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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -9 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,865 2,367 2,684
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.12% 8.41% 8.36%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.61% 59.77% 58.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,822 1,595 1,704
10th Percentile £181 £163 £185
25th Percentile £225 £204 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £423 £400 £423
Median % change year-on-year +5.81% -5.38% -0.53%
75th Percentile £567 £538 £575
90th Percentile £667 £638 £644
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 303 234 128
10th Percentile £16.25 £13.82 £15.58
25th Percentile £19.23 £17.33 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £21.29 £24.35
Median % change year-on-year +21.04% -12.57% -2.60%
75th Percentile £65.00 £32.14 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.94 £65.00 £68.16
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.05% -9.02% +2.89%

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 4,576 3,960 4,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.77% 14.07% 14.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,922 2,598 2,824
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £585
90th Percentile £675 £663 £688
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £470
% change year-on-year +4.44% -4.31% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 285 213
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.16 £16.26
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.82 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £24.00 £61.43
Median % change year-on-year +35.42% -60.93% +26.92%
75th Percentile £67.25 £43.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +3.08% -54.55% +21.04%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -6 973 £423 -0.59% 167
South East -7 559 £480 +31.51% 163
North of England -12 487 £344 +18.62% 135
Midlands -14 296 £400 - 77
North West -3 290 £354 +8.98% 74
South West -18 271 £550 +57.14% 110
East of England 0 251 £220 -37.14% 67
West Midlands -21 206 £407 +1.81% 44
Yorkshire -13 157 £245 +13.95% 50
East Midlands +1 89 £275 +37.50% 33
North East -23 42 £273 +36.25% 17
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
1 243 (8.48%) SharePoint
2 220 (7.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 60 (2.09%) IIS
4 56 (1.95%) Confluence
5 27 (0.94%) nginx
6 21 (0.73%) Apache
7 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.45%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.24%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.21%) Documentum
11 5 (0.17%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.17%) Appian
11 5 (0.17%) Camunda
11 5 (0.17%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.14%) CICS
12 4 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.10%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 3 (0.10%) OpenStack
Applications
1 193 (6.74%) Microsoft Office
2 59 (2.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 13 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
4 5 (0.17%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.10%) Houdini
5 3 (0.10%) NUKE
5 3 (0.10%) PTC Creo
6 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.035%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
7 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 45 (1.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (0.28%) Finacle
3 7 (0.24%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.21%) Teamcenter
5 5 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.10%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.070%) assyst
7 2 (0.070%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.035%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.035%) Eikon
8 1 (0.035%) Monis
8 1 (0.035%) NEC Housing
8 1 (0.035%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.035%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.035%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.035%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 948 (33.09%) Microsoft 365
2 891 (31.10%) Azure
3 507 (17.70%) Entra ID
4 312 (10.89%) AWS
5 140 (4.89%) OneDrive
6 104 (3.63%) GCP
7 102 (3.56%) Azure DevOps
8 77 (2.69%) Azure Monitor
9 65 (2.27%) GitHub
10 62 (2.16%) SaaS
11 58 (2.02%) Power Platform
12 51 (1.78%) IaaS
13 47 (1.64%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.29%) PaaS
15 29 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.98%) Google Workspace
17 27 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
