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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 16
Rank change year-on-year -6 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,688 2,277 3,128
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.97% 8.36% 8.67%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.55% 61.21% 61.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,723 1,543 2,100
10th Percentile £170 £180 £173
25th Percentile £225 £233 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £415 £438
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -5.14% -2.78%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £672
UK median daily rate £425 £425 £425
% change year-on-year - - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 178 265
10th Percentile £16.13 £15.12 £11.80
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.03 £14.48
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -20.00%
75th Percentile £55.13 £27.31 £40.00
90th Percentile £71.29 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.13 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +33.17% -5.65% -16.67%

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 4,367 3,720 5,065
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.70% 13.66% 14.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,815 2,483 3,332
10th Percentile £190 £200 £193
25th Percentile £313 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £652 £688 £695
UK median daily rate £465 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +0.54% -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 221 378
10th Percentile £16.06 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.30% -8.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.40 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -41.18%

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 18 July 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 18 July 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 18 July 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 -18 869 £415 -7.72% 199
South East -8 562 £475 -3.46% 282
North of England -9 478 £355 +1.31% 187
Midlands -18 278 £335 +11.67% 100
South West -10 270 £488 +8.33% 94
North West -10 251 £350 -2.23% 106
East of England -1 212 £335 +34.00% 98
Yorkshire -11 204 £365 -8.75% 50
West Midlands -28 172 £450 +38.46% 52
East Midlands +10 101 £270 +35.00% 48
North East -31 27 £270 -1.82% 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
1 222 (8.26%) Microsoft Exchange
2 205 (7.63%) SharePoint
3 59 (2.19%) Confluence
4 55 (2.05%) IIS
5 16 (0.60%) nginx
6 14 (0.52%) Tomcat
7 13 (0.48%) Apache
8 11 (0.41%) Skype for Business
9 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.22%) Appian
10 6 (0.22%) Documentum
10 6 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 5 (0.19%) Camunda
12 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
13 3 (0.11%) Tuxedo
14 2 (0.074%) SAS
14 2 (0.074%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 159 (5.92%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.15%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.11%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.11%) PTC Creo
8 2 (0.074%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.074%) Houdini
8 2 (0.074%) NUKE
9 1 (0.037%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.037%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 48 (1.79%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.37%) Finacle
4 9 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
5 6 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.074%) assyst
8 1 (0.037%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.037%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.037%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.037%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 827 (30.77%) Azure
2 798 (29.69%) Microsoft 365
3 388 (14.43%) Entra ID
4 290 (10.79%) AWS
5 113 (4.20%) OneDrive
6 87 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
7 84 (3.13%) GCP
8 72 (2.68%) SaaS
9 62 (2.31%) IaaS
10 59 (2.19%) Azure Monitor
11 56 (2.08%) GitHub
12 53 (1.97%) PaaS
12 53 (1.97%) Power Platform
13 38 (1.41%) Azure Sentinel
14 26 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
14 26 (0.97%) Google Workspace
15 25 (0.93%) OpenShift
16 24 (0.89%) Azure AKS
17 23 (0.86%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 22 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 396 (14.73%) DNS
