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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 20 17
Rank change year-on-year -8 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,827 2,321 2,790
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.09% 8.34% 8.46%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.39% 60.68% 59.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,820 1,578 1,851
10th Percentile £173 £169 £180
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £416 £408 £425
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.12% -2.86%
75th Percentile £556 £560 £575
90th Percentile £650 £651 £663
UK median daily rate £425 £408 £425
% change year-on-year +4.29% -4.12% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 198 155
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £13.65
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.75 £21.64 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +18.99% -9.08% -4.80%
75th Percentile £65.00 £41.36 £62.25
90th Percentile £76.70 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.51 £23.00 £24.17
% change year-on-year +10.89% -4.82% +7.40%

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 4,531 3,825 4,703
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.77% 13.75% 14.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,901 2,523 3,040
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £310 £304 £332
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £583 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 242 241
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £15.17
25th Percentile £19.00 £18.51 £20.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -52.10% +14.43%
75th Percentile £67.84 £59.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.20 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +2.47% -47.05% +5.57%

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 11 September 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 11 September 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 11 September 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 -12 947 £420 -1.18% 393
South East -9 557 £484 +1.79% 345
North of England -3 510 £325 - 211
North West +4 310 £344 -1.71% 112
Midlands -16 287 £400 +6.67% 173
South West -15 283 £488 +28.71% 133
East of England -1 221 £250 -28.57% 158
West Midlands -24 189 £402 +0.50% 113
Yorkshire -19 166 £270 -1.82% 68
East Midlands +7 96 £275 +37.50% 60
North East -32 38 £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
1 240 (8.49%) SharePoint
2 235 (8.31%) Microsoft Exchange
3 63 (2.23%) IIS
4 53 (1.87%) Confluence
5 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.64%) nginx
7 17 (0.60%) Apache
8 11 (0.39%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.21%) Documentum
11 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Camunda
11 5 (0.18%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
14 2 (0.071%) SAS
14 2 (0.071%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 190 (6.72%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.14%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.11%) Houdini
7 3 (0.11%) NUKE
8 2 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.98%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.35%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.11%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.071%) assyst
8 1 (0.035%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.035%) Monis
8 1 (0.035%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.035%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.035%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 926 (32.76%) Microsoft 365
2 885 (31.31%) Azure
3 469 (16.59%) Entra ID
4 309 (10.93%) AWS
5 139 (4.92%) OneDrive
6 102 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
7 93 (3.29%) GCP
8 74 (2.62%) Azure Monitor
9 70 (2.48%) SaaS
10 63 (2.23%) Power Platform
11 61 (2.16%) IaaS
12 60 (2.12%) GitHub
13 46 (1.63%) PaaS
14 40 (1.41%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.96%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (0.96%) OpenShift
16 26 (0.92%) Google Workspace
17 22 (0.78%) GitHub Actions
18 21 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
19 20 (0.71%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 448 (15.85%) DNS
2 321 (11.35%) DHCP
3 315 (11.14%) Firewall
4 233 (8.24%) VPN
5 211 (7.46%) TCP/IP
6 118 (4.17%) WAN
7 117 (4.14%) Wi-Fi
8 110 (3.89%) LAN
9 85 (3.01%) SAN
10 83 (2.94%) Network Security
10 83 (2.94%) VLAN
