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

 6 months to
24 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 191 133 91
Rank change year-on-year -58 -42 -10
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 612 533 899
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.41% 2.13% 2.41%
As % of the Operating Systems category 14.69% 14.98% 17.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 413 382 660
10th Percentile £263 £350 £213
25th Percentile £400 £435 £345
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £488
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +12.82% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £594
90th Percentile £668 £688 £675
UK median daily rate £475 £529 £475
% change year-on-year -10.12% +11.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 5 19
10th Percentile £19.25 £14.32 £15.18
25th Percentile £20.79 £15.33 £16.13
Median hourly rate £26.00 £32.77 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year -20.66% -14.88% +31.40%
75th Percentile £65.96 £73.75 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.00 £76.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £17.75 £38.50
% change year-on-year +35.21% -53.90% +31.40%

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 4,167 3,558 5,154
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.59% 14.21% 13.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,718 2,406 3,417
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £656 £689 £700
UK median daily rate £463 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 188 397
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.31 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £19.14 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +69.85% -20.86% -44.96%
75th Percentile £65.00 £49.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.65 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +27.27% -9.02% -45.18%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 -49 189 £488 -7.14% 54
South East -36 140 £515 -6.36% 98
North of England -84 88 £460 -8.91% 70
Midlands -12 72 £450 - 48
South West -40 62 £508 -11.74% 37
East of England -13 58 £450 -18.18% 32
North West -54 53 £447 -5.00% 41
West Midlands -36 42 £438 +9.38% 23
Yorkshire -53 32 £625 +16.28% 20
East Midlands +3 28 £450 -10.00% 25
North East -37 3 £500 - 11
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 70 (11.44%) Microsoft Exchange
2 28 (4.58%) SharePoint
3 27 (4.41%) IIS
4 10 (1.63%) nginx
4 10 (1.63%) Tomcat
5 6 (0.98%) Apache
6 3 (0.49%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.33%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.33%) SAS
7 2 (0.33%) Skype for Business
8 1 (0.16%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.16%) Confluence
8 1 (0.16%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.16%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 10 (1.63%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.33%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 14 (2.29%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.49%) Veritas eDiscovery
3 1 (0.16%) Oracle FAH
3 1 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 239 (39.05%) Azure
2 101 (16.50%) Entra ID
2 101 (16.50%) Microsoft 365
3 75 (12.25%) AWS
4 23 (3.76%) IaaS
5 19 (3.10%) Azure Monitor
6 17 (2.78%) GCP
6 17 (2.78%) Power Platform
7 14 (2.29%) PaaS
8 12 (1.96%) GitHub
9 9 (1.47%) Nutanix
9 9 (1.47%) SaaS
10 8 (1.31%) Amazon EC2
10 8 (1.31%) Azure DevOps
10 8 (1.31%) Azure Sentinel
11 7 (1.14%) GitHub Actions
12 6 (0.98%) Cohesity
12 6 (0.98%) OpenShift
13 5 (0.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (0.82%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 200 (32.68%) DNS
2 137 (22.39%) DHCP
3 93 (15.20%) Firewall
4 51 (8.33%) VPN
5 48 (7.84%) WAN
6 40 (6.54%) LAN
7 39 (6.37%) TCP/IP
8 30 (4.90%) SAN
9 22 (3.59%) Network Security
10 21 (3.43%) VLAN
11 16 (2.61%) SSL
12 15 (2.45%) SMTP
12 15 (2.45%) VoIP
13 14 (2.29%) Kerberos
14 13 (2.12%) FTP
14 13 (2.12%) Wi-Fi
15 12 (1.96%) NAS
16 11 (1.80%) SSH
17 8 (1.31%) NetScaler
