WSUS Contracts

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for WSUS skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited WSUS over the 6 months to 1 June 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 440 555 714
Rank change year-on-year +115 +159 -74
Contract jobs citing WSUS 135 127 124
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.31% 0.23% 0.14%
As % of the Systems Management category 2.59% 1.44% 0.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 109 89 84
10th Percentile £266 £304 £218
25th Percentile £385 £381 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £475 £432
Median % change year-on-year +21.05% +9.88% +8.08%
75th Percentile £608 £538 £488
90th Percentile - £590 £550
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £500 £438
% change year-on-year +15.00% +14.29% +9.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 9 7
10th Percentile - £36.75 £20.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £47.83 £36.25
Median hourly rate £21.00 £60.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year -65.00% +11.11% +3.85%
75th Percentile £21.50 - £55.75
90th Percentile - £64.50 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £38.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year - +92.50% +33.33%

All Systems Management Skills
UK

WSUS is in the Systems Management category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for systems management skills 5,219 8,830 13,822
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.12% 15.75% 15.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,781 6,309 9,985
10th Percentile £275 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year -6.36% -2.22% +11.17%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £675
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -5.81% +5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 202 182
10th Percentile £14.00 £17.72 £13.42
25th Percentile £20.38 £25.71 £15.56
Median hourly rate £30.00 £57.50 £21.78
Median % change year-on-year -47.83% +164.00% -45.55%
75th Percentile £51.44 £73.74 £43.25
90th Percentile £71.25 £83.68 £58.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £42.75 £20.00
% change year-on-year -6.43% +113.75% -12.74%

WSUS
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing WSUS as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for WSUS in the UK

WSUS
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for WSUS in the UK

WSUS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing WSUS over the 6 months to 1 June 2024.

Daily rate histogram for WSUS in the UK

WSUS
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for WSUS in the UK

WSUS
Top 14 Contract 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 1 June 2024. 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 +105 125 £575 +21.05% 34
UK excluding London +54 114 £575 +15.00% 33
South East +84 92 £575 +43.75% 18
Work from Home +120 33 £605 +80.60% 10
London +88 20 £318 -15.33% 3
Scotland +44 9 £340 +0.74% 3
South West -14 6 £450 -14.29% 5
East of England +7 3 £265 -44.21% 3
Midlands +18 2 £475 -9.52% 3
North of England -5 2 £378 -20.53% 3
West Midlands +12 1 - - 1
North East +11 1 £180 -41.94%
East Midlands +9 1 £475 -9.52% 2
North West +1 1 £575 +21.05% 1

