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

6 months to
28 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,587 2,184 3,199
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.95% 8.58% 8.56%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.01% 61.04% 61.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,688 1,501 2,170
10th Percentile £166 £181 £170
25th Percentile £223 £243 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £425 £425 £425
% change year-on-year - - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 216 156 274
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.65 £11.86
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £14.27
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -0.68% -22.83%
75th Percentile £57.50 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £70.41 £64.38 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.21 £18.87 £19.09
% change year-on-year +33.57% -1.15% -20.23%

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 4,172 3,578 5,196
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.59% 14.05% 13.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,715 2,404 3,440
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.29% -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £655 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £463 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 190 397
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.11 £17.27 £16.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £19.32 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.26% -22.74% -41.18%
75th Percentile £65.00 £49.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.60 £67.10 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.83 £22.25 £24.93
% change year-on-year +20.58% -10.74% -41.35%

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 28 June 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 28 June 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 28 June 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 -20 838 £425 -3.41% 210
South East -8 525 £475 -3.06% 270
North of England -6 459 £365 +1.96% 172
Midlands -16 274 £338 +22.73% 118
South West -14 257 £488 +8.33% 135
North West -6 237 £364 -1.09% 95
East of England -1 217 £318 +14.39% 89
Yorkshire -13 203 £365 -9.32% 55
West Midlands -24 171 £450 +50.00% 54
East Midlands +11 98 £263 +31.25% 64
North East -38 23 £290 -3.33% 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
1 220 (8.50%) Microsoft Exchange
2 173 (6.69%) SharePoint
3 54 (2.09%) Confluence
4 53 (2.05%) IIS
5 14 (0.54%) Apache
5 14 (0.54%) Skype for Business
5 14 (0.54%) Tomcat
6 13 (0.50%) nginx
7 10 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.35%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.27%) Appian
10 5 (0.19%) Camunda
11 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.15%) Documentum
11 4 (0.15%) TPMS
12 3 (0.12%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.12%) NetWeaver
12 3 (0.12%) Tuxedo
12 3 (0.12%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.077%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 164 (6.34%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.27%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.19%) PTC Creo
6 4 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.077%) Acrobat
8 1 (0.039%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 40 (1.55%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.43%) Teamcenter
3 10 (0.39%) Finacle
4 5 (0.19%) OpenText MBPM
4 5 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
5 2 (0.077%) assyst
6 1 (0.039%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.039%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.039%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 782 (30.23%) Azure
2 737 (28.49%) Microsoft 365
3 348 (13.45%) Entra ID
4 271 (10.48%) AWS
5 100 (3.87%) OneDrive
6 80 (3.09%) GCP
7 75 (2.90%) Azure DevOps
8 72 (2.78%) SaaS
9 61 (2.36%) IaaS
10 60 (2.32%) GitHub
11 50 (1.93%) PaaS
12 49 (1.89%) Power Platform
13 46 (1.78%) Azure Monitor
14 34 (1.31%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.08%) Google Workspace
16 27 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
17 25 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
17 25 (0.97%) OpenShift
18 21 (0.81%) Azure AKS
19 20 (0.77%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 352 (13.61%) DNS
