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

6 months to
16 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -9 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,863 2,378 2,683
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.12% 8.43% 8.37%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.68% 59.72% 58.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,816 1,595 1,706
10th Percentile £181 £163 £185
25th Percentile £225 £205 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £418 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £561 £538 £575
90th Percentile £656 £638 £646
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 306 240 124
10th Percentile £16.25 £14.15 £15.53
25th Percentile £19.05 £17.33 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.76 £21.29 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +21.00% -11.95% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £30.06 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.84 £65.00 £69.03
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.05% -9.02% +2.89%

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 4,568 3,982 4,562
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.76% 14.12% 14.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,914 2,596 2,824
10th Percentile £193 £185 £201
25th Percentile £311 £275 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £662 £688
UK median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 359 295 208
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.84 £23.12
Median hourly rate £32.29 £24.00 £60.72
Median % change year-on-year +34.54% -60.47% +25.44%
75th Percentile £65.61 £52.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £25.00 £54.00
% change year-on-year +3.00% -53.70% +18.84%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -1 973 £416 -2.12% 163
South East -7 562 £478 +30.82% 163
North of England -12 487 £344 +17.61% 128
Midlands -15 293 £400 +6.67% 79
North West -2 291 £358 +10.26% 70
South West -18 271 £550 +57.14% 108
East of England 0 249 £220 -37.14% 68
West Midlands -23 203 £402 +0.50% 45
Yorkshire -15 156 £235 +6.82% 47
East Midlands +1 89 £275 +37.50% 34
North East -26 42 £273 +36.25% 17
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
1 245 (8.56%) SharePoint
2 221 (7.72%) Microsoft Exchange
3 58 (2.03%) IIS
4 56 (1.96%) Confluence
5 26 (0.91%) nginx
6 21 (0.73%) Apache
7 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
8 12 (0.42%) Tomcat
9 8 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 7 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.21%) Documentum
12 5 (0.17%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.17%) Appian
12 5 (0.17%) Camunda
12 5 (0.17%) FactoryTalk
13 4 (0.14%) CICS
13 4 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
14 3 (0.10%) CloudStack
14 3 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
14 3 (0.10%) OpenStack
Applications
1 195 (6.81%) Microsoft Office
2 59 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
4 5 (0.17%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.10%) Houdini
5 3 (0.10%) NUKE
5 3 (0.10%) PTC Creo
6 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.035%) AutoCAD
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 45 (1.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (0.28%) Finacle
3 7 (0.24%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.21%) Teamcenter
5 5 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.10%) Eikon
6 3 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.10%) 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%) NEC Housing
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
Cloud Services
1 951 (33.22%) Microsoft 365
2 891 (31.12%) Azure
3 511 (17.85%) Entra ID
4 309 (10.79%) AWS
5 140 (4.89%) OneDrive
6 104 (3.63%) GCP
7 101 (3.53%) Azure DevOps
8 77 (2.69%) Azure Monitor
9 65 (2.27%) GitHub
10 62 (2.17%) SaaS
11 58 (2.03%) Power Platform
12 51 (1.78%) IaaS
13 47 (1.64%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.29%) PaaS
15 29 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.98%) Google Workspace
17 27 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
19 21 (0.73%) Datadog
19 21 (0.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 451 (15.75%) DNS
2 318 (11.11%) DHCP
2 318 (11.11%) Firewall
3 248 (8.66%) VPN
4 237 (8.28%) TCP/IP
5 114 (3.98%) Wi-Fi
