WSUS Contract Job Trends

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring WSUS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 24 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 636 504 456
Rank change year-on-year -132 -48 +74
Contract jobs citing WSUS 44 55 113
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.080% 0.17% 0.30%
As % of the Systems Management category 0.73% 1.19% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 46 97
10th Percentile £208 £340 £265
25th Percentile £328 £525 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% - +10.00%
75th Percentile £486 £575 £608
90th Percentile £666 £604 £618
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -18.18% - +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 0
10th Percentile £58.18 - -
25th Percentile £72.13 - -
Median hourly rate £74.00 - -
75th Percentile - - -
90th Percentile £75.25 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £74.00 - -

All Systems Management Skills
UK

WSUS falls under the Systems Management category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring systems management skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 6,060 4,633 4,592
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.04% 14.05% 12.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,013 2,992 3,063
10th Percentile £313 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £609 £600 £625
90th Percentile £694 £688 £707
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.44% -4.25% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 207 94 61
10th Percentile £18.25 £13.75 £19.95
25th Percentile £25.75 £18.87 £24.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £26.23 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +147.86% -31.88% -30.00%
75th Percentile £73.88 £63.00 £64.50
90th Percentile £87.38 £67.18 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £21.39 £38.50
% change year-on-year +203.88% -44.44% -18.09%

WSUS
Job Vacancy Trend

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

WSUS job vacancy trend in the UK

WSUS
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing WSUS

WSUS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing WSUS over the 6 months to 24 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for WSUS in the UK

WSUS
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing WSUS

WSUS
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing WSUS over the 6 months to 24 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for WSUS in the UK

WSUS
Top 13 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing WSUS within the UK over the 6 months to 24 September 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 -136 42 £450 -18.18% 14
UK excluding London -112 30 £450 -18.18% 9
London -81 13 £350 -40.43% 5
South West -42 9 £560 +1.73% 2
Midlands - 7 £450 -
North West -48 6 £295 -9.23% 1
North of England -62 6 £295 -9.23% 2
East of England -47 5 £450 -18.18% 2
East Midlands - 5 - -
South East -66 2 - - 3
Work from Home -75 2 £425 -20.93% 2
West Midlands - 2 £450 -
Wales - 1 £175 -

