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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -6
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,841 2,350 2,699
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.14% 8.40% 8.36%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.73% 60.29% 58.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,807 1,591 1,714
10th Percentile £181 £163 £183
25th Percentile £225 £206 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £568 £540 £575
90th Percentile £668 £638 £638
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 224 131
10th Percentile £16.25 £14.48 £15.22
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.69 £18.08
Median hourly rate £25.77 £21.73 £24.20
Median % change year-on-year +18.59% -10.21% -3.20%
75th Percentile £65.00 £35.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.43 £65.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £22.38 £24.18
% change year-on-year +15.05% -7.43% +7.47%

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 4,529 3,898 4,588
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.79% 13.93% 14.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,893 2,553 2,843
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £275 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £672 £688
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 348 277 215
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £22.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.00% -58.33% +28.51%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +2.47% -52.55% +21.14%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -7 960 £423 -0.59% 1,032
South East -7 561 £482 +31.99% 386
North of England -8 493 £344 +13.27% 328
North West 0 292 £352 +8.34% 180
Midlands -14 290 £402 +0.50% 253
South West -18 265 £550 +57.14% 210
East of England 0 245 £222 -36.71% 201
West Midlands -22 200 £425 +6.25% 144
Yorkshire -12 161 £275 +25.00% 112
East Midlands +2 89 £275 +22.22% 109
North East -26 44 £273 +22.06% 43
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
1 238 (8.38%) SharePoint
2 217 (7.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 60 (2.11%) IIS
4 56 (1.97%) Confluence
5 26 (0.92%) nginx
6 20 (0.70%) Apache
7 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.46%) 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%) CICS
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.11%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
Applications
1 191 (6.72%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
4 12 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.035%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 48 (1.69%) Remedy ITSM
2 9 (0.32%) 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
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.11%) ResourceLink
6 3 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 2 (0.070%) assyst
7 2 (0.070%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.035%) Dynamics NAV
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-CA
8 1 (0.035%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.035%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.035%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 930 (32.73%) Microsoft 365
2 888 (31.26%) Azure
3 498 (17.53%) Entra ID
4 314 (11.05%) AWS
5 136 (4.79%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
6 103 (3.63%) GCP
7 77 (2.71%) Azure Monitor
8 64 (2.25%) GitHub
8 64 (2.25%) SaaS
9 58 (2.04%) Power Platform
10 53 (1.87%) IaaS
11 43 (1.51%) Azure Sentinel
12 39 (1.37%) PaaS
13 29 (1.02%) AWS CloudFormation
14 27 (0.95%) Google Workspace
15 26 (0.92%) OpenShift
16 25 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
17 22 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
18 21 (0.74%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 450 (15.84%) DNS
2 319 (11.23%) DHCP
3 318 (11.19%) Firewall
4 247 (8.69%) VPN
5 234 (8.24%) TCP/IP
6 115 (4.05%) Wi-Fi
7 105 (3.70%) LAN
7 105 (3.70%) WAN
8 99 (3.48%) Network Security
9 81 (2.85%) SAN
10 77 (2.71%) VLAN
11 51 (1.80%) Wireless
12 47 (1.65%) SSL
13 38 (1.34%) Internet
14 37 (1.30%) BGP
15 34 (1.20%) NAS
15 34 (1.20%) Skype
