Systems Administrator Contract Job Trends

System Administrator (Sysadmin)
UK

The median System Administrator (Sysadmin) daily rate in the UK is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 20 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 482 386 400
Rank change year-on-year -96 +14 +211
Contract jobs requiring a Systems Administrator 109 155 202
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.30% 0.45% 0.46%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.32% 0.49% 0.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 51 58 118
10th Percentile £255 £193 £236
25th Percentile £369 £280 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £419 £468
Median % change year-on-year +13.43% -10.52% +18.48%
75th Percentile £548 £588 £575
90th Percentile £600 £650 £600
UK excluding London median daily rate £515 £416 £468
% change year-on-year +23.80% -11.11% +17.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 8 14
10th Percentile - £21.10 £34.06
25th Percentile £17.50 £21.44 £48.40
Median hourly rate £18.00 £30.50 £52.15
Median % change year-on-year -40.98% -41.51% +148.31%
75th Percentile £24.00 £57.62 £59.95
90th Percentile £29.90 - £67.54
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.77 £47.37 £55.28
% change year-on-year -47.72% -14.30% +163.24%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 33,545 31,624 41,095
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.00% 92.80% 93.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,197 19,461 27,642
10th Percentile £293 £300 £288
25th Percentile £404 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £643
90th Percentile £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,986 989 1,457
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.60 £15.14
25th Percentile £18.08 £21.22 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.93% -25.56% +50.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.44 £72.55 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +82.48%

Systems Administrator
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Systems Administrator' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Systems Administrator job vacancy trend in the UK

Systems Administrator
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Systems Administrator job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Systems Administrator job vacancies in the UK

Systems Administrator
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Systems Administrator over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Systems Administrator in the UK

Systems Administrator
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Systems Administrator job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Systems Administrator job vacancies in the UK

Systems Administrator
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Systems Administrator over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Systems Administrator in the UK

Systems Administrator
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 20 December 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
England -86 88 £500 +11.11% 64
UK excluding London -97 52 £515 +23.80% 58
London +8 38 £413 +1.54% 14
Work from Home -7 35 £450 +9.09% 20
South West -24 18 £575 - 8
South East -40 11 £515 +40.14% 12
North of England -52 9 £525 +10.53% 12
North West -22 6 £479 - 7
East of England -22 5 £450 +12.50% 25
Midlands -43 4 £475 -9.52%
East Midlands - 4 £475 -
Northern Ireland -7 3 £375 +25.00%
Yorkshire -55 3 £525 +10.53% 4
Scotland -2 2 £275 +42.12% 1

Systems Administrator Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 20 December 2025, Systems Administrator contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Systems Administrator in the job title.

1 37 (33.94%) Windows
2 29 (26.61%) Linux
2 29 (26.61%) Security Cleared
3 22 (20.18%) Microsoft
4 20 (18.35%) DV Cleared
5 19 (17.43%) Network Management
6 17 (15.60%) Change Management
6 17 (15.60%) Microsoft 365
7 16 (14.68%) Security Patching
8 14 (12.84%) Active Directory
8 14 (12.84%) Network Security
8 14 (12.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (12.84%) VMware
9 13 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
9 13 (11.93%) Firewall
9 13 (11.93%) SharePoint
10 12 (11.01%) Oracle
11 11 (10.09%) Business Intelligence
11 11 (10.09%) ERP
11 11 (10.09%) Problem-Solving
11 11 (10.09%) Red Hat
12 10 (9.17%) DNS
12 10 (9.17%) ITIL
12 10 (9.17%) Microsoft Excel
12 10 (9.17%) Power BI
12 10 (9.17%) Power Platform
12 10 (9.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 10 (9.17%) VMware Infrastructure
13 9 (8.26%) AWS
13 9 (8.26%) Azure

