Windows Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft Windows
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Windows skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -4 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,759 2,247 2,867
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.02% 8.12% 8.62%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.72% 60.78% 60.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,775 1,521 1,952
10th Percentile £170 £170 £178
25th Percentile £225 £225 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -8.89% +5.88%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £656
UK median daily rate £425 £415 £450
% change year-on-year +2.41% -7.78% +3.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 186 201
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.12 £11.07
25th Percentile £18.13 £17.36 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.76 £18.87 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.51% -10.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £60.25 £28.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £20.00 £21.80
% change year-on-year +28.75% -8.26% -3.11%

All Operating Systems
England

Windows falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring operating system skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 4,470 3,697 4,751
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.76% 13.36% 14.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,872 2,445 3,163
10th Percentile £190 £191 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -8.16% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £669 £688 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £460 £475
% change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 234 292
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.43
25th Percentile £19.29 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £35.22 £23.00 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +53.13% -35.36% -11.04%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.94 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £24.58 £30.00
% change year-on-year +5.78% -18.07% -25.00%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Windows job vacancy trend in England

Windows
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows

Windows
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows in England over the 6 months to 15 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Windows in England

Windows
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Windows

Windows
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows in England over the 6 months to 15 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in England

Windows
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Windows within the England region over the 6 months to 15 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
London -12 920 £425 - 812
South East -8 582 £475 -3.06% 373
North of England -6 497 £335 +3.08% 294
South West -13 288 £488 +35.42% 159
North West -1 286 £350 - 165
Midlands -20 262 £400 - 148
East of England -3 192 £338 +6.22% 160
Yorkshire -17 185 £335 +21.82% 95
West Midlands -31 168 £430 -1.71% 99
East Midlands +5 90 £270 +35.00% 49
North East -36 30 £250 -4.76% 44
Windows
UK

