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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 17
Rank change year-on-year -5 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,472 2,086 3,296
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.23% 8.49% 8.84%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.10% 60.64% 64.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,665 1,483 2,284
10th Percentile £161 £180 £158
25th Percentile £213 £238 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £415 £416 £400
Median % change year-on-year -0.24% +4.00% -11.11%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £676 £675
UK median daily rate £415 £425 £400
% change year-on-year -2.35% +6.25% -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 197 104 271
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.13 £11.80
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £18.82 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +32.84% +6.21% -21.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £28.00 £25.00
90th Percentile £74.43 £64.63 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £22.81 £19.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year +16.97% +8.33% -20.00%

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 4,046 3,440 5,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.19% 14.00% 13.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,685 2,342 3,500
10th Percentile £185 £200 £181
25th Percentile £310 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £459
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +3.49% -10.87%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £588
90th Percentile £663 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £463
% change year-on-year -5.26% +2.70% -9.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 277 151 373
10th Percentile £15.81 £16.25 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.11 £14.72
Median hourly rate £37.50 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.07% +12.09% -37.14%
75th Percentile £67.84 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.81 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £34.57 £24.18 £22.00
% change year-on-year +42.95% +9.91% -41.33%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -23 761 £445 -0.89% 175
South East -5 498 £470 -4.18% 263
North of England -9 479 £325 - 167
Midlands -15 277 £330 +21.66% 112
North West -2 267 £263 -25.00% 96
South West -11 228 £453 -15.67% 121
East of England +6 208 £350 +55.21% 107
Yorkshire -15 193 £365 +12.31% 49
West Midlands -24 164 £455 +63.96% 55
East Midlands +6 109 £210 +1.82% 56
North East -19 26 £244 +10.80% 27
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
1 219 (8.86%) Microsoft Exchange
2 143 (5.78%) SharePoint
3 47 (1.90%) IIS
4 46 (1.86%) Confluence
5 21 (0.85%) WebLogic
6 16 (0.65%) Apache
7 12 (0.49%) Skype for Business
8 11 (0.44%) Tuxedo
9 8 (0.32%) nginx
9 8 (0.32%) Tomcat
9 8 (0.32%) TPMS
10 5 (0.20%) SAS
11 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.12%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.081%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.081%) Appian
13 2 (0.081%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.081%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 181 (7.32%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (2.55%) Microsoft Excel
3 25 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 9 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.20%) Acrobat
6 5 (0.20%) PTC Creo
7 3 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.040%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.040%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 38 (1.54%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.32%) Teamcenter
4 5 (0.20%) assyst
5 3 (0.12%) Finacle
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle 11i
5 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 2 (0.081%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.081%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.081%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.081%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.040%) Aladdin
7 1 (0.040%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.040%) Eikon
7 1 (0.040%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle FAH
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.040%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.040%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 699 (28.28%) Microsoft 365
2 679 (27.47%) Azure
3 289 (11.69%) Entra ID
4 203 (8.21%) AWS
5 68 (2.75%) GCP
6 67 (2.71%) SaaS
