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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 20 17
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,764 2,294 2,831
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.03% 8.31% 8.52%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.22% 60.98% 60.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,781 1,555 1,909
10th Percentile £170 £170 £178
25th Percentile £225 £220 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £420 £408 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.07% -9.44% +5.88%
75th Percentile £556 £573 £575
90th Percentile £650 £663 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £410 £446
% change year-on-year +3.66% -8.07% +2.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 241 195 197
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.28 £11.02
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.44 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.09
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -10.53% -6.27%
75th Percentile £60.00 £29.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.88 £21.02 £22.00
% change year-on-year +18.37% -4.48% -2.22%

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 4,442 3,762 4,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.68% 13.63% 14.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,858 2,483 3,105
10th Percentile £190 £192 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £588
90th Percentile £673 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 308 243 283
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.51 £12.39
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.26 £17.00
Median hourly rate £34.68 £24.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +44.48% -31.43% -12.50%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.38
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.80 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.92 £25.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +3.68% -9.09% -31.25%

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 22 August 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 22 August 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 22 August 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 -13 925 £425 +2.37% 222
South East -8 569 £475 -3.46% 303
North of England -4 508 £325 - 186
North West +3 297 £340 -3.00% 91
South West -15 285 £488 +39.29% 107
Midlands -22 260 £385 -3.75% 120
East of England -3 199 £335 - 117
Yorkshire -15 183 £324 +3.60% 68
West Midlands -29 165 £425 -0.93% 77
East Midlands +2 91 £273 +36.25% 43
North East -34 32 £260 -0.95% 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
1 231 (8.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 230 (8.32%) SharePoint
3 58 (2.10%) IIS
4 56 (2.03%) Confluence
5 19 (0.69%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.58%) nginx
7 15 (0.54%) Apache
8 11 (0.40%) Tomcat
9 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.22%) Documentum
12 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.18%) Appian
12 5 (0.18%) Camunda
13 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
14 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
14 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
14 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
15 2 (0.072%) SAS
Applications
1 173 (6.26%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.072%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.072%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.036%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.036%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.036%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 58 (2.10%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.36%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
4 6 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
5 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.072%) assyst
9 1 (0.036%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.036%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.036%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.036%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.036%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.036%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.036%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.036%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.036%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 890 (32.20%) Microsoft 365
2 879 (31.80%) Azure
3 443 (16.03%) Entra ID
4 311 (11.25%) AWS
5 130 (4.70%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 90 (3.26%) GCP
8 74 (2.68%) Azure Monitor
9 70 (2.53%) SaaS
10 64 (2.32%) Power Platform
11 63 (2.28%) GitHub
12 62 (2.24%) IaaS
13 47 (1.70%) PaaS
