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 15 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
15 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 449 581 728
Rank change year-on-year +132 +147 -112
Contract jobs citing WSUS 125 119 129
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.29% 0.21% 0.15%
As % of the Systems Management category 2.46% 1.30% 0.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 104 85 84
10th Percentile £278 £300 £223
25th Percentile £406 £363 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £475 £426
Median % change year-on-year +21.05% +11.63% +6.38%
75th Percentile £608 £538 £488
90th Percentile - £595 £573
UK excluding London median daily rate £575 £488 £426
% change year-on-year +17.95% +14.44% +6.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 8 9
10th Percentile - - £20.00
25th Percentile £20.50 £36.75 £37.25
Median hourly rate £21.00 £60.00 £54.00
Median % change year-on-year -65.00% +11.11% +3.85%
75th Percentile £21.50 £61.13 -
90th Percentile - £64.50 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £38.50 £29.86
% change year-on-year - +28.92% +99.08%

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 5,079 9,138 13,916
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.94% 16.00% 15.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,654 6,565 10,050
10th Percentile £263 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £560 £565
Median % change year-on-year -8.13% -0.88% +13.00%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £675
90th Percentile £700 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -5.86% +5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 200 180
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.25 £13.82
25th Percentile £17.72 £22.67 £15.75
Median hourly rate £25.77 £55.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -53.15% +144.44% -43.75%
75th Percentile £50.06 £70.00 £47.25
90th Percentile £71.25 £83.08 £62.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.75 £42.50 £20.00
% change year-on-year -32.35% +112.50% -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 15 May 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 13 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 15 May 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 +117 118 £575 +21.05% 39
UK excluding London +61 103 £575 +17.95% 39
South East +87 86 £575 +43.75% 17
Work from Home +128 29 £605 +95.16% 11
London +101 21 £343 +5.38% 4
Scotland +50 6 £340 -24.44% 5
South West +4 5 £503 -8.64% 5
East of England +14 3 £265 -44.21% 4
North of England -6 2 £378 -20.53% 3
Midlands +25 1 £475 -9.52% 5
North East +11 1 £180 -41.94%
East Midlands +11 1 £475 -9.52% 3
North West 0 1 £575 +21.05% 2

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 29 (23.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 3 (2.40%) IIS
2 3 (2.40%) SharePoint
3 2 (1.60%) Skype for Business
4 1 (0.80%) Confluence
4 1 (0.80%) Exchange Server 2007
4 1 (0.80%) Exchange Server 2010
4 1 (0.80%) Exchange Server 2013
4 1 (0.80%) Site Server
Applications
1 11 (8.80%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 44 (35.20%) Azure
2 28 (22.40%) Microsoft 365
3 19 (15.20%) Entra ID
4 17 (13.60%) Azure Monitor
4 17 (13.60%) Azure Storage
5 14 (11.20%) OCI
6 13 (10.40%) AWS
7 6 (4.80%) Amazon EC2
8 2 (1.60%) IaaS
9 1 (0.80%) Amazon S3
9 1 (0.80%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (0.80%) Cloud Computing
9 1 (0.80%) GitHub
9 1 (0.80%) Nutanix
9 1 (0.80%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 60 (48.00%) DNS
2 47 (37.60%) DHCP
3 42 (33.60%) Firewall
4 22 (17.60%) SAN
5 14 (11.20%) Wireless
6 8 (6.40%) TCP/IP
7 7 (5.60%) Internet
8 6 (4.80%) Remote Desktop
9 5 (4.00%) NAS
9 5 (4.00%) VPN
9 5 (4.00%) VSAN
10 4 (3.20%) Skype
11 3 (2.40%) VLAN
12 2 (1.60%) Unified Communications
12 2 (1.60%) Wi-Fi
13 1 (0.80%) Cisco Nexus
13 1 (0.80%) Fibre Channel
13 1 (0.80%) NetScaler
13 1 (0.80%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (3.20%) Elasticsearch
1 4 (3.20%) MySQL
1 4 (3.20%) PostgreSQL
1 4 (3.20%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 4 (3.20%) JIRA
2 1 (0.80%) GitLab
General
1 69 (55.20%) Social Skills
2 8 (6.40%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (4.80%) Finance
4 5 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
4 5 (4.00%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.40%) Financial Institution
5 3 (2.40%) Front Office
6 1 (0.80%) Aerospace
6 1 (0.80%) Banking
6 1 (0.80%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (0.80%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 31 (24.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 20 (16.00%) Windows Engineer
