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

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 17
Rank change year-on-year -5 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,479 2,093 3,263
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.25% 8.53% 8.81%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.13% 60.63% 64.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,672 1,490 2,261
10th Percentile £160 £180 £158
25th Percentile £213 £240 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £415 £421 £400
Median % change year-on-year -1.31% +5.13% -11.11%
75th Percentile £545 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £685 £675
UK median daily rate £415 £425 £400
% change year-on-year -2.35% +6.25% -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 201 103 268
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.12 £11.80
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £23.50 £18.82 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +24.87% +6.21% -21.09%
75th Percentile £65.00 £28.00 £24.16
90th Percentile £74.26 £64.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £22.81 £20.00 £17.72
% change year-on-year +14.05% +12.87% -21.24%

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 4,055 3,452 5,072
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 10.23% 14.07% 13.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,692 2,353 3,467
10th Percentile £185 £200 £180
25th Percentile £310 £313 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £453
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +4.86% -12.04%
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 282 150 370
10th Percentile £15.65 £16.16 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.11 £14.72
Median hourly rate £35.68 £24.66 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.68% +12.09% -37.14%
75th Percentile £67.84 £65.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £74.97 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £34.00 £24.18 £22.00
% change year-on-year +40.61% +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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -23 767 £428 -5.00% 183
South East -7 498 £467 -6.60% 272
North of England -10 479 £320 -1.54% 186
Midlands -15 279 £325 +19.82% 122
North West -4 266 £261 -25.36% 105
South West -12 227 £457 -14.67% 116
East of England +6 209 £350 +55.21% 103
Yorkshire -16 193 £365 +12.31% 59
West Midlands -24 164 £455 +63.96% 61
East Midlands +4 111 £210 +1.82% 60
North East -18 27 £225 +2.27% 28
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
1 218 (8.79%) Microsoft Exchange
2 143 (5.77%) SharePoint
3 47 (1.90%) IIS
4 46 (1.86%) Confluence
5 21 (0.85%) WebLogic
6 16 (0.65%) Apache
7 12 (0.48%) 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%) WordPress
Applications
1 183 (7.38%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (2.58%) 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 37 (1.49%) 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
1 701 (28.28%) Microsoft 365
2 677 (27.31%) Azure
3 291 (11.74%) Entra ID
4 203 (8.19%) AWS
5 69 (2.78%) GCP
6 66 (2.66%) Azure DevOps
6 66 (2.66%) SaaS
7 58 (2.34%) OneDrive
8 54 (2.18%) IaaS
9 47 (1.90%) GitHub
10 46 (1.86%) Google Workspace
10 46 (1.86%) PaaS
11 37 (1.49%) Azure Monitor
12 35 (1.41%) Power Platform
13 26 (1.05%) Azure Sentinel
14 22 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
15 21 (0.85%) OpenShift
16 18 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
17 17 (0.69%) Microsoft Purview
18 16 (0.65%) Nutanix
Communications & Networking
1 338 (13.63%) DNS
2 292 (11.78%) Firewall
3 237 (9.56%) DHCP
4 173 (6.98%) VPN
5 152 (6.13%) LAN
6 150 (6.05%) WAN
7 149 (6.01%) TCP/IP
8 124 (5.00%) Wi-Fi
9 74 (2.99%) Network Security
10 68 (2.74%) VLAN
11 52 (2.10%) SAN
