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

 6 months to
25 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,862 2,331 2,763
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.15% 8.37% 8.42%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.49% 60.53% 58.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,817 1,579 1,782
10th Percentile £173 £163 £183
25th Percentile £225 £212 £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 £641 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -0.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 296 222 139
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.16 £15.07
25th Percentile £19.24 £18.10 £17.44
Median hourly rate £25.89 £21.73 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +19.12% -10.13% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.42 £36.88 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.75 £65.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £22.58 £24.18
% change year-on-year +14.06% -6.64% -3.28%

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 4,580 3,851 4,697
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.84% 13.83% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,916 2,526 2,952
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £310 £289 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.43% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 353 272 222
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.03
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.08 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.54% -58.21% +25.44%
75th Percentile £67.84 £58.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.80 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +6.00% -52.55% +15.52%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -8 960 £416 -2.12% 986
South East -7 563 £475 +26.67% 453
North of England -6 504 £325 +11.59% 345
North West +5 299 £344 +5.85% 193
Midlands -14 297 £400 +3.23% 306
South West -17 265 £533 +46.90% 206
East of England -1 249 £238 -32.14% 236
West Midlands -24 201 £402 +0.50% 191
Yorkshire -15 168 £260 +29.51% 119
East Midlands +2 95 £275 +4.76% 114
North East -28 42 £283 +13.80% 39
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
2 231 (8.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 57 (1.99%) IIS
4 55 (1.92%) Confluence
5 20 (0.70%) nginx
6 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
7 16 (0.56%) Apache
8 10 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
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%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.10%) CICS
13 3 (0.10%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 3 (0.10%) OpenStack
Applications
1 194 (6.78%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.14%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.10%) Houdini
7 3 (0.10%) NUKE
8 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 53 (1.85%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.35%) Finacle
3 7 (0.24%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
4 5 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.10%) 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
1 940 (32.84%) Microsoft 365
2 888 (31.03%) Azure
3 484 (16.91%) Entra ID
4 311 (10.87%) AWS
5 139 (4.86%) OneDrive
6 102 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
6 102 (3.56%) GCP
7 72 (2.52%) SaaS
8 70 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
9 63 (2.20%) GitHub
10 59 (2.06%) Power Platform
11 57 (1.99%) IaaS
12 43 (1.50%) PaaS
13 40 (1.40%) Azure Sentinel
14 27 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
16 25 (0.87%) Google Workspace
17 24 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
18 21 (0.73%) Amazon EC2
18 21 (0.73%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 454 (15.86%) DNS
2 326 (11.39%) DHCP
3 315 (11.01%) Firewall
4 243 (8.49%) VPN
5 227 (7.93%) TCP/IP
6 115 (4.02%) Wi-Fi
7 114 (3.98%) WAN
8 111 (3.88%) LAN
9 94 (3.28%) Network Security
10 84 (2.94%) SAN
11 82 (2.87%) VLAN
12 51 (1.78%) Wireless
13 50 (1.75%) SSL
14 38 (1.33%) Internet
15 37 (1.29%) NAS
16 36 (1.26%) BGP
17 34 (1.19%) Skype
18 30 (1.05%) VoIP
19 29 (1.01%) VSAN
20 27 (0.94%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 247 (8.63%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.92%) Oracle Database
