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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -6
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,848 2,322 2,681
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.15% 8.36% 8.34%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.58% 60.19% 58.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,813 1,576 1,700
10th Percentile £180 £163 £182
25th Percentile £225 £208 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £560 £545 £575
90th Percentile £669 £638 £638
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -0.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 302 220 133
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.12 £15.22
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.77 £17.44
Median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £38.94 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.64 £65.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £22.58 £24.18
% change year-on-year +14.06% -6.64% +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 4,551 3,858 4,565
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.82% 13.90% 14.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,902 2,531 2,824
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £276 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £582
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 353 273 217
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £22.25
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -58.08% +28.51%
75th Percentile £67.47 £58.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +2.47% -52.10% +20.00%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 -6 958 £420 -1.18% 1,013
South East -7 557 £478 +27.33% 476
North of England -7 499 £340 +11.31% 356
North West +4 296 £350 +6.06% 197
Midlands -15 294 £402 +0.50% 297
South West -18 263 £545 +50.34% 221
East of England 0 251 £223 -36.29% 240
West Midlands -22 199 £425 +6.25% 165
Yorkshire -13 163 £279 +26.59% 122
East Midlands +3 94 £275 +22.22% 130
North East -20 45 £275 +10.00% 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
1 239 (8.39%) SharePoint
2 222 (7.79%) Microsoft Exchange
3 60 (2.11%) IIS
4 56 (1.97%) Confluence
5 21 (0.74%) nginx
6 20 (0.70%) Apache
7 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.46%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.21%) Documentum
11 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Camunda
11 5 (0.18%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.14%) CICS
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.11%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
Applications
1 190 (6.67%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
4 12 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) 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 48 (1.69%) Remedy ITSM
2 9 (0.32%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.11%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.070%) assyst
7 2 (0.070%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.035%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.035%) Monis
8 1 (0.035%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.035%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.035%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.035%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 940 (33.01%) Microsoft 365
2 889 (31.21%) Azure
3 497 (17.45%) Entra ID
4 315 (11.06%) AWS
5 135 (4.74%) OneDrive
6 108 (3.79%) GCP
7 102 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
8 71 (2.49%) Azure Monitor
9 69 (2.42%) SaaS
10 64 (2.25%) GitHub
11 58 (2.04%) Power Platform
12 57 (2.00%) IaaS
13 42 (1.47%) PaaS
14 39 (1.37%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (0.95%) Google Workspace
17 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
18 24 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
19 21 (0.74%) Datadog
20 20 (0.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 449 (15.77%) DNS
2 319 (11.20%) DHCP
3 307 (10.78%) Firewall
4 238 (8.36%) VPN
5 230 (8.08%) TCP/IP
6 117 (4.11%) Wi-Fi
7 105 (3.69%) LAN
7 105 (3.69%) WAN
8 94 (3.30%) Network Security
9 83 (2.91%) SAN
10 77 (2.70%) VLAN
11 50 (1.76%) Wireless
12 49 (1.72%) SSL
13 38 (1.33%) Internet
14 37 (1.30%) BGP
15 36 (1.26%) NAS
16 34 (1.19%) Skype
17 32 (1.12%) VoIP
18 27 (0.95%) SSH
