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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 19 17
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,546 2,197 3,179
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.92% 8.86% 8.43%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.07% 62.06% 61.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,662 1,528 2,167
10th Percentile £163 £182 £165
25th Percentile £220 £250 £235
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £425 £425 £425
% change year-on-year - - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 212 154 269
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.47 £11.80
25th Percentile £18.88 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.83 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.77% +4.60% -28.00%
75th Percentile £57.88 £25.00 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.55 £62.28 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.51 £18.87 £18.27
% change year-on-year +35.16% +3.28% -25.79%

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 4,102 3,540 5,153
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.54% 14.27% 13.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,675 2,388 3,427
10th Percentile £189 £200 £188
25th Percentile £313 £313 £312
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.76% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £656 £689 £700
UK median daily rate £463 £463 £475
% change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 278 186 388
10th Percentile £15.98 £15.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.33 £15.59
Median hourly rate £32.50 £18.94 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.64% -17.67% -50.80%
75th Percentile £65.00 £41.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £71.65 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.24 £21.28 £23.80
% change year-on-year +42.11% -10.59% -49.89%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -21 817 £428 -2.56% 257
South East -7 517 £475 -3.06% 288
North of England -8 462 £365 +4.29% 195
Midlands -13 276 £325 +16.07% 122
South West -10 245 £478 -2.55% 147
North West -6 244 £350 -4.63% 113
East of England -2 212 £336 -16.72% 93
Yorkshire -15 201 £365 -9.32% 58
West Midlands -22 169 £450 +50.00% 60
East Midlands +7 102 £225 +12.50% 62
North East -40 21 £290 +0.87% 27
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
1 218 (8.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 170 (6.68%) SharePoint
3 57 (2.24%) Confluence
4 54 (2.12%) IIS
5 15 (0.59%) Apache
6 14 (0.55%) Skype for Business
6 14 (0.55%) Tomcat
7 13 (0.51%) nginx
8 9 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.24%) Appian
10 5 (0.20%) TPMS
11 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) Camunda
11 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.12%) Documentum
12 3 (0.12%) NetWeaver
12 3 (0.12%) Tuxedo
13 2 (0.079%) Oracle HTTP Server
13 2 (0.079%) SAS
Applications
1 158 (6.21%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.31%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.20%) PTC Creo
7 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.039%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 43 (1.69%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.43%) Teamcenter
3 7 (0.27%) Finacle
4 4 (0.16%) OpenText MBPM
4 4 (0.16%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 2 (0.079%) assyst
6 2 (0.079%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.079%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.079%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.039%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.039%) Oracle FAH
7 1 (0.039%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.039%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.039%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 781 (30.68%) Azure
2 735 (28.87%) Microsoft 365
3 341 (13.39%) Entra ID
4 261 (10.25%) AWS
5 96 (3.77%) OneDrive
6 78 (3.06%) GCP
7 71 (2.79%) Azure DevOps
8 68 (2.67%) SaaS
9 63 (2.47%) IaaS
10 61 (2.40%) GitHub
11 50 (1.96%) PaaS
12 48 (1.89%) Power Platform
13 41 (1.61%) Azure Monitor
14 34 (1.34%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.10%) Google Workspace
16 26 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (0.94%) OpenShift
18 19 (0.75%) Azure AKS
18 19 (0.75%) Microsoft Purview
19 18 (0.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 349 (13.71%) DNS
2 264 (10.37%) Firewall
