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

 6 months to
5 Feb 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 178 124 78
Rank change year-on-year -54 -46 +21
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 532 566 1,012
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.59% 2.15% 2.68%
As % of the Operating Systems category 12.66% 15.17% 18.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 420 380 683
10th Percentile £219 £250 £190
25th Percentile £375 £380 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £425
Median % change year-on-year - +17.65% -10.53%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £575
90th Percentile £700 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £440
% change year-on-year - +13.64% -7.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 7 35
10th Percentile £14.74 £34.25 £16.00
25th Percentile £15.50 £47.50 £24.39
Median hourly rate £21.80 £53.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -58.87% +0.95% +68.00%
75th Percentile £28.67 £92.88 £70.26
90th Percentile £45.13 £112.00 £77.41
UK median hourly rate £21.80 £50.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -56.40% -4.76% +78.88%

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 4,201 3,730 5,493
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 12.58% 14.19% 14.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,829 2,358 3,753
10th Percentile £175 £200 £178
25th Percentile £263 £313 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £474 £463
Median % change year-on-year -5.25% +2.43% -10.19%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £594
90th Percentile £675 £699 £700
UK median daily rate £444 £475 £466
% change year-on-year -6.58% +1.93% -9.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 122 372
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.28 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.00 £17.16
Median hourly rate £22.58 £47.00 £25.06
Median % change year-on-year -51.97% +87.57% -3.63%
75th Percentile £54.22 £67.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £68.00 £71.23 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £23.58 £31.79 £25.25
% change year-on-year -25.84% +25.90% -1.79%

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 5 February 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 5 February 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 5 February 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 -50 177 £500 - 67
South East -33 93 £500 - 130
North of England -57 82 £375 -16.67% 80
South West -20 74 £560 -5.68% 45
North West -18 63 £370 -18.90% 39
Midlands -49 53 £438 +35.14% 40
East of England +1 49 £450 +4.65% 34
West Midlands -35 39 £450 +73.08% 19
Yorkshire -55 16 £375 -15.73% 34
East Midlands -22 14 £415 +3.75% 21
North East -15 6 £550 -8.33% 10
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 73 (13.72%) Microsoft Exchange
2 34 (6.39%) SharePoint
3 27 (5.08%) IIS
4 13 (2.44%) Apache
5 9 (1.69%) Confluence
6 8 (1.50%) WebSphere
7 7 (1.32%) JBoss
8 6 (1.13%) iPlanet
8 6 (1.13%) WebSphere Application Server
9 5 (0.94%) SAS
9 5 (0.94%) Skype for Business
10 2 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2010
10 2 (0.38%) WordPress
11 1 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2013
11 1 (0.19%) nginx
11 1 (0.19%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.19%) SharePoint 2010
11 1 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 26 (4.89%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 2 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.38%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.38%) Windchill
4 1 (0.19%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.19%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 3 (0.56%) Veritas eDiscovery
2 2 (0.38%) Teamcenter
3 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle FAH
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle General Ledger
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 1 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 1 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.19%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 189 (35.53%) Azure
2 112 (21.05%) Microsoft 365
3 91 (17.11%) Entra ID
4 49 (9.21%) AWS
5 21 (3.95%) IaaS
6 13 (2.44%) SaaS
7 11 (2.07%) Nutanix
7 11 (2.07%) PaaS
8 8 (1.50%) Azure DevOps
9 7 (1.32%) Azure Monitor
10 6 (1.13%) Azure Sentinel
