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

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 19 17
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,535 2,178 3,156
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.92% 8.82% 8.43%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.87% 61.96% 61.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,654 1,518 2,154
10th Percentile £163 £181 £165
25th Percentile £220 £249 £232
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 213 148 266
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.20 £11.80
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.82 £18.07
Median % change year-on-year +36.82% +4.18% -27.74%
75th Percentile £57.50 £25.04 £28.75
90th Percentile £70.51 £60.98 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £18.87 £18.27
% change year-on-year +33.28% +3.28% -25.79%

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 4,097 3,515 5,122
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.56% 14.23% 13.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,669 2,368 3,409
10th Percentile £188 £200 £188
25th Percentile £313 £313 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.15% -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £570 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £689 £700
UK median daily rate £460 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -1.08% -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 279 180 385
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.31 £15.63
Median hourly rate £32.50 £19.14 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.85% -16.80% -51.58%
75th Percentile £65.00 £44.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £71.60 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £22.00 £23.98
% change year-on-year +27.27% -8.24% -49.53%

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 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 16 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 16 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 -22 810 £425 -3.41% 299
South East -8 519 £475 -3.11% 306
North of England -7 467 £365 +4.29% 199
Midlands -17 273 £325 +17.12% 122
North West -4 248 £352 -4.06% 118
South West -16 238 £488 +1.56% 149
East of England -3 212 £341 -9.00% 99
Yorkshire -14 201 £365 -9.88% 53
West Midlands -24 168 £450 +50.00% 67
East Midlands +5 100 £200 -3.03% 55
North East -39 22 £283 -1.74% 31
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
1 218 (8.60%) Microsoft Exchange
2 165 (6.51%) SharePoint
3 55 (2.17%) Confluence
4 53 (2.09%) IIS
5 15 (0.59%) Apache
6 14 (0.55%) Skype for Business
6 14 (0.55%) Tomcat
7 13 (0.51%) nginx
8 9 (0.36%) WebLogic
9 8 (0.32%) Oracle Workflow
10 5 (0.20%) Appian
10 5 (0.20%) TPMS
11 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.12%) Camunda
12 3 (0.12%) Documentum
12 3 (0.12%) NetWeaver
12 3 (0.12%) Tuxedo
13 2 (0.079%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.079%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 155 (6.11%) Microsoft Office
2 60 (2.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.20%) PTC Creo
7 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.039%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 43 (1.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (0.43%) Teamcenter
3 7 (0.28%) Finacle
4 3 (0.12%) OpenText MBPM
4 3 (0.12%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
5 2 (0.079%) assyst
5 2 (0.079%) Oracle General Ledger
5 2 (0.079%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.079%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.039%) Dynamics NAV
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.039%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.039%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 771 (30.41%) Azure
2 734 (28.95%) Microsoft 365
3 328 (12.94%) Entra ID
4 252 (9.94%) AWS
5 93 (3.67%) OneDrive
6 78 (3.08%) GCP
7 69 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
8 67 (2.64%) SaaS
9 63 (2.49%) IaaS
10 61 (2.41%) GitHub
11 50 (1.97%) PaaS
12 47 (1.85%) Power Platform
13 41 (1.62%) Azure Monitor
14 33 (1.30%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.10%) Google Workspace
16 27 (1.07%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (0.95%) OpenShift
18 19 (0.75%) Azure AKS
18 19 (0.75%) Microsoft Purview
19 18 (0.71%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 349 (13.77%) DNS
2 261 (10.30%) Firewall
3 248 (9.78%) DHCP
