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

 6 months to
21 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,752 2,286 2,846
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.03% 8.30% 8.55%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.19% 61.06% 60.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,773 1,549 1,913
10th Percentile £170 £170 £180
25th Percentile £225 £220 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £408 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.07% -9.44% +5.88%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £663 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £410 £449
% change year-on-year +3.66% -8.64% +3.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 239 192 202
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.16 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.44 £15.18
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -10.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £60.17 £28.00 £58.69
90th Percentile £74.20 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.51 £20.00 £21.80
% change year-on-year +27.53% -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 4,425 3,744 4,727
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.69% 13.59% 14.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,845 2,469 3,110
10th Percentile £190 £191 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 305 240 288
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.41
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.13 £16.97
Median hourly rate £35.22 £23.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +49.87% -27.69% -12.96%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.19
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £24.83 £27.50
% change year-on-year +4.71% -9.71% -31.25%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -12 918 £425 +0.59% 215
South East -9 569 £475 -5.00% 306
North of England -4 505 £328 +0.77% 195
North West +2 293 £344 -1.71% 94
South West -15 286 £488 +39.29% 103
Midlands -20 259 £384 -4.13% 125
East of England -3 197 £335 - 121
Yorkshire -16 184 £313 - 74
West Midlands -28 164 £419 -2.39% 83
East Midlands +5 91 £273 +36.25% 42
North East -26 32 £260 -0.95% 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
1 231 (8.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 229 (8.32%) SharePoint
3 57 (2.07%) IIS
4 56 (2.03%) Confluence
5 19 (0.69%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.58%) nginx
7 15 (0.55%) Apache
8 11 (0.40%) Tomcat
9 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.22%) Documentum
12 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.18%) Appian
12 5 (0.18%) Camunda
13 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
14 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
14 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 2 (0.073%) SAS
Applications
1 172 (6.25%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.073%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.073%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.036%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.036%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.036%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 58 (2.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.36%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
4 6 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
5 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.15%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.073%) assyst
9 1 (0.036%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.036%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.036%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.036%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.036%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.036%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.036%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.036%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.036%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 883 (32.09%) Microsoft 365
2 876 (31.83%) Azure
3 441 (16.02%) Entra ID
4 309 (11.23%) AWS
5 129 (4.69%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (3.27%) GCP
8 74 (2.69%) Azure Monitor
9 70 (2.54%) SaaS
10 64 (2.33%) Power Platform
11 63 (2.29%) GitHub
12 62 (2.25%) IaaS
13 47 (1.71%) PaaS
14 41 (1.49%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
15 28 (1.02%) OpenShift
16 26 (0.94%) Google Workspace
17 24 (0.87%) Azure AKS
18 23 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
19 22 (0.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 437 (15.88%) DNS
