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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -9 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,859 2,371 2,669
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.11% 8.43% 8.35%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.52% 59.84% 58.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,818 1,596 1,694
10th Percentile £181 £163 £185
25th Percentile £225 £205 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £400 £424
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -5.66% -0.24%
75th Percentile £569 £538 £575
90th Percentile £668 £638 £644
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 300 231 127
10th Percentile £16.25 £13.65 £15.57
25th Percentile £19.24 £17.33 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £21.28 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.10% -13.14% -2.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £33.26 £65.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £68.38
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.05% -9.02% +2.89%

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 4,573 3,962 4,551
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.77% 14.09% 14.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,917 2,597 2,810
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £676 £668 £688
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £470
% change year-on-year +4.44% -4.26% -5.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 353 282 212
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.13 £16.26
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.59 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.29 £24.00 £61.97
Median % change year-on-year +34.54% -61.27% +28.03%
75th Percentile £67.25 £48.06 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £55.33
% change year-on-year +3.08% -54.81% +21.75%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -4 970 £420 -1.18% 878
South East -7 561 £480 +31.51% 342
North of England -10 488 £335 +15.52% 289
Midlands -15 294 £400 +3.23% 207
North West -3 290 £350 +7.69% 159
South West -18 270 £550 +57.14% 186
East of England -1 249 £220 -37.14% 154
West Midlands -20 205 £407 +1.81% 111
Yorkshire -15 158 £245 +13.95% 101
East Midlands -1 88 £275 +29.41% 96
North East -27 42 £273 +22.06% 35
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
1 242 (8.46%) SharePoint
2 219 (7.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 60 (2.10%) IIS
4 56 (1.96%) Confluence
5 27 (0.94%) nginx
6 21 (0.73%) Apache
7 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.45%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.24%) WebLogic
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%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.14%) CICS
12 4 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.10%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 3 (0.10%) OpenStack
Applications
1 192 (6.72%) Microsoft Office
2 59 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
4 5 (0.17%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.10%) Houdini
5 3 (0.10%) NUKE
5 3 (0.10%) PTC Creo
6 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.035%) AutoCAD
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 46 (1.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (0.28%) Finacle
3 7 (0.24%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.21%) Teamcenter
5 5 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
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%) Eikon
8 1 (0.035%) Monis
8 1 (0.035%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.035%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.035%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.035%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 944 (33.02%) Microsoft 365
2 891 (31.16%) Azure
3 504 (17.63%) Entra ID
4 311 (10.88%) AWS
5 140 (4.90%) OneDrive
6 102 (3.57%) Azure DevOps
6 102 (3.57%) GCP
7 77 (2.69%) Azure Monitor
8 65 (2.27%) GitHub
9 62 (2.17%) SaaS
10 58 (2.03%) Power Platform
11 51 (1.78%) IaaS
12 46 (1.61%) Azure Sentinel
13 37 (1.29%) PaaS
14 29 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
15 27 (0.94%) Google Workspace
16 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
17 22 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
