Windows Server Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft Windows Server
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Windows Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
4 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 188 135 92
Rank change year-on-year -53 -43 -11
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 603 517 881
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.44% 2.16% 2.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 14.78% 15.35% 17.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 418 370 659
10th Percentile £254 £350 £210
25th Percentile £400 £425 £320
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £545 £475
Median % change year-on-year -12.84% +14.74% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £595
90th Percentile £660 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £525 £464
% change year-on-year -9.52% +13.21% -7.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 4 17
10th Percentile £19.25 £14.15 £14.60
25th Percentile £20.79 £14.91 £16.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £17.04 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +52.58% -55.74% +2.67%
75th Percentile £60.33 £32.97 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.00 £57.44 £65.46
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £17.63 £38.50
% change year-on-year +36.17% -54.22% +28.33%

All Operating Systems
England

Windows Server falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,081 3,368 5,053
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.77% 14.04% 13.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,653 2,292 3,427
10th Percentile £188 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £467 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.47% -1.79% -5.94%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £689 £700
UK median daily rate £459 £465 £470
% change year-on-year -1.29% -1.06% -6.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 165 369
10th Percentile £15.61 £15.10 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.25 £15.50
Median hourly rate £33.32 £20.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.58% -11.11% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.00 £62.00
90th Percentile £72.20 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £22.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +47.73% -2.22% -47.06%

Windows Server
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Windows Server relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Windows Server job vacancy trend in England

Windows Server
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows Server.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows Server

Windows Server
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows Server in England over the 6 months to 4 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Windows Server in England

Windows Server
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows Server.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows Server

Windows Server
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows Server in England over the 6 months to 4 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows Server in England

Windows Server
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Windows Server within the England region over the 6 months to 4 June 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year		 Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads		 Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months		 Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year		 Live
Jobs
London -48 181 £489 -6.90% 75
South East -28 142 £525 -2.78% 107
North of England -85 87 £447 -7.94% 67
Midlands -21 70 £438 -2.78% 42
East of England -14 63 £450 -18.18% 30
North West -31 62 £425 -1.45% 39
South West -43 58 £515 -12.34% 55
West Midlands -38 43 £438 +9.38% 24
East Midlands -8 25 £450 -10.00% 18
Yorkshire -69 23 £500 -6.98% 23
North East -32 2 £330 -34.00% 6
Windows Server
UK

