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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -7 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,691 2,252 2,950
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.94% 8.18% 8.68%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.73% 60.64% 61.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,716 1,524 2,006
10th Percentile £170 £178 £175
25th Percentile £225 £225 £253
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £438
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -5.71% -1.42%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £658
UK median daily rate £425 £415 £425
% change year-on-year +2.37% -2.32% -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 237 185 222
10th Percentile £16.06 £15.21 £11.07
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.33 £14.83
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -18.77%
75th Percentile £55.50 £28.00 £52.73
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.26 £19.27 £21.00
% change year-on-year +31.08% -8.24% -10.64%

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 4,359 3,714 4,809
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.62% 13.50% 14.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,797 2,480 3,201
10th Percentile £190 £200 £200
25th Percentile £313 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £470 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +1.62% -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 299 230 321
10th Percentile £16.07 £15.50 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.13 £16.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.30% -16.36% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £24.00 £27.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% -11.11% -36.47%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 -16 895 £425 - 289
South East -7 577 £475 -5.00% 301
North of England -8 465 £337 -0.66% 185
South West -9 277 £488 +8.33% 109
Midlands -23 261 £400 +23.08% 124
North West -9 251 £340 -5.17% 95
East of England -3 200 £339 +38.97% 107
Yorkshire -16 192 £365 +12.31% 60
West Midlands -30 169 £450 +12.50% 77
East Midlands +6 88 £270 +35.00% 47
North East -44 26 £270 -1.82% 36
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
1 226 (8.40%) Microsoft Exchange
2 212 (7.88%) SharePoint
3 56 (2.08%) Confluence
3 56 (2.08%) IIS
4 17 (0.63%) nginx
5 15 (0.56%) Apache
6 14 (0.52%) Tomcat
7 11 (0.41%) Skype for Business
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.33%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.22%) Appian
9 6 (0.22%) Documentum
10 5 (0.19%) Camunda
11 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.11%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
12 3 (0.11%) Tuxedo
13 2 (0.074%) WebSphere
Applications
1 165 (6.13%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 4 (0.15%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.074%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.037%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.037%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.037%) InDesign
8 1 (0.037%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 55 (2.04%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.37%) Finacle
3 8 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.26%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.26%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.22%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.074%) assyst
8 1 (0.037%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.037%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.037%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.037%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.037%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 840 (31.22%) Azure
2 830 (30.84%) Microsoft 365
3 405 (15.05%) Entra ID
4 298 (11.07%) AWS
5 118 (4.38%) OneDrive
6 92 (3.42%) GCP
7 91 (3.38%) Azure DevOps
8 72 (2.68%) SaaS
9 62 (2.30%) GitHub
9 62 (2.30%) IaaS
10 60 (2.23%) Azure Monitor
11 57 (2.12%) Power Platform
12 52 (1.93%) PaaS
13 39 (1.45%) Azure Sentinel
14 27 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
15 24 (0.89%) Azure AKS
15 24 (0.89%) Google Workspace
16 22 (0.82%) Datadog
16 22 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
16 22 (0.82%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 415 (15.42%) DNS
2 319 (11.85%) Firewall
3 286 (10.63%) DHCP
4 202 (7.51%) VPN