10 6 (1.13%) OpenShift
11 5 (0.94%) Amazon S3
11 5 (0.94%) GitHub
11 5 (0.94%) Virtual Private Cloud
12 4 (0.75%) Azure ExpressRoute
12 4 (0.75%) GCP
12 4 (0.75%) OCI
12 4 (0.75%) Serverless
13 3 (0.56%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 171 (32.14%) DNS
2 127 (23.87%) DHCP
3 109 (20.49%) Firewall
4 48 (9.02%) TCP/IP
5 47 (8.83%) WAN
6 45 (8.46%) VPN
7 40 (7.52%) LAN
8 28 (5.26%) Network Security
9 23 (4.32%) Kerberos
10 21 (3.95%) Cisco IOS
11 19 (3.57%) VLAN
12 17 (3.20%) Cisco Firepower
12 17 (3.20%) Cisco ISE
12 17 (3.20%) Junos
12 17 (3.20%) Wireless
13 13 (2.44%) FTP
14 11 (2.07%) VoIP
14 11 (2.07%) Wi-Fi
15 10 (1.88%) SMTP
16 9 (1.69%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (10.71%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.82%) Oracle Database
3 5 (0.94%) Elasticsearch
4 4 (0.75%) Relational Database
5 3 (0.56%) DB2
5 3 (0.56%) NoSQL
6 2 (0.38%) Apache Hive
6 2 (0.38%) Hadoop
6 2 (0.38%) Impala
6 2 (0.38%) MySQL
6 2 (0.38%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (0.38%) Power BI
7 1 (0.19%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.19%) BusinessObjects
7 1 (0.19%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (0.19%) Electronic Patient Records
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (0.19%) Redis
7 1 (0.19%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 18 (3.38%) Jenkins
2 16 (3.01%) Git
3 13 (2.44%) JIRA
4 12 (2.26%) GitLab
5 11 (2.07%) Sonatype Nexus
5 11 (2.07%) Visual Studio
6 7 (1.32%) Bitbucket Server
6 7 (1.32%) CA Release Automation
7 5 (0.94%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.75%) Robot Framework
9 3 (0.56%) Octopus Deploy
9 3 (0.56%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.56%) TeamCity
10 2 (0.38%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.38%) Fiddler
10 2 (0.38%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.19%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.19%) GoCD
11 1 (0.19%) Maven
11 1 (0.19%) Selenium
General
1 127 (23.87%) Social Skills
2 59 (11.09%) Finance
3 56 (10.53%) Analytical Skills
4 47 (8.83%) Public Sector
5 32 (6.02%) Documentation Skills
6 20 (3.76%) Banking
7 19 (3.57%) Legal
8 13 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 6 (1.13%) Spanish Language
11 5 (0.94%) Front Office
12 4 (0.75%) Aerospace
12 4 (0.75%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.75%) Local Government
12 4 (0.75%) Marketing
12 4 (0.75%) Military
13 3 (0.56%) Back Office
13 3 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.56%) Retail
14 2 (0.38%) Aeronautics
Job Titles
1 88 (16.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 59 (11.09%) Analyst
3 48 (9.02%) Support Engineer
4 40 (7.52%) Architect
5 36 (6.77%) Platform Engineer
6 35 (6.58%) Senior
7 31 (5.83%) Network Engineer
7 31 (5.83%) Wintel Engineer
8 30 (5.64%) 3rd Line Engineer
9 29 (5.45%) 3rd Line Support
9 29 (5.45%) Support Analyst
10 28 (5.26%) IT Support
11 25 (4.70%) Technical Analyst
12 24 (4.51%) Developer
13 23 (4.32%) 2nd Line Support
13 23 (4.32%) Windows Engineer
14 19 (3.57%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
14 19 (3.57%) Technical Support
15 18 (3.38%) Cloud Engineer
16 17 (3.20%) Network Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (7.52%) OAuth
2 38 (7.14%) SAML
3 28 (5.26%) LDAP
4 24 (4.51%) .NET
4 24 (4.51%) OpenID
5 17 (3.20%) OAuth2
6 15 (2.82%) .NET Framework
6 15 (2.82%) REST
7 9 (1.69%) React
8 8 (1.50%) Middleware
8 8 (1.50%) XMPP
9 6 (1.13%) AngularJS
10 4 (0.75%) ASP.NET Web API
10 4 (0.75%) Keycloak
10 4 (0.75%) SOAP
10 4 (0.75%) WCF
10 4 (0.75%) YAML
11 3 (0.56%) RESTful
11 3 (0.56%) Web Services
11 3 (0.56%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 42 (7.89%) PKI
2 40 (7.52%) Data Centre
2 40 (7.52%) Replication
3 20 (3.76%) Hybrid Cloud
4 18 (3.38%) Clustering
5 17 (3.20%) NHS
6 16 (3.01%) Private Cloud
7 15 (2.82%) Product Ownership
8 14 (2.63%) Onboarding
9 13 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
10 12 (2.26%) Driving Licence
11 10 (1.88%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (1.69%) CMDB
12 9 (1.69%) Management Information System
13 8 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
13 8 (1.50%) Enterprise Storage
13 8 (1.50%) iPhone
14 7 (1.32%) Cloud Native
15 6 (1.13%) Legacy Systems
15 6 (1.13%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 530 (99.62%) Windows
2 125 (23.50%) Linux
3 39 (7.33%) Windows Server 2019