18 21 (0.73%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 452 (15.81%) DNS
2 319 (11.16%) DHCP
3 318 (11.12%) Firewall
4 248 (8.67%) VPN
5 237 (8.29%) TCP/IP
6 113 (3.95%) Wi-Fi
7 107 (3.74%) LAN
8 105 (3.67%) WAN
9 97 (3.39%) Network Security
10 82 (2.87%) SAN
11 78 (2.73%) VLAN
12 54 (1.89%) Wireless
13 47 (1.64%) SSL
14 37 (1.29%) BGP
15 36 (1.26%) Internet
16 35 (1.22%) NAS
17 34 (1.19%) Skype
18 31 (1.08%) VoIP
19 30 (1.05%) SSH
20 27 (0.94%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 243 (8.50%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.82%) 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 21 (0.73%) 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
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
12 8 (0.28%) RDBMS
13 7 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
13 7 (0.24%) MongoDB
14 6 (0.21%) NoSQL
15 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 144 (5.04%) JIRA
2 74 (2.59%) Git
3 60 (2.10%) Jenkins
4 52 (1.82%) GitLab
5 48 (1.68%) MSI
6 33 (1.15%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.59%) Artifactory
8 15 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.52%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
11 7 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
11 7 (0.24%) Toad
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
General
1 1,055 (36.90%) Social Skills
2 357 (12.49%) Finance
3 331 (11.58%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (5.07%) Banking
5 127 (4.44%) Public Sector
6 99 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 76 (2.66%) Legal
8 71 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
9 69 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 61 (2.13%) Manufacturing
11 48 (1.68%) Telecoms
12 45 (1.57%) Retail
13 41 (1.43%) Front Office
13 41 (1.43%) Law
14 36 (1.26%) Military
15 32 (1.12%) Investment Banking
16 26 (0.91%) Financial Institution
17 24 (0.84%) Aerospace
18 23 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
18 23 (0.80%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 483 (16.89%) Support Engineer
2 390 (13.64%) IT Support
3 307 (10.74%) IT Engineer
4 288 (10.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 259 (9.06%) IT Support Engineer
6 244 (8.53%) Analyst
7 235 (8.22%) Senior
8 134 (4.69%) Desktop Support
9 127 (4.44%) 2nd Line Support
9 127 (4.44%) Desktop Engineer
10 111 (3.88%) Cloud Engineer
11 110 (3.85%) Architect
12 108 (3.78%) Lead
13 98 (3.43%) Windows Engineer
14 87 (3.04%) Support Analyst
15 85 (2.97%) Consultant
16 82 (2.87%) Developer
17 81 (2.83%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 75 (2.62%) Service Analyst
19 74 (2.59%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (9.41%) Terraform
2 120 (4.20%) .NET
3 110 (3.85%) REST
4 57 (1.99%) .NET Framework
5 45 (1.57%) LDAP
6 40 (1.40%) JSON
7 39 (1.36%) Middleware
8 38 (1.33%) WPF
9 28 (0.98%) ARM Templates
10 22 (0.77%) Software Packaging
10 22 (0.77%) Web Services
10 22 (0.77%) WinForms
11 21 (0.73%) .NET Core
11 21 (0.73%) XML
12 19 (0.66%) Kafka
13 18 (0.63%) HTML
13 18 (0.63%) YAML
14 17 (0.59%) CSS
14 17 (0.59%) React
14 17 (0.59%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 363 (12.70%) Onboarding
2 168 (5.88%) Data Centre
3 142 (4.97%) PKI
4 104 (3.64%) Management Information System
5 87 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
6 80 (2.80%) Cloud Native
7 79 (2.76%) Enterprise Software
8 77 (2.69%) Video Conferencing
9 69 (2.41%) Clustering
9 69 (2.41%) Driving Licence
10 62 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 57 (1.99%) Replication
12 49 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
13 42 (1.47%) CMDB
14 38 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
15 37 (1.29%) Operational Technology
15 37 (1.29%) Virtual Team
16 32 (1.12%) Enterprise Storage
17 31 (1.08%) Public Cloud
18 30 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 814 (28.47%) Windows Server
2 691 (24.17%) Linux
3 525 (18.36%) Windows 10
4 179 (6.26%) macOS
5 132 (4.62%) Apple iOS
6 129 (4.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 125 (4.37%) Android
8 100 (3.50%) Unix
9 72 (2.52%) Windows Server 2019
10 48 (1.68%) Ubuntu
11 40 (1.40%) Windows 7
11 40 (1.40%) Windows Server 2012
12 38 (1.33%) CentOS
13 33 (1.15%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (0.66%) Solaris