17 8 (1.31%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (20.26%) SQL Server
2 17 (2.78%) Power BI
3 13 (2.12%) Elasticsearch
4 12 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
4 12 (1.96%) Oracle Database
4 12 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (1.47%) NoSQL
6 7 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 6 (0.98%) Db2
8 5 (0.82%) Big Data
9 4 (0.65%) GIS
9 4 (0.65%) Oracle BI EE
10 3 (0.49%) Data Mining
10 3 (0.49%) MySQL
10 3 (0.49%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 2 (0.33%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 1 (0.16%) Data Warehouse
12 1 (0.16%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 10 (1.63%) JIRA
2 8 (1.31%) Visual Studio
3 7 (1.14%) Git
4 6 (0.98%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.65%) GitLab
5 4 (0.65%) Robot Framework
6 3 (0.49%) MSI
6 3 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.33%) AdminStudio
7 2 (0.33%) InstallShield
8 1 (0.16%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.16%) eggPlant
8 1 (0.16%) GoCD
8 1 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.16%) Postman
General
1 125 (20.42%) Social Skills
2 62 (10.13%) Finance
3 60 (9.80%) Public Sector
4 49 (8.01%) Analytical Skills
5 29 (4.74%) Banking
6 27 (4.41%) Documentation Skills
7 17 (2.78%) Legal
8 14 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 14 (2.29%) Military
9 11 (1.80%) Law
10 8 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (0.82%) Local Government
11 5 (0.82%) Retail
12 4 (0.65%) Marketing
12 4 (0.65%) Police
13 3 (0.49%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.49%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.33%) Front Office
14 2 (0.33%) Pharmaceutical
15 1 (0.16%) Games
Job Titles
1 155 (25.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 49 (8.01%) Support Engineer
3 43 (7.03%) Senior
4 41 (6.70%) Cloud Engineer
5 36 (5.88%) Analyst
6 33 (5.39%) Architect
7 31 (5.07%) Lead
8 30 (4.90%) 3rd Line Engineer
9 28 (4.58%) IT Support
10 25 (4.08%) IT Engineer
11 24 (3.92%) Administrator
11 24 (3.92%) Wintel Engineer
12 23 (3.76%) Server Engineer
13 21 (3.43%) Infrastructure Support
14 20 (3.27%) Developer
14 20 (3.27%) Windows Engineer
15 18 (2.94%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
16 17 (2.78%) 3rd Line Support
16 17 (2.78%) Azure Engineer
16 17 (2.78%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (4.90%) .NET
2 26 (4.25%) .NET Framework
3 20 (3.27%) OAuth
4 19 (3.10%) LDAP
5 17 (2.78%) REST
5 17 (2.78%) SAML
6 7 (1.14%) JSON
7 6 (0.98%) Elastic Stack
7 6 (0.98%) RabbitMQ
8 5 (0.82%) Keycloak
8 5 (0.82%) OAuth2
8 5 (0.82%) OpenID
8 5 (0.82%) Software Packaging
9 4 (0.65%) ADO
9 4 (0.65%) Azure Blueprints
9 4 (0.65%) EJB
9 4 (0.65%) YAML
10 3 (0.49%) ARM Templates
10 3 (0.49%) OpenLayers
10 3 (0.49%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 59 (9.64%) PKI
2 40 (6.54%) Clustering
3 34 (5.56%) Data Centre
3 34 (5.56%) Onboarding
3 34 (5.56%) Replication
4 32 (5.23%) Hybrid Cloud
5 23 (3.76%) Management Information System
6 20 (3.27%) Legacy Systems
7 13 (2.12%) Linux Command Line
7 13 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
8 11 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
8 11 (1.80%) Virtual Team
9 10 (1.63%) Enterprise Storage
9 10 (1.63%) Security Posture
10 9 (1.47%) Cloud Native
10 9 (1.47%) Product Ownership
11 8 (1.31%) Driving Licence
11 8 (1.31%) NHS
11 8 (1.31%) Smartcard
12 7 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 612 (100.00%) Windows
2 164 (26.80%) Linux
3 53 (8.66%) Windows Server 2019
4 44 (7.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 41 (6.70%) Windows 10
6 39 (6.37%) Windows Server 2016
7 34 (5.56%) Unix
8 31 (5.07%) Windows Server 2012
9 21 (3.43%) Ubuntu
10 9 (1.47%) AIX
10 9 (1.47%) CentOS
10 9 (1.47%) VMS
10 9 (1.47%) Windows Server 2003
10 9 (1.47%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (1.31%) Solaris
12 5 (0.82%) Mac OS
13 4 (0.65%) Alpine Linux
14 3 (0.49%) Android
14 3 (0.49%) Windows 7
15 2 (0.33%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (30.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 106 (17.32%) Problem-Solving