4 36 (6.77%) Windows 10
5 33 (6.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 33 (6.20%) Windows Server 2012
6 29 (5.45%) Windows Server 2016
7 14 (2.63%) Unix
8 10 (1.88%) Windows Server 2003
9 8 (1.50%) Android
10 7 (1.32%) CentOS
10 7 (1.32%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (1.13%) AIX
11 6 (1.13%) Ubuntu
12 5 (0.94%) VMS
13 3 (0.56%) Apple iOS
14 2 (0.38%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.38%) Solaris
14 2 (0.38%) zOS
15 1 (0.19%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (23.87%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 87 (16.35%) Problem-Solving
3 80 (15.04%) ITIL
4 69 (12.97%) Disaster Recovery
5 68 (12.78%) High Availability
6 66 (12.41%) Agile
7 62 (11.65%) Service Management
8 58 (10.90%) Migration
9 51 (9.59%) Identity Access Management
10 47 (8.83%) ITSM
11 46 (8.65%) DevOps
12 44 (8.27%) Change Management
13 41 (7.71%) Continuous Improvement
14 39 (7.33%) CI/CD
14 39 (7.33%) Project Delivery
14 39 (7.33%) RBAC
15 35 (6.58%) Platform Engineering
16 33 (6.20%) Change Control
17 32 (6.02%) Cybersecurity
18 31 (5.83%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 196 (36.84%) PowerShell
2 61 (11.47%) SQL
3 49 (9.21%) Python
4 27 (5.08%) Bash
5 26 (4.89%) C#
6 18 (3.38%) T-SQL
7 15 (2.82%) PL/SQL
8 10 (1.88%) Java
8 10 (1.88%) Perl
9 7 (1.32%) Bicep
9 7 (1.32%) Groovy
10 6 (1.13%) JavaScript
11 5 (0.94%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.38%) Delphi
12 2 (0.38%) JCL
12 2 (0.38%) PHP
12 2 (0.38%) REXX
12 2 (0.38%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.38%) VBA
Qualifications
1 205 (38.53%) Security Cleared
2 130 (24.44%) SC Cleared
3 76 (14.29%) DV Cleared
4 66 (12.41%) Microsoft Certification
5 62 (11.65%) Degree
6 27 (5.08%) MCSE
7 20 (3.76%) Cisco Certification
8 19 (3.57%) Azure Certification
9 18 (3.38%) CCNP
10 17 (3.20%) CCNA
11 15 (2.82%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 14 (2.63%) MCSA
13 13 (2.44%) AWS Certification
14 10 (1.88%) ITIL Certification
15 9 (1.69%) CCDP
15 9 (1.69%) VCAP
16 7 (1.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 7 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
16 7 (1.32%) CISSP
16 7 (1.32%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (3.95%) QA
2 20 (3.76%) GDPR
3 15 (2.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 10 (1.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 10 (1.88%) SLA
5 8 (1.50%) NIST
6 7 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
7 3 (0.56%) NIST 800
8 2 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 2 (0.38%) NCSC
9 1 (0.19%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.19%) Basel III
9 1 (0.19%) DICOM
9 1 (0.19%) GAAP
9 1 (0.19%) HL7
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.19%) JSP 440
System Software
1 336 (63.16%) Active Directory
2 147 (27.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 54 (10.15%) Hyper-V
4 44 (8.27%) vSphere
5 35 (6.58%) Docker
6 30 (5.64%) Virtual Machines
6 30 (5.64%) VMware ESXi
7 27 (5.08%) VMware NSX
8 11 (2.07%) Virtual Desktop
8 11 (2.07%) Virtual Servers
9 6 (1.13%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 6 (1.13%) Terminal Services
10 5 (0.94%) Tivoli Directory Server
11 4 (0.75%) Firmware
11 4 (0.75%) KVM
11 4 (0.75%) NFS
12 3 (0.56%) BitLocker
12 3 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
13 2 (0.38%) Job Entry Subsystem
13 2 (0.38%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 74 (13.91%) Microsoft Intune
1 74 (13.91%) SCCM
2 53 (9.96%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 52 (9.77%) Single Sign-On
4 50 (9.40%) Ansible
5 49 (9.21%) vCenter Server
6 43 (8.08%) Terraform
7 25 (4.70%) Kubernetes
7 25 (4.70%) SCOM
8 15 (2.82%) WSUS
9 9 (1.69%) Progress Chef
10 7 (1.32%) CA Single Sign-On
10 7 (1.32%) Puppet
10 7 (1.32%) SCOrch
11 6 (1.13%) CA Wily
11 6 (1.13%) CASB
12 5 (0.94%) FortiGate
12 5 (0.94%) Microsoft Clustering
12 5 (0.94%) vMotion
12 5 (0.94%) VxRail
Vendors
1 264 (49.62%) Microsoft
2 199 (37.41%) VMware
3 73 (13.72%) Cisco
4 54 (10.15%) Citrix
5 39 (7.33%) Oracle
6 36 (6.77%) SolarWinds
7 29 (5.45%) Dell
8 27 (5.08%) Red Hat
8 27 (5.08%) Veeam
9 22 (4.14%) ServiceNow
10 19 (3.57%) Juniper
11 17 (3.20%) Splunk
12 15 (2.82%) Okta
13 13 (2.44%) Palo Alto
14 10 (1.88%) IBM
15 9 (1.69%) Broadcom
15 9 (1.69%) CyberArk
15 9 (1.69%) NetApp
16 8 (1.50%) Atlassian
16 8 (1.50%) F5
354 Windows Server jobs in England