3 19 (15.20%) Build Engineer
3 19 (15.20%) Windows Build Engineer
4 18 (14.40%) Support Specialist
5 17 (13.60%) Active Directory Support
6 16 (12.80%) Support Engineer
7 14 (11.20%) Active Directory Specialist
7 14 (11.20%) Azure Specialist
8 11 (8.80%) Integration Engineer
9 10 (8.00%) Storage Engineer
10 9 (7.20%) Infrastructure Support
10 9 (7.20%) Wintel Engineer
11 7 (5.60%) Senior
12 5 (4.00%) 3rd Line Engineer
12 5 (4.00%) Azure Engineer
12 5 (4.00%) Desktop Analyst
12 5 (4.00%) Desktop Support Analyst
12 5 (4.00%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
12 5 (4.00%) Server Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (13.60%) ARM Templates
2 5 (4.00%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 26 (20.80%) PKI
2 19 (15.20%) Self-Motivation
3 14 (11.20%) Data Centre
4 4 (3.20%) Fat Client
4 4 (3.20%) Thin Client
5 3 (2.40%) Clustering
6 2 (1.60%) BYOD
6 2 (1.60%) Team-Oriented Environment
7 1 (0.80%) Client/Server
7 1 (0.80%) CMDB
7 1 (0.80%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.80%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.80%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 119 (95.20%) Windows
2 101 (80.80%) Windows Server
3 60 (48.00%) Windows Server 2019
4 54 (43.20%) Windows Server 2016
5 50 (40.00%) Windows Server 2012
6 44 (35.20%) Linux
6 44 (35.20%) Windows 10
7 19 (15.20%) Windows NT
8 14 (11.20%) Windows XP
9 8 (6.40%) Ubuntu
10 3 (2.40%) Apple iOS
10 3 (2.40%) Unix
10 3 (2.40%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (1.60%) Android
11 2 (1.60%) CentOS
11 2 (1.60%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.80%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.80%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (52.00%) ITIL
2 47 (37.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 42 (33.60%) Release Management
4 40 (32.00%) Service Management
5 32 (25.60%) Customer Service
6 24 (19.20%) Patch Management
7 23 (18.40%) Deployment Automation
8 22 (17.60%) Problem-Solving
9 20 (16.00%) Agile
9 20 (16.00%) Proactive Monitoring
9 20 (16.00%) RBAC
10 19 (15.20%) Analytics
10 19 (15.20%) DevOps
10 19 (15.20%) User Acceptance Testing
11 18 (14.40%) Server Management
12 17 (13.60%) CI/CD
12 17 (13.60%) Infrastructure as Code
12 17 (13.60%) Log Analytics
12 17 (13.60%) Multi-Factor Authentication
12 17 (13.60%) Privileged Identity Management
Programming Languages
1 54 (43.20%) PowerShell
2 18 (14.40%) C#
2 18 (14.40%) VB
3 17 (13.60%) Bicep
3 17 (13.60%) VBScript
4 8 (6.40%) SQL
5 3 (2.40%) Python
5 3 (2.40%) VB.NET
6 2 (1.60%) C++
7 1 (0.80%) Java
Qualifications
1 90 (72.00%) Security Cleared
2 66 (52.80%) DV Cleared
3 47 (37.60%) SC Cleared
4 41 (32.80%) Degree
5 17 (13.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
6 15 (12.00%) CCNA
6 15 (12.00%) CCNP
6 15 (12.00%) Cisco Certification
7 10 (8.00%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (5.60%) MCSE
9 4 (3.20%) ITIL Certification
10 3 (2.40%) MCP
11 2 (1.60%) Azure Certification
11 2 (1.60%) CTC Cleared
12 1 (0.80%) BPSS Clearance
12 1 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
12 1 (0.80%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 19 (15.20%) QA
2 5 (4.00%) SLA
3 3 (2.40%) ISO 9001
3 3 (2.40%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 109 (87.20%) Active Directory
2 52 (41.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 25 (20.00%) Firmware
3 25 (20.00%) Hyper-V
3 25 (20.00%) Virtual Machines
3 25 (20.00%) VMware ESXi
4 17 (13.60%) Virtual Desktop
5 10 (8.00%) vSphere
6 2 (1.60%) Virtual Servers
6 2 (1.60%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.80%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 1 (0.80%) XenApp
7 1 (0.80%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 75 (60.00%) SCCM
2 33 (26.40%) SCOM
3 25 (20.00%) vCenter Server
4 23 (18.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 21 (16.80%) Microsoft Intune
6 19 (15.20%) Sysprep
7 17 (13.60%) Kubernetes
8 15 (12.00%) NetBackup
9 14 (11.20%) EMC NetWorker
10 7 (5.60%) Nessus
11 5 (4.00%) Ansible
12 4 (3.20%) Red Hat Satellite
12 4 (3.20%) ZABBIX
13 2 (1.60%) AirWatch
13 2 (1.60%) Terraform
14 1 (0.80%) FortiGate
14 1 (0.80%) Jamf Pro
14 1 (0.80%) Norton AntiVirus
14 1 (0.80%) SolarWinds Orion
14 1 (0.80%) VxRail
Vendors
1 99 (79.20%) Microsoft
2 61 (48.80%) VMware
3 23 (18.40%) Veeam
4 22 (17.60%) Cisco
5 19 (15.20%) Dell
5 19 (15.20%) Oracle
6 16 (12.80%) EMC
6 16 (12.80%) Symantec
7 15 (12.00%) Juniper
7 15 (12.00%) Palo Alto
8 14 (11.20%) 3PAR
8 14 (11.20%) Extreme Networks
8 14 (11.20%) HP
9 8 (6.40%) Red Hat
10 7 (5.60%) SolarWinds
11 6 (4.80%) Apple
12 5 (4.00%) Citrix
13 4 (3.20%) Qualys
14 2 (1.60%) Rapid7
14 2 (1.60%) Splunk