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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -6
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,865 2,343 2,678
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.15% 8.38% 8.34%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.66% 60.26% 58.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,825 1,590 1,700
10th Percentile £181 £163 £182
25th Percentile £225 £208 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £563 £540 £575
90th Percentile £670 £638 £638
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 301 221 130
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.12 £15.22
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.69 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.35
Median % change year-on-year +17.14% -9.65% -2.60%
75th Percentile £65.00 £38.94 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.32 £65.00 £67.72
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £22.57 £24.18
% change year-on-year +14.10% -6.67% +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 4,572 3,888 4,561
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.82% 13.91% 14.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,917 2,550 2,824
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.89% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £582
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £473 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +5.00% -5.26% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 273 214
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.46 £18.87 £23.11
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -58.08% +30.78%
75th Percentile £67.31 £58.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £74.97 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £54.00
% change year-on-year +2.47% -53.43% +23.43%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -7 961 £425 - 1,077
South East -7 562 £480 +31.51% 493
North of England -8 499 £335 +9.84% 361
Midlands -15 300 £402 +3.74% 281
North West +5 295 £350 +6.87% 195
South West -18 264 £550 +57.14% 227
East of England 0 251 £223 -36.29% 236
West Midlands -22 203 £425 +6.25% 156
Yorkshire -13 164 £275 +17.02% 126
East Midlands +1 96 £300 +33.33% 124
North East -23 45 £275 +11.56% 47
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
1 239 (8.34%) SharePoint
2 222 (7.75%) Microsoft Exchange
3 60 (2.09%) IIS
4 56 (1.95%) Confluence
5 26 (0.91%) nginx
6 20 (0.70%) Apache
7 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.45%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.21%) Documentum
11 5 (0.17%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.17%) Appian
11 5 (0.17%) Camunda
11 5 (0.17%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.14%) CICS
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.10%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.10%) OpenStack
13 3 (0.10%) SAS
Applications
1 190 (6.63%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
4 12 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.17%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.10%) Houdini
6 3 (0.10%) NUKE
7 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 48 (1.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 9 (0.31%) 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
7 2 (0.070%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.035%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.035%) Monis
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
8 1 (0.035%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.035%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 938 (32.74%) Microsoft 365
2 897 (31.31%) Azure
3 500 (17.45%) Entra ID
4 325 (11.34%) AWS
5 135 (4.71%) OneDrive
6 109 (3.80%) GCP
7 102 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
8 73 (2.55%) Azure Monitor
9 69 (2.41%) SaaS
10 65 (2.27%) GitHub
11 58 (2.02%) Power Platform
12 57 (1.99%) IaaS
13 43 (1.50%) PaaS
14 41 (1.43%) Azure Sentinel
15 29 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (0.94%) Google Workspace
17 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
18 25 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
19 24 (0.84%) Amazon EC2
20 21 (0.73%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 453 (15.81%) DNS
2 322 (11.24%) DHCP
3 314 (10.96%) Firewall
4 245 (8.55%) VPN
