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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 20 18
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,850 2,327 2,769
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.14% 8.38% 8.47%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.43% 60.82% 59.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,822 1,586 1,818
10th Percentile £173 £165 £180
25th Percentile £225 £213 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £416 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -5.88% -1.16%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £656 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 284 202 150
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.16 £13.87
25th Percentile £18.38 £18.10 £16.32
Median hourly rate £25.77 £21.38 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +20.53% -10.17% -4.80%
75th Percentile £65.42 £41.62 £64.88
90th Percentile £77.20 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +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 4,565 3,826 4,686
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.83% 13.78% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,915 2,525 2,996
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £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 346 246 235
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £15.22
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.59 £20.15
Median hourly rate £38.61 £25.15 £57.25
Median % change year-on-year +53.52% -56.07% +22.62%
75th Percentile £68.00 £59.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.75 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £49.25
% change year-on-year +9.34% -48.93% +5.48%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -10 956 £420 -1.18% 976
South East -8 555 £492 +19.88% 469
North of England -4 510 £325 - 331
North West +5 306 £335 - 184
Midlands -17 289 £391 +11.32% 290
South West -16 278 £500 +33.33% 221
East of England +1 240 £240 -31.43% 215
West Midlands -24 192 £402 +0.50% 188
Yorkshire -22 168 £279 +16.04% 104
East Midlands +4 95 £273 +21.11% 102
North East -26 40 £275 - 49
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
1 242 (8.49%) SharePoint
2 231 (8.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 59 (2.07%) IIS
4 52 (1.82%) Confluence
5 19 (0.67%) nginx
5 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.60%) Apache
7 11 (0.39%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.21%) Documentum
10 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.18%) Appian
10 5 (0.18%) Camunda
10 5 (0.18%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
12 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
13 2 (0.070%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 2 (0.070%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 191 (6.70%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.14%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.11%) Houdini
7 3 (0.11%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.11%) NUKE
8 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 55 (1.93%) 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 (0.070%) 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
1 929 (32.60%) Microsoft 365
2 896 (31.44%) Azure
3 478 (16.77%) Entra ID
4 313 (10.98%) AWS
5 139 (4.88%) OneDrive
6 104 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
7 96 (3.37%) GCP
8 73 (2.56%) SaaS
9 72 (2.53%) Azure Monitor
10 63 (2.21%) GitHub
11 61 (2.14%) Power Platform
12 60 (2.11%) IaaS
13 45 (1.58%) PaaS
14 39 (1.37%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.95%) Google Workspace
16 26 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
17 23 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
18 22 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
19 21 (0.74%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 449 (15.75%) DNS
2 323 (11.33%) DHCP
3 315 (11.05%) Firewall
4 239 (8.39%) VPN
5 228 (8.00%) TCP/IP
6 118 (4.14%) WAN
6 118 (4.14%) Wi-Fi
7 112 (3.93%) LAN
8 90 (3.16%) Network Security
9 84 (2.95%) SAN
9 84 (2.95%) VLAN
10 48 (1.68%) SSL
11 46 (1.61%) Wireless
12 39 (1.37%) Internet
12 39 (1.37%) NAS
13 35 (1.23%) Skype
14 33 (1.16%) VSAN
15 30 (1.05%) BGP
16 28 (0.98%) VoIP