2 297 (11.05%) Firewall
3 273 (10.16%) DHCP
4 190 (7.07%) VPN
5 184 (6.85%) TCP/IP
6 157 (5.84%) LAN
7 143 (5.32%) WAN
8 126 (4.69%) Wi-Fi
9 84 (3.13%) SAN
10 62 (2.31%) Network Security
11 58 (2.16%) VLAN
12 45 (1.67%) BGP
13 43 (1.60%) SSL
14 38 (1.41%) Internet
14 38 (1.41%) NAS
15 36 (1.34%) OSPF
16 33 (1.23%) Wireless
17 29 (1.08%) Skype
17 29 (1.08%) VoIP
18 28 (1.04%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 243 (9.04%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.93%) Oracle Database
3 38 (1.41%) Power BI
4 28 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
5 27 (1.00%) Relational Database
6 23 (0.86%) MySQL
7 20 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
7 20 (0.74%) Db2
8 16 (0.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 13 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
10 12 (0.45%) NoSQL
10 12 (0.45%) RDBMS
11 11 (0.41%) MongoDB
12 9 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
12 9 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 8 (0.30%) Data Warehouse
13 8 (0.30%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 7 (0.26%) GIS
15 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
15 5 (0.19%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 171 (6.36%) JIRA
2 52 (1.93%) Git
3 48 (1.79%) MSI
4 43 (1.60%) Jenkins
5 35 (1.30%) GitLab
5 35 (1.30%) Visual Studio
6 17 (0.63%) Eclipse
7 11 (0.41%) Bitbucket
8 8 (0.30%) Chocolatey
9 7 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
10 6 (0.22%) Android Studio
10 6 (0.22%) Artifactory
10 6 (0.22%) InstallShield
10 6 (0.22%) Xcode
11 5 (0.19%) AdminStudio
11 5 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 5 (0.19%) Selenium
11 5 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
12 4 (0.15%) Appium
12 4 (0.15%) Burp Suite
General
1 968 (36.01%) Social Skills
2 303 (11.27%) Finance
3 299 (11.12%) Analytical Skills
4 172 (6.40%) Public Sector
5 155 (5.77%) Banking
6 98 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (3.09%) Organisational Skills
8 78 (2.90%) Legal
9 57 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 50 (1.86%) Retail
11 44 (1.64%) Military
12 42 (1.56%) Manufacturing
13 36 (1.34%) Front Office
13 36 (1.34%) Investment Banking
14 33 (1.23%) Telecoms
15 31 (1.15%) Law
16 26 (0.97%) Spanish Language
17 22 (0.82%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.82%) French Language
18 21 (0.78%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 388 (14.43%) Support Engineer
2 363 (13.50%) IT Support
3 261 (9.71%) Analyst
4 260 (9.67%) IT Engineer
5 251 (9.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 219 (8.15%) IT Support Engineer
7 198 (7.37%) Senior
8 118 (4.39%) 2nd Line Support
8 118 (4.39%) Architect
9 108 (4.02%) Desktop Support
10 100 (3.72%) Desktop Engineer
10 100 (3.72%) Developer
11 97 (3.61%) Support Analyst
12 92 (3.42%) Lead
13 91 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
14 85 (3.16%) IT Analyst
15 78 (2.90%) Consultant
16 72 (2.68%) Service Analyst
16 72 (2.68%) Windows Engineer
17 70 (2.60%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (3.79%) .NET
2 92 (3.42%) REST
3 62 (2.31%) .NET Framework
4 34 (1.26%) LDAP
5 31 (1.15%) 802.1X
6 29 (1.08%) Microsoft Graph
7 28 (1.04%) Middleware
7 28 (1.04%) WPF
8 27 (1.00%) WinForms
9 25 (0.93%) Web Services
10 23 (0.86%) CSS
11 22 (0.82%) SAML
12 21 (0.78%) Software Packaging
13 20 (0.74%) Elastic Stack
14 19 (0.71%) JSON
15 18 (0.67%) Kafka
16 17 (0.63%) HTML
16 17 (0.63%) RESTful
17 16 (0.60%) Node.js
17 16 (0.60%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 282 (10.49%) Onboarding
2 142 (5.28%) Data Centre
3 139 (5.17%) PKI
4 82 (3.05%) Clustering
5 71 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
6 70 (2.60%) Management Information System
7 65 (2.42%) Cloud Native
7 65 (2.42%) Self-Motivation
8 57 (2.12%) Replication
9 52 (1.93%) Hybrid Cloud
10 50 (1.86%) Security Posture
10 50 (1.86%) Video Conferencing
11 48 (1.79%) Driving Licence
12 47 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
13 40 (1.49%) Virtual Team
14 33 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 32 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
15 32 (1.19%) Linux Command Line
16 28 (1.04%) CMDB
16 28 (1.04%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 654 (24.33%) Windows Server
2 642 (23.88%) Linux
3 468 (17.41%) Windows 10
4 179 (6.66%) Mac OS
5 127 (4.72%) Apple iOS
6 123 (4.58%) Unix
7 122 (4.54%) Android
