Windows Server Contract Job Trends in the South West

Microsoft Windows Server
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring Windows Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 20 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 41 79
Rank change year-on-year -49 +38 -36
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 53 74 71
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.58% 4.37% 2.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 14.60% 23.42% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 64 63
10th Percentile £355 £472 £175
25th Percentile £427 £525 £247
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £575 £500
Median % change year-on-year -11.09% +15.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £581
90th Percentile £704 £700 £675
England median daily rate £484 £550 £475
% change year-on-year -12.09% +15.79% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 2
10th Percentile - - £65.18
25th Percentile £19.25 - £67.31
Median hourly rate £19.50 - £72.75
75th Percentile £37.06 - £76.31
90th Percentile £68.23 - £77.33
England median hourly rate £27.16 £18.75 £46.75
% change year-on-year +44.85% -59.89% +37.50%

All Operating Systems
South 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 South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 363 316 508
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 10.79% 18.64% 16.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 219 223 363
10th Percentile £205 £200 £175
25th Percentile £345 £225 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £619 £588
90th Percentile £638 £694 £699
England median daily rate £450 £473 £473
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.16% -7.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 39 76
10th Percentile £16.62 £18.13 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £40.00
Median hourly rate £63.14 £64.00 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year -1.35% +0.39% -1.92%
75th Percentile £68.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £73.41 - -
England median hourly rate £42.60 £21.28 £22.00
% change year-on-year +100.20% -3.27% -42.11%

Windows Server
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Windows Server relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West.

Windows Server job vacancy trend in the South West

Windows Server
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Windows Server.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Windows Server

Windows Server
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows Server in the South West over the 6 months to 20 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Windows Server in the South West

Windows Server
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Windows Server.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing Windows Server

Windows Server
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows Server in the South West over the 6 months to 20 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows Server in the South West

Windows Server
Contract Job Locations in the South 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 South West region over the 6 months to 20 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
Somerset -3 18 £475 -7.32% 3
Wiltshire -37 16 £594 +3.26% 5
Bristol -22 7 £463 -15.91% 11
Gloucestershire -20 5 £395 -35.77% 8
Devon -15 4 £490 +216.13% 8
Windows Server
England

