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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,724 2,260 2,865
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.98% 8.12% 8.63%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.82% 60.74% 60.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,743 1,525 1,953
10th Percentile £170 £171 £178
25th Percentile £225 £225 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -8.89% +4.65%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £672 £659
UK median daily rate £425 £415 £448
% change year-on-year +2.41% -7.31% +2.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 185 203
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.21 £11.07
25th Percentile £18.13 £17.33 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -10.14% -12.50%
75th Percentile £59.75 £28.00 £58.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £19.68 £21.80
% change year-on-year +27.03% -9.72% -7.23%

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 4,406 3,721 4,714
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.67% 13.37% 14.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,821 2,464 3,144
10th Percentile £190 £198 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £454 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.47% -7.20% -2.10%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £669 £685 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £461 £475
% change year-on-year +2.87% -2.89% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 232 294
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.44
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £33.32 £23.00 £34.50
Median % change year-on-year +44.85% -33.33% -16.96%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.56
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £24.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +7.38% -12.73% -35.29%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -14 904 £425 - 831
South East -8 584 £475 -3.06% 366
North of England -6 472 £325 -1.52% 263
South West -12 282 £488 +27.45% 167
Midlands -19 266 £400 - 142
North West -4 262 £340 -4.10% 161
East of England -2 199 £340 +36.00% 161
Yorkshire -19 186 £338 +8.16% 74
West Midlands -29 172 £450 +5.88% 94
East Midlands +9 90 £270 +36.71% 48
North East -38 28 £250 -4.76% 35
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
1 230 (8.44%) Microsoft Exchange
2 223 (8.19%) SharePoint
3 58 (2.13%) Confluence
4 57 (2.09%) IIS
5 18 (0.66%) nginx
6 16 (0.59%) Apache
7 14 (0.51%) Tomcat
8 11 (0.40%) Skype for Business
9 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 8 (0.29%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.22%) Documentum
12 5 (0.18%) Appian
12 5 (0.18%) Camunda
13 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.15%) Apache Solr
13 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
14 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
15 2 (0.073%) CMS
Applications
1 160 (5.87%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.15%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.11%) Houdini
7 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.11%) NUKE
8 2 (0.073%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.037%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.037%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.037%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 56 (2.06%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.37%) Finacle
3 7 (0.26%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.26%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.18%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.073%) assyst
7 1 (0.037%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.037%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.037%) SAP BRIM
7 1 (0.037%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.037%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.037%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.037%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.037%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.037%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 871 (31.98%) Azure
2 864 (31.72%) Microsoft 365
3 434 (15.93%) Entra ID
4 300 (11.01%) AWS
5 126 (4.63%) OneDrive
6 95 (3.49%) Azure DevOps
7 89 (3.27%) GCP
8 71 (2.61%) SaaS
9 69 (2.53%) Azure Monitor
10 64 (2.35%) IaaS
11 62 (2.28%) GitHub
11 62 (2.28%) Power Platform
12 49 (1.80%) PaaS
13 40 (1.47%) Azure Sentinel
14 26 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
