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 21 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 22 21 14
Rank change year-on-year -1 -7 +1
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,488 2,369 3,667
As % of all contract jobs in England 7.93% 8.23% 9.90%
As % of the Operating Systems category 59.92% 58.68% 64.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,698 1,537 2,481
10th Percentile £163 £181 £158
25th Percentile £204 £228 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £385 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year -3.75% - -5.88%
75th Percentile £538 £556 £575
90th Percentile £630 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £390 £400 £400
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 250 85 220
10th Percentile £13.90 £15.22 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.69 £17.44 £17.66
Median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.02% +9.91% +10.00%
75th Percentile £43.75 £57.62 £51.83
90th Percentile £67.08 £74.00 £65.01
UK median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £22.00
% change year-on-year -9.02% +9.91% +10.00%

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 4,152 4,037 5,709
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 13.23% 14.02% 15.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,728 2,547 3,943
10th Percentile £176 £200 £180
25th Percentile £263 £313 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £608
90th Percentile £669 £699 £700
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 332 140 302
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.46 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.45 £18.34
Median hourly rate £25.15 £55.33 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -54.54% +70.23% +30.00%
75th Percentile £63.50 £68.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £71.03 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £41.75 £32.50
% change year-on-year -39.76% +28.46% +34.02%

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 21 December 2025.

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 21 December 2025.

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 21 December 2025. 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 -16 739 £438 +4.04% 183
South East 0 517 £365 -11.78% 334
North of England -3 414 £238 -31.93% 210
South West +4 314 £425 +6.25% 117
Midlands -2 311 £400 +23.08% 134
North West -2 238 £305 -12.86% 114
West Midlands -4 214 £449 +43.06% 82
East of England +2 196 £225 -25.00% 115
Yorkshire -14 147 £230 -35.26% 81
East Midlands 0 97 £220 -39.81% 52
North East +2 32 £188 -41.41% 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
1 208 (8.36%) Microsoft Exchange
2 171 (6.87%) SharePoint
3 70 (2.81%) Confluence
4 43 (1.73%) Apache
4 43 (1.73%) IIS
5 25 (1.00%) WebLogic
6 19 (0.76%) Skype for Business
7 18 (0.72%) WebSphere
8 16 (0.64%) JBoss
9 13 (0.52%) nginx
10 12 (0.48%) SharePoint Server
11 11 (0.44%) WebSphere Application Server
12 10 (0.40%) Exchange Server 2010
12 10 (0.40%) iPlanet
13 8 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.32%) Tuxedo
14 7 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2003
14 7 (0.28%) Exchange Server 2007
14 7 (0.28%) Office Communications Server
15 6 (0.24%) TPMS
Applications
1 234 (9.41%) Microsoft Office
2 80 (3.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.40%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 9 (0.36%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.080%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.080%) Windchill
8 1 (0.040%) Acrobat
8 1 (0.040%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.040%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.040%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.040%) InDesign
8 1 (0.040%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.040%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 21 (0.84%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (0.24%) assyst
3 5 (0.20%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
5 2 (0.080%) Eikon
5 2 (0.080%) Fidessa
5 2 (0.080%) ION MarketView
5 2 (0.080%) Maximo
5 2 (0.080%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.080%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.080%) SystmOne
5 2 (0.080%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.040%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.040%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.040%) Eze OMS
6 1 (0.040%) RMDS
6 1 (0.040%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 679 (27.29%) Microsoft 365