2 270 (10.44%) Firewall
3 252 (9.74%) DHCP
4 176 (6.80%) VPN
5 157 (6.07%) LAN
6 153 (5.91%) WAN
7 152 (5.88%) TCP/IP
8 125 (4.83%) Wi-Fi
9 75 (2.90%) SAN
10 55 (2.13%) Network Security
11 53 (2.05%) VLAN
12 43 (1.66%) BGP
13 36 (1.39%) SSL
14 35 (1.35%) Internet
14 35 (1.35%) OSPF
15 33 (1.28%) NAS
15 33 (1.28%) Skype
16 31 (1.20%) SNMP
16 31 (1.20%) VoIP
17 29 (1.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 224 (8.66%) SQL Server
2 51 (1.97%) Oracle Database
3 33 (1.28%) Power BI
4 29 (1.12%) Relational Database
5 27 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (0.97%) MySQL
7 16 (0.62%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (0.62%) Db2
8 14 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
9 13 (0.50%) NoSQL
9 13 (0.50%) RDBMS
10 12 (0.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 10 (0.39%) MongoDB
12 7 (0.27%) GIS
13 6 (0.23%) Geospatial Data
13 6 (0.23%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
14 5 (0.19%) Big Data
14 5 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
14 5 (0.19%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 167 (6.46%) JIRA
2 43 (1.66%) MSI
3 41 (1.58%) Git
3 41 (1.58%) Jenkins
4 38 (1.47%) GitLab
5 37 (1.43%) Visual Studio
6 17 (0.66%) Eclipse
7 9 (0.35%) Chocolatey
8 7 (0.27%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.27%) Burp Suite
8 7 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (0.23%) Android Studio
9 6 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
9 6 (0.23%) InstallShield
9 6 (0.23%) Metasploit
9 6 (0.23%) Xcode
10 5 (0.19%) AdminStudio
10 5 (0.19%) Artifactory
10 5 (0.19%) Selenium
11 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
General
1 901 (34.83%) Social Skills
2 288 (11.13%) Finance
3 275 (10.63%) Analytical Skills
4 168 (6.49%) Public Sector
5 150 (5.80%) Banking
6 101 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
7 82 (3.17%) Legal
8 80 (3.09%) Organisational Skills
9 52 (2.01%) Retail
10 51 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 45 (1.74%) Military
12 37 (1.43%) Manufacturing
13 36 (1.39%) Front Office
13 36 (1.39%) Investment Banking
14 30 (1.16%) Telecoms
15 28 (1.08%) Law
16 27 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
17 25 (0.97%) Spanish Language
18 22 (0.85%) French Language
19 18 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 350 (13.53%) Support Engineer
2 347 (13.41%) IT Support
3 263 (10.17%) Analyst
4 235 (9.08%) IT Engineer
5 229 (8.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 195 (7.54%) IT Support Engineer
7 173 (6.69%) Senior
8 130 (5.03%) Architect
9 106 (4.10%) 2nd Line Support
10 102 (3.94%) Desktop Support
11 99 (3.83%) Support Analyst
12 98 (3.79%) Desktop Engineer
13 95 (3.67%) Developer
14 89 (3.44%) Lead
15 85 (3.29%) IT Analyst
16 79 (3.05%) Technical Support
17 75 (2.90%) Cloud Engineer
18 70 (2.71%) Consultant
19 66 (2.55%) Windows Engineer
20 61 (2.36%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (3.67%) .NET
2 80 (3.09%) REST
3 58 (2.24%) .NET Framework
4 38 (1.47%) LDAP
5 31 (1.20%) 802.1X
6 30 (1.16%) Microsoft Graph
7 29 (1.12%) SAML
8 27 (1.04%) Middleware
9 26 (1.01%) Web Services
9 26 (1.01%) WPF
10 25 (0.97%) WinForms
11 24 (0.93%) OAuth
12 22 (0.85%) Elastic Stack
13 21 (0.81%) Software Packaging
14 20 (0.77%) CSS
15 16 (0.62%) JSON
15 16 (0.62%) Kafka
15 16 (0.62%) Node.js
16 14 (0.54%) SailPoint
17 13 (0.50%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 254 (9.82%) Onboarding
2 132 (5.10%) Data Centre
3 121 (4.68%) PKI
4 75 (2.90%) Clustering
5 71 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
6 65 (2.51%) Self-Motivation
7 64 (2.47%) Management Information System
8 55 (2.13%) Cloud Native
9 53 (2.05%) Replication
10 48 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
10 48 (1.86%) Security Posture
11 46 (1.78%) Driving Licence
11 46 (1.78%) Virtual Team
12 44 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
13 32 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
14 31 (1.20%) Video Conferencing
15 30 (1.16%) CMDB
15 30 (1.16%) Product Ownership
16 28 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 627 (24.24%) Linux
2 617 (23.85%) Windows Server
3 449 (17.36%) Windows 10
4 167 (6.46%) Mac OS
5 127 (4.91%) Apple iOS
6 124 (4.79%) Unix
7 120 (4.64%) Android
8 92 (3.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 61 (2.36%) Windows Server 2019
10 48 (1.86%) Windows Server 2016