19 26 (0.91%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 253 (8.88%) SQL Server
2 54 (1.90%) Oracle Database
3 50 (1.76%) Power BI
4 29 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 28 (0.98%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
7 23 (0.81%) MySQL
8 22 (0.77%) Relational Database
9 15 (0.53%) Db2
10 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
12 9 (0.32%) Data Warehouse
12 9 (0.32%) RDBMS
13 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
14 7 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
14 7 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
14 7 (0.25%) MongoDB
14 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
15 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 143 (5.02%) JIRA
2 73 (2.56%) Git
3 53 (1.86%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.69%) MSI
5 47 (1.65%) GitLab
6 33 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.53%) Artifactory
7 15 (0.53%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 11 (0.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
12 6 (0.21%) Robot Framework
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 6 (0.21%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.21%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
13 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 5 (0.18%) Toad
14 4 (0.14%) JMeter
General
1 1,051 (36.90%) Social Skills
2 353 (12.39%) Finance
3 332 (11.66%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (5.13%) Banking
5 131 (4.60%) Public Sector
6 105 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
7 73 (2.56%) Legal
8 69 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 68 (2.39%) Organisational Skills
10 59 (2.07%) Manufacturing
11 49 (1.72%) Telecoms
12 46 (1.62%) Retail
13 41 (1.44%) Front Office
14 39 (1.37%) Law
15 38 (1.33%) Military
16 34 (1.19%) Investment Banking
17 25 (0.88%) Financial Institution
18 24 (0.84%) Spanish Language
19 23 (0.81%) Aerospace
19 23 (0.81%) French Language
Job Titles
1 477 (16.75%) Support Engineer
2 392 (13.76%) IT Support
3 305 (10.71%) IT Engineer
4 289 (10.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 257 (9.02%) IT Support Engineer
6 243 (8.53%) Analyst
7 228 (8.01%) Senior
8 130 (4.56%) Desktop Support
9 122 (4.28%) 2nd Line Support
9 122 (4.28%) Desktop Engineer
10 113 (3.97%) Cloud Engineer
11 109 (3.83%) Lead
12 105 (3.69%) Architect
13 100 (3.51%) Windows Engineer
14 87 (3.05%) Support Analyst
15 84 (2.95%) Developer
16 78 (2.74%) Consultant
17 76 (2.67%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 72 (2.53%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
18 72 (2.53%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (8.95%) Terraform
2 117 (4.11%) .NET
3 105 (3.69%) REST
4 55 (1.93%) .NET Framework
5 42 (1.47%) LDAP
6 40 (1.40%) JSON
7 39 (1.37%) Middleware
8 36 (1.26%) WPF
9 23 (0.81%) ARM Templates
9 23 (0.81%) WinForms
10 22 (0.77%) Web Services
11 21 (0.74%) .NET Core
11 21 (0.74%) Software Packaging
12 19 (0.67%) Kafka
12 19 (0.67%) XML
13 18 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
13 18 (0.63%) HTML
13 18 (0.63%) Microsoft Graph
13 18 (0.63%) YAML
14 17 (0.60%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 364 (12.78%) Onboarding
2 166 (5.83%) Data Centre
3 141 (4.95%) PKI
4 102 (3.58%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.88%) Enterprise Software
5 82 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
6 74 (2.60%) Cloud Native
6 74 (2.60%) Video Conferencing
7 69 (2.42%) Clustering
8 68 (2.39%) Driving Licence
9 58 (2.04%) Security Posture
10 55 (1.93%) Replication
11 50 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
12 39 (1.37%) CMDB
12 39 (1.37%) Virtual Team
13 38 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
14 35 (1.23%) Operational Technology
15 32 (1.12%) Enterprise Storage
16 31 (1.09%) Public Cloud
17 30 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 815 (28.62%) Windows Server
2 685 (24.05%) Linux
3 520 (18.26%) Windows 10
4 185 (6.50%) Mac OS
5 138 (4.85%) Apple iOS
6 131 (4.60%) Android
7 130 (4.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 103 (3.62%) Unix
9 68 (2.39%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.65%) Ubuntu
11 45 (1.58%) Windows 7
12 39 (1.37%) CentOS
13 38 (1.33%) Windows Server 2012
14 34 (1.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 18 (0.63%) Solaris
