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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,755 2,250 2,832
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.02% 8.15% 8.55%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.81% 60.98% 60.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,777 1,521 1,927
10th Percentile £171 £168 £178
25th Percentile £225 £220 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £409 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.91% -9.11% +5.88%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £673 £658
UK median daily rate £425 £413 £450
% change year-on-year +3.03% -8.33% +4.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 239 187 200
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.12 £11.06
25th Percentile £17.96 £17.33 £15.04
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -10.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £60.17 £28.00 £58.56
90th Percentile £74.20 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £19.68 £21.80
% change year-on-year +30.84% -9.72% -3.11%

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 4,457 3,690 4,706
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.74% 13.36% 14.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,872 2,436 3,131
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £450 £490
Median % change year-on-year +4.94% -8.16% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £588
90th Percentile £675 £682 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £461 £475
% change year-on-year +2.98% -2.89% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 304 235 288
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.41
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.13 £16.77
Median hourly rate £34.68 £23.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.76% -29.23% -5.80%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.88 £67.63
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £24.50 £27.50
% change year-on-year +6.12% -10.91% -30.56%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 -13 927 £425 - 661
South East -8 573 £475 -3.06% 358
North of England -6 501 £325 - 249
North West +2 290 £344 -1.71% 135
South West -12 287 £488 +35.42% 148
Midlands -23 256 £384 -4.13% 139
East of England -4 192 £339 +1.12% 149
Yorkshire -20 184 £313 +8.70% 81
West Midlands -28 162 £425 -0.47% 94
East Midlands +5 90 £270 +35.00% 45
North East -31 31 £250 -4.76% 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
1 236 (8.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 229 (8.31%) SharePoint
3 57 (2.07%) Confluence
3 57 (2.07%) IIS
4 19 (0.69%) Skype for Business
5 17 (0.62%) nginx
6 16 (0.58%) Apache
7 13 (0.47%) Tomcat
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.22%) Documentum
11 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Camunda
12 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
13 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
Applications
1 170 (6.17%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.073%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.036%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.036%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.036%) InDesign
8 1 (0.036%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 57 (2.07%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.36%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.18%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.073%) assyst
7 1 (0.036%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.036%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP BRIM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.036%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.036%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 884 (32.09%) Azure
2 878 (31.87%) Microsoft 365
3 449 (16.30%) Entra ID
4 310 (11.25%) AWS
5 130 (4.72%) OneDrive
6 102 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 93 (3.38%) GCP
8 73 (2.65%) Azure Monitor
9 72 (2.61%) SaaS
10 64 (2.32%) IaaS
10 64 (2.32%) Power Platform
11 63 (2.29%) GitHub
12 48 (1.74%) PaaS
13 41 (1.49%) Azure Sentinel
14 28 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
14 28 (1.02%) OpenShift
15 26 (0.94%) Google Workspace
16 24 (0.87%) Azure AKS
17 23 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
18 22 (0.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 442 (16.04%) DNS
2 322 (11.69%) Firewall
3 316 (11.47%) DHCP
