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

 6 months to
15 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 169 127 73
Rank change year-on-year -42 -54 +24
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 506 548 1,018
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.59% 2.03% 2.84%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.23% 14.55% 18.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 402 370 670
10th Percentile £222 £248 £193
25th Percentile £377 £360 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +5.56% -5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £575
90th Percentile £688 £661 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £480 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% +6.67% -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 8 30
10th Percentile £13.22 £36.94 £23.96
25th Percentile £15.50 £48.75 £42.57
Median hourly rate £21.23 £62.75 £56.03
Median % change year-on-year -66.17% +11.99% +86.77%
75th Percentile £41.94 £103.00 £75.37
90th Percentile £51.52 £112.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £21.23 £51.50 £56.03
% change year-on-year -58.78% -8.08% +86.77%

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 4,137 3,767 5,413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 13.03% 13.97% 15.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,768 2,380 3,741
10th Percentile £173 £200 £179
25th Percentile £263 £313 £270
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £474 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.01% -0.26% -6.86%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 128 292
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.22 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.04 £51.25 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year -51.15% +65.32% +24.00%
75th Percentile £61.25 £67.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.00 £73.83 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £32.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% +1.56% +28.00%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -47 163 £500 - 68
South East -22 99 £500 +3.31% 117
North of England -34 73 £358 -10.50% 71
South West -32 70 £550 - 41
North West -5 57 £358 -8.79% 32
Midlands -33 50 £500 +42.86% 28
East of England +4 47 £425 -1.16% 30
West Midlands -28 39 £525 +101.92% 18
Yorkshire -49 14 £300 -31.82% 33
East Midlands -30 11 £415 +3.75% 9
North East -13 5 £550 +18.92% 7
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 (14.03%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (6.32%) SharePoint
3 30 (5.93%) IIS
4 15 (2.96%) Apache
5 10 (1.98%) WebSphere
6 9 (1.78%) Confluence
6 9 (1.78%) JBoss
7 8 (1.58%) iPlanet
7 8 (1.58%) WebSphere Application Server
8 6 (1.19%) SAS
9 5 (0.99%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
10 2 (0.40%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.40%) WordPress
11 1 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 1 (0.20%) MQSeries
11 1 (0.20%) nginx
11 1 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.20%) SharePoint 2010
11 1 (0.20%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 28 (5.53%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.40%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.40%) Windchill
4 1 (0.20%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.20%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 3 (0.59%) Veritas eDiscovery
2 2 (0.40%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.20%) Oracle FAH
3 1 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.20%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 1 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.20%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 175 (34.58%) Azure
2 107 (21.15%) Microsoft 365
3 76 (15.02%) Entra ID
4 52 (10.28%) AWS
5 22 (4.35%) IaaS
6 17 (3.36%) SaaS
7 12 (2.37%) PaaS
8 11 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (1.38%) Azure Monitor
9 7 (1.38%) GitHub
9 7 (1.38%) Nutanix
9 7 (1.38%) OpenShift
10 6 (1.19%) Amazon S3
10 6 (1.19%) Azure Sentinel
10 6 (1.19%) GCP
10 6 (1.19%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 5 (0.99%) Power Platform
12 4 (0.79%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 4 (0.79%) OCI
12 4 (0.79%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 152 (30.04%) DNS
2 108 (21.34%) DHCP
3 106 (20.95%) Firewall
4 48 (9.49%) TCP/IP
5 47 (9.29%) VPN
