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

 6 months to
10 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 19 17
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,513 2,137 3,157
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.95% 8.73% 8.42%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.85% 61.64% 61.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,644 1,502 2,180
10th Percentile £163 £183 £163
25th Percentile £220 £250 £225
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £413
Median % change year-on-year - +3.03% -8.33%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £425 £425 £411
% change year-on-year - +3.53% -8.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 212 141 259
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.20 £11.65
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.82 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.82% +4.56% -28.00%
75th Percentile £57.88 £25.00 £25.00
90th Percentile £70.55 £59.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.21 £18.87 £18.13
% change year-on-year +33.57% +4.08% -26.36%

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 4,063 3,467 5,159
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.62% 14.17% 13.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,642 2,356 3,470
10th Percentile £188 £200 £188
25th Percentile £313 £313 £304
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.15% -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £569 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £689 £700
UK median daily rate £460 £465 £470
% change year-on-year -1.08% -1.12% -5.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 170 374
10th Percentile £15.77 £15.12 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.03 £15.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £18.94 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +71.64% -15.84% -48.78%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.67 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.55 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £31.75 £21.95 £22.52
% change year-on-year +44.65% -2.53% -50.02%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -22 785 £428 -2.84% 200
South East -8 520 £475 -3.06% 283
North of England -7 466 £365 +4.29% 184
Midlands -16 277 £325 +14.04% 109
North West -4 248 £352 -6.11% 110
South West -12 234 £475 -2.06% 143
East of England -2 216 £350 -7.59% 74
Yorkshire -17 201 £370 -8.07% 55
West Midlands -22 166 £450 +50.00% 63
East Midlands +5 106 £225 +9.09% 46
North East -28 21 £290 +0.87% 22
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
1 217 (8.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 166 (6.61%) SharePoint
3 55 (2.19%) Confluence
4 54 (2.15%) IIS
5 15 (0.60%) Apache
6 14 (0.56%) Skype for Business
6 14 (0.56%) Tomcat
7 13 (0.52%) nginx
8 10 (0.40%) 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%) Tuxedo
11 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.12%) Camunda
12 3 (0.12%) NetWeaver
13 2 (0.080%) Apache Pulsar
13 2 (0.080%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.080%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 156 (6.21%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (0.88%) 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 (0.040%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 44 (1.75%) Remedy ITSM
2 12 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.44%) Teamcenter
4 6 (0.24%) Finacle
5 3 (0.12%) OpenText MBPM
5 3 (0.12%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 2 (0.080%) assyst
6 2 (0.080%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.080%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.080%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle FAH
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.040%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.040%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 759 (30.20%) Azure
2 730 (29.05%) Microsoft 365
3 322 (12.81%) Entra ID
4 251 (9.99%) AWS
5 89 (3.54%) OneDrive
6 82 (3.26%) GCP
7 70 (2.79%) Azure DevOps
8 67 (2.67%) SaaS
9 63 (2.51%) IaaS
10 61 (2.43%) GitHub
11 52 (2.07%) PaaS
12 47 (1.87%) Power Platform
13 35 (1.39%) Azure Monitor
14 33 (1.31%) Google Workspace
15 28 (1.11%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
16 24 (0.96%) OpenShift
17 18 (0.72%) AWS CloudFormation
17 18 (0.72%) Azure AKS
