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 25 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 20 17
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,748 2,294 2,836
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.02% 8.33% 8.53%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.27% 61.14% 60.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,769 1,553 1,897
10th Percentile £170 £170 £179
25th Percentile £225 £220 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £415 £408 £438
Median % change year-on-year +1.84% -6.86% +0.57%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £663 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £410 £430
% change year-on-year +3.66% -4.65% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 238 195 195
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.28 £11.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.44 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.59
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -12.60% -4.04%
75th Percentile £55.88 £30.00 £59.38
90th Percentile £74.30 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £21.28 £22.00
% change year-on-year +12.78% -3.27% -2.22%

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 4,413 3,752 4,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.66% 13.62% 14.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,835 2,473 3,086
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £310 £306 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £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 306 242 281
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.51 £12.38
25th Percentile £19.22 £18.19 £17.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £24.00 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +35.42% -33.64% -10.32%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.08 £30.00
% change year-on-year +2.77% -16.42% -29.41%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 -12 922 £425 +0.59% 233
South East -8 569 £475 -3.26% 309
North of England -4 506 £325 - 195
North West +3 298 £328 -6.43% 89
South West -14 281 £475 +35.71% 122
Midlands -18 262 £393 -1.88% 141
East of England -5 191 £335 +5.43% 133
Yorkshire -16 180 £313 - 76
West Midlands -28 166 £425 -4.49% 96
East Midlands +5 92 £273 +36.25% 45
North East -31 32 £260 -0.95% 40
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
1 231 (8.41%) SharePoint
2 230 (8.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 56 (2.04%) IIS
4 55 (2.00%) Confluence
5 18 (0.66%) nginx
5 18 (0.66%) Skype for Business
6 15 (0.55%) Apache
7 11 (0.40%) Tomcat
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.22%) Documentum
11 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Camunda
12 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
14 2 (0.073%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 2 (0.073%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 173 (6.30%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (2.29%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.073%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.073%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.036%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.036%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.036%) InDesign
8 1 (0.036%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 57 (2.07%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.36%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.073%) assyst
8 1 (0.036%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.036%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.036%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.036%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.036%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.036%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.036%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.036%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.036%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 898 (32.68%) Microsoft 365
2 878 (31.95%) Azure
3 446 (16.23%) Entra ID
4 307 (11.17%) AWS
5 131 (4.77%) OneDrive
6 101 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
7 88 (3.20%) GCP
8 74 (2.69%) Azure Monitor
9 69 (2.51%) SaaS
10 62 (2.26%) Power Platform
11 61 (2.22%) GitHub
12 59 (2.15%) IaaS
13 45 (1.64%) PaaS
14 41 (1.49%) Azure Sentinel
15 28 (1.02%) OpenShift
16 26 (0.95%) Google Workspace
17 25 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
18 24 (0.87%) Azure AKS
19 23 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