2 322 (11.70%) Firewall
3 314 (11.41%) DHCP
4 231 (8.39%) VPN
5 211 (7.67%) TCP/IP
6 131 (4.76%) WAN
7 130 (4.72%) LAN
8 125 (4.54%) Wi-Fi
9 90 (3.27%) SAN
10 82 (2.98%) VLAN
11 74 (2.69%) Network Security
12 43 (1.56%) NAS
13 41 (1.49%) SSL
14 40 (1.45%) Wireless
15 39 (1.42%) VSAN
16 38 (1.38%) Internet
17 35 (1.27%) Skype
18 31 (1.13%) BGP
19 26 (0.94%) VoIP
20 24 (0.87%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (9.56%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.89%) Power BI
3 51 (1.85%) Oracle Database
4 25 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 23 (0.84%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
7 21 (0.76%) MySQL
8 18 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
9 15 (0.55%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 15 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 11 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
10 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
11 10 (0.36%) Db2
12 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
14 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
14 5 (0.18%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 159 (5.78%) JIRA
2 66 (2.40%) Git
3 47 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.64%) MSI
5 39 (1.42%) GitLab
6 31 (1.13%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.62%) Bitbucket
7 17 (0.62%) Eclipse
8 10 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.33%) Selenium
10 7 (0.25%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.25%) Chocolatey
10 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
11 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
11 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
12 4 (0.15%) Claude Code
12 4 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
13 3 (0.11%) Appium
General
1 1,008 (36.63%) Social Skills
2 344 (12.50%) Finance
3 335 (12.17%) Analytical Skills
4 158 (5.74%) Banking
5 143 (5.20%) Public Sector
6 95 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
7 73 (2.65%) Legal
7 73 (2.65%) Organisational Skills
8 59 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 53 (1.93%) Manufacturing
9 53 (1.93%) Retail
10 42 (1.53%) Telecoms
11 41 (1.49%) Front Office
12 37 (1.34%) Military
13 36 (1.31%) Law
14 34 (1.24%) Investment Banking
15 28 (1.02%) Spanish Language
16 25 (0.91%) Financial Institution
16 25 (0.91%) French Language
17 20 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 442 (16.06%) Support Engineer
2 376 (13.66%) IT Support
3 294 (10.68%) IT Engineer
4 289 (10.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 246 (8.94%) IT Support Engineer
6 235 (8.54%) Analyst
7 221 (8.03%) Senior
8 126 (4.58%) 2nd Line Support
9 120 (4.36%) Desktop Support
10 107 (3.89%) Architect
11 105 (3.82%) Desktop Engineer
12 104 (3.78%) Cloud Engineer
13 100 (3.63%) Lead
14 92 (3.34%) Support Analyst
15 89 (3.23%) Developer
16 85 (3.09%) Windows Engineer
17 80 (2.91%) Consultant
18 77 (2.80%) 1st Line Support
19 75 (2.73%) IT Analyst
20 73 (2.65%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (9.05%) Terraform
2 113 (4.11%) .NET
3 99 (3.60%) REST
4 64 (2.33%) .NET Framework
5 30 (1.09%) Middleware
6 29 (1.05%) WPF
7 28 (1.02%) JSON
8 27 (0.98%) LDAP
9 25 (0.91%) WinForms
10 22 (0.80%) ARM Templates
11 21 (0.76%) CSS
11 21 (0.76%) Software Packaging
12 20 (0.73%) HTML
12 20 (0.73%) Web Services
13 19 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
13 19 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
14 18 (0.65%) .NET Core
14 18 (0.65%) Kafka
15 17 (0.62%) 802.1X
15 17 (0.62%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 329 (11.95%) Onboarding
2 150 (5.45%) Data Centre
3 146 (5.31%) PKI
4 85 (3.09%) Clustering
5 83 (3.02%) Management Information System
6 79 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
7 72 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
8 71 (2.58%) Cloud Native
9 64 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
9 64 (2.33%) Video Conferencing
10 55 (2.00%) Driving Licence
11 54 (1.96%) Replication
12 45 (1.64%) Security Posture
13 43 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
14 39 (1.42%) Virtual Team
15 38 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
16 36 (1.31%) Enterprise Storage
17 34 (1.24%) CMDB
18 30 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
19 29 (1.05%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 735 (26.71%) Windows Server
2 673 (24.45%) Linux
3 489 (17.77%) Windows 10
4 180 (6.54%) Mac OS
5 124 (4.51%) Apple iOS
6 121 (4.40%) Android
7 111 (4.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 107 (3.89%) Unix
9 67 (2.43%) Windows Server 2019
