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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 16
Rank change year-on-year -6 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,692 2,306 3,179
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.00% 8.45% 8.67%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.83% 61.26% 61.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,734 1,564 2,130
10th Percentile £165 £180 £173
25th Percentile £223 £237 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £416 £430
Median % change year-on-year +2.27% -3.35% -4.44%
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 234 174 278
10th Percentile £16.11 £15.12 £11.94
25th Percentile £19.00 £16.95 £14.31
Median hourly rate £25.76 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.51% -5.65% -20.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £71.57 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.51 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +35.16% -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 4,354 3,764 5,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.71% 13.79% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,821 2,511 3,364
10th Percentile £190 £200 £193
25th Percentile £313 £313 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.54% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £656 £688 £695
UK median daily rate £465 £465 £475
% change year-on-year - -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 216 396
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.70 £16.25
Median hourly rate £32.50 £22.53 £24.68
Median % change year-on-year +44.25% -8.70% -41.94%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.86
% change year-on-year +13.04% -7.46% -41.52%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -17 878 £425 -5.56% 254
South East -9 549 £475 -3.46% 323
North of England -9 476 £363 +3.57% 231
Midlands -17 277 £338 +12.50% 123
South West -11 275 £488 +21.88% 145
North West -8 252 £358 +1.23% 120
East of England 0 219 £335 +31.56% 99
Yorkshire -15 202 £365 -9.88% 76
West Midlands -26 173 £450 +44.00% 65
East Midlands +11 99 £273 +36.25% 58
North East -34 26 £273 -0.91% 43
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
1 226 (8.40%) Microsoft Exchange
2 195 (7.24%) SharePoint
3 55 (2.04%) Confluence
4 54 (2.01%) IIS
5 15 (0.56%) nginx
6 14 (0.52%) Skype for Business
6 14 (0.52%) Tomcat
7 13 (0.48%) Apache
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.26%) Appian
9 7 (0.26%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.22%) Documentum
11 5 (0.19%) Camunda
12 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
13 3 (0.11%) Tuxedo
14 2 (0.074%) ArcGIS
14 2 (0.074%) CMS
14 2 (0.074%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 161 (5.98%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (2.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.19%) PTC Creo
6 4 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.037%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.037%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.037%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.037%) Houdini
7 1 (0.037%) InDesign
7 1 (0.037%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 43 (1.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.41%) Teamcenter
4 10 (0.37%) Finacle
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 NAV
8 1 (0.037%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.037%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 825 (30.65%) Azure
2 786 (29.20%) Microsoft 365
3 384 (14.26%) Entra ID
4 284 (10.55%) AWS
5 109 (4.05%) OneDrive
6 86 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
7 82 (3.05%) GCP
8 72 (2.67%) SaaS
9 61 (2.27%) IaaS
10 59 (2.19%) GitHub
11 52 (1.93%) Azure Monitor
11 52 (1.93%) PaaS
11 52 (1.93%) Power Platform
12 34 (1.26%) Azure Sentinel
13 28 (1.04%) Google Workspace
14 27 (1.00%) GitHub Actions
15 26 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (0.93%) OpenShift
17 23 (0.85%) Azure AKS
18 22 (0.82%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 395 (14.67%) DNS
2 279 (10.36%) Firewall
3 272 (10.10%) DHCP
4 182 (6.76%) VPN
5 168 (6.24%) TCP/IP
6 159 (5.91%) LAN
7 148 (5.50%) WAN
8 126 (4.68%) Wi-Fi
9 82 (3.05%) SAN
10 58 (2.15%) VLAN
11 56 (2.08%) Network Security
12 44 (1.63%) BGP
13 39 (1.45%) SSL
