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

 6 months to
19 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 160 183 109
Rank change year-on-year +23 -74 -37
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 807 440 720
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.73% 1.58% 2.19%
As % of the Operating Systems category 17.55% 11.48% 15.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 517 324 519
10th Percentile £261 £263 £248
25th Percentile £375 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £510 £484
Median % change year-on-year -5.20% +5.37% +0.83%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £675 £650 £673
UK median daily rate £488 £508 £475
% change year-on-year -3.94% +6.84% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 7 6
10th Percentile £16.25 £12.97 £36.17
25th Percentile £26.00 £13.31 £40.06
Median hourly rate £63.14 £30.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +110.45% -42.86% +8.47%
75th Percentile £72.63 £37.36 £66.64
90th Percentile £74.00 £56.16 £84.84
UK median hourly rate £63.14 £17.75 £50.00
% change year-on-year +255.69% -64.50% +3.31%

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 4,599 3,832 4,724
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.88% 13.78% 14.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,527 3,010
10th Percentile £190 £189 £200
25th Percentile £313 £289 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.11% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £680
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 253 231
10th Percentile £16.03 £15.50 £15.49
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £20.40
Median hourly rate £38.61 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.52% -56.26% +20.22%
75th Percentile £68.00 £62.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.45 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +9.34% -49.70% +5.26%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +5 238 £481 -3.75% 245
South East -6 194 £515 -1.90% 149
North of England -7 135 £450 +8.11% 101
East of England +6 87 £475 -13.64% 72
Midlands +2 85 £425 -5.56% 109
North West -22 73 £448 +5.41% 57
South West -29 58 £560 +6.57% 45
West Midlands -29 50 £425 -5.56% 74
Yorkshire -10 45 £525 +37.70% 27
East Midlands +16 34 £438 -2.78% 35
North East -35 18 £350 -30.00% 19
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 88 (10.90%) Microsoft Exchange
2 53 (6.57%) SharePoint
3 23 (2.85%) IIS
4 8 (0.99%) nginx
5 7 (0.87%) Tomcat
6 6 (0.74%) Apache
6 6 (0.74%) Confluence
7 4 (0.50%) FactoryTalk
8 3 (0.37%) CloudStack
8 3 (0.37%) Exchange Server 2013
9 2 (0.25%) SAS
9 2 (0.25%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.12%) OpenStack
10 1 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 17 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 14 (1.73%) Remedy ITSM
2 2 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
2 2 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
Cloud Services
1 339 (42.01%) Azure
2 168 (20.82%) Microsoft 365
3 163 (20.20%) Entra ID
4 102 (12.64%) AWS
5 44 (5.45%) Azure Monitor
6 33 (4.09%) Azure DevOps
7 32 (3.97%) GCP
8 24 (2.97%) IaaS
8 24 (2.97%) Power Platform
9 21 (2.60%) GitHub
10 20 (2.48%) OpenShift
11 19 (2.35%) Azure Sentinel
12 12 (1.49%) OneDrive
13 11 (1.36%) Amazon EC2
14 10 (1.24%) Nutanix
14 10 (1.24%) PaaS
15 9 (1.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 9 (1.12%) SaaS
16 8 (0.99%) Datadog
16 8 (0.99%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 254 (31.47%) DNS
2 168 (20.82%) DHCP
3 138 (17.10%) Firewall
4 75 (9.29%) TCP/IP
5 70 (8.67%) VPN
6 59 (7.31%) SAN
7 47 (5.82%) WAN
8 45 (5.58%) VLAN
9 44 (5.45%) LAN
10 41 (5.08%) Network Security
11 30 (3.72%) SSL
12 22 (2.73%) NAS
13 20 (2.48%) Wi-Fi
13 20 (2.48%) Wireless
14 18 (2.23%) NetScaler
15 14 (1.73%) SSH
16 13 (1.61%) VoIP
17 10 (1.24%) HTTP
18 9 (1.12%) BGP
18 9 (1.12%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (18.22%) SQL Server
2 24 (2.97%) Power BI
3 16 (1.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 14 (1.73%) MySQL
