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

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 174 124 74
Rank change year-on-year -50 -50 +23
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 530 572 1,029
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.62% 2.16% 2.74%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.64% 15.27% 18.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 420 384 686
10th Percentile £236 £250 £194
25th Percentile £400 £379 £295
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £445
Median % change year-on-year - +12.36% -6.32%
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% +64.71%
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% +78.43%

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 4,194 3,745 5,464
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.78% 14.15% 14.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,805 2,353 3,753
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 £565 £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 307 124 342
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.33 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.84 £20.30 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.50 £51.50 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -54.37% +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 £26.00
% change year-on-year -26.47% +30.77% +1.13%

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 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 28 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 28 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 -47 178 £500 - 72
South East -32 93 £500 - 138
North of England -53 80 £370 -16.85% 66
South West -26 75 £560 -2.61% 52
North West -12 63 £365 -14.12% 25
Midlands -44 52 £444 +26.79% 43
East of England +12 48 £425 -1.16% 28
West Midlands -31 39 £500 +92.31% 22
Yorkshire -53 15 £375 -21.05% 36
East Midlands -32 13 £415 +3.75% 21
North East -18 5 £550 -8.33% 5
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 73 (13.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (6.04%) SharePoint
3 29 (5.47%) IIS
4 15 (2.83%) Apache
5 10 (1.89%) WebSphere
6 9 (1.70%) Confluence
6 9 (1.70%) JBoss
7 8 (1.51%) iPlanet
7 8 (1.51%) WebSphere Application Server
8 6 (1.13%) SAS
9 5 (0.94%) 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 (4.91%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.94%) 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
1 190 (35.85%) Azure
2 109 (20.57%) Microsoft 365
3 89 (16.79%) Entra ID
4 53 (10.00%) AWS
5 22 (4.15%) IaaS
6 15 (2.83%) SaaS
7 12 (2.26%) PaaS
8 10 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
9 9 (1.70%) Nutanix
10 7 (1.32%) Azure Monitor
10 7 (1.32%) GitHub
10 7 (1.32%) OpenShift
11 6 (1.13%) Amazon S3
11 6 (1.13%) Azure Sentinel
11 6 (1.13%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 5 (0.94%) GCP
13 4 (0.75%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 4 (0.75%) OCI
13 4 (0.75%) Power Platform
13 4 (0.75%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 167 (31.51%) DNS
2 124 (23.40%) DHCP
3 109 (20.57%) Firewall
4 49 (9.25%) TCP/IP
5 47 (8.87%) VPN
6 44 (8.30%) WAN
7 38 (7.17%) LAN
8 28 (5.28%) Network Security
9 25 (4.72%) Kerberos
10 21 (3.96%) Cisco IOS
10 21 (3.96%) VLAN
11 17 (3.21%) Cisco Firepower
11 17 (3.21%) Cisco ISE
11 17 (3.21%) Junos
11 17 (3.21%) Wireless
12 12 (2.26%) FTP
13 11 (2.08%) SMTP
13 11 (2.08%) VoIP
14 10 (1.89%) SAN
14 10 (1.89%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 58 (10.94%) SQL Server