17 18 (0.72%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 348 (13.85%) DNS
2 262 (10.43%) Firewall
3 248 (9.87%) DHCP
4 169 (6.73%) VPN
5 149 (5.93%) LAN
6 147 (5.85%) TCP/IP
7 143 (5.69%) WAN
8 114 (4.54%) Wi-Fi
9 66 (2.63%) SAN
10 57 (2.27%) Network Security
11 52 (2.07%) VLAN
12 37 (1.47%) BGP
13 34 (1.35%) Skype
13 34 (1.35%) SSL
14 33 (1.31%) OSPF
14 33 (1.31%) Wireless
15 31 (1.23%) SNMP
15 31 (1.23%) VoIP
16 30 (1.19%) BIG-IP
17 29 (1.15%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 210 (8.36%) SQL Server
2 42 (1.67%) Oracle Database
3 31 (1.23%) Power BI
3 31 (1.23%) Relational Database
4 26 (1.03%) MySQL
4 26 (1.03%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (0.56%) Db2
5 14 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
5 14 (0.56%) MongoDB
6 13 (0.52%) NoSQL
7 12 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
8 10 (0.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 9 (0.36%) RDBMS
10 7 (0.28%) GIS
11 6 (0.24%) BigQuery
11 6 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
11 6 (0.24%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 5 (0.20%) Azure SQL Database
12 5 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
13 4 (0.16%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 172 (6.84%) JIRA
2 43 (1.71%) Jenkins
3 38 (1.51%) Git
4 37 (1.47%) MSI
5 35 (1.39%) GitLab
5 35 (1.39%) Visual Studio
6 18 (0.72%) Eclipse
7 11 (0.44%) Burp Suite
8 10 (0.40%) Metasploit
9 9 (0.36%) Chocolatey
10 8 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.28%) Android Studio
11 7 (0.28%) Bitbucket
11 7 (0.28%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.28%) Selenium
11 7 (0.28%) Xcode
12 6 (0.24%) InstallShield
13 5 (0.20%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.20%) Robot Framework
14 4 (0.16%) Appium
General
1 864 (34.38%) Social Skills
2 277 (11.02%) Finance
3 250 (9.95%) Analytical Skills
4 167 (6.65%) Public Sector
5 150 (5.97%) Banking
6 96 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
7 86 (3.42%) Legal
8 73 (2.90%) Organisational Skills
9 50 (1.99%) Retail
10 49 (1.95%) Military
11 46 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 37 (1.47%) Investment Banking
12 37 (1.47%) Law
13 36 (1.43%) Manufacturing
14 32 (1.27%) Front Office
15 30 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
16 25 (0.99%) Telecoms
17 22 (0.88%) Local Government
17 22 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 20 (0.80%) French Language
Job Titles
1 327 (13.01%) IT Support
2 325 (12.93%) Support Engineer
3 276 (10.98%) Analyst
4 229 (9.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 210 (8.36%) IT Engineer
6 174 (6.92%) IT Support Engineer
7 170 (6.76%) Senior
8 125 (4.97%) Architect
9 106 (4.22%) Support Analyst
10 105 (4.18%) Desktop Support
11 101 (4.02%) Desktop Engineer
12 94 (3.74%) 2nd Line Support
13 90 (3.58%) Lead
14 88 (3.50%) IT Analyst
15 84 (3.34%) Developer
15 84 (3.34%) Technical Support
16 64 (2.55%) Cloud Engineer
16 64 (2.55%) Windows Engineer
17 63 (2.51%) Consultant
18 62 (2.47%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (3.38%) .NET
2 72 (2.87%) REST
3 51 (2.03%) .NET Framework
4 35 (1.39%) LDAP
5 32 (1.27%) Microsoft Graph
6 28 (1.11%) 802.1X
6 28 (1.11%) SAML
7 26 (1.03%) Middleware
8 25 (0.99%) Web Services
8 25 (0.99%) WinForms
9 23 (0.92%) WPF
10 21 (0.84%) OAuth
11 20 (0.80%) Kafka
12 19 (0.76%) CSS
13 18 (0.72%) Software Packaging
14 17 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
15 16 (0.64%) AngularJS
15 16 (0.64%) Node.js
16 15 (0.60%) React
17 13 (0.52%) ADO
Miscellaneous
1 240 (9.55%) Onboarding
2 125 (4.97%) Data Centre
3 114 (4.54%) PKI
4 74 (2.94%) Clustering
5 70 (2.79%) Enterprise Software
6 58 (2.31%) Management Information System
7 57 (2.27%) Self-Motivation
8 54 (2.15%) Replication
9 49 (1.95%) Cloud Native
10 48 (1.91%) Hybrid Cloud
11 46 (1.83%) Security Posture
12 44 (1.75%) Virtual Team
13 43 (1.71%) Driving Licence
13 43 (1.71%) Legacy Systems
14 34 (1.35%) Smartphone
15 32 (1.27%) CMDB
16 31 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
16 31 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
16 31 (1.23%) Product Ownership
17 28 (1.11%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 618 (24.59%) Linux
2 611 (24.31%) Windows Server
3 449 (17.87%) Windows 10
4 162 (6.45%) Mac OS
5 128 (5.09%) Apple iOS
6 123 (4.89%) Unix
7 118 (4.70%) Android
8 83 (3.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 66 (2.63%) Windows Server 2019
