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 27 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
27 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 163 117 74
Rank change year-on-year -46 -43 +21
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 526 565 1,039
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.62% 2.15% 2.75%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.62% 15.25% 18.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 417 376 690
10th Percentile £231 £249 £194
25th Percentile £400 £373 £295
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £440
Median % change year-on-year - +13.64% -7.37%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £575
90th Percentile £700 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £450
% change year-on-year - +11.11% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 7 36
10th Percentile £14.24 £34.25 £16.13
25th Percentile £15.50 £47.50 £29.54
Median hourly rate £21.63 £53.00 £53.53
Median % change year-on-year -59.19% -0.99% +71.30%
75th Percentile £37.52 £92.88 £69.45
90th Percentile £47.26 £112.00 £77.27
UK median hourly rate £21.63 £50.00 £53.53
% change year-on-year -56.74% -6.59% +89.55%

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 4,168 3,705 5,501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.80% 14.10% 14.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,787 2,326 3,776
10th Percentile £173 £200 £178
25th Percentile £263 £313 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.06% -8.74%
75th Percentile £568 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 124 342
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.33 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.76 £20.30 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.54 £51.50 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -54.30% +103.96% -1.79%
75th Percentile £60.00 £67.25 £62.82
90th Percentile £68.00 £73.00 £72.44
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £34.00 £26.25
% change year-on-year -26.47% +29.52% +2.10%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 -37 176 £500 - 74
South East -40 93 £500 - 144
North of England -48 80 £370 -15.91% 74
South West -21 75 £560 -2.61% 55
North West -12 63 £365 -8.75% 27
Midlands -50 50 £450 +28.57% 47
East of England +9 48 £425 -1.16% 35
West Midlands -30 37 £500 +92.31% 21
Yorkshire -49 15 £375 -21.05% 39
East Midlands -26 13 £415 +3.75% 25
North East -18 5 £550 -8.33% 8
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 (13.50%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (6.08%) SharePoint
3 29 (5.51%) IIS
4 15 (2.85%) Apache
5 10 (1.90%) WebSphere
6 9 (1.71%) Confluence
6 9 (1.71%) JBoss
7 8 (1.52%) iPlanet
7 8 (1.52%) WebSphere Application Server
8 6 (1.14%) SAS
9 5 (0.95%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2010
10 2 (0.38%) WordPress
11 1 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
11 1 (0.19%) nginx
11 1 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.19%) SharePoint 2010
11 1 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 26 (4.94%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.38%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.38%) Windchill
4 1 (0.19%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.19%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 3 (0.57%) Veritas eDiscovery
2 2 (0.38%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle FAH
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.19%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 189 (35.93%) Azure
2 109 (20.72%) Microsoft 365
3 88 (16.73%) Entra ID
4 53 (10.08%) AWS
5 22 (4.18%) IaaS
6 15 (2.85%) SaaS
7 12 (2.28%) PaaS
8 10 (1.90%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.71%) Nutanix
10 7 (1.33%) Azure Monitor
10 7 (1.33%) GitHub
10 7 (1.33%) OpenShift
11 6 (1.14%) Amazon S3
11 6 (1.14%) Azure Sentinel
11 6 (1.14%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 5 (0.95%) GCP
13 4 (0.76%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 4 (0.76%) OCI
13 4 (0.76%) Power Platform
13 4 (0.76%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 164 (31.18%) DNS
2 121 (23.00%) DHCP
3 109 (20.72%) Firewall
4 47 (8.94%) TCP/IP
4 47 (8.94%) VPN
5 43 (8.17%) WAN
6 37 (7.03%) LAN
7 28 (5.32%) Network Security
8 25 (4.75%) Kerberos
9 21 (3.99%) Cisco IOS
9 21 (3.99%) VLAN
10 17 (3.23%) Cisco Firepower