5 193 (7.17%) TCP/IP
6 145 (5.39%) LAN
7 136 (5.05%) WAN
8 121 (4.50%) Wi-Fi
9 85 (3.16%) SAN
10 67 (2.49%) VLAN
11 66 (2.45%) Network Security
12 46 (1.71%) BGP
13 45 (1.67%) SSL
14 38 (1.41%) Internet
14 38 (1.41%) NAS
14 38 (1.41%) Wireless
15 36 (1.34%) OSPF
16 33 (1.23%) VSAN
17 29 (1.08%) VoIP
18 28 (1.04%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 262 (9.74%) SQL Server
2 53 (1.97%) Oracle Database
3 45 (1.67%) Power BI
4 26 (0.97%) PostgreSQL
5 25 (0.93%) Relational Database
6 23 (0.85%) MySQL
7 21 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 19 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (0.63%) Db2
10 13 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
11 12 (0.45%) RDBMS
11 12 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 12 (0.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 11 (0.41%) MongoDB
12 11 (0.41%) NoSQL
13 10 (0.37%) Geospatial Data
14 8 (0.30%) Data Warehouse
15 6 (0.22%) GIS
16 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
16 5 (0.19%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 162 (6.02%) JIRA
2 60 (2.23%) Git
3 45 (1.67%) Jenkins
3 45 (1.67%) MSI
4 39 (1.45%) GitLab
5 32 (1.19%) Visual Studio
6 17 (0.63%) Eclipse
7 14 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 9 (0.33%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.26%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.22%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.22%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.22%) Xcode
12 5 (0.19%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.19%) Selenium
13 4 (0.15%) Maven
13 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
General
1 985 (36.60%) Social Skills
2 323 (12.00%) Finance
3 320 (11.89%) Analytical Skills
4 158 (5.87%) Public Sector
5 157 (5.83%) Banking
6 95 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
7 78 (2.90%) Organisational Skills
8 77 (2.86%) Legal
9 56 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 53 (1.97%) Retail
11 45 (1.67%) Military
12 44 (1.64%) Manufacturing
13 39 (1.45%) Front Office
14 38 (1.41%) Telecoms
15 35 (1.30%) Law
16 34 (1.26%) Investment Banking
17 27 (1.00%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.93%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.85%) French Language
20 20 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 399 (14.83%) Support Engineer
2 366 (13.60%) IT Support
3 272 (10.11%) IT Engineer
4 264 (9.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 249 (9.25%) Analyst
6 227 (8.44%) IT Support Engineer
7 216 (8.03%) Senior
8 123 (4.57%) 2nd Line Support
9 109 (4.05%) Desktop Support
10 108 (4.01%) Architect
11 100 (3.72%) Cloud Engineer
12 98 (3.64%) Developer
13 97 (3.60%) Desktop Engineer
14 96 (3.57%) Lead
15 94 (3.49%) Support Analyst
16 81 (3.01%) IT Analyst
17 74 (2.75%) Consultant
17 74 (2.75%) Windows Engineer
18 72 (2.68%) 1st Line Support
19 69 (2.56%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (3.94%) .NET
2 95 (3.53%) REST
3 61 (2.27%) .NET Framework
4 31 (1.15%) 802.1X
5 28 (1.04%) WPF
6 27 (1.00%) LDAP
6 27 (1.00%) Middleware
6 27 (1.00%) WinForms
7 24 (0.89%) CSS
7 24 (0.89%) Microsoft Graph
7 24 (0.89%) Web Services
8 21 (0.78%) JSON
8 21 (0.78%) Software Packaging
9 20 (0.74%) HTML
10 19 (0.71%) Elastic Stack
10 19 (0.71%) Kafka
11 16 (0.59%) ARM Templates
11 16 (0.59%) RESTful
11 16 (0.59%) SAML
11 16 (0.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 300 (11.15%) Onboarding
2 149 (5.54%) Data Centre
2 149 (5.54%) PKI
3 86 (3.20%) Clustering
4 76 (2.82%) Management Information System
5 73 (2.71%) Enterprise Software
6 70 (2.60%) Cloud Native
7 62 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
8 61 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
9 55 (2.04%) Video Conferencing
10 53 (1.97%) Driving Licence
11 51 (1.90%) Replication
12 50 (1.86%) Security Posture
13 47 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
14 42 (1.56%) Virtual Team
15 36 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
16 33 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
17 29 (1.08%) Enterprise Storage
17 29 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
18 27 (1.00%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 679 (25.23%) Windows Server
2 653 (24.27%) Linux
3 470 (17.47%) Windows 10
4 178 (6.61%) Mac OS
5 123 (4.57%) Apple iOS
6 122 (4.53%) Unix
7 121 (4.50%) Android
8 108 (4.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 69 (2.56%) Windows Server 2019
