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 25 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
25 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 177 171 104
Rank change year-on-year -6 -67 -28
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 738 455 759
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.62% 1.65% 2.28%
As % of the Operating Systems category 16.72% 12.13% 16.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 490 319 557
10th Percentile £261 £300 £250
25th Percentile £375 £406 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £568 £588 £591
90th Percentile £668 £650 £677
UK median daily rate £486 £525 £498
% change year-on-year -7.38% +5.37% +2.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 6 10
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.97 £33.60
25th Percentile £23.00 £13.14 £40.06
Median hourly rate £52.50 £22.03 £58.30
Median % change year-on-year +138.37% -62.22% +45.75%
75th Percentile £70.50 £32.08 £70.86
90th Percentile £74.00 £55.14 £80.20
UK median hourly rate £38.72 £17.63 £58.30
% change year-on-year +119.69% -69.77% +45.75%

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 4,413 3,752 4,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.66% 13.62% 14.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,835 2,473 3,086
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £310 £306 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 242 281
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.51 £12.38
25th Percentile £19.22 £18.19 £17.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £24.00 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +35.42% -33.64% -10.32%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.08 £30.00
% change year-on-year +2.77% -16.42% -29.41%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 -6 222 £475 -5.00% 70
South East -7 193 £515 -4.10% 124
North of England -22 120 £450 +3.21% 64
Midlands -23 73 £428 -18.57% 56
North West -15 65 £449 +6.90% 29
East of England -9 64 £450 -18.18% 46
South West -30 62 £495 -8.33% 42
Yorkshire -21 45 £510 +18.67% 22
West Midlands -30 43 £425 -19.05% 40
East Midlands +4 28 £450 - 16
North East -32 10 £213 -57.50% 16
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 84 (11.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 48 (6.50%) SharePoint
3 28 (3.79%) IIS
4 8 (1.08%) nginx
5 7 (0.95%) Tomcat
6 5 (0.68%) Apache
6 5 (0.68%) Confluence
7 4 (0.54%) FactoryTalk
8 3 (0.41%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.41%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.27%) SAS
9 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.14%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.14%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
10 1 (0.14%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 18 (2.44%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 16 (2.17%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.27%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.27%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 317 (42.95%) Azure
2 155 (21.00%) Microsoft 365
3 149 (20.19%) Entra ID
4 95 (12.87%) AWS
5 47 (6.37%) Azure Monitor
6 29 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
7 26 (3.52%) GCP
8 25 (3.39%) IaaS
9 23 (3.12%) Power Platform
10 19 (2.57%) GitHub
11 18 (2.44%) Azure Sentinel
12 15 (2.03%) OpenShift
13 12 (1.63%) OneDrive
14 11 (1.49%) PaaS
15 10 (1.36%) Amazon EC2
15 10 (1.36%) Nutanix
16 8 (1.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 8 (1.08%) Datadog
17 7 (0.95%) Azure Stack
17 7 (0.95%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 245 (33.20%) DNS
2 157 (21.27%) DHCP
3 133 (18.02%) Firewall
4 71 (9.62%) VPN
5 63 (8.54%) TCP/IP
6 49 (6.64%) SAN
7 44 (5.96%) WAN
8 43 (5.83%) VLAN
9 40 (5.42%) LAN
10 28 (3.79%) Network Security
11 21 (2.85%) SSL
12 20 (2.71%) NAS
13 19 (2.57%) Wi-Fi
14 14 (1.90%) VoIP
15 13 (1.76%) NetScaler
15 13 (1.76%) SSH
16 12 (1.63%) SMTP
16 12 (1.63%) Wireless
17 10 (1.36%) VSAN
18 6 (0.81%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (19.51%) SQL Server
2 23 (3.12%) Power BI
