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

 6 months to
2 Oct 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -8 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,862 2,337 2,725
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.15% 8.35% 8.39%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.45% 60.28% 59.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,824 1,580 1,741
10th Percentile £180 £163 £183
25th Percentile £225 £208 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £556 £540 £575
90th Percentile £668 £638 £641
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 220 135
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.03 £15.19
25th Percentile £19.24 £17.79 £17.22
Median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £39.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.84 £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 4,583 3,877 4,618
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.85% 13.85% 14.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,925 2,537 2,877
10th Percentile £193 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £280 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.42% -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 352 271 218
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £19.46 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.79 £25.15 £59.25
Median % change year-on-year +42.30% -57.55% +24.73%
75th Percentile £67.84 £58.88 £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% +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 2 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 2 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 2 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 -4 955 £416 -2.12% 1,089
South East -8 564 £482 +30.20% 490
North of England -5 507 £344 +12.79% 374
North West +3 298 £350 +6.06% 207
Midlands -16 296 £400 - 306
South West -16 267 £540 +48.97% 245
East of England -1 246 £235 -32.86% 251
West Midlands -23 202 £407 +1.81% 169
Yorkshire -15 169 £282 +34.29% 132
East Midlands +2 93 £275 +22.22% 136
North East -24 45 £283 +13.00% 40
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
1 241 (8.42%) SharePoint
2 226 (7.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 61 (2.13%) IIS
4 57 (1.99%) Confluence
5 19 (0.66%) Apache
5 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.63%) nginx
7 13 (0.45%) 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
1 194 (6.78%) Microsoft Office
2 60 (2.10%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 12 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
4 5 (0.17%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.10%) Houdini
5 3 (0.10%) NUKE
6 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 50 (1.75%) 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
1 938 (32.77%) Microsoft 365
2 889 (31.06%) Azure
3 495 (17.30%) Entra ID
4 316 (11.04%) AWS
5 138 (4.82%) OneDrive
6 109 (3.81%) GCP
7 103 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
8 73 (2.55%) SaaS
9 70 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
10 62 (2.17%) GitHub
11 57 (1.99%) IaaS
11 57 (1.99%) Power Platform
12 43 (1.50%) PaaS
13 39 (1.36%) Azure Sentinel
14 28 (0.98%) Google Workspace
15 27 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
17 24 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
18 21 (0.73%) Datadog
19 20 (0.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 450 (15.72%) DNS
2 321 (11.22%) DHCP
3 309 (10.80%) Firewall
4 240 (8.39%) VPN
5 228 (7.97%) TCP/IP
6 117 (4.09%) Wi-Fi
7 108 (3.77%) WAN
8 107 (3.74%) LAN
9 94 (3.28%) Network Security
10 83 (2.90%) SAN
11 78 (2.73%) VLAN
12 51 (1.78%) Wireless
13 50 (1.75%) SSL
14 39 (1.36%) Internet
15 36 (1.26%) BGP
15 36 (1.26%) NAS
16 34 (1.19%) Skype
17 32 (1.12%) VoIP
18 27 (0.94%) SSH
19 26 (0.91%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (8.91%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.92%) Oracle Database
3 48 (1.68%) Power BI
4 29 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 28 (0.98%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
7 23 (0.80%) MySQL
7 23 (0.80%) Relational Database
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%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (0.24%) MongoDB
14 6 (0.21%) Elasticsearch
15 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 145 (5.07%) JIRA
2 71 (2.48%) Git
3 51 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 49 (1.71%) MSI
5 46 (1.61%) GitLab
6 32 (1.12%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.52%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.49%) Artifactory
8 14 (0.49%) Bitbucket
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 1,055 (36.86%) Social Skills
2 349 (12.19%) Finance
3 342 (11.95%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (5.07%) Banking
5 130 (4.54%) Public Sector
6 107 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
7 73 (2.55%) Legal
8 69 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 67 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
10 56 (1.96%) Manufacturing
11 50 (1.75%) Telecoms
12 47 (1.64%) Retail
13 40 (1.40%) Front Office
14 39 (1.36%) Law
14 39 (1.36%) Military
15 33 (1.15%) Investment Banking
16 25 (0.87%) Financial Institution
16 25 (0.87%) Spanish Language
17 24 (0.84%) Aerospace
18 23 (0.80%) French Language
Job Titles
1 472 (16.49%) Support Engineer
2 391 (13.66%) IT Support
3 302 (10.55%) IT Engineer
4 296 (10.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 255 (8.91%) IT Support Engineer
6 243 (8.49%) Analyst
7 229 (8.00%) Senior
8 130 (4.54%) Desktop Support
9 121 (4.23%) 2nd Line Support
10 120 (4.19%) Desktop Engineer
11 114 (3.98%) Cloud Engineer
12 109 (3.81%) Lead
13 107 (3.74%) Architect
14 101 (3.53%) Windows Engineer