4 170 (6.71%) VPN
5 149 (5.88%) LAN
5 149 (5.88%) TCP/IP
6 148 (5.84%) WAN
7 118 (4.65%) Wi-Fi
8 66 (2.60%) SAN
9 57 (2.25%) Network Security
10 50 (1.97%) VLAN
11 40 (1.58%) BGP
12 34 (1.34%) SSL
13 33 (1.30%) OSPF
13 33 (1.30%) Skype
14 32 (1.26%) Wireless
15 31 (1.22%) Internet
15 31 (1.22%) SNMP
16 30 (1.18%) BIG-IP
17 27 (1.07%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 211 (8.32%) SQL Server
2 44 (1.74%) Oracle Database
3 31 (1.22%) Power BI
4 28 (1.10%) Relational Database
5 26 (1.03%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (0.99%) MySQL
7 15 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
8 14 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
8 14 (0.55%) Db2
9 13 (0.51%) NoSQL
10 12 (0.47%) MongoDB
11 10 (0.39%) RDBMS
11 10 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 7 (0.28%) GIS
13 6 (0.24%) BigQuery
13 6 (0.24%) Data Warehouse
13 6 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (0.24%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 5 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
14 5 (0.20%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 168 (6.63%) JIRA
2 41 (1.62%) Jenkins
3 38 (1.50%) Git
3 38 (1.50%) MSI
4 35 (1.38%) Visual Studio
5 33 (1.30%) GitLab
6 18 (0.71%) Eclipse
7 10 (0.39%) Burp Suite
8 9 (0.36%) Chocolatey
8 9 (0.36%) Metasploit
9 8 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.28%) Android Studio
10 7 (0.28%) Bitbucket
10 7 (0.28%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.28%) Xcode
11 6 (0.24%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.20%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.20%) Artifactory
12 5 (0.20%) Robot Framework
12 5 (0.20%) Selenium
General
1 875 (34.52%) Social Skills
2 285 (11.24%) Finance
3 259 (10.22%) Analytical Skills
4 164 (6.47%) Public Sector
5 148 (5.84%) Banking
6 97 (3.83%) Documentation Skills
7 88 (3.47%) Legal
8 73 (2.88%) Organisational Skills
9 51 (2.01%) Retail
10 49 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 47 (1.85%) Military
12 37 (1.46%) Investment Banking
12 37 (1.46%) Manufacturing
13 32 (1.26%) Front Office
13 32 (1.26%) Law
14 30 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
15 26 (1.03%) Telecoms
16 23 (0.91%) Spanish Language
17 21 (0.83%) French Language
18 19 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 339 (13.37%) Support Engineer
2 336 (13.25%) IT Support
3 276 (10.89%) Analyst
4 224 (8.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 218 (8.60%) IT Engineer
6 183 (7.22%) IT Support Engineer
7 171 (6.75%) Senior
8 124 (4.89%) Architect
9 109 (4.30%) Desktop Support
10 105 (4.14%) Support Analyst
11 104 (4.10%) Desktop Engineer
12 98 (3.87%) 2nd Line Support
13 88 (3.47%) IT Analyst
14 87 (3.43%) Lead
15 86 (3.39%) Developer
16 83 (3.27%) Technical Support
17 67 (2.64%) Cloud Engineer
17 67 (2.64%) Consultant
18 64 (2.52%) Windows Engineer
19 63 (2.49%) Desktop Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (3.43%) .NET
2 73 (2.88%) REST
3 51 (2.01%) .NET Framework
4 36 (1.42%) LDAP
5 32 (1.26%) Microsoft Graph
6 29 (1.14%) SAML
7 28 (1.10%) 802.1X
8 26 (1.03%) Middleware
9 25 (0.99%) Web Services
9 25 (0.99%) WinForms
10 22 (0.87%) OAuth
10 22 (0.87%) WPF
11 20 (0.79%) Software Packaging
12 19 (0.75%) CSS
12 19 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
13 18 (0.71%) Kafka
14 16 (0.63%) Node.js
15 13 (0.51%) ADO
15 13 (0.51%) JSON
15 13 (0.51%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 244 (9.63%) Onboarding
2 128 (5.05%) Data Centre
3 118 (4.65%) PKI
4 75 (2.96%) Clustering
5 74 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
6 60 (2.37%) Management Information System
6 60 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
7 54 (2.13%) Replication
8 51 (2.01%) Cloud Native
9 48 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
10 47 (1.85%) Security Posture
11 46 (1.81%) Virtual Team
12 45 (1.78%) Driving Licence
13 43 (1.70%) Legacy Systems
14 33 (1.30%) CMDB
15 32 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
16 31 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
17 30 (1.18%) Product Ownership
18 28 (1.10%) Enterprise Storage
18 28 (1.10%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 621 (24.50%) Linux
2 608 (23.98%) Windows Server
3 452 (17.83%) Windows 10
4 163 (6.43%) Mac OS
5 130 (5.13%) Apple iOS
6 120 (4.73%) Android
6 120 (4.73%) Unix
7 84 (3.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 64 (2.52%) Windows Server 2019