Systems Administrator Skill Set
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 13 (11.93%) SharePoint
2 4 (3.67%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (2.75%) Apache
4 2 (1.83%) CMS
4 2 (1.83%) Confluence
5 1 (0.92%) SAS
Applications
1 10 (9.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (7.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.92%) S-PLUS
Business Applications
1 4 (3.67%) ContrOCC
2 2 (1.83%) CA PPM
2 2 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.92%) iTrent
3 1 (0.92%) Magento
3 1 (0.92%) Sage 200
3 1 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.92%) Shopify
3 1 (0.92%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 17 (15.60%) Microsoft 365
2 10 (9.17%) Power Platform
3 9 (8.26%) AWS
3 9 (8.26%) Azure
4 6 (5.50%) Entra ID
4 6 (5.50%) IaaS
4 6 (5.50%) SaaS
5 5 (4.59%) GCP
6 3 (2.75%) Dynamics 365
6 3 (2.75%) PaaS
6 3 (2.75%) SuccessFactors
7 1 (0.92%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (0.92%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 14 (12.84%) Network Security
2 13 (11.93%) Firewall
3 10 (9.17%) DNS
4 7 (6.42%) DHCP
5 4 (3.67%) SAN
5 4 (3.67%) VPN
6 3 (2.75%) Wireless
7 2 (1.83%) Remote Desktop
7 2 (1.83%) VLAN
8 1 (0.92%) LAN
8 1 (0.92%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (9.17%) Power BI
2 4 (3.67%) MySQL
2 4 (3.67%) Oracle Database
3 3 (2.75%) MariaDB
4 2 (1.83%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
5 1 (0.92%) DB2
5 1 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
5 1 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 4 (3.67%) JIRA
2 3 (2.75%) Jenkins
2 3 (2.75%) Vagrant
3 2 (1.83%) Bitbucket
3 2 (1.83%) Git
General
1 33 (30.28%) Social Skills
2 22 (20.18%) Finance
3 13 (11.93%) Public Sector
4 10 (9.17%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (7.34%) Legal
6 5 (4.59%) Banking
7 4 (3.67%) Telecoms
8 3 (2.75%) Fire and Rescue
9 2 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (1.83%) Financial Institution
9 2 (1.83%) Local Government
9 2 (1.83%) Military
10 1 (0.92%) Electronics
10 1 (0.92%) German Language
10 1 (0.92%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.92%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.92%) Marketing
10 1 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (2.75%) LAMP
2 2 (1.83%) CSS
2 2 (1.83%) HTML
2 2 (1.83%) Zend Framework
3 1 (0.92%) HTML5 Canvas
3 1 (0.92%) IDoc
Miscellaneous
1 14 (12.84%) PKI
2 9 (8.26%) Onboarding
3 3 (2.75%) Clustering
3 3 (2.75%) Data Centre
4 2 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
4 2 (1.83%) Data Structures
4 2 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (1.83%) Hedge funds
4 2 (1.83%) Learning Management System
4 2 (1.83%) Management Information System
5 1 (0.92%) Educational Technology
5 1 (0.92%) Enterprise Storage
5 1 (0.92%) Mainframe
5 1 (0.92%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 37 (33.94%) Windows
2 29 (26.61%) Linux
3 14 (12.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 8 (7.34%) Windows Server
5 5 (4.59%) Unix
6 4 (3.67%) Ubuntu
7 3 (2.75%) CentOS
7 3 (2.75%) Debian
8 2 (1.83%) Solaris
8 2 (1.83%) Windows Server 2016
8 2 (1.83%) Windows Server 2019
9 1 (0.92%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 19 (17.43%) Network Management
2 17 (15.60%) Change Management
3 16 (14.68%) Security Patching
4 13 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
5 11 (10.09%) Business Intelligence
5 11 (10.09%) ERP
5 11 (10.09%) Problem-Solving
6 10 (9.17%) ITIL
6 10 (9.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 8 (7.34%) Data Management
7 8 (7.34%) Knowledge Management
7 8 (7.34%) Time Management
8 6 (5.50%) Infrastructure as Code
8 6 (5.50%) Service Delivery
9 5 (4.59%) Decision-Making
9 5 (4.59%) DevOps
9 5 (4.59%) Disaster Recovery
9 5 (4.59%) Root Cause Analysis
9 5 (4.59%) Stakeholder Management
10 4 (3.67%) Agile
Programming Languages
1 9 (8.26%) PowerShell
1 9 (8.26%) SQL
2 8 (7.34%) Bash
3 6 (5.50%) Python
4 3 (2.75%) Perl
5 2 (1.83%) JavaScript
5 2 (1.83%) PHP
5 2 (1.83%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 29 (26.61%) Security Cleared
2 20 (18.35%) DV Cleared
3 9 (8.26%) SC Cleared
4 3 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
6 1 (0.92%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (4.59%) QA
2 3 (2.75%) Data Quality
2 3 (2.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (2.75%) PMO
3 2 (1.83%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.83%) NIST
4 1 (0.92%) GDPR
4 1 (0.92%) GRC
System Software
1 14 (12.84%) Active Directory
2 10 (9.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (5.50%) Hyper-V
4 3 (2.75%) Docker
5 2 (1.83%) Slurm Workload Manager
5 2 (1.83%) VirtualBox
5 2 (1.83%) VMware ESXi
6 1 (0.92%) GPFS
6 1 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 9 (8.26%) Progress Chef
2 6 (5.50%) Ansible
3 4 (3.67%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (2.75%) EMC NetWorker
4 3 (2.75%) EMC VPLEX
4 3 (2.75%) Puppet
4 3 (2.75%) SCCM
4 3 (2.75%) Single Sign-On
4 3 (2.75%) Terraform
5 2 (1.83%) Icinga
5 2 (1.83%) Nagios
5 2 (1.83%) Salt
6 1 (0.92%) BladeLogic
6 1 (0.92%) Failover Clustering
6 1 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 22 (20.18%) Microsoft
2 14 (12.84%) VMware
3 12 (11.01%) Oracle
4 11 (10.09%) Red Hat
5 7 (6.42%) Dell
6 6 (5.50%) IFS
6 6 (5.50%) SAP
7 5 (4.59%) Cisco
7 5 (4.59%) Palo Alto
8 4 (3.67%) Fortinet
8 4 (3.67%) Google
8 4 (3.67%) Liquidlogic
8 4 (3.67%) ServiceNow
9 3 (2.75%) Brocade
9 3 (2.75%) EMC
9 3 (2.75%) Isilon
9 3 (2.75%) Rackspace
10 2 (1.83%) HP
10 2 (1.83%) Intel
10 2 (1.83%) NetApp