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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,700 2,250 2,963
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.97% 8.18% 8.70%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.80% 60.66% 61.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,723 1,527 2,014
10th Percentile £170 £178 £175
25th Percentile £225 £225 £251
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £440
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -6.25% -1.12%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £659
UK median daily rate £425 £415 £426
% change year-on-year +2.39% -2.45% -5.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 182 225
10th Percentile £16.05 £15.15 £11.07
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.33 £14.72
Median hourly rate £25.76 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.51% -5.65% -19.39%
75th Percentile £55.13 £28.00 £51.91
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.51 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +35.16% -10.14% -13.62%

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 4,369 3,709 4,829
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.67% 13.49% 14.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,808 2,476 3,212
10th Percentile £190 £200 £200
25th Percentile £313 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £460 £478
Median % change year-on-year +1.56% -3.66% -4.50%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £588
90th Percentile £663 £676 £688
UK median daily rate £470 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +1.62% -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 297 226 327
10th Percentile £16.06 £15.50 £12.65
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.11 £16.65
Median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.30% -16.36% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.73 £67.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £26.00 £23.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year +10.64% -12.96% -36.47%

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 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 30 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 30 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 -17 893 £424 -0.24% 286
South East -7 580 £475 -3.46% 295
North of England -12 468 £338 -0.59% 194
South West -11 275 £488 +8.33% 119
Midlands -22 264 £400 +23.08% 128
North West -9 254 £344 -3.91% 98
East of England -3 203 £335 +41.05% 116
Yorkshire -12 192 £365 +10.19% 65
West Midlands -30 170 £450 +12.50% 77
East Midlands +12 90 £270 +35.00% 51
North East -43 26 £270 -1.82% 37
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 (8.30%) Microsoft Exchange
2 213 (7.89%) SharePoint
3 56 (2.07%) Confluence
3 56 (2.07%) IIS
4 17 (0.63%) nginx
5 15 (0.56%) Apache
6 14 (0.52%) Tomcat
7 11 (0.41%) Skype for Business
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
8 9 (0.33%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.22%) Appian
9 6 (0.22%) Documentum
10 5 (0.19%) Camunda
11 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.11%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
12 3 (0.11%) Tuxedo
13 2 (0.074%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 165 (6.11%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
4 5 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 4 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.074%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.037%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.037%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.037%) InDesign
8 1 (0.037%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 55 (2.04%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.37%) Finacle
3 8 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.26%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.26%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.22%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.074%) assyst
8 1 (0.037%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.037%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.037%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.037%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.037%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 845 (31.30%) Azure
2 836 (30.96%) Microsoft 365
3 405 (15.00%) Entra ID
4 297 (11.00%) AWS
5 118 (4.37%) OneDrive
6 92 (3.41%) GCP
7 91 (3.37%) Azure DevOps
8 72 (2.67%) SaaS
9 63 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
10 62 (2.30%) IaaS
11 61 (2.26%) GitHub
12 57 (2.11%) Power Platform
13 52 (1.93%) PaaS
14 40 (1.48%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (0.93%) Azure AKS