3 13 (1.76%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 11 (1.49%) Oracle Database
5 11 (1.49%) PostgreSQL
6 10 (1.36%) Elasticsearch
7 9 (1.22%) MySQL
8 7 (0.95%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.68%) Big Data
10 3 (0.41%) Data Mining
10 3 (0.41%) GIS
10 3 (0.41%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.41%) Oracle BI EE
10 3 (0.41%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 2 (0.27%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 1 (0.14%) Amazon Aurora
12 1 (0.14%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 14 (1.90%) Git
1 14 (1.90%) Jenkins
2 12 (1.63%) JIRA
3 8 (1.08%) GitLab
4 4 (0.54%) Visual Studio
5 3 (0.41%) Artifactory
5 3 (0.41%) MSI
5 3 (0.41%) Octopus Deploy
6 2 (0.27%) AdminStudio
6 2 (0.27%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.27%) InstallShield
6 2 (0.27%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.27%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.14%) eggPlant
7 1 (0.14%) Postman
7 1 (0.14%) Subversion
7 1 (0.14%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.14%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.14%) VSS/SourceSafe
General
1 185 (25.07%) Social Skills
2 92 (12.47%) Analytical Skills
3 78 (10.57%) Finance
4 44 (5.96%) Public Sector
5 42 (5.69%) Documentation Skills
6 40 (5.42%) Banking
7 15 (2.03%) Law
8 14 (1.90%) Military
9 13 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (1.63%) Legal
11 11 (1.49%) Telecoms
12 10 (1.36%) Pharmaceutical
13 9 (1.22%) Manufacturing
14 8 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
15 6 (0.81%) Aerospace
15 6 (0.81%) Games
15 6 (0.81%) Local Government
16 5 (0.68%) Retail
17 4 (0.54%) Financial Institution
17 4 (0.54%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 192 (26.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 83 (11.25%) Senior
3 69 (9.35%) Support Engineer
4 54 (7.32%) Cloud Engineer
5 51 (6.91%) 3rd Line Engineer
6 48 (6.50%) Lead
7 38 (5.15%) IT Engineer
8 35 (4.74%) Architect
8 35 (4.74%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 31 (4.20%) Azure Engineer
10 30 (4.07%) IT Support
10 30 (4.07%) Windows Engineer
11 29 (3.93%) Administrator
11 29 (3.93%) Server Engineer
12 26 (3.52%) Infrastructure Support
13 24 (3.25%) Storage Engineer
14 23 (3.12%) Systems Engineer
15 22 (2.98%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
16 21 (2.85%) 3rd Line Support
16 21 (2.85%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 86 (11.65%) Terraform
2 31 (4.20%) .NET
3 23 (3.12%) .NET Framework
4 22 (2.98%) REST
5 17 (2.30%) ARM Templates
6 11 (1.49%) JSON
7 9 (1.22%) Elastic Stack
7 9 (1.22%) LDAP
8 7 (0.95%) OAuth
8 7 (0.95%) RabbitMQ
8 7 (0.95%) YAML
9 6 (0.81%) Software Packaging
10 5 (0.68%) SailPoint
11 4 (0.54%) ADO
11 4 (0.54%) ASP.NET
11 4 (0.54%) Azure Blueprints
11 4 (0.54%) Middleware
11 4 (0.54%) SAML
12 3 (0.41%) EJB
12 3 (0.41%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 76 (10.30%) PKI
2 62 (8.40%) Hybrid Cloud
3 55 (7.45%) Clustering
4 53 (7.18%) Onboarding
5 43 (5.83%) Data Centre
6 38 (5.15%) Management Information System
7 35 (4.74%) Replication
8 19 (2.57%) Enterprise Storage
9 17 (2.30%) Driving Licence
10 14 (1.90%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.90%) Virtual Team
11 11 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
11 11 (1.49%) Security Posture
12 10 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
13 9 (1.22%) Cloud Native
14 8 (1.08%) ARM Cortex
14 8 (1.08%) Smartcard
15 7 (0.95%) Operational Technology
15 7 (0.95%) SCADA
15 7 (0.95%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 738 (100.00%) Windows
2 210 (28.46%) Linux
3 56 (7.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 55 (7.45%) Windows Server 2019
5 54 (7.32%) Windows 10
6 38 (5.15%) Windows Server 2016
7 34 (4.61%) Ubuntu
8 29 (3.93%) Windows Server 2012
9 25 (3.39%) Unix
10 24 (3.25%) CentOS
11 13 (1.76%) Mac OS
11 13 (1.76%) VMS
12 10 (1.36%) Rocky
12 10 (1.36%) Windows Server 2008
13 7 (0.95%) Windows 7
14 5 (0.68%) Solaris
14 5 (0.68%) Windows Server 2003
15 4 (0.54%) Alpine Linux
15 4 (0.54%) Android