16 31 (1.09%) VoIP
17 30 (1.06%) SSH
18 26 (0.92%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 252 (8.87%) SQL Server
2 54 (1.90%) Oracle Database
3 50 (1.76%) Power BI
4 31 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
5 29 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
5 29 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 23 (0.81%) MySQL
7 22 (0.77%) Relational Database
8 15 (0.53%) Db2
9 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
11 9 (0.32%) Data Warehouse
11 9 (0.32%) RDBMS
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
13 7 (0.25%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 142 (5.00%) JIRA
2 74 (2.60%) Git
3 59 (2.08%) Jenkins
4 53 (1.87%) GitLab
5 48 (1.69%) MSI
6 33 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.53%) Artifactory
7 15 (0.53%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 11 (0.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.25%) Rational DOORS
12 6 (0.21%) Robot Framework
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 6 (0.21%) SonarQube
12 6 (0.21%) Zephyr
13 5 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
13 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 5 (0.18%) Toad
14 4 (0.14%) Chocolatey
General
1 1,046 (36.82%) Social Skills
2 354 (12.46%) Finance
3 336 (11.83%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (5.14%) Banking
5 130 (4.58%) Public Sector
6 103 (3.63%) Documentation Skills
7 74 (2.60%) Legal
8 68 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 68 (2.39%) Organisational Skills
9 59 (2.08%) Manufacturing
10 49 (1.72%) Telecoms
11 46 (1.62%) Retail
12 41 (1.44%) Front Office
13 40 (1.41%) Law
14 37 (1.30%) Military
15 33 (1.16%) Investment Banking
16 25 (0.88%) Financial Institution
17 24 (0.84%) Spanish Language
18 23 (0.81%) Aerospace
19 22 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 475 (16.72%) Support Engineer
2 388 (13.66%) IT Support
3 303 (10.67%) IT Engineer
4 287 (10.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 255 (8.98%) IT Support Engineer
6 239 (8.41%) Analyst
7 234 (8.24%) Senior
8 130 (4.58%) Desktop Support
9 123 (4.33%) 2nd Line Support
9 123 (4.33%) Desktop Engineer
10 112 (3.94%) Cloud Engineer
11 108 (3.80%) Lead
12 107 (3.77%) Architect
13 99 (3.48%) Windows Engineer
14 86 (3.03%) Support Analyst
15 83 (2.92%) Developer
16 80 (2.82%) Consultant
17 77 (2.71%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 74 (2.60%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
19 71 (2.50%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (9.33%) Terraform
2 121 (4.26%) .NET
3 109 (3.84%) REST
4 58 (2.04%) .NET Framework
5 45 (1.58%) LDAP
6 40 (1.41%) JSON
7 39 (1.37%) Middleware
7 39 (1.37%) WPF
8 28 (0.99%) ARM Templates
9 23 (0.81%) WinForms
10 22 (0.77%) Software Packaging
10 22 (0.77%) Web Services
11 21 (0.74%) .NET Core
12 19 (0.67%) Kafka
12 19 (0.67%) XML
13 18 (0.63%) HTML
13 18 (0.63%) YAML
14 17 (0.60%) CSS
14 17 (0.60%) React
14 17 (0.60%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 367 (12.92%) Onboarding
2 166 (5.84%) Data Centre
3 142 (5.00%) PKI
4 103 (3.63%) Management Information System
5 86 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
6 82 (2.89%) Enterprise Software
7 76 (2.68%) Cloud Native
8 75 (2.64%) Video Conferencing
9 69 (2.43%) Clustering
10 68 (2.39%) Driving Licence
11 60 (2.11%) Security Posture
12 56 (1.97%) Replication
13 49 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
14 39 (1.37%) CMDB
15 38 (1.34%) Virtual Team
16 37 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
17 35 (1.23%) Operational Technology
18 31 (1.09%) Enterprise Storage
18 31 (1.09%) Public Cloud
19 30 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 814 (28.65%) Windows Server
2 695 (24.46%) Linux
3 516 (18.16%) Windows 10
4 178 (6.27%) Mac OS
5 130 (4.58%) Apple iOS
6 129 (4.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 124 (4.36%) Android
8 105 (3.70%) Unix
9 70 (2.46%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.65%) Ubuntu
11 42 (1.48%) Windows 7
12 39 (1.37%) CentOS
13 38 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
14 33 (1.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 18 (0.63%) Solaris
