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 £463, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 22 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
22 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 295 250 351
Rank change year-on-year -45 +101 +80
Contract jobs requiring a Systems Administrator 35 149 85
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.27% 0.74% 0.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.30% 0.80% 0.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 30 90 44
10th Percentile £250 £279 £122
25th Percentile £403 £378 £269
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £550 £420
Median % change year-on-year -15.91% +30.95% +12.00%
75th Percentile £498 £575 £475
90th Percentile £578 - £529
UK median daily rate £425 £500 £425
% change year-on-year -15.00% +17.65% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 32 9
10th Percentile - £11.77 £25.33
25th Percentile - £15.48 £47.50
Median hourly rate - £34.80 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year - -33.71% +5.42%
75th Percentile - £59.95 £53.75
90th Percentile - £61.60 £64.77
UK median hourly rate - £25.60 £52.50
% change year-on-year - -51.24% +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 11,749 18,731 21,611
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.89% 92.50% 94.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,490 11,452 15,051
10th Percentile £213 £213 £225
25th Percentile £363 £363 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £600
90th Percentile £650 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £510 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -2.86% -3.31% +3.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 826 2,272 1,106
10th Percentile £13.93 £12.50 £13.41
25th Percentile £17.30 £15.74 £18.04
Median hourly rate £27.13 £40.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.19% -5.88% +112.50%
75th Percentile £63.56 £61.60 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £28.08 £36.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -23.08% -18.89% +87.50%

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 22 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 22 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
East of England +30 9 £428 -5.00% 26
Scotland +1 7 £400 +100.00% 7
Midlands +11 6 £488 -6.25% 32
South East -5 6 £490 +3.38% 37
South West -10 6 £483 -12.27% 35
West Midlands - 5 £475 - 11
East Midlands -2 1 £536 +2.98% 19
Northern Ireland - 1 £350 - 1
Systems Administrator
UK

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

For the 6 months to 22 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 (48.57%) Linux
2 16 (45.71%) Windows
3 11 (31.43%) SAN
3 11 (31.43%) Change Management
3 11 (31.43%) Security Cleared
4 10 (28.57%) Disaster Recovery
4 10 (28.57%) VMware
5 9 (25.71%) Public Sector
5 9 (25.71%) Social Skills
6 8 (22.86%) Windows Server
6 8 (22.86%) Microsoft
6 8 (22.86%) Active Directory
6 8 (22.86%) Shell Script
6 8 (22.86%) ITIL
7 7 (20.00%) Unix
7 7 (20.00%) LDAP
7 7 (20.00%) Red Hat
7 7 (20.00%) Ubuntu
7 7 (20.00%) DV Cleared
7 7 (20.00%) Ansible
7 7 (20.00%) Containerisation
8 6 (17.14%) Security Patching
8 6 (17.14%) Network Security
8 6 (17.14%) Hyper-V
8 6 (17.14%) PKI
8 6 (17.14%) Python
9 5 (14.29%) Microsoft Exchange
9 5 (14.29%) LAN
9 5 (14.29%) WAN
9 5 (14.29%) DNS

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 (14.29%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (8.57%) OpenStack
Applications
1 1 (2.86%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (11.43%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 5 (14.29%) AWS
2 4 (11.43%) Cloud Computing
3 2 (5.71%) AWS CloudFormation
3 2 (5.71%) Azure
3 2 (5.71%) SaaS
4 1 (2.86%) Entra ID
4 1 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
4 1 (2.86%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 11 (31.43%) SAN
2 6 (17.14%) Network Security
3 5 (14.29%) DNS
3 5 (14.29%) LAN
3 5 (14.29%) WAN
4 4 (11.43%) NAS
4 4 (11.43%) TCP/IP
5 3 (8.57%) iSCSI
6 2 (5.71%) Firewall
7 1 (2.86%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (5.71%) Oracle Database
2 1 (2.86%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 5 (14.29%) JIRA
2 4 (11.43%) GitLab
2 4 (11.43%) TeamCity
General
1 9 (25.71%) Public Sector
1 9 (25.71%) Social Skills
2 3 (8.57%) Organisational Skills
3 1 (2.86%) Finance
3 1 (2.86%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (20.00%) LDAP
2 3 (8.57%) X-Windows
3 1 (2.86%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (2.86%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 6 (17.14%) PKI
2 4 (11.43%) Distributed Computing
3 3 (8.57%) Data Centre
3 3 (8.57%) Enterprise Storage
3 3 (8.57%) Linux Command Line
3 3 (8.57%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 17 (48.57%) Linux
2 16 (45.71%) Windows
3 8 (22.86%) Windows Server
4 7 (20.00%) Ubuntu
4 7 (20.00%) Unix
5 4 (11.43%) AIX
6 3 (8.57%) CentOS
6 3 (8.57%) Mac OS
7 1 (2.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (31.43%) Change Management
2 10 (28.57%) Disaster Recovery
3 8 (22.86%) ITIL
4 7 (20.00%) Containerisation
5 6 (17.14%) Security Patching
6 5 (14.29%) Capacity Planning
6 5 (14.29%) DevOps
6 5 (14.29%) ITSM
6 5 (14.29%) Problem Management
6 5 (14.29%) Storage Management
7 4 (11.43%) CI/CD
7 4 (11.43%) Data Science
7 4 (11.43%) Incident Management
7 4 (11.43%) Infrastructure Management
7 4 (11.43%) Network Management
7 4 (11.43%) Resource Management
7 4 (11.43%) Task Automation
8 3 (8.57%) Line Management
8 3 (8.57%) Problem-Solving
8 3 (8.57%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 8 (22.86%) Shell Script
2 6 (17.14%) Python
3 3 (8.57%) PowerShell
4 1 (2.86%) Bash
4 1 (2.86%) SQL
Qualifications
1 11 (31.43%) Security Cleared
2 7 (20.00%) DV Cleared
3 4 (11.43%) SC Cleared
4 3 (8.57%) Degree
5 1 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (2.86%) CISSP
5 1 (2.86%) CompTIA Security+
5 1 (2.86%) Linux+ Certification
5 1 (2.86%) RHCE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (14.29%) PCI DSS
2 3 (8.57%) Cyber Essentials
2 3 (8.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
2 3 (8.57%) Disclosure Scotland
2 3 (8.57%) SLA
3 1 (2.86%) QA
System Software
1 8 (22.86%) Active Directory
2 6 (17.14%) Hyper-V
3 4 (11.43%) Docker
4 3 (8.57%) Virtual Servers
4 3 (8.57%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (2.86%) NFS
5 1 (2.86%) Samba
Systems Management
1 7 (20.00%) Ansible
2 3 (8.57%) Terraform
3 2 (5.71%) Kubernetes
3 2 (5.71%) Progress Chef
3 2 (5.71%) Puppet
3 2 (5.71%) Salt
3 2 (5.71%) Tivoli
3 2 (5.71%) Tivoli Storage Manager
4 1 (2.86%) EMC NetWorker
4 1 (2.86%) EMC VPLEX
4 1 (2.86%) Nagios
4 1 (2.86%) SCOM
4 1 (2.86%) SELinux
4 1 (2.86%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 10 (28.57%) VMware
2 8 (22.86%) Microsoft
3 7 (20.00%) Red Hat
4 5 (14.29%) ServiceNow
5 4 (11.43%) NetApp
6 3 (8.57%) Oracle
7 2 (5.71%) IBM
8 1 (2.86%) Brocade
8 1 (2.86%) Cisco
8 1 (2.86%) Dell
8 1 (2.86%) Dynatrace
8 1 (2.86%) EMC
8 1 (2.86%) Isilon