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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 96 68 65
Rank change year-on-year -28 -3 -19
Contract jobs citing Windows Server 65 48 81
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.77% 2.53% 3.05%
As % of the Operating Systems category 15.97% 14.37% 14.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 32 58
10th Percentile £350 £325 £321
25th Percentile £406 £369 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.57% -2.33% +4.88%
75th Percentile £681 £592 £609
90th Percentile £750 £650 £677
England median daily rate £483 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -7.95% +5.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 1
10th Percentile £19.25 - -
25th Percentile £22.63 £72.50 £63.75
Median hourly rate £26.00 £75.00 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -65.33% +11.11% +9.76%
75th Percentile £56.75 £77.50 £71.25
90th Percentile £58.63 - -
England median hourly rate £63.14 £22.03 £52.50
% change year-on-year +186.65% -58.05% +23.53%

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 407 334 544
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 11.10% 17.60% 20.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 211 341
10th Percentile £213 £183 £180
25th Percentile £363 £225 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £435 £525
Median % change year-on-year +17.82% -17.14% +0.96%
75th Percentile £631 £600 £588
90th Percentile £733 £675 £672
England median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 47 66
10th Percentile £16.62 £18.36 £53.00
25th Percentile £20.70 - £65.00
Median hourly rate £36.93 £18.87 £70.00
Median % change year-on-year +95.69% -73.04% +7.19%
75th Percentile £68.00 £66.50 -
90th Percentile £79.63 £68.00 -
England median hourly rate £33.32 £24.66 £49.00
% change year-on-year +35.10% -49.67% +11.43%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 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
Somerset -20 19 £475 +35.71% 4
Wiltshire -13 15 £536 -7.78% 12
Bristol -23 10 £550 - 12
Gloucestershire -7 9 £340 -2.86% 10
Dorset -7 6 - - 4
Devon -19 3 £750 +383.87% 4
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 12 (18.46%) IIS
2 9 (13.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (7.69%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.54%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 28 (43.08%) Azure
2 15 (23.08%) AWS
3 9 (13.85%) Azure Monitor
4 8 (12.31%) Entra ID
5 5 (7.69%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (3.08%) Azure Sentinel
6 2 (3.08%) Azure Stack
6 2 (3.08%) Power Platform
7 1 (1.54%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (1.54%) Azure Key Vault
7 1 (1.54%) Cloud Computing
7 1 (1.54%) Datadog
7 1 (1.54%) IaaS
7 1 (1.54%) PaaS
7 1 (1.54%) Rubrik
7 1 (1.54%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (43.08%) DNS
2 17 (26.15%) DHCP
3 8 (12.31%) SAN
4 7 (10.77%) Firewall
5 5 (7.69%) VoIP
6 4 (6.15%) VLAN
7 3 (4.62%) Cisco Nexus
7 3 (4.62%) Network Security
8 2 (3.08%) BGP
8 2 (3.08%) LAN
8 2 (3.08%) MPLS
8 2 (3.08%) NAS
8 2 (3.08%) SSL
8 2 (3.08%) TCP/IP
8 2 (3.08%) VPN
8 2 (3.08%) VSAN
8 2 (3.08%) WAN
9 1 (1.54%) DMZ
9 1 (1.54%) Internet
9 1 (1.54%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (33.85%) SQL Server
2 6 (9.23%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (3.08%) Oracle BI EE
3 2 (3.08%) Power BI
3 2 (3.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 1 (1.54%) MongoDB
4 1 (1.54%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 3 (4.62%) JIRA
2 1 (1.54%) GitLab
2 1 (1.54%) Visual Studio
General
1 14 (21.54%) Social Skills
2 9 (13.85%) Public Sector
3 8 (12.31%) Documentation Skills
4 6 (9.23%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (7.69%) Military
6 2 (3.08%) Finance
6 2 (3.08%) Law
6 2 (3.08%) Local Government
6 2 (3.08%) Police
7 1 (1.54%) Aerospace
7 1 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.54%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 17 (26.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 10 (15.38%) Administrator
2 10 (15.38%) Senior
3 8 (12.31%) Azure Engineer
3 8 (12.31%) Site Engineer
3 8 (12.31%) Site Reliability Engineer
4 7 (10.77%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
4 7 (10.77%) Systems Administrator
5 6 (9.23%) DBA
6 5 (7.69%) Architect
6 5 (7.69%) DevOps Engineer
6 5 (7.69%) IT Engineer
6 5 (7.69%) Lead
7 4 (6.15%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
