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

6 months to
20 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,855 2,316 2,793
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.16% 8.34% 8.48%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.49% 60.68% 59.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,816 1,578 1,825
10th Percentile £173 £164 £181
25th Percentile £225 £213 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £416 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £668 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 210 145
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.12 £14.33
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.01 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £21.73 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +18.59% -10.13% -3.28%
75th Percentile £66.74 £41.46 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.50 £65.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +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 4,569 3,817 4,724
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.87% 13.74% 14.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,904 2,517 3,008
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £293 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £676
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 256 229
10th Percentile £16.03 £15.50 £15.60
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.74 £20.50
Median hourly rate £38.61 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.52% -56.26% +20.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.31 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.45 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +9.34% -49.70% +5.26%

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 20 September 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 20 September 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 20 September 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 -7 962 £418 -1.71% 967
South East -8 558 £492 +19.88% 448
North of England -5 508 £325 +7.47% 318
North West +6 306 £344 +5.04% 178
Midlands -15 292 £400 +8.11% 275
South West -17 267 £528 +50.71% 204
East of England +1 246 £240 -31.43% 208
West Midlands -26 195 £402 +0.50% 179
Yorkshire -19 165 £225 +11.66% 99
East Midlands +2 95 £273 +21.11% 96
North East -24 42 £283 +7.62% 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
1 238 (8.34%) SharePoint
2 228 (7.99%) Microsoft Exchange
3 58 (2.03%) IIS
4 52 (1.82%) Confluence
5 19 (0.67%) nginx
5 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.56%) Apache
7 10 (0.35%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.21%) Documentum
10 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.18%) Appian
10 5 (0.18%) Camunda
10 5 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
12 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.070%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 2 (0.070%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 192 (6.73%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.14%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.11%) Houdini
7 3 (0.11%) NUKE
8 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 55 (1.93%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.35%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.11%) 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
1 926 (32.43%) Microsoft 365
2 887 (31.07%) Azure
3 474 (16.60%) Entra ID
4 312 (10.93%) AWS
5 137 (4.80%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
7 100 (3.50%) GCP
8 73 (2.56%) SaaS
9 70 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
10 62 (2.17%) GitHub
11 60 (2.10%) Power Platform
12 58 (2.03%) IaaS
13 44 (1.54%) PaaS
14 38 (1.33%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (0.95%) Google Workspace
15 27 (0.95%) OpenShift
16 24 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
17 22 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
17 22 (0.77%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 450 (15.76%) DNS
2 323 (11.31%) DHCP
3 319 (11.17%) Firewall
4 241 (8.44%) VPN
5 228 (7.99%) TCP/IP
6 117 (4.10%) WAN
7 116 (4.06%) Wi-Fi
8 112 (3.92%) LAN
9 93 (3.26%) Network Security
10 86 (3.01%) SAN
11 85 (2.98%) VLAN
12 49 (1.72%) Wireless
13 48 (1.68%) SSL
14 39 (1.37%) Internet
15 38 (1.33%) NAS
16 35 (1.23%) Skype
17 33 (1.16%) BGP
