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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,628 2,188 3,176
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.00% 8.53% 8.55%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.14% 61.07% 61.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,707 1,503 2,156
10th Percentile £165 £181 £168
25th Percentile £223 £241 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £426
Median % change year-on-year - -0.12% -5.44%
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 220 157 273
10th Percentile £16.01 £14.73 £11.84
25th Percentile £18.88 £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 £56.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £70.26 £64.25 £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 4,229 3,583 5,157
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.65% 13.98% 13.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,744 2,408 3,416
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 £656 £688 £700
UK median daily rate £463 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 191 396
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.13 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.33 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.24 £19.27 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.93% -22.92% -41.18%
75th Percentile £65.00 £49.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.41 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.47 £22.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +20.32% -12.00% -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 1 July 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 1 July 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 1 July 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 -21 852 £425 -3.41% 268
South East -8 528 £475 -5.00% 299
North of England -9 472 £365 +3.11% 203
Midlands -15 277 £338 +22.73% 130
South West -11 264 £488 +8.33% 160
North West -4 249 £363 -1.29% 117
East of England -2 218 £318 +14.39% 99
Yorkshire -12 204 £365 -8.75% 63
West Midlands -22 174 £450 +50.00% 64
East Midlands +11 98 £263 +31.25% 66
North East -33 23 £290 -3.33% 29
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 (8.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 181 (6.89%) SharePoint
3 56 (2.13%) Confluence
4 53 (2.02%) IIS
5 14 (0.53%) Apache
5 14 (0.53%) Skype for Business
5 14 (0.53%) Tomcat
6 13 (0.49%) nginx
7 9 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
7 9 (0.34%) WebLogic
8 7 (0.27%) Appian
9 5 (0.19%) Camunda
9 5 (0.19%) Documentum
10 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
11 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
11 3 (0.11%) TPMS
11 3 (0.11%) Tuxedo
12 2 (0.076%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.076%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 163 (6.20%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.23%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.19%) PTC Creo
7 4 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.076%) Acrobat
9 1 (0.038%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.038%) Houdini
9 1 (0.038%) InDesign
9 1 (0.038%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 39 (1.48%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.42%) Teamcenter
4 10 (0.38%) Finacle
5 5 (0.19%) OpenText MBPM
5 5 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
6 2 (0.076%) assyst
7 1 (0.038%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.038%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.038%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 804 (30.59%) Azure
2 747 (28.42%) Microsoft 365
3 358 (13.62%) Entra ID
4 278 (10.58%) AWS
5 104 (3.96%) OneDrive
6 82 (3.12%) GCP
7 81 (3.08%) Azure DevOps
8 73 (2.78%) SaaS
9 59 (2.25%) GitHub
9 59 (2.25%) IaaS
10 51 (1.94%) Power Platform
11 50 (1.90%) Azure Monitor
12 48 (1.83%) PaaS
13 34 (1.29%) Azure Sentinel
14 28 (1.07%) Google Workspace
15 27 (1.03%) GitHub Actions
16 26 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
17 25 (0.95%) OpenShift
18 22 (0.84%) Azure AKS
19 21 (0.80%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 357 (13.58%) DNS