4 229 (8.31%) VPN
5 209 (7.59%) TCP/IP
6 131 (4.75%) LAN
6 131 (4.75%) WAN
7 127 (4.61%) Wi-Fi
8 88 (3.19%) SAN
9 78 (2.83%) VLAN
10 71 (2.58%) Network Security
11 43 (1.56%) SSL
12 42 (1.52%) NAS
13 39 (1.42%) Internet
13 39 (1.42%) VSAN
14 38 (1.38%) Wireless
15 34 (1.23%) Skype
16 33 (1.20%) BGP
17 26 (0.94%) VoIP
18 24 (0.87%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (9.55%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.89%) Power BI
3 51 (1.85%) Oracle Database
4 25 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 23 (0.83%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.80%) MySQL
6 22 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 12 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
10 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
11 10 (0.36%) Db2
12 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
14 5 (0.18%) GIS
14 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 159 (5.77%) JIRA
2 67 (2.43%) Git
3 45 (1.63%) Jenkins
3 45 (1.63%) MSI
4 38 (1.38%) GitLab
5 32 (1.16%) Visual Studio
6 17 (0.62%) Bitbucket
6 17 (0.62%) Eclipse
7 10 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 8 (0.29%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
9 7 (0.25%) Chocolatey
9 7 (0.25%) Selenium
9 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
10 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
10 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
11 4 (0.15%) Android Studio
11 4 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
11 4 (0.15%) Xcode
General
1 1,010 (36.66%) Social Skills
2 344 (12.49%) Finance
3 338 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
4 157 (5.70%) Banking
5 145 (5.26%) Public Sector
6 92 (3.34%) Documentation Skills
7 73 (2.65%) Legal
8 71 (2.58%) Organisational Skills
9 59 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 54 (1.96%) Retail
11 51 (1.85%) Manufacturing
12 42 (1.52%) Telecoms
13 40 (1.45%) Front Office
14 36 (1.31%) Law
14 36 (1.31%) Military
15 33 (1.20%) Investment Banking
16 28 (1.02%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.91%) Financial Institution
18 24 (0.87%) French Language
19 19 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 439 (15.93%) Support Engineer
2 379 (13.76%) IT Support
3 295 (10.71%) IT Engineer
4 284 (10.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 247 (8.97%) IT Support Engineer
6 239 (8.68%) Analyst
7 222 (8.06%) Senior
8 125 (4.54%) 2nd Line Support
9 120 (4.36%) Desktop Support
10 111 (4.03%) Architect
11 106 (3.85%) Desktop Engineer
12 105 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
13 101 (3.67%) Lead
14 96 (3.48%) Support Analyst
15 91 (3.30%) Developer
16 84 (3.05%) Windows Engineer
17 78 (2.83%) Consultant
18 77 (2.79%) 1st Line Support
19 76 (2.76%) IT Analyst
20 72 (2.61%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (4.03%) .NET
2 100 (3.63%) REST
3 62 (2.25%) .NET Framework
4 29 (1.05%) Middleware
4 29 (1.05%) WPF
5 28 (1.02%) JSON
6 26 (0.94%) LDAP
6 26 (0.94%) WinForms
7 23 (0.83%) CSS
8 21 (0.76%) ARM Templates
8 21 (0.76%) HTML
8 21 (0.76%) Web Services
9 20 (0.73%) Software Packaging
10 19 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
10 19 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
11 18 (0.65%) .NET Core
11 18 (0.65%) 802.1X
11 18 (0.65%) Kafka
12 17 (0.62%) RESTful
12 17 (0.62%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 325 (11.80%) Onboarding
2 148 (5.37%) Data Centre
3 144 (5.23%) PKI
4 84 (3.05%) Clustering
4 84 (3.05%) Management Information System
5 77 (2.79%) Hybrid Cloud
6 74 (2.69%) Cloud Native
7 71 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
8 63 (2.29%) Video Conferencing
9 62 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
10 54 (1.96%) Driving Licence
10 54 (1.96%) Replication
11 46 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
12 45 (1.63%) Security Posture
13 40 (1.45%) Virtual Team
14 39 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
15 35 (1.27%) CMDB
16 34 (1.23%) Enterprise Storage
17 30 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
18 29 (1.05%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 732 (26.57%) Windows Server
2 670 (24.32%) Linux
3 490 (17.79%) Windows 10
4 180 (6.53%) Mac OS
5 127 (4.61%) Apple iOS
6 124 (4.50%) Android
7 113 (4.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 109 (3.96%) Unix
9 69 (2.50%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.71%) Windows 7