18 32 (1.12%) VSAN
19 29 (1.02%) VoIP
20 26 (0.91%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (8.93%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.93%) Oracle Database
3 51 (1.79%) Power BI
4 29 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 27 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.81%) Relational Database
7 21 (0.74%) MySQL
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.39%) Db2
9 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
10 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
11 9 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.25%) MongoDB
14 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
15 4 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 143 (5.01%) JIRA
2 69 (2.42%) Git
3 48 (1.68%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.65%) MSI
5 44 (1.54%) GitLab
6 32 (1.12%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.56%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.53%) Eclipse
9 12 (0.42%) Artifactory
10 11 (0.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 9 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
13 5 (0.18%) Chocolatey
13 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
13 5 (0.18%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
14 4 (0.14%) Zephyr
General
1 1,055 (36.95%) Social Skills
2 349 (12.22%) Analytical Skills
3 347 (12.15%) Finance
4 150 (5.25%) Banking
5 125 (4.38%) Public Sector
6 108 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (2.59%) Legal
8 70 (2.45%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 55 (1.93%) Manufacturing
11 50 (1.75%) Retail
12 49 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 43 (1.51%) Front Office
14 41 (1.44%) Law
15 39 (1.37%) Military
16 37 (1.30%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.98%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.88%) French Language
19 24 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
20 23 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 470 (16.46%) Support Engineer
2 398 (13.94%) IT Support
3 308 (10.79%) IT Engineer
4 302 (10.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 257 (9.00%) IT Support Engineer
6 251 (8.79%) Analyst
7 229 (8.02%) Senior
8 125 (4.38%) Desktop Support
9 122 (4.27%) 2nd Line Support
10 116 (4.06%) Desktop Engineer
11 110 (3.85%) Cloud Engineer
12 108 (3.78%) Lead
13 106 (3.71%) Architect
14 99 (3.47%) Windows Engineer
15 94 (3.29%) Support Analyst
16 86 (3.01%) Developer
17 77 (2.70%) Consultant
18 75 (2.63%) 1st Line Support
19 73 (2.56%) IT Analyst
20 72 (2.52%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (8.55%) Terraform
2 118 (4.13%) .NET
3 102 (3.57%) REST
4 57 (2.00%) .NET Framework
5 39 (1.37%) LDAP
6 37 (1.30%) WPF
7 36 (1.26%) JSON
7 36 (1.26%) Middleware
8 27 (0.95%) WinForms
9 23 (0.81%) ARM Templates
9 23 (0.81%) Software Packaging
10 21 (0.74%) .NET Core
11 20 (0.70%) HTML
12 19 (0.67%) CSS
12 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Graph
12 19 (0.67%) Web Services
13 18 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
14 17 (0.60%) RESTful
14 17 (0.60%) XML
15 16 (0.56%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 355 (12.43%) Onboarding
2 161 (5.64%) Data Centre
3 142 (4.97%) PKI
4 100 (3.50%) Management Information System
5 86 (3.01%) Hybrid Cloud
6 77 (2.70%) Clustering
7 75 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
8 70 (2.45%) Video Conferencing
9 69 (2.42%) Cloud Native
10 65 (2.28%) Driving Licence
11 58 (2.03%) Replication
12 56 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
13 54 (1.89%) Security Posture
14 41 (1.44%) Virtual Team
15 36 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
16 35 (1.23%) CMDB
17 34 (1.19%) Enterprise Storage
18 33 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
19 32 (1.12%) Operational Technology
19 32 (1.12%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 804 (28.16%) Windows Server
2 690 (24.17%) Linux
3 512 (17.93%) Windows 10
4 187 (6.55%) Mac OS
5 131 (4.59%) Apple iOS
6 129 (4.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 124 (4.34%) Android
8 106 (3.71%) Unix
9 67 (2.35%) Windows Server 2019
10 51 (1.79%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.61%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.33%) CentOS
13 37 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
14 34 (1.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 19 (0.67%) AIX
