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 28 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
28 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 159 192 112
Rank change year-on-year +33 -80 -36
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 808 424 697
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.75% 1.53% 2.14%
As % of the Operating Systems category 17.79% 11.10% 14.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 517 316 484
10th Percentile £261 £256 £248
25th Percentile £375 £400 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £508 £475
Median % change year-on-year -4.83% +6.84% -0.52%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £650 £638
UK median daily rate £488 £508 £473
% change year-on-year -3.94% +7.41% -0.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 11 8
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.97 £42.17
25th Percentile £26.00 £13.31 £48.75
Median hourly rate £63.31 £16.00 £62.19
Median % change year-on-year +295.67% -74.27% +27.02%
75th Percentile £72.25 £31.39 £103.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £41.94 £112.00
UK median hourly rate £63.14 £17.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year +260.77% -66.67% +7.23%

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 4,543 3,821 4,651
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.85% 13.78% 14.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,896 2,511 2,903
10th Percentile £190 £186 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.11% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £582
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 267 220
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £19.37 £18.87 £21.95
Median hourly rate £35.22 £25.15 £59.25
Median % change year-on-year +40.04% -57.55% +23.78%
75th Percentile £67.84 £59.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +14.43%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 +7 242 £475 -5.00% 167
South East +6 196 £515 -1.90% 128
North of England +15 135 £450 +8.11% 112
East of England +5 87 £500 -9.09% 66
Midlands +4 80 £438 -16.67% 94
North West -18 72 £425 - 62
South West -32 57 £567 +8.05% 46
West Midlands -24 47 £425 -19.05% 61
Yorkshire -6 46 £525 +37.70% 37
East Midlands +11 33 £450 -10.00% 32
North East -23 18 £350 -30.00% 14
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 90 (11.14%) Microsoft Exchange
2 55 (6.81%) SharePoint
3 23 (2.85%) IIS
4 7 (0.87%) Confluence
4 7 (0.87%) nginx
5 6 (0.74%) Apache
5 6 (0.74%) Tomcat
6 4 (0.50%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.37%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.37%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.25%) SAS
8 2 (0.25%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.12%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.12%) SharePoint 2010
9 1 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
9 1 (0.12%) WebLogic
Applications
1 17 (2.10%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 12 (1.49%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 335 (41.46%) Azure
2 175 (21.66%) Microsoft 365
3 169 (20.92%) Entra ID
4 100 (12.38%) AWS
5 44 (5.45%) Azure Monitor
6 33 (4.08%) GCP
7 32 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
8 24 (2.97%) IaaS
9 23 (2.85%) Power Platform
10 20 (2.48%) OpenShift
11 19 (2.35%) Azure Sentinel
11 19 (2.35%) GitHub
12 11 (1.36%) OneDrive
13 10 (1.24%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (1.24%) Nutanix
13 10 (1.24%) PaaS
14 9 (1.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 8 (0.99%) Datadog
15 8 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
15 8 (0.99%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 255 (31.56%) DNS
2 168 (20.79%) DHCP
3 140 (17.33%) Firewall
4 74 (9.16%) TCP/IP
5 71 (8.79%) VPN
6 57 (7.05%) SAN
7 47 (5.82%) WAN
8 46 (5.69%) LAN
9 43 (5.32%) Network Security
9 43 (5.32%) VLAN
10 31 (3.84%) SSL
11 21 (2.60%) Wi-Fi
11 21 (2.60%) Wireless
12 20 (2.48%) NAS
13 18 (2.23%) NetScaler
14 14 (1.73%) SSH
15 13 (1.61%) VoIP
16 11 (1.36%) BGP
16 11 (1.36%) HTTP
17 9 (1.11%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (17.95%) SQL Server
2 23 (2.85%) Power BI
3 15 (1.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 13 (1.61%) MySQL