Windows Server
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 71 (11.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 31 (5.14%) IIS
3 27 (4.48%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.66%) nginx
4 10 (1.66%) Tomcat
5 7 (1.16%) Apache
6 3 (0.50%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.33%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.33%) SAS
7 2 (0.33%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.17%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.17%) Confluence
8 1 (0.17%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 10 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 13 (2.16%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.50%) Veritas eDiscovery
3 1 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle FAH
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 227 (37.65%) Azure
2 108 (17.91%) Microsoft 365
3 100 (16.58%) Entra ID
4 69 (11.44%) AWS
5 25 (4.15%) IaaS
6 20 (3.32%) Azure Monitor
7 17 (2.82%) Power Platform
8 15 (2.49%) PaaS
9 13 (2.16%) GCP
10 11 (1.82%) GitHub
10 11 (1.82%) Nutanix
11 8 (1.33%) Azure DevOps
11 8 (1.33%) SaaS
12 7 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (1.16%) Azure Sentinel
13 6 (1.00%) Cohesity
13 6 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
14 5 (0.83%) Azure Stack
14 5 (0.83%) Microsoft Copilot
15 4 (0.66%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 199 (33.00%) DNS
2 139 (23.05%) DHCP
3 98 (16.25%) Firewall
4 52 (8.62%) VPN
5 45 (7.46%) WAN
6 42 (6.97%) TCP/IP
7 37 (6.14%) LAN
8 26 (4.31%) Network Security
9 22 (3.65%) SAN
10 15 (2.49%) Kerberos
10 15 (2.49%) VLAN
11 14 (2.32%) SMTP
12 13 (2.16%) FTP
13 12 (1.99%) SSL
13 12 (1.99%) VoIP
14 11 (1.82%) Wi-Fi
15 9 (1.49%) NAS
15 9 (1.49%) NetScaler
15 9 (1.49%) SSH
16 8 (1.33%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (19.90%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.82%) Power BI
3 12 (1.99%) Elasticsearch
4 11 (1.82%) Oracle Database
5 10 (1.66%) PostgreSQL
6 9 (1.49%) NoSQL
7 7 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (1.00%) DB2
9 5 (0.83%) Relational Database
10 4 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
10 4 (0.66%) GIS
10 4 (0.66%) Oracle BI EE
11 3 (0.50%) Data Mining
11 3 (0.50%) MySQL
11 3 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 2 (0.33%) Big Data
12 2 (0.33%) MongoDB
12 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 1 (0.17%) Oracle Database 11g
13 1 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 11 (1.82%) JIRA
2 9 (1.49%) Visual Studio
3 6 (1.00%) Jenkins
3 6 (1.00%) Robot Framework
4 5 (0.83%) Git
4 5 (0.83%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.50%) GitLab
5 3 (0.50%) MSI
6 2 (0.33%) AdminStudio
6 2 (0.33%) InstallShield
7 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.17%) eggPlant
7 1 (0.17%) GoCD
7 1 (0.17%) Octopus Deploy
7 1 (0.17%) Postman
7 1 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 120 (19.90%) Social Skills
2 63 (10.45%) Finance
3 60 (9.95%) Public Sector
4 47 (7.79%) Analytical Skills
5 23 (3.81%) Banking
6 21 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (2.82%) Legal
8 15 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (1.82%) Law
9 11 (1.82%) Military
10 8 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (1.16%) Local Government
12 5 (0.83%) Marketing
12 5 (0.83%) Retail
13 4 (0.66%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.66%) Police
14 3 (0.50%) Front Office
14 3 (0.50%) Telecoms
15 2 (0.33%) Aerospace
15 2 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 143 (23.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 43 (7.13%) Senior
3 42 (6.97%) Support Engineer
4 39 (6.47%) Analyst
5 33 (5.47%) Cloud Engineer
6 31 (5.14%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 31 (5.14%) Wintel Engineer
7 30 (4.98%) IT Support
8 29 (4.81%) Architect
8 29 (4.81%) Lead
9 24 (3.98%) Administrator
10 21 (3.48%) IT Engineer
10 21 (3.48%) Windows Engineer
11 19 (3.15%) Developer
11 19 (3.15%) Server Engineer
12 17 (2.82%) Azure Engineer
12 17 (2.82%) Infrastructure Support
12 17 (2.82%) Systems Administrator
13 16 (2.65%) 3rd Line Support
13 16 (2.65%) Storage Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.98%) .NET
2 25 (4.15%) .NET Framework
3 19 (3.15%) LDAP
4 18 (2.99%) OAuth
4 18 (2.99%) REST
5 17 (2.82%) SAML
6 6 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
7 5 (0.83%) JSON
7 5 (0.83%) React
7 5 (0.83%) Software Packaging
8 4 (0.66%) ADO
8 4 (0.66%) AngularJS
8 4 (0.66%) Azure Blueprints
8 4 (0.66%) EJB
8 4 (0.66%) Keycloak
8 4 (0.66%) Middleware
8 4 (0.66%) OAuth2
8 4 (0.66%) OpenID
8 4 (0.66%) RabbitMQ
8 4 (0.66%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 54 (8.96%) PKI
2 44 (7.30%) Clustering
3 39 (6.47%) Replication
4 33 (5.47%) Onboarding
5 30 (4.98%) Data Centre
6 29 (4.81%) Hybrid Cloud
7 19 (3.15%) Legacy Systems
8 17 (2.82%) Management Information System
9 14 (2.32%) Enterprise Storage