3 252 (9.90%) DHCP
4 173 (6.79%) VPN
5 150 (5.89%) LAN
6 149 (5.85%) WAN
7 144 (5.66%) TCP/IP
8 118 (4.63%) Wi-Fi
9 70 (2.75%) SAN
10 57 (2.24%) Network Security
11 51 (2.00%) VLAN
12 41 (1.61%) BGP
13 35 (1.37%) SSL
14 34 (1.34%) OSPF
15 33 (1.30%) Skype
16 32 (1.26%) Internet
16 32 (1.26%) SNMP
17 31 (1.22%) Wireless
18 30 (1.18%) BIG-IP
19 29 (1.14%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 213 (8.37%) SQL Server
2 46 (1.81%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.26%) Power BI
4 27 (1.06%) Relational Database
5 26 (1.02%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (0.94%) MySQL
7 15 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
8 14 (0.55%) Db2
9 13 (0.51%) NoSQL
10 11 (0.43%) MongoDB
11 10 (0.39%) RDBMS
11 10 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 7 (0.27%) GIS
13 6 (0.24%) BigQuery
13 6 (0.24%) Data Warehouse
13 6 (0.24%) Geospatial Data
13 6 (0.24%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 5 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
14 5 (0.20%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 168 (6.60%) JIRA
2 41 (1.61%) Jenkins
3 40 (1.57%) MSI
4 39 (1.53%) Git
4 39 (1.53%) GitLab
5 35 (1.37%) Visual Studio
6 17 (0.67%) Eclipse
7 10 (0.39%) Burp Suite
8 9 (0.35%) Chocolatey
8 9 (0.35%) Metasploit
9 8 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.27%) Bitbucket
11 6 (0.24%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.24%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.24%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.24%) Xcode
12 5 (0.20%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.20%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.20%) Robot Framework
12 5 (0.20%) Selenium
General
1 876 (34.41%) Social Skills
2 283 (11.12%) Finance
3 259 (10.17%) Analytical Skills
4 165 (6.48%) Public Sector
5 148 (5.81%) Banking
6 98 (3.85%) Documentation Skills
7 85 (3.34%) Legal
8 74 (2.91%) Organisational Skills
9 51 (2.00%) Retail
10 50 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 47 (1.85%) Military
12 37 (1.45%) Investment Banking
12 37 (1.45%) Manufacturing
13 32 (1.26%) Front Office
14 31 (1.22%) Law
15 30 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
16 26 (1.02%) Telecoms
17 23 (0.90%) Spanish Language
18 21 (0.82%) French Language
19 18 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 340 (13.35%) Support Engineer
2 334 (13.12%) IT Support
3 271 (10.64%) Analyst
4 230 (9.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 219 (8.60%) IT Engineer
6 183 (7.19%) IT Support Engineer
7 170 (6.68%) Senior
8 125 (4.91%) Architect
9 108 (4.24%) Desktop Support
10 104 (4.08%) Desktop Engineer
10 104 (4.08%) Support Analyst
11 99 (3.89%) 2nd Line Support
12 90 (3.53%) Developer
13 87 (3.42%) IT Analyst
14 84 (3.30%) Lead
15 82 (3.22%) Technical Support
16 69 (2.71%) Cloud Engineer
17 66 (2.59%) Consultant
18 65 (2.55%) Windows Engineer
19 63 (2.47%) Desktop Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (3.57%) .NET
2 76 (2.99%) REST
3 54 (2.12%) .NET Framework
4 36 (1.41%) LDAP
5 32 (1.26%) Microsoft Graph
6 29 (1.14%) 802.1X
6 29 (1.14%) SAML
7 26 (1.02%) Middleware
8 25 (0.98%) Web Services
8 25 (0.98%) WinForms
9 24 (0.94%) WPF
10 23 (0.90%) OAuth
11 20 (0.79%) CSS
11 20 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
11 20 (0.79%) Software Packaging
12 17 (0.67%) Kafka
13 16 (0.63%) Node.js
14 14 (0.55%) JSON
14 14 (0.55%) SailPoint
15 13 (0.51%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 246 (9.66%) Onboarding
2 128 (5.03%) Data Centre
3 118 (4.63%) PKI
4 75 (2.95%) Enterprise Software
5 71 (2.79%) Clustering
6 63 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
7 60 (2.36%) Management Information System
8 54 (2.12%) Cloud Native
9 50 (1.96%) Replication
10 49 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
11 48 (1.89%) Security Posture
12 45 (1.77%) Virtual Team
13 44 (1.73%) Legacy Systems
14 43 (1.69%) Driving Licence
15 33 (1.30%) CMDB
16 32 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
17 30 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
17 30 (1.18%) Product Ownership
18 29 (1.14%) Smartphone
19 27 (1.06%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 622 (24.43%) Linux
2 611 (24.00%) Windows Server
3 447 (17.56%) Windows 10
4 161 (6.32%) Mac OS
5 129 (5.07%) Apple iOS
6 121 (4.75%) Unix
7 119 (4.67%) Android
8 85 (3.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 64 (2.51%) Windows Server 2019
