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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,843 2,306 2,740
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.16% 8.31% 8.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.58% 60.35% 58.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,808 1,567 1,753
10th Percentile £175 £163 £185
25th Percentile £225 £208 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.94% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £556 £540 £575
90th Percentile £668 £638 £638
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -1.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 292 217 136
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.12 £15.20
25th Percentile £19.24 £18.13 £17.33
Median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £40.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.97 £65.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%

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 4,543 3,821 4,651
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.85% 13.78% 14.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,896 2,511 2,903
10th Percentile £190 £186 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.11% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £582
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 346 267 220
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.00
25th Percentile £19.37 £18.87 £21.95
Median hourly rate £35.22 £25.15 £59.25
Median % change year-on-year +40.04% -57.55% +23.78%
75th Percentile £67.84 £59.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +14.43%

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 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 28 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 28 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 -5 948 £416 -2.12% 719
South East -7 563 £475 +30.14% 334
North of England -7 499 £325 +8.33% 300
North West +5 294 £344 +3.69% 163
Midlands -15 292 £400 +3.23% 265
South West -17 263 £535 +52.86% 176
East of England -1 250 £235 -32.86% 192
West Midlands -23 198 £407 +1.81% 160
Yorkshire -14 168 £279 +39.25% 103
East Midlands +2 93 £275 +22.22% 104
North East -24 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 (8.51%) SharePoint
2 226 (7.95%) Microsoft Exchange
3 57 (2.00%) IIS
4 54 (1.90%) Confluence
5 19 (0.67%) nginx
5 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.56%) Apache
7 9 (0.32%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.21%) Documentum
10 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.18%) Appian
10 5 (0.18%) Camunda
11 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
11 4 (0.14%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.11%) CICS
12 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
12 3 (0.11%) IBM Transformation Extender
12 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
Applications
1 193 (6.79%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 52 (1.83%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.35%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.11%) 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
1 932 (32.78%) Microsoft 365
2 877 (30.85%) Azure
3 484 (17.02%) Entra ID
4 309 (10.87%) AWS
5 138 (4.85%) OneDrive
6 104 (3.66%) GCP
7 101 (3.55%) Azure DevOps
8 73 (2.57%) SaaS
9 68 (2.39%) Azure Monitor
10 62 (2.18%) GitHub
11 59 (2.08%) Power Platform
12 56 (1.97%) IaaS
13 42 (1.48%) PaaS
14 40 (1.41%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (0.95%) Google Workspace
16 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
17 24 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
18 21 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
18 21 (0.74%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 455 (16.00%) DNS
2 325 (11.43%) DHCP
3 311 (10.94%) Firewall
4 243 (8.55%) VPN
5 224 (7.88%) TCP/IP
6 115 (4.05%) Wi-Fi
7 110 (3.87%) WAN
8 108 (3.80%) LAN
9 94 (3.31%) Network Security
10 83 (2.92%) SAN
11 78 (2.74%) VLAN
12 51 (1.79%) Wireless
13 49 (1.72%) SSL
14 38 (1.34%) Internet
15 36 (1.27%) BGP
15 36 (1.27%) NAS
16 35 (1.23%) Skype
17 31 (1.09%) VoIP
18 26 (0.91%) HTTP
18 26 (0.91%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 248 (8.72%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.93%) Oracle Database
3 50 (1.76%) Power BI