14 37 (1.37%) Internet
15 36 (1.34%) NAS
15 36 (1.34%) OSPF
16 32 (1.19%) Skype
16 32 (1.19%) Wireless
17 30 (1.11%) VoIP
18 28 (1.04%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 238 (8.84%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.93%) Oracle Database
3 36 (1.34%) Power BI
4 29 (1.08%) Relational Database
5 27 (1.00%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (0.93%) MySQL
7 18 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
7 18 (0.67%) Db2
8 14 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 13 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
9 13 (0.48%) RDBMS
10 12 (0.45%) NoSQL
11 11 (0.41%) MongoDB
12 9 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
13 7 (0.26%) Data Warehouse
13 7 (0.26%) GIS
13 7 (0.26%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 6 (0.22%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
15 5 (0.19%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 171 (6.35%) JIRA
2 50 (1.86%) Git
3 47 (1.75%) MSI
4 45 (1.67%) Jenkins
5 39 (1.45%) GitLab
6 37 (1.37%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.63%) Eclipse
8 9 (0.33%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.33%) Chocolatey
9 7 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
10 6 (0.22%) Android Studio
10 6 (0.22%) InstallShield
10 6 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.22%) Xcode
11 5 (0.19%) AdminStudio
11 5 (0.19%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.19%) Selenium
12 4 (0.15%) Appium
12 4 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 4 (0.15%) Burp Suite
General
1 968 (35.96%) Social Skills
2 295 (10.96%) Finance
3 292 (10.85%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (6.46%) Public Sector
5 153 (5.68%) Banking
6 100 (3.71%) Documentation Skills
7 87 (3.23%) Organisational Skills
8 82 (3.05%) Legal
9 54 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 52 (1.93%) Retail
11 41 (1.52%) Military
12 39 (1.45%) Manufacturing
13 37 (1.37%) Front Office
14 36 (1.34%) Investment Banking
15 33 (1.23%) Telecoms
16 30 (1.11%) Law
17 26 (0.97%) Spanish Language
18 24 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
19 22 (0.82%) Financial Institution
19 22 (0.82%) French Language
Job Titles
1 385 (14.30%) Support Engineer
2 365 (13.56%) IT Support
3 267 (9.92%) Analyst
4 257 (9.55%) IT Engineer
5 247 (9.18%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 217 (8.06%) IT Support Engineer
7 184 (6.84%) Senior
8 122 (4.53%) Architect
9 117 (4.35%) 2nd Line Support
10 109 (4.05%) Desktop Support
11 103 (3.83%) Desktop Engineer
12 101 (3.75%) Developer
13 98 (3.64%) Support Analyst
14 96 (3.57%) Lead
15 86 (3.19%) Cloud Engineer
15 86 (3.19%) IT Analyst
16 78 (2.90%) Technical Support
17 77 (2.86%) Consultant
18 70 (2.60%) Service Analyst
18 70 (2.60%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 100 (3.71%) .NET
2 90 (3.34%) REST
3 61 (2.27%) .NET Framework
4 38 (1.41%) LDAP
5 31 (1.15%) 802.1X
6 30 (1.11%) SAML
7 29 (1.08%) Microsoft Graph
8 28 (1.04%) WPF
9 27 (1.00%) Middleware
10 26 (0.97%) WinForms
11 25 (0.93%) Web Services
12 23 (0.85%) CSS
12 23 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
12 23 (0.85%) OAuth
13 22 (0.82%) Software Packaging
14 17 (0.63%) HTML
14 17 (0.63%) JSON
14 17 (0.63%) Kafka
14 17 (0.63%) RESTful
15 16 (0.59%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 276 (10.25%) Onboarding
2 136 (5.05%) Data Centre
3 130 (4.83%) PKI
4 78 (2.90%) Clustering
5 72 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
6 70 (2.60%) Management Information System
7 65 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
8 61 (2.27%) Replication
9 60 (2.23%) Cloud Native
10 51 (1.89%) Driving Licence
11 48 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
12 47 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
12 47 (1.75%) Security Posture
13 46 (1.71%) Virtual Team
14 44 (1.63%) Video Conferencing
15 33 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
16 32 (1.19%) Linux Command Line
17 30 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
18 28 (1.04%) CMDB
19 27 (1.00%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 652 (24.22%) Windows Server
2 639 (23.74%) Linux
3 473 (17.57%) Windows 10
4 179 (6.65%) Mac OS
5 128 (4.75%) Apple iOS
6 124 (4.61%) Android
7 122 (4.53%) Unix