14 41 (1.48%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
15 28 (1.01%) OpenShift
16 26 (0.94%) Google Workspace
17 24 (0.87%) Azure AKS
18 23 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
19 22 (0.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 439 (15.88%) DNS
2 323 (11.69%) Firewall
3 315 (11.40%) DHCP
4 231 (8.36%) VPN
5 211 (7.63%) TCP/IP
6 132 (4.78%) WAN
7 130 (4.70%) LAN
8 127 (4.59%) Wi-Fi
9 90 (3.26%) SAN
10 82 (2.97%) VLAN
11 75 (2.71%) Network Security
12 43 (1.56%) NAS
13 41 (1.48%) SSL
14 40 (1.45%) Wireless
15 39 (1.41%) Internet
15 39 (1.41%) VSAN
16 35 (1.27%) Skype
17 31 (1.12%) BGP
18 27 (0.98%) VoIP
19 24 (0.87%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (9.59%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.88%) Oracle Database
2 52 (1.88%) Power BI
3 25 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 23 (0.83%) Relational Database
5 22 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
6 21 (0.76%) MySQL
7 18 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
8 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
9 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
9 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
10 10 (0.36%) Db2
11 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
11 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
12 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
13 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
13 5 (0.18%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 158 (5.72%) JIRA
2 66 (2.39%) Git
3 47 (1.70%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.63%) MSI
5 39 (1.41%) GitLab
6 31 (1.12%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.62%) Bitbucket
7 17 (0.62%) Eclipse
8 10 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.33%) Selenium
10 7 (0.25%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.25%) Chocolatey
10 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
11 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
11 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
12 4 (0.14%) Claude Code
12 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
13 3 (0.11%) Appium
General
1 1,012 (36.61%) Social Skills
2 345 (12.48%) Finance
3 336 (12.16%) Analytical Skills
4 158 (5.72%) Banking
5 142 (5.14%) Public Sector
6 97 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (2.71%) Legal
8 73 (2.64%) Organisational Skills
9 60 (2.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 53 (1.92%) Retail
11 52 (1.88%) Manufacturing
12 42 (1.52%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.48%) Front Office
14 37 (1.34%) Military
15 36 (1.30%) Law
16 34 (1.23%) Investment Banking
17 28 (1.01%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.90%) Financial Institution
18 25 (0.90%) French Language
19 20 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 444 (16.06%) Support Engineer
2 377 (13.64%) IT Support
3 295 (10.67%) IT Engineer
4 289 (10.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 247 (8.94%) IT Support Engineer
6 234 (8.47%) Analyst
7 222 (8.03%) Senior
8 124 (4.49%) 2nd Line Support
9 121 (4.38%) Desktop Support
10 106 (3.84%) Architect
11 105 (3.80%) Desktop Engineer
12 104 (3.76%) Cloud Engineer
13 101 (3.65%) Lead
14 92 (3.33%) Support Analyst
15 90 (3.26%) Developer
16 85 (3.08%) Windows Engineer
17 81 (2.93%) Consultant
18 78 (2.82%) 1st Line Support
19 75 (2.71%) IT Analyst
20 72 (2.60%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (9.01%) Terraform
2 114 (4.12%) .NET
3 99 (3.58%) REST
4 65 (2.35%) .NET Framework
5 30 (1.09%) Middleware
5 30 (1.09%) WPF
6 28 (1.01%) JSON
6 28 (1.01%) LDAP
7 26 (0.94%) WinForms
8 22 (0.80%) ARM Templates
9 21 (0.76%) CSS
9 21 (0.76%) Software Packaging
10 20 (0.72%) HTML
10 20 (0.72%) Web Services
11 19 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
11 19 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
12 18 (0.65%) .NET Core
12 18 (0.65%) Kafka
13 17 (0.62%) 802.1X
13 17 (0.62%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 333 (12.05%) Onboarding
2 150 (5.43%) Data Centre
3 148 (5.35%) PKI
4 85 (3.08%) Clustering
4 85 (3.08%) Management Information System
5 79 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
6 72 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
7 71 (2.57%) Cloud Native
8 65 (2.35%) Self-Motivation
9 64 (2.32%) Video Conferencing
10 56 (2.03%) Driving Licence
11 54 (1.95%) Replication
12 45 (1.63%) Security Posture
13 43 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
14 39 (1.41%) Virtual Team
15 38 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
16 37 (1.34%) Enterprise Storage
17 34 (1.23%) CMDB
18 30 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
19 29 (1.05%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 740 (26.77%) Windows Server