6 41 (8.10%) WAN
7 36 (7.11%) LAN
8 24 (4.74%) Network Security
9 21 (4.15%) Cisco IOS
9 21 (4.15%) VLAN
10 18 (3.56%) Wireless
11 17 (3.36%) Cisco Firepower
11 17 (3.36%) Cisco ISE
11 17 (3.36%) Junos
12 15 (2.96%) Kerberos
13 11 (2.17%) Wi-Fi
14 10 (1.98%) FTP
14 10 (1.98%) VoIP
15 9 (1.78%) SAN
15 9 (1.78%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (11.46%) SQL Server
2 21 (4.15%) Oracle Database
3 5 (0.99%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.79%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.79%) PostgreSQL
5 3 (0.59%) Power BI
5 3 (0.59%) Relational Database
6 2 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (0.40%) Apache Hive
6 2 (0.40%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.40%) Impala
6 2 (0.40%) MySQL
6 2 (0.40%) SAP HANA
7 1 (0.20%) BusinessObjects
7 1 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle Discoverer
7 1 (0.20%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.20%) Redis
7 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 22 (4.35%) Jenkins
2 19 (3.75%) Git
3 13 (2.57%) GitLab
3 13 (2.57%) JIRA
4 12 (2.37%) Sonatype Nexus
5 9 (1.78%) Bitbucket Server
5 9 (1.78%) CA Release Automation
5 9 (1.78%) Visual Studio
6 5 (0.99%) Bitbucket
7 4 (0.79%) Robot Framework
8 3 (0.59%) Octopus Deploy
8 3 (0.59%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.59%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.40%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.40%) Fiddler
9 2 (0.40%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.20%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.20%) GoCD
10 1 (0.20%) Maven
10 1 (0.20%) Selenium
General
1 127 (25.10%) Social Skills
2 60 (11.86%) Finance
3 53 (10.47%) Analytical Skills
4 43 (8.50%) Public Sector
5 33 (6.52%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.95%) Banking
7 19 (3.75%) Legal
8 10 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.78%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.19%) Front Office
10 6 (1.19%) Spanish Language
11 5 (0.99%) Marketing
12 4 (0.79%) Aerospace
12 4 (0.79%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.79%) Law
13 3 (0.59%) Back Office
13 3 (0.59%) Electronics
13 3 (0.59%) Local Government
13 3 (0.59%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.59%) Military
Job Titles
1 79 (15.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 54 (10.67%) Analyst
3 49 (9.68%) Support Engineer
4 38 (7.51%) Architect
4 38 (7.51%) Platform Engineer
5 33 (6.52%) Senior
6 30 (5.93%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 29 (5.73%) Network Engineer
7 29 (5.73%) Support Analyst
8 26 (5.14%) 3rd Line Support
8 26 (5.14%) IT Support
9 25 (4.94%) Wintel Engineer
10 23 (4.55%) 2nd Line Support
11 22 (4.35%) Developer
11 22 (4.35%) Technical Analyst
12 21 (4.15%) Windows Engineer
13 19 (3.75%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
13 19 (3.75%) Cloud Engineer
14 17 (3.36%) Network Support Engineer
14 17 (3.36%) Server Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (6.13%) OAuth
2 30 (5.93%) SAML
3 25 (4.94%) OpenID
4 22 (4.35%) .NET
5 20 (3.95%) LDAP
6 16 (3.16%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.96%) REST
8 12 (2.37%) .NET Framework
9 9 (1.78%) Middleware
10 8 (1.58%) React
10 8 (1.58%) XMPP
11 6 (1.19%) AngularJS
12 4 (0.79%) ASP.NET Web API
12 4 (0.79%) SOAP
12 4 (0.79%) WCF
12 4 (0.79%) YAML
13 3 (0.59%) RESTful
13 3 (0.59%) Web Services
13 3 (0.59%) WinForms
13 3 (0.59%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 42 (8.30%) PKI
2 39 (7.71%) Data Centre
3 27 (5.34%) Replication
4 20 (3.95%) Hybrid Cloud
5 17 (3.36%) NHS
6 16 (3.16%) Private Cloud
7 15 (2.96%) Clustering
8 14 (2.77%) Enterprise Software
8 14 (2.77%) Product Ownership
9 12 (2.37%) Driving Licence
9 12 (2.37%) Onboarding
10 10 (1.98%) Enterprise Storage
10 10 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
11 9 (1.78%) CMDB
11 9 (1.78%) Management Information System
12 8 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
12 8 (1.58%) Client/Server
12 8 (1.58%) Cloud Native
13 7 (1.38%) iPhone
14 5 (0.99%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 504 (99.60%) Windows
2 130 (25.69%) Linux
3 36 (7.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 36 (7.11%) Windows 10
4 33 (6.52%) Windows Server 2019
5 30 (5.93%) Windows Server 2012
6 26 (5.14%) Windows Server 2016
7 12 (2.37%) Unix
8 9 (1.78%) Windows Server 2003
9 7 (1.38%) Android
