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

 6 months to
12 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 170 178 102
Rank change year-on-year +8 -76 -27
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 788 443 742
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.70% 1.59% 2.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 17.35% 11.60% 15.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 512 320 537
10th Percentile £261 £300 £248
25th Percentile £375 £406 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.95% +5.00% +2.56%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £675 £650 £680
UK median daily rate £488 £519 £475
% change year-on-year -6.02% +9.21% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 6 7
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.97 £27.65
25th Percentile £26.00 £13.14 £36.17
Median hourly rate £63.14 £22.03 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +186.65% -55.95% +3.92%
75th Percentile £72.54 £32.08 £63.59
90th Percentile £74.00 £55.14 £81.81
UK median hourly rate £57.67 £17.63 £44.25
% change year-on-year +227.18% -60.17% -8.03%

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 4,542 3,820 4,710
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.80% 13.73% 14.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,908 2,518 3,037
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £310 £303 £333
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £582 £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 337 247 240
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £15.12
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.66 £19.80
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -53.43% +17.70%
75th Percentile £67.84 £59.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.60 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £26.33 £25.15 £48.78
% change year-on-year +4.69% -48.44% +8.41%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 -3 232 £475 -5.00% 151
South East -7 192 £515 -2.23% 146
North of England -9 132 £450 +8.11% 69
Midlands 0 86 £425 -5.56% 78
East of England +2 75 £475 -13.64% 64
North West -12 73 £449 +5.65% 35
South West -31 62 £513 -5.09% 39
West Midlands -24 54 £425 -12.82% 54
Yorkshire -20 43 £525 +50.00% 18
East Midlands +10 31 £444 -1.39% 24
North East -31 16 £350 -30.00% 17
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 90 (11.42%) Microsoft Exchange
2 53 (6.73%) SharePoint
3 27 (3.43%) IIS
4 8 (1.02%) nginx
5 7 (0.89%) Tomcat
6 6 (0.76%) Apache
6 6 (0.76%) Confluence
7 4 (0.51%) FactoryTalk
8 3 (0.38%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.25%) SAS
9 2 (0.25%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.13%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.13%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 16 (2.03%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 15 (1.90%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 333 (42.26%) Azure
2 165 (20.94%) Microsoft 365
3 163 (20.69%) Entra ID
4 99 (12.56%) AWS
5 47 (5.96%) Azure Monitor
6 33 (4.19%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (3.68%) GCP
8 27 (3.43%) IaaS
9 26 (3.30%) Power Platform
10 20 (2.54%) GitHub
11 19 (2.41%) Azure Sentinel
12 18 (2.28%) OpenShift
13 13 (1.65%) OneDrive
14 12 (1.52%) PaaS
15 11 (1.40%) Amazon EC2
16 10 (1.27%) Nutanix
17 9 (1.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 8 (1.02%) Datadog
18 8 (1.02%) SaaS
19 7 (0.89%) Azure Stack
Communications & Networking
1 252 (31.98%) DNS
2 165 (20.94%) DHCP
3 136 (17.26%) Firewall
4 69 (8.76%) VPN
5 67 (8.50%) TCP/IP
6 55 (6.98%) SAN
7 45 (5.71%) VLAN
8 43 (5.46%) WAN
9 38 (4.82%) LAN
10 35 (4.44%) Network Security
11 26 (3.30%) SSL
12 22 (2.79%) NAS
13 20 (2.54%) Wi-Fi
14 19 (2.41%) Wireless
15 16 (2.03%) NetScaler
16 14 (1.78%) VoIP
17 13 (1.65%) SSH
18 11 (1.40%) SMTP
19 8 (1.02%) Skype
19 8 (1.02%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (18.78%) SQL Server
2 26 (3.30%) Power BI
3 16 (2.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 14 (1.78%) MySQL
5 13 (1.65%) Amazon RDS
6 12 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
7 11 (1.40%) Oracle Database