WSUS
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 36 (26.67%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (2.96%) SharePoint
3 3 (2.22%) Exchange Server 2013
3 3 (2.22%) IIS
4 1 (0.74%) Exchange Server 2007
4 1 (0.74%) Exchange Server 2010
4 1 (0.74%) Site Server
4 1 (0.74%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 10 (7.41%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 47 (34.81%) Azure
2 32 (23.70%) Microsoft 365
3 23 (17.04%) Entra ID
4 22 (16.30%) Azure Monitor
5 20 (14.81%) Azure Storage
6 14 (10.37%) OCI
7 12 (8.89%) AWS
8 4 (2.96%) Amazon EC2
9 2 (1.48%) Azure Sentinel
9 2 (1.48%) Microsoft Purview
10 1 (0.74%) Azure DevOps
10 1 (0.74%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (0.74%) GitHub
10 1 (0.74%) IaaS
10 1 (0.74%) Nutanix
10 1 (0.74%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 62 (45.93%) DNS
2 48 (35.56%) DHCP
3 46 (34.07%) Firewall
4 22 (16.30%) SAN
5 16 (11.85%) Wireless
6 11 (8.15%) TCP/IP
7 7 (5.19%) Internet
8 6 (4.44%) VLAN
9 5 (3.70%) NAS
9 5 (3.70%) Remote Desktop
9 5 (3.70%) VSAN
10 4 (2.96%) VPN
11 3 (2.22%) Skype
12 2 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
13 1 (0.74%) Cisco Nexus
13 1 (0.74%) Fibre Channel
13 1 (0.74%) FTP
13 1 (0.74%) NetScaler
13 1 (0.74%) Unified Communications
13 1 (0.74%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (4.44%) SQL Server
2 4 (2.96%) Elasticsearch
2 4 (2.96%) MySQL
2 4 (2.96%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (1.48%) JIRA
2 1 (0.74%) GitLab
General
1 70 (51.85%) Social Skills
2 8 (5.93%) Analytical Skills
2 8 (5.93%) Finance
3 5 (3.70%) Organisational Skills
4 4 (2.96%) Financial Institution
4 4 (2.96%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.22%) Front Office
6 2 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.74%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.74%) Banking
7 1 (0.74%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 31 (22.96%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 21 (15.56%) Support Engineer
3 20 (14.81%) Active Directory Support
3 20 (14.81%) Support Specialist
4 18 (13.33%) Windows Engineer
5 17 (12.59%) Build Engineer
5 17 (12.59%) Windows Build Engineer
6 14 (10.37%) Active Directory Specialist
6 14 (10.37%) Azure Specialist
7 12 (8.89%) Integration Engineer
7 12 (8.89%) Wintel Engineer
8 11 (8.15%) Infrastructure Support
9 10 (7.41%) Storage Engineer
10 7 (5.19%) Azure Engineer
11 6 (4.44%) Active Directory Engineer
11 6 (4.44%) Active Directory Support Engineer
11 6 (4.44%) Infrastructure Specialist
11 6 (4.44%) Infrastructure Support Specialist
11 6 (4.44%) Senior
12 5 (3.70%) 3rd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (14.81%) ARM Templates
2 5 (3.70%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 28 (20.74%) PKI
2 22 (16.30%) Self-Motivation
3 14 (10.37%) Data Centre
4 4 (2.96%) Fat Client
4 4 (2.96%) Thin Client
5 3 (2.22%) Clustering
6 2 (1.48%) BYOD
6 2 (1.48%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (1.48%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (1.48%) Team-Oriented Environment
7 1 (0.74%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.74%) CMDB
7 1 (0.74%) Enterprise Cloud
7 1 (0.74%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.74%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.74%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 126 (93.33%) Windows
2 107 (79.26%) Windows Server
3 64 (47.41%) Windows Server 2019
4 58 (42.96%) Windows Server 2016
5 50 (37.04%) Windows Server 2012
6 46 (34.07%) Linux
7 40 (29.63%) Windows 10
8 17 (12.59%) Windows NT
9 14 (10.37%) Windows XP
10 8 (5.93%) Ubuntu
11 3 (2.22%) Apple iOS
11 3 (2.22%) Unix
11 3 (2.22%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (1.48%) Android
12 2 (1.48%) CentOS
13 1 (0.74%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.74%) VMS
13 1 (0.74%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (51.11%) ITIL
2 47 (34.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 43 (31.85%) Release Management
4 40 (29.63%) Service Management
5 34 (25.19%) Customer Service
6 24 (17.78%) Patch Management
7 23 (17.04%) Problem-Solving
7 23 (17.04%) RBAC
8 22 (16.30%) Agile
8 22 (16.30%) Analytics
8 22 (16.30%) Deployment Automation
8 22 (16.30%) DevOps
8 22 (16.30%) Proactive Monitoring
9 21 (15.56%) Identity Management
10 20 (14.81%) CI/CD
10 20 (14.81%) Infrastructure as Code
10 20 (14.81%) Log Analytics
10 20 (14.81%) Multi-Factor Authentication
10 20 (14.81%) Privileged Identity Management
11 17 (12.59%) Server Management
Programming Languages
1 56 (41.48%) PowerShell
2 21 (15.56%) C#
2 21 (15.56%) VB
3 20 (14.81%) Bicep
3 20 (14.81%) VBScript
4 7 (5.19%) SQL
5 3 (2.22%) Python
5 3 (2.22%) VB.NET
6 2 (1.48%) C++
7 1 (0.74%) Java
Qualifications
1 98 (72.59%) Security Cleared
2 71 (52.59%) DV Cleared
3 52 (38.52%) SC Cleared
4 44 (32.59%) Degree
5 20 (14.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 14 (10.37%) CCNA
6 14 (10.37%) CCNP
6 14 (10.37%) Cisco Certification
7 12 (8.89%) Microsoft Certification
8 9 (6.67%) MCSE
9 7 (5.19%) MCP
10 3 (2.22%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (1.48%) Azure Certification
11 2 (1.48%) CTC Cleared
12 1 (0.74%) BPSS Clearance
12 1 (0.74%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.74%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (12.59%) QA
2 5 (3.70%) SLA
3 3 (2.22%) ISO 9001
3 3 (2.22%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 119 (88.15%) Active Directory
2 55 (40.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (22.96%) Hyper-V
4 29 (21.48%) Virtual Machines
5 26 (19.26%) VMware ESXi
6 23 (17.04%) Firmware
7 20 (14.81%) Virtual Desktop
8 11 (8.15%) vSphere
9 2 (1.48%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.74%) Citrix Presentation Server
10 1 (0.74%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.74%) XenApp
10 1 (0.74%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 82 (60.74%) SCCM
2 35 (25.93%) SCOM
3 26 (19.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 24 (17.78%) vCenter Server
5 23 (17.04%) Microsoft Intune
6 20 (14.81%) Kubernetes
7 17 (12.59%) Sysprep
8 15 (11.11%) NetBackup
9 14 (10.37%) EMC NetWorker
10 11 (8.15%) Nessus
11 5 (3.70%) Ansible
12 4 (2.96%) Red Hat Satellite
12 4 (2.96%) ZABBIX
13 2 (1.48%) AirWatch
13 2 (1.48%) SCDPM
13 2 (1.48%) SCVMM
13 2 (1.48%) Terraform
14 1 (0.74%) Failover Clustering
14 1 (0.74%) Jamf Pro
14 1 (0.74%) VxRail
Vendors
1 106 (78.52%) Microsoft
2 65 (48.15%) VMware
3 22 (16.30%) Veeam
4 20 (14.81%) Cisco
4 20 (14.81%) Oracle
5 18 (13.33%) Dell
6 17 (12.59%) Symantec
7 16 (11.85%) EMC
8 15 (11.11%) HP
8 15 (11.11%) Juniper
8 15 (11.11%) Palo Alto
9 14 (10.37%) 3PAR
9 14 (10.37%) Extreme Networks
10 8 (5.93%) Citrix
11 7 (5.19%) Qualys
11 7 (5.19%) Red Hat
12 6 (4.44%) SolarWinds
13 5 (3.70%) Apple
14 3 (2.22%) Avaya
15 2 (1.48%) Veritas