2 675 (24.42%) Linux
3 489 (17.69%) Windows 10
4 180 (6.51%) Mac OS
5 123 (4.45%) Apple iOS
6 119 (4.31%) Android
7 111 (4.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 107 (3.87%) Unix
9 67 (2.42%) Windows Server 2019
10 46 (1.66%) Ubuntu
10 46 (1.66%) Windows 7
11 41 (1.48%) Windows Server 2016
12 37 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
13 30 (1.09%) CentOS
14 24 (0.87%) AIX
15 20 (0.72%) VMS
16 17 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
17 15 (0.54%) Solaris
18 11 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
19 10 (0.36%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 672 (24.31%) Problem-Solving
2 512 (18.52%) ITIL
3 439 (15.88%) Customer Service
4 369 (13.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 363 (13.13%) ITSM
6 328 (11.87%) Migration
7 290 (10.49%) Continuous Improvement
8 276 (9.99%) DevOps
9 256 (9.26%) Service Management
10 247 (8.94%) Agile
11 245 (8.86%) CI/CD
12 230 (8.32%) Infrastructure as Code
13 199 (7.20%) Change Management
14 187 (6.77%) Stakeholder Management
15 178 (6.44%) Disaster Recovery
16 170 (6.15%) High Availability
17 163 (5.90%) Cybersecurity
18 162 (5.86%) Root Cause Analysis
19 159 (5.75%) Service Delivery
20 154 (5.57%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 702 (25.40%) PowerShell
2 312 (11.29%) Python
3 280 (10.13%) SQL
4 170 (6.15%) Bash
5 143 (5.17%) C#
6 65 (2.35%) Java
6 65 (2.35%) JavaScript
7 51 (1.85%) T-SQL
8 47 (1.70%) Bicep
9 46 (1.66%) PL/SQL
10 43 (1.56%) C++
11 29 (1.05%) VB
12 26 (0.94%) VBScript
13 24 (0.87%) Search Processing Language
14 17 (0.62%) Perl
14 17 (0.62%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.58%) TypeScript
16 12 (0.43%) VBA
17 11 (0.40%) C
18 10 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 877 (31.73%) Security Cleared
2 532 (19.25%) SC Cleared
3 329 (11.90%) DV Cleared
4 283 (10.24%) Degree
5 108 (3.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 82 (2.97%) Azure Certification
7 76 (2.75%) Cisco Certification
8 75 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
9 60 (2.17%) CISSP
10 52 (1.88%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.74%) A+ Certification
12 46 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
13 38 (1.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 32 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 30 (1.09%) CCNA
16 29 (1.05%) CCNP
17 26 (0.94%) DBS Check
17 26 (0.94%) MCSE
18 25 (0.90%) CISM
19 24 (0.87%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 143 (5.17%) SLA
2 109 (3.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 82 (2.97%) QA
4 80 (2.89%) NIST
5 27 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
5 27 (0.98%) NCSC
6 25 (0.90%) GDPR
7 22 (0.80%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (0.51%) Accessibility
10 13 (0.47%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.40%) GRC
11 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.40%) WCAG
12 9 (0.33%) PMO
13 8 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 7 (0.25%) GxP
14 7 (0.25%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,144 (41.39%) Active Directory
2 413 (14.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 175 (6.33%) Hyper-V
4 133 (4.81%) VMware ESXi
5 122 (4.41%) vSphere
6 103 (3.73%) Docker
7 89 (3.22%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.97%) VMware NSX
9 80 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (1.45%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.30%) Firmware
12 20 (0.72%) vCloud
13 17 (0.62%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
15 10 (0.36%) KVM
16 9 (0.33%) XenApp
16 9 (0.33%) XenDesktop
17 8 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
18 7 (0.25%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 7 (0.25%) NFS
Systems Management
1 409 (14.80%) Microsoft Intune
2 287 (10.38%) SCCM
3 220 (7.96%) Ansible
4 150 (5.43%) Kubernetes
5 115 (4.16%) vCenter Server
6 77 (2.79%) SCOM
7 46 (1.66%) WSUS
8 44 (1.59%) Jamf Pro
9 36 (1.30%) Progress Chef
10 32 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (1.09%) Puppet
12 28 (1.01%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.90%) WMI
14 24 (0.87%) Grafana
14 24 (0.87%) Nagios
14 24 (0.87%) Packer
14 24 (0.87%) Prometheus
15 23 (0.83%) VxRail
16 20 (0.72%) Microsoft Clustering
16 20 (0.72%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,304 (47.18%) Microsoft
2 549 (19.86%) VMware
3 331 (11.98%) ServiceNow
4 180 (6.51%) Cisco
5 164 (5.93%) Citrix
6 159 (5.75%) Oracle
7 104 (3.76%) Splunk
8 92 (3.33%) Apple
9 87 (3.15%) CyberArk
10 74 (2.68%) Google
11 69 (2.50%) SolarWinds
12 63 (2.28%) HP
13 62 (2.24%) Remedy
14 61 (2.21%) BeyondTrust
14 61 (2.21%) Red Hat
15 50 (1.81%) Dell
16 48 (1.74%) BMC
17 40 (1.45%) NetApp
18 39 (1.41%) Meraki
19 38 (1.37%) Juniper