8 9 (1.14%) Elasticsearch
9 7 (0.89%) NoSQL
10 6 (0.76%) Relational Database
11 3 (0.38%) Azure SQL Database
11 3 (0.38%) Big Data
11 3 (0.38%) GIS
11 3 (0.38%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.38%) Oracle BI EE
11 3 (0.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 2 (0.25%) Data Mining
12 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 1 (0.13%) Amazon Aurora
13 1 (0.13%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 15 (1.90%) Jenkins
1 15 (1.90%) JIRA
2 14 (1.78%) Git
3 10 (1.27%) GitLab
4 5 (0.63%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 5 (0.63%) Visual Studio
5 3 (0.38%) Artifactory
5 3 (0.38%) MSI
5 3 (0.38%) Octopus Deploy
6 2 (0.25%) AdminStudio
6 2 (0.25%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.25%) InstallShield
6 2 (0.25%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.13%) JMeter
7 1 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.13%) Subversion
7 1 (0.13%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.13%) Vagrant
7 1 (0.13%) VSS/SourceSafe
General
1 198 (25.13%) Social Skills
2 103 (13.07%) Analytical Skills
3 77 (9.77%) Finance
4 45 (5.71%) Documentation Skills
5 42 (5.33%) Public Sector
6 40 (5.08%) Banking
7 17 (2.16%) Law
8 14 (1.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 13 (1.65%) Military
10 12 (1.52%) Telecoms
11 11 (1.40%) Aerospace
12 10 (1.27%) Legal
12 10 (1.27%) Pharmaceutical
13 9 (1.14%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.76%) Games
14 6 (0.76%) Local Government
14 6 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
15 4 (0.51%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.51%) Marketing
15 4 (0.51%) Police
Job Titles
1 206 (26.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 94 (11.93%) Senior
3 71 (9.01%) Support Engineer
4 59 (7.49%) Cloud Engineer
5 51 (6.47%) Lead
6 50 (6.35%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 42 (5.33%) IT Engineer
8 40 (5.08%) Architect
8 40 (5.08%) Windows Engineer
9 39 (4.95%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 32 (4.06%) Administrator
11 30 (3.81%) Azure Engineer
11 30 (3.81%) IT Support
12 28 (3.55%) Server Engineer
12 28 (3.55%) Storage Engineer
12 28 (3.55%) Systems Engineer
13 25 (3.17%) VMware Engineer
14 24 (3.05%) Infrastructure Support
14 24 (3.05%) Wintel Engineer
15 23 (2.92%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 90 (11.42%) Terraform
2 30 (3.81%) .NET
3 24 (3.05%) REST
4 18 (2.28%) .NET Framework
5 17 (2.16%) ARM Templates
6 12 (1.52%) LDAP
7 10 (1.27%) JSON
8 8 (1.02%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (1.02%) OAuth
9 7 (0.89%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (0.76%) YAML
11 5 (0.63%) Middleware
11 5 (0.63%) SailPoint
11 5 (0.63%) SAML
11 5 (0.63%) Software Packaging
12 4 (0.51%) 802.1X
12 4 (0.51%) ASP.NET
12 4 (0.51%) OAuth2
12 4 (0.51%) OpenID
12 4 (0.51%) React
Miscellaneous
1 77 (9.77%) PKI
2 67 (8.50%) Hybrid Cloud
3 56 (7.11%) Clustering
3 56 (7.11%) Data Centre
4 54 (6.85%) Onboarding
5 45 (5.71%) Replication
6 44 (5.58%) Management Information System
7 21 (2.66%) Enterprise Storage
8 19 (2.41%) Security Posture
9 15 (1.90%) Driving Licence
10 14 (1.78%) Virtual Team
11 12 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (1.52%) Smartcard
12 11 (1.40%) Cloud Native
12 11 (1.40%) Linux Command Line
13 9 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
14 8 (1.02%) ARM Cortex
14 8 (1.02%) Public Cloud
14 8 (1.02%) SCADA
15 7 (0.89%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 788 (100.00%) Windows
2 228 (28.93%) Linux
3 63 (7.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 55 (6.98%) Windows 10
5 52 (6.60%) Windows Server 2019
6 33 (4.19%) Ubuntu
6 33 (4.19%) Windows Server 2016
7 29 (3.68%) Unix
7 29 (3.68%) Windows Server 2012
8 28 (3.55%) CentOS
9 14 (1.78%) Rocky
10 13 (1.65%) Mac OS
11 11 (1.40%) VMS
12 10 (1.27%) Windows Server 2008
13 8 (1.02%) Windows 7
14 7 (0.89%) Windows Server 2003
15 5 (0.63%) Solaris
16 4 (0.51%) Alpine Linux
17 3 (0.38%) Android
17 3 (0.38%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 257 (32.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 196 (24.87%) Problem-Solving
