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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 16
Rank change year-on-year -6 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,675 2,277 3,158
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.98% 8.38% 8.64%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.66% 61.11% 61.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,724 1,538 2,120
10th Percentile £170 £180 £173
25th Percentile £225 £238 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £415 £433
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% -4.03% -3.89%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £672
UK median daily rate £425 £425 £425
% change year-on-year - - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 229 178 277
10th Percentile £16.07 £15.12 £11.92
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.03 £14.41
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -18.77%
75th Percentile £55.50 £28.00 £40.00
90th Percentile £72.40 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.26 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +33.86% -5.65% -15.54%

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 4,338 3,726 5,103
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.69% 13.71% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,809 2,479 3,352
10th Percentile £190 £200 £193
25th Percentile £313 £313 £320
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £653 £688 £690
UK median daily rate £465 £464 £475
% change year-on-year +0.27% -2.37% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 220 394
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.93 £16.24
Median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £24.34
Median % change year-on-year +41.30% -5.51% -42.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.80 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.10 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -6.12% -42.35%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -17 868 £420 -6.67% 185
South East -8 555 £475 -3.46% 295
North of England -10 477 £355 +1.31% 201
Midlands -18 276 £335 +11.67% 110
South West -11 270 £488 +8.33% 108
North West -8 251 £350 -2.23% 111
East of England -2 210 £300 +8.08% 103
Yorkshire -12 203 £365 -8.75% 59
West Midlands -25 172 £450 +38.46% 57
East Midlands +11 99 £270 +35.00% 53
North East -37 27 £270 -1.82% 38
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
1 224 (8.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 206 (7.70%) SharePoint
3 55 (2.06%) Confluence
3 55 (2.06%) IIS
4 15 (0.56%) nginx
5 14 (0.52%) Tomcat
6 12 (0.45%) Apache
6 12 (0.45%) Skype for Business
7 9 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
8 7 (0.26%) Appian
9 6 (0.22%) Documentum
9 6 (0.22%) WebLogic
10 5 (0.19%) Camunda
11 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
12 3 (0.11%) Tuxedo
13 2 (0.075%) Oracle HTTP Server
13 2 (0.075%) SAS
13 2 (0.075%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 160 (5.98%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 16 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.15%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.11%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.11%) PTC Creo
8 1 (0.037%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.037%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.037%) Houdini
8 1 (0.037%) InDesign
8 1 (0.037%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 45 (1.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.37%) Finacle
4 9 (0.34%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
5 6 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.075%) assyst
8 1 (0.037%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.037%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.037%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.037%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 818 (30.58%) Azure
2 795 (29.72%) Microsoft 365
3 387 (14.47%) Entra ID
4 286 (10.69%) AWS
5 113 (4.22%) OneDrive
6 87 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
7 83 (3.10%) GCP
8 72 (2.69%) SaaS
9 62 (2.32%) IaaS
10 57 (2.13%) GitHub
11 54 (2.02%) Azure Monitor
12 53 (1.98%) PaaS
12 53 (1.98%) Power Platform
13 34 (1.27%) Azure Sentinel
14 26 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
14 26 (0.97%) Google Workspace
15 25 (0.93%) OpenShift
16 24 (0.90%) GitHub Actions
17 23 (0.86%) Azure AKS
18 22 (0.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 392 (14.65%) DNS
2 286 (10.69%) Firewall
