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 27 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 623 500 442
Rank change year-on-year -123 -58 +115
Contract jobs citing WSUS 51 56 129
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.095% 0.17% 0.33%
As % of the Systems Management category 0.87% 1.23% 2.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 44 103
10th Percentile £239 £327 £262
25th Percentile £369 £438 £345
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £433 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -21.36% - +12.82%
75th Percentile £481 £575 £608
90th Percentile £590 £611 £613
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -18.18% - +12.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 5
10th Percentile £44.86 - -
25th Percentile £64.84 - £20.50
Median hourly rate £74.00 - £21.00
75th Percentile - - £21.50
90th Percentile £74.75 - -
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 5,883 4,545 4,601
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.96% 13.88% 11.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,918 2,955 3,175
10th Percentile £313 £281 £300
25th Percentile £420 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -2.91% -6.36%
75th Percentile £602 £600 £619
90th Percentile £688 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 80 67
10th Percentile £18.25 £13.75 £20.00
25th Percentile £30.75 £18.87 £23.80
Median hourly rate £63.48 £30.00 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +111.60% -17.05% -35.71%
75th Percentile £71.43 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £84.17 £78.83 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.31 £55.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +15.10% +42.86% -16.63%

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 27 August 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 27 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for WSUS in the UK

WSUS
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 WSUS within the UK over the 6 months to 27 August 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 -110 49 £450 -18.18% 17
UK excluding London -108 34 £450 -18.18% 15
London -65 16 £377 -37.17% 4
Midlands - 8 £450 - 1
North of England -66 7 £400 +22.14% 5
East of England -39 6 £450 -18.18%
North West -43 6 £295 -9.92% 4
South West -49 6 £536 +34.00% 2
South East -55 6 £600 +8.60% 7
East Midlands - 6 - - 1
Work from Home -73 3 £450 -19.06% 2
West Midlands - 2 £450 -
Wales - 1 £175 -
Yorkshire - 1 £500 - 1