11 48 (1.70%) Wireless
12 43 (1.52%) SSL
13 41 (1.45%) NAS
14 39 (1.38%) Internet
15 35 (1.24%) Skype
15 35 (1.24%) VSAN
16 28 (0.99%) VoIP
17 25 (0.88%) BGP
18 24 (0.85%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 259 (9.16%) SQL Server
2 53 (1.87%) Oracle Database
2 53 (1.87%) Power BI
3 29 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 27 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
5 24 (0.85%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
6 22 (0.78%) MySQL
7 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
8 11 (0.39%) RDBMS
9 10 (0.35%) Db2
9 10 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
10 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (0.28%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
10 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
11 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
12 4 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 150 (5.31%) JIRA
2 63 (2.23%) Git
3 45 (1.59%) MSI
4 44 (1.56%) Jenkins
5 40 (1.41%) GitLab
6 19 (0.67%) Visual Studio
7 14 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 11 (0.39%) Artifactory
9 9 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.28%) Eclipse
11 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
13 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.18%) Chocolatey
13 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
13 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
13 5 (0.18%) Selenium
13 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 4 (0.14%) Claude Code
14 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,037 (36.68%) Social Skills
2 346 (12.24%) Finance
3 343 (12.13%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (5.27%) Banking
5 130 (4.60%) Public Sector
6 108 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
7 79 (2.79%) Legal
8 70 (2.48%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 57 (2.02%) Manufacturing
11 49 (1.73%) Retail
12 46 (1.63%) Telecoms
13 43 (1.52%) Front Office
14 38 (1.34%) Law
15 35 (1.24%) Investment Banking
16 30 (1.06%) Military
17 28 (0.99%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.88%) French Language
19 23 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
20 22 (0.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 466 (16.48%) Support Engineer
2 393 (13.90%) IT Support
3 311 (11.00%) IT Engineer
4 300 (10.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 257 (9.09%) IT Support Engineer
6 248 (8.77%) Analyst
7 232 (8.21%) Senior
8 125 (4.42%) Desktop Support
9 120 (4.24%) 2nd Line Support
10 114 (4.03%) Desktop Engineer
11 109 (3.86%) Cloud Engineer
12 108 (3.82%) Lead
13 101 (3.57%) Architect
14 96 (3.40%) Windows Engineer
15 95 (3.36%) Support Analyst
16 82 (2.90%) Developer
17 80 (2.83%) 1st Line Support
18 78 (2.76%) Consultant
19 75 (2.65%) IT Analyst
20 73 (2.58%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (8.74%) Terraform
2 113 (4.00%) .NET
3 102 (3.61%) REST
4 60 (2.12%) .NET Framework
5 37 (1.31%) LDAP
6 34 (1.20%) JSON
7 31 (1.10%) Middleware
8 30 (1.06%) WPF
9 24 (0.85%) ARM Templates
10 22 (0.78%) Software Packaging
10 22 (0.78%) WinForms
11 20 (0.71%) HTML
11 20 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
12 19 (0.67%) .NET Core
12 19 (0.67%) CSS
13 18 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
14 17 (0.60%) Kafka
14 17 (0.60%) XML
15 15 (0.53%) RESTful
15 15 (0.53%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 345 (12.20%) Onboarding
2 152 (5.38%) Data Centre
3 142 (5.02%) PKI
4 95 (3.36%) Management Information System
5 83 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
6 79 (2.79%) Clustering
7 72 (2.55%) Cloud Native
8 71 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
9 66 (2.33%) Video Conferencing
10 62 (2.19%) Replication
11 59 (2.09%) Driving Licence
12 53 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
13 50 (1.77%) Security Posture
14 42 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
15 40 (1.41%) Virtual Team
16 36 (1.27%) Enterprise Storage
17 35 (1.24%) CMDB
18 33 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
18 33 (1.17%) Linux Command Line
19 29 (1.03%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 790 (27.94%) Windows Server
2 673 (23.81%) Linux
3 504 (17.83%) Windows 10
4 185 (6.54%) Mac OS
5 128 (4.53%) Apple iOS
6 124 (4.39%) Android
7 120 (4.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 106 (3.75%) Unix
9 67 (2.37%) Windows Server 2019
10 51 (1.80%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.63%) Windows 7