2 570 (22.91%) Azure
3 230 (9.24%) Entra ID
4 223 (8.96%) AWS
5 76 (3.05%) OneDrive
6 71 (2.85%) GCP
7 65 (2.61%) SaaS
8 49 (1.97%) Azure DevOps
8 49 (1.97%) IaaS
9 45 (1.81%) Google Workspace
10 40 (1.61%) GitHub
11 36 (1.45%) Power Platform
12 34 (1.37%) Azure Monitor
12 34 (1.37%) PaaS
13 31 (1.25%) Amazon S3
14 29 (1.17%) Virtual Private Cloud
15 28 (1.13%) Amazon EC2
16 27 (1.09%) Azure Sentinel
17 26 (1.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 25 (1.00%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 328 (13.18%) DNS
2 273 (10.97%) Firewall
3 199 (8.00%) DHCP
4 183 (7.36%) TCP/IP
5 158 (6.35%) VPN
6 86 (3.46%) LAN
6 86 (3.46%) Wi-Fi
7 84 (3.38%) WAN
8 82 (3.30%) Network Security
9 69 (2.77%) Wireless
10 61 (2.45%) VLAN
11 53 (2.13%) SSH
12 46 (1.85%) SAN
13 39 (1.57%) HTTP
14 31 (1.25%) FTP
15 30 (1.21%) Cisco IOS
16 29 (1.17%) SMTP
17 28 (1.13%) Internet
18 27 (1.09%) Skype
19 24 (0.96%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (4.38%) SQL Server
2 65 (2.61%) Oracle Database
3 60 (2.41%) Relational Database
4 47 (1.89%) MySQL
5 26 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (1.00%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
8 14 (0.56%) Power BI
9 12 (0.48%) Amazon Aurora
10 11 (0.44%) BigQuery
11 9 (0.36%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.32%) GIS
12 8 (0.32%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
13 7 (0.28%) RDBMS
13 7 (0.28%) SAP HANA
14 6 (0.24%) DB2
15 4 (0.16%) Oracle Database 10g
15 4 (0.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 3 (0.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 132 (5.31%) JIRA
2 84 (3.38%) Git
2 84 (3.38%) Jenkins
3 48 (1.93%) GitLab
4 39 (1.57%) Eclipse
5 30 (1.21%) MSI
6 24 (0.96%) Visual Studio
7 23 (0.92%) Android Studio
8 22 (0.88%) Browser DevTools
9 21 (0.84%) Xcode
10 18 (0.72%) Artifactory
10 18 (0.72%) Vagrant
11 17 (0.68%) Sonatype Nexus
12 16 (0.64%) Bitbucket
13 14 (0.56%) Bitbucket Server
13 14 (0.56%) CA Release Automation
14 12 (0.48%) Burp Suite
14 12 (0.48%) Metasploit
15 11 (0.44%) InstallShield
16 10 (0.40%) SonarQube
General
1 949 (38.14%) Social Skills
2 295 (11.86%) Finance
3 229 (9.20%) Public Sector
4 212 (8.52%) Analytical Skills
5 110 (4.42%) Banking
6 101 (4.06%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (3.01%) Legal
8 60 (2.41%) Organisational Skills
9 52 (2.09%) Military
10 49 (1.97%) Manufacturing
11 44 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 43 (1.73%) Presentation Skills
13 39 (1.57%) Retail
14 38 (1.53%) Telecoms
15 30 (1.21%) Aerospace
16 26 (1.05%) Front Office
17 24 (0.96%) Law
18 22 (0.88%) Marketing
19 18 (0.72%) Financial Institution
20 16 (0.64%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 407 (16.36%) Support Engineer
2 310 (12.46%) Analyst
3 306 (12.30%) IT Support
4 182 (7.32%) IT Engineer
5 153 (6.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 141 (5.67%) Desktop Support
7 136 (5.47%) IT Support Engineer
8 135 (5.43%) Support Analyst
8 135 (5.43%) Windows Engineer
9 134 (5.39%) Senior
10 129 (5.18%) Desktop Engineer
11 121 (4.86%) Architect
12 119 (4.78%) Deployment Engineer
13 116 (4.66%) 2nd Line Support
14 110 (4.42%) Technical Support
15 103 (4.14%) Desktop Support Engineer
16 93 (3.74%) Platform Engineer
17 92 (3.70%) Developer
18 78 (3.14%) IT Analyst
19 74 (2.97%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (2.77%) .NET
2 49 (1.97%) REST
3 44 (1.77%) LDAP
4 39 (1.57%) .NET Framework
4 39 (1.57%) Middleware
5 38 (1.53%) OAuth
6 37 (1.49%) React
6 37 (1.49%) SAML
7 35 (1.41%) AngularJS
8 33 (1.33%) WPF
9 30 (1.21%) OpenID
10 28 (1.13%) Web Services
11 27 (1.09%) CSS
12 26 (1.05%) Node.js
13 24 (0.96%) XML
14 23 (0.92%) Ajax
15 22 (0.88%) GraphQL
15 22 (0.88%) SOAP
16 19 (0.76%) Kafka
16 19 (0.76%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 111 (4.46%) Onboarding
2 85 (3.42%) Data Centre
2 85 (3.42%) PKI
3 75 (3.01%) Driving Licence
4 65 (2.61%) Replication
5 58 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
6 56 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
7 55 (2.21%) Management Information System
8 47 (1.89%) Smartphone
9 38 (1.53%) Security Posture
10 32 (1.29%) NHS
11 31 (1.25%) Hybrid Cloud
12 30 (1.21%) Video Conferencing
13 29 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
14 28 (1.13%) Clustering
15 27 (1.09%) iPhone
16 26 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
17 24 (0.96%) Mobile App
18 22 (0.88%) Legacy Systems
18 22 (0.88%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 621 (24.96%) Linux