16 16 (0.56%) AIX
17 15 (0.53%) Rocky
17 15 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
18 13 (0.46%) VMS
19 11 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 676 (23.79%) Problem-Solving
2 546 (19.22%) ITIL
3 476 (16.75%) Customer Service
4 391 (13.76%) ITSM
5 372 (13.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 355 (12.50%) Migration
7 344 (12.11%) Continuous Improvement
8 302 (10.63%) Service Management
9 296 (10.42%) DevOps
10 282 (9.93%) CI/CD
11 279 (9.82%) Infrastructure as Code
12 249 (8.76%) Stakeholder Management
13 239 (8.41%) Agile
14 218 (7.67%) Change Management
14 218 (7.67%) Root Cause Analysis
15 212 (7.46%) Disaster Recovery
16 204 (7.18%) Cybersecurity
17 176 (6.20%) Technical Leadership
18 175 (6.16%) Validation
19 161 (5.67%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 733 (25.80%) PowerShell
2 324 (11.40%) Python
3 271 (9.54%) SQL
4 191 (6.72%) Bash
5 144 (5.07%) C#
6 67 (2.36%) Java
7 66 (2.32%) T-SQL
8 62 (2.18%) JavaScript
9 56 (1.97%) Bicep
10 44 (1.55%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.30%) C++
12 29 (1.02%) VB
13 25 (0.88%) VBScript
14 18 (0.63%) Groovy
15 17 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.56%) Perl
17 15 (0.53%) TypeScript
18 12 (0.42%) Go
18 12 (0.42%) VBA
19 9 (0.32%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 906 (31.89%) Security Cleared
2 522 (18.37%) SC Cleared
3 380 (13.38%) DV Cleared
4 280 (9.86%) Degree
5 106 (3.73%) Microsoft Certification
6 86 (3.03%) Azure Certification
7 66 (2.32%) Cisco Certification
8 64 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
9 63 (2.22%) CISSP
10 57 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (1.90%) AWS Certification
12 46 (1.62%) A+ Certification
13 42 (1.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 35 (1.23%) DBS Check
15 34 (1.20%) CCNP
15 34 (1.20%) CISM
16 33 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
17 29 (1.02%) CCNA
18 26 (0.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 23 (0.81%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (5.35%) SLA
2 106 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 84 (2.96%) NIST
4 72 (2.53%) QA
5 36 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
6 28 (0.99%) NCSC
7 26 (0.92%) PCI DSS
8 19 (0.67%) GDPR
9 17 (0.60%) GRC
10 16 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
12 12 (0.42%) WCAG
13 11 (0.39%) Data Quality
13 11 (0.39%) ISO 31000
14 10 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 9 (0.32%) GxP
16 8 (0.28%) HIPAA
16 8 (0.28%) PMO
17 6 (0.21%) ISO 9001
17 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,213 (42.70%) Active Directory
2 437 (15.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 194 (6.83%) Hyper-V
4 140 (4.93%) VMware ESXi
5 128 (4.51%) vSphere
6 122 (4.29%) Docker
7 96 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
8 94 (3.31%) Virtual Desktop
9 68 (2.39%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.30%) BitLocker
11 30 (1.06%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 20 (0.70%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.53%) 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 9 (0.32%) KVM
Systems Management
1 435 (15.31%) Microsoft Intune
2 331 (11.65%) SCCM
3 222 (7.81%) Ansible
4 154 (5.42%) Kubernetes
5 112 (3.94%) vCenter Server
6 96 (3.38%) SCOM
7 43 (1.51%) Jamf Pro
8 38 (1.34%) Grafana
9 36 (1.27%) WSUS
10 34 (1.20%) Prometheus
11 30 (1.06%) Progress Chef
12 28 (0.99%) WMI
13 27 (0.95%) Puppet
14 25 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
15 24 (0.84%) NetBackup
15 24 (0.84%) VxRail
16 21 (0.74%) Nagios
17 20 (0.70%) Packer
18 19 (0.67%) FortiGate
19 17 (0.60%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,412 (49.70%) Microsoft
2 571 (20.10%) VMware
3 336 (11.83%) ServiceNow
4 202 (7.11%) Cisco
5 165 (5.81%) Oracle
6 154 (5.42%) Citrix
7 97 (3.41%) CyberArk
8 95 (3.34%) Apple
9 92 (3.24%) Splunk
10 85 (2.99%) Google
11 70 (2.46%) Red Hat
12 67 (2.36%) SolarWinds
13 65 (2.29%) BeyondTrust
14 54 (1.90%) Dell
15 52 (1.83%) Remedy
16 46 (1.62%) Palo Alto
17 42 (1.48%) HP
18 40 (1.41%) CrowdStrike
19 39 (1.37%) NetApp
20 38 (1.34%) Fortinet