9 7 (1.38%) CentOS
9 7 (1.38%) Windows Server 2008
10 6 (1.19%) Ubuntu
11 4 (0.79%) VMS
12 3 (0.59%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.59%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.40%) AIX
13 2 (0.40%) Solaris
13 2 (0.40%) zOS
14 1 (0.20%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (23.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 91 (17.98%) Problem-Solving
3 84 (16.60%) ITIL
4 73 (14.43%) Agile
5 63 (12.45%) Service Management
6 60 (11.86%) Migration
7 53 (10.47%) Disaster Recovery
8 50 (9.88%) DevOps
9 46 (9.09%) ITSM
10 45 (8.89%) High Availability
11 44 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
12 42 (8.30%) Change Management
13 41 (8.10%) CI/CD
14 40 (7.91%) Identity Access Management
15 38 (7.51%) Project Delivery
16 35 (6.92%) Platform Engineering
17 32 (6.32%) Infrastructure as Code
18 31 (6.13%) Change Control
19 29 (5.73%) Cybersecurity
20 28 (5.53%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 184 (36.36%) PowerShell
2 63 (12.45%) SQL
3 55 (10.87%) Python
4 27 (5.34%) Bash
5 24 (4.74%) C#
6 17 (3.36%) T-SQL
7 13 (2.57%) PL/SQL
8 11 (2.17%) Java
9 10 (1.98%) Perl
10 9 (1.78%) Groovy
11 8 (1.58%) Bicep
12 7 (1.38%) Shell Script
13 6 (1.19%) JavaScript
14 3 (0.59%) VBScript
15 2 (0.40%) Delphi
15 2 (0.40%) JCL
15 2 (0.40%) PHP
15 2 (0.40%) REXX
15 2 (0.40%) VBA
16 1 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 194 (38.34%) Security Cleared
2 119 (23.52%) SC Cleared
3 75 (14.82%) DV Cleared
4 65 (12.85%) Microsoft Certification
5 59 (11.66%) Degree
6 27 (5.34%) MCSE
7 20 (3.95%) Cisco Certification
8 18 (3.56%) Azure Certification
8 18 (3.56%) CCNP
9 17 (3.36%) CCNA
10 15 (2.96%) AWS Certification
11 12 (2.37%) ITIL Certification
11 12 (2.37%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 10 (1.98%) MCSA
13 9 (1.78%) CCDP
14 8 (1.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 8 (1.58%) Master's Degree
15 7 (1.38%) CompTIA Security+
15 7 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
16 6 (1.19%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (3.75%) QA
2 13 (2.57%) SLA
3 12 (2.37%) GDPR
3 12 (2.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 8 (1.58%) NIST
5 7 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials
6 5 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.59%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 2 (0.40%) NCSC
9 1 (0.20%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.20%) Basel III
9 1 (0.20%) DICOM
9 1 (0.20%) GAAP
9 1 (0.20%) HL7
9 1 (0.20%) IFRS
9 1 (0.20%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.20%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.20%) JSP 440
9 1 (0.20%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 317 (62.65%) Active Directory
2 130 (25.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 52 (10.28%) Hyper-V
4 34 (6.72%) Docker
5 33 (6.52%) vSphere
6 24 (4.74%) VMware ESXi
7 23 (4.55%) VMware NSX
8 21 (4.15%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (2.37%) Terminal Services
9 12 (2.37%) Virtual Servers
10 9 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (1.19%) NFS
11 6 (1.19%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 5 (0.99%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 4 (0.79%) Firmware
14 3 (0.59%) BitLocker
14 3 (0.59%) Microsoft App-V
15 2 (0.40%) HDFS
15 2 (0.40%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 2 (0.40%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 66 (13.04%) SCCM
2 64 (12.65%) Microsoft Intune
3 47 (9.29%) Ansible
4 46 (9.09%) Terraform
5 41 (8.10%) vCenter Server
6 39 (7.71%) Single Sign-On
7 34 (6.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 25 (4.94%) SCOM
9 23 (4.55%) Kubernetes
10 15 (2.96%) WSUS
11 10 (1.98%) Progress Chef
12 9 (1.78%) CA Single Sign-On
13 8 (1.58%) CA Wily
13 8 (1.58%) Puppet
14 7 (1.38%) SCOrch
15 6 (1.19%) CASB
15 6 (1.19%) Tivoli
16 5 (0.99%) Microsoft Clustering
16 5 (0.99%) vRealize
16 5 (0.99%) VxRail
Vendors
1 245 (48.42%) Microsoft
2 187 (36.96%) VMware
3 71 (14.03%) Cisco
4 57 (11.26%) Citrix
5 44 (8.70%) Oracle
6 37 (7.31%) SolarWinds
7 29 (5.73%) Veeam
8 28 (5.53%) Red Hat
9 26 (5.14%) Dell
10 22 (4.35%) Splunk
11 20 (3.95%) ServiceNow
12 19 (3.75%) Juniper
13 14 (2.77%) Palo Alto
14 13 (2.57%) NetApp
15 11 (2.17%) Broadcom
16 9 (1.78%) Atlassian
16 9 (1.78%) CyberArk
16 9 (1.78%) IBM
17 8 (1.58%) AppDynamics
17 8 (1.58%) SAP
315 Windows Server jobs in England