Systems Administrator Contracts in the UK excluding London

System Administrator (Sysadmin)
UK > UK excluding London

The median System Administrator (Sysadmin) daily rate in the UK excluding London is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 300 250 376
Rank change year-on-year -50 +126 +45
Contract jobs requiring a Systems Administrator 36 151 86
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.28% 0.73% 0.36%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.31% 0.78% 0.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 91 46
10th Percentile £192 £281 £122
25th Percentile £379 £378 £282
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £550 £425
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +29.41% +6.25%
75th Percentile £536 £575 £472
90th Percentile £586 - £494
UK median daily rate £423 £500 £425
% change year-on-year -15.50% +17.65% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 28 8
10th Percentile £20.98 £11.77 £39.75
25th Percentile £21.31 £16.66 £48.18
Median hourly rate £22.25 £44.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.43% -16.19% +5.42%
75th Percentile £22.81 £59.95 £55.47
90th Percentile £22.93 £61.60 £66.85
UK median hourly rate £22.75 £44.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -48.30% -16.19% +110.00%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 11,767 19,240 22,667
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.17% 92.63% 94.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,552 11,748 15,893
10th Percentile £213 £213 £225
25th Percentile £363 £363 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £492 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.46% -1.60% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £598 £595
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.78% +2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 829 2,243 1,165
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.50 £13.45
25th Percentile £17.61 £15.75 £18.09
Median hourly rate £28.00 £39.55 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -29.20% -6.94% +117.95%
75th Percentile £64.50 £61.30 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £29.00 £36.42 £45.00
% change year-on-year -20.37% -19.07% +91.49%

Systems Administrator
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings that featured Systems Administrator in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for Systems Administrator in the UK excluding London

Systems Administrator
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Systems Administrator in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for Systems Administrator in the UK excluding London

Systems Administrator
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Systems Administrator in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Systems Administrator in the UK excluding London

Systems Administrator
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Systems Administrator in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for Systems Administrator in the UK excluding London

Systems Administrator
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Systems Administrator within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 1 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
Scotland +7 10 £280 +40.00% 6
Midlands +22 7 £500 -3.85% 25
South East -6 7 £490 +6.06% 38
East of England +31 6 £430 -4.44% 25
West Midlands - 6 £488 - 11
South West +1 5 £550 - 20
Yorkshire +8 1 £400 -20.00% 8
North of England +6 1 £400 +10.34% 24
East Midlands +4 1 £536 +2.98% 13
Systems Administrator
UK

Systems Administrator Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 1 May 2025, Systems Administrator contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Systems Administrator in the job title.

1 17 (47.22%) Windows
2 12 (33.33%) Linux
2 12 (33.33%) Change Management
3 11 (30.56%) Security Cleared
3 11 (30.56%) Public Sector
4 9 (25.00%) iTrent
5 8 (22.22%) Windows Server
5 8 (22.22%) ITIL
6 7 (19.44%) Unix
6 7 (19.44%) LDAP
6 7 (19.44%) Microsoft
6 7 (19.44%) Disaster Recovery
6 7 (19.44%) Management Information System
6 7 (19.44%) DV Cleared
7 6 (16.67%) Security Patching
7 6 (16.67%) Network Security
7 6 (16.67%) PKI
7 6 (16.67%) Active Directory
7 6 (16.67%) SAN
8 5 (13.89%) Red Hat
8 5 (13.89%) Microsoft Exchange
8 5 (13.89%) LAN
8 5 (13.89%) WAN
8 5 (13.89%) Finance
8 5 (13.89%) VMware
8 5 (13.89%) Systems Analysis
8 5 (13.89%) Azure
8 5 (13.89%) DevOps
8 5 (13.89%) Storage Management
8 5 (13.89%) Social Skills