12 49 (1.98%) Wireless
13 42 (1.69%) BGP
14 33 (1.33%) OSPF
15 31 (1.25%) Skype
15 31 (1.25%) VoIP
16 30 (1.21%) SSL
17 29 (1.17%) Internet
18 28 (1.13%) BIG-IP
19 27 (1.09%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (6.82%) SQL Server
2 43 (1.73%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.33%) Relational Database
4 27 (1.09%) MySQL
5 23 (0.93%) PostgreSQL
6 18 (0.73%) Power BI
7 14 (0.56%) DB2
8 13 (0.52%) Elasticsearch
8 13 (0.52%) 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
1 163 (6.58%) JIRA
2 48 (1.94%) GitLab
3 46 (1.86%) MSI
4 43 (1.73%) Jenkins
5 40 (1.61%) Git
6 34 (1.37%) Visual Studio
7 20 (0.81%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.73%) Burp Suite
9 17 (0.69%) Metasploit
10 11 (0.44%) Chocolatey
11 10 (0.40%) Android Studio
11 10 (0.40%) Artifactory
11 10 (0.40%) Bitbucket
12 9 (0.36%) InstallShield
13 8 (0.32%) Browser DevTools
13 8 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
13 8 (0.32%) Xcode
14 7 (0.28%) JUnit
15 6 (0.24%) AdminStudio
15 6 (0.24%) Toad
General
1 867 (34.97%) Social Skills
2 244 (9.84%) Finance
3 216 (8.71%) Analytical Skills
4 199 (8.03%) Public Sector
5 147 (5.93%) Banking
6 102 (4.11%) Legal
7 98 (3.95%) Documentation Skills
8 76 (3.07%) Organisational Skills
9 61 (2.46%) Military
10 35 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
10 35 (1.41%) Retail
11 33 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 32 (1.29%) Law
12 32 (1.29%) Manufacturing
13 29 (1.17%) Investment Banking
13 29 (1.17%) Telecoms
14 27 (1.09%) Front Office
15 20 (0.81%) Local Government
16 16 (0.65%) Police
17 14 (0.56%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 343 (13.84%) IT Support
2 314 (12.67%) Support Engineer
3 300 (12.10%) Analyst
4 213 (8.59%) IT Engineer
5 184 (7.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 174 (7.02%) IT Support Engineer
7 161 (6.49%) Senior
8 155 (6.25%) Architect
9 121 (4.88%) Support Analyst
10 102 (4.11%) Developer
11 98 (3.95%) Desktop Support
12 93 (3.75%) IT Analyst
13 92 (3.71%) Technical Support
14 88 (3.55%) Desktop Engineer
15 85 (3.43%) 2nd Line Support
16 83 (3.35%) Windows Engineer
17 79 (3.19%) Lead
18 73 (2.94%) IT Support Analyst
19 64 (2.58%) 1st Line Support
20 61 (2.46%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (3.43%) .NET
2 65 (2.62%) REST
3 53 (2.14%) .NET Framework
4 36 (1.45%) SAML
5 34 (1.37%) 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 18 (0.73%) CSS
12 18 (0.73%) React
13 17 (0.69%) Software Packaging
14 16 (0.65%) AngularJS
14 16 (0.65%) OpenID
14 16 (0.65%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 191 (7.70%) Onboarding
2 105 (4.24%) Data Centre
3 92 (3.71%) PKI
4 81 (3.27%) Enterprise Software
5 71 (2.86%) Clustering
6 64 (2.58%) Self-Motivation
7 62 (2.50%) Driving Licence
8 58 (2.34%) Replication
9 44 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
10 40 (1.61%) Product Ownership
11 38 (1.53%) Legacy Systems
11 38 (1.53%) Management Information System
11 38 (1.53%) Smartphone
12 37 (1.49%) Security Posture
13 30 (1.21%) Virtual Team
14 29 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
15 28 (1.13%) Cloud Native
15 28 (1.13%) CMDB
16 26 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
17 23 (0.93%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 607 (24.49%) Linux
2 582 (23.48%) Windows Server
3 498 (20.09%) Windows 10
4 148 (5.97%) Mac OS
5 138 (5.57%) Android
6 119 (4.80%) Apple iOS
7 115 (4.64%) Unix
8 77 (3.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 64 (2.58%) Windows Server 2016
10 51 (2.06%) Windows Server 2019
11 47 (1.90%) Windows 7
12 39 (1.57%) Windows Server 2012
13 33 (1.33%) AIX
14 22 (0.89%) Windows Server 2003
15 19 (0.77%) Ubuntu
16 18 (0.73%) VMS
17 11 (0.44%) Solaris
17 11 (0.44%) Windows Server 2008
18 10 (0.40%) Mac OS X