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 23 (45.10%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (5.88%) Confluence
2 3 (5.88%) IIS
2 3 (5.88%) SharePoint
3 2 (3.92%) Exchange Server 2013
4 1 (1.96%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 15 (29.41%) Microsoft 365
2 8 (15.69%) Azure
3 6 (11.76%) Google Workspace
4 5 (9.80%) Cohesity
5 3 (5.88%) Entra ID
5 3 (5.88%) IaaS
5 3 (5.88%) OneDrive
6 2 (3.92%) AWS
7 1 (1.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (1.96%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (1.96%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (1.96%) Amazon ELB
7 1 (1.96%) Amazon S3
7 1 (1.96%) AWS KMS
7 1 (1.96%) Power Platform
7 1 (1.96%) Route 53
7 1 (1.96%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 32 (62.75%) DNS
2 18 (35.29%) DHCP
3 10 (19.61%) VPN
4 9 (17.65%) Firewall
5 8 (15.69%) SAN
5 8 (15.69%) TCP/IP
6 7 (13.73%) VLAN
7 6 (11.76%) IPv4
7 6 (11.76%) IPv6
8 5 (9.80%) DMZ
8 5 (9.80%) Network Security
8 5 (9.80%) Skype
8 5 (9.80%) VoIP
9 3 (5.88%) VSAN
10 2 (3.92%) LAN
10 2 (3.92%) WAN
11 1 (1.96%) FTP
11 1 (1.96%) HTTP
11 1 (1.96%) SMTP
11 1 (1.96%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (19.61%) SQL Server
2 1 (1.96%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (1.96%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (1.96%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 3 (5.88%) JIRA
2 1 (1.96%) Git
2 1 (1.96%) Jenkins
2 1 (1.96%) Vagrant
General
1 20 (39.22%) Social Skills
2 8 (15.69%) Finance
3 6 (11.76%) Banking
3 6 (11.76%) Documentation Skills
3 6 (11.76%) Investment Banking
4 5 (9.80%) Front Office
4 5 (9.80%) Organisational Skills
5 3 (5.88%) Military
6 2 (3.92%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (3.92%) Legal
6 2 (3.92%) Public Sector
6 2 (3.92%) Spanish Language
7 1 (1.96%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.96%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 19 (37.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 10 (19.61%) IT Engineer
3 7 (13.73%) Support Engineer
4 6 (11.76%) Analyst
4 6 (11.76%) Help Desk Analyst
4 6 (11.76%) IT Analyst
4 6 (11.76%) IT Infrastructure Engineer
4 6 (11.76%) Senior
5 5 (9.80%) Administrator
6 4 (7.84%) Operations Engineer
6 4 (7.84%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
7 3 (5.88%) IT Support
7 3 (5.88%) IT Support Engineer
7 3 (5.88%) Server Engineer
7 3 (5.88%) Windows Engineer
7 3 (5.88%) Wintel Engineer
8 2 (3.92%) 2nd Line Support
8 2 (3.92%) Citrix Administrator
8 2 (3.92%) Desktop Engineer
8 2 (3.92%) IT Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (3.92%) JSON
2 1 (1.96%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 11 (21.57%) Onboarding
2 8 (15.69%) Smartcard
3 6 (11.76%) PKI
3 6 (11.76%) Self-Motivation
3 6 (11.76%) Virtual Team
4 5 (9.80%) Clustering
4 5 (9.80%) YubiKey
5 4 (7.84%) Data Centre
5 4 (7.84%) Fat Client
5 4 (7.84%) Thin Client
6 3 (5.88%) Client/Server
7 1 (1.96%) Driving Licence
7 1 (1.96%) Enterprise Storage
7 1 (1.96%) Life Science
7 1 (1.96%) Replication
7 1 (1.96%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 48 (94.12%) Windows
2 37 (72.55%) Windows Server
3 14 (27.45%) Linux
4 11 (21.57%) Windows Server 2019
5 10 (19.61%) Windows 10
6 8 (15.69%) Windows Server 2012
6 8 (15.69%) Windows Server 2016
7 5 (9.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (7.84%) Ubuntu
9 3 (5.88%) Apple iOS
9 3 (5.88%) Mac OS
10 2 (3.92%) OpenVMS
10 2 (3.92%) VMS
10 2 (3.92%) Windows 7
10 2 (3.92%) Windows Server 2008
11 1 (1.96%) Amazon Linux
11 1 (1.96%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 23 (45.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
2 22 (43.14%) Problem-Solving
3 14 (27.45%) ITIL
4 12 (23.53%) Patch Management
5 10 (19.61%) Service Management
6 8 (15.69%) Software Deployment
7 7 (13.73%) Agile
8 6 (11.76%) Decision-Making
8 6 (11.76%) Deployment Automation
8 6 (11.76%) ITSM
8 6 (11.76%) Server Management
8 6 (11.76%) Service Delivery
9 4 (7.84%) Collaborative Working
9 4 (7.84%) Continuous Improvement
9 4 (7.84%) High Availability
9 4 (7.84%) Internal Audit
9 4 (7.84%) Performance Tuning
9 4 (7.84%) Virtual Environments
10 3 (5.88%) Kalman Filter
10 3 (5.88%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 10 (19.61%) PowerShell
2 4 (7.84%) SQL
3 1 (1.96%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 27 (52.94%) Security Cleared
2 14 (27.45%) SC Cleared
3 13 (25.49%) DV Cleared
4 8 (15.69%) Degree
5 4 (7.84%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (5.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (5.88%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 3 (5.88%) MCSA
7 2 (3.92%) Azure Certification
8 1 (1.96%) AWS Certification
8 1 (1.96%) MCSE
8 1 (1.96%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (3.92%) JSP 440
1 2 (3.92%) SLA
System Software
1 30 (58.82%) Active Directory
2 19 (37.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 11 (21.57%) Hyper-V
4 4 (7.84%) vSphere
5 3 (5.88%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (5.88%) VMware NSX
6 2 (3.92%) XenApp
6 2 (3.92%) XenDesktop
7 1 (1.96%) BitLocker
7 1 (1.96%) DFS Replication
7 1 (1.96%) Docker
7 1 (1.96%) Dovecot
7 1 (1.96%) Postfix
7 1 (1.96%) Squid
7 1 (1.96%) Virtual Desktop
7 1 (1.96%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 23 (45.10%) SCCM
2 6 (11.76%) Nessus
3 5 (9.80%) Failover Clustering
4 2 (3.92%) FortiGate
4 2 (3.92%) NetBackup
5 1 (1.96%) Ansible
5 1 (1.96%) Grafana
5 1 (1.96%) Microsoft Clustering
5 1 (1.96%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.96%) NetApp OnCommand
5 1 (1.96%) OPNET
5 1 (1.96%) Progress Chef
5 1 (1.96%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.96%) Proxmox
5 1 (1.96%) vCenter Server
5 1 (1.96%) vMotion
Vendors
1 26 (50.98%) Microsoft
2 22 (43.14%) VMware
3 20 (39.22%) Citrix
4 8 (15.69%) Cisco
5 5 (9.80%) Bloomberg
5 5 (9.80%) ION Trading
5 5 (9.80%) Red Hat
5 5 (9.80%) Reuters
5 5 (9.80%) Tenable
6 3 (5.88%) Apple
6 3 (5.88%) McAfee
6 3 (5.88%) NVIDIA
7 2 (3.92%) Google
7 2 (3.92%) Oracle
7 2 (3.92%) SolarWinds
7 2 (3.92%) Splunk
7 2 (3.92%) Tanium
7 2 (3.92%) Veeam
7 2 (3.92%) Veritas
8 1 (1.96%) SAP