10 56 (2.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 47 (1.87%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.51%) Windows Server 2012
13 29 (1.15%) AIX
14 27 (1.07%) Ubuntu
15 18 (0.72%) Solaris
15 18 (0.72%) VMS
16 17 (0.68%) Windows Server 2003
17 13 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
18 12 (0.48%) CentOS
19 8 (0.32%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 544 (21.65%) Problem-Solving
2 385 (15.32%) ITIL
3 378 (15.04%) Customer Service
4 297 (11.82%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 275 (10.94%) Migration
6 255 (10.15%) ITSM
7 244 (9.71%) Agile
8 233 (9.27%) DevOps
9 216 (8.60%) CI/CD
10 191 (7.60%) Continuous Improvement
11 174 (6.92%) Change Management
12 171 (6.80%) Service Management
13 168 (6.69%) High Availability
14 156 (6.21%) Disaster Recovery
15 140 (5.57%) Cybersecurity
15 140 (5.57%) Stakeholder Management
16 138 (5.49%) Infrastructure as Code
17 129 (5.13%) SIEM
18 117 (4.66%) Runbook
19 114 (4.54%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 551 (21.93%) PowerShell
2 250 (9.95%) SQL
3 249 (9.91%) Python
4 124 (4.93%) C#
5 106 (4.22%) Bash
6 71 (2.83%) Java
7 69 (2.75%) JavaScript
8 46 (1.83%) PL/SQL
9 45 (1.79%) C++
10 40 (1.59%) T-SQL
11 25 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
12 24 (0.96%) VB
13 22 (0.88%) Search Processing Language
13 22 (0.88%) Shell Script
14 18 (0.72%) Bicep
14 18 (0.72%) Perl
14 18 (0.72%) VBScript
15 13 (0.52%) C
16 12 (0.48%) VBA
17 11 (0.44%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 750 (29.84%) Security Cleared
2 479 (19.06%) SC Cleared
3 287 (11.42%) Degree
4 240 (9.55%) DV Cleared
5 108 (4.30%) Microsoft Certification
6 75 (2.98%) Cisco Certification
7 73 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
8 58 (2.31%) CISSP
9 52 (2.07%) Azure Certification
10 46 (1.83%) MCSE
11 40 (1.59%) AWS Certification
12 37 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
13 32 (1.27%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 30 (1.19%) MCSA
15 28 (1.11%) CCNA
16 27 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
17 25 (0.99%) CISM
18 24 (0.96%) CCNP
18 24 (0.96%) CompTIA Security+
19 18 (0.72%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (4.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 97 (3.86%) SLA
3 85 (3.38%) NIST
4 68 (2.71%) QA
5 67 (2.67%) GDPR
6 35 (1.39%) PCI DSS
7 30 (1.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 24 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
9 15 (0.60%) NCSC
10 11 (0.44%) Data Quality
10 11 (0.44%) MiFID
10 11 (0.44%) NIST 800
11 10 (0.40%) FINRA
11 10 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.36%) PMO
13 7 (0.28%) GRC
13 7 (0.28%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.24%) ISO 31000
15 5 (0.20%) Accessibility
15 5 (0.20%) GLBA
System Software
1 948 (37.72%) Active Directory
2 327 (13.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 138 (5.49%) Hyper-V
4 101 (4.02%) VMware ESXi
5 96 (3.82%) vSphere
6 90 (3.58%) Virtual Machines
7 88 (3.50%) Docker
8 54 (2.15%) Virtual Desktop
9 50 (1.99%) VMware NSX
10 36 (1.43%) BitLocker
10 36 (1.43%) Firmware
11 27 (1.07%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.80%) KVM
13 11 (0.44%) XenDesktop
14 10 (0.40%) vCloud
14 10 (0.40%) XenApp
15 8 (0.32%) VMware Workstation
16 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
17 5 (0.20%) etcd
Systems Management
1 353 (14.05%) Microsoft Intune
2 224 (8.91%) SCCM
3 167 (6.65%) Ansible
4 155 (6.17%) Terraform
5 124 (4.93%) Kubernetes
6 83 (3.30%) vCenter Server
7 46 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
8 39 (1.55%) Jamf Pro
8 39 (1.55%) SCOM
9 37 (1.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (1.43%) FortiGate
11 34 (1.35%) WSUS
12 29 (1.15%) Progress Chef
13 27 (1.07%) Grafana
14 25 (0.99%) Prometheus
15 23 (0.92%) Puppet
16 21 (0.84%) Nagios
17 19 (0.76%) Nessus
18 18 (0.72%) Tivoli
18 18 (0.72%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,090 (43.37%) Microsoft
2 423 (16.83%) VMware
3 230 (9.15%) ServiceNow
4 182 (7.24%) Citrix
5 173 (6.88%) Cisco
6 150 (5.97%) Oracle
7 126 (5.01%) Splunk
8 68 (2.71%) HP
8 68 (2.71%) SolarWinds
9 59 (2.35%) Google
10 58 (2.31%) Red Hat
11 56 (2.23%) Remedy
12 55 (2.19%) Dell
13 51 (2.03%) Apple
14 50 (1.99%) CyberArk
15 46 (1.83%) IBM
16 45 (1.79%) F5
16 45 (1.79%) Juniper
17 42 (1.67%) BeyondTrust
18 35 (1.39%) Palo Alto
913 Windows jobs in England