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 30 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,876 2,316 2,691
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.18% 8.35% 8.38%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.55% 60.31% 58.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,834 1,575 1,715
10th Percentile £176 £163 £185
25th Percentile £225 £208 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £421 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +5.19% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £556 £540 £575
90th Percentile £668 £638 £638
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 215 133
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.12 £15.18
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.05 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.89 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +17.66% -9.02% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £40.97 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.84 £65.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +7.47%

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 4,598 3,840 4,566
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.88% 13.84% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,937 2,524 2,840
10th Percentile £190 £187 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £580
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 351 265 216
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.22 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.04% -58.08% +25.44%
75th Percentile £67.65 £59.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +19.77%

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 30 September 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 30 September 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 30 September 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 -6 962 £416 -2.12% 756
South East -7 567 £479 +27.80% 356
North of England -6 505 £325 +7.47% 300
North West +5 297 £344 +5.04% 160
Midlands -15 297 £400 - 258
South West -18 267 £540 +54.29% 191
East of England -1 250 £238 -32.14% 207
West Midlands -20 203 £402 +0.50% 150
Yorkshire -16 169 £282 +41.00% 110
East Midlands +4 93 £275 +22.22% 107
North East -22 44 £283 +13.80% 37
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
1 245 (8.52%) SharePoint
2 230 (8.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 61 (2.12%) IIS
4 56 (1.95%) Confluence
5 19 (0.66%) nginx
5 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.63%) Apache
7 11 (0.38%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.21%) Documentum
10 5 (0.17%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.17%) Appian
10 5 (0.17%) Camunda
11 4 (0.14%) CICS
11 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
11 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.10%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
12 3 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
12 3 (0.10%) OpenStack
Applications
1 195 (6.78%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.17%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.10%) Houdini
6 3 (0.10%) NUKE
7 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 53 (1.84%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.35%) Finacle
3 7 (0.24%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
4 5 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.10%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.070%) assyst
8 1 (0.035%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.035%) Monis
8 1 (0.035%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.035%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.035%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 940 (32.68%) Microsoft 365
2 887 (30.84%) Azure
3 493 (17.14%) Entra ID
4 316 (10.99%) AWS
5 140 (4.87%) OneDrive
6 108 (3.76%) GCP
7 102 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
8 75 (2.61%) SaaS
9 70 (2.43%) Azure Monitor
10 62 (2.16%) GitHub
11 59 (2.05%) Power Platform
12 58 (2.02%) IaaS
13 44 (1.53%) PaaS
14 40 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (0.94%) Google Workspace
16 26 (0.90%) OpenShift
17 24 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
18 21 (0.73%) Amazon EC2
18 21 (0.73%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 459 (15.96%) DNS
2 327 (11.37%) DHCP
3 315 (10.95%) Firewall
4 245 (8.52%) VPN
5 227 (7.89%) TCP/IP
6 116 (4.03%) Wi-Fi
7 109 (3.79%) LAN
7 109 (3.79%) WAN