19 22 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
20 21 (0.73%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 455 (15.88%) DNS
2 322 (11.24%) DHCP
3 319 (11.13%) Firewall
4 248 (8.66%) VPN
5 237 (8.27%) TCP/IP
6 113 (3.94%) Wi-Fi
7 107 (3.73%) LAN
8 104 (3.63%) WAN
9 98 (3.42%) Network Security
10 82 (2.86%) SAN
11 79 (2.76%) VLAN
12 54 (1.88%) Wireless
13 47 (1.64%) SSL
14 36 (1.26%) BGP
14 36 (1.26%) Internet
15 35 (1.22%) NAS
16 34 (1.19%) Skype
17 31 (1.08%) VoIP
18 30 (1.05%) SSH
19 27 (0.94%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 243 (8.48%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.82%) Oracle Database
3 50 (1.75%) Power BI
4 31 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
5 29 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
6 28 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 23 (0.80%) MySQL
8 21 (0.73%) Relational Database
9 15 (0.52%) Db2
10 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 11 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
12 9 (0.31%) Data Warehouse
13 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 8 (0.28%) RDBMS
14 7 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
14 7 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
14 7 (0.24%) MongoDB
15 6 (0.21%) NoSQL
16 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 144 (5.03%) JIRA
2 74 (2.58%) Git
3 60 (2.09%) Jenkins
4 52 (1.82%) GitLab
5 48 (1.68%) MSI
6 33 (1.15%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.59%) Artifactory
8 15 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.52%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
11 7 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
11 7 (0.24%) Toad
12 6 (0.21%) Robot Framework
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 6 (0.21%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.21%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 4 (0.14%) Browser DevTools
General
1 1,061 (37.03%) Social Skills
2 358 (12.50%) Finance
3 332 (11.59%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (5.06%) Banking
5 130 (4.54%) Public Sector
6 100 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (2.58%) Legal
8 72 (2.51%) Organisational Skills
9 69 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 64 (2.23%) Manufacturing
11 48 (1.68%) Telecoms
12 45 (1.57%) Retail
13 41 (1.43%) Front Office
13 41 (1.43%) Law
14 37 (1.29%) Military
15 32 (1.12%) Investment Banking
16 26 (0.91%) Financial Institution
17 24 (0.84%) Aerospace
18 23 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
18 23 (0.80%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 487 (17.00%) Support Engineer
2 392 (13.68%) IT Support
3 310 (10.82%) IT Engineer
4 288 (10.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 262 (9.14%) IT Support Engineer
6 245 (8.55%) Analyst
7 235 (8.20%) Senior
8 135 (4.71%) Desktop Support
9 129 (4.50%) 2nd Line Support
10 127 (4.43%) Desktop Engineer
11 113 (3.94%) Cloud Engineer
12 110 (3.84%) Architect
13 109 (3.80%) Lead
14 98 (3.42%) Windows Engineer
15 87 (3.04%) Support Analyst
16 86 (3.00%) Consultant
17 82 (2.86%) Desktop Support Engineer
17 82 (2.86%) Developer
18 76 (2.65%) Service Analyst
19 74 (2.58%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (9.39%) Terraform
2 120 (4.19%) .NET
3 109 (3.80%) REST
4 57 (1.99%) .NET Framework
5 45 (1.57%) LDAP
6 39 (1.36%) JSON
7 38 (1.33%) Middleware
7 38 (1.33%) WPF
8 28 (0.98%) ARM Templates
9 22 (0.77%) Software Packaging
9 22 (0.77%) Web Services
9 22 (0.77%) WinForms
10 21 (0.73%) .NET Core
11 20 (0.70%) XML
12 19 (0.66%) Kafka
13 18 (0.63%) HTML
13 18 (0.63%) YAML
14 17 (0.59%) CSS
14 17 (0.59%) React
14 17 (0.59%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 363 (12.67%) Onboarding
2 166 (5.79%) Data Centre
3 142 (4.96%) PKI
4 104 (3.63%) Management Information System
5 87 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
6 80 (2.79%) Cloud Native
7 77 (2.69%) Video Conferencing
8 76 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
9 68 (2.37%) Driving Licence
10 67 (2.34%) Clustering
11 63 (2.20%) Security Posture
12 58 (2.02%) Replication
13 50 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
14 42 (1.47%) CMDB
15 38 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
16 37 (1.29%) Operational Technology
17 36 (1.26%) Virtual Team
18 32 (1.12%) Enterprise Storage
19 31 (1.08%) Public Cloud
20 30 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 817 (28.52%) Windows Server
2 690 (24.08%) Linux
3 528 (18.43%) Windows 10
4 178 (6.21%) macOS
5 131 (4.57%) Apple iOS
6 129 (4.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 124 (4.33%) Android
