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

 6 months to
10 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 179 148 98
Rank change year-on-year -31 -50 -17
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 652 531 884
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.45% 1.96% 2.38%
As % of the Operating Systems category 14.96% 14.27% 16.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 437 377 643
10th Percentile £263 £337 £221
25th Percentile £400 £445 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £550 £480
Median % change year-on-year -12.73% +14.58% -4.00%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £588
90th Percentile £671 £680 £675
UK median daily rate £483 £526 £475
% change year-on-year -8.04% +10.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 44 5 18
10th Percentile £17.15 £14.32 £14.89
25th Percentile £20.78 £15.33 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £46.75
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% -35.83% +59.56%
75th Percentile £62.21 £32.77 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.00 £59.61 £70.16
UK median hourly rate £23.75 £17.75 £46.75
% change year-on-year +33.80% -62.03% +59.56%

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 4,358 3,721 5,204
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.72% 13.77% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,837 2,484 3,413
10th Percentile £190 £200 £193
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.08% -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £661 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £465 £465 £475
% change year-on-year - -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 293 215 402
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.76
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.62 £16.24
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.50 £24.68
Median % change year-on-year +44.44% -8.82% -41.94%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.80 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.50 £23.00 £24.50
% change year-on-year +15.22% -6.12% -42.35%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 -41 198 £488 -7.14% 70
South East -34 151 £515 -6.36% 126
North of England -74 99 £476 -4.80% 92
Midlands -12 75 £444 -1.39% 48
South West -33 64 £504 -12.39% 38
East of England -14 62 £450 -18.18% 31
North West -40 56 £448 -6.18% 47
West Midlands -46 43 £438 +9.38% 28
Yorkshire -43 39 £625 +19.05% 33
East Midlands +7 30 £450 -10.00% 20
North East -38 4 £350 -30.00% 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 74 (11.35%) Microsoft Exchange
2 36 (5.52%) SharePoint
3 26 (3.99%) IIS
4 10 (1.53%) nginx
4 10 (1.53%) Tomcat
5 5 (0.77%) Apache
6 3 (0.46%) CloudStack
6 3 (0.46%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.31%) FactoryTalk
7 2 (0.31%) SAS
7 2 (0.31%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.15%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.15%) Confluence
8 1 (0.15%) OpenStack
Applications
1 10 (1.53%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.31%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 15 (2.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.15%) OpenText MBPM
2 1 (0.15%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 261 (40.03%) Azure
2 116 (17.79%) Entra ID
3 110 (16.87%) Microsoft 365
4 82 (12.58%) AWS
5 26 (3.99%) Azure Monitor
6 22 (3.37%) IaaS
7 21 (3.22%) Power Platform
8 18 (2.76%) GCP
9 14 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (1.84%) GitHub
10 12 (1.84%) PaaS
11 9 (1.38%) Amazon EC2
11 9 (1.38%) Nutanix
12 8 (1.23%) Azure Sentinel
12 8 (1.23%) SaaS
13 7 (1.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (1.07%) Datadog
13 7 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (0.92%) Cohesity
14 6 (0.92%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 215 (32.98%) DNS
2 136 (20.86%) DHCP
3 96 (14.72%) Firewall
4 49 (7.52%) VPN
5 45 (6.90%) WAN
6 43 (6.60%) TCP/IP
7 40 (6.13%) LAN
8 39 (5.98%) SAN
9 27 (4.14%) VLAN
10 22 (3.37%) SSL
11 19 (2.91%) Network Security
12 15 (2.30%) NAS
13 14 (2.15%) SMTP
13 14 (2.15%) VoIP
13 14 (2.15%) Wi-Fi
14 13 (1.99%) FTP