7 66 (2.67%) Azure DevOps
8 58 (2.35%) OneDrive
9 54 (2.18%) IaaS
10 49 (1.98%) GitHub
11 46 (1.86%) PaaS
12 45 (1.82%) Google Workspace
13 39 (1.58%) Azure Monitor
14 35 (1.42%) Power Platform
15 26 (1.05%) Azure Sentinel
16 24 (0.97%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (0.85%) OpenShift
18 18 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
18 18 (0.73%) Azure AKS
19 17 (0.69%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 337 (13.63%) DNS
2 292 (11.81%) Firewall
3 236 (9.55%) DHCP
4 172 (6.96%) VPN
5 150 (6.07%) LAN
6 148 (5.99%) TCP/IP
6 148 (5.99%) WAN
7 124 (5.02%) Wi-Fi
8 74 (2.99%) Network Security
9 67 (2.71%) VLAN
10 52 (2.10%) SAN
11 49 (1.98%) Wireless
12 42 (1.70%) BGP
13 33 (1.33%) OSPF
14 31 (1.25%) Skype
14 31 (1.25%) VoIP
15 30 (1.21%) SSL
16 29 (1.17%) Internet
17 28 (1.13%) BIG-IP
18 27 (1.09%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 171 (6.92%) SQL Server
2 43 (1.74%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.38%) Relational Database
4 28 (1.13%) MySQL
5 23 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
6 18 (0.73%) Power BI
7 14 (0.57%) DB2
8 13 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
8 13 (0.53%) MongoDB
9 10 (0.40%) NoSQL
10 8 (0.32%) BigQuery
10 8 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
11 7 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 6 (0.24%) RDBMS
13 5 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (0.20%) GIS
13 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 4 (0.16%) Amazon RDS
14 4 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
15 3 (0.12%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 162 (6.55%) JIRA
2 48 (1.94%) GitLab
3 46 (1.86%) MSI
4 43 (1.74%) Jenkins
5 40 (1.62%) Git
6 34 (1.38%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.85%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.73%) Burp Suite
9 17 (0.69%) Metasploit
10 11 (0.44%) Android Studio
10 11 (0.44%) Chocolatey
11 10 (0.40%) Artifactory
11 10 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 9 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
12 9 (0.36%) InstallShield
12 9 (0.36%) Xcode
13 8 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
14 7 (0.28%) JUnit
15 6 (0.24%) AdminStudio
15 6 (0.24%) Toad
General
1 862 (34.87%) Social Skills
2 245 (9.91%) Finance
3 217 (8.78%) Analytical Skills
4 198 (8.01%) Public Sector
5 147 (5.95%) Banking
6 103 (4.17%) Legal
7 98 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
8 73 (2.95%) Organisational Skills
9 61 (2.47%) Military
10 35 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
10 35 (1.42%) Retail
11 33 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 32 (1.29%) Law
13 31 (1.25%) Manufacturing
14 29 (1.17%) Investment Banking
14 29 (1.17%) Telecoms
15 27 (1.09%) Front Office
16 20 (0.81%) Local Government
17 16 (0.65%) Police
18 14 (0.57%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 333 (13.47%) IT Support
2 308 (12.46%) Support Engineer
3 292 (11.81%) Analyst
4 207 (8.37%) IT Engineer
5 188 (7.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 168 (6.80%) IT Support Engineer
7 164 (6.63%) Senior
8 155 (6.27%) Architect
9 117 (4.73%) Support Analyst
10 101 (4.09%) Developer
11 97 (3.92%) Desktop Support
12 93 (3.76%) Technical Support
13 88 (3.56%) Desktop Engineer
13 88 (3.56%) IT Analyst
14 85 (3.44%) 2nd Line Support
14 85 (3.44%) Windows Engineer
15 78 (3.16%) Lead
16 69 (2.79%) IT Support Analyst
17 64 (2.59%) 1st Line Support
18 60 (2.43%) Desktop Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (3.44%) .NET
2 65 (2.63%) REST
3 53 (2.14%) .NET Framework
4 36 (1.46%) SAML
5 34 (1.38%) LDAP
6 33 (1.33%) Middleware
7 29 (1.17%) OAuth
8 28 (1.13%) WinForms
8 28 (1.13%) WPF
9 26 (1.05%) Kafka
9 26 (1.05%) Microsoft Graph
10 25 (1.01%) 802.1X
10 25 (1.01%) Web Services
11 20 (0.81%) Node.js
12 19 (0.77%) CSS
12 19 (0.77%) React
13 17 (0.69%) AngularJS
13 17 (0.69%) Software Packaging
14 16 (0.65%) OpenID
14 16 (0.65%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 189 (7.65%) Onboarding
2 105 (4.25%) Data Centre
3 93 (3.76%) PKI
4 79 (3.20%) Enterprise Software
5 73 (2.95%) Clustering
6 64 (2.59%) Self-Motivation
7 60 (2.43%) Driving Licence
8 59 (2.39%) Replication
9 44 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
10 40 (1.62%) Product Ownership
11 38 (1.54%) Legacy Systems
11 38 (1.54%) Management Information System
11 38 (1.54%) Smartphone
12 37 (1.50%) Security Posture
13 30 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
13 30 (1.21%) Virtual Team
14 28 (1.13%) Cloud Native
14 28 (1.13%) CMDB
15 26 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