15 87 (3.04%) Support Analyst
16 83 (2.90%) Developer
17 80 (2.80%) Consultant
18 75 (2.62%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 75 (2.62%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 74 (2.59%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (8.70%) Terraform
2 119 (4.16%) .NET
3 103 (3.60%) REST
4 56 (1.96%) .NET Framework
5 43 (1.50%) LDAP
6 39 (1.36%) Middleware
7 38 (1.33%) JSON
7 38 (1.33%) WPF
8 25 (0.87%) WinForms
9 23 (0.80%) ARM Templates
10 22 (0.77%) Web Services
11 21 (0.73%) .NET Core
11 21 (0.73%) Software Packaging
12 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
13 19 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 18 (0.63%) HTML
14 18 (0.63%) YAML
15 17 (0.59%) CSS
15 17 (0.59%) RESTful
15 17 (0.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 365 (12.75%) Onboarding
2 167 (5.84%) Data Centre
3 139 (4.86%) PKI
4 101 (3.53%) Management Information System
5 81 (2.83%) Hybrid Cloud
6 80 (2.80%) Enterprise Software
7 74 (2.59%) Cloud Native
8 73 (2.55%) Video Conferencing
9 70 (2.45%) Clustering
10 68 (2.38%) Driving Licence
11 57 (1.99%) Security Posture
12 56 (1.96%) Replication
13 52 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
14 39 (1.36%) Virtual Team
15 38 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
16 35 (1.22%) CMDB
17 32 (1.12%) Enterprise Storage
17 32 (1.12%) Operational Technology
18 31 (1.08%) Public Cloud
19 30 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 820 (28.65%) Windows Server
2 687 (24.00%) Linux
3 514 (17.96%) Windows 10
4 190 (6.64%) Mac OS
5 140 (4.89%) Apple iOS
6 131 (4.58%) Android
7 129 (4.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 104 (3.63%) Unix
9 67 (2.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.64%) Ubuntu
11 45 (1.57%) Windows 7
12 39 (1.36%) CentOS
12 39 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 18 (0.63%) AIX
14 18 (0.63%) Solaris
15 16 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
16 15 (0.52%) Rocky
17 14 (0.49%) VMS
18 11 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 697 (24.35%) Problem-Solving
2 551 (19.25%) ITIL
3 477 (16.67%) Customer Service
4 392 (13.70%) ITSM
5 382 (13.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 357 (12.47%) Migration
7 340 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
8 293 (10.24%) Service Management
9 279 (9.75%) DevOps
10 267 (9.33%) CI/CD
11 265 (9.26%) Infrastructure as Code
12 240 (8.39%) Stakeholder Management
13 236 (8.25%) Agile
14 216 (7.55%) Root Cause Analysis
15 214 (7.48%) Change Management
16 204 (7.13%) Disaster Recovery
17 190 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
18 172 (6.01%) Validation
19 169 (5.90%) Technical Leadership
20 165 (5.77%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 720 (25.16%) PowerShell
2 319 (11.15%) Python
3 272 (9.50%) SQL
4 183 (6.39%) Bash
5 144 (5.03%) C#
6 65 (2.27%) T-SQL
7 64 (2.24%) Java
8 60 (2.10%) JavaScript
9 50 (1.75%) Bicep
10 44 (1.54%) PL/SQL
11 38 (1.33%) C++
12 29 (1.01%) VB
13 25 (0.87%) VBScript
14 16 (0.56%) Perl
15 15 (0.52%) Shell Script
15 15 (0.52%) TypeScript
16 12 (0.42%) Go
16 12 (0.42%) VBA
17 11 (0.38%) Groovy
17 11 (0.38%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 910 (31.80%) Security Cleared
2 530 (18.52%) SC Cleared
3 380 (13.28%) DV Cleared
4 285 (9.96%) Degree
5 110 (3.84%) Microsoft Certification
6 88 (3.07%) Azure Certification
7 67 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
8 65 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (2.17%) CISSP
10 53 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
11 52 (1.82%) AWS Certification
12 48 (1.68%) A+ Certification
13 44 (1.54%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 35 (1.22%) ITIL Certification
15 34 (1.19%) DBS Check
16 33 (1.15%) CCNP
16 33 (1.15%) CISM
17 30 (1.05%) CCNA
18 29 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 24 (0.84%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 155 (5.42%) SLA
2 109 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 82 (2.87%) NIST
4 74 (2.59%) QA
5 38 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
6 29 (1.01%) NCSC
7 26 (0.91%) PCI DSS
8 19 (0.66%) 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 1,215 (42.45%) Active Directory
2 448 (15.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 200 (6.99%) Hyper-V
4 144 (5.03%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.61%) vSphere
6 112 (3.91%) Docker
7 99 (3.46%) Virtual Machines
8 89 (3.11%) Virtual Desktop
9 74 (2.59%) VMware NSX
10 38 (1.33%) BitLocker
11 29 (1.01%) 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%) KVM
17 10 (0.35%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 429 (14.99%) Microsoft Intune
2 325 (11.36%) SCCM
3 213 (7.44%) Ansible
4 150 (5.24%) Kubernetes
5 115 (4.02%) vCenter Server
6 98 (3.42%) SCOM
7 46 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
8 38 (1.33%) WSUS
9 36 (1.26%) Grafana
10 33 (1.15%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.98%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.98%) WMI
12 27 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
13 26 (0.91%) Puppet
14 24 (0.84%) NetBackup
14 24 (0.84%) VxRail
15 23 (0.80%) Nagios
16 21 (0.73%) Packer
17 17 (0.59%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.59%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,408 (49.20%) Microsoft
2 585 (20.44%) VMware
3 330 (11.53%) ServiceNow
4 200 (6.99%) Cisco
5 161 (5.63%) Oracle
6 156 (5.45%) Citrix
7 97 (3.39%) Apple
8 95 (3.32%) Splunk
9 94 (3.28%) CyberArk
10 84 (2.94%) Google
11 70 (2.45%) Red Hat
12 69 (2.41%) SolarWinds
13 64 (2.24%) BeyondTrust
14 55 (1.92%) Dell
15 54 (1.89%) Remedy
16 44 (1.54%) HP
16 44 (1.54%) Palo Alto
17 39 (1.36%) NetApp
18 38 (1.33%) Zscaler
19 36 (1.26%) BMC
2,807 Windows jobs in England