8 95 (3.30%) Network Security
9 83 (2.89%) SAN
10 80 (2.78%) VLAN
11 51 (1.77%) Wireless
12 50 (1.74%) SSL
13 39 (1.36%) Internet
14 37 (1.29%) BGP
15 36 (1.25%) NAS
16 35 (1.22%) Skype
17 31 (1.08%) VoIP
18 27 (0.94%) SSH
19 26 (0.90%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (8.83%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.91%) Oracle Database
3 50 (1.74%) Power BI
4 29 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 27 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.80%) Relational Database
7 21 (0.73%) MySQL
8 15 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 14 (0.49%) Db2
10 11 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
11 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
13 6 (0.21%) MongoDB
14 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 143 (4.97%) JIRA
2 72 (2.50%) Git
3 50 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.67%) MSI
5 46 (1.60%) GitLab
6 32 (1.11%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.52%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.52%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.49%) Artifactory
9 11 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
12 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.21%) Robot Framework
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 6 (0.21%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.21%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 4 (0.14%) Chocolatey
14 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,061 (36.89%) Social Skills
2 352 (12.24%) Finance
3 344 (11.96%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (5.18%) Banking
5 128 (4.45%) Public Sector
6 109 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
7 73 (2.54%) Legal
8 69 (2.40%) Organisational Skills
9 68 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.95%) Manufacturing
11 49 (1.70%) Telecoms
12 48 (1.67%) Retail
13 42 (1.46%) Front Office
14 41 (1.43%) Law
15 39 (1.36%) Military
16 35 (1.22%) Investment Banking
17 25 (0.87%) Financial Institution
17 25 (0.87%) Spanish Language
18 24 (0.83%) Aerospace
18 24 (0.83%) French Language
Job Titles
1 479 (16.66%) Support Engineer
2 393 (13.66%) IT Support
3 306 (10.64%) IT Engineer
4 305 (10.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 257 (8.94%) IT Support Engineer
6 245 (8.52%) Analyst
7 231 (8.03%) Senior
8 133 (4.62%) Desktop Support
9 123 (4.28%) Desktop Engineer
10 122 (4.24%) 2nd Line Support
11 115 (4.00%) Cloud Engineer
12 110 (3.82%) Lead
13 108 (3.76%) Architect
14 101 (3.51%) Windows Engineer
15 88 (3.06%) Support Analyst
16 85 (2.96%) Developer
17 78 (2.71%) Consultant
17 78 (2.71%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 75 (2.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 73 (2.54%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (8.69%) Terraform
2 120 (4.17%) .NET
3 103 (3.58%) REST
4 57 (1.98%) .NET Framework
5 41 (1.43%) LDAP
6 39 (1.36%) Middleware
7 38 (1.32%) WPF
8 37 (1.29%) JSON
9 25 (0.87%) WinForms
10 23 (0.80%) ARM Templates
11 21 (0.73%) .NET Core
11 21 (0.73%) Software Packaging
11 21 (0.73%) Web Services
12 19 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
12 19 (0.66%) HTML
12 19 (0.66%) Microsoft Graph
13 18 (0.63%) CSS
14 17 (0.59%) SAML
14 17 (0.59%) XML
14 17 (0.59%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 367 (12.76%) Onboarding
2 169 (5.88%) Data Centre
3 143 (4.97%) PKI
4 102 (3.55%) Management Information System
5 83 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
6 76 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
7 73 (2.54%) Cloud Native
7 73 (2.54%) Clustering
7 73 (2.54%) Video Conferencing
8 68 (2.36%) Driving Licence
9 56 (1.95%) Security Posture
10 55 (1.91%) Self-Motivation
11 53 (1.84%) Replication
12 40 (1.39%) Virtual Team
13 39 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
14 35 (1.22%) CMDB
15 34 (1.18%) Enterprise Storage
16 32 (1.11%) Operational Technology
17 31 (1.08%) Public Cloud
18 30 (1.04%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 820 (28.51%) Windows Server
2 690 (23.99%) Linux
3 517 (17.98%) Windows 10
4 191 (6.64%) Mac OS
5 136 (4.73%) Apple iOS
6 128 (4.45%) Android
6 128 (4.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 104 (3.62%) Unix
8 67 (2.33%) Windows Server 2019
9 47 (1.63%) Ubuntu
10 46 (1.60%) Windows 7
11 40 (1.39%) Windows Server 2012
12 39 (1.36%) CentOS
13 34 (1.18%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (0.66%) Solaris
15 18 (0.63%) AIX