2 18 (3.40%) Oracle Database
3 5 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.75%) NoSQL
4 4 (0.75%) 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 (3.96%) Jenkins
2 19 (3.58%) Git
3 13 (2.45%) JIRA
3 13 (2.45%) Sonatype Nexus
4 12 (2.26%) GitLab
5 11 (2.08%) Visual Studio
6 9 (1.70%) Bitbucket Server
6 9 (1.70%) CA Release Automation
7 5 (0.94%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.75%) 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 (23.77%) Social Skills
2 62 (11.70%) Finance
3 55 (10.38%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (8.49%) Public Sector
5 33 (6.23%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.77%) Banking
7 18 (3.40%) Legal
8 12 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 8 (1.51%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.13%) Spanish Language
11 5 (0.94%) Front Office
11 5 (0.94%) Marketing
12 4 (0.75%) Aerospace
12 4 (0.75%) 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 85 (16.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 57 (10.75%) Analyst
3 47 (8.87%) Support Engineer
4 40 (7.55%) Architect
5 39 (7.36%) Platform Engineer
6 35 (6.60%) Senior
7 31 (5.85%) Network Engineer
7 31 (5.85%) Wintel Engineer
8 30 (5.66%) 3rd Line Engineer
9 29 (5.47%) Support Analyst
10 28 (5.28%) 3rd Line Support
11 26 (4.91%) IT Support
12 24 (4.53%) Developer
12 24 (4.53%) Technical Analyst
12 24 (4.53%) Windows Engineer
13 23 (4.34%) 2nd Line Support
14 19 (3.58%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
14 19 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
15 18 (3.40%) Server Engineer
15 18 (3.40%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (7.92%) OAuth
2 40 (7.55%) SAML
3 30 (5.66%) LDAP
4 26 (4.91%) OpenID
5 24 (4.53%) .NET
6 17 (3.21%) OAuth2
7 15 (2.83%) .NET Framework
7 15 (2.83%) REST
8 9 (1.70%) React
9 8 (1.51%) Middleware
9 8 (1.51%) XMPP
10 6 (1.13%) AngularJS
11 4 (0.75%) ASP.NET Web API
11 4 (0.75%) SOAP
11 4 (0.75%) WCF
11 4 (0.75%) YAML
12 3 (0.57%) RESTful
12 3 (0.57%) Web Services
12 3 (0.57%) WinForms
12 3 (0.57%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 42 (7.92%) PKI
2 41 (7.74%) Data Centre
2 41 (7.74%) Replication
3 21 (3.96%) Hybrid Cloud
4 19 (3.58%) Clustering
5 17 (3.21%) NHS
5 17 (3.21%) Private Cloud
6 15 (2.83%) Product Ownership
7 13 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
7 13 (2.45%) Onboarding
8 12 (2.26%) Driving Licence
9 10 (1.89%) Enterprise Storage
9 10 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
10 9 (1.70%) CMDB
10 9 (1.70%) Management Information System
11 8 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
11 8 (1.51%) Cloud Native
11 8 (1.51%) iPhone
12 6 (1.13%) Client/Server
12 6 (1.13%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 528 (99.62%) Windows
2 130 (24.53%) Linux
3 37 (6.98%) Windows Server 2019
4 36 (6.79%) Windows 10
5 34 (6.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 32 (6.04%) Windows Server 2012
7 28 (5.28%) Windows Server 2016
8 13 (2.45%) Unix
9 10 (1.89%) Windows Server 2003
10 8 (1.51%) CentOS
11 7 (1.32%) Android
11 7 (1.32%) Windows Server 2008
12 6 (1.13%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.75%) AIX
13 4 (0.75%) VMS
14 3 (0.57%) Apple iOS
15 2 (0.38%) Mac OS
15 2 (0.38%) Solaris
15 2 (0.38%) zOS
16 1 (0.19%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (23.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 88 (16.60%) Problem-Solving
3 81 (15.28%) ITIL
4 71 (13.40%) Agile