4 28 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 27 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.81%) Relational Database
7 21 (0.74%) MySQL
8 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 13 (0.46%) Db2
10 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
11 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (0.21%) MongoDB
14 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
15 4 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 141 (4.96%) JIRA
2 70 (2.46%) Git
3 49 (1.72%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.69%) MSI
5 45 (1.58%) GitLab
6 32 (1.13%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.53%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.53%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.46%) Artifactory
9 11 (0.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
12 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.21%) Robot Framework
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
13 5 (0.18%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 5 (0.18%) Zephyr
14 4 (0.14%) Chocolatey
14 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,052 (37.00%) Social Skills
2 348 (12.24%) Finance
3 344 (12.10%) Analytical Skills
4 147 (5.17%) Banking
5 126 (4.43%) Public Sector
6 109 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
7 72 (2.53%) Legal
8 68 (2.39%) Organisational Skills
9 67 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.97%) Manufacturing
11 49 (1.72%) Telecoms
12 47 (1.65%) Retail
13 42 (1.48%) Front Office
14 41 (1.44%) Law
15 39 (1.37%) Military
16 34 (1.20%) Investment Banking
17 25 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 24 (0.84%) Financial Institution
18 24 (0.84%) French Language
19 23 (0.81%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 475 (16.71%) Support Engineer
2 394 (13.86%) IT Support
3 304 (10.69%) IT Engineer
4 299 (10.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 256 (9.00%) IT Support Engineer
6 241 (8.48%) Analyst
7 228 (8.02%) Senior
8 130 (4.57%) Desktop Support
9 122 (4.29%) 2nd Line Support
10 119 (4.19%) Desktop Engineer
11 112 (3.94%) Cloud Engineer
12 109 (3.83%) Lead
13 105 (3.69%) Architect
14 101 (3.55%) Windows Engineer
15 88 (3.10%) Support Analyst
16 84 (2.95%) Developer
17 77 (2.71%) Consultant
18 75 (2.64%) Desktop Support Engineer
19 74 (2.60%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
20 72 (2.53%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (8.62%) Terraform
2 118 (4.15%) .NET
3 102 (3.59%) REST
4 57 (2.00%) .NET Framework
5 39 (1.37%) LDAP
6 37 (1.30%) JSON
6 37 (1.30%) WPF
7 36 (1.27%) Middleware
8 25 (0.88%) WinForms
9 23 (0.81%) ARM Templates
10 21 (0.74%) .NET Core
10 21 (0.74%) Software Packaging
11 19 (0.67%) HTML
11 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Graph
11 19 (0.67%) Web Services
12 18 (0.63%) CSS
12 18 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
13 17 (0.60%) RESTful
13 17 (0.60%) SAML
13 17 (0.60%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 363 (12.77%) Onboarding
2 164 (5.77%) Data Centre
3 142 (4.99%) PKI
4 100 (3.52%) Management Information System
5 83 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
6 75 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
7 73 (2.57%) Video Conferencing
8 72 (2.53%) Clustering
9 70 (2.46%) Cloud Native
10 68 (2.39%) Driving Licence
11 56 (1.97%) Security Posture
12 55 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
13 52 (1.83%) Replication
14 40 (1.41%) Virtual Team
15 37 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
16 35 (1.23%) CMDB
17 33 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
18 32 (1.13%) Operational Technology
19 30 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
19 30 (1.06%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 808 (28.42%) Windows Server
2 680 (23.92%) Linux
3 514 (18.08%) Windows 10
4 192 (6.75%) Mac OS
5 135 (4.75%) Apple iOS
6 127 (4.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 126 (4.43%) Android
8 102 (3.59%) Unix
9 66 (2.32%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.65%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.62%) Windows 7
12 40 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
13 39 (1.37%) CentOS
14 34 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 19 (0.67%) Solaris
16 18 (0.63%) AIX