9 53 (2.09%) Windows Server 2016
10 47 (1.85%) Windows 7
11 38 (1.50%) Windows Server 2012
12 29 (1.14%) AIX
13 28 (1.10%) Ubuntu
14 18 (0.71%) Solaris
15 17 (0.67%) VMS
15 17 (0.67%) Windows Server 2003
16 13 (0.51%) Windows Server 2008
17 12 (0.47%) CentOS
18 9 (0.36%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 554 (21.85%) Problem-Solving
2 390 (15.38%) ITIL
3 377 (14.87%) Customer Service
4 294 (11.60%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 277 (10.93%) Migration
6 259 (10.22%) ITSM
7 240 (9.47%) Agile
8 230 (9.07%) DevOps
9 215 (8.48%) CI/CD
10 195 (7.69%) Continuous Improvement
11 179 (7.06%) Service Management
12 175 (6.90%) Change Management
13 170 (6.71%) High Availability
14 152 (6.00%) Disaster Recovery
15 143 (5.64%) Infrastructure as Code
16 139 (5.48%) Stakeholder Management
17 138 (5.44%) Cybersecurity
18 133 (5.25%) SIEM
19 123 (4.85%) Runbook
20 118 (4.65%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 550 (21.70%) PowerShell
2 251 (9.90%) SQL
3 246 (9.70%) Python
4 121 (4.77%) C#
5 99 (3.91%) Bash
6 65 (2.56%) Java
6 65 (2.56%) JavaScript
7 47 (1.85%) PL/SQL
8 46 (1.81%) C++
9 41 (1.62%) T-SQL
10 25 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
11 24 (0.95%) VB
12 22 (0.87%) Search Processing Language
13 20 (0.79%) Shell Script
14 18 (0.71%) Perl
14 18 (0.71%) VBScript
15 17 (0.67%) Bicep
16 13 (0.51%) C
17 12 (0.47%) VBA
18 11 (0.43%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 749 (29.55%) Security Cleared
2 476 (18.78%) SC Cleared
3 288 (11.36%) Degree
4 244 (9.63%) DV Cleared
5 107 (4.22%) Microsoft Certification
6 75 (2.96%) Cisco Certification
7 73 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
8 62 (2.45%) CISSP
9 53 (2.09%) Azure Certification
10 46 (1.81%) MCSE
11 42 (1.66%) AWS Certification
12 36 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
13 32 (1.26%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 30 (1.18%) MCSA
15 28 (1.10%) CCNA
16 27 (1.07%) CISM
17 24 (0.95%) CCNP
17 24 (0.95%) CompTIA Security+
17 24 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
18 19 (0.75%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (4.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 98 (3.87%) SLA
3 85 (3.35%) NIST
4 68 (2.68%) QA
5 65 (2.56%) GDPR
6 37 (1.46%) PCI DSS
7 31 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 25 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.55%) NCSC
10 11 (0.43%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.43%) HIPAA
11 10 (0.39%) FINRA
11 10 (0.39%) MiFID
11 10 (0.39%) NIST 800
12 8 (0.32%) GRC
12 8 (0.32%) PMO
12 8 (0.32%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.24%) ISO 31000
14 5 (0.20%) Accessibility
14 5 (0.20%) GLBA
System Software
1 957 (37.75%) Active Directory
2 320 (12.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 136 (5.36%) Hyper-V
4 104 (4.10%) VMware ESXi
5 95 (3.75%) vSphere
6 89 (3.51%) Virtual Machines
7 86 (3.39%) Docker
8 57 (2.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 50 (1.97%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.46%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.42%) Firmware
12 28 (1.10%) Microsoft App-V
13 19 (0.75%) KVM
14 11 (0.43%) vCloud
14 11 (0.43%) XenDesktop
15 10 (0.39%) XenApp
16 8 (0.32%) VMware Workstation
17 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
17 6 (0.24%) Terminal Services
17 6 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 358 (14.12%) Microsoft Intune
2 223 (8.80%) SCCM
3 169 (6.67%) Ansible
4 158 (6.23%) Terraform
5 120 (4.73%) Kubernetes
6 85 (3.35%) vCenter Server
7 48 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
8 41 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
9 40 (1.58%) FortiGate
9 40 (1.58%) SCOM
10 36 (1.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 34 (1.34%) WSUS
12 30 (1.18%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.99%) Grafana
13 25 (0.99%) Prometheus
13 25 (0.99%) Puppet
14 22 (0.87%) Nagios
15 19 (0.75%) ZABBIX
16 18 (0.71%) Nessus
16 18 (0.71%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 1,098 (43.31%) Microsoft
2 416 (16.41%) VMware
3 233 (9.19%) ServiceNow
4 180 (7.10%) Citrix
5 174 (6.86%) Cisco
6 148 (5.84%) Oracle
7 127 (5.01%) Splunk
8 70 (2.76%) HP
9 69 (2.72%) SolarWinds
10 58 (2.29%) Red Hat
11 57 (2.25%) Google
12 56 (2.21%) Dell
13 55 (2.17%) Apple
13 55 (2.17%) Remedy
14 52 (2.05%) CyberArk
15 46 (1.81%) IBM
16 45 (1.78%) Juniper
17 44 (1.74%) F5
18 42 (1.66%) BeyondTrust
19 35 (1.38%) Palo Alto