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

 6 months to
17 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 187 131 93
Rank change year-on-year -56 -38 -6
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 582 529 875
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.42% 2.16% 2.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 14.47% 15.38% 17.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 413 374 651
10th Percentile £251 £350 £210
25th Percentile £400 £425 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £550 £475
Median % change year-on-year -12.73% +15.79% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £595
90th Percentile £658 £688 £690
UK median daily rate £475 £525 £460
% change year-on-year -9.52% +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 4,021 3,439 4,944
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.78% 14.06% 13.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,643 2,338 3,374
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £310 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £468 £471
Median % change year-on-year -3.74% -0.74% -8.10%
75th Percentile £573 £589 £588
90th Percentile £663 £699 £700
UK median daily rate £456 £467 £469
% change year-on-year -2.25% -0.53% -6.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 152 362
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.13 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.41 £14.83
Median hourly rate £47.50 £21.59 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +120.01% -1.86% -42.11%
75th Percentile £67.84 £59.09 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.74 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £22.53 £22.08
% change year-on-year +110.83% +2.06% -43.47%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -58 174 £493 -6.19% 68
South East -29 135 £515 -6.36% 98
North of England -80 88 £425 -12.37% 60
Midlands -27 68 £438 +2.94% 41
North West -38 65 £400 -7.25% 33
East of England -5 62 £450 -18.18% 29
South West -46 53 £515 -10.43% 43
West Midlands -39 42 £428 +6.88% 20
East Midlands -8 24 £450 -10.00% 21
Yorkshire -69 21 £500 -6.98% 22
North East -24 2 £330 -34.00% 6
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 71 (12.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 33 (5.67%) IIS
3 22 (3.78%) SharePoint
4 8 (1.37%) Apache
5 7 (1.20%) nginx
5 7 (1.20%) Tomcat
6 5 (0.86%) SAS
7 3 (0.52%) WebLogic
8 2 (0.34%) CloudStack
8 2 (0.34%) Skype for Business
8 2 (0.34%) WordPress
9 1 (0.17%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.17%) Confluence
9 1 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
9 1 (0.17%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.17%) WebSphere
Applications
1 14 (2.41%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 10 (1.72%) 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
1 210 (36.08%) Azure
2 103 (17.70%) Microsoft 365
3 95 (16.32%) Entra ID
4 54 (9.28%) AWS
5 24 (4.12%) IaaS
6 20 (3.44%) Azure Monitor
7 15 (2.58%) Power Platform
8 14 (2.41%) PaaS
9 12 (2.06%) Nutanix
10 10 (1.72%) Azure DevOps
10 10 (1.72%) GitHub
11 7 (1.20%) Amazon EC2
11 7 (1.20%) GCP
11 7 (1.20%) SaaS
12 6 (1.03%) Cohesity
13 5 (0.86%) Microsoft Copilot
13 5 (0.86%) Mimecast
14 4 (0.69%) Azure AKS
14 4 (0.69%) GitHub Actions
14 4 (0.69%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 193 (33.16%) DNS
2 133 (22.85%) DHCP
3 102 (17.53%) Firewall
4 53 (9.11%) VPN
5 45 (7.73%) WAN
6 43 (7.39%) TCP/IP
7 39 (6.70%) LAN
8 24 (4.12%) Network Security
9 20 (3.44%) SAN
10 18 (3.09%) VLAN
11 17 (2.92%) FTP
12 15 (2.58%) Kerberos
12 15 (2.58%) SMTP
13 13 (2.23%) SSL
13 13 (2.23%) Wi-Fi
14 11 (1.89%) VoIP
15 10 (1.72%) NAS
16 9 (1.55%) VSAN
17 8 (1.37%) Skype
17 8 (1.37%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (18.73%) SQL Server
2 15 (2.58%) Power BI