Windows Server
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 13 (24.53%) IIS
2 4 (7.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (3.77%) Skype for Business
4 1 (1.89%) Apache
4 1 (1.89%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 19 (35.85%) Azure
2 11 (20.75%) AWS
2 11 (20.75%) Azure Monitor
3 4 (7.55%) Entra ID
3 4 (7.55%) IaaS
3 4 (7.55%) PaaS
4 3 (5.66%) Azure Sentinel
4 3 (5.66%) GCP
4 3 (5.66%) Power Platform
5 2 (3.77%) Microsoft 365
6 1 (1.89%) Cloud Computing
6 1 (1.89%) OCI
6 1 (1.89%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 19 (35.85%) DNS
2 13 (24.53%) Firewall
3 12 (22.64%) DHCP
4 5 (9.43%) Network Security
4 5 (9.43%) VPN
5 4 (7.55%) WAN
6 3 (5.66%) VoIP
7 2 (3.77%) Cisco IOS
7 2 (3.77%) H.323
7 2 (3.77%) LAN
7 2 (3.77%) RTP
7 2 (3.77%) Skype
7 2 (3.77%) VLAN
8 1 (1.89%) Cisco Nexus
8 1 (1.89%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (33.96%) SQL Server
2 4 (7.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 3 (5.66%) Oracle BI EE
3 3 (5.66%) Power BI
4 1 (1.89%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 1 (1.89%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 4 (7.55%) JIRA
2 2 (3.77%) GitLab
3 1 (1.89%) Artifactory
3 1 (1.89%) Bitbucket
3 1 (1.89%) eggPlant
3 1 (1.89%) Git
3 1 (1.89%) GoCD
3 1 (1.89%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.89%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 8 (15.09%) Social Skills
2 6 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (9.43%) Public Sector
4 4 (7.55%) Documentation Skills
4 4 (7.55%) Finance
5 2 (3.77%) Law
5 2 (3.77%) Police
6 1 (1.89%) Banking
6 1 (1.89%) Electronics
6 1 (1.89%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.89%) Marketing
6 1 (1.89%) Military
6 1 (1.89%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 13 (24.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 8 (15.09%) Architect
2 8 (15.09%) Azure Engineer
2 8 (15.09%) Site Engineer
2 8 (15.09%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 6 (11.32%) Administrator
3 6 (11.32%) Systems Administrator
4 5 (9.43%) Technical Architect
4 5 (9.43%) Windows Engineer
5 4 (7.55%) DevOps Engineer
5 4 (7.55%) PowerShell Engineer
6 3 (5.66%) Migration Engineer
6 3 (5.66%) Senior
6 3 (5.66%) Wintel Engineer
7 2 (3.77%) Applications Packager
7 2 (3.77%) IT Administrator
7 2 (3.77%) Senior Systems Administrator
7 2 (3.77%) Solutions Architect
7 2 (3.77%) Telephony Engineer
7 2 (3.77%) Wintel Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (16.98%) .NET
2 8 (15.09%) .NET Framework
3 3 (5.66%) Keycloak
3 3 (5.66%) OAuth
3 3 (5.66%) OAuth2
3 3 (5.66%) OpenID
3 3 (5.66%) SAML
4 2 (3.77%) Apache NiFi
4 2 (3.77%) XMPP
5 1 (1.89%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 7 (13.21%) Legacy Systems
2 6 (11.32%) Data Centre
2 6 (11.32%) Legacy Code
3 3 (5.66%) Enterprise Software
3 3 (5.66%) Private Cloud
4 2 (3.77%) Enterprise Storage
4 2 (3.77%) Hybrid Cloud
4 2 (3.77%) Replication
5 1 (1.89%) Client/Server
5 1 (1.89%) Enterprise Cloud
5 1 (1.89%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (1.89%) Management Information System
5 1 (1.89%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 53 (100.00%) Windows
2 14 (26.42%) Linux
3 4 (7.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (7.55%) Windows Server 2016
4 3 (5.66%) CentOS
4 3 (5.66%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (3.77%) Ubuntu
6 1 (1.89%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 18 (33.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 16 (30.19%) Problem-Solving
3 14 (26.42%) High Availability
4 12 (22.64%) Disaster Recovery
4 12 (22.64%) Migration
5 11 (20.75%) DevOps
5 11 (20.75%) Root Cause Analysis
6 10 (18.87%) Infrastructure as Code
6 10 (18.87%) Runbook
7 9 (16.98%) Change Management
7 9 (16.98%) Incident Management
7 9 (16.98%) Incident Response
7 9 (16.98%) ITIL
8 8 (15.09%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 8 (15.09%) Technical Leadership
8 8 (15.09%) Zero Trust
9 7 (13.21%) Configuration Management
9 7 (13.21%) Identity Access Management
9 7 (13.21%) Service-Level Objective
10 6 (11.32%) Graceful Degradation
Programming Languages
1 27 (50.94%) PowerShell
2 3 (5.66%) Bicep
2 3 (5.66%) Python
3 2 (3.77%) Bash
4 1 (1.89%) C#
4 1 (1.89%) SQL
4 1 (1.89%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 33 (62.26%) Security Cleared
2 18 (33.96%) DV Cleared
2 18 (33.96%) SC Cleared
3 5 (9.43%) Microsoft Certification
4 4 (7.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (5.66%) Azure Certification
6 2 (3.77%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (13.21%) QA
System Software
1 32 (60.38%) Active Directory
2 21 (39.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (30.19%) Hyper-V
4 7 (13.21%) VMware NSX
5 2 (3.77%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (3.77%) VMware Workstation
6 1 (1.89%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 10 (18.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
2 7 (13.21%) Single Sign-On
3 6 (11.32%) Ansible
3 6 (11.32%) Terraform
4 3 (5.66%) SCCM
4 3 (5.66%) VxRail
5 2 (3.77%) Cisco CUCM
5 2 (3.77%) Kubernetes
5 2 (3.77%) McAfee ePO
5 2 (3.77%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (1.89%) Failover Clustering
6 1 (1.89%) FreeIPA
6 1 (1.89%) Progress Chef
6 1 (1.89%) Puppet
6 1 (1.89%) SCOM
6 1 (1.89%) WSUS
Vendors
1 24 (45.28%) VMware
2 21 (39.62%) Microsoft
3 4 (7.55%) Cisco
3 4 (7.55%) Oracle
4 3 (5.66%) BeyondTrust
4 3 (5.66%) Dell
4 3 (5.66%) NetApp
4 3 (5.66%) Thales
5 2 (3.77%) Genesys
5 2 (3.77%) Google
5 2 (3.77%) McAfee
5 2 (3.77%) Red Hat
6 1 (1.89%) Citrix
6 1 (1.89%) Qualys
6 1 (1.89%) SAP
6 1 (1.89%) Tenable