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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 22 15
Rank change year-on-year -4 -7 -1
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,542 2,146 3,404
As % of all contract jobs in England 7.06% 8.62% 8.94%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.77% 60.48% 63.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,711 1,499 2,301
10th Percentile £160 £181 £155
25th Percentile £204 £225 £208
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £403 £410 £380
Median % change year-on-year -1.83% +7.89% -15.37%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £570
90th Percentile £640 £675 £650
UK median daily rate £400 £421 £395
% change year-on-year -4.99% +6.58% -10.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 78 275
10th Percentile £13.58 £15.22 £12.10
25th Percentile £16.62 £16.95 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.80 £20.50 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +6.34% +15.69% -19.45%
75th Percentile £41.94 £42.25 £25.84
90th Percentile £66.80 £70.25 £62.29
UK median hourly rate £21.80 £22.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year -3.11% +25.00% -18.18%

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 4,183 3,548 5,344
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.62% 14.25% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,768 2,363 3,609
10th Percentile £180 £200 £175
25th Percentile £268 £313 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -13.46%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £588
90th Percentile £669 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £445 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -6.32% +5.56% -12.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 315 127 386
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.25 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.84 £18.29 £15.54
Median hourly rate £22.81 £34.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.91% +51.11% -15.09%
75th Percentile £60.00 £67.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £71.10 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £23.00 £28.71 £22.50
% change year-on-year -19.87% +27.58% -15.09%

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 9 March 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 9 March 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 9 March 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 -19 766 £441 +3.82% 224
South East -2 517 £425 -5.56% 345
North of England -9 477 £274 -21.71% 214
South West -2 274 £450 -13.46% 115
Midlands -16 269 £275 -15.38% 121
North West -6 255 £263 -25.00% 126
East of England +4 220 £235 +1.40% 112
Yorkshire -13 192 £325 -18.75% 69
West Midlands -24 160 £425 +28.79% 55
East Midlands -2 108 £210 -9.19% 65
North East -8 33 £188 -37.50% 24
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 (8.62%) Microsoft Exchange
2 165 (6.49%) SharePoint
3 55 (2.16%) Confluence
4 35 (1.38%) IIS
5 23 (0.90%) Apache
6 20 (0.79%) WebLogic
7 14 (0.55%) Skype for Business
8 11 (0.43%) Tuxedo
9 10 (0.39%) TPMS
10 5 (0.20%) nginx
10 5 (0.20%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.20%) WebSphere
11 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
12 3 (0.12%) SAS
13 2 (0.079%) iPlanet
13 2 (0.079%) JBoss
13 2 (0.079%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 217 (8.54%) Microsoft Office
2 70 (2.75%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.20%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.20%) PTC Creo
6 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.079%) InDesign
8 1 (0.039%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.039%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.039%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.039%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 27 (1.06%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.28%) Teamcenter
4 5 (0.20%) assyst
5 4 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 2 (0.079%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.079%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.079%) SystmOne
8 1 (0.039%) Aladdin
8 1 (0.039%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.039%) Eikon
8 1 (0.039%) Fidessa
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.039%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 743 (29.23%) Microsoft 365
2 630 (24.78%) Azure
3 273 (10.74%) Entra ID
4 181 (7.12%) AWS
5 88 (3.46%) OneDrive