5 12 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
6 11 (1.36%) Oracle Database
6 11 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
7 7 (0.87%) Elasticsearch
7 7 (0.87%) NoSQL
8 6 (0.74%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (0.37%) Big Data
9 3 (0.37%) GIS
9 3 (0.37%) Oracle BI EE
10 2 (0.25%) Data Mining
10 2 (0.25%) Metadata
10 2 (0.25%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.12%) Amazon Aurora
11 1 (0.12%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 16 (1.98%) Jenkins
2 15 (1.86%) Git
2 15 (1.86%) JIRA
3 10 (1.24%) GitLab
4 5 (0.62%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 5 (0.62%) Visual Studio
5 3 (0.37%) Artifactory
5 3 (0.37%) MSI
5 3 (0.37%) Octopus Deploy
6 2 (0.25%) AdminStudio
6 2 (0.25%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.25%) InstallShield
6 2 (0.25%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.12%) JMeter
7 1 (0.12%) MSBuild
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.12%) Subversion
7 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
General
1 206 (25.50%) Social Skills
2 102 (12.62%) Analytical Skills
3 83 (10.27%) Finance
4 47 (5.82%) Documentation Skills
5 44 (5.45%) Banking
6 38 (4.70%) Public Sector
7 21 (2.60%) Law
8 14 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 13 (1.61%) Aerospace
9 13 (1.61%) Military
10 12 (1.49%) Legal
10 12 (1.49%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.11%) Manufacturing
12 8 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (0.74%) Games
14 5 (0.62%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.62%) Local Government
14 5 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.62%) Police
15 4 (0.50%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 204 (25.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 96 (11.88%) Senior
3 76 (9.41%) Support Engineer
4 58 (7.18%) Cloud Engineer
5 49 (6.06%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 47 (5.82%) Lead
7 45 (5.57%) Windows Engineer
8 43 (5.32%) IT Engineer
9 42 (5.20%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 41 (5.07%) Architect
11 35 (4.33%) IT Support
12 33 (4.08%) Administrator
13 28 (3.47%) Storage Engineer
14 27 (3.34%) Systems Engineer
15 26 (3.22%) Azure Engineer
15 26 (3.22%) VMware Engineer
15 26 (3.22%) Wintel Engineer
16 24 (2.97%) IT Support Engineer
16 24 (2.97%) Platform Engineer
16 24 (2.97%) Server Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (10.77%) Terraform
2 31 (3.84%) .NET
3 25 (3.09%) REST
4 17 (2.10%) ARM Templates
5 15 (1.86%) .NET Framework
6 12 (1.49%) LDAP
7 10 (1.24%) JSON
8 8 (0.99%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (0.99%) OAuth
9 7 (0.87%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (0.74%) Middleware
10 6 (0.74%) YAML
11 5 (0.62%) SailPoint
11 5 (0.62%) SAML
11 5 (0.62%) Software Packaging
12 4 (0.50%) 802.1X
12 4 (0.50%) OAuth2
12 4 (0.50%) OpenID
12 4 (0.50%) React
12 4 (0.50%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 77 (9.53%) PKI
2 64 (7.92%) Data Centre
3 63 (7.80%) Hybrid Cloud
4 56 (6.93%) Onboarding
5 55 (6.81%) Clustering
6 45 (5.57%) Management Information System
7 41 (5.07%) Replication
8 26 (3.22%) Security Posture
9 19 (2.35%) Driving Licence
9 19 (2.35%) Enterprise Storage
10 15 (1.86%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.73%) Smartcard
12 13 (1.61%) Virtual Team
13 11 (1.36%) Cloud Native
13 11 (1.36%) Linux Command Line
13 11 (1.36%) Public Cloud
14 10 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
15 9 (1.11%) Operational Technology
16 8 (0.99%) ARM Cortex
17 7 (0.87%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 808 (100.00%) Windows
2 230 (28.47%) Linux
3 69 (8.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 57 (7.05%) Windows 10
5 50 (6.19%) Windows Server 2019
6 32 (3.96%) Windows Server 2016
7 30 (3.71%) Windows Server 2012
8 29 (3.59%) CentOS
8 29 (3.59%) Ubuntu
8 29 (3.59%) Unix
9 14 (1.73%) Mac OS
9 14 (1.73%) Rocky
10 10 (1.24%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (0.99%) VMS
11 8 (0.99%) Windows 7
12 6 (0.74%) Windows Server 2003
13 4 (0.50%) Alpine Linux
13 4 (0.50%) Solaris
14 3 (0.37%) Android
