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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,614 2,184 3,175
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.97% 8.56% 8.55%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.13% 61.04% 61.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,700 1,501 2,155
10th Percentile £166 £181 £169
25th Percentile £224 £243 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £426
Median % change year-on-year - -0.23% -5.33%
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 217 156 273
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.65 £11.84
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 £70.37 £64.38 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.26 £18.87 £19.18
% change year-on-year +33.86% -1.62% -19.61%

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 4,207 3,578 5,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.61% 14.03% 13.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,733 2,404 3,415
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 £650 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £463 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 190 396
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 £26.66 £22.25 £25.00
% change year-on-year +19.82% -11.00% -41.18%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -22 848 £425 -3.41% 207
South East -8 528 £475 -3.06% 267
North of England -7 468 £365 +1.96% 170
Midlands -15 276 £339 +23.18% 110
South West -11 260 £488 +8.33% 123
North West -6 246 £364 -1.09% 98
East of England -2 218 £318 +14.39% 88
Yorkshire -15 203 £365 -9.32% 53
West Midlands -24 174 £450 +50.00% 55
East Midlands +9 97 £263 +31.25% 55
North East -36 23 £290 -3.33% 25
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 (8.38%) Microsoft Exchange
2 176 (6.73%) SharePoint
3 54 (2.07%) Confluence
4 53 (2.03%) 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 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.34%) WebLogic
9 7 (0.27%) Appian
10 5 (0.19%) Camunda
11 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.15%) Documentum
12 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
12 3 (0.11%) TPMS
12 3 (0.11%) Tuxedo
12 3 (0.11%) WebSphere
13 2 (0.077%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 167 (6.39%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.49%) 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 (0.038%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 40 (1.53%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.42%) Teamcenter
3 10 (0.38%) Finacle
4 5 (0.19%) OpenText MBPM
4 5 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
5 2 (0.077%) assyst
6 1 (0.038%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.038%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.038%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.038%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.038%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.038%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.038%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.038%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 794 (30.37%) Azure
2 745 (28.50%) Microsoft 365
3 353 (13.50%) Entra ID
4 277 (10.60%) AWS
5 102 (3.90%) OneDrive
6 82 (3.14%) GCP
7 77 (2.95%) Azure DevOps
8 73 (2.79%) SaaS
9 60 (2.30%) IaaS
10 59 (2.26%) GitHub
11 51 (1.95%) Power Platform
12 49 (1.87%) Azure Monitor
12 49 (1.87%) PaaS
13 34 (1.30%) Azure Sentinel
14 29 (1.11%) Google Workspace
15 27 (1.03%) GitHub Actions
16 26 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
17 25 (0.96%) OpenShift
18 22 (0.84%) Azure AKS
19 21 (0.80%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 353 (13.50%) DNS
2 273 (10.44%) Firewall
3 252 (9.64%) DHCP
4 177 (6.77%) VPN
5 159 (6.08%) LAN
6 154 (5.89%) WAN
7 152 (5.81%) TCP/IP
8 126 (4.82%) Wi-Fi
9 77 (2.95%) SAN
10 57 (2.18%) Network Security
11 54 (2.07%) VLAN
12 45 (1.72%) BGP
13 38 (1.45%) SSL
14 37 (1.42%) OSPF
15 36 (1.38%) Internet
16 34 (1.30%) NAS
17 33 (1.26%) Skype
18 31 (1.19%) VoIP
19 30 (1.15%) SNMP
20 29 (1.11%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 230 (8.80%) SQL Server
