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

 6 months to
10 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 173 171 95
Rank change year-on-year -2 -76 -17
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 707 455 780
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.55% 1.63% 2.35%
As % of the Operating Systems category 16.05% 12.23% 16.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 472 318 575
10th Percentile £261 £313 £255
25th Percentile £380 £425 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £532 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.07% +6.35% +1.01%
75th Percentile £571 £588 £590
90th Percentile £668 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £488 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -7.14% +5.00% +2.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 39 5 11
10th Percentile £16.25 £14.32 £35.58
25th Percentile £20.00 £15.33 £43.38
Median hourly rate £38.72 £30.00 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +29.07% -51.30% +54.00%
75th Percentile £69.17 £32.77 £70.47
90th Percentile £74.00 £59.61 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £38.72 £17.75 £61.60
% change year-on-year +118.14% -71.19% +54.00%

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 4,406 3,721 4,714
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.67% 13.37% 14.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,821 2,464 3,144
10th Percentile £190 £198 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £454 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.47% -7.20% -2.10%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £669 £685 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £461 £475
% change year-on-year +2.87% -2.89% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 232 294
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.44
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £33.32 £23.00 £34.50
Median % change year-on-year +44.85% -33.33% -16.96%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.56
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £24.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +7.38% -12.73% -35.29%

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 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 10 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 10 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 -19 216 £475 -5.00% 85
South East -19 193 £515 -6.36% 115
North of England -37 103 £485 +3.74% 70
Midlands -14 69 £438 -10.26% 51
East of England +2 62 £450 -18.18% 36
South West -30 60 £495 -10.00% 38
North West -29 55 £476 +6.97% 45
Yorkshire -30 42 £510 -0.49% 16
West Midlands -35 42 £428 -18.57% 29
East Midlands +9 25 £450 - 22
North East -39 6 £200 -60.00% 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 84 (11.88%) Microsoft Exchange
2 42 (5.94%) SharePoint
3 28 (3.96%) IIS
4 10 (1.41%) nginx
4 10 (1.41%) Tomcat
5 5 (0.71%) Apache
6 4 (0.57%) FactoryTalk
7 3 (0.42%) CloudStack
7 3 (0.42%) Confluence
7 3 (0.42%) Exchange Server 2013
7 3 (0.42%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.28%) SAS
8 2 (0.28%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.14%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.14%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 18 (2.55%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 17 (2.40%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 299 (42.29%) Azure
2 142 (20.08%) Microsoft 365
3 138 (19.52%) Entra ID
4 87 (12.31%) AWS
5 43 (6.08%) Azure Monitor
6 27 (3.82%) IaaS
7 26 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
8 25 (3.54%) Power Platform
9 23 (3.25%) GCP
10 20 (2.83%) GitHub
11 16 (2.26%) Azure Sentinel
12 14 (1.98%) OpenShift
13 12 (1.70%) PaaS
14 11 (1.56%) OneDrive
15 9 (1.27%) Amazon EC2
16 8 (1.13%) GitHub Actions
17 7 (0.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 7 (0.99%) Azure Stack
17 7 (0.99%) Nutanix
17 7 (0.99%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 233 (32.96%) DNS
2 145 (20.51%) DHCP
3 125 (17.68%) Firewall
4 66 (9.34%) VPN
5 59 (8.35%) TCP/IP
6 45 (6.36%) SAN
7 43 (6.08%) WAN
8 41 (5.80%) LAN
9 38 (5.37%) VLAN
10 23 (3.25%) Network Security
10 23 (3.25%) SSL