19 8 (0.32%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 522 (21.06%) Problem-Solving
2 420 (16.94%) Customer Service
3 365 (14.72%) ITIL
4 264 (10.65%) Migration
5 258 (10.41%) Agile
6 254 (10.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 221 (8.91%) DevOps
8 210 (8.47%) ITSM
9 204 (8.23%) CI/CD
10 173 (6.98%) Continuous Improvement
11 168 (6.78%) Service Management
12 162 (6.53%) Disaster Recovery
13 161 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
14 159 (6.41%) Change Management
15 140 (5.65%) High Availability
16 119 (4.80%) Stakeholder Management
17 111 (4.48%) Infrastructure as Code
17 111 (4.48%) SIEM
18 102 (4.11%) Computer Science
18 102 (4.11%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 539 (21.74%) PowerShell
2 241 (9.72%) SQL
3 235 (9.48%) Python
4 128 (5.16%) C#
5 99 (3.99%) Bash
6 74 (2.99%) Java
7 69 (2.78%) JavaScript
8 54 (2.18%) PL/SQL
9 46 (1.86%) C++
10 43 (1.73%) T-SQL
11 34 (1.37%) Perl
12 28 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
13 24 (0.97%) VB
14 18 (0.73%) Shell Script
14 18 (0.73%) VBScript
15 16 (0.65%) Search Processing Language
16 14 (0.56%) VBA
17 12 (0.48%) Go
17 12 (0.48%) TypeScript
18 11 (0.44%) C
Qualifications
1 783 (31.59%) Security Cleared
2 521 (21.02%) SC Cleared
3 253 (10.21%) Degree
4 231 (9.32%) DV Cleared
5 110 (4.44%) Microsoft Certification
6 70 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
7 64 (2.58%) Cisco Certification
8 44 (1.77%) Azure Certification
8 44 (1.77%) MCSE
9 33 (1.33%) CCNA
9 33 (1.33%) CISSP
10 32 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
11 29 (1.17%) AWS Certification
11 29 (1.17%) ITIL Certification
12 28 (1.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 27 (1.09%) MCSA
14 21 (0.85%) CCNP
15 20 (0.81%) A+ Certification
15 20 (0.81%) CompTIA Security+
16 17 (0.69%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (3.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 82 (3.31%) GDPR
2 82 (3.31%) QA
3 72 (2.90%) SLA
4 61 (2.46%) NIST
5 39 (1.57%) PCI DSS
6 27 (1.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 17 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
8 13 (0.52%) NCSC
9 12 (0.48%) NIST 800
10 11 (0.44%) MiFID
10 11 (0.44%) PMO
11 10 (0.40%) FINRA
12 9 (0.36%) Data Quality
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
1 940 (37.92%) Active Directory
2 293 (11.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 128 (5.16%) Hyper-V
4 81 (3.27%) Docker
5 79 (3.19%) vSphere
6 72 (2.90%) VMware ESXi
7 63 (2.54%) Virtual Machines
8 48 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
9 34 (1.37%) Firmware
9 34 (1.37%) VMware NSX
10 30 (1.21%) BitLocker
11 25 (1.01%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.81%) KVM
13 12 (0.48%) XenApp
13 12 (0.48%) 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
1 340 (13.72%) Microsoft Intune
2 277 (11.17%) SCCM
3 159 (6.41%) Ansible
4 146 (5.89%) Terraform
5 118 (4.76%) Kubernetes
6 66 (2.66%) vCenter Server
7 55 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
8 50 (2.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 37 (1.49%) Jamf Pro
10 35 (1.41%) WSUS
11 33 (1.33%) FortiGate
12 26 (1.05%) Grafana
12 26 (1.05%) SCOM
13 23 (0.93%) Prometheus
14 20 (0.81%) Nessus
15 19 (0.77%) Nagios
16 18 (0.73%) Progress Chef
17 16 (0.65%) Nmap
17 16 (0.65%) Puppet
18 14 (0.56%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,069 (43.12%) Microsoft
2 386 (15.57%) VMware
3 210 (8.47%) ServiceNow
4 205 (8.27%) Citrix
5 159 (6.41%) Cisco
6 151 (6.09%) Oracle
7 114 (4.60%) Splunk
8 69 (2.78%) HP
9 60 (2.42%) Red Hat
9 60 (2.42%) SolarWinds
10 57 (2.30%) Dell
11 53 (2.14%) Google
12 52 (2.10%) Remedy
13 45 (1.82%) Apple
13 45 (1.82%) IBM
14 44 (1.77%) CyberArk
15 37 (1.49%) Veeam
16 36 (1.45%) F5
16 36 (1.45%) Juniper
17 28 (1.13%) Palo Alto