15 25 (0.92%) Google Workspace
15 25 (0.92%) OpenShift
16 24 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
17 23 (0.84%) Azure AKS
18 21 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 436 (16.01%) DNS
2 331 (12.15%) Firewall
3 304 (11.16%) DHCP
4 217 (7.97%) VPN
5 204 (7.49%) TCP/IP
6 140 (5.14%) LAN
7 136 (4.99%) WAN
8 122 (4.48%) Wi-Fi
9 86 (3.16%) SAN
10 69 (2.53%) Network Security
11 67 (2.46%) VLAN
12 47 (1.73%) SSL
13 46 (1.69%) BGP
14 41 (1.51%) NAS
15 39 (1.43%) Internet
16 38 (1.40%) VSAN
17 37 (1.36%) Wireless
18 36 (1.32%) OSPF
19 28 (1.03%) BIG-IP
19 28 (1.03%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 261 (9.58%) SQL Server
2 53 (1.95%) Oracle Database
3 49 (1.80%) Power BI
4 24 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 23 (0.84%) MySQL
5 23 (0.84%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
8 14 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 14 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 13 (0.48%) Db2
10 12 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
11 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
11 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
12 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
12 8 (0.29%) NoSQL
13 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.18%) Big Data
13 5 (0.18%) GIS
Development Applications
1 159 (5.84%) JIRA
2 63 (2.31%) Git
3 48 (1.76%) MSI
4 42 (1.54%) Jenkins
5 37 (1.36%) GitLab
6 32 (1.17%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.62%) Eclipse
8 15 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 10 (0.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.26%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.26%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.18%) Selenium
13 4 (0.15%) Android Studio
13 4 (0.15%) Maven
13 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
13 4 (0.15%) Xcode
General
1 1,006 (36.93%) Social Skills
2 330 (12.11%) Analytical Skills
3 327 (12.00%) Finance
4 155 (5.69%) Public Sector
5 154 (5.65%) Banking
6 93 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
7 76 (2.79%) Legal
8 75 (2.75%) Organisational Skills
9 55 (2.02%) Retail
10 54 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 52 (1.91%) Manufacturing
12 42 (1.54%) Military
13 41 (1.51%) Front Office
14 38 (1.40%) Telecoms
15 35 (1.28%) Law
16 34 (1.25%) Investment Banking
17 28 (1.03%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.92%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.84%) French Language
20 20 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 426 (15.64%) Support Engineer
2 378 (13.88%) IT Support
3 289 (10.61%) IT Engineer
4 274 (10.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 245 (8.99%) Analyst
6 243 (8.92%) IT Support Engineer
7 219 (8.04%) Senior
8 125 (4.59%) 2nd Line Support
9 115 (4.22%) Desktop Support
10 111 (4.07%) Architect
11 102 (3.74%) Cloud Engineer
12 101 (3.71%) Desktop Engineer
13 100 (3.67%) Lead
14 97 (3.56%) Developer
15 93 (3.41%) Support Analyst
16 79 (2.90%) IT Analyst
16 79 (2.90%) Windows Engineer
17 76 (2.79%) 1st Line Support
17 76 (2.79%) Consultant
18 72 (2.64%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (4.00%) .NET
2 99 (3.63%) REST
3 63 (2.31%) .NET Framework
4 31 (1.14%) 802.1X
5 30 (1.10%) Middleware
5 30 (1.10%) WPF
6 28 (1.03%) LDAP
7 27 (0.99%) JSON
7 27 (0.99%) WinForms
8 26 (0.95%) CSS
9 23 (0.84%) HTML
9 23 (0.84%) Web Services
10 22 (0.81%) Microsoft Graph
11 19 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
11 19 (0.70%) Software Packaging
12 18 (0.66%) ARM Templates
13 17 (0.62%) .NET Core
13 17 (0.62%) RESTful
13 17 (0.62%) XML
14 16 (0.59%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 307 (11.27%) Onboarding
2 152 (5.58%) Data Centre
3 148 (5.43%) PKI
4 92 (3.38%) Clustering
5 78 (2.86%) Management Information System
6 73 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
6 73 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
7 70 (2.57%) Cloud Native
8 62 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
9 57 (2.09%) Video Conferencing
10 53 (1.95%) Driving Licence
11 52 (1.91%) Replication
12 49 (1.80%) Security Posture
13 47 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
14 40 (1.47%) Virtual Team
15 38 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
16 34 (1.25%) CMDB
17 32 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
18 29 (1.06%) Enterprise Storage
18 29 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 707 (25.95%) Windows Server
2 658 (24.16%) Linux
3 475 (17.44%) Windows 10