17 25 (0.88%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (8.91%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.93%) Oracle Database
3 51 (1.79%) Power BI
4 29 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 28 (0.98%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
6 24 (0.84%) Relational Database
7 22 (0.77%) MySQL
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
9 11 (0.39%) RDBMS
10 10 (0.35%) Db2
11 9 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) MongoDB
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 147 (5.16%) JIRA
2 67 (2.35%) Git
3 47 (1.65%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.58%) MSI
5 44 (1.54%) GitLab
6 29 (1.02%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.53%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.53%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.46%) Artifactory
9 10 (0.35%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.18%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
12 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
12 5 (0.18%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,054 (36.98%) Social Skills
2 346 (12.14%) Finance
3 345 (12.11%) Analytical Skills
4 148 (5.19%) Banking
5 131 (4.60%) Public Sector
6 108 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
7 76 (2.67%) Legal
8 70 (2.46%) Organisational Skills
9 63 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.96%) Manufacturing
11 50 (1.75%) Telecoms
12 48 (1.68%) Retail
13 41 (1.44%) Front Office
14 40 (1.40%) Law
15 38 (1.33%) Military
16 36 (1.26%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.98%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.88%) French Language
19 24 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
20 21 (0.74%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 467 (16.39%) Support Engineer
2 395 (13.86%) IT Support
3 307 (10.77%) IT Engineer
4 298 (10.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 255 (8.95%) IT Support Engineer
6 250 (8.77%) Analyst
7 231 (8.11%) Senior
8 124 (4.35%) Desktop Support
9 121 (4.25%) 2nd Line Support
10 116 (4.07%) Desktop Engineer
11 110 (3.86%) Lead
12 109 (3.82%) Cloud Engineer
13 105 (3.68%) Architect
14 99 (3.47%) Windows Engineer
15 94 (3.30%) Support Analyst
16 85 (2.98%) Developer
17 79 (2.77%) 1st Line Support
18 77 (2.70%) Consultant
19 75 (2.63%) IT Analyst
20 73 (2.56%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (8.56%) Terraform
2 114 (4.00%) .NET
3 102 (3.58%) REST
4 57 (2.00%) .NET Framework
5 38 (1.33%) LDAP
6 36 (1.26%) JSON
6 36 (1.26%) Middleware
7 34 (1.19%) WPF
8 26 (0.91%) WinForms
9 24 (0.84%) ARM Templates
9 24 (0.84%) Software Packaging
10 20 (0.70%) HTML
10 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
11 19 (0.67%) .NET Core
11 19 (0.67%) CSS
12 18 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
13 17 (0.60%) Web Services
13 17 (0.60%) XML
14 16 (0.56%) Node.js
14 16 (0.56%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 353 (12.39%) Onboarding
2 156 (5.47%) Data Centre
3 141 (4.95%) PKI
4 97 (3.40%) Management Information System
5 84 (2.95%) Hybrid Cloud
6 76 (2.67%) Clustering
7 75 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
8 71 (2.49%) Cloud Native
9 69 (2.42%) Video Conferencing
10 60 (2.11%) Replication
11 59 (2.07%) Driving Licence
12 55 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
13 54 (1.89%) Security Posture
14 40 (1.40%) Virtual Team
15 39 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
16 35 (1.23%) CMDB
16 35 (1.23%) Enterprise Storage
17 33 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
18 31 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
18 31 (1.09%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 796 (27.93%) Windows Server
2 684 (24.00%) Linux
3 517 (18.14%) Windows 10
4 189 (6.63%) Mac OS
5 134 (4.70%) Apple iOS
6 126 (4.42%) Android
7 125 (4.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 106 (3.72%) Unix
9 66 (2.32%) Windows Server 2019
10 50 (1.75%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.61%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 37 (1.30%) CentOS
14 34 (1.19%) Windows Server 2016
15 19 (0.67%) VMS
16 18 (0.63%) AIX
17 17 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
18 16 (0.56%) Solaris
19 15 (0.53%) Rocky