10 46 (1.67%) Ubuntu
10 46 (1.67%) Windows 7
11 40 (1.45%) Windows Server 2016
12 37 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
13 30 (1.09%) CentOS
14 24 (0.87%) AIX
15 20 (0.73%) VMS
16 17 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
17 15 (0.55%) Solaris
18 11 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
19 10 (0.36%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 668 (24.27%) Problem-Solving
2 510 (18.53%) ITIL
3 435 (15.81%) Customer Service
4 369 (13.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 361 (13.12%) ITSM
6 326 (11.85%) Migration
7 287 (10.43%) Continuous Improvement
8 276 (10.03%) DevOps
9 255 (9.27%) Service Management
10 245 (8.90%) Agile
10 245 (8.90%) CI/CD
11 230 (8.36%) Infrastructure as Code
12 198 (7.19%) Change Management
13 186 (6.76%) Stakeholder Management
14 174 (6.32%) Disaster Recovery
15 170 (6.18%) High Availability
16 161 (5.85%) Cybersecurity
16 161 (5.85%) Root Cause Analysis
17 158 (5.74%) Service Delivery
18 153 (5.56%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 699 (25.40%) PowerShell
2 311 (11.30%) Python
3 278 (10.10%) SQL
4 170 (6.18%) Bash
5 142 (5.16%) C#
6 65 (2.36%) Java
7 64 (2.33%) JavaScript
8 50 (1.82%) T-SQL
9 47 (1.71%) Bicep
10 45 (1.64%) PL/SQL
11 43 (1.56%) C++
12 28 (1.02%) VB
13 26 (0.94%) VBScript
14 24 (0.87%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.62%) Perl
15 17 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.58%) TypeScript
17 11 (0.40%) C
17 11 (0.40%) VBA
18 10 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 874 (31.76%) Security Cleared
2 530 (19.26%) SC Cleared
3 328 (11.92%) DV Cleared
4 283 (10.28%) Degree
5 108 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
6 82 (2.98%) Azure Certification
7 76 (2.76%) Cisco Certification
8 75 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
9 60 (2.18%) CISSP
10 52 (1.89%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.74%) A+ Certification
12 46 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
13 38 (1.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 32 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 30 (1.09%) CCNA
16 29 (1.05%) CCNP
17 26 (0.94%) DBS Check
17 26 (0.94%) MCSE
18 25 (0.91%) CISM
19 24 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (5.16%) SLA
2 109 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 81 (2.94%) QA
4 80 (2.91%) NIST
5 27 (0.98%) NCSC
6 26 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
7 25 (0.91%) GDPR
8 22 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (0.47%) Accessibility
10 13 (0.47%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.40%) GRC
11 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.40%) WCAG
12 9 (0.33%) PMO
13 7 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 7 (0.25%) GxP
13 7 (0.25%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,140 (41.42%) Active Directory
2 412 (14.97%) VMware Infrastructure
3 174 (6.32%) Hyper-V
4 133 (4.83%) VMware ESXi
5 122 (4.43%) vSphere
6 103 (3.74%) Docker
7 89 (3.23%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.98%) VMware NSX
9 78 (2.83%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (1.45%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.31%) Firmware
12 20 (0.73%) vCloud
13 17 (0.62%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
15 10 (0.36%) KVM
16 9 (0.33%) XenApp
16 9 (0.33%) XenDesktop
17 8 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
18 7 (0.25%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 7 (0.25%) NFS
Systems Management
1 409 (14.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 288 (10.47%) SCCM
3 220 (7.99%) Ansible
4 150 (5.45%) Kubernetes
5 115 (4.18%) vCenter Server
6 77 (2.80%) SCOM
7 45 (1.64%) WSUS
8 44 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
9 36 (1.31%) Progress Chef
10 32 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (1.09%) Puppet
12 28 (1.02%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.91%) WMI
14 24 (0.87%) Grafana
14 24 (0.87%) Nagios
14 24 (0.87%) Packer
14 24 (0.87%) Prometheus
15 23 (0.84%) VxRail
16 20 (0.73%) Microsoft Clustering
16 20 (0.73%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,294 (47.02%) Microsoft
2 547 (19.88%) VMware
3 329 (11.95%) ServiceNow
4 179 (6.50%) Cisco
5 163 (5.92%) Citrix
6 158 (5.74%) Oracle
7 103 (3.74%) Splunk
8 91 (3.31%) Apple
9 87 (3.16%) CyberArk
10 74 (2.69%) Google
11 68 (2.47%) SolarWinds
12 63 (2.29%) HP
13 62 (2.25%) Remedy
14 61 (2.22%) BeyondTrust
14 61 (2.22%) Red Hat
15 50 (1.82%) Dell
16 48 (1.74%) BMC
17 40 (1.45%) NetApp
18 39 (1.42%) Meraki
19 38 (1.38%) Juniper
967 Windows jobs in England