Windows Server Contracts in the North West

Microsoft Windows Server
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring Windows Server skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Windows Server over the 6 months leading up to 31 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 59 63 56
Rank change year-on-year +4 -7 +8
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 66 74 113
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 3.36% 2.72% 3.71%
As % of the Operating Systems category 23.66% 22.29% 22.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 57 66
10th Percentile £262 £210 £195
25th Percentile £350 £300 £314
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £800 £469
Median % change year-on-year -46.88% +70.67% +25.00%
75th Percentile £531 £850 £567
90th Percentile £543 - £656
England median daily rate £550 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% +17.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 25
10th Percentile - - £26.45
25th Percentile - - £29.30
Median hourly rate - - £42.50
75th Percentile - - £49.40
90th Percentile - - £51.09
England median hourly rate £17.04 £38.50 £37.50
% change year-on-year -55.74% +2.67% +64.84%

All Operating Systems
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 279 332 492
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.21% 12.21% 16.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 185 210 329
10th Percentile £173 £178 £175
25th Percentile £250 £273 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £431 £475
Median % change year-on-year -7.25% -9.21% +5.56%
75th Percentile £506 £613 £575
90th Percentile £618 £850 £650
England median daily rate £470 £475 £510
% change year-on-year -1.05% -6.86% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 60 46
10th Percentile - - £14.28
25th Percentile £13.00 £10.95 £17.71
Median hourly rate £14.40 £15.00 £29.30
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -48.81% +46.50%
75th Percentile £17.44 £18.86 £46.19
90th Percentile - £48.00 £49.52
England median hourly rate £20.64 £22.50 £43.13
% change year-on-year -8.27% -47.83% +100.58%

Windows Server
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Windows Server as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Windows Server in the North West

Windows Server
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Windows Server in the North West.

Daily rate trend for Windows Server in the North West

Windows Server
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows Server in the North West over the 6 months to 31 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Windows Server in the North West

Windows Server
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Windows Server in the North West.

Hourly rate trend for Windows Server in the North West

Windows Server
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 North West region over the 6 months to 31 May 2025. 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
Manchester -18 22 £431 -46.09% 50
Cheshire +5 15 £350 +75.00% 11
Lancashire - 13 £525 - 28
Cumbria +12 7 £525 -0.57% 10
Merseyside +2 6 £215 -25.86% 10
Windows Server
England

