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

6 months to
15 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 16
Rank change year-on-year -5 -6 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,557 2,153 3,374
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.93% 8.65% 8.91%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.97% 60.55% 63.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,714 1,509 2,290
10th Percentile £161 £181 £155
25th Percentile £204 £227 £208
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £408 £413 £380
Median % change year-on-year -1.21% +8.55% -15.56%
75th Percentile £549 £575 £569
90th Percentile £640 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £403 £424 £400
% change year-on-year -5.04% +6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 83 268
10th Percentile £13.82 £15.23 £12.18
25th Percentile £16.62 £16.95 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.50 £21.28 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +1.03% +20.09% -19.75%
75th Percentile £41.94 £33.88 £25.07
90th Percentile £66.14 £68.15 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £21.46 £22.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year -4.62% +26.98% -19.45%

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 4,194 3,556 5,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.37% 14.29% 13.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,773 2,383 3,579
10th Percentile £180 £200 £178
25th Percentile £275 £313 £266
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -13.46%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £588
90th Percentile £663 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £447 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -5.89% +5.56% -12.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 312 129 376
10th Percentile £14.10 £16.45 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.38 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.68 £29.00 £22.21
Median % change year-on-year -21.79% +30.56% -16.18%
75th Percentile £60.00 £66.00 £58.00
90th Percentile £68.68 £71.05 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £22.81 £28.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -18.54% +24.44% -15.09%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 -19 770 £439 +3.24% 218
South East -1 529 £428 -7.57% 298
North of England -7 491 £272 -22.29% 203
South West -4 266 £450 -14.29% 116
North West -7 265 £261 -27.93% 125
Midlands -14 265 £300 -7.69% 121
East of England +4 215 £235 +4.21% 89
Yorkshire -11 196 £325 -18.75% 62
West Midlands -24 157 £442 +34.02% 60
East Midlands 0 105 £200 -20.00% 60
North East -10 33 £188 -37.50% 23
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
1 219 (8.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 167 (6.53%) SharePoint
3 56 (2.19%) Confluence
4 41 (1.60%) IIS
5 22 (0.86%) Apache
6 20 (0.78%) WebLogic
7 14 (0.55%) Skype for Business
8 11 (0.43%) Tuxedo
9 10 (0.39%) TPMS
10 5 (0.20%) nginx
10 5 (0.20%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 3 (0.12%) SAS
12 3 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
13 2 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2010
13 2 (0.078%) Sitecore CMS
13 2 (0.078%) WordPress
Applications
1 215 (8.41%) Microsoft Office
2 74 (2.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.20%) Acrobat
6 5 (0.20%) PTC Creo
7 4 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.078%) InDesign
9 1 (0.039%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.039%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.039%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.039%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 28 (1.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.27%) Teamcenter
4 5 (0.20%) assyst
5 4 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 2 (0.078%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.078%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 2 (0.078%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 2 (0.078%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.078%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.078%) SystmOne
8 1 (0.039%) Aladdin
8 1 (0.039%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.039%) Eikon
8 1 (0.039%) Fidessa
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.039%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 744 (29.10%) Microsoft 365
2 640 (25.03%) Azure
3 277 (10.83%) Entra ID
4 180 (7.04%) AWS
5 89 (3.48%) OneDrive
6 66 (2.58%) SaaS
7 64 (2.50%) GCP
8 55 (2.15%) Azure DevOps