3 101 (16.50%) High Availability
4 99 (16.18%) Disaster Recovery
5 81 (13.24%) ITIL
6 72 (11.76%) Migration
7 55 (8.99%) Change Management
7 55 (8.99%) ITSM
8 49 (8.01%) Infrastructure as Code
9 48 (7.84%) DevOps
10 46 (7.52%) Project Delivery
11 43 (7.03%) Root Cause Analysis
12 42 (6.86%) Runbook
12 42 (6.86%) Vulnerability Remediation
13 41 (6.70%) Agile
13 41 (6.70%) Technical Leadership
14 39 (6.37%) Patch Management
15 38 (6.21%) Cybersecurity
16 37 (6.05%) Continuous Improvement
16 37 (6.05%) Identity Access Management
Programming Languages
1 221 (36.11%) PowerShell
2 92 (15.03%) SQL
3 61 (9.97%) Python
4 29 (4.74%) Bash
5 27 (4.41%) C#
6 25 (4.08%) PL/SQL
7 19 (3.10%) T-SQL
8 16 (2.61%) JavaScript
9 10 (1.63%) Java
10 8 (1.31%) Bicep
11 3 (0.49%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.33%) JCL
12 2 (0.33%) REXX
13 1 (0.16%) Groovy
13 1 (0.16%) Ladder Logic
13 1 (0.16%) Perl
13 1 (0.16%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.16%) VB
Qualifications
1 242 (39.54%) Security Cleared
2 136 (22.22%) SC Cleared
3 105 (17.16%) DV Cleared
4 70 (11.44%) Degree
5 46 (7.52%) Microsoft Certification
6 24 (3.92%) MCSE
6 24 (3.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 17 (2.78%) MCSA
8 14 (2.29%) VCAP
9 13 (2.12%) Cisco Certification
10 11 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
10 11 (1.80%) CISSP
11 10 (1.63%) Azure Certification
12 9 (1.47%) CISM
13 8 (1.31%) CCNA
14 7 (1.14%) CCNP
15 6 (0.98%) AWS Certification
16 5 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
17 4 (0.65%) MCITP
17 4 (0.65%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (6.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 28 (4.58%) QA
3 25 (4.08%) NIST
4 21 (3.43%) GDPR
5 15 (2.45%) SLA
6 14 (2.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 12 (1.96%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (0.82%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.49%) NCSC
10 2 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.33%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.33%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.33%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.16%) Basel III
11 1 (0.16%) GAAP
11 1 (0.16%) IFRS
11 1 (0.16%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.16%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.16%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.16%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 353 (57.68%) Active Directory
2 218 (35.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 100 (16.34%) Hyper-V
4 79 (12.91%) VMware ESXi
5 75 (12.25%) vSphere
6 49 (8.01%) Virtual Machines
7 35 (5.72%) VMware NSX
8 34 (5.56%) Docker
9 16 (2.61%) Virtual Desktop
10 12 (1.96%) vCloud
11 11 (1.80%) KVM
11 11 (1.80%) Microsoft App-V
12 10 (1.63%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.98%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.98%) VMware Workstation
13 6 (0.98%) XenApp
14 5 (0.82%) XenDesktop
15 4 (0.65%) Firmware
15 4 (0.65%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.65%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 82 (13.40%) Ansible
2 72 (11.76%) vCenter Server
3 63 (10.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 55 (8.99%) SCCM
5 50 (8.17%) Terraform
6 37 (6.05%) Kubernetes
6 37 (6.05%) SCOM
7 30 (4.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 27 (4.41%) Single Sign-On
8 27 (4.41%) WSUS
9 14 (2.29%) vMotion
10 11 (1.80%) Nessus
10 11 (1.80%) Puppet
11 8 (1.31%) Avamar
12 7 (1.14%) VxRail
13 6 (0.98%) Grafana
13 6 (0.98%) IBM BigFix
13 6 (0.98%) Oracle RMAN
13 6 (0.98%) Prometheus
13 6 (0.98%) WMI
Vendors
1 269 (43.95%) Microsoft
2 261 (42.65%) VMware
3 65 (10.62%) Cisco
4 64 (10.46%) Citrix
5 55 (8.99%) Oracle
6 40 (6.54%) ServiceNow
7 27 (4.41%) Dell
8 26 (4.25%) Red Hat
9 22 (3.59%) Okta
10 20 (3.27%) Tenable
11 19 (3.10%) BeyondTrust
12 16 (2.61%) IBM
13 15 (2.45%) CyberArk
14 14 (2.29%) HP
14 14 (2.29%) Remedy
15 13 (2.12%) BMC
15 13 (2.12%) Qualys
15 13 (2.12%) Splunk
15 13 (2.12%) Thales
15 13 (2.12%) Veeam
306 Windows Server jobs in England