16 17 (0.59%) Windows Server 2008
17 15 (0.52%) Rocky
18 14 (0.49%) VMS
19 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 696 (24.20%) Problem-Solving
2 553 (19.23%) ITIL
3 479 (16.66%) Customer Service
4 396 (13.77%) ITSM
5 391 (13.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 360 (12.52%) Migration
7 338 (11.75%) Continuous Improvement
8 294 (10.22%) Service Management
9 281 (9.77%) DevOps
10 265 (9.21%) CI/CD
11 263 (9.14%) Infrastructure as Code
12 238 (8.28%) Agile
13 237 (8.24%) Stakeholder Management
14 215 (7.48%) Root Cause Analysis
15 212 (7.37%) Change Management
16 198 (6.88%) Disaster Recovery
17 188 (6.54%) Cybersecurity
18 170 (5.91%) Validation
19 166 (5.77%) Incident Management
19 166 (5.77%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 713 (24.79%) PowerShell
2 318 (11.06%) Python
3 276 (9.60%) SQL
4 180 (6.26%) Bash
5 145 (5.04%) C#
6 65 (2.26%) T-SQL
7 64 (2.23%) Java
8 62 (2.16%) JavaScript
9 50 (1.74%) Bicep
10 46 (1.60%) PL/SQL
11 38 (1.32%) C++
12 29 (1.01%) VB
13 25 (0.87%) VBScript
14 16 (0.56%) Perl
14 16 (0.56%) TypeScript
15 15 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 12 (0.42%) Go
16 12 (0.42%) VBA
17 11 (0.38%) Groovy
17 11 (0.38%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 918 (31.92%) Security Cleared
2 529 (18.39%) SC Cleared
3 386 (13.42%) DV Cleared
4 286 (9.94%) Degree
5 111 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 89 (3.09%) Azure Certification
7 69 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
8 66 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
9 64 (2.23%) CISSP
10 54 (1.88%) AWS Certification
11 53 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
12 48 (1.67%) A+ Certification
13 45 (1.56%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 34 (1.18%) CISM
14 34 (1.18%) ITIL Certification
15 33 (1.15%) CCNP
16 32 (1.11%) DBS Check
17 31 (1.08%) CCNA
18 30 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 24 (0.83%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 156 (5.42%) SLA
2 110 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 82 (2.85%) NIST
4 75 (2.61%) QA
5 38 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
6 29 (1.01%) NCSC
7 26 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 20 (0.70%) GDPR
9 17 (0.59%) GRC
10 15 (0.52%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 12 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 12 (0.42%) WCAG
12 11 (0.38%) ISO 31000
13 10 (0.35%) Data Quality
13 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
14 9 (0.31%) GxP
15 8 (0.28%) PMO
16 6 (0.21%) ISO 9001
16 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,220 (42.42%) Active Directory
2 449 (15.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 199 (6.92%) Hyper-V
4 144 (5.01%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.59%) vSphere
6 114 (3.96%) Docker
7 99 (3.44%) Virtual Machines
8 83 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
9 75 (2.61%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.36%) BitLocker
11 29 (1.01%) Firmware
12 24 (0.83%) vCloud
13 19 (0.66%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
15 14 (0.49%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.42%) NFS
16 12 (0.42%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) KVM
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 9 (0.31%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 430 (14.95%) Microsoft Intune
2 323 (11.23%) SCCM
3 212 (7.37%) Ansible
4 151 (5.25%) Kubernetes
5 117 (4.07%) vCenter Server
6 98 (3.41%) SCOM
7 46 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
8 40 (1.39%) WSUS
9 36 (1.25%) Grafana
10 33 (1.15%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.97%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.97%) WMI
12 27 (0.94%) Puppet
12 27 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
13 24 (0.83%) NetBackup
13 24 (0.83%) VxRail
14 23 (0.80%) Nagios
15 21 (0.73%) Packer
16 18 (0.63%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.59%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,410 (49.03%) Microsoft
2 586 (20.38%) VMware
3 334 (11.61%) ServiceNow
4 203 (7.06%) Cisco
5 160 (5.56%) Oracle
6 155 (5.39%) Citrix
7 96 (3.34%) Splunk
8 95 (3.30%) Apple
9 94 (3.27%) CyberArk
10 82 (2.85%) Google
11 71 (2.47%) Red Hat
11 71 (2.47%) SolarWinds
12 65 (2.26%) BeyondTrust
13 57 (1.98%) Remedy
14 56 (1.95%) Dell
15 44 (1.53%) HP
15 44 (1.53%) Palo Alto
16 38 (1.32%) NetApp
16 38 (1.32%) Zscaler
17 37 (1.29%) BMC