14 13 (1.99%) Kerberos
15 11 (1.69%) SSH
16 8 (1.23%) NetScaler
16 8 (1.23%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 136 (20.86%) SQL Server
2 21 (3.22%) Power BI
3 14 (2.15%) Oracle Database
4 13 (1.99%) Amazon RDS
5 12 (1.84%) Elasticsearch
5 12 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
6 11 (1.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 10 (1.53%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.07%) MySQL
9 6 (0.92%) Db2
10 5 (0.77%) Big Data
11 4 (0.61%) GIS
11 4 (0.61%) Oracle BI EE
11 4 (0.61%) Relational Database
12 3 (0.46%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.46%) MongoDB
12 3 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 2 (0.31%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 1 (0.15%) Oracle Database 11g
14 1 (0.15%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 8 (1.23%) Git
1 8 (1.23%) Jenkins
2 7 (1.07%) JIRA
3 6 (0.92%) Visual Studio
4 5 (0.77%) GitLab
5 3 (0.46%) MSI
5 3 (0.46%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.31%) AdminStudio
6 2 (0.31%) InstallShield
6 2 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.15%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.15%) eggPlant
7 1 (0.15%) GoCD
7 1 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
7 1 (0.15%) Postman
General
1 143 (21.93%) Social Skills
2 64 (9.82%) Finance
3 63 (9.66%) Public Sector
4 57 (8.74%) Analytical Skills
5 31 (4.75%) Banking
5 31 (4.75%) Documentation Skills
6 16 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (2.15%) Military
8 13 (1.99%) Legal
9 12 (1.84%) Law
10 9 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (0.77%) Local Government
11 5 (0.77%) Manufacturing
11 5 (0.77%) Retail
11 5 (0.77%) Telecoms
12 4 (0.61%) Marketing
12 4 (0.61%) Pharmaceutical
12 4 (0.61%) Police
13 2 (0.31%) Front Office
13 2 (0.31%) Games
Job Titles
1 165 (25.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 52 (7.98%) Senior
3 50 (7.67%) Support Engineer
4 47 (7.21%) Cloud Engineer
5 35 (5.37%) Architect
5 35 (5.37%) Lead
6 34 (5.21%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 33 (5.06%) Analyst
8 27 (4.14%) Administrator
8 27 (4.14%) IT Engineer
9 25 (3.83%) IT Support
10 23 (3.53%) Infrastructure Support
10 23 (3.53%) Server Engineer
10 23 (3.53%) Wintel Engineer
11 21 (3.22%) Azure Engineer
11 21 (3.22%) Windows Engineer
12 20 (3.07%) Developer
13 19 (2.91%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
13 19 (2.91%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
14 18 (2.76%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.60%) .NET
2 25 (3.83%) .NET Framework
3 19 (2.91%) OAuth
4 18 (2.76%) REST
5 17 (2.61%) LDAP
6 16 (2.45%) SAML
7 9 (1.38%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (1.07%) JSON
8 7 (1.07%) RabbitMQ
9 6 (0.92%) Software Packaging
10 5 (0.77%) Keycloak
10 5 (0.77%) OAuth2
10 5 (0.77%) OpenID
10 5 (0.77%) YAML
11 4 (0.61%) ADO
11 4 (0.61%) Azure Blueprints
11 4 (0.61%) EJB
11 4 (0.61%) Spring
12 3 (0.46%) ASP.NET
12 3 (0.46%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 64 (9.82%) PKI
2 46 (7.06%) Clustering
3 43 (6.60%) Replication
4 38 (5.83%) Data Centre
5 36 (5.52%) Onboarding
6 33 (5.06%) Hybrid Cloud
7 27 (4.14%) Management Information System
8 20 (3.07%) Legacy Systems
9 13 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
9 13 (1.99%) Linux Command Line
10 12 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
10 12 (1.84%) Virtual Team
11 11 (1.69%) Security Posture
12 9 (1.38%) Cloud Native
12 9 (1.38%) Driving Licence
12 9 (1.38%) Enterprise Storage
12 9 (1.38%) Smartcard
13 8 (1.23%) NHS
13 8 (1.23%) Product Ownership
14 7 (1.07%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 652 (100.00%) Windows
2 170 (26.07%) Linux
3 55 (8.44%) Windows Server 2019
4 51 (7.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 41 (6.29%) Windows 10
6 36 (5.52%) Windows Server 2016
7 35 (5.37%) Unix
8 29 (4.45%) Windows Server 2012
9 24 (3.68%) Ubuntu
10 14 (2.15%) CentOS
11 9 (1.38%) AIX
11 9 (1.38%) VMS
11 9 (1.38%) Windows Server 2008
12 8 (1.23%) Solaris
12 8 (1.23%) Windows Server 2003
13 7 (1.07%) Mac OS
14 6 (0.92%) Rocky
15 4 (0.61%) Alpine Linux
16 3 (0.46%) Android