6 108 (3.77%) LAN
7 103 (3.60%) WAN
8 96 (3.35%) Network Security
9 82 (2.86%) SAN
10 80 (2.79%) VLAN
11 53 (1.85%) Wireless
12 47 (1.64%) SSL
13 35 (1.22%) BGP
13 35 (1.22%) Internet
14 34 (1.19%) NAS
15 33 (1.15%) Skype
16 31 (1.08%) VoIP
17 30 (1.05%) SSH
18 27 (0.94%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 241 (8.42%) SQL Server
2 50 (1.75%) Oracle Database
2 50 (1.75%) Power BI
3 31 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
4 29 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
5 28 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 23 (0.80%) MySQL
7 21 (0.73%) Relational Database
8 15 (0.52%) Db2
9 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 11 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
11 9 (0.31%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
12 8 (0.28%) RDBMS
13 7 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (0.24%) MongoDB
14 6 (0.21%) Elasticsearch
14 6 (0.21%) NoSQL
15 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 143 (4.99%) JIRA
2 73 (2.55%) Git
3 60 (2.10%) Jenkins
4 52 (1.82%) GitLab
5 48 (1.68%) MSI
6 33 (1.15%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.59%) Artifactory
8 15 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.52%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
11 7 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
11 7 (0.24%) Toad
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
General
1 1,061 (37.06%) Social Skills
2 357 (12.47%) Finance
3 333 (11.63%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (5.10%) Banking
5 131 (4.58%) Public Sector
6 99 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (2.58%) Legal
8 73 (2.55%) Organisational Skills
9 69 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 65 (2.27%) Manufacturing
11 47 (1.64%) Telecoms
12 46 (1.61%) Retail
13 44 (1.54%) Front Office
14 41 (1.43%) Law
15 37 (1.29%) Military
16 33 (1.15%) Investment Banking
17 26 (0.91%) Financial Institution
18 24 (0.84%) Aerospace
19 23 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
19 23 (0.80%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 488 (17.05%) Support Engineer
2 394 (13.76%) IT Support
3 311 (10.86%) IT Engineer
4 287 (10.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 263 (9.19%) IT Support Engineer
6 247 (8.63%) Analyst
7 234 (8.17%) Senior
8 135 (4.72%) Desktop Support
9 129 (4.51%) 2nd Line Support
10 127 (4.44%) Desktop Engineer
11 112 (3.91%) Architect
11 112 (3.91%) Cloud Engineer
12 108 (3.77%) Lead
13 99 (3.46%) Windows Engineer
14 88 (3.07%) Support Analyst
15 86 (3.00%) Consultant
16 82 (2.86%) Desktop Support Engineer
17 80 (2.79%) Developer
18 77 (2.69%) Service Analyst
19 74 (2.58%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (9.36%) Terraform
2 118 (4.12%) .NET
3 109 (3.81%) REST
4 55 (1.92%) .NET Framework
5 46 (1.61%) LDAP
6 38 (1.33%) JSON
6 38 (1.33%) Middleware
6 38 (1.33%) WPF
7 28 (0.98%) ARM Templates
8 23 (0.80%) Software Packaging
9 22 (0.77%) Web Services
9 22 (0.77%) WinForms
10 21 (0.73%) .NET Core
11 19 (0.66%) Kafka
11 19 (0.66%) XML
12 18 (0.63%) HTML
12 18 (0.63%) YAML
13 17 (0.59%) CSS
13 17 (0.59%) React
13 17 (0.59%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 364 (12.71%) Onboarding
2 167 (5.83%) Data Centre
3 142 (4.96%) PKI
4 104 (3.63%) Management Information System
5 87 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
6 81 (2.83%) Cloud Native
7 77 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
7 77 (2.69%) Video Conferencing
8 68 (2.38%) Driving Licence
9 65 (2.27%) Clustering
10 62 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 59 (2.06%) Replication
12 49 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
13 42 (1.47%) CMDB
14 38 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
15 37 (1.29%) Operational Technology
16 35 (1.22%) Virtual Team
17 32 (1.12%) Enterprise Storage
18 31 (1.08%) Public Cloud
19 30 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 812 (28.36%) Windows Server
2 689 (24.07%) Linux
3 527 (18.41%) Windows 10
4 181 (6.32%) macOS
5 132 (4.61%) Apple iOS
6 129 (4.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 123 (4.30%) Android
8 100 (3.49%) Unix
9 69 (2.41%) Windows Server 2019
10 49 (1.71%) Ubuntu
11 40 (1.40%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.33%) CentOS
13 37 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