2 270 (10.27%) Firewall
3 254 (9.67%) DHCP
4 176 (6.70%) VPN
5 159 (6.05%) LAN
6 155 (5.90%) WAN
7 154 (5.86%) TCP/IP
8 126 (4.79%) Wi-Fi
9 77 (2.93%) SAN
10 57 (2.17%) Network Security
11 54 (2.05%) VLAN
12 45 (1.71%) BGP
13 39 (1.48%) SSL
14 37 (1.41%) OSPF
15 36 (1.37%) Internet
16 34 (1.29%) NAS
17 33 (1.26%) Skype
18 31 (1.18%) VoIP
19 30 (1.14%) SNMP
19 30 (1.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 227 (8.64%) SQL Server
2 51 (1.94%) Oracle Database
3 35 (1.33%) Power BI
4 29 (1.10%) 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 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
7 14 (0.53%) NoSQL
8 13 (0.49%) RDBMS
8 13 (0.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 11 (0.42%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.30%) Geospatial Data
11 7 (0.27%) GIS
11 7 (0.27%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 6 (0.23%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.19%) Big Data
13 5 (0.19%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 170 (6.47%) JIRA
2 46 (1.75%) Git
3 45 (1.71%) MSI
4 42 (1.60%) Jenkins
5 38 (1.45%) GitLab
6 36 (1.37%) 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%) Appium
General
1 920 (35.01%) Social Skills
2 290 (11.04%) Finance
3 279 (10.62%) Analytical Skills
4 171 (6.51%) Public Sector
5 148 (5.63%) Banking
6 99 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 81 (3.08%) Organisational Skills
8 80 (3.04%) Legal
9 53 (2.02%) Retail
10 50 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 45 (1.71%) Military
12 36 (1.37%) Manufacturing
13 35 (1.33%) Front Office
14 34 (1.29%) Investment Banking
15 31 (1.18%) Telecoms
16 29 (1.10%) Law
17 26 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
18 24 (0.91%) Spanish Language
19 20 (0.76%) French Language
20 18 (0.68%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 359 (13.66%) Support Engineer
2 352 (13.39%) IT Support
3 267 (10.16%) Analyst
4 240 (9.13%) IT Engineer
5 233 (8.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 200 (7.61%) IT Support Engineer
7 174 (6.62%) Senior
8 133 (5.06%) Architect
9 110 (4.19%) 2nd Line Support
10 104 (3.96%) Desktop Support
11 102 (3.88%) Support Analyst
12 99 (3.77%) Desktop Engineer
13 98 (3.73%) Developer
14 92 (3.50%) Lead
15 87 (3.31%) IT Analyst
16 79 (3.01%) Technical Support
17 77 (2.93%) Cloud Engineer
18 73 (2.78%) Consultant
19 67 (2.55%) Windows Engineer
20 64 (2.44%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (3.61%) .NET
2 83 (3.16%) REST
3 59 (2.25%) .NET Framework
4 38 (1.45%) LDAP
5 31 (1.18%) 802.1X
5 31 (1.18%) Microsoft Graph
6 30 (1.14%) SAML
7 28 (1.07%) WPF
8 26 (0.99%) Middleware
9 25 (0.95%) Web Services
9 25 (0.95%) WinForms
10 24 (0.91%) OAuth
11 22 (0.84%) CSS
11 22 (0.84%) Elastic Stack
12 21 (0.80%) Software Packaging
13 16 (0.61%) JSON
13 16 (0.61%) Kafka
13 16 (0.61%) Node.js
14 15 (0.57%) HTML
14 15 (0.57%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 262 (9.97%) Onboarding
2 132 (5.02%) Data Centre
3 124 (4.72%) PKI
4 77 (2.93%) Clustering
5 74 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
6 67 (2.55%) Management Information System
7 65 (2.47%) Self-Motivation
8 57 (2.17%) Cloud Native
9 56 (2.13%) Replication
10 48 (1.83%) Hybrid Cloud
10 48 (1.83%) Security Posture
11 46 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
12 45 (1.71%) Driving Licence
12 45 (1.71%) Virtual Team
13 38 (1.45%) Video Conferencing
14 32 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
15 31 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
16 30 (1.14%) CMDB
17 29 (1.10%) Linux Command Line
17 29 (1.10%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 629 (23.93%) Linux
2 626 (23.82%) Windows Server
3 452 (17.20%) Windows 10
4 172 (6.54%) Mac OS
5 128 (4.87%) Apple iOS
6 126 (4.79%) Unix
7 122 (4.64%) Android
8 93 (3.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 62 (2.36%) Windows Server 2019
10 48 (1.83%) Windows Server 2016
11 45 (1.71%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.45%) Windows Server 2012
13 33 (1.26%) Ubuntu
14 31 (1.18%) AIX
15 18 (0.68%) Solaris
15 18 (0.68%) VMS