16 3 (0.46%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 199 (30.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 118 (18.10%) Problem-Solving
3 105 (16.10%) High Availability
4 100 (15.34%) Disaster Recovery
5 88 (13.50%) ITIL
6 71 (10.89%) Migration
7 62 (9.51%) Change Management
8 58 (8.90%) ITSM
9 56 (8.59%) DevOps
10 55 (8.44%) Infrastructure as Code
11 49 (7.52%) Project Delivery
12 48 (7.36%) Runbook
13 47 (7.21%) Continuous Improvement
14 45 (6.90%) Root Cause Analysis
15 43 (6.60%) Agile
15 43 (6.60%) Technical Leadership
16 42 (6.44%) Vulnerability Remediation
17 41 (6.29%) CI/CD
18 40 (6.13%) Patch Management
19 39 (5.98%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 238 (36.50%) PowerShell
2 101 (15.49%) SQL
3 62 (9.51%) Python
4 34 (5.21%) Bash
5 27 (4.14%) C#
6 25 (3.83%) PL/SQL
7 24 (3.68%) T-SQL
8 17 (2.61%) JavaScript
9 12 (1.84%) Java
10 10 (1.53%) Bicep
11 3 (0.46%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.31%) JCL
12 2 (0.31%) Korn
12 2 (0.31%) REXX
13 1 (0.15%) Groovy
13 1 (0.15%) Ladder Logic
13 1 (0.15%) Perl
13 1 (0.15%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.15%) VB
Qualifications
1 263 (40.34%) Security Cleared
2 146 (22.39%) SC Cleared
3 118 (18.10%) DV Cleared
4 70 (10.74%) Degree
5 49 (7.52%) Microsoft Certification
6 25 (3.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 23 (3.53%) MCSE
8 16 (2.45%) MCSA
9 15 (2.30%) Azure Certification
10 14 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
10 14 (2.15%) VCAP
11 13 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
12 10 (1.53%) CISSP
13 8 (1.23%) CCNA
13 8 (1.23%) CCNP
14 7 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 7 (1.07%) CISM
15 5 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
15 5 (0.77%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 4 (0.61%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (5.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 28 (4.29%) QA
3 26 (3.99%) NIST
4 20 (3.07%) GDPR
5 18 (2.76%) SLA
6 12 (1.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 11 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.77%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.46%) NCSC
10 2 (0.31%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.31%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.31%) GxP
10 2 (0.31%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.31%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.31%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.15%) Accessibility
11 1 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.15%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 368 (56.44%) Active Directory
2 228 (34.97%) VMware Infrastructure
3 105 (16.10%) Hyper-V
4 85 (13.04%) VMware ESXi
5 79 (12.12%) vSphere
6 55 (8.44%) Virtual Machines
7 40 (6.13%) VMware NSX
8 35 (5.37%) Docker
9 26 (3.99%) Virtual Desktop
10 14 (2.15%) vCloud
11 11 (1.69%) KVM
12 10 (1.53%) Microsoft App-V
13 9 (1.38%) BitLocker
14 7 (1.07%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.92%) VMware Workstation
15 6 (0.92%) XenApp
16 5 (0.77%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.77%) XenDesktop
17 4 (0.61%) Firmware
17 4 (0.61%) UAG
Systems Management
1 86 (13.19%) Ansible
2 77 (11.81%) vCenter Server
3 71 (10.89%) Microsoft Intune
4 59 (9.05%) SCCM
5 54 (8.28%) Terraform
6 46 (7.06%) SCOM
7 40 (6.13%) Kubernetes
8 28 (4.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 28 (4.29%) WSUS
9 26 (3.99%) Single Sign-On
10 13 (1.99%) vMotion
11 12 (1.84%) Nessus
12 10 (1.53%) Avamar
12 10 (1.53%) Grafana
12 10 (1.53%) Puppet
13 9 (1.38%) Prometheus
14 7 (1.07%) VxRail
15 6 (0.92%) Failover Clustering
15 6 (0.92%) FortiGate
15 6 (0.92%) IBM BigFix
Vendors
1 296 (45.40%) Microsoft
2 279 (42.79%) VMware
3 69 (10.58%) Citrix
4 63 (9.66%) Cisco
5 57 (8.74%) Oracle
6 43 (6.60%) ServiceNow
7 29 (4.45%) Dell
8 28 (4.29%) Red Hat
9 26 (3.99%) BeyondTrust
10 23 (3.53%) CyberArk
11 21 (3.22%) Okta
11 21 (3.22%) Tenable
12 20 (3.07%) Veeam
13 16 (2.45%) NetApp
14 15 (2.30%) HP
14 15 (2.30%) IBM
14 15 (2.30%) Remedy
14 15 (2.30%) Splunk
14 15 (2.30%) Thales
15 14 (2.15%) BMC
372 Windows Server jobs in England