3 50 (1.75%) Power BI
4 28 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 26 (0.91%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.80%) Relational Database
7 21 (0.73%) MySQL
8 14 (0.49%) Db2
8 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
10 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
11 9 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (0.21%) MongoDB
14 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
15 4 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 143 (5.00%) JIRA
2 70 (2.45%) Git
3 48 (1.68%) Jenkins
3 48 (1.68%) MSI
4 45 (1.57%) GitLab
5 33 (1.15%) Visual Studio
6 15 (0.52%) Bitbucket
6 15 (0.52%) Eclipse
7 13 (0.45%) Artifactory
8 11 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 10 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
11 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.21%) Robot Framework
11 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 5 (0.17%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 5 (0.17%) Zephyr
13 4 (0.14%) JMeter
13 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,063 (37.14%) Social Skills
2 353 (12.33%) Finance
3 350 (12.23%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (5.21%) Banking
5 127 (4.44%) Public Sector
6 108 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 76 (2.66%) Legal
8 68 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 68 (2.38%) Organisational Skills
9 56 (1.96%) Manufacturing
10 51 (1.78%) Telecoms
11 49 (1.71%) Retail
12 42 (1.47%) Front Office
13 40 (1.40%) Law
14 39 (1.36%) Military
15 34 (1.19%) Investment Banking
16 26 (0.91%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.87%) French Language
18 24 (0.84%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 472 (16.49%) Support Engineer
2 396 (13.84%) IT Support
3 302 (10.55%) IT Engineer
4 300 (10.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 255 (8.91%) IT Support Engineer
6 244 (8.53%) Analyst
7 228 (7.97%) Senior
8 129 (4.51%) Desktop Support
9 121 (4.23%) 2nd Line Support
10 119 (4.16%) Desktop Engineer
11 111 (3.88%) Lead
12 110 (3.84%) Cloud Engineer
13 105 (3.67%) Architect
14 98 (3.42%) Windows Engineer
15 92 (3.21%) Support Analyst
16 84 (2.94%) Developer
17 78 (2.73%) Consultant
18 74 (2.59%) 1st Line Support
18 74 (2.59%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 74 (2.59%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (8.60%) Terraform
2 117 (4.09%) .NET
3 104 (3.63%) REST
4 56 (1.96%) .NET Framework
5 39 (1.36%) LDAP
5 39 (1.36%) Middleware
6 37 (1.29%) JSON
6 37 (1.29%) WPF
7 27 (0.94%) WinForms
8 23 (0.80%) ARM Templates
9 22 (0.77%) Software Packaging
10 21 (0.73%) .NET Core
11 19 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
11 19 (0.66%) HTML
11 19 (0.66%) Microsoft Graph
11 19 (0.66%) Web Services
12 18 (0.63%) CSS
13 17 (0.59%) RESTful
13 17 (0.59%) SAML
13 17 (0.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 361 (12.61%) Onboarding
2 163 (5.70%) Data Centre
3 142 (4.96%) PKI
4 101 (3.53%) Management Information System
5 85 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
6 75 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
7 73 (2.55%) Clustering
7 73 (2.55%) Video Conferencing
8 71 (2.48%) Cloud Native
9 68 (2.38%) Driving Licence
10 56 (1.96%) Replication
10 56 (1.96%) Self-Motivation
11 54 (1.89%) Security Posture
12 40 (1.40%) Virtual Team
13 37 (1.29%) CMDB
13 37 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
14 33 (1.15%) Enterprise Storage
15 32 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
15 32 (1.12%) Operational Technology
16 31 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 809 (28.27%) Windows Server
2 693 (24.21%) Linux
3 515 (17.99%) Windows 10
4 192 (6.71%) Mac OS
5 135 (4.72%) Apple iOS
6 131 (4.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 127 (4.44%) Android
8 105 (3.67%) Unix
9 67 (2.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 48 (1.68%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.61%) Windows 7
12 40 (1.40%) CentOS
13 39 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
14 35 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 20 (0.70%) Solaris
16 19 (0.66%) AIX
17 18 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
18 17 (0.59%) VMS
19 15 (0.52%) Rocky