3 13 (2.23%) Oracle Database
4 11 (1.89%) Elasticsearch
5 7 (1.20%) NoSQL
5 7 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 6 (1.03%) DB2
6 6 (1.03%) PostgreSQL
7 5 (0.86%) Relational Database
8 4 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.69%) Oracle BI EE
9 3 (0.52%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.52%) GIS
10 2 (0.34%) Big Data
10 2 (0.34%) MongoDB
10 2 (0.34%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 2 (0.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.17%) Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.17%) Oracle Database 11g
11 1 (0.17%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 11 (1.89%) JIRA
2 10 (1.72%) Visual Studio
3 7 (1.20%) Robot Framework
4 6 (1.03%) GitLab
4 6 (1.03%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.03%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (0.86%) Git
6 3 (0.52%) MSI
7 2 (0.34%) AdminStudio
7 2 (0.34%) InstallShield
7 2 (0.34%) 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
1 122 (20.96%) Social Skills
2 62 (10.65%) Finance
3 58 (9.97%) Public Sector
4 42 (7.22%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (4.30%) Documentation Skills
6 23 (3.95%) Banking
7 18 (3.09%) Legal
8 12 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 12 (2.06%) Military
9 9 (1.55%) Law
10 7 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
11 6 (1.03%) Local Government
12 5 (0.86%) Marketing
12 5 (0.86%) Police
12 5 (0.86%) Retail
13 4 (0.69%) Front Office
14 3 (0.52%) Financial Institution
14 3 (0.52%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.52%) Telecoms
15 2 (0.34%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 131 (22.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 45 (7.73%) Analyst
3 36 (6.19%) Senior
4 35 (6.01%) Support Engineer
5 32 (5.50%) IT Support
6 30 (5.15%) Wintel Engineer
7 28 (4.81%) Architect
8 27 (4.64%) 3rd Line Engineer
9 24 (4.12%) Developer
9 24 (4.12%) Lead
9 24 (4.12%) Windows Engineer
10 21 (3.61%) Cloud Engineer
11 20 (3.44%) IT Engineer
11 20 (3.44%) Server Engineer
12 19 (3.26%) C# Developer
13 17 (2.92%) 3rd Line Support
13 17 (2.92%) Administrator
13 17 (2.92%) Support Analyst
14 16 (2.75%) Platform Engineer
15 15 (2.58%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (5.67%) .NET
2 28 (4.81%) .NET Framework
3 22 (3.78%) REST
4 20 (3.44%) OAuth
5 19 (3.26%) SAML
6 18 (3.09%) LDAP
7 6 (1.03%) OAuth2
7 6 (1.03%) OpenID
7 6 (1.03%) React
8 5 (0.86%) AngularJS
8 5 (0.86%) JSON
8 5 (0.86%) Middleware
9 4 (0.69%) ADO
9 4 (0.69%) EJB
9 4 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
9 4 (0.69%) ISPF
9 4 (0.69%) Keycloak
9 4 (0.69%) RabbitMQ
9 4 (0.69%) Software Packaging
9 4 (0.69%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 49 (8.42%) PKI
2 42 (7.22%) Clustering
3 40 (6.87%) Replication
4 33 (5.67%) Data Centre
5 30 (5.15%) Onboarding
6 28 (4.81%) Hybrid Cloud
7 19 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
8 18 (3.09%) Enterprise Software
9 17 (2.92%) Self-Motivation
10 15 (2.58%) Enterprise Storage
11 12 (2.06%) Management Information System
12 10 (1.72%) Linux Command Line
13 9 (1.55%) Product Ownership
14 8 (1.37%) Driving Licence
14 8 (1.37%) Legacy Code
14 8 (1.37%) Private Cloud
14 8 (1.37%) Virtual Team
15 7 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
15 7 (1.20%) NHS
16 6 (1.03%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 582 (100.00%) Windows
2 151 (25.95%) Linux
3 53 (9.11%) Windows Server 2019
4 48 (8.25%) Windows Server 2016
5 35 (6.01%) Windows 10
6 32 (5.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 28 (4.81%) Windows Server 2012
8 24 (4.12%) Unix
9 17 (2.92%) Ubuntu
10 11 (1.89%) Windows Server 2003
11 9 (1.55%) AIX
11 9 (1.55%) VMS
11 9 (1.55%) Windows Server 2008
12 8 (1.37%) Solaris
13 6 (1.03%) CentOS
14 4 (0.69%) Android
14 4 (0.69%) zOS
15 3 (0.52%) Windows 7