12 37 (1.31%) CentOS
12 37 (1.31%) Windows Server 2012
13 35 (1.24%) Windows Server 2016
14 20 (0.71%) AIX
14 20 (0.71%) VMS
15 17 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
16 15 (0.53%) Rocky
16 15 (0.53%) Solaris
17 13 (0.46%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 684 (24.20%) Problem-Solving
2 537 (19.00%) ITIL
3 472 (16.70%) Customer Service
4 383 (13.55%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 378 (13.37%) ITSM
6 339 (11.99%) Migration
7 318 (11.25%) Continuous Improvement
8 280 (9.90%) Service Management
9 274 (9.69%) DevOps
10 243 (8.60%) Infrastructure as Code
11 236 (8.35%) Agile
12 235 (8.31%) CI/CD
13 212 (7.50%) Stakeholder Management
14 199 (7.04%) Root Cause Analysis
15 198 (7.00%) Change Management
16 185 (6.54%) Disaster Recovery
17 171 (6.05%) Cybersecurity
18 161 (5.70%) Technical Leadership
19 159 (5.62%) Incident Management
20 158 (5.59%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 718 (25.40%) PowerShell
2 307 (10.86%) Python
3 280 (9.90%) SQL
4 173 (6.12%) Bash
5 127 (4.49%) C#
6 60 (2.12%) Java
6 60 (2.12%) T-SQL
7 53 (1.87%) JavaScript
8 50 (1.77%) Bicep
8 50 (1.77%) PL/SQL
9 29 (1.03%) VB
10 25 (0.88%) VBScript
11 24 (0.85%) C++
12 17 (0.60%) Search Processing Language
12 17 (0.60%) TypeScript
13 16 (0.57%) Perl
14 15 (0.53%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.42%) VBA
16 8 (0.28%) Go
16 8 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 909 (32.15%) Security Cleared
2 536 (18.96%) SC Cleared
3 369 (13.05%) DV Cleared
4 288 (10.19%) Degree
5 112 (3.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 90 (3.18%) Azure Certification
7 72 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
8 65 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
9 60 (2.12%) CISSP
10 53 (1.87%) AWS Certification
11 50 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
12 48 (1.70%) A+ Certification
13 45 (1.59%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 32 (1.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 28 (0.99%) CCNP
15 28 (0.99%) CISM
15 28 (0.99%) DBS Check
16 27 (0.96%) CCNA
17 26 (0.92%) ITIL Certification
17 26 (0.92%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (5.27%) SLA
2 109 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 81 (2.87%) NIST
4 78 (2.76%) QA
5 33 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.96%) NCSC
7 23 (0.81%) PCI DSS
8 21 (0.74%) GDPR
9 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
10 14 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 13 (0.46%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 12 (0.42%) GRC
12 12 (0.42%) WCAG
13 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
14 9 (0.32%) GxP
15 8 (0.28%) ISO 31000
15 8 (0.28%) PMO
16 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
16 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,184 (41.88%) Active Directory
2 436 (15.42%) VMware Infrastructure
3 196 (6.93%) Hyper-V
4 151 (5.34%) VMware ESXi
5 126 (4.46%) vSphere
6 107 (3.78%) Docker
7 103 (3.64%) Virtual Machines
8 83 (2.94%) Virtual Desktop
9 79 (2.79%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.38%) BitLocker
11 28 (0.99%) Firmware
12 24 (0.85%) vCloud
13 15 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.50%) NFS
14 14 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.42%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.39%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 9 (0.32%) KVM
19 6 (0.21%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 420 (14.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 318 (11.25%) SCCM
3 214 (7.57%) Ansible
4 144 (5.09%) Kubernetes
5 123 (4.35%) vCenter Server
6 95 (3.36%) SCOM
7 46 (1.63%) Jamf Pro
8 44 (1.56%) WSUS
9 30 (1.06%) Grafana
10 29 (1.03%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.99%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
12 26 (0.92%) WMI
13 25 (0.88%) Puppet
14 24 (0.85%) VxRail
15 22 (0.78%) Packer
16 21 (0.74%) Nagios
16 21 (0.74%) NetBackup
17 20 (0.71%) FortiGate
17 20 (0.71%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,358 (48.04%) Microsoft
2 575 (20.34%) VMware
3 338 (11.96%) ServiceNow
4 189 (6.69%) Cisco
5 163 (5.77%) Oracle
6 156 (5.52%) Citrix
7 98 (3.47%) Apple
8 97 (3.43%) Splunk
9 89 (3.15%) CyberArk
10 76 (2.69%) Google
11 70 (2.48%) Red Hat
12 66 (2.33%) SolarWinds
13 64 (2.26%) BeyondTrust
14 60 (2.12%) Remedy
15 53 (1.87%) Dell
16 52 (1.84%) HP
17 43 (1.52%) BMC
17 43 (1.52%) NetApp
18 36 (1.27%) Meraki
19 35 (1.24%) Fortinet