7 4 (6.15%) PowerShell Engineer
7 4 (6.15%) Windows Engineer
8 3 (4.62%) Infrastructure Specialist
8 3 (4.62%) Migration Engineer
8 3 (4.62%) Wintel Engineer
9 2 (3.08%) Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (15.38%) .NET
2 9 (13.85%) .NET Framework
3 3 (4.62%) OAuth
3 3 (4.62%) SAML
3 3 (4.62%) Terraform
4 2 (3.08%) OAuth2
4 2 (3.08%) OpenID
5 1 (1.54%) Apache NiFi
5 1 (1.54%) Keycloak
5 1 (1.54%) LDAP
5 1 (1.54%) RabbitMQ
5 1 (1.54%) Spring
5 1 (1.54%) Spring Boot
5 1 (1.54%) WinForms
5 1 (1.54%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (16.92%) PKI
2 7 (10.77%) Legacy Systems
3 6 (9.23%) Legacy Code
4 5 (7.69%) Clustering
5 4 (6.15%) Data Centre
6 3 (4.62%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (4.62%) Enterprise Storage
6 3 (4.62%) Fat Client
6 3 (4.62%) Smartcard
6 3 (4.62%) Thin Client
6 3 (4.62%) Virtual Team
7 2 (3.08%) Management Information System
7 2 (3.08%) Private Cloud
7 2 (3.08%) Replication
8 1 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (1.54%) Driving Licence
8 1 (1.54%) Enterprise Cloud
8 1 (1.54%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.54%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 65 (100.00%) Windows
2 16 (24.62%) Linux
3 10 (15.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (4.62%) Data ONTAP
4 3 (4.62%) Ubuntu
4 3 (4.62%) Windows Server 2019
5 2 (3.08%) CentOS
5 2 (3.08%) Windows Server 2012
6 1 (1.54%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (30.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 19 (29.23%) High Availability
3 14 (21.54%) Runbook
4 13 (20.00%) Disaster Recovery
5 12 (18.46%) Incident Management
6 11 (16.92%) DevOps
6 11 (16.92%) Migration
6 11 (16.92%) Problem-Solving
6 11 (16.92%) Root Cause Analysis
7 10 (15.38%) Continuous Improvement
7 10 (15.38%) Incident Response
7 10 (15.38%) Patch Management
7 10 (15.38%) Site Reliability Engineering
8 9 (13.85%) ITIL
9 8 (12.31%) Configuration Management
10 7 (10.77%) Service-Level Objective
10 7 (10.77%) Software Testing
10 7 (10.77%) Technical Leadership
11 6 (9.23%) CI/CD
11 6 (9.23%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 27 (41.54%) PowerShell
2 11 (16.92%) SQL
3 3 (4.62%) Python
4 2 (3.08%) Bash
4 2 (3.08%) C#
5 1 (1.54%) Java
Qualifications
1 41 (63.08%) Security Cleared
2 25 (38.46%) SC Cleared
3 21 (32.31%) DV Cleared
4 6 (9.23%) Degree
5 2 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (3.08%) CISSP
5 2 (3.08%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (1.54%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.54%) CISM
6 1 (1.54%) CompTIA Security+
6 1 (1.54%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.54%) MCSE
6 1 (1.54%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (10.77%) QA
2 4 (6.15%) SLA
3 2 (3.08%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (3.08%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 2 (3.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (1.54%) Disclosure Scotland
4 1 (1.54%) NCSC
System Software
1 38 (58.46%) Active Directory
2 18 (27.69%) Hyper-V
2 18 (27.69%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (9.23%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (4.62%) VMware Workstation
4 3 (4.62%) vSphere
5 2 (3.08%) Docker
5 2 (3.08%) Virtual Desktop
6 1 (1.54%) Firmware
6 1 (1.54%) KVM
6 1 (1.54%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 1 (1.54%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (1.54%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 8 (12.31%) WSUS
2 5 (7.69%) Failover Clustering
3 4 (6.15%) Ansible
3 4 (6.15%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (4.62%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 3 (4.62%) Kubernetes
4 3 (4.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (4.62%) OPNET
4 3 (4.62%) VxRail
5 2 (3.08%) SCCM
6 1 (1.54%) Data Guard
6 1 (1.54%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
6 1 (1.54%) Grafana
6 1 (1.54%) Nessus
6 1 (1.54%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 1 (1.54%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (1.54%) PingFederate
6 1 (1.54%) Prometheus
6 1 (1.54%) SCOM
Vendors
1 24 (36.92%) Microsoft
2 22 (33.85%) VMware
3 16 (24.62%) Cisco
4 10 (15.38%) Oracle
5 7 (10.77%) Red Hat
6 3 (4.62%) McAfee
6 3 (4.62%) NetApp
7 2 (3.08%) Juniper
7 2 (3.08%) Qualys
7 2 (3.08%) Tenable
8 1 (1.54%) Atlassian
8 1 (1.54%) BeyondTrust
8 1 (1.54%) CyberArk
8 1 (1.54%) Dell
8 1 (1.54%) Ping Identity
8 1 (1.54%) Thales