10 17 (3.23%) Cisco ISE
10 17 (3.23%) Junos
10 17 (3.23%) Wireless
11 11 (2.09%) VoIP
12 10 (1.90%) FTP
12 10 (1.90%) SAN
12 10 (1.90%) Wi-Fi
13 9 (1.71%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (10.84%) SQL Server
2 18 (3.42%) Oracle Database
3 5 (0.95%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.76%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.76%) Relational Database
5 3 (0.57%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.57%) Power BI
6 2 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.38%) Apache Hive
6 2 (0.38%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.38%) Impala
6 2 (0.38%) MySQL
6 2 (0.38%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.19%) Amazon Aurora
7 1 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (0.19%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.19%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.19%) Redis
7 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 21 (3.99%) Jenkins
2 19 (3.61%) Git
3 13 (2.47%) JIRA
3 13 (2.47%) Sonatype Nexus
4 12 (2.28%) GitLab
5 10 (1.90%) Visual Studio
6 9 (1.71%) Bitbucket Server
6 9 (1.71%) CA Release Automation
7 5 (0.95%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.76%) Robot Framework
9 3 (0.57%) Octopus Deploy
9 3 (0.57%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.57%) TeamCity
10 2 (0.38%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.38%) Fiddler
10 2 (0.38%) GoCD
10 2 (0.38%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.19%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.19%) Maven
11 1 (0.19%) Selenium
General
1 126 (23.95%) Social Skills
2 61 (11.60%) Finance
3 55 (10.46%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 33 (6.27%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.80%) Banking
7 18 (3.42%) Legal
8 12 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 8 (1.52%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.14%) Spanish Language
11 5 (0.95%) Front Office
11 5 (0.95%) Marketing
12 4 (0.76%) Aerospace
12 4 (0.76%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.57%) Back Office
13 3 (0.57%) Electronics
13 3 (0.57%) Local Government
13 3 (0.57%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.57%) Military
13 3 (0.57%) Retail
Job Titles
1 83 (15.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 57 (10.84%) Analyst
3 47 (8.94%) Support Engineer
4 40 (7.60%) Architect
5 39 (7.41%) Platform Engineer
6 35 (6.65%) Senior
7 31 (5.89%) Network Engineer
7 31 (5.89%) Wintel Engineer
8 30 (5.70%) 3rd Line Engineer
9 29 (5.51%) Support Analyst
10 28 (5.32%) 3rd Line Support
11 26 (4.94%) IT Support
12 24 (4.56%) Technical Analyst
13 23 (4.37%) 2nd Line Support
13 23 (4.37%) Developer
14 22 (4.18%) Windows Engineer
15 19 (3.61%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
15 19 (3.61%) Cloud Engineer
16 18 (3.42%) Technical Support
17 17 (3.23%) Network Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (7.98%) OAuth
2 40 (7.60%) SAML
3 30 (5.70%) LDAP
4 26 (4.94%) OpenID
5 23 (4.37%) .NET
6 17 (3.23%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.85%) REST
8 14 (2.66%) .NET Framework
9 9 (1.71%) React
10 8 (1.52%) Middleware
10 8 (1.52%) XMPP
11 6 (1.14%) AngularJS
12 4 (0.76%) ASP.NET Web API
12 4 (0.76%) SOAP
12 4 (0.76%) WCF
12 4 (0.76%) YAML
13 3 (0.57%) RESTful
13 3 (0.57%) Web Services
13 3 (0.57%) WinForms
13 3 (0.57%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 42 (7.98%) PKI
2 41 (7.79%) Replication
3 40 (7.60%) Data Centre
4 21 (3.99%) Hybrid Cloud
5 19 (3.61%) Clustering
6 17 (3.23%) NHS
6 17 (3.23%) Private Cloud
7 15 (2.85%) Product Ownership
8 13 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
8 13 (2.47%) Onboarding
9 12 (2.28%) Driving Licence
10 10 (1.90%) Enterprise Storage
10 10 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
11 9 (1.71%) CMDB
11 9 (1.71%) Management Information System
12 8 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
12 8 (1.52%) Cloud Native
12 8 (1.52%) iPhone
13 6 (1.14%) Client/Server
13 6 (1.14%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 524 (99.62%) Windows
2 130 (24.71%) Linux
3 36 (6.84%) Windows 10
3 36 (6.84%) Windows Server 2019
4 34 (6.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 32 (6.08%) Windows Server 2012
6 28 (5.32%) Windows Server 2016
7 13 (2.47%) Unix
8 10 (1.90%) Windows Server 2003
9 8 (1.52%) CentOS