16 16 (0.61%) Windows Server 2003
17 15 (0.57%) CentOS
18 13 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
19 9 (0.34%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 582 (22.15%) Problem-Solving
2 422 (16.06%) ITIL
3 392 (14.92%) Customer Service
4 304 (11.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 287 (10.92%) Migration
6 265 (10.08%) ITSM
7 252 (9.59%) DevOps
8 241 (9.17%) Agile
9 230 (8.75%) Continuous Improvement
10 227 (8.64%) CI/CD
11 190 (7.23%) Service Management
12 183 (6.96%) High Availability
13 177 (6.74%) Change Management
14 161 (6.13%) Infrastructure as Code
15 151 (5.75%) Stakeholder Management
16 146 (5.56%) Disaster Recovery
17 135 (5.14%) Cybersecurity
18 132 (5.02%) SIEM
19 131 (4.98%) Service Delivery
20 130 (4.95%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 560 (21.31%) PowerShell
2 264 (10.05%) Python
3 263 (10.01%) SQL
4 130 (4.95%) C#
5 103 (3.92%) Bash
6 66 (2.51%) Java
7 65 (2.47%) JavaScript
8 48 (1.83%) C++
9 47 (1.79%) PL/SQL
10 46 (1.75%) T-SQL
11 24 (0.91%) VB
12 22 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
12 22 (0.84%) Search Processing Language
13 21 (0.80%) Bicep
14 20 (0.76%) VBScript
15 18 (0.68%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.65%) Perl
17 16 (0.61%) TypeScript
18 14 (0.53%) C
19 12 (0.46%) VBA
Qualifications
1 790 (30.06%) Security Cleared
2 498 (18.95%) SC Cleared
3 298 (11.34%) Degree
4 259 (9.86%) DV Cleared
5 108 (4.11%) Microsoft Certification
6 81 (3.08%) Cisco Certification
7 72 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
8 60 (2.28%) CISSP
9 56 (2.13%) Azure Certification
10 43 (1.64%) AWS Certification
11 41 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
12 40 (1.52%) MCSE
13 31 (1.18%) CCNA
14 29 (1.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 28 (1.07%) CCNP
16 26 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
17 25 (0.95%) MCSA
18 24 (0.91%) A+ Certification
18 24 (0.91%) CISM
19 21 (0.80%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 119 (4.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 101 (3.84%) SLA
3 86 (3.27%) NIST
4 75 (2.85%) QA
5 58 (2.21%) GDPR
6 33 (1.26%) PCI DSS
7 31 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 26 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
9 18 (0.68%) NCSC
10 11 (0.42%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.42%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.38%) Accessibility
11 10 (0.38%) NIST 800
12 9 (0.34%) GRC
13 8 (0.30%) SOC 2
13 8 (0.30%) WCAG
14 7 (0.27%) FINRA
14 7 (0.27%) MiFID
15 6 (0.23%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.23%) PMO
System Software
1 991 (37.71%) Active Directory
2 329 (12.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 133 (5.06%) Hyper-V
4 107 (4.07%) VMware ESXi
5 98 (3.73%) Virtual Machines
6 96 (3.65%) vSphere
7 86 (3.27%) Docker
8 65 (2.47%) Virtual Desktop
9 52 (1.98%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.41%) BitLocker
10 37 (1.41%) Firmware
11 28 (1.07%) Microsoft App-V
12 17 (0.65%) KVM
13 12 (0.46%) vCloud
14 9 (0.34%) XenDesktop
15 8 (0.30%) VMware Workstation
15 8 (0.30%) XenApp
16 6 (0.23%) NFS
16 6 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 380 (14.46%) Microsoft Intune
2 232 (8.83%) SCCM
3 187 (7.12%) Terraform
4 170 (6.47%) Ansible
5 130 (4.95%) Kubernetes
6 89 (3.39%) vCenter Server
7 49 (1.86%) Single Sign-On
8 46 (1.75%) Jamf Pro
8 46 (1.75%) SCOM
9 42 (1.60%) FortiGate
10 38 (1.45%) WSUS
11 34 (1.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 30 (1.14%) Progress Chef
13 29 (1.10%) Prometheus
14 27 (1.03%) Puppet
15 25 (0.95%) Grafana
16 23 (0.88%) Nagios
17 21 (0.80%) Nessus
18 20 (0.76%) ZABBIX
19 19 (0.72%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,142 (43.46%) Microsoft
2 428 (16.29%) VMware
3 243 (9.25%) ServiceNow
4 183 (6.96%) Citrix
5 182 (6.93%) Cisco
6 149 (5.67%) Oracle
7 118 (4.49%) Splunk
8 72 (2.74%) SolarWinds
9 70 (2.66%) Apple
10 69 (2.63%) HP
11 63 (2.40%) Red Hat
12 62 (2.36%) Google
13 61 (2.32%) CyberArk
14 57 (2.17%) Dell
15 51 (1.94%) BeyondTrust
16 50 (1.90%) Remedy
17 48 (1.83%) Juniper
18 47 (1.79%) IBM
19 45 (1.71%) F5
20 36 (1.37%) Tenable