Systems Administrator Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 5 (13.89%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (5.56%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 9 (25.00%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 5 (13.89%) Azure
2 2 (5.56%) AWS
2 2 (5.56%) Entra ID
2 2 (5.56%) SaaS
3 1 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
3 1 (2.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 1 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
3 1 (2.78%) Microsoft 365
3 1 (2.78%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 6 (16.67%) Network Security
1 6 (16.67%) SAN
2 5 (13.89%) LAN
2 5 (13.89%) WAN
3 4 (11.11%) NAS
3 4 (11.11%) TCP/IP
4 2 (5.56%) Firewall
4 2 (5.56%) Intranet
5 1 (2.78%) Kerberos
5 1 (2.78%) VPN
5 1 (2.78%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (5.56%) Oracle Database
2 1 (2.78%) BusinessObjects
2 1 (2.78%) SQL Server
General
1 11 (30.56%) Public Sector
2 5 (13.89%) Finance
2 5 (13.89%) Social Skills
3 3 (8.33%) Organisational Skills
4 1 (2.78%) Aerospace
4 1 (2.78%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (2.78%) Electronics
4 1 (2.78%) General Ledger
4 1 (2.78%) Manufacturing
4 1 (2.78%) Marketing
4 1 (2.78%) Military
4 1 (2.78%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (19.44%) LDAP
2 3 (8.33%) X-Windows
3 1 (2.78%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 7 (19.44%) Management Information System
2 6 (16.67%) PKI
3 4 (11.11%) Distributed Computing
4 2 (5.56%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 17 (47.22%) Windows
2 12 (33.33%) Linux
3 8 (22.22%) Windows Server
4 7 (19.44%) Unix
5 4 (11.11%) AIX
5 4 (11.11%) Ubuntu
6 3 (8.33%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (33.33%) Change Management
2 8 (22.22%) ITIL
3 7 (19.44%) Disaster Recovery
4 6 (16.67%) Security Patching
5 5 (13.89%) DevOps
5 5 (13.89%) Storage Management
5 5 (13.89%) Systems Analysis
6 4 (11.11%) Capacity Planning
6 4 (11.11%) Incident Management
6 4 (11.11%) Information Security
6 4 (11.11%) Infrastructure Management
6 4 (11.11%) Line Management
6 4 (11.11%) Performance Management
6 4 (11.11%) Problem Management
6 4 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
6 4 (11.11%) Resource Management
6 4 (11.11%) Task Automation
7 3 (8.33%) Business Continuity
7 3 (8.33%) Network Management
7 3 (8.33%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 4 (11.11%) PowerShell
2 3 (8.33%) Shell Script
3 1 (2.78%) Bash
3 1 (2.78%) Python
3 1 (2.78%) SQL
Qualifications
1 11 (30.56%) Security Cleared
2 7 (19.44%) DV Cleared
3 4 (11.11%) SC Cleared
4 1 (2.78%) CISSP
4 1 (2.78%) CompTIA Security+
4 1 (2.78%) HNC
4 1 (2.78%) Linux+ Certification
4 1 (2.78%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (11.11%) Disclosure Scotland
1 4 (11.11%) SLA
2 3 (8.33%) Cyber Essentials
2 3 (8.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 1 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 6 (16.67%) Active Directory
2 4 (11.11%) Docker
3 3 (8.33%) Hyper-V
3 3 (8.33%) Virtual Servers
4 2 (5.56%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (2.78%) NFS
5 1 (2.78%) Samba
Systems Management
1 2 (5.56%) Tivoli
1 2 (5.56%) Tivoli Storage Manager
2 1 (2.78%) Ansible
2 1 (2.78%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.78%) Nagios
2 1 (2.78%) SCOM
2 1 (2.78%) SELinux
2 1 (2.78%) Terraform
2 1 (2.78%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 7 (19.44%) Microsoft
2 5 (13.89%) Red Hat
2 5 (13.89%) VMware
3 4 (11.11%) NetApp
4 3 (8.33%) Oracle
5 2 (5.56%) IBM
6 1 (2.78%) Cisco
6 1 (2.78%) Dynatrace
6 1 (2.78%) SAP