3 270 (10.09%) DHCP
4 184 (6.88%) VPN
5 174 (6.50%) TCP/IP
6 155 (5.79%) LAN
7 141 (5.27%) WAN
8 128 (4.79%) Wi-Fi
9 82 (3.07%) SAN
10 60 (2.24%) Network Security
11 57 (2.13%) VLAN
12 45 (1.68%) BGP
13 41 (1.53%) SSL
14 38 (1.42%) Internet
14 38 (1.42%) NAS
15 36 (1.35%) OSPF
16 33 (1.23%) Wireless
17 30 (1.12%) Skype
18 29 (1.08%) VoIP
19 28 (1.05%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 239 (8.93%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.94%) Oracle Database
3 38 (1.42%) Power BI
4 29 (1.08%) Relational Database
5 28 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (0.93%) MySQL
7 20 (0.75%) Db2
8 19 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
9 14 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 13 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
10 13 (0.49%) RDBMS
11 12 (0.45%) NoSQL
12 11 (0.41%) MongoDB
13 9 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
14 7 (0.26%) Data Warehouse
14 7 (0.26%) GIS
14 7 (0.26%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 6 (0.22%) SQL Server Analysis Services
16 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
16 5 (0.19%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 166 (6.21%) JIRA
2 51 (1.91%) Git
3 48 (1.79%) MSI
4 44 (1.64%) Jenkins
5 37 (1.38%) GitLab
6 35 (1.31%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.64%) Eclipse
8 9 (0.34%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.30%) Chocolatey
10 7 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.22%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.22%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.22%) Xcode
12 5 (0.19%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.19%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.19%) Selenium
13 4 (0.15%) Appium
13 4 (0.15%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 4 (0.15%) Burp Suite
General
1 964 (36.04%) Social Skills
2 299 (11.18%) Finance
3 296 (11.07%) Analytical Skills
4 167 (6.24%) Public Sector
5 155 (5.79%) Banking
6 97 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (3.10%) Organisational Skills
8 79 (2.95%) Legal
9 56 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 50 (1.87%) Retail
11 43 (1.61%) Manufacturing
12 41 (1.53%) Military
13 36 (1.35%) Front Office
13 36 (1.35%) Investment Banking
14 33 (1.23%) Telecoms
15 31 (1.16%) Law
16 26 (0.97%) Spanish Language
17 22 (0.82%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.82%) French Language
17 22 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 387 (14.47%) Support Engineer
2 367 (13.72%) IT Support
3 263 (9.83%) Analyst
4 259 (9.68%) IT Engineer
5 246 (9.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 219 (8.19%) IT Support Engineer
7 191 (7.14%) Senior
8 119 (4.45%) Architect
9 117 (4.37%) 2nd Line Support
10 109 (4.07%) Desktop Support
11 100 (3.74%) Desktop Engineer
11 100 (3.74%) Developer
12 98 (3.66%) Support Analyst
13 96 (3.59%) Lead
14 91 (3.40%) Cloud Engineer
15 87 (3.25%) IT Analyst
16 76 (2.84%) Consultant
17 72 (2.69%) Windows Engineer
18 71 (2.65%) Service Analyst
19 70 (2.62%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (3.81%) .NET
2 92 (3.44%) REST
3 62 (2.32%) .NET Framework
4 37 (1.38%) LDAP
5 31 (1.16%) 802.1X
6 29 (1.08%) Microsoft Graph
7 28 (1.05%) Middleware
7 28 (1.05%) WPF
8 27 (1.01%) WinForms
9 25 (0.93%) SAML
9 25 (0.93%) Web Services
10 23 (0.86%) CSS
11 22 (0.82%) Software Packaging
12 21 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
13 19 (0.71%) JSON
13 19 (0.71%) OAuth
14 18 (0.67%) Kafka
15 17 (0.64%) HTML
15 17 (0.64%) RESTful
16 16 (0.60%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 276 (10.32%) Onboarding
2 138 (5.16%) Data Centre
3 136 (5.08%) PKI
4 80 (2.99%) Clustering
5 71 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
6 66 (2.47%) Management Information System
7 65 (2.43%) Self-Motivation
8 64 (2.39%) Cloud Native
9 59 (2.21%) Replication
10 49 (1.83%) Security Posture
11 48 (1.79%) Video Conferencing
12 47 (1.76%) Driving Licence
12 47 (1.76%) Hybrid Cloud
12 47 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
13 40 (1.50%) Virtual Team
14 33 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 32 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
16 30 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
17 28 (1.05%) CMDB
17 28 (1.05%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 646 (24.15%) Windows Server
2 632 (23.63%) Linux
3 468 (17.50%) Windows 10
4 177 (6.62%) Mac OS
5 126 (4.71%) Apple iOS
6 124 (4.64%) Unix
