Server Hardening Contract Job Trends

Server Hardening
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Server Hardening skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 630 514 591
Rank change year-on-year -116 +77 +72
Contract jobs citing Server Hardening 13 10 8
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.026% 0.034% 0.018%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 0.031% 0.038% 0.022%
Number of daily rates quoted 7 7 6
10th Percentile £408 £375 £425
25th Percentile £425 £388 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £400 £530
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% -24.53% -17.83%
75th Percentile £475 £431 £560
90th Percentile £500 £473 £599
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +12.50% -11.11% -27.27%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Server Hardening falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 42,104 26,621 36,920
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.75% 90.94% 85.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,283 16,896 23,594
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,537 1,167 2,565
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.85% -24.66% +1.67%
75th Percentile £67.89 £56.00 £61.25
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

Server Hardening
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Server Hardening relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Server Hardening job vacancy trend in the UK

Server Hardening
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Server Hardening.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Server Hardening

Server Hardening
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Server Hardening.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Server Hardening

Server Hardening
Top 9 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Server Hardening within the UK over the 6 months to 9 June 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
England -126 10 £450 +12.50% 3
UK excluding London -102 5 £450 +12.50% 3
London - 5 £450 -
North West -38 2 £450 +9.09% 1
Work from Home -59 2 £431 +7.81% 1
North of England -75 2 £450 +9.09% 1
West Midlands - 2 £450 -
Midlands - 2 £450 - 1
South West -30 1 £413 +3.13% 1

Server Hardening
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 2 (15.38%) IIS
2 1 (7.69%) Apache
2 1 (7.69%) nginx
2 1 (7.69%) Tomcat
Cloud Services
1 5 (38.46%) Azure
2 3 (23.08%) AWS
3 2 (15.38%) Azure Monitor
3 2 (15.38%) Azure Stack
3 2 (15.38%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 7 (53.85%) DNS
2 6 (46.15%) DHCP
3 1 (7.69%) NAS
3 1 (7.69%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (15.38%) SQL Server
2 1 (7.69%) Amazon RDS
General
1 2 (15.38%) Banking
1 2 (15.38%) Finance
Job Titles
1 5 (38.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
1 5 (38.46%) Server Engineer
1 5 (38.46%) VMware Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Administrator
2 2 (15.38%) Citrix Administrator
2 2 (15.38%) Wintel Engineer
2 2 (15.38%) Wintel Infrastructure Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Architect
3 1 (7.69%) Linux Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) SCCM Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) SCCM Infrastructure Engineer
3 1 (7.69%) Server Administrator
3 1 (7.69%) Windows Administrator
3 1 (7.69%) Windows Server Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (15.38%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 2 (15.38%) Clustering
1 2 (15.38%) Hybrid Cloud
1 2 (15.38%) PKI
2 1 (7.69%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 9 (69.23%) Windows
2 7 (53.85%) Windows Server
3 6 (46.15%) Linux
4 2 (15.38%) Windows Server 2012
4 2 (15.38%) Windows Server 2016
4 2 (15.38%) Windows Server 2019
5 1 (7.69%) CentOS
5 1 (7.69%) Ubuntu
5 1 (7.69%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 7 (53.85%) Vulnerability Remediation
2 5 (38.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 4 (30.77%) ITIL
3 4 (30.77%) Runbook
3 4 (30.77%) Security Hardening
4 3 (23.08%) High Availability
4 3 (23.08%) Patch Management
4 3 (23.08%) Performance Tuning
4 3 (23.08%) Root Cause Analysis
4 3 (23.08%) Virtual Environments
5 2 (15.38%) Analytics
5 2 (15.38%) Application Virtualisation
5 2 (15.38%) Capacity Planning
5 2 (15.38%) Identity Management
5 2 (15.38%) Information Security
5 2 (15.38%) Migration
5 2 (15.38%) Problem Management
5 2 (15.38%) SIEM
5 2 (15.38%) User Experience
5 2 (15.38%) Vulnerability Management
Programming Languages
1 5 (38.46%) PowerShell
2 4 (30.77%) Bash
3 2 (15.38%) Bicep
4 1 (7.69%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (7.69%) SC Cleared
1 1 (7.69%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (30.77%) SLA
2 2 (15.38%) SOC 2
3 1 (7.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 6 (46.15%) Active Directory
1 6 (46.15%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (15.38%) Hyper-V
2 2 (15.38%) Virtual Desktop
2 2 (15.38%) Virtual Servers
2 2 (15.38%) VMware ESXi
2 2 (15.38%) vSphere
2 2 (15.38%) XenApp
2 2 (15.38%) XenDesktop
3 1 (7.69%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 3 (23.08%) SCCM
2 2 (15.38%) Failover Clustering
2 2 (15.38%) Nessus
2 2 (15.38%) vCenter Server
2 2 (15.38%) WSUS
3 1 (7.69%) Ansible
3 1 (7.69%) Puppet
3 1 (7.69%) Terraform
Vendors
1 10 (76.92%) VMware
2 3 (23.08%) Citrix
2 3 (23.08%) Microsoft
3 2 (15.38%) Qualys
3 2 (15.38%) Tenable
4 1 (7.69%) Red Hat