20 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 703 (24.56%) Problem-Solving
2 554 (19.36%) ITIL
3 484 (16.91%) Customer Service
4 390 (13.63%) ITSM
5 385 (13.45%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 356 (12.44%) Migration
7 333 (11.64%) Continuous Improvement
8 291 (10.17%) Service Management
9 277 (9.68%) DevOps
10 261 (9.12%) CI/CD
11 254 (8.87%) Infrastructure as Code
12 233 (8.14%) Agile
13 231 (8.07%) Stakeholder Management
14 210 (7.34%) Change Management
15 208 (7.27%) Root Cause Analysis
16 192 (6.71%) Disaster Recovery
17 182 (6.36%) Cybersecurity
18 169 (5.90%) Validation
19 164 (5.73%) Technical Leadership
20 163 (5.70%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 708 (24.74%) PowerShell
2 318 (11.11%) Python
3 273 (9.54%) SQL
4 178 (6.22%) Bash
5 141 (4.93%) C#
6 64 (2.24%) Java
7 62 (2.17%) T-SQL
8 60 (2.10%) JavaScript
9 50 (1.75%) Bicep
10 48 (1.68%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.29%) C++
12 29 (1.01%) VB
13 25 (0.87%) VBScript
14 16 (0.56%) Perl
14 16 (0.56%) TypeScript
15 15 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 12 (0.42%) Search Processing Language
16 12 (0.42%) VBA
17 11 (0.38%) Go
17 11 (0.38%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 911 (31.83%) Security Cleared
2 529 (18.48%) SC Cleared
3 379 (13.24%) DV Cleared
4 288 (10.06%) Degree
5 113 (3.95%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (3.21%) Azure Certification
7 69 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
8 68 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
9 64 (2.24%) CISSP
10 54 (1.89%) AWS Certification
11 52 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
12 49 (1.71%) A+ Certification
13 44 (1.54%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 33 (1.15%) CISM
14 33 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
15 32 (1.12%) CCNA
15 32 (1.12%) CCNP
15 32 (1.12%) DBS Check
16 31 (1.08%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 26 (0.91%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 153 (5.35%) SLA
2 109 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 81 (2.83%) NIST
4 75 (2.62%) QA
5 39 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
6 28 (0.98%) NCSC
7 22 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 21 (0.73%) GDPR
9 16 (0.56%) GRC
10 15 (0.52%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 13 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.42%) WCAG
13 10 (0.35%) Data Quality
13 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.35%) ISO 31000
14 9 (0.31%) GxP
15 8 (0.28%) PMO
16 6 (0.21%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,211 (42.31%) Active Directory
2 454 (15.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 199 (6.95%) Hyper-V
4 148 (5.17%) VMware ESXi
5 135 (4.72%) vSphere
6 114 (3.98%) Docker
7 104 (3.63%) Virtual Machines
8 83 (2.90%) Virtual Desktop
9 76 (2.66%) VMware NSX
10 38 (1.33%) BitLocker
11 28 (0.98%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 17 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
15 13 (0.45%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 13 (0.45%) NFS
16 12 (0.42%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 9 (0.31%) KVM
19 7 (0.24%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 426 (14.88%) Microsoft Intune
2 322 (11.25%) SCCM
3 213 (7.44%) Ansible
4 149 (5.21%) Kubernetes
5 119 (4.16%) vCenter Server
6 99 (3.46%) SCOM
7 47 (1.64%) Jamf Pro
8 39 (1.36%) WSUS
9 34 (1.19%) Grafana
10 31 (1.08%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.98%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 27 (0.94%) WMI
13 26 (0.91%) Puppet
13 26 (0.91%) VxRail
14 24 (0.84%) Nagios
14 24 (0.84%) NetBackup
15 21 (0.73%) Packer
16 19 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
17 18 (0.63%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,398 (48.85%) Microsoft
2 592 (20.68%) VMware
3 331 (11.57%) ServiceNow
4 203 (7.09%) Cisco
5 160 (5.59%) Oracle
6 154 (5.38%) Citrix
7 96 (3.35%) Apple
8 93 (3.25%) CyberArk
8 93 (3.25%) Splunk
9 79 (2.76%) Google
10 72 (2.52%) Red Hat
11 70 (2.45%) SolarWinds
12 65 (2.27%) BeyondTrust
13 57 (1.99%) Dell
13 57 (1.99%) Remedy
14 44 (1.54%) HP
15 40 (1.40%) NetApp
15 40 (1.40%) Palo Alto
16 37 (1.29%) BMC
16 37 (1.29%) Zscaler
2,574 Windows jobs in England