17 24 (0.89%) Google Workspace
18 22 (0.81%) Datadog
18 22 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
18 22 (0.81%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 415 (15.37%) DNS
2 317 (11.74%) Firewall
3 286 (10.59%) DHCP
4 202 (7.48%) VPN
5 191 (7.07%) TCP/IP
6 144 (5.33%) LAN
7 135 (5.00%) WAN
8 122 (4.52%) Wi-Fi
9 85 (3.15%) SAN
10 67 (2.48%) VLAN
11 66 (2.44%) Network Security
12 46 (1.70%) BGP
13 45 (1.67%) SSL
14 38 (1.41%) Internet
14 38 (1.41%) NAS
14 38 (1.41%) Wireless
15 36 (1.33%) OSPF
16 31 (1.15%) VSAN
17 30 (1.11%) VoIP
18 28 (1.04%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (9.74%) SQL Server
2 53 (1.96%) Oracle Database
3 45 (1.67%) Power BI
4 26 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
5 25 (0.93%) Relational Database
6 23 (0.85%) MySQL
7 21 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 19 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
9 18 (0.67%) Db2
10 13 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
11 12 (0.44%) RDBMS
11 12 (0.44%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 12 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 11 (0.41%) MongoDB
12 11 (0.41%) NoSQL
13 10 (0.37%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.33%) Data Warehouse
15 6 (0.22%) GIS
16 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
16 5 (0.19%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 163 (6.04%) JIRA
2 60 (2.22%) Git
3 46 (1.70%) MSI
4 44 (1.63%) Jenkins
5 38 (1.41%) GitLab
6 32 (1.19%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.63%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.52%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.33%) Chocolatey
10 8 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.26%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.22%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.22%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.22%) Xcode
13 5 (0.19%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.19%) Selenium
14 4 (0.15%) Maven
14 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
General
1 991 (36.70%) Social Skills
2 326 (12.07%) Finance
3 318 (11.78%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (6.04%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.85%) Banking
6 98 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
7 80 (2.96%) Organisational Skills
8 78 (2.89%) Legal
9 57 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 52 (1.93%) Retail
11 47 (1.74%) Military
12 43 (1.59%) Manufacturing
13 39 (1.44%) Front Office
14 37 (1.37%) Telecoms
15 36 (1.33%) Law
16 34 (1.26%) Investment Banking
17 27 (1.00%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.93%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.85%) French Language
20 20 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 399 (14.78%) Support Engineer
2 368 (13.63%) IT Support
3 273 (10.11%) IT Engineer
4 263 (9.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 250 (9.26%) Analyst
6 228 (8.44%) IT Support Engineer
7 214 (7.93%) Senior
8 122 (4.52%) 2nd Line Support
9 110 (4.07%) Desktop Support
10 108 (4.00%) Architect
11 100 (3.70%) Cloud Engineer
12 98 (3.63%) Desktop Engineer
12 98 (3.63%) Developer
13 97 (3.59%) Lead
14 96 (3.56%) Support Analyst
15 81 (3.00%) IT Analyst
16 74 (2.74%) 1st Line Support
16 74 (2.74%) Windows Engineer
17 73 (2.70%) Consultant
18 69 (2.56%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (3.89%) .NET
2 94 (3.48%) REST
3 61 (2.26%) .NET Framework
4 31 (1.15%) 802.1X
5 28 (1.04%) WPF
6 27 (1.00%) LDAP
6 27 (1.00%) Middleware
6 27 (1.00%) WinForms
7 24 (0.89%) CSS
7 24 (0.89%) Microsoft Graph
7 24 (0.89%) Web Services
8 21 (0.78%) JSON
8 21 (0.78%) Software Packaging
9 20 (0.74%) HTML
9 20 (0.74%) Kafka
10 19 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
11 16 (0.59%) ARM Templates
11 16 (0.59%) RESTful
11 16 (0.59%) SAML
12 15 (0.56%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 302 (11.19%) Onboarding
2 147 (5.44%) PKI
3 146 (5.41%) Data Centre
4 86 (3.19%) Clustering
5 75 (2.78%) Management Information System
6 71 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
7 70 (2.59%) Cloud Native
8 62 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
9 61 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
10 55 (2.04%) Video Conferencing
11 54 (2.00%) Driving Licence
12 51 (1.89%) Replication
13 50 (1.85%) Security Posture
14 48 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.56%) Virtual Team
16 35 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
17 33 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
18 30 (1.11%) Linux Command Line
19 28 (1.04%) Enterprise Storage
