Systems Administrator Contracts

System Administrator (Sysadmin)
UK

The median System Administrator (Sysadmin) daily rate in the UK is £410, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 June 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
25 Jun 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 450 382 468
Rank change year-on-year -68 +86 +170
Contract jobs requiring a Systems Administrator 80 213 225
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.27% 0.49% 0.41%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.29% 0.53% 0.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 64 106 131
10th Percentile £213 £278 £250
25th Percentile £281 £385 £357
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £410 £500 £425
Median % change year-on-year -18.00% +17.65% -5.56%
75th Percentile £488 £575 £505
90th Percentile £508 - £563
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £539 £425
% change year-on-year -14.19% +26.82% +9.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 45 11
10th Percentile - £11.91 £26.25
25th Percentile - £14.13 £47.50
Median hourly rate - £20.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year - -61.90% +50.00%
75th Percentile - £58.49 £53.75
90th Percentile - £59.95 £60.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £20.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year - -61.90% -13.93%

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 27,810 40,484 52,424
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.17% 92.93% 94.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,834 26,012 36,485
10th Percentile £288 £281 £313
25th Percentile £402 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +1.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.65% -1.40% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,203 2,914 1,505
10th Percentile £13.78 £12.86 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.39 £16.38 £19.06
Median hourly rate £27.13 £37.50 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year -27.67% -12.79% +68.63%
75th Percentile £56.25 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £74.00 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -37.13% - +100.00%

Systems Administrator
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Systems Administrator in the UK

Systems Administrator
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Systems Administrator.

Daily rate trend for Systems Administrator in the UK

Systems Administrator
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Systems Administrator over the 6 months to 25 June 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Systems Administrator in the UK

Systems Administrator
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Systems Administrator.

Hourly rate trend for Systems Administrator in the UK

Systems Administrator
Top 12 Contract 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 25 June 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 -44 68 £425 -18.27% 151
UK excluding London -72 42 £463 -14.19% 99
London +32 28 £350 -20.45% 59
Work from Home +36 26 £400 -13.51% 114
East of England +30 11 £428 -5.00% 17
South West +11 8 £475 -13.64% 25
Scotland -1 8 £400 +102.53% 4
South East -10 7 £490 -2.00% 20
Midlands +6 6 £488 -6.25% 18
West Midlands +10 5 £475 - 5
Northern Ireland - 2 £350 - 1
East Midlands -4 1 £536 +2.98% 13

Systems Administrator Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 25 June 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 featuring Systems Administrator in the job title.

1 30 (37.50%) Windows
2 26 (32.50%) Linux
3 23 (28.75%) Social Skills
4 19 (23.75%) Microsoft
5 18 (22.50%) Active Directory
5 18 (22.50%) VMware
5 18 (22.50%) AWS
6 17 (21.25%) Python
7 16 (20.00%) Azure
8 15 (18.75%) Security Cleared
8 15 (18.75%) DevOps
8 15 (18.75%) Disaster Recovery
9 14 (17.50%) Change Management
9 14 (17.50%) Public Sector
10 13 (16.25%) SAN
10 13 (16.25%) ITIL
10 13 (16.25%) Ansible
11 11 (13.75%) DNS
11 11 (13.75%) JIRA
11 11 (13.75%) Problem Management
12 10 (12.50%) Ubuntu
12 10 (12.50%) Microsoft Exchange
12 10 (12.50%) Shell Script
12 10 (12.50%) ITSM
12 10 (12.50%) Containerisation
13 9 (11.25%) Red Hat
13 9 (11.25%) Terraform
13 9 (11.25%) Windows Server
13 9 (11.25%) VMware Infrastructure
14 8 (10.00%) PowerShell