20 21 (0.76%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 438 (15.94%) DNS
2 320 (11.64%) Firewall
3 316 (11.50%) DHCP
4 233 (8.48%) VPN
5 208 (7.57%) TCP/IP
6 131 (4.77%) WAN
7 128 (4.66%) LAN
8 125 (4.55%) Wi-Fi
9 87 (3.17%) SAN
10 81 (2.95%) VLAN
11 76 (2.77%) Network Security
12 43 (1.56%) NAS
13 41 (1.49%) SSL
14 39 (1.42%) Internet
14 39 (1.42%) VSAN
14 39 (1.42%) Wireless
15 34 (1.24%) Skype
16 30 (1.09%) BGP
17 27 (0.98%) VoIP
18 25 (0.91%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 256 (9.32%) SQL Server
2 50 (1.82%) Oracle Database
2 50 (1.82%) Power BI
3 24 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 23 (0.84%) Relational Database
5 21 (0.76%) MySQL
6 20 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (0.55%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 15 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 11 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
8 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
8 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
9 10 (0.36%) Db2
10 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
11 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
12 5 (0.18%) Big Data
12 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
12 5 (0.18%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 155 (5.64%) JIRA
2 66 (2.40%) Git
3 46 (1.67%) MSI
4 43 (1.56%) Jenkins
5 37 (1.35%) GitLab
6 24 (0.87%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.58%) Bitbucket
8 10 (0.36%) Eclipse
9 9 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.33%) Selenium
10 7 (0.25%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.22%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
13 4 (0.15%) Claude Code
13 4 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
13 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
14 3 (0.11%) Appium
General
1 1,008 (36.68%) Social Skills
2 340 (12.37%) Finance
3 334 (12.15%) Analytical Skills
4 152 (5.53%) Banking
5 139 (5.06%) Public Sector
6 98 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (2.73%) Legal
8 73 (2.66%) Organisational Skills
9 62 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 53 (1.93%) Retail
11 51 (1.86%) Manufacturing
12 42 (1.53%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.49%) Front Office
14 34 (1.24%) Law
15 33 (1.20%) Investment Banking
16 32 (1.16%) Military
17 28 (1.02%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.91%) French Language
19 24 (0.87%) Financial Institution
20 20 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 447 (16.27%) Support Engineer
2 379 (13.79%) IT Support
3 299 (10.88%) IT Engineer
4 285 (10.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 249 (9.06%) IT Support Engineer
6 236 (8.59%) Analyst
7 219 (7.97%) Senior
8 124 (4.51%) 2nd Line Support
9 122 (4.44%) Desktop Support
10 106 (3.86%) Desktop Engineer
11 103 (3.75%) Cloud Engineer
11 103 (3.75%) Lead
12 100 (3.64%) Architect
13 93 (3.38%) Support Analyst
14 87 (3.17%) Developer
15 86 (3.13%) Windows Engineer
16 81 (2.95%) Consultant
17 78 (2.84%) 1st Line Support
18 75 (2.73%) IT Analyst
19 72 (2.62%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (8.88%) Terraform
2 112 (4.08%) .NET
3 98 (3.57%) REST
4 63 (2.29%) .NET Framework
5 30 (1.09%) Middleware
6 29 (1.06%) LDAP
6 29 (1.06%) WPF
7 28 (1.02%) JSON
8 25 (0.91%) WinForms
9 22 (0.80%) ARM Templates
10 21 (0.76%) CSS
10 21 (0.76%) Software Packaging
11 20 (0.73%) HTML
12 19 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
12 19 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
13 18 (0.66%) .NET Core
13 18 (0.66%) Kafka
14 17 (0.62%) RESTful
14 17 (0.62%) SAML
15 16 (0.58%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 332 (12.08%) Onboarding
2 147 (5.35%) Data Centre
3 144 (5.24%) PKI
4 86 (3.13%) Management Information System
5 84 (3.06%) Clustering
6 79 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
7 71 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
8 68 (2.47%) Cloud Native
9 65 (2.37%) Video Conferencing
10 64 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
11 56 (2.04%) Driving Licence
12 53 (1.93%) Replication
13 44 (1.60%) Security Posture
14 43 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
15 40 (1.46%) Virtual Team
16 37 (1.35%) Enterprise Storage
17 36 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
18 35 (1.27%) CMDB
19 31 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
20 29 (1.06%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 738 (26.86%) Windows Server
2 660 (24.02%) Linux
3 498 (18.12%) Windows 10
4 181 (6.59%) Mac OS