16 2 (0.34%) Apple iOS
16 2 (0.34%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (28.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 102 (17.53%) Disaster Recovery
3 96 (16.49%) High Availability
4 91 (15.64%) ITIL
5 87 (14.95%) Problem-Solving
6 65 (11.17%) Migration
7 61 (10.48%) Agile
8 57 (9.79%) Change Management
9 47 (8.08%) Project Delivery
10 46 (7.90%) ITSM
11 41 (7.04%) DevOps
12 36 (6.19%) Service Management
13 35 (6.01%) Infrastructure as Code
14 34 (5.84%) Identity Access Management
15 33 (5.67%) Business Intelligence
15 33 (5.67%) Runbook
16 32 (5.50%) Technical Leadership
17 31 (5.33%) CI/CD
18 30 (5.15%) Cybersecurity
18 30 (5.15%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 215 (36.94%) PowerShell
2 86 (14.78%) SQL
3 51 (8.76%) Python
4 34 (5.84%) C#
5 28 (4.81%) PL/SQL
6 26 (4.47%) Bash
7 23 (3.95%) T-SQL
8 18 (3.09%) JavaScript
9 13 (2.23%) Java
10 6 (1.03%) Bicep
11 4 (0.69%) JCL
11 4 (0.69%) REXX
12 3 (0.52%) Shell Script
13 2 (0.34%) Delphi
13 2 (0.34%) Perl
13 2 (0.34%) PHP
14 1 (0.17%) Ladder Logic
14 1 (0.17%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.17%) VB
Qualifications
1 235 (40.38%) Security Cleared
2 149 (25.60%) SC Cleared
3 90 (15.46%) DV Cleared
4 63 (10.82%) Degree
5 46 (7.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 24 (4.12%) MCSE
6 24 (4.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
7 17 (2.92%) VCAP
8 16 (2.75%) MCSA
9 14 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
10 12 (2.06%) Azure Certification
11 11 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
12 9 (1.55%) CCNA
13 7 (1.20%) CCNP
13 7 (1.20%) CISSP
14 6 (1.03%) AWS Certification
15 5 (0.86%) CISM
16 4 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
16 4 (0.69%) MCITP
16 4 (0.69%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (4.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 28 (4.81%) QA
3 25 (4.30%) GDPR
4 19 (3.26%) NIST
5 15 (2.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 12 (2.06%) SLA
7 11 (1.89%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.52%) NCSC
8 3 (0.52%) NIST 800
9 2 (0.34%) 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
1 331 (56.87%) Active Directory
2 202 (34.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 92 (15.81%) Hyper-V
4 64 (11.00%) vSphere
5 58 (9.97%) VMware ESXi
6 43 (7.39%) Virtual Machines
7 37 (6.36%) Docker
8 29 (4.98%) VMware NSX
9 12 (2.06%) Virtual Desktop
10 11 (1.89%) KVM
11 10 (1.72%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (1.55%) BitLocker
13 7 (1.20%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (1.03%) vCloud
14 6 (1.03%) XenApp
15 5 (0.86%) XenDesktop
16 4 (0.69%) Job Entry Subsystem
16 4 (0.69%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.69%) VMware Workstation
17 3 (0.52%) NFS
Systems Management
1 76 (13.06%) Ansible
2 69 (11.86%) Microsoft Intune
3 62 (10.65%) SCCM
4 59 (10.14%) vCenter Server
5 41 (7.04%) Terraform
6 37 (6.36%) Kubernetes
7 34 (5.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 31 (5.33%) Single Sign-On
9 29 (4.98%) SCOM
10 25 (4.30%) WSUS
11 11 (1.89%) vMotion
12 10 (1.72%) Puppet
13 9 (1.55%) Nessus
14 6 (1.03%) IBM BigFix
15 5 (0.86%) Backup Exec
15 5 (0.86%) Control-M
15 5 (0.86%) VxRail
16 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Clustering
16 4 (0.69%) Oracle RMAN
16 4 (0.69%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 245 (42.10%) VMware
2 243 (41.75%) Microsoft
3 69 (11.86%) Citrix
4 61 (10.48%) Cisco
5 50 (8.59%) Oracle
6 38 (6.53%) ServiceNow
7 22 (3.78%) Dell
8 21 (3.61%) Red Hat
9 20 (3.44%) Veeam
10 16 (2.75%) Okta
11 15 (2.58%) BeyondTrust
11 15 (2.58%) NetApp
11 15 (2.58%) SolarWinds
12 14 (2.41%) BMC
12 14 (2.41%) IBM
12 14 (2.41%) Palo Alto
13 12 (2.06%) CyberArk
13 12 (2.06%) Tenable
14 11 (1.89%) HP
15 10 (1.72%) Remedy
322 Windows Server jobs in England