6 67 (2.64%) GCP
7 66 (2.60%) SaaS
8 52 (2.05%) Azure DevOps
9 51 (2.01%) Google Workspace
10 44 (1.73%) IaaS
11 43 (1.69%) GitHub
12 36 (1.42%) PaaS
12 36 (1.42%) Power Platform
13 22 (0.87%) AWS CloudFormation
13 22 (0.87%) Azure Monitor
14 21 (0.83%) Azure Sentinel
15 20 (0.79%) GitHub Actions
16 17 (0.67%) Nutanix
17 16 (0.63%) OpenShift
18 15 (0.59%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 329 (12.94%) DNS
2 286 (11.25%) Firewall
3 218 (8.58%) DHCP
4 167 (6.57%) TCP/IP
5 165 (6.49%) VPN
6 132 (5.19%) LAN
6 132 (5.19%) WAN
7 125 (4.92%) Wi-Fi
8 69 (2.71%) Network Security
9 62 (2.44%) VLAN
10 59 (2.32%) Wireless
11 39 (1.53%) SAN
12 35 (1.38%) BGP
13 32 (1.26%) Skype
14 31 (1.22%) SSH
15 28 (1.10%) VoIP
16 27 (1.06%) Cisco ISE
16 27 (1.06%) SSL
17 26 (1.02%) Junos
18 25 (0.98%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (5.70%) SQL Server
2 49 (1.93%) Oracle Database
3 44 (1.73%) Relational Database
4 38 (1.49%) MySQL
5 23 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
6 14 (0.55%) Power BI
7 13 (0.51%) BigQuery
7 13 (0.51%) DB2
8 11 (0.43%) MongoDB
8 11 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
9 9 (0.35%) NoSQL
10 8 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
11 7 (0.28%) GIS
11 7 (0.28%) SAP HANA
12 6 (0.24%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 4 (0.16%) Amazon RDS
14 4 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
14 4 (0.16%) Oracle Database 10g
Development Applications
1 152 (5.98%) JIRA
2 53 (2.08%) GitLab
2 53 (2.08%) Jenkins
3 48 (1.89%) Git
4 41 (1.61%) MSI
5 33 (1.30%) Visual Studio
6 27 (1.06%) Eclipse
7 18 (0.71%) Burp Suite
7 18 (0.71%) Metasploit
8 17 (0.67%) Android Studio
9 15 (0.59%) Artifactory
9 15 (0.59%) Xcode
10 12 (0.47%) Browser DevTools
11 10 (0.39%) Chocolatey
12 9 (0.35%) Bitbucket
12 9 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
13 7 (0.28%) JUnit
13 7 (0.28%) Robot Framework
14 6 (0.24%) InstallShield
14 6 (0.24%) Toad
General
1 939 (36.94%) Social Skills
2 244 (9.60%) Finance
3 214 (8.42%) Public Sector
4 210 (8.26%) Analytical Skills
5 132 (5.19%) Banking
6 106 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
7 97 (3.82%) Legal
8 83 (3.27%) Organisational Skills
9 60 (2.36%) Military
10 46 (1.81%) Presentation Skills
11 39 (1.53%) Manufacturing
12 36 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 34 (1.34%) Retail
14 25 (0.98%) Telecoms
15 24 (0.94%) Law
16 22 (0.87%) Investment Banking
17 21 (0.83%) Aerospace
18 18 (0.71%) Front Office
18 18 (0.71%) Local Government
19 15 (0.59%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 358 (14.08%) Support Engineer
2 352 (13.85%) IT Support
3 335 (13.18%) Analyst
4 203 (7.99%) IT Engineer
5 169 (6.65%) IT Support Engineer
6 157 (6.18%) Architect
7 149 (5.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 148 (5.82%) Senior
9 146 (5.74%) Support Analyst
10 119 (4.68%) Desktop Support
11 116 (4.56%) Technical Support
12 115 (4.52%) 2nd Line Support
13 109 (4.29%) Desktop Engineer
14 107 (4.21%) Developer
15 95 (3.74%) Windows Engineer
16 89 (3.50%) Lead
17 87 (3.42%) IT Analyst
18 80 (3.15%) Desktop Support Engineer
19 76 (2.99%) Deployment Engineer
20 74 (2.91%) IT Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (3.07%) .NET
2 58 (2.28%) REST
3 47 (1.85%) OAuth
4 44 (1.73%) .NET Framework
5 43 (1.69%) SAML
6 40 (1.57%) LDAP
7 32 (1.26%) Middleware
8 31 (1.22%) Web Services
9 30 (1.18%) WPF
10 28 (1.10%) React
11 27 (1.06%) AngularJS
12 26 (1.02%) CSS
13 24 (0.94%) Microsoft Graph
13 24 (0.94%) OpenID
13 24 (0.94%) WinForms
14 21 (0.83%) OAuth2
15 20 (0.79%) 802.1X
15 20 (0.79%) Node.js
16 19 (0.75%) Apache NiFi
16 19 (0.75%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 166 (6.53%) Onboarding
2 102 (4.01%) Data Centre
3 98 (3.86%) PKI
4 79 (3.11%) Driving Licence
5 77 (3.03%) Enterprise Software
6 68 (2.68%) Self-Motivation
7 56 (2.20%) Smartphone
8 48 (1.89%) Clustering
9 47 (1.85%) Management Information System
10 46 (1.81%) Replication
11 41 (1.61%) Security Posture
12 39 (1.53%) Hybrid Cloud
13 38 (1.49%) Product Ownership
14 36 (1.42%) NHS
15 30 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
16 28 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
17 26 (1.02%) Analytical Mindset
17 26 (1.02%) CMDB
17 26 (1.02%) Virtual Team
18 23 (0.90%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 595 (23.41%) Linux
2 567 (22.31%) Windows 10
3 542 (21.32%) Windows Server
4 142 (5.59%) Android
5 134 (5.27%) Unix
6 133 (5.23%) Mac OS
