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

 6 months to
12 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 189 129 89
Rank change year-on-year -60 -40 -1
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 575 530 895
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.42% 2.18% 2.43%
As % of the Operating Systems category 14.45% 15.48% 17.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 408 371 656
10th Percentile £254 £340 £210
25th Percentile £400 £425 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £538 £470
Median % change year-on-year -9.99% +14.47% -6.00%
75th Percentile £575 £603 £594
90th Percentile £650 £688 £695
UK median daily rate £478 £525 £460
% change year-on-year -9.05% +14.13% -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 38 3 18
10th Percentile £19.25 £15.89 £14.89
25th Percentile £20.91 £16.73 £16.06
Median hourly rate £27.16 £18.75 £46.75
Median % change year-on-year +44.85% -59.89% +37.50%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.56 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.00 £62.88 £66.88
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £17.75 £46.75
% change year-on-year +35.21% -62.03% +46.09%

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 3,978 3,424 5,014
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.80% 14.08% 13.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,617 2,326 3,433
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £310 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.06% -8.29%
75th Percentile £570 £600 £588
90th Percentile £659 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £468
% change year-on-year -5.21% +1.60% -7.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 153 362
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.22 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.38 £17.44 £14.83
Median hourly rate £47.50 £22.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +111.11% +2.27% -41.21%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.25 £61.20
90th Percentile £74.84 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £23.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +106.52% +4.55% -42.86%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 -54 172 £500 -7.02% 79
South East -27 132 £515 -5.60% 102
North of England -81 85 £423 -12.89% 63
Midlands -17 67 £438 +9.38% 36
East of England +2 65 £450 -11.98% 28
North West -37 63 £370 -15.43% 34
South West -51 52 £511 -11.09% 34
West Midlands -43 41 £434 +8.44% 15
East Midlands -17 24 £450 -10.00% 21
Yorkshire -68 20 £500 -6.98% 25
North East -21 2 £330 -40.00% 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 72 (12.52%) Microsoft Exchange
2 32 (5.57%) IIS
3 23 (4.00%) SharePoint
4 7 (1.22%) Apache
4 7 (1.22%) nginx
4 7 (1.22%) Tomcat
5 5 (0.87%) SAS
6 3 (0.52%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2010
7 2 (0.35%) Skype for Business
7 2 (0.35%) WordPress
8 1 (0.17%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.17%) CloudStack
8 1 (0.17%) Confluence
8 1 (0.17%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 14 (2.43%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.70%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (1.74%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.52%) Veritas eDiscovery
3 1 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle FAH
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 207 (36.00%) Azure
2 103 (17.91%) Microsoft 365
3 92 (16.00%) Entra ID
4 53 (9.22%) AWS
5 22 (3.83%) IaaS
6 18 (3.13%) Azure Monitor
7 15 (2.61%) Power Platform
8 14 (2.43%) PaaS
9 12 (2.09%) Nutanix
10 10 (1.74%) Azure DevOps
10 10 (1.74%) GitHub
11 8 (1.39%) SaaS
12 7 (1.22%) Amazon EC2
12 7 (1.22%) GCP
13 6 (1.04%) Cohesity
14 5 (0.87%) Microsoft Copilot
14 5 (0.87%) Mimecast
15 4 (0.70%) Azure AKS
15 4 (0.70%) Azure Logic Apps
15 4 (0.70%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 195 (33.91%) DNS
2 136 (23.65%) DHCP
3 103 (17.91%) Firewall
4 53 (9.22%) VPN
5 45 (7.83%) WAN
6 43 (7.48%) TCP/IP
7 38 (6.61%) LAN
8 23 (4.00%) Network Security
9 19 (3.30%) SAN
10 18 (3.13%) VLAN
11 17 (2.96%) FTP
12 15 (2.61%) Kerberos
12 15 (2.61%) SMTP