4 179 (6.57%) Mac OS
5 122 (4.48%) Apple iOS
6 119 (4.37%) Android
7 117 (4.30%) Unix
8 110 (4.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 69 (2.53%) Windows Server 2019
10 41 (1.51%) Ubuntu
11 39 (1.43%) Windows Server 2016
12 38 (1.40%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.25%) Windows 7
14 30 (1.10%) AIX
15 24 (0.88%) CentOS
16 21 (0.77%) VMS
16 21 (0.77%) Windows Server 2008
17 20 (0.73%) Solaris
18 10 (0.37%) Rocky
19 9 (0.33%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 671 (24.63%) Problem-Solving
2 497 (18.25%) ITIL
3 426 (15.64%) Customer Service
4 355 (13.03%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 334 (12.26%) ITSM
6 321 (11.78%) Migration
7 280 (10.28%) Continuous Improvement
8 270 (9.91%) DevOps
9 249 (9.14%) Agile
10 242 (8.88%) CI/CD
11 234 (8.59%) Service Management
12 214 (7.86%) Infrastructure as Code
13 201 (7.38%) Change Management
14 181 (6.64%) High Availability
15 180 (6.61%) Stakeholder Management
16 160 (5.87%) Disaster Recovery
17 159 (5.84%) Cybersecurity
18 157 (5.76%) Service Delivery
19 150 (5.51%) Incident Management
20 148 (5.43%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 659 (24.19%) PowerShell
2 296 (10.87%) Python
3 275 (10.10%) SQL
4 162 (5.95%) Bash
5 142 (5.21%) C#
6 71 (2.61%) JavaScript
7 66 (2.42%) Java
8 51 (1.87%) T-SQL
9 49 (1.80%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.76%) C++
11 42 (1.54%) Bicep
12 24 (0.88%) Search Processing Language
13 21 (0.77%) VB
14 18 (0.66%) TypeScript
14 18 (0.66%) VBScript
15 17 (0.62%) Perl
16 16 (0.59%) Shell Script
17 15 (0.55%) C
18 13 (0.48%) VBA
19 11 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 854 (31.35%) Security Cleared
2 518 (19.02%) SC Cleared
3 313 (11.49%) DV Cleared
4 283 (10.39%) Degree
5 111 (4.07%) Microsoft Certification
6 80 (2.94%) Cisco Certification
7 72 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
8 71 (2.61%) Azure Certification
9 61 (2.24%) CISSP
10 49 (1.80%) AWS Certification
11 46 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
12 45 (1.65%) A+ Certification
13 35 (1.28%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 32 (1.17%) MCSE
14 32 (1.17%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 28 (1.03%) CCNA
15 28 (1.03%) CCNP
16 25 (0.92%) ITIL Certification
17 23 (0.84%) DBS Check
17 23 (0.84%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 135 (4.96%) SLA
2 112 (4.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 81 (2.97%) NIST
4 77 (2.83%) QA
5 28 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
5 28 (1.03%) GDPR
5 28 (1.03%) NCSC
6 23 (0.84%) PCI DSS
7 16 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 13 (0.48%) Accessibility
9 12 (0.44%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
10 11 (0.40%) WCAG
11 10 (0.37%) GRC
11 10 (0.37%) PMO
12 8 (0.29%) GxP
12 8 (0.29%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.29%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,111 (40.79%) Active Directory
2 386 (14.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 160 (5.87%) Hyper-V
4 131 (4.81%) VMware ESXi
5 112 (4.11%) vSphere
6 101 (3.71%) Docker
7 93 (3.41%) Virtual Machines
8 78 (2.86%) VMware NSX
9 73 (2.68%) Virtual Desktop
10 33 (1.21%) Firmware
11 31 (1.14%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.73%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.66%) vCloud
14 12 (0.44%) KVM
14 12 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.26%) NFS
17 6 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
17 6 (0.22%) XenApp
17 6 (0.22%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 404 (14.83%) Microsoft Intune
2 255 (9.36%) SCCM
3 241 (8.85%) Terraform
4 212 (7.78%) Ansible
5 151 (5.54%) Kubernetes
6 113 (4.15%) vCenter Server
7 74 (2.72%) SCOM
8 47 (1.73%) Jamf Pro
9 42 (1.54%) WSUS
10 38 (1.40%) FortiGate
11 35 (1.28%) Progress Chef
12 32 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
13 29 (1.06%) Puppet
14 25 (0.92%) Packer
15 23 (0.84%) Nagios
16 22 (0.81%) VxRail
16 22 (0.81%) WMI
17 21 (0.77%) Grafana
17 21 (0.77%) Prometheus
18 20 (0.73%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,242 (45.59%) Microsoft
2 521 (19.13%) VMware
3 309 (11.34%) ServiceNow
4 182 (6.68%) Cisco
5 172 (6.31%) Citrix
6 158 (5.80%) Oracle
7 118 (4.33%) Splunk
8 86 (3.16%) Apple
9 82 (3.01%) SolarWinds
10 79 (2.90%) CyberArk
11 68 (2.50%) Google
12 67 (2.46%) Remedy
13 66 (2.42%) HP
14 63 (2.31%) Red Hat
15 57 (2.09%) BeyondTrust
16 54 (1.98%) Juniper
17 53 (1.95%) Dell
18 45 (1.65%) BMC
19 43 (1.58%) F5
20 42 (1.54%) IBM