16 23 (0.93%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 608 (24.60%) Linux
2 586 (23.71%) Windows Server
3 493 (19.94%) Windows 10
4 146 (5.91%) Mac OS
5 138 (5.58%) Android
6 116 (4.69%) Apple iOS
6 116 (4.69%) Unix
7 77 (3.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 63 (2.55%) Windows Server 2016
9 51 (2.06%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.90%) Windows 7
11 39 (1.58%) Windows Server 2012
12 33 (1.33%) AIX
13 22 (0.89%) Windows Server 2003
14 19 (0.77%) Ubuntu
15 18 (0.73%) VMS
16 11 (0.44%) Solaris
16 11 (0.44%) Windows Server 2008
17 9 (0.36%) Mac OS X
18 8 (0.32%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 519 (21.00%) Problem-Solving
2 417 (16.87%) Customer Service
3 363 (14.68%) ITIL
4 265 (10.72%) Migration
5 259 (10.48%) Agile
6 258 (10.44%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 221 (8.94%) DevOps
8 206 (8.33%) CI/CD
9 205 (8.29%) ITSM
10 171 (6.92%) Continuous Improvement
11 169 (6.84%) Service Management
12 163 (6.59%) Disaster Recovery
13 158 (6.39%) Change Management
13 158 (6.39%) Cybersecurity
14 141 (5.70%) High Availability
15 119 (4.81%) Stakeholder Management
16 113 (4.57%) Infrastructure as Code
16 113 (4.57%) SIEM
17 103 (4.17%) Computer Science
18 101 (4.09%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 542 (21.93%) PowerShell
2 242 (9.79%) SQL
3 235 (9.51%) Python
4 130 (5.26%) C#
5 99 (4.00%) Bash
6 75 (3.03%) Java
7 71 (2.87%) JavaScript
8 54 (2.18%) PL/SQL
9 46 (1.86%) C++
10 43 (1.74%) T-SQL
11 35 (1.42%) Perl
12 30 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
13 24 (0.97%) VB
14 18 (0.73%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.69%) VBScript
16 16 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
17 14 (0.57%) VBA
18 12 (0.49%) Go
18 12 (0.49%) TypeScript
19 11 (0.44%) C
Qualifications
1 785 (31.76%) Security Cleared
2 522 (21.12%) SC Cleared
3 251 (10.15%) Degree
4 232 (9.39%) DV Cleared
5 110 (4.45%) Microsoft Certification
6 71 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
7 64 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
8 45 (1.82%) MCSE
9 44 (1.78%) Azure Certification
10 33 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
10 33 (1.33%) CCNA
10 33 (1.33%) CISSP
11 29 (1.17%) AWS Certification
11 29 (1.17%) ITIL Certification
11 29 (1.17%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 28 (1.13%) MCSA
13 21 (0.85%) CCNP
14 20 (0.81%) CompTIA Security+
15 18 (0.73%) A+ Certification
16 16 (0.65%) CHECK Team Member
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (3.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 82 (3.32%) GDPR
3 81 (3.28%) QA
4 72 (2.91%) SLA
5 61 (2.47%) NIST
6 39 (1.58%) PCI DSS
7 27 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 17 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.53%) NCSC
10 12 (0.49%) NIST 800
11 11 (0.44%) MiFID
11 11 (0.44%) PMO
12 10 (0.40%) Data Quality
12 10 (0.40%) FINRA
13 8 (0.32%) GLBA
14 6 (0.24%) DICOM
14 6 (0.24%) HL7
15 5 (0.20%) HIPAA
16 4 (0.16%) GMP
16 4 (0.16%) GxP
System Software
1 937 (37.90%) Active Directory
2 294 (11.89%) VMware Infrastructure
3 128 (5.18%) Hyper-V
4 81 (3.28%) Docker
5 80 (3.24%) vSphere
6 73 (2.95%) VMware ESXi
7 67 (2.71%) Virtual Machines
8 49 (1.98%) Virtual Desktop
9 34 (1.38%) Firmware
9 34 (1.38%) VMware NSX
10 29 (1.17%) BitLocker
11 25 (1.01%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.81%) KVM
13 12 (0.49%) XenApp
13 12 (0.49%) XenDesktop
14 5 (0.20%) etcd
14 5 (0.20%) NFS
14 5 (0.20%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.16%) Job Entry Subsystem
15 4 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 339 (13.71%) Microsoft Intune
2 274 (11.08%) SCCM
3 160 (6.47%) Ansible
4 148 (5.99%) Terraform
5 120 (4.85%) Kubernetes
6 67 (2.71%) vCenter Server
7 55 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
8 50 (2.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 35 (1.42%) Jamf Pro
9 35 (1.42%) WSUS
10 33 (1.33%) FortiGate
11 26 (1.05%) Grafana
11 26 (1.05%) SCOM
12 23 (0.93%) Prometheus
13 20 (0.81%) Nessus
14 19 (0.77%) Nagios
15 18 (0.73%) Progress Chef
16 16 (0.65%) Nmap
16 16 (0.65%) Puppet
17 14 (0.57%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,068 (43.20%) Microsoft
2 388 (15.70%) VMware
3 205 (8.29%) Citrix
3 205 (8.29%) ServiceNow
4 160 (6.47%) Cisco
5 151 (6.11%) Oracle
6 115 (4.65%) Splunk
7 69 (2.79%) HP
8 60 (2.43%) Red Hat
8 60 (2.43%) SolarWinds
9 57 (2.31%) Dell
10 53 (2.14%) Google
11 52 (2.10%) Remedy
12 45 (1.82%) Apple
12 45 (1.82%) IBM
13 43 (1.74%) CyberArk
14 37 (1.50%) Veeam
15 36 (1.46%) F5
15 36 (1.46%) Juniper
16 28 (1.13%) Palo Alto