9 51 (1.99%) Google Workspace
10 46 (1.80%) IaaS
11 43 (1.68%) GitHub
12 41 (1.60%) Power Platform
13 38 (1.49%) PaaS
14 28 (1.10%) Azure Monitor
15 23 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
16 22 (0.86%) AWS CloudFormation
17 21 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
18 19 (0.74%) OpenShift
19 17 (0.66%) Nutanix
20 16 (0.63%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 336 (13.14%) DNS
2 296 (11.58%) Firewall
3 223 (8.72%) DHCP
4 167 (6.53%) VPN
5 166 (6.49%) TCP/IP
6 143 (5.59%) LAN
7 142 (5.55%) WAN
8 135 (5.28%) Wi-Fi
9 72 (2.82%) Network Security
10 61 (2.39%) VLAN
11 60 (2.35%) Wireless
12 41 (1.60%) SAN
13 38 (1.49%) BGP
14 31 (1.21%) Skype
14 31 (1.21%) SSH
15 29 (1.13%) SSL
15 29 (1.13%) VoIP
16 28 (1.10%) Cisco ISE
16 28 (1.10%) Junos
16 28 (1.10%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 149 (5.83%) SQL Server
2 47 (1.84%) Oracle Database
3 42 (1.64%) Relational Database
4 36 (1.41%) MySQL
5 23 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
6 17 (0.66%) Power BI
7 13 (0.51%) BigQuery
7 13 (0.51%) DB2
8 11 (0.43%) MongoDB
8 11 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
9 9 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
9 9 (0.35%) NoSQL
10 7 (0.27%) SAP HANA
11 6 (0.23%) Data Warehouse
11 6 (0.23%) GIS
12 5 (0.20%) Amazon RDS
12 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 4 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
13 4 (0.16%) Oracle Database 10g
Development Applications
1 157 (6.14%) JIRA
2 55 (2.15%) Jenkins
3 54 (2.11%) GitLab
4 47 (1.84%) Git
5 42 (1.64%) MSI
6 33 (1.29%) Visual Studio
7 26 (1.02%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.66%) Burp Suite
8 17 (0.66%) Metasploit
9 16 (0.63%) Android Studio
10 14 (0.55%) Artifactory
10 14 (0.55%) Xcode
11 12 (0.47%) Browser DevTools
12 10 (0.39%) Chocolatey
13 9 (0.35%) Bitbucket
14 8 (0.31%) JUnit
14 8 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
15 7 (0.27%) Robot Framework
15 7 (0.27%) Selenium
16 6 (0.23%) Toad
General
1 928 (36.29%) Social Skills
2 243 (9.50%) Finance
3 210 (8.21%) Analytical Skills
3 210 (8.21%) Public Sector
4 133 (5.20%) Banking
5 108 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
6 98 (3.83%) Legal
7 81 (3.17%) Organisational Skills
8 58 (2.27%) Military
9 43 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
10 39 (1.53%) Manufacturing
11 37 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 33 (1.29%) Retail
13 25 (0.98%) Law
13 25 (0.98%) Telecoms
14 20 (0.78%) Aerospace
14 20 (0.78%) Investment Banking
15 19 (0.74%) Local Government
16 17 (0.66%) Front Office
17 15 (0.59%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 359 (14.04%) Support Engineer
2 355 (13.88%) IT Support
3 330 (12.91%) Analyst
4 210 (8.21%) IT Engineer
5 177 (6.92%) IT Support Engineer
6 159 (6.22%) Architect
7 156 (6.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 153 (5.98%) Senior
9 144 (5.63%) Support Analyst
10 119 (4.65%) Desktop Support
11 112 (4.38%) 2nd Line Support
11 112 (4.38%) Technical Support
12 107 (4.18%) Desktop Engineer
13 105 (4.11%) Developer
14 97 (3.79%) Windows Engineer
15 85 (3.32%) Lead
16 83 (3.25%) IT Analyst
17 78 (3.05%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 70 (2.74%) Deployment Engineer
18 70 (2.74%) IT Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (3.13%) .NET
2 59 (2.31%) REST
3 48 (1.88%) .NET Framework
4 46 (1.80%) OAuth
5 43 (1.68%) SAML
6 40 (1.56%) LDAP
7 32 (1.25%) Middleware
8 30 (1.17%) Web Services
9 29 (1.13%) WPF
10 25 (0.98%) AngularJS
10 25 (0.98%) CSS
10 25 (0.98%) React
11 24 (0.94%) Kafka
11 24 (0.94%) Microsoft Graph
11 24 (0.94%) WinForms
12 23 (0.90%) OpenID
13 22 (0.86%) 802.1X
14 21 (0.82%) OAuth2
15 20 (0.78%) Node.js
16 19 (0.74%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 171 (6.69%) Onboarding
2 104 (4.07%) Data Centre
3 101 (3.95%) PKI
4 77 (3.01%) Driving Licence
4 77 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
5 67 (2.62%) Self-Motivation
6 56 (2.19%) Smartphone
7 53 (2.07%) Clustering
8 48 (1.88%) Replication
9 46 (1.80%) Management Information System
10 40 (1.56%) Security Posture
11 39 (1.53%) Hybrid Cloud
12 38 (1.49%) Product Ownership
13 33 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
13 33 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
13 33 (1.29%) NHS
14 31 (1.21%) CMDB
15 28 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
16 26 (1.02%) Virtual Team
17 23 (0.90%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 595 (23.27%) Linux
2 555 (21.71%) Windows 10
2 555 (21.71%) Windows Server