Windows Server
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 29 (43.94%) Microsoft Exchange
2 17 (25.76%) SharePoint
3 7 (10.61%) IIS
4 2 (3.03%) BizTalk Server
5 1 (1.52%) Apache
5 1 (1.52%) Confluence
5 1 (1.52%) SAS
5 1 (1.52%) SharePoint Server
5 1 (1.52%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (18.18%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (7.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (7.58%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (1.52%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 40 (60.61%) Azure
2 32 (48.48%) Entra ID
3 29 (43.94%) Microsoft 365
4 10 (15.15%) IaaS
5 4 (6.06%) AWS
5 4 (6.06%) Google Workspace
5 4 (6.06%) OneDrive
6 2 (3.03%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (3.03%) Amazon S3
6 2 (3.03%) AWS CloudFormation
6 2 (3.03%) GCP
6 2 (3.03%) Nutanix
6 2 (3.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 1 (1.52%) AWS Lambda
7 1 (1.52%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (1.52%) Cloudflare
7 1 (1.52%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 24 (36.36%) DHCP
2 21 (31.82%) DNS
3 17 (25.76%) Firewall
4 15 (22.73%) Network Security
5 11 (16.67%) Intrusion Detection
5 11 (16.67%) LAN
6 10 (15.15%) VPN
7 7 (10.61%) SAN
8 3 (4.55%) DMZ
8 3 (4.55%) Internet
8 3 (4.55%) iSCSI
8 3 (4.55%) Remote Desktop
8 3 (4.55%) WAN
8 3 (4.55%) Wi-Fi
8 3 (4.55%) Wireless
8 3 (4.55%) WLAN
9 1 (1.52%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (25.76%) SQL Server
2 2 (3.03%) GIS
2 2 (3.03%) MSDE
2 2 (3.03%) SQL Server Reporting Services
3 1 (1.52%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (1.52%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (1.52%) DB2
3 1 (1.52%) DTS
3 1 (1.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 4 (6.06%) GitLab
2 1 (1.52%) Git
2 1 (1.52%) Jenkins
2 1 (1.52%) JIRA
2 1 (1.52%) Octopus Deploy
2 1 (1.52%) Selenium
2 1 (1.52%) SonarQube
General
1 13 (19.70%) Public Sector
2 12 (18.18%) Social Skills
3 11 (16.67%) Telecoms
4 7 (10.61%) Documentation Skills
5 5 (7.58%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (7.58%) Manufacturing
5 5 (7.58%) Presentation Skills
6 4 (6.06%) Legal
7 3 (4.55%) Finance
7 3 (4.55%) Military
8 1 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.52%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 15 (22.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 9 (13.64%) Administrator
2 9 (13.64%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
2 9 (13.64%) Support Engineer
3 7 (10.61%) VMWare Administrator
3 7 (10.61%) Windows Engineer
3 7 (10.61%) Wintel Administrator
4 6 (9.09%) 2nd Line Engineer
4 6 (9.09%) 2nd Line Support
4 6 (9.09%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
4 6 (9.09%) Analyst
4 6 (9.09%) Infrastructure Specialist
5 5 (7.58%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
5 5 (7.58%) 2nd Line Desktop Support Engineer
5 5 (7.58%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 5 (7.58%) 3rd Line Infrastructure Engineer
5 5 (7.58%) Desktop Engineer
5 5 (7.58%) Desktop Support
5 5 (7.58%) Desktop Support Engineer
5 5 (7.58%) Infrastructure Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (3.03%) .NET
1 2 (3.03%) ASP.NET
2 1 (1.52%) Microsoft Graph
2 1 (1.52%) SOAP
2 1 (1.52%) Web Services
2 1 (1.52%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (10.61%) Hybrid Cloud
2 6 (9.09%) Management Information System
3 5 (7.58%) Data Centre
3 5 (7.58%) Onboarding
4 4 (6.06%) Clustering
5 3 (4.55%) IVR
6 1 (1.52%) Cloud Native
6 1 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.52%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (1.52%) NHS
6 1 (1.52%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 66 (100.00%) Windows
2 23 (34.85%) Windows Server 2016
3 17 (25.76%) Linux
4 16 (24.24%) Windows Server 2012
4 16 (24.24%) Windows Server 2019
5 11 (16.67%) Windows 10
6 8 (12.12%) VMS
6 8 (12.12%) Windows Server 2003
7 5 (7.58%) Windows 8
7 5 (7.58%) Windows Server 2008
7 5 (7.58%) Windows XP
8 4 (6.06%) Android
8 4 (6.06%) Unix
9 2 (3.03%) CentOS
10 1 (1.52%) Apple iOS
10 1 (1.52%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (42.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 26 (39.39%) ITIL
3 20 (30.30%) High Availability
4 19 (28.79%) Problem-Solving
5 16 (24.24%) DevOps
6 15 (22.73%) Disaster Recovery
7 14 (21.21%) Business Continuity
7 14 (21.21%) Project Delivery
8 12 (18.18%) BCP
9 11 (16.67%) Change Management
9 11 (16.67%) Information Security
9 11 (16.67%) ITSM
9 11 (16.67%) Vulnerability Scanning
10 9 (13.64%) CI/CD
10 9 (13.64%) Cybersecurity
10 9 (13.64%) Enterprise Architecture
10 9 (13.64%) Patch Management
10 9 (13.64%) RBAC
11 8 (12.12%) Business Continuity Planning
11 8 (12.12%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 19 (28.79%) PowerShell
2 3 (4.55%) SQL
3 2 (3.03%) Bash
3 2 (3.03%) Python
3 2 (3.03%) T-SQL
4 1 (1.52%) JavaScript
4 1 (1.52%) Ruby
4 1 (1.52%) VB
4 1 (1.52%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 24 (36.36%) Microsoft Certification
2 14 (21.21%) SC Cleared
2 14 (21.21%) Security Cleared
3 11 (16.67%) Azure Certification
4 5 (7.58%) MCSE
5 4 (6.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 1 (1.52%) Degree
6 1 (1.52%) MCP
6 1 (1.52%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (12.12%) SLA
2 2 (3.03%) PCI DSS
3 1 (1.52%) NCSC
3 1 (1.52%) QA
System Software
1 58 (87.88%) Active Directory
2 26 (39.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (19.70%) VMware ESXi
4 12 (18.18%) vSphere
5 9 (13.64%) Virtual Machines
6 7 (10.61%) Hyper-V
7 5 (7.58%) BitLocker
8 3 (4.55%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 3 (4.55%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (3.03%) VMware NSX
10 1 (1.52%) Docker
10 1 (1.52%) Firmware
10 1 (1.52%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (1.52%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 25 (37.88%) Microsoft Intune
2 17 (25.76%) WSUS
3 14 (21.21%) vCenter Server
4 6 (9.09%) SCCM
5 5 (7.58%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (6.06%) Ansible
6 4 (6.06%) Dell DRAC
6 4 (6.06%) Microsoft Clustering
6 4 (6.06%) NetApp OnCommand
6 4 (6.06%) Terraform
6 4 (6.06%) vMotion
7 3 (4.55%) Backup Exec
8 2 (3.03%) Nagios
8 2 (3.03%) Prometheus
8 2 (3.03%) ZABBIX
9 1 (1.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 1 (1.52%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (1.52%) Perfmon
9 1 (1.52%) SCOM
9 1 (1.52%) VxRail
Vendors
1 52 (78.79%) Microsoft
2 40 (60.61%) VMware
3 8 (12.12%) Citrix
3 8 (12.12%) CyberArk
4 6 (9.09%) Dell
5 5 (7.58%) Canon
5 5 (7.58%) Cisco
6 4 (6.06%) CheckPoint
6 4 (6.06%) Google
6 4 (6.06%) Symantec
6 4 (6.06%) Zscaler
7 3 (4.55%) Apple
7 3 (4.55%) IBM
7 3 (4.55%) Veeam
8 2 (3.03%) HP
8 2 (3.03%) SolarWinds
9 1 (1.52%) McAfee