17 17 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
18 15 (0.53%) Rocky
19 14 (0.49%) VMS
20 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 693 (24.38%) Problem-Solving
2 549 (19.31%) ITIL
3 472 (16.60%) Customer Service
4 389 (13.68%) ITSM
5 384 (13.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 351 (12.35%) Migration
7 336 (11.82%) Continuous Improvement
8 289 (10.17%) Service Management
9 275 (9.67%) DevOps
10 261 (9.18%) CI/CD
11 257 (9.04%) Infrastructure as Code
12 235 (8.27%) Agile
13 232 (8.16%) Stakeholder Management
14 212 (7.46%) Change Management
15 211 (7.42%) Root Cause Analysis
16 194 (6.82%) Disaster Recovery
17 186 (6.54%) Cybersecurity
18 166 (5.84%) Technical Leadership
18 166 (5.84%) Validation
19 165 (5.80%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 703 (24.73%) PowerShell
2 316 (11.12%) Python
3 269 (9.46%) SQL
4 177 (6.23%) Bash
5 142 (4.99%) C#
6 63 (2.22%) Java
6 63 (2.22%) T-SQL
7 61 (2.15%) JavaScript
8 50 (1.76%) Bicep
9 46 (1.62%) PL/SQL
10 37 (1.30%) C++
11 29 (1.02%) VB
12 25 (0.88%) VBScript
13 16 (0.56%) Perl
13 16 (0.56%) TypeScript
14 15 (0.53%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.42%) VBA
16 11 (0.39%) Go
16 11 (0.39%) Groovy
16 11 (0.39%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 911 (32.04%) Security Cleared
2 525 (18.47%) SC Cleared
3 383 (13.47%) DV Cleared
4 285 (10.02%) Degree
5 110 (3.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 89 (3.13%) Azure Certification
7 67 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
8 66 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
9 63 (2.22%) CISSP
10 54 (1.90%) AWS Certification
11 52 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
12 47 (1.65%) A+ Certification
13 45 (1.58%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 33 (1.16%) CISM
14 33 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
15 32 (1.13%) CCNP
15 32 (1.13%) DBS Check
16 31 (1.09%) CCNA
17 30 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 24 (0.84%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (5.42%) SLA
2 106 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 79 (2.78%) NIST
4 75 (2.64%) QA
5 38 (1.34%) Cyber Essentials
6 28 (0.98%) NCSC
7 23 (0.81%) PCI DSS
8 19 (0.67%) GDPR
9 16 (0.56%) GRC
10 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 12 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 12 (0.42%) WCAG
12 10 (0.35%) Data Quality
12 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.35%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.32%) GxP
14 8 (0.28%) PMO
15 6 (0.21%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,207 (42.46%) Active Directory
2 447 (15.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 197 (6.93%) Hyper-V
4 144 (5.07%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.64%) vSphere
6 112 (3.94%) Docker
7 99 (3.48%) Virtual Machines
8 83 (2.92%) Virtual Desktop
9 75 (2.64%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.37%) BitLocker
11 28 (0.98%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 19 (0.67%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
15 13 (0.46%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.42%) NFS
16 12 (0.42%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 9 (0.32%) KVM
18 9 (0.32%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 427 (15.02%) Microsoft Intune
2 320 (11.26%) SCCM
3 210 (7.39%) Ansible
4 148 (5.21%) Kubernetes
5 117 (4.12%) vCenter Server
6 98 (3.45%) SCOM
7 46 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
8 40 (1.41%) WSUS
9 34 (1.20%) Grafana
10 31 (1.09%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.98%) WMI
12 27 (0.95%) Progress Chef
12 27 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
13 26 (0.91%) Puppet
14 24 (0.84%) NetBackup
14 24 (0.84%) VxRail
15 23 (0.81%) Nagios
16 21 (0.74%) Packer
17 18 (0.63%) FortiGate
18 17 (0.60%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,398 (49.17%) Microsoft
2 583 (20.51%) VMware
3 328 (11.54%) ServiceNow
4 199 (7.00%) Cisco
5 159 (5.59%) Oracle
6 153 (5.38%) Citrix
7 95 (3.34%) Apple
8 94 (3.31%) Splunk
9 93 (3.27%) CyberArk
10 81 (2.85%) Google
11 71 (2.50%) Red Hat
12 69 (2.43%) SolarWinds
13 65 (2.29%) BeyondTrust
14 56 (1.97%) Dell
14 56 (1.97%) Remedy
15 44 (1.55%) HP
16 42 (1.48%) Palo Alto
17 38 (1.34%) Zscaler
18 37 (1.30%) NetApp
19 36 (1.27%) BMC