10 7 (1.33%) Android
10 7 (1.33%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (1.14%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.76%) AIX
12 4 (0.76%) VMS
13 3 (0.57%) Apple iOS
14 2 (0.38%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.38%) Solaris
14 2 (0.38%) zOS
15 1 (0.19%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (23.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 87 (16.54%) Problem-Solving
3 79 (15.02%) ITIL
4 71 (13.50%) Agile
5 69 (13.12%) Disaster Recovery
6 67 (12.74%) High Availability
7 63 (11.98%) Service Management
8 60 (11.41%) Migration
9 53 (10.08%) Identity Access Management
10 51 (9.70%) DevOps
11 47 (8.94%) ITSM
12 45 (8.56%) Change Management
12 45 (8.56%) Continuous Improvement
13 42 (7.98%) CI/CD
14 39 (7.41%) Project Delivery
14 39 (7.41%) RBAC
15 37 (7.03%) Platform Engineering
16 34 (6.46%) Infrastructure as Code
17 33 (6.27%) Change Control
18 30 (5.70%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 200 (38.02%) PowerShell
2 61 (11.60%) SQL
3 53 (10.08%) Python
4 27 (5.13%) Bash
5 25 (4.75%) C#
6 18 (3.42%) T-SQL
7 14 (2.66%) PL/SQL
8 10 (1.90%) Java
8 10 (1.90%) Perl
9 9 (1.71%) Groovy
10 8 (1.52%) Bicep
11 7 (1.33%) Shell Script
12 6 (1.14%) JavaScript
13 2 (0.38%) Delphi
13 2 (0.38%) JCL
13 2 (0.38%) PHP
13 2 (0.38%) REXX
13 2 (0.38%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.38%) VBA
14 1 (0.19%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 205 (38.97%) Security Cleared
2 129 (24.52%) SC Cleared
3 77 (14.64%) DV Cleared
4 68 (12.93%) Microsoft Certification
5 63 (11.98%) Degree
6 28 (5.32%) MCSE
7 20 (3.80%) Azure Certification
7 20 (3.80%) Cisco Certification
8 18 (3.42%) CCNP
9 17 (3.23%) CCNA
10 16 (3.04%) AWS Certification
11 15 (2.85%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 14 (2.66%) MCSA
13 12 (2.28%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (1.71%) CCDP
14 9 (1.71%) VCAP
15 8 (1.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 7 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
16 7 (1.33%) Master's Degree
17 6 (1.14%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (3.80%) GDPR
1 20 (3.80%) QA
2 15 (2.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 12 (2.28%) SLA
4 11 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
5 7 (1.33%) NIST
6 3 (0.57%) NIST 800
7 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 2 (0.38%) NCSC
8 1 (0.19%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.19%) Basel III
8 1 (0.19%) DICOM
8 1 (0.19%) GAAP
8 1 (0.19%) HL7
8 1 (0.19%) IFRS
8 1 (0.19%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.19%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.19%) JSP 440
System Software
1 332 (63.12%) Active Directory
2 141 (26.81%) VMware Infrastructure
3 50 (9.51%) Hyper-V
4 42 (7.98%) vSphere
5 36 (6.84%) Docker
6 29 (5.51%) VMware ESXi
7 28 (5.32%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (5.13%) VMware NSX
9 12 (2.28%) Virtual Servers
10 10 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (1.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 6 (1.14%) Terminal Services
11 6 (1.14%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 4 (0.76%) Firmware
12 4 (0.76%) NFS
13 3 (0.57%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.57%) Microsoft App-V
14 2 (0.38%) HDFS
14 2 (0.38%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 2 (0.38%) KVM
Systems Management
1 71 (13.50%) SCCM
2 70 (13.31%) Microsoft Intune
3 52 (9.89%) Ansible
4 51 (9.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 51 (9.70%) Single Sign-On
5 47 (8.94%) vCenter Server
6 45 (8.56%) Terraform
7 27 (5.13%) SCOM
8 25 (4.75%) Kubernetes
9 15 (2.85%) WSUS
10 10 (1.90%) Progress Chef
11 9 (1.71%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (1.52%) CA Wily
12 8 (1.52%) Puppet
13 7 (1.33%) SCOrch
14 6 (1.14%) CASB
14 6 (1.14%) Tivoli
15 5 (0.95%) Microsoft Clustering
15 5 (0.95%) vMotion
15 5 (0.95%) VxRail
Vendors
1 261 (49.62%) Microsoft
2 194 (36.88%) VMware
3 75 (14.26%) Cisco
4 54 (10.27%) Citrix
5 43 (8.17%) Oracle
6 36 (6.84%) SolarWinds
7 27 (5.13%) Red Hat
7 27 (5.13%) Veeam
8 26 (4.94%) Dell
9 21 (3.99%) ServiceNow
10 19 (3.61%) Juniper
10 19 (3.61%) Splunk
11 15 (2.85%) Okta
12 13 (2.47%) Palo Alto
13 11 (2.09%) Broadcom
14 10 (1.90%) IBM
14 10 (1.90%) NetApp
15 9 (1.71%) CyberArk
16 8 (1.52%) AppDynamics
16 8 (1.52%) SAP
385 Windows Server jobs in England