Windows
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 235 (8.52%) Microsoft Exchange
2 227 (8.23%) SharePoint
3 59 (2.14%) Confluence
4 57 (2.07%) IIS
5 19 (0.69%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.58%) Apache
6 16 (0.58%) nginx
7 12 (0.43%) Tomcat
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.22%) Documentum
11 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Camunda
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
14 2 (0.072%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 172 (6.23%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.14%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.11%) Houdini
7 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.11%) NUKE
8 2 (0.072%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.036%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.036%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.036%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 57 (2.07%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.36%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.18%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.072%) assyst
7 1 (0.036%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.036%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP BRIM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.036%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.036%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 885 (32.08%) Azure
2 873 (31.64%) Microsoft 365
3 444 (16.09%) Entra ID
4 306 (11.09%) AWS
5 127 (4.60%) OneDrive
6 101 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
7 91 (3.30%) GCP
8 74 (2.68%) SaaS
9 71 (2.57%) Azure Monitor
10 66 (2.39%) IaaS
11 65 (2.36%) Power Platform
12 63 (2.28%) GitHub
13 50 (1.81%) PaaS
14 41 (1.49%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (0.98%) OpenShift
16 26 (0.94%) Google Workspace
17 24 (0.87%) Azure AKS
18 23 (0.83%) Datadog
18 23 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 449 (16.27%) DNS
2 332 (12.03%) Firewall
3 320 (11.60%) DHCP
4 227 (8.23%) VPN
5 207 (7.50%) TCP/IP
6 144 (5.22%) LAN
7 141 (5.11%) WAN
8 130 (4.71%) Wi-Fi
9 91 (3.30%) SAN
10 75 (2.72%) VLAN
11 67 (2.43%) Network Security
12 44 (1.59%) NAS
12 44 (1.59%) SSL
13 43 (1.56%) BGP
14 39 (1.41%) VSAN
15 38 (1.38%) Internet
16 37 (1.34%) Wireless
17 35 (1.27%) Skype
18 32 (1.16%) OSPF
19 26 (0.94%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 266 (9.64%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.88%) Power BI
3 51 (1.85%) Oracle Database
4 25 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 23 (0.83%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.80%) MySQL
6 22 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 13 (0.47%) Db2
10 11 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
10 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
11 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
11 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
12 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
13 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.18%) Big Data
13 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 157 (5.69%) JIRA
2 65 (2.36%) Git
3 48 (1.74%) MSI
4 44 (1.59%) Jenkins
5 38 (1.38%) GitLab
6 32 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.62%) Eclipse
8 16 (0.58%) Bitbucket
9 10 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.29%) Artifactory
10 8 (0.29%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.25%) Selenium
11 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
13 4 (0.14%) Android Studio
13 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
13 4 (0.14%) Robot Framework
13 4 (0.14%) Xcode
General
1 1,012 (36.68%) Social Skills
2 338 (12.25%) Finance
3 336 (12.18%) Analytical Skills
4 158 (5.73%) Banking
5 148 (5.36%) Public Sector
6 94 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
7 77 (2.79%) Legal
8 73 (2.65%) Organisational Skills
9 60 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 54 (1.96%) Retail
11 50 (1.81%) Manufacturing
12 42 (1.52%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.49%) Front Office
14 38 (1.38%) Military
15 36 (1.30%) Law
16 35 (1.27%) Investment Banking
17 28 (1.01%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.91%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.83%) French Language
20 19 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 431 (15.62%) Support Engineer
2 375 (13.59%) IT Support
3 291 (10.55%) IT Engineer
4 284 (10.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 243 (8.81%) Analyst
6 242 (8.77%) IT Support Engineer
7 223 (8.08%) Senior
8 126 (4.57%) 2nd Line Support
9 119 (4.31%) Desktop Support
10 112 (4.06%) Architect
11 106 (3.84%) Desktop Engineer
12 104 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
13 102 (3.70%) Lead
14 94 (3.41%) Support Analyst
15 92 (3.33%) Developer
16 83 (3.01%) Windows Engineer
17 78 (2.83%) Consultant
17 78 (2.83%) IT Analyst
18 76 (2.75%) 1st Line Support
19 72 (2.61%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (4.02%) .NET
2 99 (3.59%) REST
3 62 (2.25%) .NET Framework
4 29 (1.05%) WPF
5 28 (1.01%) 802.1X
5 28 (1.01%) JSON
5 28 (1.01%) LDAP
5 28 (1.01%) Middleware
6 26 (0.94%) WinForms
7 23 (0.83%) CSS
8 21 (0.76%) HTML
8 21 (0.76%) Web Services
9 20 (0.72%) ARM Templates
10 19 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
10 19 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
11 18 (0.65%) .NET Core
11 18 (0.65%) Kafka
11 18 (0.65%) Software Packaging
12 17 (0.62%) RESTful