5 122 (4.44%) Apple iOS
6 119 (4.33%) Android
7 107 (3.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 101 (3.68%) Unix
9 66 (2.40%) Windows Server 2019
10 49 (1.78%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.67%) Windows 7
12 40 (1.46%) Windows Server 2016
13 37 (1.35%) Windows Server 2012
14 30 (1.09%) CentOS
15 24 (0.87%) AIX
16 21 (0.76%) VMS
17 17 (0.62%) Windows Server 2008
18 15 (0.55%) Solaris
19 11 (0.40%) Debian
19 11 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 672 (24.45%) Problem-Solving
2 514 (18.70%) ITIL
3 445 (16.19%) Customer Service
4 364 (13.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 364 (13.25%) ITSM
5 323 (11.75%) Migration
6 293 (10.66%) Continuous Improvement
7 269 (9.79%) DevOps
8 257 (9.35%) Service Management
9 234 (8.52%) Agile
10 232 (8.44%) CI/CD
11 228 (8.30%) Infrastructure as Code
12 199 (7.24%) Change Management
13 184 (6.70%) Stakeholder Management
14 172 (6.26%) Disaster Recovery
15 168 (6.11%) High Availability
16 164 (5.97%) Root Cause Analysis
17 163 (5.93%) Cybersecurity
18 157 (5.71%) Service Delivery
19 153 (5.57%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 693 (25.22%) PowerShell
2 303 (11.03%) Python
3 276 (10.04%) SQL
4 165 (6.00%) Bash
5 131 (4.77%) C#
6 64 (2.33%) Java
7 58 (2.11%) JavaScript
8 49 (1.78%) T-SQL
9 47 (1.71%) Bicep
10 44 (1.60%) PL/SQL
11 36 (1.31%) C++
12 28 (1.02%) VB
13 26 (0.95%) VBScript
14 24 (0.87%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.62%) Perl
16 16 (0.58%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 11 (0.40%) C
18 11 (0.40%) VBA
19 10 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 868 (31.59%) Security Cleared
2 523 (19.03%) SC Cleared
3 329 (11.97%) DV Cleared
4 282 (10.26%) Degree
5 108 (3.93%) Microsoft Certification
6 82 (2.98%) Azure Certification
7 73 (2.66%) Cisco Certification
7 73 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
8 59 (2.15%) CISSP
9 52 (1.89%) AWS Certification
10 49 (1.78%) A+ Certification
11 44 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
12 39 (1.42%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 31 (1.13%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 29 (1.06%) CCNA
15 28 (1.02%) CCNP
16 26 (0.95%) DBS Check
16 26 (0.95%) MCSE
17 25 (0.91%) CISM
17 25 (0.91%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 145 (5.28%) SLA
2 110 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 80 (2.91%) NIST
3 80 (2.91%) QA
4 29 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
5 27 (0.98%) NCSC
6 23 (0.84%) GDPR
7 22 (0.80%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (0.51%) Accessibility
10 13 (0.47%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.40%) GRC
11 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.40%) WCAG
12 10 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 9 (0.33%) PMO
14 7 (0.25%) GxP
14 7 (0.25%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,145 (41.67%) Active Directory
2 411 (14.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 174 (6.33%) Hyper-V
4 136 (4.95%) VMware ESXi
5 122 (4.44%) vSphere
6 102 (3.71%) Docker
7 90 (3.28%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.98%) VMware NSX
9 81 (2.95%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (1.46%) BitLocker
11 33 (1.20%) Firmware
12 22 (0.80%) vCloud
13 17 (0.62%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
15 10 (0.36%) KVM
16 9 (0.33%) XenApp
16 9 (0.33%) XenDesktop
17 8 (0.29%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 7 (0.25%) NFS
18 7 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 408 (14.85%) Microsoft Intune
2 291 (10.59%) SCCM
3 214 (7.79%) Ansible
4 146 (5.31%) Kubernetes
5 117 (4.26%) vCenter Server
6 79 (2.87%) SCOM
7 46 (1.67%) WSUS
8 44 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
9 31 (1.13%) Progress Chef
9 31 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
10 27 (0.98%) FortiGate
11 26 (0.95%) Prometheus
11 26 (0.95%) Puppet
11 26 (0.95%) WMI
12 25 (0.91%) Grafana
13 24 (0.87%) Nagios
13 24 (0.87%) Packer
14 23 (0.84%) VxRail
15 20 (0.73%) Microsoft Clustering
15 20 (0.73%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,298 (47.23%) Microsoft
2 544 (19.80%) VMware
3 329 (11.97%) ServiceNow
4 177 (6.44%) Cisco
5 159 (5.79%) Citrix
6 155 (5.64%) Oracle
7 103 (3.75%) Splunk
8 94 (3.42%) Apple
9 86 (3.13%) CyberArk
10 72 (2.62%) Google
11 68 (2.47%) SolarWinds
12 62 (2.26%) HP
13 61 (2.22%) BeyondTrust
13 61 (2.22%) Remedy
14 60 (2.18%) Red Hat
15 48 (1.75%) Dell
16 47 (1.71%) BMC
17 40 (1.46%) NetApp
18 39 (1.42%) Meraki
19 37 (1.35%) Juniper