11 19 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
12 17 (2.40%) NAS
13 15 (2.12%) VoIP
14 11 (1.56%) SSH
15 10 (1.41%) SMTP
15 10 (1.41%) VSAN
15 10 (1.41%) Wireless
16 8 (1.13%) Skype
17 7 (0.99%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (20.93%) SQL Server
2 25 (3.54%) Power BI
3 15 (2.12%) Oracle Database
4 13 (1.84%) Amazon RDS
4 13 (1.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 12 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
6 11 (1.56%) Elasticsearch
7 9 (1.27%) MySQL
8 8 (1.13%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.71%) Big Data
10 4 (0.57%) GIS
10 4 (0.57%) Oracle BI EE
11 3 (0.42%) Data Mining
11 3 (0.42%) Db2
11 3 (0.42%) MongoDB
11 3 (0.42%) Relational Database
11 3 (0.42%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 2 (0.28%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 1 (0.14%) Oracle Database 11g
13 1 (0.14%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 12 (1.70%) Git
1 12 (1.70%) Jenkins
2 10 (1.41%) JIRA
3 8 (1.13%) GitLab
4 4 (0.57%) Visual Studio
5 3 (0.42%) MSI
5 3 (0.42%) Octopus Deploy
5 3 (0.42%) Robot Framework
6 2 (0.28%) AdminStudio
6 2 (0.28%) Artifactory
6 2 (0.28%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.28%) InstallShield
6 2 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.28%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.14%) eggPlant
7 1 (0.14%) MSBuild
7 1 (0.14%) Postman
7 1 (0.14%) Subversion
7 1 (0.14%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.14%) VSS/SourceSafe
General
1 176 (24.89%) Social Skills
2 86 (12.16%) Analytical Skills
3 71 (10.04%) Finance
4 56 (7.92%) Public Sector
5 36 (5.09%) Banking
6 35 (4.95%) Documentation Skills
7 16 (2.26%) Military
8 15 (2.12%) Law
9 14 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 11 (1.56%) Legal
10 11 (1.56%) Organisational Skills
11 10 (1.41%) Telecoms
12 9 (1.27%) Manufacturing
13 8 (1.13%) Pharmaceutical
14 6 (0.85%) Games
14 6 (0.85%) Local Government
15 5 (0.71%) Retail
16 4 (0.57%) Aerospace
16 4 (0.57%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.57%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 184 (26.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 78 (11.03%) Senior
3 63 (8.91%) Support Engineer
4 51 (7.21%) Cloud Engineer
5 48 (6.79%) Lead
6 47 (6.65%) 3rd Line Engineer
7 38 (5.37%) IT Engineer
8 35 (4.95%) Architect
9 32 (4.53%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
10 29 (4.10%) IT Support
11 28 (3.96%) Azure Engineer
12 27 (3.82%) Administrator
12 27 (3.82%) Server Engineer
13 25 (3.54%) Infrastructure Support
13 25 (3.54%) Windows Engineer
14 23 (3.25%) Storage Engineer
15 22 (3.11%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
15 22 (3.11%) Systems Engineer
16 20 (2.83%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
16 20 (2.83%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (4.38%) .NET
2 24 (3.39%) .NET Framework
3 22 (3.11%) REST
4 14 (1.98%) ARM Templates
5 11 (1.56%) JSON
6 9 (1.27%) Elastic Stack
7 7 (0.99%) RabbitMQ
8 6 (0.85%) LDAP
8 6 (0.85%) OAuth
8 6 (0.85%) Software Packaging
8 6 (0.85%) YAML
9 5 (0.71%) Middleware
9 5 (0.71%) SailPoint
10 4 (0.57%) ADO
10 4 (0.57%) ASP.NET
10 4 (0.57%) Azure Blueprints
10 4 (0.57%) EJB
10 4 (0.57%) Spring
11 3 (0.42%) 802.1X
11 3 (0.42%) OpenLayers
Miscellaneous
1 71 (10.04%) PKI
2 57 (8.06%) Hybrid Cloud
3 50 (7.07%) Clustering
3 50 (7.07%) Onboarding
4 42 (5.94%) Data Centre
5 34 (4.81%) Management Information System
6 32 (4.53%) Replication
7 16 (2.26%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (1.98%) Driving Licence
8 14 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
8 14 (1.98%) Virtual Team
9 13 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
9 13 (1.84%) Enterprise Storage
10 11 (1.56%) Cloud Native
10 11 (1.56%) Security Posture
11 10 (1.41%) Linux Command Line
12 9 (1.27%) Smartcard
13 8 (1.13%) Operational Technology
14 7 (0.99%) ARM Cortex
14 7 (0.99%) Fat Client
Operating Systems
1 707 (100.00%) Windows
2 202 (28.57%) Linux
3 58 (8.20%) Windows Server 2019
4 56 (7.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 51 (7.21%) Windows 10
6 37 (5.23%) Windows Server 2016
7 31 (4.38%) Unix
8 30 (4.24%) Windows Server 2012
9 29 (4.10%) Ubuntu
10 20 (2.83%) CentOS