10 40 (1.49%) Ubuntu
11 39 (1.45%) Windows Server 2016
12 35 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
13 33 (1.23%) Windows 7
14 29 (1.08%) AIX
15 23 (0.85%) CentOS
16 19 (0.71%) Solaris
16 19 (0.71%) VMS
16 19 (0.71%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.37%) Rocky
18 9 (0.33%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 642 (23.86%) Problem-Solving
2 475 (17.65%) ITIL
3 409 (15.20%) Customer Service
4 345 (12.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 315 (11.71%) Migration
6 311 (11.56%) ITSM
7 266 (9.88%) Continuous Improvement
8 260 (9.66%) DevOps
9 246 (9.14%) Agile
10 241 (8.96%) CI/CD
11 219 (8.14%) Service Management
12 202 (7.51%) Infrastructure as Code
13 192 (7.13%) Change Management
14 174 (6.47%) High Availability
14 174 (6.47%) Stakeholder Management
15 150 (5.57%) Cybersecurity
15 150 (5.57%) Service Delivery
16 149 (5.54%) Disaster Recovery
16 149 (5.54%) SIEM
17 145 (5.39%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 625 (23.23%) PowerShell
2 292 (10.85%) Python
3 277 (10.29%) SQL
4 153 (5.69%) Bash
5 138 (5.13%) C#
6 70 (2.60%) JavaScript
7 69 (2.56%) Java
8 51 (1.90%) T-SQL
9 49 (1.82%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.78%) C++
11 38 (1.41%) Bicep
12 24 (0.89%) Search Processing Language
13 22 (0.82%) VB
14 18 (0.67%) VBScript
15 17 (0.63%) Perl
16 16 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.59%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.56%) C
18 14 (0.52%) VBA
19 13 (0.48%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 829 (30.81%) Security Cleared
2 498 (18.51%) SC Cleared
3 305 (11.33%) DV Cleared
4 289 (10.74%) Degree
5 107 (3.98%) Microsoft Certification
6 81 (3.01%) Cisco Certification
7 73 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.53%) Azure Certification
9 62 (2.30%) CISSP
10 50 (1.86%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
12 42 (1.56%) A+ Certification
13 32 (1.19%) MCSE
14 30 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 29 (1.08%) CCNA
16 28 (1.04%) CCNP
17 27 (1.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 25 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.85%) CISM
19 23 (0.85%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 135 (5.02%) SLA
2 115 (4.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 83 (3.08%) NIST
4 74 (2.75%) QA
5 30 (1.11%) GDPR
6 27 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (0.89%) PCI DSS
8 22 (0.82%) NCSC
9 16 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 12 (0.45%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.41%) Accessibility
11 11 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.37%) GRC
12 10 (0.37%) PMO
13 9 (0.33%) WCAG
14 8 (0.30%) GxP
14 8 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 8 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,081 (40.17%) Active Directory
2 364 (13.53%) VMware Infrastructure
3 145 (5.39%) Hyper-V
4 126 (4.68%) VMware ESXi
5 104 (3.86%) vSphere
6 100 (3.72%) Docker
7 89 (3.31%) Virtual Machines
8 74 (2.75%) VMware NSX
9 72 (2.68%) Virtual Desktop
10 33 (1.23%) Firmware
11 32 (1.19%) BitLocker
12 23 (0.85%) Microsoft App-V
13 16 (0.59%) vCloud
14 12 (0.45%) KVM
15 8 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.30%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.26%) NFS
16 7 (0.26%) XenApp
16 7 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 6 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 398 (14.79%) Microsoft Intune
2 250 (9.29%) SCCM
3 232 (8.62%) Terraform
4 203 (7.54%) Ansible
5 151 (5.61%) Kubernetes
6 110 (4.09%) vCenter Server
7 67 (2.49%) SCOM
8 45 (1.67%) Jamf Pro
9 38 (1.41%) FortiGate
9 38 (1.41%) WSUS
10 35 (1.30%) Progress Chef
11 30 (1.11%) Puppet
11 30 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
12 24 (0.89%) Grafana
13 23 (0.85%) Nagios
13 23 (0.85%) Packer
13 23 (0.85%) Prometheus
14 20 (0.74%) ZABBIX
15 19 (0.71%) Nessus
15 19 (0.71%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,189 (44.18%) Microsoft
2 494 (18.36%) VMware
3 294 (10.93%) ServiceNow
4 180 (6.69%) Cisco
5 175 (6.50%) Citrix
6 159 (5.91%) Oracle
7 116 (4.31%) Splunk
8 80 (2.97%) Apple
8 80 (2.97%) SolarWinds
9 79 (2.94%) CyberArk
10 67 (2.49%) Google
11 65 (2.42%) HP
11 65 (2.42%) Red Hat
11 65 (2.42%) Remedy
12 59 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
13 54 (2.01%) Juniper
14 51 (1.90%) Dell
15 44 (1.64%) IBM
16 43 (1.60%) BMC
16 43 (1.60%) F5