9 14 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
10 12 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
11 11 (1.82%) Linux Command Line
12 10 (1.66%) Virtual Team
13 9 (1.49%) Cloud Native
13 9 (1.49%) Product Ownership
14 8 (1.33%) Driving Licence
14 8 (1.33%) NHS
14 8 (1.33%) Private Cloud
14 8 (1.33%) Public Cloud
14 8 (1.33%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 603 (100.00%) Windows
2 159 (26.37%) Linux
3 58 (9.62%) Windows Server 2019
4 46 (7.63%) Windows Server 2016
5 40 (6.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 40 (6.63%) Windows 10
6 31 (5.14%) Windows Server 2012
7 28 (4.64%) Unix
8 21 (3.48%) Ubuntu
9 11 (1.82%) Windows Server 2003
10 10 (1.66%) Windows Server 2008
11 9 (1.49%) AIX
11 9 (1.49%) VMS
12 8 (1.33%) CentOS
12 8 (1.33%) Solaris
13 4 (0.66%) Alpine Linux
13 4 (0.66%) Mac OS
14 3 (0.50%) Android
14 3 (0.50%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.33%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (28.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 103 (17.08%) Disaster Recovery
3 100 (16.58%) High Availability
4 92 (15.26%) Problem-Solving
5 86 (14.26%) ITIL
6 66 (10.95%) Migration
7 61 (10.12%) Change Management
8 55 (9.12%) ITSM
9 50 (8.29%) Agile
10 49 (8.13%) Project Delivery
11 47 (7.79%) DevOps
12 43 (7.13%) Infrastructure as Code
13 41 (6.80%) Root Cause Analysis
14 38 (6.30%) Service Management
14 38 (6.30%) Technical Leadership
15 36 (5.97%) Runbook
16 34 (5.64%) Continuous Improvement
16 34 (5.64%) Cybersecurity
16 34 (5.64%) Identity Access Management
17 32 (5.31%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 224 (37.15%) PowerShell
2 85 (14.10%) SQL
3 59 (9.78%) Python
4 32 (5.31%) Bash
5 28 (4.64%) C#
6 24 (3.98%) PL/SQL
7 19 (3.15%) JavaScript
7 19 (3.15%) T-SQL
8 14 (2.32%) Java
9 9 (1.49%) Bicep
10 3 (0.50%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.33%) JCL
11 2 (0.33%) REXX
12 1 (0.17%) Groovy
12 1 (0.17%) Ladder Logic
12 1 (0.17%) Perl
12 1 (0.17%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.17%) VB
Qualifications
1 241 (39.97%) Security Cleared
2 145 (24.05%) SC Cleared
3 96 (15.92%) DV Cleared
4 64 (10.61%) Degree
5 45 (7.46%) Microsoft Certification
6 27 (4.48%) MCSE
6 27 (4.48%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 19 (3.15%) MCSA
8 18 (2.99%) VCAP
9 14 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
10 12 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
11 10 (1.66%) Azure Certification
11 10 (1.66%) CISSP
12 9 (1.49%) CCNA
13 8 (1.33%) CISM
14 7 (1.16%) CCNP
15 5 (0.83%) AWS Certification
15 5 (0.83%) ITIL Certification
16 4 (0.66%) CompTIA Security+
16 4 (0.66%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 34 (5.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (4.48%) QA
3 24 (3.98%) GDPR
4 22 (3.65%) NIST
5 15 (2.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 14 (2.32%) SLA
7 11 (1.82%) Cyber Essentials
8 4 (0.66%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.50%) NCSC
9 3 (0.50%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.33%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 1 (0.17%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.17%) Basel III
11 1 (0.17%) GAAP
11 1 (0.17%) IFRS
11 1 (0.17%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.17%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.17%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 346 (57.38%) Active Directory
2 212 (35.16%) VMware Infrastructure
3 98 (16.25%) Hyper-V
4 72 (11.94%) vSphere
5 69 (11.44%) VMware ESXi
6 50 (8.29%) Virtual Machines
7 34 (5.64%) Docker
8 32 (5.31%) VMware NSX
9 11 (1.82%) KVM
10 10 (1.66%) Microsoft App-V
10 10 (1.66%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (1.49%) BitLocker
11 9 (1.49%) vCloud
12 6 (1.00%) Virtual Servers
12 6 (1.00%) VMware Workstation
12 6 (1.00%) XenApp
13 5 (0.83%) XenDesktop
14 4 (0.66%) Oracle RAC
15 3 (0.50%) Firmware
15 3 (0.50%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 79 (13.10%) Ansible
2 67 (11.11%) Microsoft Intune
2 67 (11.11%) vCenter Server
3 60 (9.95%) SCCM
4 50 (8.29%) Terraform
5 36 (5.97%) Kubernetes
5 36 (5.97%) SCOM
6 33 (5.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 26 (4.31%) Single Sign-On
8 24 (3.98%) WSUS
9 12 (1.99%) vMotion
10 10 (1.66%) Nessus
10 10 (1.66%) Puppet
11 8 (1.33%) Avamar
12 6 (1.00%) Grafana
12 6 (1.00%) IBM BigFix
12 6 (1.00%) Oracle RMAN
12 6 (1.00%) Prometheus
13 5 (0.83%) VxRail
14 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 266 (44.11%) Microsoft
2 257 (42.62%) VMware
3 65 (10.78%) Cisco
4 61 (10.12%) Citrix
5 51 (8.46%) Oracle
6 41 (6.80%) ServiceNow
7 26 (4.31%) Dell
8 24 (3.98%) Red Hat
9 20 (3.32%) Okta
10 17 (2.82%) Tenable
11 16 (2.65%) IBM
11 16 (2.65%) Veeam
12 15 (2.49%) BeyondTrust
13 14 (2.32%) NetApp
13 14 (2.32%) Qualys
14 13 (2.16%) BMC
14 13 (2.16%) Remedy
14 13 (2.16%) SolarWinds
15 12 (1.99%) CyberArk
15 12 (1.99%) Thales
354 Windows Server jobs in England