Systems Administrator Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 10 (12.50%) Microsoft Exchange
2 5 (6.25%) Confluence
3 4 (5.00%) Apache
3 4 (5.00%) SharePoint
4 3 (3.75%) OpenStack
5 1 (1.25%) Tomcat
Applications
1 1 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (5.00%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 18 (22.50%) AWS
2 16 (20.00%) Azure
3 7 (8.75%) Entra ID
3 7 (8.75%) SaaS
4 6 (7.50%) Microsoft 365
5 5 (6.25%) Cloud Computing
6 4 (5.00%) GCP
7 3 (3.75%) AWS CloudFormation
8 1 (1.25%) Dynamics 365
8 1 (1.25%) Google Workspace
8 1 (1.25%) IBM Cloud
8 1 (1.25%) OCI
8 1 (1.25%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 13 (16.25%) SAN
2 11 (13.75%) DNS
3 6 (7.50%) Firewall
3 6 (7.50%) iSCSI
3 6 (7.50%) Network Security
4 5 (6.25%) LAN
4 5 (6.25%) WAN
5 4 (5.00%) NAS
5 4 (5.00%) TCP/IP
6 3 (3.75%) SMTP
7 2 (2.50%) VPN
8 1 (1.25%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (5.00%) MySQL
2 3 (3.75%) MariaDB
3 2 (2.50%) DB2
3 2 (2.50%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 11 (13.75%) JIRA
2 5 (6.25%) GitLab
2 5 (6.25%) TeamCity
3 3 (3.75%) Jenkins
3 3 (3.75%) Vagrant
4 2 (2.50%) Bitbucket
4 2 (2.50%) Git
5 1 (1.25%) Toad
General
1 23 (28.75%) Social Skills
2 14 (17.50%) Public Sector
3 5 (6.25%) Finance
4 3 (3.75%) Law
4 3 (3.75%) Organisational Skills
4 3 (3.75%) Police
5 2 (2.50%) Local Government
6 1 (1.25%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (8.75%) LDAP
2 3 (3.75%) LAMP
2 3 (3.75%) X-Windows
3 2 (2.50%) Zend Framework
4 1 (1.25%) Elastic Stack
4 1 (1.25%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 6 (7.50%) PKI
2 4 (5.00%) Distributed Computing
2 4 (5.00%) Management Information System
2 4 (5.00%) PMI
3 3 (3.75%) Data Centre
3 3 (3.75%) Enterprise Storage
3 3 (3.75%) Linux Command Line
4 2 (2.50%) Clustering
4 2 (2.50%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.25%) Cloud Native
5 1 (1.25%) Cybercrime
5 1 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.25%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (1.25%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (1.25%) Mainframe
5 1 (1.25%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 30 (37.50%) Windows
2 26 (32.50%) Linux
3 10 (12.50%) Ubuntu
4 9 (11.25%) Windows Server
5 7 (8.75%) CentOS
5 7 (8.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 7 (8.75%) Unix
6 4 (5.00%) AIX
7 3 (3.75%) Debian
7 3 (3.75%) Mac OS
7 3 (3.75%) Windows 10
8 1 (1.25%) Solaris
8 1 (1.25%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (1.25%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (18.75%) DevOps
1 15 (18.75%) Disaster Recovery
2 14 (17.50%) Change Management
3 13 (16.25%) ITIL
4 11 (13.75%) Problem Management
5 10 (12.50%) Containerisation
5 10 (12.50%) ITSM
6 8 (10.00%) Network Management
7 7 (8.75%) Problem-Solving
7 7 (8.75%) Security Patching
8 5 (6.25%) Capacity Planning
8 5 (6.25%) CI/CD
8 5 (6.25%) Cybersecurity
8 5 (6.25%) Infrastructure as Code
8 5 (6.25%) Storage Management
8 5 (6.25%) Task Automation
9 4 (5.00%) High Availability
9 4 (5.00%) Infrastructure Management
9 4 (5.00%) Root Cause Analysis
9 4 (5.00%) Software Deployment
Programming Languages
1 17 (21.25%) Python
2 10 (12.50%) Shell Script
3 8 (10.00%) PowerShell
4 5 (6.25%) Bash
5 4 (5.00%) Perl
6 2 (2.50%) JavaScript
6 2 (2.50%) PHP
7 1 (1.25%) Java
Qualifications
1 15 (18.75%) Security Cleared
2 7 (8.75%) DV Cleared
2 7 (8.75%) SC Cleared
3 4 (5.00%) Degree
3 4 (5.00%) PMI Certification
4 2 (2.50%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.25%) CISSP
5 1 (1.25%) CompTIA Security+
5 1 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.25%) Linux+ Certification
5 1 (1.25%) RHCE
5 1 (1.25%) Sun Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (7.50%) PCI DSS
2 4 (5.00%) QA
3 3 (3.75%) Cyber Essentials
3 3 (3.75%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
3 3 (3.75%) Disclosure Scotland
3 3 (3.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (3.75%) SOC 2
4 2 (2.50%) SLA
5 1 (1.25%) GDPR
System Software
1 18 (22.50%) Active Directory
2 9 (11.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (10.00%) Docker
4 6 (7.50%) Hyper-V
5 3 (3.75%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (2.50%) VirtualBox
6 2 (2.50%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (1.25%) GPFS
7 1 (1.25%) NFS
7 1 (1.25%) Samba
7 1 (1.25%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 13 (16.25%) Ansible
2 9 (11.25%) Terraform
3 8 (10.00%) Progress Chef
3 8 (10.00%) Puppet
4 6 (7.50%) Salt
5 4 (5.00%) Microsoft Intune
6 3 (3.75%) Kubernetes
6 3 (3.75%) Nagios
7 2 (2.50%) EMC NetWorker
7 2 (2.50%) EMC VPLEX
7 2 (2.50%) Icinga
7 2 (2.50%) SCCM
7 2 (2.50%) Tivoli
7 2 (2.50%) Tivoli Storage Manager
8 1 (1.25%) BladeLogic
8 1 (1.25%) Jamf Pro
8 1 (1.25%) SCOM
8 1 (1.25%) SELinux
8 1 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (1.25%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 19 (23.75%) Microsoft
2 18 (22.50%) VMware
3 9 (11.25%) Red Hat
4 8 (10.00%) Oracle
5 6 (7.50%) ServiceNow
6 5 (6.25%) IBM
7 4 (5.00%) NetApp
8 3 (3.75%) Dell
8 3 (3.75%) Rackspace
9 2 (2.50%) Brocade
9 2 (2.50%) Cisco
9 2 (2.50%) EMC
9 2 (2.50%) Isilon
9 2 (2.50%) New Relic
9 2 (2.50%) Zend
10 1 (1.25%) BMC
10 1 (1.25%) Civica
10 1 (1.25%) Google
10 1 (1.25%) HP
10 1 (1.25%) Sun