12 17 (0.62%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 320 (11.60%) Onboarding
2 156 (5.65%) Data Centre
3 152 (5.51%) PKI
4 94 (3.41%) Clustering
5 81 (2.94%) Management Information System
6 77 (2.79%) Hybrid Cloud
7 73 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
8 72 (2.61%) Cloud Native
9 62 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
10 61 (2.21%) Video Conferencing
11 54 (1.96%) Driving Licence
12 53 (1.92%) Replication
13 46 (1.67%) Security Posture
14 44 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
15 40 (1.45%) Virtual Team
16 38 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
17 34 (1.23%) CMDB
18 32 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
19 30 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
19 30 (1.09%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 724 (26.24%) Windows Server
2 668 (24.21%) Linux
3 483 (17.51%) Windows 10
4 179 (6.49%) Mac OS
5 124 (4.49%) Apple iOS
6 123 (4.46%) Android
7 113 (4.10%) Unix
8 109 (3.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 68 (2.46%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.70%) Windows 7
11 42 (1.52%) Ubuntu
12 39 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
13 36 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
14 29 (1.05%) AIX
15 27 (0.98%) CentOS
16 20 (0.72%) VMS
17 19 (0.69%) Windows Server 2008
18 17 (0.62%) Solaris
19 12 (0.43%) Windows Server 2003
20 10 (0.36%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 680 (24.65%) Problem-Solving
2 508 (18.41%) ITIL
3 426 (15.44%) Customer Service
4 365 (13.23%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 357 (12.94%) ITSM
6 326 (11.82%) Migration
7 283 (10.26%) Continuous Improvement
8 275 (9.97%) DevOps
9 254 (9.21%) Service Management
10 249 (9.03%) Agile
11 246 (8.92%) CI/CD
12 222 (8.05%) Infrastructure as Code
13 203 (7.36%) Change Management
14 192 (6.96%) Stakeholder Management
15 181 (6.56%) High Availability
16 169 (6.13%) Disaster Recovery
17 160 (5.80%) Cybersecurity
18 157 (5.69%) Service Delivery
19 152 (5.51%) Incident Management
19 152 (5.51%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 692 (25.08%) PowerShell
2 303 (10.98%) Python
3 278 (10.08%) SQL
4 168 (6.09%) Bash
5 139 (5.04%) C#
6 68 (2.46%) JavaScript
7 67 (2.43%) Java
8 50 (1.81%) T-SQL
9 46 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 45 (1.63%) Bicep
11 44 (1.59%) C++
12 28 (1.01%) VB
13 25 (0.91%) VBScript
14 24 (0.87%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.62%) Perl
15 17 (0.62%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.62%) TypeScript
16 12 (0.43%) C
17 11 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
17 11 (0.40%) VBA
Qualifications
1 876 (31.75%) Security Cleared
2 529 (19.17%) SC Cleared
3 326 (11.82%) DV Cleared
4 281 (10.18%) Degree
5 109 (3.95%) Microsoft Certification
6 82 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
7 81 (2.94%) Azure Certification
8 74 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (2.25%) CISSP
10 51 (1.85%) AWS Certification
11 47 (1.70%) A+ Certification
12 45 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
13 39 (1.41%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 32 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 29 (1.05%) MCSE
16 28 (1.01%) CCNA
17 27 (0.98%) CCNP
18 25 (0.91%) CISM
18 25 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.83%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 140 (5.07%) SLA
2 109 (3.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 81 (2.94%) NIST
4 78 (2.83%) QA
5 28 (1.01%) NCSC
6 27 (0.98%) GDPR
7 26 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
8 22 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (0.47%) Accessibility
11 12 (0.43%) Data Quality
12 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.40%) WCAG
13 10 (0.36%) GRC
14 9 (0.33%) PMO
15 8 (0.29%) NIST 800
16 7 (0.25%) GxP
16 7 (0.25%) SOC 2
17 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,127 (40.85%) Active Directory
2 395 (14.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 166 (6.02%) Hyper-V
4 133 (4.82%) VMware ESXi
5 116 (4.20%) vSphere
6 101 (3.66%) Docker
7 94 (3.41%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.97%) VMware NSX
9 78 (2.83%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (1.45%) BitLocker
11 32 (1.16%) Firmware
12 20 (0.72%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.72%) vCloud
13 13 (0.47%) Virtual Servers
14 12 (0.43%) KVM
15 8 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.25%) NFS
17 6 (0.22%) XenApp
17 6 (0.22%) XenDesktop
18 5 (0.18%) UAG
Systems Management
1 410 (14.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 276 (10.00%) SCCM
3 249 (9.03%) Terraform
4 217 (7.87%) Ansible
5 153 (5.55%) Kubernetes
6 116 (4.20%) vCenter Server
7 77 (2.79%) SCOM
8 46 (1.67%) Jamf Pro
9 45 (1.63%) WSUS
10 37 (1.34%) FortiGate
11 36 (1.30%) Progress Chef
12 32 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
13 29 (1.05%) Puppet
14 24 (0.87%) Grafana
14 24 (0.87%) Packer
15 23 (0.83%) Nagios
15 23 (0.83%) Prometheus
15 23 (0.83%) VxRail
15 23 (0.83%) WMI
16 20 (0.72%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,275 (46.21%) Microsoft
2 537 (19.46%) VMware
3 326 (11.82%) ServiceNow
4 184 (6.67%) Cisco
5 171 (6.20%) Citrix
6 157 (5.69%) Oracle
7 116 (4.20%) Splunk
8 87 (3.15%) Apple
9 85 (3.08%) CyberArk
10 80 (2.90%) SolarWinds
11 71 (2.57%) Google
12 65 (2.36%) Remedy
13 64 (2.32%) HP
14 63 (2.28%) Red Hat
15 58 (2.10%) BeyondTrust
16 51 (1.85%) Dell
17 50 (1.81%) Juniper
18 46 (1.67%) BMC
19 41 (1.49%) F5
20 40 (1.45%) IBM