5 232 (8.10%) TCP/IP
6 117 (4.08%) Wi-Fi
7 106 (3.70%) LAN
7 106 (3.70%) WAN
8 98 (3.42%) Network Security
9 84 (2.93%) SAN
10 78 (2.72%) VLAN
11 51 (1.78%) Wireless
12 50 (1.75%) SSL
13 39 (1.36%) Internet
14 37 (1.29%) BGP
15 36 (1.26%) NAS
16 34 (1.19%) Skype
17 32 (1.12%) VoIP
18 29 (1.01%) SSH
19 26 (0.91%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (8.87%) SQL Server
2 54 (1.88%) Oracle Database
3 50 (1.75%) Power BI
4 31 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
5 29 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
5 29 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 23 (0.80%) MySQL
7 22 (0.77%) 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
11 9 (0.31%) RDBMS
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
13 7 (0.24%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.24%) NoSQL
14 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 143 (4.99%) JIRA
2 74 (2.58%) Git
3 59 (2.06%) Jenkins
4 53 (1.85%) GitLab
5 49 (1.71%) MSI
6 33 (1.15%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.52%) Artifactory
7 15 (0.52%) Eclipse
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%) Robot Framework
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 6 (0.21%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.21%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.17%) Octopus Deploy
13 5 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 5 (0.17%) Toad
14 4 (0.14%) Chocolatey
General
1 1,054 (36.79%) Social Skills
2 353 (12.32%) Finance
3 338 (11.80%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (5.10%) Banking
5 133 (4.64%) Public Sector
6 106 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (2.58%) Legal
8 69 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 69 (2.41%) Organisational Skills
9 59 (2.06%) Manufacturing
10 48 (1.68%) Telecoms
11 46 (1.61%) Retail
12 41 (1.43%) Law
13 40 (1.40%) Front Office
14 39 (1.36%) Military
15 33 (1.15%) Investment Banking
16 25 (0.87%) Financial Institution
17 24 (0.84%) Aerospace
17 24 (0.84%) Spanish Language
18 22 (0.77%) French Language
Job Titles
1 476 (16.61%) Support Engineer
2 390 (13.61%) IT Support
3 305 (10.65%) IT Engineer
4 293 (10.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 256 (8.94%) IT Support Engineer
6 242 (8.45%) Analyst
7 236 (8.24%) Senior
8 129 (4.50%) Desktop Support
9 123 (4.29%) 2nd Line Support
10 122 (4.26%) Desktop Engineer
11 114 (3.98%) Cloud Engineer
12 109 (3.80%) Lead
13 107 (3.73%) Architect
14 100 (3.49%) Windows Engineer
15 86 (3.00%) Support Analyst
16 84 (2.93%) Developer
17 81 (2.83%) Consultant
18 76 (2.65%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 76 (2.65%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 72 (2.51%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (9.18%) Terraform
2 121 (4.22%) .NET
3 109 (3.80%) REST
4 58 (2.02%) .NET Framework
5 42 (1.47%) LDAP
6 40 (1.40%) JSON
7 39 (1.36%) Middleware
7 39 (1.36%) WPF
8 25 (0.87%) ARM Templates
9 23 (0.80%) WinForms
10 22 (0.77%) Software Packaging
10 22 (0.77%) Web Services
11 21 (0.73%) .NET Core
12 19 (0.66%) Kafka
12 19 (0.66%) XML
13 18 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
13 18 (0.63%) HTML
13 18 (0.63%) Microsoft Graph
13 18 (0.63%) YAML
14 17 (0.59%) React
Miscellaneous
1 368 (12.84%) Onboarding
2 168 (5.86%) Data Centre
3 142 (4.96%) PKI
4 103 (3.60%) Management Information System
5 85 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
6 83 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
7 74 (2.58%) Cloud Native
7 74 (2.58%) Video Conferencing
8 69 (2.41%) Clustering
8 69 (2.41%) Driving Licence
9 60 (2.09%) Security Posture
10 55 (1.92%) Replication
11 50 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
12 39 (1.36%) CMDB
12 39 (1.36%) Virtual Team
13 38 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
14 35 (1.22%) Operational Technology
15 32 (1.12%) Enterprise Storage
16 31 (1.08%) Public Cloud
17 30 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 822 (28.69%) Windows Server
2 698 (24.36%) Linux
3 520 (18.15%) Windows 10
4 183 (6.39%) Mac OS
5 137 (4.78%) Apple iOS
6 131 (4.57%) Android
7 130 (4.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 104 (3.63%) Unix
9 69 (2.41%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.64%) Ubuntu
11 44 (1.54%) Windows 7
12 39 (1.36%) CentOS
13 38 (1.33%) Windows Server 2012