16 3 (0.41%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 241 (32.66%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 180 (24.39%) Problem-Solving
3 143 (19.38%) ITIL
4 112 (15.18%) Disaster Recovery
5 91 (12.33%) Migration
6 86 (11.65%) High Availability
7 84 (11.38%) Change Management
7 84 (11.38%) Infrastructure as Code
8 83 (11.25%) ITSM
9 82 (11.11%) Root Cause Analysis
10 76 (10.30%) DevOps
11 75 (10.16%) Service Management
12 67 (9.08%) Continuous Improvement
13 66 (8.94%) Technical Leadership
14 63 (8.54%) Project Delivery
15 61 (8.27%) Vulnerability Remediation
16 56 (7.59%) Agile
16 56 (7.59%) CI/CD
17 55 (7.45%) Runbook
18 53 (7.18%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 293 (39.70%) PowerShell
2 100 (13.55%) SQL
3 75 (10.16%) Python
4 61 (8.27%) Bash
5 27 (3.66%) Bicep
6 25 (3.39%) T-SQL
7 23 (3.12%) C#
8 21 (2.85%) PL/SQL
9 13 (1.76%) JavaScript
10 11 (1.49%) Java
11 4 (0.54%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.41%) Korn
13 2 (0.27%) Groovy
13 2 (0.27%) JCL
13 2 (0.27%) REXX
14 1 (0.14%) CodeQL
14 1 (0.14%) Go
14 1 (0.14%) Ladder Logic
14 1 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 319 (43.22%) Security Cleared
2 173 (23.44%) SC Cleared
3 157 (21.27%) DV Cleared
4 67 (9.08%) Degree
5 51 (6.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 32 (4.34%) Azure Certification
7 26 (3.52%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 19 (2.57%) MCSE
9 17 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
10 14 (1.90%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 14 (1.90%) MCSA
11 11 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
12 10 (1.36%) AWS Certification
12 10 (1.36%) CCNA
12 10 (1.36%) CISSP
12 10 (1.36%) VCAP
13 8 (1.08%) ITIL Certification
14 7 (0.95%) CCNP
14 7 (0.95%) CISM
15 6 (0.81%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 32 (4.34%) SLA
3 26 (3.52%) QA
4 23 (3.12%) NIST
5 12 (1.63%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (1.08%) GDPR
6 8 (1.08%) NCSC
7 5 (0.68%) GxP
7 5 (0.68%) SOC 2
8 4 (0.54%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 4 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 3 (0.41%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.27%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.27%) JSP 440
10 2 (0.27%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.14%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.14%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 426 (57.72%) Active Directory
2 269 (36.45%) VMware Infrastructure
3 137 (18.56%) Hyper-V
4 103 (13.96%) VMware ESXi
5 87 (11.79%) vSphere
6 51 (6.91%) Virtual Machines
7 42 (5.69%) VMware NSX
8 41 (5.56%) Docker
9 33 (4.47%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (2.98%) vCloud
11 14 (1.90%) Virtual Servers
12 10 (1.36%) Firmware
12 10 (1.36%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (1.22%) XenApp
14 8 (1.08%) BitLocker
14 8 (1.08%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 8 (1.08%) XenDesktop
15 6 (0.81%) KVM
16 5 (0.68%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.68%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 101 (13.69%) Ansible
2 91 (12.33%) vCenter Server
3 87 (11.79%) Microsoft Intune
4 74 (10.03%) SCCM
5 64 (8.67%) SCOM
6 48 (6.50%) Kubernetes
7 35 (4.74%) WSUS
8 16 (2.17%) Grafana
9 15 (2.03%) vMotion
10 14 (1.90%) NetBackup
10 14 (1.90%) Prometheus
11 13 (1.76%) Avamar
12 12 (1.63%) Failover Clustering
13 10 (1.36%) Nessus
13 10 (1.36%) Puppet
14 7 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 7 (0.95%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.95%) Microsoft Clustering
14 7 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
14 7 (0.95%) WMI
Vendors
1 380 (51.49%) Microsoft
2 345 (46.75%) VMware
3 79 (10.70%) Cisco
4 73 (9.89%) Citrix
5 56 (7.59%) Oracle
6 51 (6.91%) ServiceNow
7 30 (4.07%) CyberArk
8 28 (3.79%) Red Hat
9 27 (3.66%) Dell
10 26 (3.52%) BeyondTrust
10 26 (3.52%) Veeam
11 25 (3.39%) NetApp
12 24 (3.25%) Splunk
13 19 (2.57%) HP
14 18 (2.44%) Remedy
14 18 (2.44%) Tenable
15 17 (2.30%) Fortinet
15 17 (2.30%) Google
15 17 (2.30%) Zscaler
16 16 (2.17%) CrowdStrike
356 Windows Server jobs in England