8 100 (3.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 67 (2.49%) Windows Server 2019
10 43 (1.60%) Windows Server 2016
11 41 (1.52%) Windows 7
12 37 (1.37%) Ubuntu
12 37 (1.37%) Windows Server 2012
13 30 (1.11%) AIX
14 18 (0.67%) CentOS
14 18 (0.67%) Solaris
14 18 (0.67%) VMS
15 13 (0.48%) Windows Server 2003
15 13 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
16 9 (0.33%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 613 (22.77%) Problem-Solving
2 449 (16.68%) ITIL
3 402 (14.93%) Customer Service
4 322 (11.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 292 (10.85%) Migration
6 283 (10.51%) ITSM
7 257 (9.55%) DevOps
8 241 (8.95%) Continuous Improvement
9 239 (8.88%) Agile
10 231 (8.58%) CI/CD
11 200 (7.43%) Service Management
12 186 (6.91%) High Availability
13 176 (6.54%) Change Management
14 175 (6.50%) Infrastructure as Code
15 157 (5.83%) Stakeholder Management
16 147 (5.46%) Disaster Recovery
17 140 (5.20%) Cybersecurity
18 139 (5.16%) Runbook
18 139 (5.16%) SIEM
19 136 (5.05%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 584 (21.69%) PowerShell
2 274 (10.18%) Python
3 269 (9.99%) SQL
4 134 (4.98%) C#
5 120 (4.46%) Bash
6 66 (2.45%) JavaScript
7 65 (2.41%) Java
8 51 (1.89%) PL/SQL
9 50 (1.86%) T-SQL
10 47 (1.75%) C++
11 24 (0.89%) Bicep
11 24 (0.89%) Search Processing Language
11 24 (0.89%) VB
12 21 (0.78%) VBScript
13 20 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
14 18 (0.67%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.63%) TypeScript
16 16 (0.59%) Perl
17 14 (0.52%) C
18 13 (0.48%) VBA
Qualifications
1 816 (30.31%) Security Cleared
2 505 (18.76%) SC Cleared
3 300 (11.14%) Degree
4 281 (10.44%) DV Cleared
5 111 (4.12%) Microsoft Certification
6 80 (2.97%) Cisco Certification
7 75 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
8 59 (2.19%) Azure Certification
8 59 (2.19%) CISSP
9 46 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 44 (1.63%) AWS Certification
11 39 (1.45%) MCSE
12 32 (1.19%) A+ Certification
13 31 (1.15%) CCNA
14 30 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 27 (1.00%) CCNP
16 26 (0.97%) MCSA
17 24 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
18 23 (0.85%) CISM
19 21 (0.78%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (4.16%) SLA
2 111 (4.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 83 (3.08%) NIST
4 73 (2.71%) QA
5 47 (1.75%) GDPR
6 28 (1.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 27 (1.00%) PCI DSS
8 25 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
9 23 (0.85%) NCSC
10 12 (0.45%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.41%) Accessibility
11 11 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.37%) NIST 800
13 9 (0.33%) GRC
13 9 (0.33%) WCAG
14 8 (0.30%) PMO
14 8 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.22%) GxP
15 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.19%) MiFID
System Software
1 1,050 (39.00%) Active Directory
2 350 (13.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 141 (5.24%) Hyper-V
4 117 (4.35%) VMware ESXi
5 102 (3.79%) vSphere
6 100 (3.71%) Virtual Machines
7 92 (3.42%) Docker
8 69 (2.56%) Virtual Desktop
9 61 (2.27%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.37%) Firmware
11 36 (1.34%) BitLocker
12 27 (1.00%) Microsoft App-V
13 17 (0.63%) KVM
14 14 (0.52%) 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%) UAG
Systems Management
1 393 (14.60%) Microsoft Intune
2 245 (9.10%) SCCM
3 197 (7.32%) Terraform
4 177 (6.58%) Ansible
5 139 (5.16%) Kubernetes
6 101 (3.75%) vCenter Server
7 55 (2.04%) SCOM
8 49 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
9 48 (1.78%) Jamf Pro
10 39 (1.45%) FortiGate
11 38 (1.41%) WSUS
12 33 (1.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 30 (1.11%) Progress Chef
14 29 (1.08%) Prometheus
15 27 (1.00%) Puppet
16 26 (0.97%) Grafana
17 23 (0.85%) Nagios
18 21 (0.78%) Nessus
18 21 (0.78%) Packer
19 20 (0.74%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,174 (43.61%) Microsoft
2 461 (17.12%) VMware
3 263 (9.77%) ServiceNow
4 185 (6.87%) Citrix
5 174 (6.46%) Cisco
6 154 (5.72%) Oracle
7 121 (4.49%) Splunk
8 78 (2.90%) Apple
9 75 (2.79%) SolarWinds
10 71 (2.64%) CyberArk
11 68 (2.53%) HP
12 65 (2.41%) Red Hat
13 63 (2.34%) Google
14 59 (2.19%) Dell
15 55 (2.04%) BeyondTrust
16 54 (2.01%) Remedy
17 50 (1.86%) Juniper
18 46 (1.71%) IBM
19 44 (1.63%) F5
20 38 (1.41%) Tenable