16 16 (0.56%) AIX
17 15 (0.53%) Rocky
17 15 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.49%) VMS
19 11 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 683 (23.98%) Problem-Solving
2 543 (19.07%) ITIL
3 478 (16.78%) Customer Service
4 388 (13.62%) ITSM
5 376 (13.20%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 358 (12.57%) Migration
7 339 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
8 293 (10.29%) Service Management
9 285 (10.01%) DevOps
10 272 (9.55%) CI/CD
11 269 (9.45%) Infrastructure as Code
12 239 (8.39%) Stakeholder Management
13 236 (8.29%) Agile
14 217 (7.62%) Root Cause Analysis
15 214 (7.51%) Change Management
16 205 (7.20%) Disaster Recovery
17 193 (6.78%) Cybersecurity
18 172 (6.04%) Validation
19 170 (5.97%) Technical Leadership
20 162 (5.69%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 718 (25.21%) PowerShell
2 320 (11.24%) Python
3 270 (9.48%) SQL
4 186 (6.53%) Bash
5 140 (4.92%) C#
6 67 (2.35%) Java
7 65 (2.28%) T-SQL
8 59 (2.07%) JavaScript
9 51 (1.79%) Bicep
10 44 (1.54%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.30%) C++
12 29 (1.02%) VB
13 25 (0.88%) VBScript
14 17 (0.60%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.56%) Perl
16 15 (0.53%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.46%) Groovy
18 12 (0.42%) Go
18 12 (0.42%) VBA
19 9 (0.32%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 901 (31.64%) Security Cleared
2 523 (18.36%) SC Cleared
3 376 (13.20%) DV Cleared
4 281 (9.87%) Degree
5 109 (3.83%) Microsoft Certification
6 87 (3.05%) Azure Certification
7 67 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
8 66 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (2.18%) CISSP
10 56 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
11 52 (1.83%) AWS Certification
12 48 (1.69%) A+ Certification
13 43 (1.51%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 35 (1.23%) DBS Check
15 34 (1.19%) CCNP
16 33 (1.16%) CISM
16 33 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
17 30 (1.05%) CCNA
18 28 (0.98%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 24 (0.84%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 153 (5.37%) SLA
2 106 (3.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 83 (2.91%) NIST
4 72 (2.53%) QA
5 38 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
6 29 (1.02%) NCSC
7 26 (0.91%) PCI DSS
8 19 (0.67%) GDPR
9 17 (0.60%) GRC
10 16 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
12 12 (0.42%) WCAG
13 11 (0.39%) Data Quality
13 11 (0.39%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 9 (0.32%) GxP
14 9 (0.32%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.28%) PMO
16 6 (0.21%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,217 (42.73%) Active Directory
2 442 (15.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 198 (6.95%) Hyper-V
4 143 (5.02%) VMware ESXi
5 128 (4.49%) vSphere
6 116 (4.07%) Docker
7 98 (3.44%) Virtual Machines
8 92 (3.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 71 (2.49%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.30%) BitLocker
11 31 (1.09%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 20 (0.70%) 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%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 9 (0.32%) KVM
Systems Management
1 430 (15.10%) Microsoft Intune
2 323 (11.34%) SCCM
3 217 (7.62%) Ansible
4 154 (5.41%) Kubernetes
5 113 (3.97%) vCenter Server
6 96 (3.37%) SCOM
7 43 (1.51%) Jamf Pro
8 38 (1.33%) Grafana
8 38 (1.33%) WSUS
9 34 (1.19%) Prometheus
10 29 (1.02%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.98%) WMI
12 26 (0.91%) Puppet
13 24 (0.84%) NetBackup
13 24 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
13 24 (0.84%) VxRail
14 21 (0.74%) Nagios
15 20 (0.70%) Packer
16 17 (0.60%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.60%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,410 (49.51%) Microsoft
2 577 (20.26%) VMware
3 330 (11.59%) ServiceNow
4 201 (7.06%) Cisco
5 162 (5.69%) Oracle
6 155 (5.44%) Citrix
7 97 (3.41%) Apple
8 95 (3.34%) CyberArk
9 92 (3.23%) Splunk
10 84 (2.95%) Google
11 71 (2.49%) Red Hat
12 68 (2.39%) SolarWinds
13 63 (2.21%) BeyondTrust
14 54 (1.90%) Dell
15 52 (1.83%) Remedy
16 44 (1.54%) Palo Alto
17 42 (1.47%) HP
18 39 (1.37%) NetApp
19 36 (1.26%) Fortinet
20 35 (1.23%) Zscaler