7 121 (4.52%) Android
8 101 (3.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 66 (2.47%) Windows Server 2019
10 43 (1.61%) Windows Server 2016
11 39 (1.46%) Windows 7
12 37 (1.38%) Ubuntu
12 37 (1.38%) Windows Server 2012
13 31 (1.16%) AIX
14 18 (0.67%) CentOS
14 18 (0.67%) Solaris
14 18 (0.67%) VMS
15 14 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
16 12 (0.45%) Windows Server 2003
17 9 (0.34%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 609 (22.77%) Problem-Solving
2 449 (16.79%) ITIL
3 403 (15.07%) Customer Service
4 320 (11.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 296 (11.07%) Migration
6 284 (10.62%) ITSM
7 252 (9.42%) DevOps
8 243 (9.08%) Agile
9 242 (9.05%) Continuous Improvement
10 231 (8.64%) CI/CD
11 203 (7.59%) Service Management
12 182 (6.80%) High Availability
13 181 (6.77%) Infrastructure as Code
14 177 (6.62%) Change Management
15 160 (5.98%) Stakeholder Management
16 144 (5.38%) Disaster Recovery
17 142 (5.31%) Cybersecurity
17 142 (5.31%) SIEM
18 139 (5.20%) Runbook
19 137 (5.12%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 589 (22.02%) PowerShell
2 276 (10.32%) Python
3 268 (10.02%) SQL
4 135 (5.05%) C#
5 128 (4.79%) Bash
6 68 (2.54%) JavaScript
7 64 (2.39%) Java
8 51 (1.91%) PL/SQL
9 50 (1.87%) T-SQL
10 45 (1.68%) C++
11 26 (0.97%) Bicep
12 24 (0.90%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.86%) VB
14 19 (0.71%) VBScript
15 18 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
16 17 (0.64%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.60%) Perl
17 16 (0.60%) Shell Script
18 14 (0.52%) C
18 14 (0.52%) VBA
Qualifications
1 803 (30.02%) Security Cleared
2 491 (18.36%) SC Cleared
3 296 (11.07%) Degree
4 281 (10.50%) DV Cleared
5 108 (4.04%) Microsoft Certification
6 79 (2.95%) Cisco Certification
7 71 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
8 61 (2.28%) Azure Certification
9 59 (2.21%) CISSP
10 46 (1.72%) AWS Certification
11 45 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
12 38 (1.42%) MCSE
13 32 (1.20%) A+ Certification
14 30 (1.12%) CCNA
14 30 (1.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 26 (0.97%) CCNP
15 26 (0.97%) MCSA
16 23 (0.86%) CISM
16 23 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
17 22 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 113 (4.22%) SLA
2 112 (4.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 84 (3.14%) NIST
4 73 (2.73%) QA
5 43 (1.61%) GDPR
6 27 (1.01%) PCI DSS
7 26 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
8 25 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 23 (0.86%) NCSC
10 12 (0.45%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.41%) Accessibility
11 11 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.37%) NIST 800
13 9 (0.34%) GRC
13 9 (0.34%) WCAG
14 8 (0.30%) PMO
14 8 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 6 (0.22%) GxP
15 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,044 (39.03%) Active Directory
2 352 (13.16%) VMware Infrastructure
3 137 (5.12%) Hyper-V
4 121 (4.52%) VMware ESXi
5 102 (3.81%) vSphere
6 101 (3.78%) Virtual Machines
7 93 (3.48%) Docker
8 71 (2.65%) Virtual Desktop
9 65 (2.43%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.38%) Firmware
11 34 (1.27%) BitLocker
12 27 (1.01%) Microsoft App-V
13 17 (0.64%) KVM
14 15 (0.56%) vCloud
15 8 (0.30%) VMware Workstation
15 8 (0.30%) XenDesktop
16 7 (0.26%) NFS
16 7 (0.26%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.26%) XenApp
17 6 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 392 (14.65%) Microsoft Intune
2 242 (9.05%) SCCM
3 201 (7.51%) Terraform
4 179 (6.69%) Ansible
5 137 (5.12%) Kubernetes
6 105 (3.93%) vCenter Server
7 57 (2.13%) SCOM
8 49 (1.83%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (1.53%) Single Sign-On
10 38 (1.42%) FortiGate
11 37 (1.38%) WSUS
12 32 (1.20%) Progress Chef
13 28 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 28 (1.05%) Puppet
14 26 (0.97%) Grafana
14 26 (0.97%) Prometheus
15 23 (0.86%) Nagios
16 21 (0.79%) Nessus
16 21 (0.79%) Packer
17 20 (0.75%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,171 (43.78%) Microsoft
2 462 (17.27%) VMware
3 266 (9.94%) ServiceNow
4 186 (6.95%) Citrix
5 175 (6.54%) Cisco
6 152 (5.68%) Oracle
7 120 (4.49%) Splunk
8 79 (2.95%) Apple
9 77 (2.88%) SolarWinds
10 72 (2.69%) CyberArk
11 66 (2.47%) HP
12 64 (2.39%) Google
12 64 (2.39%) Red Hat
13 56 (2.09%) Remedy
14 53 (1.98%) BeyondTrust
15 52 (1.94%) Dell
16 50 (1.87%) Juniper
17 47 (1.76%) IBM
18 44 (1.64%) F5
19 38 (1.42%) Tenable