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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 16
Rank change year-on-year -5 -6 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,536 2,106 3,373
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.78% 8.53% 8.94%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.98% 60.07% 64.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,706 1,498 2,294
10th Percentile £161 £181 £155
25th Percentile £206 £232 £208
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £408 £415 £387
Median % change year-on-year -1.81% +7.30% -14.06%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £640 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £408 £425 £400
% change year-on-year -4.12% +6.25% -10.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 223 83 275
10th Percentile £13.72 £15.22 £12.15
25th Percentile £16.56 £16.95 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.46 £20.00 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +7.30% +12.87% -19.45%
75th Percentile £42.35 £29.00 £23.94
90th Percentile £67.84 £65.00 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £21.46 £22.09 £17.72
% change year-on-year -2.85% +24.66% -19.45%

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 4,159 3,506 5,235
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.13% 14.20% 13.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,758 2,379 3,550
10th Percentile £181 £200 £175
25th Percentile £285 £313 £273
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -13.46%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £588
90th Percentile £663 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £457
% change year-on-year -5.26% +3.94% -11.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 131 379
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.25 £13.28
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.20 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.64 £29.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.92% +31.82% -20.00%
75th Percentile £60.06 £65.88 £57.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £71.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £22.81 £27.75 £22.00
% change year-on-year -17.80% +26.14% -21.71%

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 23 March 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 23 March 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 23 March 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 -19 769 £425 - 229
South East -3 530 £450 -5.26% 290
North of England -7 480 £290 -17.14% 211
Midlands -16 268 £325 - 124
South West -5 262 £450 -16.08% 121
North West -7 259 £260 -25.71% 132
East of England +5 209 £275 +21.95% 99
Yorkshire -11 194 £347 -13.38% 65
West Midlands -28 158 £447 +37.54% 71
East Midlands -3 106 £200 -20.00% 53
North East -14 30 £184 -38.75% 20
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
1 214 (8.44%) Microsoft Exchange
2 165 (6.51%) SharePoint
3 56 (2.21%) Confluence
4 44 (1.74%) IIS
5 22 (0.87%) Apache
6 20 (0.79%) WebLogic
7 13 (0.51%) Skype for Business
8 11 (0.43%) Tuxedo
9 10 (0.39%) TPMS
10 6 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.20%) nginx
12 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
12 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
13 3 (0.12%) SAS
13 3 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
14 2 (0.079%) Exchange Server 2010
14 2 (0.079%) Sitecore CMS
14 2 (0.079%) WordPress
Applications
1 202 (7.97%) Microsoft Office
2 67 (2.64%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 9 (0.35%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.20%) Acrobat
6 5 (0.20%) PTC Creo
7 3 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.039%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.039%) InDesign
8 1 (0.039%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 28 (1.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.28%) Teamcenter
4 5 (0.20%) assyst
5 4 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 2 (0.079%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.079%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.079%) SystmOne
8 1 (0.039%) Aladdin
8 1 (0.039%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.039%) Eikon
8 1 (0.039%) Fidessa
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.039%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 736 (29.02%) Microsoft 365
2 655 (25.83%) Azure
3 281 (11.08%) Entra ID
4 183 (7.22%) AWS
5 84 (3.31%) OneDrive
6 64 (2.52%) GCP