3 142 (5.55%) Android
4 131 (5.12%) Unix
5 129 (5.04%) Mac OS
6 113 (4.42%) Apple iOS
7 66 (2.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 60 (2.35%) Windows Server 2016
9 48 (1.88%) Windows 7
10 43 (1.68%) Windows Server 2019
11 36 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
12 33 (1.29%) AIX
13 30 (1.17%) Windows Server 2003
14 14 (0.55%) Ubuntu
15 13 (0.51%) VMS
16 12 (0.47%) Solaris
16 12 (0.47%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.43%) Mac OS X
18 8 (0.31%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 501 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
2 456 (17.83%) Customer Service
3 361 (14.12%) ITIL
4 272 (10.64%) Agile
5 254 (9.93%) Migration
6 239 (9.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 216 (8.45%) DevOps
8 211 (8.25%) ITSM
9 202 (7.90%) CI/CD
10 182 (7.12%) Service Management
11 179 (7.00%) Continuous Improvement
11 179 (7.00%) Cybersecurity
12 159 (6.22%) Change Management
13 148 (5.79%) Disaster Recovery
14 128 (5.01%) Stakeholder Management
15 127 (4.97%) User Experience
16 125 (4.89%) High Availability
17 115 (4.50%) Service Delivery
18 103 (4.03%) Computer Science
18 103 (4.03%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 512 (20.02%) PowerShell
2 264 (10.32%) Python
3 227 (8.88%) SQL
4 123 (4.81%) C#
5 105 (4.11%) Bash
6 88 (3.44%) Java
7 75 (2.93%) JavaScript
8 54 (2.11%) C++
9 49 (1.92%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.88%) Perl
11 39 (1.53%) T-SQL
12 32 (1.25%) Kusto Query Language
13 24 (0.94%) VB
14 22 (0.86%) VBScript
15 20 (0.78%) Shell Script
16 15 (0.59%) VBA
17 12 (0.47%) Bicep
18 11 (0.43%) Go
18 11 (0.43%) TypeScript
19 10 (0.39%) C
Qualifications
1 813 (31.80%) Security Cleared
2 535 (20.92%) SC Cleared
3 261 (10.21%) Degree
4 230 (8.99%) DV Cleared
5 127 (4.97%) Microsoft Certification
6 76 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 62 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
8 44 (1.72%) MCSE
9 43 (1.68%) Azure Certification
10 35 (1.37%) CISSP
11 34 (1.33%) ITIL Certification
12 32 (1.25%) CCNA
13 29 (1.13%) AWS Certification
13 29 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
14 27 (1.06%) CCNP
15 22 (0.86%) MCSA
16 21 (0.82%) A+ Certification
16 21 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
16 21 (0.82%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 19 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (3.64%) GDPR
2 87 (3.40%) SLA
3 81 (3.17%) QA
4 77 (3.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 50 (1.96%) NIST
6 40 (1.56%) PCI DSS
7 22 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 15 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.51%) MiFID
9 13 (0.51%) PMO
10 12 (0.47%) NCSC
11 10 (0.39%) FINRA
11 10 (0.39%) GLBA
12 9 (0.35%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.27%) Data Quality
14 4 (0.16%) GxP
14 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.16%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.12%) COBIT
15 3 (0.12%) GMP
System Software
1 957 (37.43%) Active Directory
2 255 (9.97%) VMware Infrastructure
3 105 (4.11%) Hyper-V
4 97 (3.79%) Docker
5 60 (2.35%) vSphere
6 57 (2.23%) Virtual Machines
7 51 (1.99%) Virtual Desktop
8 49 (1.92%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (1.10%) VMware NSX
10 27 (1.06%) BitLocker
11 26 (1.02%) Firmware
11 26 (1.02%) Microsoft App-V
12 16 (0.63%) KVM
13 8 (0.31%) XenDesktop
14 7 (0.27%) Terminal Services
14 7 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.27%) XenApp
15 4 (0.16%) etcd
15 4 (0.16%) NFS
15 4 (0.16%) Snort
Systems Management
1 347 (13.57%) Microsoft Intune
2 311 (12.16%) SCCM
3 156 (6.10%) Terraform
4 141 (5.51%) Ansible
5 121 (4.73%) Kubernetes
6 64 (2.50%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (2.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 57 (2.23%) vCenter Server
9 36 (1.41%) Jamf Pro
10 32 (1.25%) FortiGate
11 27 (1.06%) Grafana
12 24 (0.94%) SCOM
12 24 (0.94%) WSUS
13 21 (0.82%) Prometheus
14 17 (0.66%) Progress Chef
14 17 (0.66%) WMI
15 16 (0.63%) Nmap
15 16 (0.63%) Puppet
16 15 (0.59%) Nessus
17 12 (0.47%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,101 (43.06%) Microsoft
2 355 (13.88%) VMware
3 232 (9.07%) ServiceNow
4 195 (7.63%) Citrix
5 156 (6.10%) Oracle
6 147 (5.75%) Cisco
7 116 (4.54%) Splunk
8 64 (2.50%) HP
9 62 (2.42%) Red Hat
10 61 (2.39%) SolarWinds
11 58 (2.27%) Dell
12 56 (2.19%) Google
13 46 (1.80%) IBM
14 45 (1.76%) Apple
15 44 (1.72%) Remedy
16 43 (1.68%) Juniper
17 41 (1.60%) Veeam
18 35 (1.37%) CyberArk
19 32 (1.25%) F5
20 29 (1.13%) SAP