8 102 (3.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 65 (2.42%) Windows Server 2019
10 43 (1.60%) Windows Server 2016
11 38 (1.41%) Ubuntu
12 36 (1.34%) Windows 7
12 36 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
13 33 (1.23%) AIX
14 19 (0.71%) CentOS
14 19 (0.71%) Solaris
15 18 (0.67%) VMS
16 14 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
17 12 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.33%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 612 (22.77%) Problem-Solving
2 456 (16.96%) ITIL
3 403 (14.99%) Customer Service
4 327 (12.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 300 (11.16%) Migration
6 288 (10.71%) ITSM
7 256 (9.52%) DevOps
8 246 (9.15%) Agile
9 244 (9.08%) Continuous Improvement
10 234 (8.71%) CI/CD
11 208 (7.74%) Service Management
12 185 (6.88%) Infrastructure as Code
13 180 (6.70%) High Availability
14 179 (6.66%) Change Management
15 165 (6.14%) Stakeholder Management
16 144 (5.36%) Cybersecurity
17 143 (5.32%) Disaster Recovery
17 143 (5.32%) SIEM
18 139 (5.17%) Runbook
18 139 (5.17%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 604 (22.47%) PowerShell
2 280 (10.42%) Python
3 270 (10.04%) SQL
4 138 (5.13%) Bash
5 134 (4.99%) C#
6 67 (2.49%) JavaScript
7 63 (2.34%) Java
8 51 (1.90%) PL/SQL
9 50 (1.86%) T-SQL
10 45 (1.67%) C++
11 32 (1.19%) Bicep
12 24 (0.89%) Search Processing Language
13 22 (0.82%) VB
14 18 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
14 18 (0.67%) VBScript
15 17 (0.63%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.63%) TypeScript
16 15 (0.56%) Perl
17 14 (0.52%) C
17 14 (0.52%) VBA
Qualifications
1 813 (30.25%) Security Cleared
2 492 (18.30%) SC Cleared
3 295 (10.97%) Degree
4 288 (10.71%) DV Cleared
5 109 (4.06%) Microsoft Certification
6 79 (2.94%) Cisco Certification
7 69 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 62 (2.31%) Azure Certification
9 60 (2.23%) CISSP
10 47 (1.75%) AWS Certification
11 46 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
12 38 (1.41%) MCSE
13 33 (1.23%) A+ Certification
14 30 (1.12%) CCNA
14 30 (1.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 26 (0.97%) CCNP
15 26 (0.97%) MCSA
16 24 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
17 23 (0.86%) CISM
17 23 (0.86%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 115 (4.28%) SLA
2 112 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 83 (3.09%) NIST
4 73 (2.72%) QA
5 40 (1.49%) GDPR
6 27 (1.00%) PCI DSS
7 26 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
8 22 (0.82%) NCSC
8 22 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (0.45%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.41%) Accessibility
10 11 (0.41%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.33%) GRC
11 9 (0.33%) NIST 800
11 9 (0.33%) PMO
11 9 (0.33%) WCAG
12 8 (0.30%) GxP
12 8 (0.30%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,053 (39.17%) Active Directory
2 357 (13.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 139 (5.17%) Hyper-V
4 122 (4.54%) VMware ESXi
5 105 (3.91%) vSphere
6 101 (3.76%) Virtual Machines
7 93 (3.46%) Docker
8 71 (2.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 67 (2.49%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.38%) Firmware
11 33 (1.23%) BitLocker
12 27 (1.00%) Microsoft App-V
13 17 (0.63%) KVM
14 15 (0.56%) vCloud
15 8 (0.30%) VMware Workstation
15 8 (0.30%) XenDesktop
16 7 (0.26%) NFS
16 7 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.26%) XenApp
17 6 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 394 (14.66%) Microsoft Intune
2 244 (9.08%) SCCM
3 210 (7.81%) Terraform
4 185 (6.88%) Ansible
5 139 (5.17%) Kubernetes
6 107 (3.98%) vCenter Server
7 58 (2.16%) SCOM
8 49 (1.82%) Jamf Pro
9 38 (1.41%) FortiGate
10 37 (1.38%) Single Sign-On
10 37 (1.38%) WSUS
11 32 (1.19%) Progress Chef
12 27 (1.00%) Grafana
12 27 (1.00%) Puppet
13 25 (0.93%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.93%) Prometheus
14 23 (0.86%) Nagios
15 22 (0.82%) Packer
16 21 (0.78%) Nessus
17 20 (0.74%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,173 (43.64%) Microsoft
2 470 (17.49%) VMware
3 271 (10.08%) ServiceNow
4 184 (6.85%) Citrix
5 177 (6.58%) Cisco
6 152 (5.65%) Oracle
7 119 (4.43%) Splunk
8 80 (2.98%) Apple
9 78 (2.90%) SolarWinds
10 74 (2.75%) CyberArk
11 66 (2.46%) HP
12 65 (2.42%) Red Hat
13 64 (2.38%) Google
14 59 (2.19%) Remedy
15 55 (2.05%) BeyondTrust
16 53 (1.97%) Dell
17 50 (1.86%) Juniper
18 47 (1.75%) IBM
19 43 (1.60%) F5
20 38 (1.41%) BMC