13 13 (2.26%) SSL
13 13 (2.26%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (1.91%) VoIP
15 9 (1.57%) VSAN
16 8 (1.39%) IPv4
16 8 (1.39%) NetScaler
16 8 (1.39%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 106 (18.43%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.61%) Power BI
3 12 (2.09%) Oracle Database
4 11 (1.91%) Elasticsearch
5 7 (1.22%) NoSQL
5 7 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (1.04%) DB2
6 6 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (0.70%) Oracle BI EE
7 4 (0.70%) Relational Database
8 3 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
8 3 (0.52%) Data Mining
8 3 (0.52%) GIS
9 2 (0.35%) Big Data
9 2 (0.35%) MongoDB
9 2 (0.35%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 2 (0.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 1 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
10 1 (0.17%) Oracle Database 11g
10 1 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 11 (1.91%) JIRA
2 10 (1.74%) Visual Studio
3 7 (1.22%) Robot Framework
4 6 (1.04%) GitLab
4 6 (1.04%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.04%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (0.87%) Git
6 3 (0.52%) MSI
7 2 (0.35%) AdminStudio
7 2 (0.35%) InstallShield
7 2 (0.35%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.17%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.17%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.17%) eggPlant
8 1 (0.17%) GoCD
8 1 (0.17%) Postman
8 1 (0.17%) TeamCity
General
1 121 (21.04%) Social Skills
2 61 (10.61%) Finance
3 59 (10.26%) Public Sector
4 43 (7.48%) Analytical Skills
5 27 (4.70%) Documentation Skills
6 22 (3.83%) Banking
7 18 (3.13%) Legal
8 12 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 12 (2.09%) Military
9 9 (1.57%) Law
10 7 (1.22%) Organisational Skills
11 6 (1.04%) Local Government
12 5 (0.87%) Marketing
12 5 (0.87%) Police
12 5 (0.87%) Retail
12 5 (0.87%) Telecoms
13 4 (0.70%) Front Office
14 3 (0.52%) Aerospace
14 3 (0.52%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.52%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 130 (22.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 45 (7.83%) Analyst
3 39 (6.78%) Senior
4 34 (5.91%) Support Engineer
5 32 (5.57%) IT Support
6 28 (4.87%) Architect
6 28 (4.87%) Wintel Engineer
7 27 (4.70%) 3rd Line Engineer
8 24 (4.17%) Windows Engineer
9 23 (4.00%) Developer
10 22 (3.83%) Lead
11 20 (3.48%) IT Engineer
11 20 (3.48%) Server Engineer
12 18 (3.13%) 3rd Line Support
12 18 (3.13%) C# Developer
12 18 (3.13%) Platform Engineer
13 17 (2.96%) Cloud Engineer
13 17 (2.96%) Support Analyst
14 16 (2.78%) Administrator
15 15 (2.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (5.57%) .NET
2 27 (4.70%) .NET Framework
3 21 (3.65%) REST
4 20 (3.48%) OAuth
5 19 (3.30%) SAML
6 18 (3.13%) LDAP
7 6 (1.04%) OAuth2
7 6 (1.04%) OpenID
8 5 (0.87%) JSON
8 5 (0.87%) Middleware
8 5 (0.87%) React
9 4 (0.70%) ADO
9 4 (0.70%) AngularJS
9 4 (0.70%) EJB
9 4 (0.70%) ISPF
9 4 (0.70%) Keycloak
10 3 (0.52%) Elastic Stack
10 3 (0.52%) Java EE
10 3 (0.52%) OpenLayers
10 3 (0.52%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 49 (8.52%) PKI
2 42 (7.30%) Clustering
3 41 (7.13%) Replication
4 34 (5.91%) Data Centre
5 30 (5.22%) Onboarding
6 27 (4.70%) Hybrid Cloud
7 19 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
8 18 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
9 17 (2.96%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (2.43%) Enterprise Storage
11 12 (2.09%) Management Information System
12 9 (1.57%) Product Ownership
13 8 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
13 8 (1.39%) Driving Licence
13 8 (1.39%) Legacy Code
13 8 (1.39%) Linux Command Line
13 8 (1.39%) Private Cloud
13 8 (1.39%) Virtual Team
14 7 (1.22%) NHS
15 6 (1.04%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 575 (100.00%) Windows
2 146 (25.39%) Linux
3 52 (9.04%) Windows Server 2019
4 49 (8.52%) Windows Server 2016
5 33 (5.74%) Windows 10
6 31 (5.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 28 (4.87%) Windows Server 2012
8 23 (4.00%) Unix
9 16 (2.78%) Ubuntu
10 10 (1.74%) Windows Server 2003
11 9 (1.57%) AIX
11 9 (1.57%) VMS