14 30 (1.05%) Windows Server 2016
15 19 (0.66%) Solaris
16 17 (0.59%) AIX
17 15 (0.52%) Rocky
18 14 (0.49%) VMS
18 14 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 671 (23.44%) Problem-Solving
2 554 (19.35%) ITIL
3 488 (17.05%) Customer Service
4 396 (13.83%) ITSM
5 372 (12.99%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 351 (12.26%) Migration
7 349 (12.19%) Continuous Improvement
8 314 (10.97%) Service Management
9 298 (10.41%) DevOps
10 281 (9.81%) Infrastructure as Code
11 280 (9.78%) CI/CD
12 262 (9.15%) Stakeholder Management
13 241 (8.42%) Agile
14 221 (7.72%) Root Cause Analysis
15 217 (7.58%) Change Management
16 212 (7.40%) Disaster Recovery
17 210 (7.33%) Cybersecurity
18 179 (6.25%) Validation
19 175 (6.11%) Technical Leadership
20 165 (5.76%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 730 (25.50%) PowerShell
2 316 (11.04%) Python
3 266 (9.29%) SQL
4 191 (6.67%) Bash
5 136 (4.75%) C#
6 71 (2.48%) Java
7 63 (2.20%) T-SQL
8 61 (2.13%) JavaScript
9 58 (2.03%) Bicep
10 41 (1.43%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.29%) C++
12 28 (0.98%) VB
13 25 (0.87%) VBScript
14 19 (0.66%) Groovy
15 16 (0.56%) Perl
15 16 (0.56%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.56%) TypeScript
16 13 (0.45%) Go
17 11 (0.38%) VBA
18 10 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 908 (31.71%) Security Cleared
2 527 (18.41%) SC Cleared
3 377 (13.17%) DV Cleared
4 273 (9.54%) Degree
5 107 (3.74%) Microsoft Certification
6 85 (2.97%) Azure Certification
7 64 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
8 63 (2.20%) CISSP
8 63 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
9 59 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
10 53 (1.85%) AWS Certification
11 46 (1.61%) A+ Certification
12 42 (1.47%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 36 (1.26%) ITIL Certification
14 35 (1.22%) CISM
14 35 (1.22%) DBS Check
15 33 (1.15%) CCNP
16 29 (1.01%) CCNA
17 26 (0.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 23 (0.80%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 156 (5.45%) SLA
2 102 (3.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 77 (2.69%) NIST
4 74 (2.58%) QA
5 37 (1.29%) Cyber Essentials
6 30 (1.05%) PCI DSS
7 26 (0.91%) NCSC
8 20 (0.70%) GDPR
9 17 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 17 (0.59%) GRC
10 16 (0.56%) Accessibility
11 12 (0.42%) Data Quality
11 12 (0.42%) WCAG
12 11 (0.38%) ISO 31000
13 10 (0.35%) GxP
14 9 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 8 (0.28%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.28%) PMO
16 7 (0.24%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 7 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,227 (42.86%) Active Directory
2 435 (15.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 193 (6.74%) Hyper-V
4 141 (4.92%) VMware ESXi
5 130 (4.54%) vSphere
6 122 (4.26%) Docker
7 98 (3.42%) Virtual Machines
8 97 (3.39%) Virtual Desktop
9 67 (2.34%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.29%) BitLocker
11 32 (1.12%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 20 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.52%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.42%) NFS
17 10 (0.35%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.35%) XenApp
18 9 (0.31%) KVM
19 8 (0.28%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 453 (15.82%) Microsoft Intune
2 339 (11.84%) SCCM
3 220 (7.68%) Ansible
4 154 (5.38%) Kubernetes
5 112 (3.91%) vCenter Server
6 95 (3.32%) SCOM
7 45 (1.57%) Jamf Pro
8 39 (1.36%) Grafana
9 36 (1.26%) WSUS
10 34 (1.19%) Prometheus
11 29 (1.01%) Progress Chef
12 28 (0.98%) WMI
13 27 (0.94%) Puppet
14 26 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
15 25 (0.87%) NetBackup
16 24 (0.84%) VxRail
17 21 (0.73%) Nagios
18 19 (0.66%) Packer
19 18 (0.63%) FortiGate
20 17 (0.59%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,441 (50.33%) Microsoft
2 569 (19.87%) VMware
3 346 (12.09%) ServiceNow
4 197 (6.88%) Cisco
5 159 (5.55%) Oracle
6 156 (5.45%) Citrix
7 98 (3.42%) Apple
8 96 (3.35%) Splunk
9 87 (3.04%) Google
10 86 (3.00%) CyberArk
11 69 (2.41%) Red Hat
12 66 (2.31%) SolarWinds
13 56 (1.96%) BeyondTrust
13 56 (1.96%) Dell
14 49 (1.71%) Remedy
15 47 (1.64%) Palo Alto
16 42 (1.47%) CrowdStrike
16 42 (1.47%) HP
17 39 (1.36%) NetApp
18 38 (1.33%) Fortinet