5 12 (1.49%) Amazon RDS
5 12 (1.49%) PostgreSQL
6 11 (1.36%) Oracle Database
7 8 (0.99%) Elasticsearch
8 7 (0.87%) NoSQL
9 6 (0.74%) Relational Database
10 3 (0.37%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (0.37%) Big Data
10 3 (0.37%) GIS
10 3 (0.37%) MongoDB
10 3 (0.37%) Oracle BI EE
10 3 (0.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 2 (0.25%) Data Mining
11 2 (0.25%) Metadata
11 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 16 (1.98%) Jenkins
2 15 (1.86%) Git
2 15 (1.86%) JIRA
3 10 (1.24%) GitLab
4 5 (0.62%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 5 (0.62%) Visual Studio
5 3 (0.37%) Artifactory
5 3 (0.37%) MSI
5 3 (0.37%) 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 (0.12%) JMeter
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (0.12%) Subversion
7 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.12%) TestCafe
7 1 (0.12%) VSS/SourceSafe
General
1 205 (25.40%) Social Skills
2 103 (12.76%) Analytical Skills
3 80 (9.91%) Finance
4 46 (5.70%) Documentation Skills
5 42 (5.20%) Banking
6 41 (5.08%) Public Sector
7 20 (2.48%) Law
8 13 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 13 (1.61%) Military
9 12 (1.49%) Aerospace
9 12 (1.49%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.24%) Legal
10 10 (1.24%) Manufacturing
10 10 (1.24%) Pharmaceutical
11 6 (0.74%) Games
11 6 (0.74%) Local Government
12 5 (0.62%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.50%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.50%) Marketing
13 4 (0.50%) Police
Job Titles
1 207 (25.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 96 (11.90%) Senior
3 72 (8.92%) Support Engineer
4 59 (7.31%) Cloud Engineer
5 49 (6.07%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 49 (6.07%) Lead
6 43 (5.33%) IT Engineer
6 43 (5.33%) Windows Engineer
7 42 (5.20%) Architect
8 40 (4.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
9 32 (3.97%) Administrator
9 32 (3.97%) IT Support
10 28 (3.47%) Azure Engineer
10 28 (3.47%) Storage Engineer
10 28 (3.47%) Systems Engineer
11 27 (3.35%) Server Engineer
11 27 (3.35%) VMware Engineer
12 26 (3.22%) Wintel Engineer
13 24 (2.97%) Infrastructure Support
13 24 (2.97%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (10.90%) Terraform
2 29 (3.59%) .NET
3 25 (3.10%) REST
4 17 (2.11%) ARM Templates
5 15 (1.86%) .NET Framework
6 13 (1.61%) LDAP
7 10 (1.24%) JSON
8 8 (0.99%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (0.99%) OAuth
9 7 (0.87%) RabbitMQ
10 6 (0.74%) YAML
11 5 (0.62%) Middleware
11 5 (0.62%) SailPoint
11 5 (0.62%) SAML
11 5 (0.62%) Software Packaging
12 4 (0.50%) 802.1X
12 4 (0.50%) Azure Blueprints
12 4 (0.50%) OAuth2
12 4 (0.50%) OpenID
12 4 (0.50%) React
Miscellaneous
1 78 (9.67%) PKI
2 67 (8.30%) Hybrid Cloud
3 60 (7.43%) Data Centre
4 55 (6.82%) Clustering
4 55 (6.82%) Onboarding
5 46 (5.70%) Management Information System
6 45 (5.58%) Replication
7 23 (2.85%) Security Posture
8 20 (2.48%) Enterprise Storage
9 18 (2.23%) Driving Licence
10 16 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (1.73%) Virtual Team
12 13 (1.61%) Smartcard
13 11 (1.36%) Cloud Native
13 11 (1.36%) Linux Command Line
13 11 (1.36%) Public Cloud
14 10 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
15 9 (1.12%) Operational Technology
16 8 (0.99%) ARM Cortex
17 7 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 807 (100.00%) Windows
2 233 (28.87%) Linux
3 70 (8.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 57 (7.06%) Windows 10
5 51 (6.32%) Windows Server 2019
6 32 (3.97%) Ubuntu
6 32 (3.97%) Windows Server 2016
7 29 (3.59%) Unix
7 29 (3.59%) Windows Server 2012
8 28 (3.47%) CentOS
9 14 (1.73%) Rocky
10 13 (1.61%) Mac OS
11 11 (1.36%) VMS
12 10 (1.24%) Windows Server 2008
13 8 (0.99%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.74%) Windows Server 2003
15 5 (0.62%) Solaris
16 4 (0.50%) Alpine Linux
17 3 (0.37%) Android
17 3 (0.37%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 261 (32.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 204 (25.28%) Problem-Solving