20 27 (1.00%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 682 (25.26%) Windows Server
2 651 (24.11%) Linux
3 471 (17.44%) Windows 10
4 177 (6.56%) Mac OS
5 123 (4.56%) Apple iOS
6 122 (4.52%) Unix
7 121 (4.48%) Android
8 108 (4.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 68 (2.52%) Windows Server 2019
10 40 (1.48%) Ubuntu
10 40 (1.48%) Windows Server 2016
11 35 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 33 (1.22%) Windows 7
13 30 (1.11%) AIX
14 23 (0.85%) CentOS
15 19 (0.70%) Solaris
15 19 (0.70%) VMS
16 18 (0.67%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.37%) Rocky
17 10 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 640 (23.70%) Problem-Solving
2 476 (17.63%) ITIL
3 413 (15.30%) Customer Service
4 346 (12.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 320 (11.85%) Migration
6 311 (11.52%) ITSM
7 264 (9.78%) Continuous Improvement
8 261 (9.67%) DevOps
9 246 (9.11%) Agile
10 240 (8.89%) CI/CD
11 220 (8.15%) Service Management
12 202 (7.48%) Infrastructure as Code
13 191 (7.07%) Change Management
14 177 (6.56%) High Availability
15 174 (6.44%) Stakeholder Management
16 150 (5.56%) Cybersecurity
17 149 (5.52%) Disaster Recovery
18 148 (5.48%) Service Delivery
19 147 (5.44%) SIEM
20 144 (5.33%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 625 (23.15%) PowerShell
2 289 (10.70%) Python
3 280 (10.37%) SQL
4 152 (5.63%) Bash
5 138 (5.11%) C#
6 70 (2.59%) JavaScript
7 69 (2.56%) Java
8 52 (1.93%) T-SQL
9 50 (1.85%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.74%) C++
11 40 (1.48%) Bicep
12 24 (0.89%) Search Processing Language
13 22 (0.81%) VB
14 18 (0.67%) VBScript
15 17 (0.63%) Perl
16 16 (0.59%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.56%) C
17 15 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 14 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
18 14 (0.52%) VBA
Qualifications
1 829 (30.70%) Security Cleared
2 499 (18.48%) SC Cleared
3 303 (11.22%) DV Cleared
4 291 (10.78%) Degree
5 107 (3.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 81 (3.00%) Cisco Certification
7 73 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
8 70 (2.59%) Azure Certification
9 62 (2.30%) CISSP
10 49 (1.81%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
12 42 (1.56%) A+ Certification
13 33 (1.22%) MCSE
14 30 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 29 (1.07%) CCNA
16 28 (1.04%) CCNP
17 26 (0.96%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 25 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.85%) CISM
20 22 (0.81%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 133 (4.93%) SLA
2 115 (4.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 84 (3.11%) NIST
4 74 (2.74%) QA
5 30 (1.11%) GDPR
6 27 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
7 25 (0.93%) PCI DSS
8 22 (0.81%) NCSC
9 16 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (0.48%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.41%) Accessibility
11 11 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.37%) GRC
12 10 (0.37%) PMO
13 9 (0.33%) WCAG
14 8 (0.30%) GxP
14 8 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 8 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,083 (40.11%) Active Directory
2 363 (13.44%) VMware Infrastructure
3 146 (5.41%) Hyper-V
4 124 (4.59%) VMware ESXi
5 103 (3.81%) vSphere
6 99 (3.67%) Docker
7 90 (3.33%) Virtual Machines
8 73 (2.70%) Virtual Desktop
9 72 (2.67%) VMware NSX
10 32 (1.19%) BitLocker
10 32 (1.19%) Firmware
11 24 (0.89%) Microsoft App-V
12 16 (0.59%) vCloud
13 13 (0.48%) KVM
14 8 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.30%) VMware Workstation
15 7 (0.26%) NFS
15 7 (0.26%) XenApp
15 7 (0.26%) XenDesktop
16 6 (0.22%) UAG
Systems Management
1 399 (14.78%) Microsoft Intune
2 251 (9.30%) SCCM
3 233 (8.63%) Terraform
4 200 (7.41%) Ansible
5 151 (5.59%) Kubernetes
6 109 (4.04%) vCenter Server
7 66 (2.44%) SCOM
8 45 (1.67%) Jamf Pro
9 38 (1.41%) FortiGate
9 38 (1.41%) WSUS
10 35 (1.30%) Progress Chef
11 30 (1.11%) Puppet
11 30 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
12 25 (0.93%) Grafana
13 24 (0.89%) Prometheus
14 23 (0.85%) Nagios
14 23 (0.85%) Packer
15 20 (0.74%) ZABBIX
16 19 (0.70%) Nessus
16 19 (0.70%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,195 (44.26%) Microsoft
2 491 (18.19%) VMware
3 290 (10.74%) ServiceNow
4 181 (6.70%) Cisco
5 177 (6.56%) Citrix
6 157 (5.81%) Oracle
7 117 (4.33%) Splunk
8 80 (2.96%) Apple
8 80 (2.96%) SolarWinds
9 79 (2.93%) CyberArk
10 66 (2.44%) Google
11 65 (2.41%) Red Hat
11 65 (2.41%) Remedy
12 64 (2.37%) HP
13 59 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
14 53 (1.96%) Juniper
15 50 (1.85%) Dell
16 45 (1.67%) IBM
17 44 (1.63%) F5
18 43 (1.59%) BMC