15 19 (0.67%) VMS
16 18 (0.63%) Solaris
17 17 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
18 15 (0.53%) Rocky
19 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 698 (24.45%) Problem-Solving
2 548 (19.19%) ITIL
3 478 (16.74%) Customer Service
4 388 (13.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 384 (13.45%) ITSM
6 348 (12.19%) Migration
7 332 (11.63%) Continuous Improvement
8 286 (10.02%) Service Management
9 277 (9.70%) DevOps
10 254 (8.90%) CI/CD
11 248 (8.69%) Infrastructure as Code
12 236 (8.27%) Agile
13 224 (7.85%) Stakeholder Management
14 208 (7.29%) Root Cause Analysis
15 206 (7.22%) Change Management
16 194 (6.80%) Disaster Recovery
17 179 (6.27%) Cybersecurity
18 163 (5.71%) Technical Leadership
19 161 (5.64%) Validation
20 160 (5.60%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 711 (24.90%) PowerShell
2 313 (10.96%) Python
3 278 (9.74%) SQL
4 180 (6.30%) Bash
5 142 (4.97%) C#
6 64 (2.24%) T-SQL
7 63 (2.21%) Java
8 61 (2.14%) JavaScript
9 50 (1.75%) Bicep
10 49 (1.72%) PL/SQL
11 35 (1.23%) C++
12 30 (1.05%) VB
13 25 (0.88%) VBScript
14 17 (0.60%) Perl
14 17 (0.60%) TypeScript
15 15 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 14 (0.49%) Search Processing Language
17 13 (0.46%) VBA
18 11 (0.39%) Go
18 11 (0.39%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 907 (31.77%) Security Cleared
2 528 (18.49%) SC Cleared
3 376 (13.17%) DV Cleared
4 287 (10.05%) Degree
5 113 (3.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 93 (3.26%) Azure Certification
7 71 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
9 64 (2.24%) CISSP
10 54 (1.89%) AWS Certification
11 51 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
12 49 (1.72%) A+ Certification
13 46 (1.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 33 (1.16%) CISM
14 33 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 32 (1.12%) DBS Check
16 30 (1.05%) CCNA
16 30 (1.05%) CCNP
16 30 (1.05%) ITIL Certification
17 26 (0.91%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (5.39%) SLA
2 113 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 86 (3.01%) NIST
4 76 (2.66%) QA
5 39 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.95%) NCSC
7 22 (0.77%) GDPR
7 22 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
8 15 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 15 (0.53%) GRC
8 15 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (0.42%) Data Quality
9 12 (0.42%) WCAG
10 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
10 10 (0.35%) ISO 31000
11 9 (0.32%) GxP
12 8 (0.28%) PMO
13 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
13 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,195 (41.86%) Active Directory
2 445 (15.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 196 (6.87%) Hyper-V
4 151 (5.29%) VMware ESXi
5 134 (4.69%) vSphere
6 112 (3.92%) Docker
7 103 (3.61%) Virtual Machines
8 83 (2.91%) Virtual Desktop
9 78 (2.73%) VMware NSX
10 36 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 28 (0.98%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 16 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
15 14 (0.49%) NFS
16 12 (0.42%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.39%) XenApp
18 9 (0.32%) KVM
18 9 (0.32%) XenDesktop
19 6 (0.21%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 418 (14.64%) Microsoft Intune
2 321 (11.24%) SCCM
3 215 (7.53%) Ansible
4 149 (5.22%) Kubernetes
5 124 (4.34%) vCenter Server
6 99 (3.47%) SCOM
7 45 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
8 43 (1.51%) WSUS
9 33 (1.16%) Grafana
10 31 (1.09%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 27 (0.95%) Progress Chef
13 26 (0.91%) VxRail
13 26 (0.91%) WMI
14 25 (0.88%) Puppet
15 23 (0.81%) Nagios
15 23 (0.81%) NetBackup
16 21 (0.74%) Packer
17 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Clustering
18 19 (0.67%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,380 (48.34%) Microsoft
2 587 (20.56%) VMware
3 332 (11.63%) ServiceNow
4 200 (7.01%) Cisco
5 162 (5.67%) Oracle
6 159 (5.57%) Citrix
7 96 (3.36%) Splunk
8 94 (3.29%) Apple
9 90 (3.15%) CyberArk
10 79 (2.77%) Google
11 71 (2.49%) Red Hat
12 70 (2.45%) SolarWinds
13 64 (2.24%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (2.07%) Remedy
15 56 (1.96%) Dell
16 46 (1.61%) HP
17 41 (1.44%) NetApp
18 40 (1.40%) BMC
18 40 (1.40%) Palo Alto
19 36 (1.26%) Zscaler