3 174 (21.56%) ITIL
4 132 (16.36%) Disaster Recovery
5 110 (13.63%) Root Cause Analysis
6 107 (13.26%) Migration
7 94 (11.65%) Change Management
7 94 (11.65%) Continuous Improvement
7 94 (11.65%) Infrastructure as Code
8 87 (10.78%) ITSM
9 84 (10.41%) Service Management
10 81 (10.04%) DevOps
11 78 (9.67%) High Availability
12 76 (9.42%) Technical Leadership
13 70 (8.67%) Stakeholder Management
14 67 (8.30%) Project Delivery
15 64 (7.93%) Vulnerability Remediation
16 61 (7.56%) CI/CD
17 58 (7.19%) Agile
18 57 (7.06%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 313 (38.79%) PowerShell
2 109 (13.51%) SQL
3 84 (10.41%) Python
4 68 (8.43%) Bash
5 35 (4.34%) T-SQL
6 28 (3.47%) Bicep
7 26 (3.22%) C#
8 18 (2.23%) PL/SQL
9 13 (1.61%) Java
10 11 (1.36%) JavaScript
11 5 (0.62%) Go
12 3 (0.37%) Korn
12 3 (0.37%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.25%) Groovy
13 2 (0.25%) JCL
13 2 (0.25%) REXX
13 2 (0.25%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.12%) Ladder Logic
14 1 (0.12%) VB
14 1 (0.12%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 351 (43.49%) Security Cleared
2 185 (22.92%) SC Cleared
3 180 (22.30%) DV Cleared
4 80 (9.91%) Degree
5 54 (6.69%) Microsoft Certification
6 42 (5.20%) Azure Certification
7 28 (3.47%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 24 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
9 22 (2.73%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 20 (2.48%) MCSE
11 14 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
11 14 (1.73%) MCSA
12 13 (1.61%) CISSP
13 12 (1.49%) AWS Certification
13 12 (1.49%) CCNA
14 11 (1.36%) CISM
15 10 (1.24%) CCNP
15 10 (1.24%) ITIL Certification
15 10 (1.24%) VCAP
16 8 (0.99%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (5.82%) SLA
2 36 (4.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (3.47%) NIST
4 21 (2.60%) QA
5 16 (1.98%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (0.99%) GDPR
6 8 (0.99%) NCSC
7 7 (0.87%) PCI DSS
8 6 (0.74%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (0.74%) GxP
9 5 (0.62%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 5 (0.62%) GRC
9 5 (0.62%) ISO 9001
9 5 (0.62%) SOC 2
10 4 (0.50%) ISO 31000
10 4 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 2 (0.25%) Government Security Classifications
11 2 (0.25%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.25%) JSP 440
12 1 (0.12%) Accessibility
System Software
1 467 (57.87%) Active Directory
2 300 (37.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 150 (18.59%) Hyper-V
4 116 (14.37%) VMware ESXi
5 103 (12.76%) vSphere
6 59 (7.31%) Virtual Machines
7 44 (5.45%) Docker
8 39 (4.83%) VMware NSX
9 34 (4.21%) Virtual Desktop
10 24 (2.97%) vCloud
11 16 (1.98%) Virtual Servers
12 12 (1.49%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 12 (1.49%) XenApp
13 10 (1.24%) Firmware
13 10 (1.24%) XenDesktop
14 7 (0.87%) Microsoft App-V
15 6 (0.74%) KVM
15 6 (0.74%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 6 (0.74%) VMware Server
16 5 (0.62%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 100 (12.39%) Ansible
2 96 (11.90%) vCenter Server
3 90 (11.15%) Microsoft Intune
4 85 (10.53%) SCCM
5 76 (9.42%) SCOM
6 51 (6.32%) Kubernetes
7 32 (3.97%) WSUS
8 18 (2.23%) Grafana
9 17 (2.11%) NetBackup
9 17 (2.11%) Prometheus
10 14 (1.73%) Avamar
11 13 (1.61%) Failover Clustering
11 13 (1.61%) vMotion
12 11 (1.36%) Nagios
13 10 (1.24%) Nessus
14 8 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.99%) Puppet
15 7 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
15 7 (0.87%) SysTrack
15 7 (0.87%) WMI
Vendors
1 424 (52.54%) Microsoft
2 383 (47.46%) VMware
3 93 (11.52%) Cisco
4 72 (8.92%) Citrix
5 60 (7.43%) Oracle
6 54 (6.69%) ServiceNow
7 36 (4.46%) Red Hat
8 32 (3.97%) CyberArk
9 30 (3.72%) Dell
10 29 (3.59%) Splunk
11 28 (3.47%) BeyondTrust
11 28 (3.47%) Veeam
12 27 (3.35%) NetApp
13 20 (2.48%) CrowdStrike
13 20 (2.48%) Google
14 19 (2.35%) Zscaler
15 18 (2.23%) Fortinet
15 18 (2.23%) Qualys
15 18 (2.23%) Tenable
16 17 (2.11%) SolarWinds
719 Windows Server jobs in England