6 64 (2.52%) SaaS
7 59 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
8 53 (2.09%) Google Workspace
9 45 (1.77%) IaaS
10 43 (1.70%) GitHub
11 40 (1.58%) Power Platform
12 38 (1.50%) PaaS
13 31 (1.22%) Azure Monitor
14 24 (0.95%) Azure Sentinel
15 23 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 21 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
17 19 (0.75%) OpenShift
18 17 (0.67%) Nutanix
19 16 (0.63%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 326 (12.85%) DNS
2 295 (11.63%) Firewall
3 217 (8.56%) DHCP
4 168 (6.62%) VPN
5 156 (6.15%) TCP/IP
6 145 (5.72%) LAN
7 142 (5.60%) WAN
8 138 (5.44%) Wi-Fi
9 72 (2.84%) Network Security
10 59 (2.33%) VLAN
11 58 (2.29%) Wireless
12 43 (1.70%) SAN
13 38 (1.50%) BGP
14 31 (1.22%) SSH
15 30 (1.18%) Skype
16 29 (1.14%) SSL
16 29 (1.14%) VoIP
17 28 (1.10%) Cisco ISE
17 28 (1.10%) Junos
17 28 (1.10%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 150 (5.91%) SQL Server
2 43 (1.70%) Oracle Database
3 39 (1.54%) Relational Database
4 35 (1.38%) MySQL
5 21 (0.83%) PostgreSQL
6 16 (0.63%) Power BI
7 13 (0.51%) BigQuery
7 13 (0.51%) DB2
8 12 (0.47%) MongoDB
9 11 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
10 9 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
10 9 (0.35%) NoSQL
11 7 (0.28%) SAP HANA
12 6 (0.24%) Amazon RDS
12 6 (0.24%) Data Warehouse
12 6 (0.24%) GIS
13 5 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 4 (0.16%) Oracle Database 10g
Development Applications
1 163 (6.43%) JIRA
2 54 (2.13%) GitLab
2 54 (2.13%) Jenkins
3 46 (1.81%) Git
4 39 (1.54%) MSI
5 33 (1.30%) Visual Studio
6 25 (0.99%) Eclipse
7 17 (0.67%) Burp Suite
7 17 (0.67%) Metasploit
8 15 (0.59%) Android Studio
8 15 (0.59%) Artifactory
9 13 (0.51%) Xcode
10 11 (0.43%) Browser DevTools
11 10 (0.39%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.39%) Chocolatey
12 8 (0.32%) InstallShield
12 8 (0.32%) JUnit
13 7 (0.28%) Robot Framework
13 7 (0.28%) Selenium
14 6 (0.24%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 913 (36.00%) Social Skills
2 239 (9.42%) Finance
3 212 (8.36%) Public Sector
4 207 (8.16%) Analytical Skills
5 136 (5.36%) Banking
6 105 (4.14%) Documentation Skills
7 99 (3.90%) Legal
8 81 (3.19%) Organisational Skills
9 58 (2.29%) Military
10 41 (1.62%) Presentation Skills
11 40 (1.58%) Manufacturing
12 37 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 34 (1.34%) Retail
14 27 (1.06%) Law
15 26 (1.03%) Telecoms
16 24 (0.95%) Investment Banking
17 21 (0.83%) Front Office
18 20 (0.79%) Local Government
19 18 (0.71%) Aerospace
20 15 (0.59%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 355 (14.00%) Support Engineer
2 354 (13.96%) IT Support
3 333 (13.13%) Analyst
4 212 (8.36%) IT Engineer
5 179 (7.06%) IT Support Engineer
6 160 (6.31%) Architect
7 157 (6.19%) Senior
8 152 (5.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 142 (5.60%) Support Analyst
10 112 (4.42%) Desktop Support
11 109 (4.30%) Technical Support
12 105 (4.14%) Developer
13 103 (4.06%) 2nd Line Support
14 100 (3.94%) Desktop Engineer
15 90 (3.55%) IT Analyst
16 89 (3.51%) Windows Engineer
17 80 (3.15%) Lead
18 73 (2.88%) Desktop Support Engineer
19 72 (2.84%) IT Support Analyst
20 69 (2.72%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (3.15%) .NET
2 61 (2.41%) REST
3 49 (1.93%) .NET Framework
4 44 (1.74%) OAuth
5 41 (1.62%) SAML
6 38 (1.50%) LDAP
7 33 (1.30%) Middleware
8 29 (1.14%) Web Services
9 27 (1.06%) WPF
10 25 (0.99%) Kafka
10 25 (0.99%) Microsoft Graph
10 25 (0.99%) React
11 24 (0.95%) CSS
11 24 (0.95%) WinForms
12 23 (0.91%) AngularJS
13 22 (0.87%) 802.1X
14 21 (0.83%) OpenID
15 20 (0.79%) Apache NiFi
15 20 (0.79%) Node.js
15 20 (0.79%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 178 (7.02%) Onboarding
2 101 (3.98%) Data Centre
3 100 (3.94%) PKI
4 76 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
5 70 (2.76%) Driving Licence
6 62 (2.44%) Self-Motivation
7 53 (2.09%) Clustering
8 50 (1.97%) Replication
9 47 (1.85%) Smartphone
10 46 (1.81%) Management Information System
11 42 (1.66%) Hybrid Cloud
12 41 (1.62%) Security Posture
13 40 (1.58%) Product Ownership
14 35 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
14 35 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
15 32 (1.26%) NHS
16 31 (1.22%) CMDB
17 26 (1.03%) Virtual Team
18 25 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
18 25 (0.99%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 596 (23.50%) Linux
2 555 (21.88%) Windows Server
3 538 (21.21%) Windows 10
4 140 (5.52%) Android
5 130 (5.13%) Mac OS
