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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,875 2,330 2,707
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.18% 8.34% 8.38%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.57% 60.33% 58.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,830 1,583 1,727
10th Percentile £180 £163 £184
25th Percentile £225 £208 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £556 £541 £575
90th Percentile £668 £638 £638
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 217 135
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.12 £15.19
25th Percentile £19.24 £17.98 £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 £40.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.84 £65.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +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 4,595 3,862 4,589
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.87% 13.82% 14.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,933 2,537 2,856
10th Percentile £193 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £276 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £580
90th Percentile £675 £675 £683
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 351 268 218
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £19.42 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £35.22 £25.15 £59.25
Median % change year-on-year +40.04% -57.55% +24.73%
75th Percentile £67.47 £59.00 £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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -5 963 £416 -2.12% 1,098
South East -7 565 £484 +28.93% 494
North of England -5 506 £340 +12.72% 363
North West +2 297 £350 +6.87% 198
Midlands -16 297 £400 - 303
South West -18 268 £540 +48.97% 239
East of England -1 249 £235 -32.86% 255
West Midlands -21 203 £402 +0.50% 171
Yorkshire -13 170 £282 +40.47% 133
East Midlands +3 93 £275 +22.22% 131
North East -21 44 £283 +13.80% 38
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
1 243 (8.45%) SharePoint
2 228 (7.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 61 (2.12%) IIS
4 57 (1.98%) Confluence
5 19 (0.66%) Apache
5 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.63%) nginx
7 12 (0.42%) 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 (6.75%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.16%) 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 51 (1.77%) 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
1 942 (32.77%) Microsoft 365
2 892 (31.03%) Azure
3 497 (17.29%) Entra ID
4 314 (10.92%) AWS
5 139 (4.83%) OneDrive
6 108 (3.76%) GCP
7 103 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
8 75 (2.61%) SaaS
9 70 (2.43%) Azure Monitor
10 62 (2.16%) GitHub
11 58 (2.02%) IaaS
11 58 (2.02%) Power Platform
12 44 (1.53%) PaaS
13 40 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
14 27 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
14 27 (0.94%) Google Workspace
15 26 (0.90%) OpenShift
16 24 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (0.73%) Datadog
18 20 (0.70%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 458 (15.93%) DNS
2 326 (11.34%) DHCP
3 314 (10.92%) Firewall
4 244 (8.49%) VPN
5 227 (7.90%) TCP/IP
6 116 (4.03%) Wi-Fi
7 109 (3.79%) WAN
8 108 (3.76%) LAN
9 95 (3.30%) Network Security
10 83 (2.89%) SAN
11 78 (2.71%) VLAN
12 51 (1.77%) Wireless
13 50 (1.74%) SSL
14 39 (1.36%) Internet
15 37 (1.29%) BGP
16 36 (1.25%) NAS
17 35 (1.22%) Skype
18 31 (1.08%) VoIP
19 27 (0.94%) SSH
20 26 (0.90%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (8.87%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.91%) Oracle Database
3 49 (1.70%) Power BI
4 29 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 28 (0.97%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.80%) Relational Database
7 22 (0.77%) MySQL
8 15 (0.52%) Db2
8 15 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
10 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
11 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
11 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
11 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
12 7 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
12 7 (0.24%) MongoDB
13 6 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
14 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 144 (5.01%) JIRA
2 71 (2.47%) Git
3 51 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 49 (1.70%) MSI
5 46 (1.60%) GitLab
6 32 (1.11%) 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 (36.70%) Social Skills
2 354 (12.31%) Finance
3 343 (11.93%) Analytical Skills
4 148 (5.15%) Banking
5 129 (4.49%) Public Sector
6 107 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
7 73 (2.54%) Legal
8 68 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 68 (2.37%) Organisational Skills
9 56 (1.95%) Manufacturing
10 50 (1.74%) Telecoms
11 48 (1.67%) Retail
12 41 (1.43%) Front Office
13 39 (1.36%) Law
13 39 (1.36%) Military
14 34 (1.18%) Investment Banking
15 25 (0.87%) Financial Institution
15 25 (0.87%) Spanish Language
16 24 (0.83%) Aerospace
16 24 (0.83%) French Language
Job Titles
1 474 (16.49%) Support Engineer
2 392 (13.63%) IT Support
3 303 (10.54%) IT Engineer
4 301 (10.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 255 (8.87%) IT Support Engineer
6 244 (8.49%) Analyst
7 230 (8.00%) Senior
8 131 (4.56%) Desktop Support
9 121 (4.21%) 2nd Line Support
9 121 (4.21%) Desktop Engineer
10 114 (3.97%) Cloud Engineer
11 109 (3.79%) Lead
12 108 (3.76%) Architect