14 3 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 258 (31.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 203 (25.12%) Problem-Solving
3 173 (21.41%) ITIL
4 132 (16.34%) Disaster Recovery
5 114 (14.11%) Root Cause Analysis
6 109 (13.49%) Migration
7 98 (12.13%) Continuous Improvement
8 94 (11.63%) Change Management
8 94 (11.63%) Infrastructure as Code
9 85 (10.52%) ITSM
10 83 (10.27%) DevOps
11 82 (10.15%) Service Management
12 77 (9.53%) Technical Leadership
13 75 (9.28%) High Availability
14 74 (9.16%) Stakeholder Management
15 70 (8.66%) Project Delivery
16 65 (8.04%) Vulnerability Remediation
17 60 (7.43%) Cybersecurity
18 59 (7.30%) Agile
18 59 (7.30%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 307 (38.00%) PowerShell
2 107 (13.24%) SQL
3 81 (10.02%) Python
4 65 (8.04%) Bash
5 36 (4.46%) T-SQL
6 29 (3.59%) Bicep
7 28 (3.47%) C#
8 16 (1.98%) PL/SQL
9 12 (1.49%) Java
10 10 (1.24%) JavaScript
11 5 (0.62%) Go
12 3 (0.37%) Korn
12 3 (0.37%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.25%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) JCL
13 2 (0.25%) REXX
13 2 (0.25%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.12%) CodeQL
14 1 (0.12%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.12%) Ladder Logic
Qualifications
1 353 (43.69%) Security Cleared
2 185 (22.90%) DV Cleared
3 181 (22.40%) SC Cleared
4 81 (10.02%) Degree
5 51 (6.31%) Microsoft Certification
6 41 (5.07%) Azure Certification
7 25 (3.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 24 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
9 22 (2.72%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 18 (2.23%) MCSE
11 14 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
11 14 (1.73%) MCSA
12 13 (1.61%) CCNA
12 13 (1.61%) CISSP
13 12 (1.49%) AWS Certification
13 12 (1.49%) CCNP
14 11 (1.36%) CISM
15 10 (1.24%) ITIL Certification
16 8 (0.99%) Computer Science Degree
16 8 (0.99%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (6.06%) SLA
2 32 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 24 (2.97%) NIST
4 21 (2.60%) QA
5 15 (1.86%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (0.99%) NCSC
7 7 (0.87%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (0.74%) GRC
8 6 (0.74%) GxP
9 5 (0.62%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 5 (0.62%) GDPR
9 5 (0.62%) ISO 9001
9 5 (0.62%) SOC 2
10 4 (0.50%) ISO 31000
10 4 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 2 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.25%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.12%) GMP
System Software
1 478 (59.16%) Active Directory
2 301 (37.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 153 (18.94%) Hyper-V
4 115 (14.23%) VMware ESXi
5 105 (13.00%) vSphere
6 56 (6.93%) Virtual Machines
7 42 (5.20%) Docker
8 36 (4.46%) VMware NSX
9 35 (4.33%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (2.97%) vCloud
11 17 (2.10%) Virtual Servers
12 13 (1.61%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 12 (1.49%) XenApp
14 10 (1.24%) Firmware
14 10 (1.24%) XenDesktop
15 7 (0.87%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.87%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 6 (0.74%) KVM
16 6 (0.74%) VMware Server
17 5 (0.62%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 95 (11.76%) Ansible
2 93 (11.51%) vCenter Server
3 92 (11.39%) Microsoft Intune
4 87 (10.77%) SCCM
5 75 (9.28%) SCOM
6 50 (6.19%) Kubernetes
7 32 (3.96%) WSUS
8 18 (2.23%) Grafana
9 17 (2.10%) NetBackup
9 17 (2.10%) Prometheus
10 15 (1.86%) Failover Clustering
11 14 (1.73%) Avamar
12 13 (1.61%) Nagios
13 11 (1.36%) Nessus
13 11 (1.36%) vMotion
14 8 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.99%) Puppet
15 7 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
15 7 (0.87%) Microsoft Clustering
15 7 (0.87%) WMI
Vendors
1 430 (53.22%) Microsoft
2 383 (47.40%) VMware
3 91 (11.26%) Cisco
4 70 (8.66%) Citrix
5 59 (7.30%) Oracle
6 51 (6.31%) ServiceNow
7 35 (4.33%) Red Hat
8 34 (4.21%) CyberArk
9 31 (3.84%) Dell
10 30 (3.71%) BeyondTrust
11 29 (3.59%) Splunk
11 29 (3.59%) Veeam
12 25 (3.09%) NetApp
13 22 (2.72%) Google
14 20 (2.48%) CrowdStrike
14 20 (2.48%) Zscaler
15 19 (2.35%) SolarWinds
15 19 (2.35%) Tenable
16 18 (2.23%) Fortinet
17 17 (2.10%) Qualys
648 Windows Server jobs in England