15 16 (0.56%) AIX
16 15 (0.52%) Rocky
16 15 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
17 14 (0.49%) VMS
18 11 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 675 (23.61%) Problem-Solving
2 552 (19.31%) ITIL
3 484 (16.93%) Customer Service
4 394 (13.78%) ITSM
5 373 (13.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 354 (12.38%) Migration
7 347 (12.14%) Continuous Improvement
8 312 (10.91%) Service Management
9 301 (10.53%) DevOps
10 284 (9.93%) Infrastructure as Code
11 282 (9.86%) CI/CD
12 257 (8.99%) Stakeholder Management
13 242 (8.46%) Agile
14 220 (7.69%) Root Cause Analysis
15 216 (7.56%) Change Management
16 212 (7.42%) Disaster Recovery
17 207 (7.24%) Cybersecurity
18 179 (6.26%) Validation
19 177 (6.19%) Technical Leadership
20 163 (5.70%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 727 (25.43%) PowerShell
2 316 (11.05%) Python
3 267 (9.34%) SQL
4 191 (6.68%) Bash
5 139 (4.86%) C#
6 71 (2.48%) Java
7 65 (2.27%) T-SQL
8 62 (2.17%) JavaScript
9 58 (2.03%) Bicep
10 43 (1.50%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.29%) C++
12 28 (0.98%) VB
13 25 (0.87%) VBScript
14 19 (0.66%) Groovy
15 17 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.56%) Perl
16 16 (0.56%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.45%) Go
18 11 (0.38%) VBA
19 9 (0.31%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 911 (31.86%) Security Cleared
2 526 (18.40%) SC Cleared
3 381 (13.33%) DV Cleared
4 276 (9.65%) Degree
5 107 (3.74%) Microsoft Certification
6 85 (2.97%) Azure Certification
7 66 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
8 64 (2.24%) CISSP
9 63 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
10 59 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
11 53 (1.85%) AWS Certification
12 46 (1.61%) A+ Certification
13 42 (1.47%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 35 (1.22%) CISM
14 35 (1.22%) DBS Check
15 34 (1.19%) CCNP
15 34 (1.19%) ITIL Certification
16 29 (1.01%) CCNA
17 26 (0.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 23 (0.80%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 156 (5.46%) SLA
2 99 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 76 (2.66%) NIST
4 73 (2.55%) QA
5 36 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
6 28 (0.98%) NCSC
6 28 (0.98%) PCI DSS
7 19 (0.66%) GDPR
8 17 (0.59%) GRC
9 16 (0.56%) Accessibility
9 16 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 12 (0.42%) WCAG
11 11 (0.38%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.38%) ISO 31000
12 10 (0.35%) GxP
13 9 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 8 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.28%) PMO
15 7 (0.24%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 7 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,220 (42.67%) Active Directory
2 440 (15.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 193 (6.75%) Hyper-V
4 141 (4.93%) VMware ESXi
5 131 (4.58%) vSphere
6 123 (4.30%) Docker
7 97 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
8 95 (3.32%) Virtual Desktop
9 68 (2.38%) VMware NSX
10 36 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 30 (1.05%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 20 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.52%) 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 8 (0.28%) KVM
Systems Management
1 444 (15.53%) Microsoft Intune
2 338 (11.82%) SCCM
3 222 (7.76%) Ansible
4 155 (5.42%) Kubernetes
5 112 (3.92%) vCenter Server
6 96 (3.36%) SCOM
7 44 (1.54%) Jamf Pro
8 39 (1.36%) Grafana
9 36 (1.26%) WSUS
10 34 (1.19%) Prometheus
11 29 (1.01%) Progress Chef
12 28 (0.98%) WMI
13 27 (0.94%) Puppet
14 25 (0.87%) NetBackup
14 25 (0.87%) Single Sign-On
15 24 (0.84%) VxRail
16 21 (0.73%) Nagios
17 19 (0.66%) FortiGate
17 19 (0.66%) Packer
18 17 (0.59%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,431 (50.05%) Microsoft
2 574 (20.08%) VMware
3 344 (12.03%) ServiceNow
4 202 (7.07%) Cisco
5 160 (5.60%) Oracle
6 158 (5.53%) Citrix
7 97 (3.39%) Apple
8 94 (3.29%) Splunk
9 87 (3.04%) CyberArk
10 86 (3.01%) Google
11 71 (2.48%) Red Hat
12 67 (2.34%) SolarWinds
13 55 (1.92%) BeyondTrust
13 55 (1.92%) Dell
14 50 (1.75%) Remedy
15 46 (1.61%) Palo Alto
16 43 (1.50%) HP
17 41 (1.43%) CrowdStrike
18 39 (1.36%) NetApp
19 38 (1.33%) Fortinet