13 101 (3.51%) Windows Engineer
14 88 (3.06%) Support Analyst
15 84 (2.92%) Developer
16 81 (2.82%) Consultant
17 76 (2.64%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 75 (2.61%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 73 (2.54%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 248 (8.63%) Terraform
2 120 (4.17%) .NET
3 104 (3.62%) REST
4 57 (1.98%) .NET Framework
5 43 (1.50%) LDAP
6 40 (1.39%) Middleware
7 38 (1.32%) JSON
7 38 (1.32%) 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%) Kafka
15 17 (0.59%) RESTful
15 17 (0.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 367 (12.77%) Onboarding
2 170 (5.91%) Data Centre
3 143 (4.97%) PKI
4 101 (3.51%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
6 80 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
7 74 (2.57%) Cloud Native
8 73 (2.54%) Clustering
8 73 (2.54%) Video Conferencing
9 68 (2.37%) Driving Licence
10 57 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 55 (1.91%) Replication
12 53 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
13 39 (1.36%) Legacy Systems
13 39 (1.36%) Virtual Team
14 36 (1.25%) CMDB
15 34 (1.18%) Enterprise Storage
16 32 (1.11%) Operational Technology
17 31 (1.08%) Public Cloud
18 30 (1.04%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 824 (28.66%) Windows Server
2 689 (23.97%) Linux
3 516 (17.95%) Windows 10
4 189 (6.57%) Mac OS
5 138 (4.80%) Apple iOS
6 129 (4.49%) Android
6 129 (4.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 105 (3.65%) Unix
8 67 (2.33%) Windows Server 2019
9 47 (1.63%) Ubuntu
10 46 (1.60%) Windows 7
11 39 (1.36%) CentOS
11 39 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
12 34 (1.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.63%) AIX
13 18 (0.63%) Solaris
14 16 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
15 15 (0.52%) Rocky
16 14 (0.49%) VMS
17 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 698 (24.28%) Problem-Solving
2 554 (19.27%) ITIL
3 477 (16.59%) Customer Service
4 394 (13.70%) ITSM
5 387 (13.46%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 360 (12.52%) Migration
7 339 (11.79%) Continuous Improvement
8 294 (10.23%) Service Management
9 280 (9.74%) DevOps
10 267 (9.29%) CI/CD
11 264 (9.18%) Infrastructure as Code
12 238 (8.28%) Agile
12 238 (8.28%) Stakeholder Management
13 217 (7.55%) Root Cause Analysis
14 214 (7.44%) Change Management
15 203 (7.06%) Disaster Recovery
16 190 (6.61%) Cybersecurity
17 173 (6.02%) Validation
18 169 (5.88%) Technical Leadership
19 166 (5.77%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 722 (25.11%) PowerShell
2 319 (11.10%) Python
3 275 (9.57%) SQL
4 183 (6.37%) Bash
5 145 (5.04%) C#
6 66 (2.30%) T-SQL
7 64 (2.23%) Java
8 61 (2.12%) JavaScript
9 50 (1.74%) Bicep
10 45 (1.57%) PL/SQL
11 38 (1.32%) 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
1 915 (31.83%) Security Cleared
2 529 (18.40%) SC Cleared
3 384 (13.36%) DV Cleared
4 284 (9.88%) Degree
5 111 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 89 (3.10%) Azure Certification
7 68 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
8 65 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
9 63 (2.19%) CISSP
10 53 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
11 52 (1.81%) AWS Certification
12 48 (1.67%) A+ Certification
13 45 (1.57%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 34 (1.18%) CISM
14 34 (1.18%) DBS Check
14 34 (1.18%) ITIL Certification
15 33 (1.15%) CCNP
16 30 (1.04%) CCNA
16 30 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 24 (0.83%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 156 (5.43%) SLA
2 110 (3.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 82 (2.85%) NIST
4 75 (2.61%) QA
5 38 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
6 29 (1.01%) NCSC
7 26 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 20 (0.70%) 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 1,224 (42.57%) Active Directory
2 449 (15.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 201 (6.99%) Hyper-V
4 145 (5.04%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.59%) vSphere
6 113 (3.93%) Docker
7 99 (3.44%) Virtual Machines
8 88 (3.06%) Virtual Desktop
9 74 (2.57%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.36%) BitLocker
11 29 (1.01%) Firmware
12 24 (0.83%) vCloud
13 20 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.59%) 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
1 434 (15.10%) Microsoft Intune
2 327 (11.37%) SCCM
3 213 (7.41%) Ansible
4 151 (5.25%) Kubernetes
5 117 (4.07%) vCenter Server
6 98 (3.41%) SCOM
7 46 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
8 39 (1.36%) WSUS
9 36 (1.25%) Grafana
10 33 (1.15%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.97%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.97%) WMI
12 27 (0.94%) Puppet
12 27 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
13 24 (0.83%) NetBackup
13 24 (0.83%) VxRail
14 23 (0.80%) Nagios
15 21 (0.73%) Packer
16 18 (0.63%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.59%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,413 (49.15%) Microsoft
2 586 (20.38%) VMware
3 334 (11.62%) ServiceNow
4 202 (7.03%) Cisco
5 162 (5.63%) Oracle
6 157 (5.46%) Citrix
7 97 (3.37%) Apple
8 96 (3.34%) Splunk
9 95 (3.30%) CyberArk
10 82 (2.85%) Google
11 70 (2.43%) Red Hat
11 70 (2.43%) SolarWinds
12 65 (2.26%) BeyondTrust
13 56 (1.95%) Dell
14 55 (1.91%) Remedy
15 44 (1.53%) HP
15 44 (1.53%) Palo Alto
16 40 (1.39%) NetApp
17 38 (1.32%) Zscaler
18 37 (1.29%) BMC