10 52 (2.04%) Windows Server 2016
11 47 (1.85%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.49%) Windows Server 2012
13 29 (1.14%) AIX
14 28 (1.10%) Ubuntu
15 18 (0.71%) Solaris
16 17 (0.67%) VMS
16 17 (0.67%) Windows Server 2003
17 13 (0.51%) Windows Server 2008
18 12 (0.47%) CentOS
19 9 (0.35%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 553 (21.72%) Problem-Solving
2 392 (15.40%) ITIL
3 376 (14.77%) Customer Service
4 300 (11.78%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 280 (11.00%) Migration
6 260 (10.21%) ITSM
7 240 (9.43%) Agile
7 240 (9.43%) DevOps
8 225 (8.84%) CI/CD
9 199 (7.82%) Continuous Improvement
10 178 (6.99%) Change Management
11 177 (6.95%) Service Management
12 171 (6.72%) High Availability
13 149 (5.85%) Disaster Recovery
14 147 (5.77%) Infrastructure as Code
15 138 (5.42%) Stakeholder Management
16 135 (5.30%) Cybersecurity
17 129 (5.07%) SIEM
18 124 (4.87%) Runbook
19 119 (4.67%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 549 (21.56%) PowerShell
2 252 (9.90%) SQL
3 247 (9.70%) Python
4 125 (4.91%) C#
5 98 (3.85%) Bash
6 66 (2.59%) JavaScript
7 64 (2.51%) Java
8 48 (1.89%) PL/SQL
9 46 (1.81%) C++
10 42 (1.65%) T-SQL
11 24 (0.94%) Kusto Query Language
11 24 (0.94%) VB
12 22 (0.86%) Search Processing Language
13 20 (0.79%) Bicep
14 19 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.75%) VBScript
15 18 (0.71%) Perl
16 13 (0.51%) C
16 13 (0.51%) TypeScript
17 12 (0.47%) VBA
Qualifications
1 752 (29.54%) Security Cleared
2 475 (18.66%) SC Cleared
3 293 (11.51%) Degree
4 244 (9.58%) DV Cleared
5 106 (4.16%) Microsoft Certification
6 76 (2.99%) Cisco Certification
7 72 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
8 61 (2.40%) CISSP
9 54 (2.12%) Azure Certification
10 43 (1.69%) MCSE
11 42 (1.65%) AWS Certification
12 36 (1.41%) BPSS Clearance
13 29 (1.14%) CCNA
14 28 (1.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 27 (1.06%) MCSA
16 26 (1.02%) CISM
17 25 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
18 24 (0.94%) CCNP
19 22 (0.86%) CompTIA Security+
20 20 (0.79%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 118 (4.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 99 (3.89%) SLA
3 85 (3.34%) NIST
4 69 (2.71%) QA
5 66 (2.59%) GDPR
6 37 (1.45%) PCI DSS
7 32 (1.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 26 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.63%) NCSC
10 11 (0.43%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.43%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.39%) FINRA
11 10 (0.39%) MiFID
11 10 (0.39%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.31%) GRC
12 8 (0.31%) PMO
12 8 (0.31%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.27%) Accessibility
14 6 (0.24%) ISO 31000
14 6 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 970 (38.10%) Active Directory
2 320 (12.57%) VMware Infrastructure
3 136 (5.34%) Hyper-V
4 101 (3.97%) VMware ESXi
5 93 (3.65%) vSphere
6 87 (3.42%) Docker
6 87 (3.42%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (2.36%) Virtual Desktop
8 50 (1.96%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.49%) BitLocker
10 37 (1.45%) Firmware
11 28 (1.10%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.75%) KVM
13 11 (0.43%) vCloud
13 11 (0.43%) XenDesktop
14 10 (0.39%) XenApp
15 8 (0.31%) VMware Workstation
16 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.24%) Terminal Services
16 6 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 362 (14.22%) Microsoft Intune
2 225 (8.84%) SCCM
3 169 (6.64%) Terraform
4 166 (6.52%) Ansible
5 122 (4.79%) Kubernetes
6 82 (3.22%) vCenter Server
7 49 (1.92%) Single Sign-On
8 40 (1.57%) FortiGate
8 40 (1.57%) SCOM
9 39 (1.53%) Jamf Pro
10 36 (1.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 35 (1.37%) WSUS
12 30 (1.18%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.98%) Prometheus
13 25 (0.98%) Puppet
14 24 (0.94%) Grafana
15 22 (0.86%) Nagios
16 19 (0.75%) Nessus
16 19 (0.75%) ZABBIX
17 18 (0.71%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,103 (43.32%) Microsoft
2 417 (16.38%) VMware
3 232 (9.11%) ServiceNow
4 183 (7.19%) Citrix
5 175 (6.87%) Cisco
6 150 (5.89%) Oracle
7 122 (4.79%) Splunk
8 73 (2.87%) SolarWinds
9 68 (2.67%) HP
10 59 (2.32%) Red Hat
11 56 (2.20%) Apple
11 56 (2.20%) Google
12 55 (2.16%) Remedy
13 54 (2.12%) Dell
14 53 (2.08%) CyberArk
15 46 (1.81%) F5
15 46 (1.81%) IBM
15 46 (1.81%) Juniper
16 43 (1.69%) BeyondTrust
17 35 (1.37%) Palo Alto