8 100 (3.49%) Unix
9 72 (2.51%) Windows Server 2019
10 48 (1.68%) Ubuntu
11 40 (1.40%) Windows 7
11 40 (1.40%) Windows Server 2012
12 38 (1.33%) CentOS
13 33 (1.15%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (0.66%) Solaris
15 16 (0.56%) AIX
16 15 (0.52%) Rocky
16 15 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
17 14 (0.49%) VMS
18 11 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 673 (23.49%) Problem-Solving
2 554 (19.34%) ITIL
3 484 (16.89%) Customer Service
4 394 (13.75%) ITSM
5 373 (13.02%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 353 (12.32%) Migration
7 350 (12.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 311 (10.86%) Service Management
9 301 (10.51%) DevOps
10 284 (9.91%) Infrastructure as Code
11 282 (9.84%) CI/CD
12 258 (9.01%) Stakeholder Management
13 241 (8.41%) Agile
14 221 (7.71%) Root Cause Analysis
15 216 (7.54%) Change Management
16 212 (7.40%) Disaster Recovery
17 210 (7.33%) Cybersecurity
18 178 (6.21%) Validation
19 177 (6.18%) Technical Leadership
20 164 (5.72%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 728 (25.41%) PowerShell
2 316 (11.03%) Python
3 267 (9.32%) SQL
4 191 (6.67%) Bash
5 139 (4.85%) C#
6 71 (2.48%) Java
7 65 (2.27%) T-SQL
8 62 (2.16%) JavaScript
9 58 (2.02%) Bicep
10 43 (1.50%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.29%) C++
12 28 (0.98%) VB
13 25 (0.87%) VBScript
14 19 (0.66%) Groovy
15 17 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.56%) Perl
16 16 (0.56%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.45%) Go
18 11 (0.38%) VBA
19 10 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 913 (31.87%) Security Cleared
2 528 (18.43%) SC Cleared
3 383 (13.37%) DV Cleared
4 276 (9.63%) Degree
5 107 (3.73%) Microsoft Certification
6 85 (2.97%) Azure Certification
7 64 (2.23%) Cisco Certification
7 64 (2.23%) CISSP
8 63 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
9 59 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
10 53 (1.85%) AWS Certification
11 46 (1.61%) A+ Certification
12 42 (1.47%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 35 (1.22%) CISM
13 35 (1.22%) DBS Check
13 35 (1.22%) ITIL Certification
14 33 (1.15%) CCNP
15 29 (1.01%) CCNA
16 26 (0.91%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 23 (0.80%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 155 (5.41%) SLA
2 101 (3.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 78 (2.72%) NIST
4 74 (2.58%) QA
5 36 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
6 30 (1.05%) PCI DSS
7 28 (0.98%) NCSC
8 19 (0.66%) GDPR
9 17 (0.59%) GRC
10 16 (0.56%) Accessibility
10 16 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 12 (0.42%) Data Quality
11 12 (0.42%) WCAG
12 11 (0.38%) ISO 31000
13 10 (0.35%) GxP
14 9 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 8 (0.28%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.28%) PMO
16 7 (0.24%) 21 CFR Part 11
16 7 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,228 (42.86%) Active Directory
2 441 (15.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 193 (6.74%) Hyper-V
4 143 (4.99%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.61%) vSphere
6 123 (4.29%) Docker
7 97 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
8 94 (3.28%) Virtual Desktop
9 68 (2.37%) VMware NSX
10 36 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 30 (1.05%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 20 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.52%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.42%) NFS
16 12 (0.42%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 8 (0.28%) KVM
Systems Management
1 447 (15.60%) Microsoft Intune
2 340 (11.87%) SCCM
3 222 (7.75%) Ansible
4 155 (5.41%) Kubernetes
5 113 (3.94%) vCenter Server
6 96 (3.35%) SCOM
7 44 (1.54%) Jamf Pro
8 39 (1.36%) Grafana
9 37 (1.29%) WSUS
10 34 (1.19%) Prometheus
11 29 (1.01%) Progress Chef
12 28 (0.98%) WMI
13 27 (0.94%) Puppet
14 26 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
15 25 (0.87%) NetBackup
16 24 (0.84%) VxRail
17 21 (0.73%) Nagios
18 19 (0.66%) Packer
19 18 (0.63%) FortiGate
20 17 (0.59%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,436 (50.12%) Microsoft
2 576 (20.10%) VMware
3 346 (12.08%) ServiceNow
4 201 (7.02%) Cisco
5 161 (5.62%) Oracle
6 158 (5.51%) Citrix
7 96 (3.35%) Apple
7 96 (3.35%) Splunk
8 87 (3.04%) CyberArk
8 87 (3.04%) Google
9 71 (2.48%) Red Hat
10 66 (2.30%) SolarWinds
11 56 (1.95%) Dell
12 55 (1.92%) BeyondTrust
13 49 (1.71%) Remedy
14 47 (1.64%) Palo Alto
15 43 (1.50%) HP
16 41 (1.43%) CrowdStrike
17 39 (1.36%) NetApp
18 38 (1.33%) Fortinet