11 45 (1.74%) Windows 7
12 37 (1.43%) Windows Server 2012
13 33 (1.28%) Ubuntu
14 30 (1.16%) AIX
15 18 (0.70%) Solaris
15 18 (0.70%) VMS
16 16 (0.62%) Windows Server 2003
17 14 (0.54%) CentOS
18 13 (0.50%) Windows Server 2008
19 9 (0.35%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 580 (22.42%) Problem-Solving
2 405 (15.66%) ITIL
3 383 (14.80%) Customer Service
4 298 (11.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 282 (10.90%) Migration
6 256 (9.90%) ITSM
7 244 (9.43%) DevOps
8 237 (9.16%) Agile
9 223 (8.62%) Continuous Improvement
10 222 (8.58%) CI/CD
11 183 (7.07%) Service Management
12 180 (6.96%) High Availability
13 173 (6.69%) Change Management
14 156 (6.03%) Infrastructure as Code
15 148 (5.72%) Stakeholder Management
16 144 (5.57%) Disaster Recovery
17 132 (5.10%) Cybersecurity
18 131 (5.06%) SIEM
19 126 (4.87%) Runbook
19 126 (4.87%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 555 (21.45%) PowerShell
2 263 (10.17%) SQL
3 256 (9.90%) Python
4 129 (4.99%) C#
5 104 (4.02%) Bash
6 64 (2.47%) JavaScript
7 61 (2.36%) Java
8 48 (1.86%) PL/SQL
9 47 (1.82%) C++
10 45 (1.74%) T-SQL
11 24 (0.93%) VB
12 22 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
12 22 (0.85%) Search Processing Language
13 20 (0.77%) Bicep
13 20 (0.77%) VBScript
14 18 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.66%) Perl
16 14 (0.54%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.50%) C
18 12 (0.46%) VBA
Qualifications
1 775 (29.96%) Security Cleared
2 490 (18.94%) SC Cleared
3 298 (11.52%) Degree
4 251 (9.70%) DV Cleared
5 107 (4.14%) Microsoft Certification
6 79 (3.05%) Cisco Certification
7 74 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
8 59 (2.28%) CISSP
9 55 (2.13%) Azure Certification
10 43 (1.66%) AWS Certification
11 40 (1.55%) MCSE
12 37 (1.43%) BPSS Clearance
13 30 (1.16%) CCNA
14 29 (1.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 27 (1.04%) CCNP
16 26 (1.01%) ITIL Certification
16 26 (1.01%) MCSA
17 24 (0.93%) CISM
18 21 (0.81%) A+ Certification
19 20 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (4.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 98 (3.79%) SLA
3 85 (3.29%) NIST
4 75 (2.90%) QA
5 59 (2.28%) GDPR
6 34 (1.31%) PCI DSS
7 32 (1.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 25 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.62%) NCSC
10 11 (0.43%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.43%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.39%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.35%) GRC
13 8 (0.31%) Accessibility
13 8 (0.31%) SOC 2
14 7 (0.27%) FINRA
14 7 (0.27%) MiFID
15 6 (0.23%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.23%) PMO
15 6 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 978 (37.80%) Active Directory
2 322 (12.45%) VMware Infrastructure
3 134 (5.18%) Hyper-V
4 104 (4.02%) VMware ESXi
5 95 (3.67%) Virtual Machines
6 92 (3.56%) vSphere
7 84 (3.25%) Docker
8 61 (2.36%) Virtual Desktop
9 51 (1.97%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.43%) BitLocker
10 37 (1.43%) Firmware
11 28 (1.08%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.70%) KVM
13 12 (0.46%) vCloud
14 10 (0.39%) XenDesktop
15 9 (0.35%) XenApp
16 8 (0.31%) VMware Workstation
17 6 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
17 6 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
18 5 (0.19%) etcd
Systems Management
1 366 (14.15%) Microsoft Intune
2 233 (9.01%) SCCM
3 180 (6.96%) Terraform
4 164 (6.34%) Ansible
5 124 (4.79%) Kubernetes
6 85 (3.29%) vCenter Server
7 49 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
8 43 (1.66%) Jamf Pro
9 42 (1.62%) FortiGate
9 42 (1.62%) SCOM
10 38 (1.47%) WSUS
11 34 (1.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 30 (1.16%) Progress Chef
13 27 (1.04%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.97%) Puppet
15 24 (0.93%) Grafana
16 22 (0.85%) Nagios
17 21 (0.81%) Nessus
18 19 (0.73%) Packer
18 19 (0.73%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,116 (43.14%) Microsoft
2 419 (16.20%) VMware
3 232 (8.97%) ServiceNow
4 183 (7.07%) Citrix
5 180 (6.96%) Cisco
6 151 (5.84%) Oracle
7 119 (4.60%) Splunk
8 70 (2.71%) HP
8 70 (2.71%) SolarWinds
9 66 (2.55%) Apple
10 63 (2.44%) Red Hat
11 60 (2.32%) Google
12 59 (2.28%) CyberArk
13 55 (2.13%) Dell
14 51 (1.97%) Remedy
15 48 (1.86%) BeyondTrust
16 47 (1.82%) Juniper
17 46 (1.78%) IBM
18 45 (1.74%) F5
19 35 (1.35%) Tenable