5 70 (13.21%) Disaster Recovery
6 67 (12.64%) High Availability
7 63 (11.89%) Service Management
8 60 (11.32%) Migration
9 53 (10.00%) Identity Access Management
10 51 (9.62%) DevOps
11 47 (8.87%) ITSM
12 46 (8.68%) Change Management
13 45 (8.49%) Continuous Improvement
14 42 (7.92%) CI/CD
15 40 (7.55%) Project Delivery
16 39 (7.36%) RBAC
17 37 (6.98%) Platform Engineering
18 34 (6.42%) Infrastructure as Code
19 33 (6.23%) Change Control
20 30 (5.66%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 200 (37.74%) PowerShell
2 62 (11.70%) SQL
3 53 (10.00%) Python
4 27 (5.09%) Bash
5 26 (4.91%) C#
6 19 (3.58%) T-SQL
7 15 (2.83%) PL/SQL
8 10 (1.89%) Java
8 10 (1.89%) Perl
9 9 (1.70%) Groovy
10 8 (1.51%) Bicep
11 7 (1.32%) Shell Script
12 6 (1.13%) 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 (38.68%) Security Cleared
2 129 (24.34%) SC Cleared
3 77 (14.53%) DV Cleared
4 68 (12.83%) Microsoft Certification
5 64 (12.08%) Degree
6 28 (5.28%) MCSE
7 20 (3.77%) Azure Certification
7 20 (3.77%) Cisco Certification
8 18 (3.40%) CCNP
9 17 (3.21%) CCNA
10 16 (3.02%) AWS Certification
11 15 (2.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 14 (2.64%) MCSA
13 12 (2.26%) ITIL Certification
14 9 (1.70%) CCDP
14 9 (1.70%) VCAP
15 8 (1.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 7 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
16 7 (1.32%) Master's Degree
17 6 (1.13%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.96%) QA
2 20 (3.77%) GDPR
3 15 (2.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (2.26%) SLA
5 11 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
6 7 (1.32%) NIST
7 3 (0.57%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 2 (0.38%) NCSC
9 1 (0.19%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.19%) Basel III
9 1 (0.19%) DICOM
9 1 (0.19%) GAAP
9 1 (0.19%) HL7
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.19%) JSP 440
System Software
1 335 (63.21%) Active Directory
2 142 (26.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 50 (9.43%) Hyper-V
4 43 (8.11%) vSphere
5 36 (6.79%) Docker
6 29 (5.47%) VMware ESXi
7 28 (5.28%) Virtual Machines
8 27 (5.09%) VMware NSX
9 12 (2.26%) Virtual Servers
10 10 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (1.13%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 6 (1.13%) Terminal Services
11 6 (1.13%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 4 (0.75%) Firmware
12 4 (0.75%) NFS
13 3 (0.57%) BitLocker
13 3 (0.57%) Microsoft App-V
14 2 (0.38%) Job Entry Subsystem
14 2 (0.38%) KVM
14 2 (0.38%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 71 (13.40%) SCCM
2 70 (13.21%) Microsoft Intune
3 52 (9.81%) Ansible
4 51 (9.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 51 (9.62%) Single Sign-On
5 47 (8.87%) vCenter Server
6 45 (8.49%) Terraform
7 27 (5.09%) SCOM
8 25 (4.72%) Kubernetes
9 15 (2.83%) WSUS
10 10 (1.89%) Progress Chef
11 9 (1.70%) CA Single Sign-On
12 8 (1.51%) CA Wily
12 8 (1.51%) Puppet
13 7 (1.32%) SCOrch
14 6 (1.13%) CASB
14 6 (1.13%) Tivoli
15 5 (0.94%) Microsoft Clustering
15 5 (0.94%) vRealize
15 5 (0.94%) VxRail
Vendors
1 263 (49.62%) Microsoft
2 195 (36.79%) VMware
3 75 (14.15%) Cisco
4 55 (10.38%) Citrix
5 44 (8.30%) Oracle
6 37 (6.98%) SolarWinds
7 27 (5.09%) Dell
7 27 (5.09%) Red Hat
7 27 (5.09%) Veeam
8 21 (3.96%) ServiceNow
9 19 (3.58%) Juniper
9 19 (3.58%) Splunk
10 15 (2.83%) Okta
11 13 (2.45%) Palo Alto
12 11 (2.08%) Broadcom
13 10 (1.89%) IBM
13 10 (1.89%) NetApp
14 9 (1.70%) CyberArk
15 8 (1.51%) AppDynamics
15 8 (1.51%) Atlassian