7 116 (4.56%) Apple iOS
8 63 (2.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 62 (2.44%) Windows Server 2016
10 48 (1.89%) Windows 7
11 44 (1.73%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (1.38%) Windows Server 2012
13 31 (1.22%) AIX
14 29 (1.14%) Windows Server 2003
15 13 (0.51%) Ubuntu
16 12 (0.47%) Solaris
16 12 (0.47%) VMS
16 12 (0.47%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.39%) Mac OS X
18 8 (0.31%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 503 (19.79%) Problem-Solving
2 464 (18.25%) Customer Service
3 358 (14.08%) ITIL
4 270 (10.62%) Agile
5 260 (10.23%) Migration
6 229 (9.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 213 (8.38%) DevOps
8 206 (8.10%) ITSM
9 200 (7.87%) CI/CD
10 184 (7.24%) Continuous Improvement
11 183 (7.20%) Service Management
12 175 (6.88%) Cybersecurity
13 155 (6.10%) Change Management
14 143 (5.63%) Disaster Recovery
15 132 (5.19%) Stakeholder Management
16 129 (5.07%) User Experience
17 120 (4.72%) Service Delivery
18 119 (4.68%) High Availability
19 102 (4.01%) Computer Science
20 101 (3.97%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 493 (19.39%) PowerShell
2 263 (10.35%) Python
3 224 (8.81%) SQL
4 124 (4.88%) C#
5 107 (4.21%) Bash
6 92 (3.62%) Java
7 76 (2.99%) JavaScript
8 57 (2.24%) C++
9 49 (1.93%) Perl
9 49 (1.93%) PL/SQL
10 40 (1.57%) T-SQL
11 31 (1.22%) Kusto Query Language
12 24 (0.94%) VB
13 22 (0.87%) Shell Script
14 21 (0.83%) VBScript
15 15 (0.59%) VBA
16 12 (0.47%) Bicep
16 12 (0.47%) TypeScript
17 11 (0.43%) C
17 11 (0.43%) Go
Qualifications
1 811 (31.90%) Security Cleared
2 533 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 254 (9.99%) Degree
4 227 (8.93%) DV Cleared
5 132 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
6 76 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
7 57 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
8 44 (1.73%) Azure Certification
9 43 (1.69%) MCSE
10 34 (1.34%) ITIL Certification
11 32 (1.26%) CISSP
12 30 (1.18%) CCNA
13 29 (1.14%) AWS Certification
14 28 (1.10%) BPSS Clearance
15 24 (0.94%) CCNP
15 24 (0.94%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 22 (0.87%) A+ Certification
16 22 (0.87%) MCSA
17 20 (0.79%) CompTIA Security+
18 19 (0.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (3.82%) GDPR
2 87 (3.42%) SLA
3 77 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 76 (2.99%) QA
5 49 (1.93%) NIST
6 38 (1.49%) PCI DSS
7 21 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 15 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.51%) MiFID
9 13 (0.51%) PMO
10 12 (0.47%) NCSC
11 10 (0.39%) FINRA
11 10 (0.39%) GLBA
12 9 (0.35%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.16%) GxP
13 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
13 4 (0.16%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.12%) COBIT
14 3 (0.12%) GMP
14 3 (0.12%) HL7
System Software
1 951 (37.41%) Active Directory
2 256 (10.07%) VMware Infrastructure
3 100 (3.93%) Hyper-V
4 98 (3.86%) Docker
5 59 (2.32%) vSphere
6 58 (2.28%) Virtual Machines
7 54 (2.12%) Virtual Desktop
8 45 (1.77%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (1.06%) VMware NSX
10 25 (0.98%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.98%) Firmware
11 23 (0.90%) Microsoft App-V
12 16 (0.63%) KVM
13 7 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.28%) XenDesktop
14 6 (0.24%) Terminal Services
14 6 (0.24%) XenApp
15 4 (0.16%) NFS
15 4 (0.16%) Snort
16 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 347 (13.65%) Microsoft Intune
2 322 (12.67%) SCCM
3 154 (6.06%) Terraform
4 134 (5.27%) Ansible
5 118 (4.64%) Kubernetes
6 63 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
7 62 (2.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 55 (2.16%) vCenter Server
9 36 (1.42%) Jamf Pro
10 28 (1.10%) FortiGate
11 27 (1.06%) Grafana
12 24 (0.94%) SCOM
13 23 (0.90%) WSUS
14 17 (0.67%) Nessus
14 17 (0.67%) Nmap
14 17 (0.67%) Progress Chef
14 17 (0.67%) Prometheus
14 17 (0.67%) WMI
15 15 (0.59%) Puppet
16 12 (0.47%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,103 (43.39%) Microsoft
2 357 (14.04%) VMware
3 227 (8.93%) ServiceNow
4 192 (7.55%) Citrix
5 159 (6.25%) Oracle
6 147 (5.78%) Cisco
7 110 (4.33%) Splunk
8 62 (2.44%) HP
9 59 (2.32%) Red Hat
10 57 (2.24%) Dell
10 57 (2.24%) SolarWinds
11 55 (2.16%) Google
12 45 (1.77%) Apple
13 44 (1.73%) IBM
13 44 (1.73%) Remedy
14 40 (1.57%) Juniper
15 39 (1.53%) Veeam
16 34 (1.34%) CyberArk
17 31 (1.22%) F5
17 31 (1.22%) SAP