11 45 (1.63%) Ubuntu
12 40 (1.45%) Windows Server 2016
13 36 (1.31%) Windows Server 2012
14 30 (1.09%) CentOS
15 24 (0.87%) AIX
16 20 (0.73%) VMS
16 20 (0.73%) Windows Server 2008
17 17 (0.62%) Solaris
18 11 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
19 10 (0.36%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 678 (24.61%) Problem-Solving
2 508 (18.44%) ITIL
3 437 (15.86%) Customer Service
4 367 (13.32%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 357 (12.96%) ITSM
6 330 (11.98%) Migration
7 285 (10.34%) Continuous Improvement
8 280 (10.16%) DevOps
9 257 (9.33%) Service Management
10 251 (9.11%) Agile
11 249 (9.04%) CI/CD
12 228 (8.28%) Infrastructure as Code
13 205 (7.44%) Change Management
14 189 (6.86%) Stakeholder Management
15 171 (6.21%) High Availability
16 169 (6.13%) Disaster Recovery
17 162 (5.88%) Root Cause Analysis
18 158 (5.74%) Cybersecurity
18 158 (5.74%) Service Delivery
19 151 (5.48%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 695 (25.23%) PowerShell
2 310 (11.25%) Python
3 278 (10.09%) SQL
4 167 (6.06%) Bash
5 139 (5.05%) C#
6 69 (2.50%) Java
7 68 (2.47%) JavaScript
8 50 (1.81%) T-SQL
9 47 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 46 (1.67%) Bicep
11 44 (1.60%) C++
12 28 (1.02%) VB
13 26 (0.94%) VBScript
14 24 (0.87%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.62%) Perl
15 17 (0.62%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.62%) TypeScript
16 12 (0.44%) C
17 11 (0.40%) VBA
18 9 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 874 (31.72%) Security Cleared
2 534 (19.38%) SC Cleared
3 322 (11.69%) DV Cleared
4 283 (10.27%) Degree
5 108 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
6 83 (3.01%) Azure Certification
7 76 (2.76%) Cisco Certification
7 76 (2.76%) Computer Science Degree
8 61 (2.21%) CISSP
9 52 (1.89%) AWS Certification
10 48 (1.74%) A+ Certification
11 46 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
12 38 (1.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 32 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 29 (1.05%) CCNA
15 28 (1.02%) CCNP
16 26 (0.94%) MCSE
17 25 (0.91%) CISM
18 24 (0.87%) DBS Check
19 23 (0.83%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (5.15%) SLA
2 109 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 81 (2.94%) NIST
4 79 (2.87%) QA
5 28 (1.02%) NCSC
6 26 (0.94%) GDPR
7 25 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
8 24 (0.87%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (0.47%) Accessibility
11 12 (0.44%) Data Quality
12 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.40%) WCAG
13 10 (0.36%) GRC
14 9 (0.33%) PMO
15 8 (0.29%) NIST 800
16 7 (0.25%) GxP
17 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
17 6 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,140 (41.38%) Active Directory
2 407 (14.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 172 (6.24%) Hyper-V
4 135 (4.90%) VMware ESXi
5 118 (4.28%) vSphere
6 103 (3.74%) Docker
7 91 (3.30%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.98%) Virtual Desktop
8 82 (2.98%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.45%) BitLocker
10 33 (1.20%) Firmware
11 20 (0.73%) vCloud
12 17 (0.62%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
14 9 (0.33%) KVM
14 9 (0.33%) XenApp
14 9 (0.33%) XenDesktop
15 8 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.25%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 7 (0.25%) NFS
Systems Management
1 413 (14.99%) Microsoft Intune
2 282 (10.24%) SCCM
3 250 (9.07%) Terraform
4 220 (7.99%) Ansible
5 152 (5.52%) Kubernetes
6 113 (4.10%) vCenter Server
7 78 (2.83%) SCOM
8 46 (1.67%) WSUS
9 44 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
10 37 (1.34%) Progress Chef
11 32 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
12 30 (1.09%) Puppet
13 27 (0.98%) FortiGate
14 24 (0.87%) Grafana
14 24 (0.87%) Packer
14 24 (0.87%) WMI
15 23 (0.83%) Nagios
15 23 (0.83%) Prometheus
15 23 (0.83%) VxRail
16 20 (0.73%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,288 (46.75%) Microsoft
2 546 (19.82%) VMware
3 327 (11.87%) ServiceNow
4 176 (6.39%) Cisco
5 168 (6.10%) Citrix
6 158 (5.74%) Oracle
7 102 (3.70%) Splunk
8 90 (3.27%) Apple
9 85 (3.09%) CyberArk
10 75 (2.72%) Google
11 70 (2.54%) SolarWinds
12 65 (2.36%) Red Hat
13 64 (2.32%) HP
14 61 (2.21%) Remedy
15 60 (2.18%) BeyondTrust
16 50 (1.81%) Dell
17 47 (1.71%) BMC
18 40 (1.45%) Juniper
19 39 (1.42%) Meraki
20 38 (1.38%) NetApp