3 165 (20.94%) ITIL
4 126 (15.99%) Disaster Recovery
5 103 (13.07%) Migration
6 102 (12.94%) Root Cause Analysis
7 94 (11.93%) Infrastructure as Code
8 87 (11.04%) Change Management
9 86 (10.91%) ITSM
10 85 (10.79%) Continuous Improvement
11 83 (10.53%) Service Management
12 82 (10.41%) DevOps
13 79 (10.03%) High Availability
14 74 (9.39%) Technical Leadership
15 66 (8.38%) Vulnerability Remediation
16 65 (8.25%) Project Delivery
17 62 (7.87%) Stakeholder Management
18 61 (7.74%) CI/CD
19 60 (7.61%) Agile
20 59 (7.49%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 314 (39.85%) PowerShell
2 110 (13.96%) SQL
3 80 (10.15%) Python
4 66 (8.38%) Bash
5 33 (4.19%) T-SQL
6 28 (3.55%) Bicep
7 25 (3.17%) C#
8 20 (2.54%) PL/SQL
9 12 (1.52%) Java
9 12 (1.52%) JavaScript
10 4 (0.51%) Go
11 3 (0.38%) Korn
11 3 (0.38%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.25%) Groovy
12 2 (0.25%) JCL
12 2 (0.25%) REXX
12 2 (0.25%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.13%) F#
13 1 (0.13%) VB
13 1 (0.13%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 350 (44.42%) Security Cleared
2 191 (24.24%) SC Cleared
3 174 (22.08%) DV Cleared
4 79 (10.03%) Degree
5 53 (6.73%) Microsoft Certification
6 39 (4.95%) Azure Certification
7 27 (3.43%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 20 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
8 20 (2.54%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 20 (2.54%) MCSE
9 14 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.78%) MCSA
10 12 (1.52%) CISSP
11 11 (1.40%) AWS Certification
12 10 (1.27%) CISM
12 10 (1.27%) ITIL Certification
12 10 (1.27%) VCAP
13 9 (1.14%) CCNA
14 8 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
15 7 (0.89%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (5.46%) SLA
2 36 (4.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 27 (3.43%) NIST
4 24 (3.05%) QA
5 16 (2.03%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (1.02%) NCSC
7 7 (0.89%) GDPR
8 6 (0.76%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (0.76%) GxP
8 6 (0.76%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.63%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 5 (0.63%) SOC 2
10 4 (0.51%) ISO 9001
11 3 (0.38%) GRC
11 3 (0.38%) ISO 31000
11 3 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 2 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.25%) HIPAA
12 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.13%) GMP
System Software
1 456 (57.87%) Active Directory
2 291 (36.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 150 (19.04%) Hyper-V
4 115 (14.59%) VMware ESXi
5 94 (11.93%) vSphere
6 58 (7.36%) Virtual Machines
7 45 (5.71%) Docker
8 40 (5.08%) VMware NSX
9 34 (4.31%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (3.05%) vCloud
11 15 (1.90%) Virtual Servers
12 12 (1.52%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 11 (1.40%) Firmware
13 11 (1.40%) XenApp
14 10 (1.27%) XenDesktop
15 9 (1.14%) Microsoft App-V
16 7 (0.89%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.76%) KVM
17 6 (0.76%) VMware Server
18 5 (0.63%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 102 (12.94%) Ansible
2 95 (12.06%) vCenter Server
3 89 (11.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 84 (10.66%) SCCM
5 73 (9.26%) SCOM
6 50 (6.35%) Kubernetes
7 33 (4.19%) WSUS
8 18 (2.28%) Grafana
9 17 (2.16%) NetBackup
9 17 (2.16%) Prometheus
10 15 (1.90%) vMotion
11 13 (1.65%) Avamar
11 13 (1.65%) Failover Clustering
12 10 (1.27%) Nessus
13 8 (1.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 8 (1.02%) Puppet
14 7 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
14 7 (0.89%) Microsoft Clustering
14 7 (0.89%) SysTrack
14 7 (0.89%) WMI
Vendors
1 412 (52.28%) Microsoft
2 371 (47.08%) VMware
3 85 (10.79%) Cisco
4 72 (9.14%) Citrix
5 60 (7.61%) Oracle
6 55 (6.98%) ServiceNow
7 35 (4.44%) Red Hat
8 31 (3.93%) CyberArk
9 29 (3.68%) Dell
9 29 (3.68%) NetApp
10 28 (3.55%) BeyondTrust
10 28 (3.55%) Splunk
10 28 (3.55%) Veeam
11 21 (2.66%) Google
12 19 (2.41%) CrowdStrike
13 18 (2.28%) Tenable
13 18 (2.28%) Zscaler
14 17 (2.16%) Fortinet
14 17 (2.16%) Qualys
14 17 (2.16%) Remedy
511 Windows Server jobs in England