2 51 (1.95%) Oracle Database
3 35 (1.34%) Power BI
4 29 (1.11%) Relational Database
5 26 (0.99%) MySQL
5 26 (0.99%) PostgreSQL
6 17 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
6 17 (0.65%) Db2
7 14 (0.54%) Elasticsearch
7 14 (0.54%) NoSQL
7 14 (0.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 13 (0.50%) RDBMS
9 10 (0.38%) MongoDB
10 7 (0.27%) GIS
10 7 (0.27%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 6 (0.23%) Geospatial Data
11 6 (0.23%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
12 5 (0.19%) Big Data
12 5 (0.19%) Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 168 (6.43%) JIRA
2 43 (1.64%) MSI
3 42 (1.61%) Jenkins
4 41 (1.57%) Git
5 38 (1.45%) GitLab
6 37 (1.42%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.65%) Eclipse
8 9 (0.34%) Chocolatey
9 7 (0.27%) Bitbucket
9 7 (0.27%) Burp Suite
9 7 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.23%) Android Studio
10 6 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
10 6 (0.23%) InstallShield
10 6 (0.23%) Metasploit
10 6 (0.23%) Xcode
11 5 (0.19%) AdminStudio
11 5 (0.19%) Artifactory
11 5 (0.19%) Selenium
12 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
General
1 916 (35.04%) Social Skills
2 293 (11.21%) Finance
3 276 (10.56%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (6.47%) Public Sector
5 151 (5.78%) Banking
6 101 (3.86%) Documentation Skills
7 82 (3.14%) Legal
8 81 (3.10%) Organisational Skills
9 53 (2.03%) Retail
10 51 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 45 (1.72%) Military
12 36 (1.38%) Front Office
12 36 (1.38%) Investment Banking
12 36 (1.38%) Manufacturing
13 31 (1.19%) Telecoms
14 28 (1.07%) Law
15 27 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
16 25 (0.96%) Spanish Language
17 22 (0.84%) French Language
18 18 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 356 (13.62%) Support Engineer
2 351 (13.43%) IT Support
3 268 (10.25%) Analyst
4 238 (9.10%) IT Engineer
5 232 (8.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 199 (7.61%) IT Support Engineer
7 173 (6.62%) Senior
8 131 (5.01%) Architect
9 109 (4.17%) 2nd Line Support
10 103 (3.94%) Desktop Support
11 102 (3.90%) Support Analyst
12 99 (3.79%) Desktop Engineer
13 96 (3.67%) Developer
14 92 (3.52%) Lead
15 86 (3.29%) IT Analyst
16 78 (2.98%) Technical Support
17 76 (2.91%) Cloud Engineer
18 73 (2.79%) Consultant
19 67 (2.56%) Windows Engineer
20 62 (2.37%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 94 (3.60%) .NET
2 80 (3.06%) REST
3 58 (2.22%) .NET Framework
4 38 (1.45%) LDAP
5 31 (1.19%) 802.1X
5 31 (1.19%) Microsoft Graph
6 30 (1.15%) SAML
7 27 (1.03%) Middleware
8 26 (0.99%) Web Services
8 26 (0.99%) WPF
9 25 (0.96%) WinForms
10 24 (0.92%) OAuth
11 22 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
12 21 (0.80%) Software Packaging
13 20 (0.77%) CSS
14 16 (0.61%) JSON
14 16 (0.61%) Kafka
14 16 (0.61%) Node.js
15 14 (0.54%) SailPoint
16 13 (0.50%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 259 (9.91%) Onboarding
2 133 (5.09%) Data Centre
3 123 (4.71%) PKI
4 77 (2.95%) Clustering
5 73 (2.79%) Enterprise Software
6 65 (2.49%) Management Information System
6 65 (2.49%) Self-Motivation
7 56 (2.14%) Replication
8 55 (2.10%) Cloud Native
9 48 (1.84%) Hybrid Cloud
9 48 (1.84%) Security Posture
10 46 (1.76%) Driving Licence
10 46 (1.76%) Virtual Team
11 44 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
12 34 (1.30%) Video Conferencing
13 32 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.19%) Analytical Mindset
15 30 (1.15%) CMDB
15 30 (1.15%) Product Ownership
16 29 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 629 (24.06%) Linux
2 625 (23.91%) Windows Server
3 455 (17.41%) Windows 10
4 170 (6.50%) Mac OS
5 127 (4.86%) Apple iOS
6 126 (4.82%) Unix
7 120 (4.59%) Android
8 93 (3.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 62 (2.37%) Windows Server 2019
10 49 (1.87%) Windows Server 2016
11 46 (1.76%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.45%) Windows Server 2012
13 33 (1.26%) Ubuntu
14 31 (1.19%) AIX
15 18 (0.69%) Solaris
15 18 (0.69%) VMS
16 16 (0.61%) Windows Server 2003