2 559 (22.47%) Windows 10
3 499 (20.06%) Windows Server
4 167 (6.71%) Unix
5 146 (5.87%) Mac OS
6 137 (5.51%) Android
7 99 (3.98%) Apple iOS
8 69 (2.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 58 (2.33%) Windows Server 2016
10 49 (1.97%) Windows 7
10 49 (1.97%) Windows Server 2019
11 40 (1.61%) Windows Server 2012
12 32 (1.29%) VMS
13 31 (1.25%) Windows Server 2003
14 28 (1.13%) AIX
15 26 (1.05%) Ubuntu
16 18 (0.72%) Amazon Linux
17 14 (0.56%) Solaris
17 14 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
18 13 (0.52%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 435 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
2 377 (15.15%) ITIL
3 376 (15.11%) Customer Service
4 238 (9.57%) Agile
5 236 (9.49%) Migration
6 220 (8.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 217 (8.72%) DevOps
8 197 (7.92%) Service Management
9 185 (7.44%) ITSM
10 184 (7.40%) CI/CD
11 165 (6.63%) Cybersecurity
12 164 (6.59%) Continuous Improvement
13 150 (6.03%) Change Management
14 137 (5.51%) User Experience
15 106 (4.26%) Stakeholder Management
16 102 (4.10%) Incident Response
17 101 (4.06%) Disaster Recovery
18 100 (4.02%) Computer Science
18 100 (4.02%) Infrastructure as Code
18 100 (4.02%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 481 (19.33%) PowerShell
2 314 (12.62%) Python
3 248 (9.97%) SQL
4 126 (5.06%) Java
5 120 (4.82%) C#
6 110 (4.42%) Bash
7 84 (3.38%) JavaScript
8 75 (3.01%) Perl
9 65 (2.61%) C++
10 41 (1.65%) PL/SQL
11 34 (1.37%) Shell Script
12 30 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
13 29 (1.17%) Groovy
13 29 (1.17%) VB
14 27 (1.09%) T-SQL
15 26 (1.05%) VBScript
16 25 (1.00%) VBA
17 13 (0.52%) PHP
18 12 (0.48%) Bicep
18 12 (0.48%) C
Qualifications
1 774 (31.11%) Security Cleared
2 520 (20.90%) SC Cleared
3 243 (9.77%) Degree
4 210 (8.44%) DV Cleared
5 163 (6.55%) Microsoft Certification
6 75 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
7 61 (2.45%) Azure Certification
8 48 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
9 47 (1.89%) MCSE
10 43 (1.73%) A+ Certification
11 35 (1.41%) AWS Certification
11 35 (1.41%) ITIL Certification
12 32 (1.29%) CISSP
13 29 (1.17%) CCNA
14 28 (1.13%) CCNP
14 28 (1.13%) DBS Check
15 25 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
15 25 (1.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 21 (0.84%) CompTIA Security+
16 21 (0.84%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (3.46%) SLA
2 73 (2.93%) GDPR
3 65 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 59 (2.37%) QA
5 49 (1.97%) NIST
6 22 (0.88%) PCI DSS
7 12 (0.48%) NCSC
8 11 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.36%) HIPAA
10 7 (0.28%) PMO
11 6 (0.24%) GLBA
12 5 (0.20%) Accessibility
13 4 (0.16%) NIST 800
13 4 (0.16%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.16%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.12%) ECSS
14 3 (0.12%) MiFID
14 3 (0.12%) SEPA
15 2 (0.080%) COBIT
15 2 (0.080%) Data Quality
System Software
1 929 (37.34%) Active Directory
2 231 (9.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 107 (4.30%) Docker
4 81 (3.26%) Hyper-V
5 58 (2.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 49 (1.97%) Virtual Machines
7 47 (1.89%) vSphere
8 40 (1.61%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (1.29%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.84%) DFS Replication
11 19 (0.76%) BitLocker
12 16 (0.64%) Firmware
12 16 (0.64%) Terminal Services
13 14 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
14 13 (0.52%) NFS
15 10 (0.40%) Dovecot
15 10 (0.40%) Postfix
15 10 (0.40%) Squid
16 8 (0.32%) Tivoli Directory Server
Systems Management
1 364 (14.63%) SCCM
2 276 (11.09%) Microsoft Intune
3 159 (6.39%) Terraform
4 120 (4.82%) Ansible
5 80 (3.22%) Kubernetes
6 60 (2.41%) vCenter Server
7 46 (1.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
9 41 (1.65%) Jamf Pro
10 37 (1.49%) Grafana
11 27 (1.09%) SCOM
12 26 (1.05%) Nessus
12 26 (1.05%) WSUS
13 24 (0.96%) Prometheus
14 20 (0.80%) Microsoft Clustering
15 17 (0.68%) Progress Chef
16 16 (0.64%) Proxmox
17 14 (0.56%) NetBackup
18 13 (0.52%) Packer
18 13 (0.52%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,076 (43.25%) Microsoft
2 324 (13.02%) VMware
3 244 (9.81%) ServiceNow
4 197 (7.92%) Oracle
5 158 (6.35%) Citrix
6 157 (6.31%) Cisco
7 125 (5.02%) Splunk
8 69 (2.77%) Apple
9 66 (2.65%) Red Hat
10 61 (2.45%) HP
11 58 (2.33%) Dell
12 53 (2.13%) IBM
13 51 (2.05%) Google
14 50 (2.01%) Veeam
15 47 (1.89%) SolarWinds
16 40 (1.61%) CyberArk
17 37 (1.49%) AppDynamics
17 37 (1.49%) SAP
18 36 (1.45%) Remedy
19 35 (1.41%) NetApp