5 130 (5.13%) Unix
6 110 (4.34%) Apple iOS
7 67 (2.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 61 (2.41%) Windows Server 2016
9 48 (1.89%) Windows 7
10 44 (1.74%) Windows Server 2019
11 37 (1.46%) Windows Server 2012
12 35 (1.38%) AIX
13 30 (1.18%) Windows Server 2003
14 15 (0.59%) Ubuntu
15 13 (0.51%) VMS
16 12 (0.47%) Solaris
16 12 (0.47%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.39%) Mac OS X
18 8 (0.32%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 501 (19.76%) Problem-Solving
2 445 (17.55%) Customer Service
3 360 (14.20%) ITIL
4 277 (10.92%) Agile
5 253 (9.98%) Migration
6 238 (9.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 222 (8.75%) DevOps
8 208 (8.20%) ITSM
9 202 (7.97%) CI/CD
10 182 (7.18%) Service Management
11 180 (7.10%) Continuous Improvement
12 176 (6.94%) Cybersecurity
13 163 (6.43%) Change Management
14 152 (5.99%) Disaster Recovery
15 129 (5.09%) Stakeholder Management
16 126 (4.97%) High Availability
17 117 (4.61%) User Experience
18 112 (4.42%) Infrastructure as Code
19 109 (4.30%) Service Delivery
20 102 (4.02%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 527 (20.78%) PowerShell
2 261 (10.29%) Python
3 226 (8.91%) SQL
4 122 (4.81%) C#
5 103 (4.06%) Bash
6 85 (3.35%) Java
7 75 (2.96%) JavaScript
8 54 (2.13%) C++
9 49 (1.93%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.85%) Perl
11 38 (1.50%) T-SQL
12 31 (1.22%) Kusto Query Language
13 23 (0.91%) VB
14 20 (0.79%) VBScript
15 19 (0.75%) Shell Script
16 14 (0.55%) VBA
17 13 (0.51%) Bicep
18 12 (0.47%) Search Processing Language
18 12 (0.47%) TypeScript
19 11 (0.43%) Go
Qualifications
1 819 (32.29%) Security Cleared
2 541 (21.33%) SC Cleared
3 259 (10.21%) Degree
4 233 (9.19%) DV Cleared
5 122 (4.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 76 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 62 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 43 (1.70%) Azure Certification
9 42 (1.66%) MCSE
10 33 (1.30%) CISSP
11 31 (1.22%) CCNA
11 31 (1.22%) ITIL Certification
12 29 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
13 28 (1.10%) AWS Certification
14 27 (1.06%) CCNP
15 23 (0.91%) MCSA
16 22 (0.87%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 20 (0.79%) CompTIA Security+
18 19 (0.75%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 19 (0.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 87 (3.43%) GDPR
2 83 (3.27%) QA
3 82 (3.23%) SLA
4 79 (3.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 54 (2.13%) NIST
6 41 (1.62%) PCI DSS
7 21 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 15 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.51%) MiFID
9 13 (0.51%) PMO
10 12 (0.47%) NCSC
11 10 (0.39%) FINRA
11 10 (0.39%) GLBA
12 9 (0.35%) NIST 800
13 8 (0.32%) Data Quality
14 4 (0.16%) GMP
14 4 (0.16%) GxP
14 4 (0.16%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.12%) COBIT
15 3 (0.12%) HL7
System Software
1 948 (37.38%) Active Directory
2 257 (10.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 107 (4.22%) Hyper-V
4 93 (3.67%) Docker
5 61 (2.41%) vSphere
6 55 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
7 51 (2.01%) Virtual Desktop
8 50 (1.97%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (1.22%) VMware NSX
10 27 (1.06%) BitLocker
11 26 (1.03%) Firmware
12 23 (0.91%) Microsoft App-V
13 16 (0.63%) KVM
14 9 (0.35%) XenDesktop
15 8 (0.32%) XenApp
16 7 (0.28%) Terminal Services
17 6 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
18 5 (0.20%) etcd
19 4 (0.16%) NFS
19 4 (0.16%) Snort
Systems Management
1 347 (13.68%) Microsoft Intune
2 298 (11.75%) SCCM
3 162 (6.39%) Terraform
4 147 (5.80%) Ansible
5 120 (4.73%) Kubernetes
6 63 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
7 60 (2.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 57 (2.25%) vCenter Server
9 38 (1.50%) Jamf Pro
10 32 (1.26%) FortiGate
11 27 (1.06%) WSUS
12 26 (1.03%) Grafana
13 23 (0.91%) SCOM
14 22 (0.87%) Prometheus
15 17 (0.67%) Progress Chef
15 17 (0.67%) WMI
16 16 (0.63%) Nmap
16 16 (0.63%) Puppet
17 15 (0.59%) Nessus
18 14 (0.55%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,100 (43.38%) Microsoft
2 355 (14.00%) VMware
3 229 (9.03%) ServiceNow
4 198 (7.81%) Citrix
5 152 (5.99%) Oracle
6 150 (5.91%) Cisco
7 117 (4.61%) Splunk
8 69 (2.72%) HP
9 62 (2.44%) Red Hat
9 62 (2.44%) SolarWinds
10 57 (2.25%) Google
11 56 (2.21%) Dell
12 47 (1.85%) IBM
13 46 (1.81%) Apple
14 44 (1.74%) Remedy
15 42 (1.66%) Juniper
16 40 (1.58%) Veeam
17 34 (1.34%) CyberArk
18 33 (1.30%) F5
19 30 (1.18%) SAP