17 15 (0.57%) CentOS
18 13 (0.50%) Windows Server 2008
19 9 (0.34%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 584 (22.34%) Problem-Solving
2 417 (15.95%) ITIL
3 387 (14.80%) Customer Service
4 302 (11.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 284 (10.86%) Migration
6 260 (9.95%) ITSM
7 246 (9.41%) DevOps
8 238 (9.10%) Agile
9 226 (8.65%) Continuous Improvement
10 225 (8.61%) CI/CD
11 189 (7.23%) Service Management
12 182 (6.96%) High Availability
13 175 (6.69%) Change Management
14 158 (6.04%) Infrastructure as Code
15 151 (5.78%) Stakeholder Management
16 146 (5.59%) Disaster Recovery
17 132 (5.05%) Cybersecurity
18 131 (5.01%) SIEM
19 129 (4.93%) Runbook
20 128 (4.90%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 560 (21.42%) PowerShell
2 266 (10.18%) SQL
3 261 (9.98%) Python
4 129 (4.93%) C#
5 103 (3.94%) Bash
6 63 (2.41%) JavaScript
7 62 (2.37%) Java
8 48 (1.84%) PL/SQL
9 47 (1.80%) C++
9 47 (1.80%) T-SQL
10 24 (0.92%) VB
11 22 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
11 22 (0.84%) Search Processing Language
12 20 (0.77%) VBScript
13 19 (0.73%) Bicep
14 18 (0.69%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.65%) Perl
16 14 (0.54%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.50%) C
18 12 (0.46%) VBA
Qualifications
1 780 (29.84%) Security Cleared
2 495 (18.94%) SC Cleared
3 301 (11.51%) Degree
4 251 (9.60%) DV Cleared
5 108 (4.13%) Microsoft Certification
6 81 (3.10%) Cisco Certification
7 74 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
8 59 (2.26%) CISSP
9 56 (2.14%) Azure Certification
10 43 (1.64%) AWS Certification
11 40 (1.53%) MCSE
12 39 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
13 31 (1.19%) CCNA
14 29 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 28 (1.07%) CCNP
16 26 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
16 26 (0.99%) MCSA
17 24 (0.92%) CISM
18 21 (0.80%) A+ Certification
19 20 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (4.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 99 (3.79%) SLA
3 86 (3.29%) NIST
4 75 (2.87%) QA
5 58 (2.22%) GDPR
6 33 (1.26%) PCI DSS
7 32 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 25 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.61%) NCSC
10 11 (0.42%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.42%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.38%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.34%) 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
1 986 (37.72%) Active Directory
2 325 (12.43%) VMware Infrastructure
3 135 (5.16%) Hyper-V
4 104 (3.98%) VMware ESXi
5 99 (3.79%) Virtual Machines
6 94 (3.60%) vSphere
7 83 (3.18%) Docker
8 63 (2.41%) Virtual Desktop
9 51 (1.95%) VMware NSX
10 38 (1.45%) Firmware
11 37 (1.42%) BitLocker
12 28 (1.07%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.69%) KVM
14 12 (0.46%) vCloud
15 10 (0.38%) XenDesktop
16 9 (0.34%) XenApp
17 8 (0.31%) VMware Workstation
18 6 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
18 6 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
19 5 (0.19%) etcd
Systems Management
1 374 (14.31%) Microsoft Intune
2 234 (8.95%) SCCM
3 182 (6.96%) Terraform
4 167 (6.39%) Ansible
5 125 (4.78%) Kubernetes
6 85 (3.25%) vCenter Server
7 49 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
8 44 (1.68%) Jamf Pro
8 44 (1.68%) SCOM
9 42 (1.61%) FortiGate
10 38 (1.45%) WSUS
11 34 (1.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 30 (1.15%) Progress Chef
13 27 (1.03%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.96%) Puppet
15 24 (0.92%) Grafana
16 22 (0.84%) Nagios
17 21 (0.80%) Nessus
18 19 (0.73%) Packer
18 19 (0.73%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,132 (43.31%) Microsoft
2 424 (16.22%) VMware
3 238 (9.10%) ServiceNow
4 185 (7.08%) Citrix
5 183 (7.00%) Cisco
6 152 (5.81%) Oracle
7 118 (4.51%) Splunk
8 70 (2.68%) HP
8 70 (2.68%) SolarWinds
9 68 (2.60%) Apple
10 63 (2.41%) Red Hat
11 62 (2.37%) Google
12 59 (2.26%) CyberArk
13 56 (2.14%) Dell
14 51 (1.95%) Remedy
15 48 (1.84%) BeyondTrust
15 48 (1.84%) Juniper
16 47 (1.80%) IBM
17 45 (1.72%) F5
18 35 (1.34%) Tenable