20 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 688 (24.14%) Problem-Solving
2 541 (18.98%) ITIL
3 476 (16.70%) Customer Service
4 382 (13.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 379 (13.30%) ITSM
6 343 (12.04%) Migration
7 329 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
8 285 (10.00%) Service Management
9 282 (9.89%) DevOps
10 254 (8.91%) CI/CD
11 248 (8.70%) Infrastructure as Code
12 243 (8.53%) Agile
13 221 (7.75%) Stakeholder Management
14 205 (7.19%) Change Management
15 204 (7.16%) Root Cause Analysis
16 189 (6.63%) Disaster Recovery
17 180 (6.32%) Cybersecurity
18 162 (5.68%) Technical Leadership
19 160 (5.61%) Incident Management
20 159 (5.58%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 718 (25.19%) PowerShell
2 312 (10.95%) Python
3 278 (9.75%) SQL
4 176 (6.18%) Bash
5 137 (4.81%) C#
6 62 (2.18%) Java
7 61 (2.14%) JavaScript
7 61 (2.14%) T-SQL
8 51 (1.79%) PL/SQL
9 50 (1.75%) Bicep
10 34 (1.19%) C++
11 30 (1.05%) VB
12 25 (0.88%) VBScript
13 17 (0.60%) TypeScript
14 16 (0.56%) Perl
15 15 (0.53%) Search Processing Language
16 14 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 13 (0.46%) VBA
18 10 (0.35%) Groovy
19 9 (0.32%) Go
Qualifications
1 912 (32.00%) Security Cleared
2 535 (18.77%) SC Cleared
3 371 (13.02%) DV Cleared
4 285 (10.00%) Degree
5 114 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (3.23%) Azure Certification
7 71 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
9 62 (2.18%) CISSP
10 54 (1.89%) AWS Certification
11 52 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
12 48 (1.68%) A+ Certification
13 45 (1.58%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 33 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 31 (1.09%) CCNP
15 31 (1.09%) CISM
16 30 (1.05%) CCNA
17 29 (1.02%) DBS Check
18 28 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
19 26 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (5.33%) SLA
2 111 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 82 (2.88%) NIST
4 76 (2.67%) QA
5 38 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.95%) NCSC
7 22 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 21 (0.74%) GDPR
9 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
9 15 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 14 (0.49%) GRC
10 14 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 12 (0.42%) Data Quality
11 12 (0.42%) WCAG
12 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 9 (0.32%) GxP
13 9 (0.32%) ISO 31000
14 8 (0.28%) PMO
15 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,197 (42.00%) Active Directory
2 443 (15.54%) VMware Infrastructure
3 194 (6.81%) Hyper-V
4 150 (5.26%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.63%) vSphere
6 111 (3.89%) Docker
7 104 (3.65%) Virtual Machines
8 85 (2.98%) Virtual Desktop
9 78 (2.74%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.30%) BitLocker
11 27 (0.95%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 15 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.49%) NFS
15 13 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
16 12 (0.42%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.42%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 9 (0.32%) KVM
19 6 (0.21%) Squid
Systems Management
1 428 (15.02%) Microsoft Intune
2 320 (11.23%) SCCM
3 216 (7.58%) Ansible
4 146 (5.12%) Kubernetes
5 123 (4.32%) vCenter Server
6 97 (3.40%) SCOM
7 48 (1.68%) Jamf Pro
8 43 (1.51%) WSUS
9 31 (1.09%) Grafana
10 29 (1.02%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.98%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 26 (0.91%) WMI
13 25 (0.88%) VxRail
14 24 (0.84%) Puppet
15 23 (0.81%) Nagios
16 22 (0.77%) Packer
17 21 (0.74%) NetBackup
18 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Clustering
19 19 (0.67%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,381 (48.46%) Microsoft
2 583 (20.46%) VMware
3 337 (11.82%) ServiceNow
4 198 (6.95%) Cisco
5 163 (5.72%) Oracle
6 155 (5.44%) Citrix
7 97 (3.40%) Apple
8 94 (3.30%) Splunk
9 89 (3.12%) CyberArk
10 78 (2.74%) Google
11 70 (2.46%) Red Hat
12 69 (2.42%) SolarWinds
13 64 (2.25%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (2.07%) Remedy
15 53 (1.86%) Dell
16 49 (1.72%) HP
17 40 (1.40%) BMC
17 40 (1.40%) NetApp
18 37 (1.30%) Palo Alto
19 36 (1.26%) Meraki