14 35 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 18 (0.63%) Solaris
16 16 (0.56%) AIX
17 15 (0.52%) Rocky
17 15 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.49%) VMS
19 11 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (23.80%) Problem-Solving
2 547 (19.09%) ITIL
3 478 (16.68%) Customer Service
4 390 (13.61%) ITSM
5 380 (13.26%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 362 (12.64%) Migration
7 345 (12.04%) Continuous Improvement
8 298 (10.40%) Service Management
9 293 (10.23%) DevOps
10 280 (9.77%) CI/CD
11 277 (9.67%) Infrastructure as Code
12 246 (8.59%) Stakeholder Management
13 239 (8.34%) Agile
14 219 (7.64%) Root Cause Analysis
15 217 (7.57%) Change Management
16 212 (7.40%) Disaster Recovery
17 198 (6.91%) Cybersecurity
18 176 (6.14%) Validation
19 175 (6.11%) Technical Leadership
20 161 (5.62%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 726 (25.34%) PowerShell
2 324 (11.31%) Python
3 272 (9.49%) SQL
4 189 (6.60%) Bash
5 144 (5.03%) C#
6 67 (2.34%) Java
7 66 (2.30%) T-SQL
8 62 (2.16%) JavaScript
9 53 (1.85%) Bicep
10 44 (1.54%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.29%) C++
12 29 (1.01%) VB
13 25 (0.87%) VBScript
14 18 (0.63%) Groovy
15 17 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.56%) Perl
17 15 (0.52%) TypeScript
18 12 (0.42%) Go
18 12 (0.42%) VBA
19 9 (0.31%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 912 (31.83%) Security Cleared
2 529 (18.46%) SC Cleared
3 382 (13.33%) DV Cleared
4 281 (9.81%) Degree
5 108 (3.77%) Microsoft Certification
6 86 (3.00%) Azure Certification
7 67 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
8 65 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
9 63 (2.20%) CISSP
10 57 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (1.88%) AWS Certification
12 47 (1.64%) A+ Certification
13 43 (1.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 35 (1.22%) DBS Check
15 34 (1.19%) CCNP
15 34 (1.19%) CISM
16 33 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
17 30 (1.05%) CCNA
18 28 (0.98%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 24 (0.84%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 153 (5.34%) SLA
2 108 (3.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 85 (2.97%) NIST
4 72 (2.51%) QA
5 38 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
6 29 (1.01%) NCSC
7 26 (0.91%) PCI DSS
8 19 (0.66%) GDPR
9 17 (0.59%) GRC
10 16 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 15 (0.52%) Accessibility
12 12 (0.42%) WCAG
13 11 (0.38%) Data Quality
13 11 (0.38%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 9 (0.31%) GxP
14 9 (0.31%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.28%) PMO
16 6 (0.21%) ISO 9001
16 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,222 (42.65%) Active Directory
2 444 (15.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 198 (6.91%) Hyper-V
4 144 (5.03%) VMware ESXi
5 129 (4.50%) vSphere
6 122 (4.26%) Docker
7 98 (3.42%) Virtual Machines
8 95 (3.32%) Virtual Desktop
9 71 (2.48%) VMware NSX
10 38 (1.33%) BitLocker
11 31 (1.08%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 20 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
15 14 (0.49%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.42%) NFS
16 12 (0.42%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 9 (0.31%) KVM
Systems Management
1 434 (15.15%) Microsoft Intune
2 326 (11.38%) SCCM
3 220 (7.68%) Ansible
4 155 (5.41%) Kubernetes
5 114 (3.98%) vCenter Server
6 96 (3.35%) SCOM
7 43 (1.50%) Jamf Pro
8 38 (1.33%) Grafana
8 38 (1.33%) WSUS
9 34 (1.19%) Prometheus
10 30 (1.05%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.98%) WMI
12 27 (0.94%) Puppet
13 24 (0.84%) NetBackup
13 24 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
13 24 (0.84%) VxRail
14 21 (0.73%) Nagios
15 20 (0.70%) Packer
16 18 (0.63%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.59%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,416 (49.42%) Microsoft
2 581 (20.28%) VMware
3 334 (11.66%) ServiceNow
4 203 (7.09%) Cisco
5 165 (5.76%) Oracle
6 156 (5.45%) Citrix
7 96 (3.35%) Apple
8 95 (3.32%) CyberArk
9 93 (3.25%) Splunk
10 85 (2.97%) Google
11 71 (2.48%) Red Hat
12 68 (2.37%) SolarWinds
13 63 (2.20%) BeyondTrust
14 54 (1.88%) Dell
15 52 (1.82%) Remedy
16 45 (1.57%) Palo Alto
17 42 (1.47%) HP
18 39 (1.36%) NetApp
19 37 (1.29%) CrowdStrike
19 37 (1.29%) Fortinet