WSUS
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 24 (54.55%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (9.09%) Confluence
3 3 (6.82%) IIS
3 3 (6.82%) SharePoint
4 2 (4.55%) Exchange Server 2013
5 1 (2.27%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 12 (27.27%) Microsoft 365
2 7 (15.91%) Azure
3 5 (11.36%) Cohesity
4 4 (9.09%) Google Workspace
5 3 (6.82%) Entra ID
5 3 (6.82%) IaaS
5 3 (6.82%) OneDrive
6 2 (4.55%) AWS
7 1 (2.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (2.27%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (2.27%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (2.27%) Amazon ELB
7 1 (2.27%) Amazon S3
7 1 (2.27%) AWS KMS
7 1 (2.27%) Power Platform
7 1 (2.27%) Route 53
7 1 (2.27%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 32 (72.73%) DNS
2 19 (43.18%) DHCP
3 8 (18.18%) SAN
3 8 (18.18%) VPN
4 6 (13.64%) Firewall
4 6 (13.64%) Skype
4 6 (13.64%) VLAN
5 5 (11.36%) IPv4
5 5 (11.36%) IPv6
5 5 (11.36%) Network Security
5 5 (11.36%) TCP/IP
5 5 (11.36%) VoIP
6 3 (6.82%) DMZ
7 1 (2.27%) FTP
7 1 (2.27%) HTTPS
7 1 (2.27%) IMAP
7 1 (2.27%) OpenLDAP
7 1 (2.27%) SMTP
7 1 (2.27%) SSH
7 1 (2.27%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (20.45%) SQL Server
2 1 (2.27%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (2.27%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (2.27%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (2.27%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 3 (6.82%) JIRA
2 1 (2.27%) Git
2 1 (2.27%) Jenkins
2 1 (2.27%) Vagrant
General
1 14 (31.82%) Social Skills
2 7 (15.91%) Finance
3 5 (11.36%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (11.36%) Documentation Skills
4 4 (9.09%) Organisational Skills
5 3 (6.82%) Banking
5 3 (6.82%) Front Office
5 3 (6.82%) Investment Banking
5 3 (6.82%) Military
5 3 (6.82%) Public Sector
6 1 (2.27%) Financial Institution
6 1 (2.27%) Legal
6 1 (2.27%) Manufacturing
6 1 (2.27%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 18 (40.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 9 (20.45%) IT Engineer
3 7 (15.91%) Support Engineer
4 5 (11.36%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
4 5 (11.36%) Senior
5 4 (9.09%) Administrator
5 4 (9.09%) Operations Engineer
5 4 (9.09%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
5 4 (9.09%) Wintel Engineer
6 3 (6.82%) Analyst
6 3 (6.82%) Help Desk Analyst
6 3 (6.82%) IT Analyst
6 3 (6.82%) IT Support
6 3 (6.82%) IT Support Engineer
7 2 (4.55%) 2nd Line Engineer
7 2 (4.55%) 2nd Line Support
7 2 (4.55%) Citrix Administrator
7 2 (4.55%) Desktop Engineer
7 2 (4.55%) Infrastructure Support
7 2 (4.55%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (4.55%) JSON
2 1 (2.27%) Middleware
2 1 (2.27%) REST
2 1 (2.27%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 8 (18.18%) Onboarding
1 8 (18.18%) PKI
1 8 (18.18%) Smartcard
2 5 (11.36%) Clustering
2 5 (11.36%) Self-Motivation
2 5 (11.36%) Virtual Team
2 5 (11.36%) YubiKey
3 4 (9.09%) Data Centre
4 3 (6.82%) Fat Client
4 3 (6.82%) Thin Client
5 2 (4.55%) Client/Server
6 1 (2.27%) CMDB
6 1 (2.27%) Driving Licence
6 1 (2.27%) Enterprise Storage
6 1 (2.27%) Life Science
6 1 (2.27%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 42 (95.45%) Windows
2 34 (77.27%) Windows Server
3 11 (25.00%) Linux
4 9 (20.45%) Windows 10
5 8 (18.18%) Windows Server 2012
6 7 (15.91%) Windows Server 2019
7 6 (13.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 6 (13.64%) Windows Server 2016
8 3 (6.82%) Apple iOS
8 3 (6.82%) Mac OS
8 3 (6.82%) Windows Server 2008
9 2 (4.55%) OpenVMS
9 2 (4.55%) VMS
9 2 (4.55%) Windows 7
10 1 (2.27%) Amazon Linux
10 1 (2.27%) CentOS
10 1 (2.27%) Ubuntu
10 1 (2.27%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (47.73%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 20 (45.45%) Problem-Solving
3 14 (31.82%) ITIL
4 11 (25.00%) Patch Management
4 11 (25.00%) Service Management
5 7 (15.91%) ITSM
5 7 (15.91%) Server Management
6 6 (13.64%) Software Deployment
7 5 (11.36%) Agile
7 5 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
7 5 (11.36%) Decision-Making
7 5 (11.36%) Runbook
8 4 (9.09%) Collaborative Working
8 4 (9.09%) Deployment Automation
8 4 (9.09%) High Availability
8 4 (9.09%) Performance Tuning
8 4 (9.09%) Service Delivery
9 3 (6.82%) Change Management
9 3 (6.82%) Server Hardening
9 3 (6.82%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 9 (20.45%) PowerShell
2 6 (13.64%) SQL
3 1 (2.27%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 25 (56.82%) Security Cleared
2 13 (29.55%) DV Cleared
3 11 (25.00%) SC Cleared
4 6 (13.64%) Degree
5 3 (6.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (4.55%) Azure Certification
6 2 (4.55%) MCSE
7 1 (2.27%) AWS Certification
7 1 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (2.27%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 1 (2.27%) MCSA
7 1 (2.27%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (4.55%) SLA
2 1 (2.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (2.27%) JSP 440
System Software
1 31 (70.45%) Active Directory
2 15 (34.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (27.27%) Hyper-V
4 2 (4.55%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (4.55%) XenApp
4 2 (4.55%) XenDesktop
5 1 (2.27%) BitLocker
5 1 (2.27%) DFS Replication
5 1 (2.27%) Docker
5 1 (2.27%) Dovecot
5 1 (2.27%) Postfix
5 1 (2.27%) Squid
5 1 (2.27%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (2.27%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 21 (47.73%) SCCM
2 6 (13.64%) Nessus
3 5 (11.36%) Failover Clustering
4 3 (6.82%) OPNET
5 2 (4.55%) NetBackup
6 1 (2.27%) Ansible
6 1 (2.27%) FortiGate
6 1 (2.27%) Grafana
6 1 (2.27%) McAfee ePO
6 1 (2.27%) Microsoft Clustering
6 1 (2.27%) NetApp OnCommand
6 1 (2.27%) Prometheus
6 1 (2.27%) Proxmox
6 1 (2.27%) Red Hat Satellite
6 1 (2.27%) SCOM
6 1 (2.27%) SolarWinds Orion
6 1 (2.27%) vCenter Server
6 1 (2.27%) vMotion
6 1 (2.27%) WMI
Vendors
1 25 (56.82%) Microsoft
2 18 (40.91%) VMware
3 17 (38.64%) Citrix
4 8 (18.18%) Cisco
5 5 (11.36%) Red Hat
5 5 (11.36%) Tenable
6 4 (9.09%) McAfee
7 3 (6.82%) Apple
7 3 (6.82%) Bloomberg
7 3 (6.82%) ION Trading
7 3 (6.82%) Reuters
8 2 (4.55%) Google
8 2 (4.55%) Oracle
8 2 (4.55%) SolarWinds
8 2 (4.55%) Tanium
8 2 (4.55%) Veeam
8 2 (4.55%) Veritas
9 1 (2.27%) Jaspersoft
9 1 (2.27%) ServiceNow
9 1 (2.27%) Splunk