11 13 (1.84%) VMS
11 13 (1.84%) Windows Server 2008
12 11 (1.56%) Mac OS
13 10 (1.41%) Rocky
14 8 (1.13%) Solaris
14 8 (1.13%) Windows 7
15 6 (0.85%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.71%) AIX
17 4 (0.57%) Alpine Linux
18 3 (0.42%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 230 (32.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 161 (22.77%) Problem-Solving
3 124 (17.54%) ITIL
4 99 (14.00%) Disaster Recovery
5 86 (12.16%) High Availability
5 86 (12.16%) Migration
6 78 (11.03%) Change Management
7 77 (10.89%) ITSM
8 76 (10.75%) Infrastructure as Code
9 74 (10.47%) DevOps
10 66 (9.34%) Service Management
11 65 (9.19%) Root Cause Analysis
12 64 (9.05%) Continuous Improvement
13 60 (8.49%) Vulnerability Remediation
14 59 (8.35%) Agile
15 56 (7.92%) Project Delivery
15 56 (7.92%) Technical Leadership
16 54 (7.64%) CI/CD
17 50 (7.07%) Runbook
18 47 (6.65%) Patch Management
Programming Languages
1 277 (39.18%) PowerShell
2 105 (14.85%) SQL
3 70 (9.90%) Python
4 57 (8.06%) Bash
5 26 (3.68%) T-SQL
6 25 (3.54%) C#
6 25 (3.54%) PL/SQL
7 24 (3.39%) Bicep
8 16 (2.26%) JavaScript
9 12 (1.70%) Java
10 3 (0.42%) Korn
10 3 (0.42%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.28%) JCL
11 2 (0.28%) REXX
12 1 (0.14%) CodeQL
12 1 (0.14%) Groovy
12 1 (0.14%) Ladder Logic
12 1 (0.14%) VB
Qualifications
1 298 (42.15%) Security Cleared
2 160 (22.63%) SC Cleared
3 146 (20.65%) DV Cleared
4 70 (9.90%) Degree
5 50 (7.07%) Microsoft Certification
6 26 (3.68%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 24 (3.39%) Azure Certification
8 20 (2.83%) MCSE
9 16 (2.26%) Cisco Certification
10 14 (1.98%) MCSA
11 12 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
12 11 (1.56%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 10 (1.41%) CCNA
13 10 (1.41%) VCAP
14 7 (0.99%) AWS Certification
14 7 (0.99%) CCNP
14 7 (0.99%) CISSP
14 7 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
15 6 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
15 6 (0.85%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 31 (4.38%) SLA
3 27 (3.82%) QA
4 23 (3.25%) NIST
5 13 (1.84%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (1.13%) GDPR
7 7 (0.99%) NCSC
8 5 (0.71%) GxP
8 5 (0.71%) SOC 2
9 4 (0.57%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 3 (0.42%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.28%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.28%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.28%) JSP 440
11 2 (0.28%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.14%) Accessibility
12 1 (0.14%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.14%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 400 (56.58%) Active Directory
2 249 (35.22%) VMware Infrastructure
3 122 (17.26%) Hyper-V
4 96 (13.58%) VMware ESXi
5 77 (10.89%) vSphere
6 52 (7.36%) Virtual Machines
7 41 (5.80%) VMware NSX
8 40 (5.66%) Docker
9 30 (4.24%) Virtual Desktop
10 18 (2.55%) vCloud
11 12 (1.70%) Virtual Servers
12 9 (1.27%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (1.13%) BitLocker
13 8 (1.13%) KVM
14 6 (0.85%) Firmware
14 6 (0.85%) VMware Workstation
14 6 (0.85%) XenApp
15 5 (0.71%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.71%) XenDesktop
16 4 (0.57%) UAG
Systems Management
1 100 (14.14%) Ansible
2 87 (12.31%) vCenter Server
3 80 (11.32%) Microsoft Intune
3 80 (11.32%) Terraform
4 67 (9.48%) SCCM
5 59 (8.35%) SCOM
6 47 (6.65%) Kubernetes
7 31 (4.38%) WSUS
8 13 (1.84%) Avamar
8 13 (1.84%) Grafana
8 13 (1.84%) NetBackup
8 13 (1.84%) vMotion
9 12 (1.70%) Nessus
10 11 (1.56%) Prometheus
11 10 (1.41%) Puppet
12 9 (1.27%) Failover Clustering
13 7 (0.99%) Jamf Pro
13 7 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
13 7 (0.99%) WMI
14 6 (0.85%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 351 (49.65%) Microsoft
2 318 (44.98%) VMware
3 70 (9.90%) Cisco
4 66 (9.34%) Citrix
5 61 (8.63%) Oracle
6 50 (7.07%) ServiceNow
7 30 (4.24%) Red Hat
8 29 (4.10%) CyberArk
9 27 (3.82%) Dell
10 26 (3.68%) BeyondTrust
11 25 (3.54%) Veeam
12 22 (3.11%) NetApp
13 21 (2.97%) Tenable
14 20 (2.83%) Splunk
15 19 (2.69%) HP
15 19 (2.69%) Remedy
16 16 (2.26%) BMC
16 16 (2.26%) Juniper
16 16 (2.26%) Zscaler
17 15 (2.12%) CrowdStrike
372 Windows Server jobs in England