12 8 (1.39%) Solaris
12 8 (1.39%) Windows Server 2008
13 6 (1.04%) CentOS
14 4 (0.70%) Android
14 4 (0.70%) zOS
15 2 (0.35%) Apple iOS
15 2 (0.35%) Mac OS
15 2 (0.35%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (28.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 98 (17.04%) Disaster Recovery
3 93 (16.17%) High Availability
4 92 (16.00%) ITIL
5 84 (14.61%) Problem-Solving
6 69 (12.00%) Migration
7 62 (10.78%) Agile
8 53 (9.22%) Change Management
9 46 (8.00%) ITSM
9 46 (8.00%) Project Delivery
10 39 (6.78%) DevOps
11 36 (6.26%) Service Management
12 34 (5.91%) Infrastructure as Code
13 33 (5.74%) Business Intelligence
13 33 (5.74%) Runbook
14 32 (5.57%) Identity Access Management
15 30 (5.22%) CI/CD
16 29 (5.04%) Cybersecurity
16 29 (5.04%) Technical Leadership
17 28 (4.87%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 212 (36.87%) PowerShell
2 83 (14.43%) SQL
3 48 (8.35%) Python
4 32 (5.57%) C#
5 27 (4.70%) PL/SQL
6 25 (4.35%) Bash
7 22 (3.83%) T-SQL
8 17 (2.96%) JavaScript
9 12 (2.09%) Java
10 4 (0.70%) Bicep
10 4 (0.70%) JCL
10 4 (0.70%) REXX
11 3 (0.52%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.35%) Delphi
12 2 (0.35%) Perl
12 2 (0.35%) PHP
13 1 (0.17%) Ladder Logic
13 1 (0.17%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.17%) VB
Qualifications
1 233 (40.52%) Security Cleared
2 148 (25.74%) SC Cleared
3 89 (15.48%) DV Cleared
4 65 (11.30%) Degree
5 44 (7.65%) Microsoft Certification
6 23 (4.00%) MCSE
7 22 (3.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 16 (2.78%) VCAP
9 15 (2.61%) MCSA
10 13 (2.26%) Cisco Certification
11 11 (1.91%) Azure Certification
11 11 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
12 9 (1.57%) CCNA
13 7 (1.22%) CISSP
14 6 (1.04%) CCNP
15 5 (0.87%) AWS Certification
15 5 (0.87%) CISM
15 5 (0.87%) CompTIA Security+
16 4 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
16 4 (0.70%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (5.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (4.70%) QA
3 25 (4.35%) GDPR
4 19 (3.30%) NIST
5 15 (2.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 11 (1.91%) Cyber Essentials
7 10 (1.74%) SLA
8 3 (0.52%) NCSC
8 3 (0.52%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 1 (0.17%) Basel III
10 1 (0.17%) DICOM
10 1 (0.17%) GAAP
10 1 (0.17%) HL7
10 1 (0.17%) IFRS
10 1 (0.17%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.17%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.17%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 335 (58.26%) Active Directory
2 200 (34.78%) VMware Infrastructure
3 91 (15.83%) Hyper-V
4 62 (10.78%) vSphere
5 56 (9.74%) VMware ESXi
6 42 (7.30%) Virtual Machines
7 34 (5.91%) Docker
8 27 (4.70%) VMware NSX
9 11 (1.91%) KVM
10 10 (1.74%) Microsoft App-V
10 10 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (1.57%) BitLocker
12 7 (1.22%) XenApp
13 6 (1.04%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.87%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.87%) XenDesktop
15 4 (0.70%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 4 (0.70%) vCloud
16 3 (0.52%) NFS
16 3 (0.52%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 73 (12.70%) Ansible
2 69 (12.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 69 (12.00%) SCCM
3 55 (9.57%) vCenter Server
4 41 (7.13%) Terraform
5 34 (5.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 32 (5.57%) Kubernetes
6 32 (5.57%) Single Sign-On
7 27 (4.70%) SCOM
8 25 (4.35%) WSUS
9 11 (1.91%) vMotion
10 10 (1.74%) Puppet
11 9 (1.57%) Nessus
12 6 (1.04%) IBM BigFix
13 5 (0.87%) Control-M
13 5 (0.87%) VxRail
14 4 (0.70%) Backup Exec
14 4 (0.70%) Failover Clustering
14 4 (0.70%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.70%) vRealize
Vendors
1 243 (42.26%) VMware
2 241 (41.91%) Microsoft
3 68 (11.83%) Citrix
4 58 (10.09%) Cisco
5 49 (8.52%) Oracle
6 38 (6.61%) ServiceNow
7 21 (3.65%) Dell
8 20 (3.48%) Red Hat
9 19 (3.30%) Veeam
10 16 (2.78%) Okta
11 15 (2.61%) BeyondTrust
11 15 (2.61%) NetApp
11 15 (2.61%) SolarWinds
12 14 (2.43%) BMC
12 14 (2.43%) IBM
12 14 (2.43%) Palo Alto
13 13 (2.26%) CyberArk
14 12 (2.09%) HP
14 12 (2.09%) Tenable
15 10 (1.74%) Remedy
319 Windows Server jobs in England