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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,837 2,310 2,781
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.15% 8.38% 8.48%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.52% 60.81% 59.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,805 1,573 1,814
10th Percentile £173 £163 £182
25th Percentile £225 £213 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £416 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £668 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 290 210 145
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.12 £14.33
25th Percentile £18.63 £17.84 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £21.38 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +20.53% -11.58% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.81 £41.46 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.60 £65.00 £66.50
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 4,538 3,799 4,712
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.84% 13.78% 14.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,885 2,502 2,997
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £310 £290 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £682
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 351 256 229
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £15.60
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.51 £21.00
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.08 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.54% -56.39% +21.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £60.31 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.50 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £28.00 £25.15 £51.25
% change year-on-year +11.33% -50.93% +11.70%

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 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 21 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 21 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 -7 953 £416 -2.12% 1,159
South East -7 557 £500 +24.88% 494
North of England -5 507 £325 +7.47% 341
North West +5 305 £344 +5.04% 188
Midlands -15 290 £400 +9.59% 303
South West -17 264 £528 +50.71% 224
East of England 0 244 £240 -31.43% 231
West Midlands -25 194 £402 +0.50% 194
Yorkshire -16 165 £225 +11.66% 110
East Midlands +3 95 £273 +21.11% 109
North East -25 42 £283 +7.62% 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
1 237 (8.35%) SharePoint
2 229 (8.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 57 (2.01%) IIS
4 52 (1.83%) Confluence
5 19 (0.67%) nginx
5 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.56%) Apache
7 10 (0.35%) 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
1 192 (6.77%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.19%) 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%) 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 (1.94%) 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
1 921 (32.46%) Microsoft 365
2 881 (31.05%) Azure
3 472 (16.64%) Entra ID
4 310 (10.93%) AWS
5 137 (4.83%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 100 (3.52%) GCP
8 73 (2.57%) SaaS
9 70 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
10 62 (2.19%) GitHub
11 60 (2.11%) Power Platform
12 58 (2.04%) IaaS
13 44 (1.55%) PaaS
14 38 (1.34%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.92%) OpenShift
17 24 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (0.85%) Google Workspace
18 22 (0.78%) Datadog
19 21 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 451 (15.90%) DNS
2 324 (11.42%) DHCP
3 314 (11.07%) Firewall
4 236 (8.32%) VPN
5 224 (7.90%) TCP/IP
6 116 (4.09%) Wi-Fi
7 115 (4.05%) WAN
8 110 (3.88%) LAN
9 93 (3.28%) Network Security
10 86 (3.03%) SAN
11 85 (3.00%) VLAN
12 49 (1.73%) Wireless
13 48 (1.69%) SSL
14 39 (1.37%) Internet
15 38 (1.34%) NAS
16 35 (1.23%) Skype
17 33 (1.16%) BGP
18 32 (1.13%) VSAN
19 29 (1.02%) VoIP
20 26 (0.92%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 254 (8.95%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.94%) Oracle Database
3 51 (1.80%) Power BI
4 29 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 27 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.81%) Relational Database
7 21 (0.74%) MySQL
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.39%) Db2
9 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
10 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
11 9 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.25%) MongoDB
14 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
15 4 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 143 (5.04%) JIRA
2 68 (2.40%) Git
3 48 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.66%) MSI
5 44 (1.55%) GitLab
6 32 (1.13%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.53%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.53%) Eclipse
8 12 (0.42%) Artifactory
9 11 (0.39%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
11 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 5 (0.18%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
12 5 (0.18%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
13 4 (0.14%) Zephyr
General
1 1,050 (37.01%) Social Skills
2 348 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
3 343 (12.09%) Finance
4 146 (5.15%) Banking
5 124 (4.37%) Public Sector
6 107 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (2.64%) Legal
8 68 (2.40%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 55 (1.94%) Manufacturing
11 50 (1.76%) Retail
12 49 (1.73%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.45%) Law
14 39 (1.37%) Front Office
14 39 (1.37%) Military
15 33 (1.16%) Investment Banking
16 26 (0.92%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.88%) French Language
18 24 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
19 22 (0.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 468 (16.50%) Support Engineer
2 397 (13.99%) IT Support
3 305 (10.75%) IT Engineer
4 299 (10.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 255 (8.99%) IT Support Engineer
6 244 (8.60%) Analyst
7 226 (7.97%) Senior
8 125 (4.41%) Desktop Support
9 121 (4.27%) 2nd Line Support
10 116 (4.09%) Desktop Engineer
11 109 (3.84%) Cloud Engineer
12 108 (3.81%) Lead
13 105 (3.70%) Architect
14 96 (3.38%) Windows Engineer
15 93 (3.28%) Support Analyst
16 85 (3.00%) Developer
17 77 (2.71%) Consultant
18 74 (2.61%) 1st Line Support
19 72 (2.54%) Service Analyst
20 71 (2.50%) Desktop Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (8.57%) Terraform
2 117 (4.12%) .NET
3 102 (3.60%) REST
4 57 (2.01%) .NET Framework
5 39 (1.37%) LDAP
6 37 (1.30%) WPF
7 36 (1.27%) JSON
8 35 (1.23%) Middleware
9 27 (0.95%) WinForms
10 23 (0.81%) ARM Templates
10 23 (0.81%) Software Packaging
11 21 (0.74%) .NET Core
12 19 (0.67%) HTML
12 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Graph
12 19 (0.67%) Web Services
13 18 (0.63%) CSS
13 18 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
14 17 (0.60%) RESTful
14 17 (0.60%) XML
15 16 (0.56%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 351 (12.37%) Onboarding
2 161 (5.68%) Data Centre
3 142 (5.01%) PKI
4 100 (3.52%) Management Information System
5 85 (3.00%) Hybrid Cloud
6 77 (2.71%) Clustering
7 75 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
8 70 (2.47%) Video Conferencing
9 69 (2.43%) Cloud Native
10 65 (2.29%) Driving Licence
11 58 (2.04%) Replication
12 55 (1.94%) Self-Motivation
13 54 (1.90%) Security Posture
14 41 (1.45%) Virtual Team
15 36 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
16 34 (1.20%) CMDB
16 34 (1.20%) Enterprise Storage
17 33 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
18 32 (1.13%) Operational Technology
19 31 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 801 (28.23%) Windows Server
2 686 (24.18%) Linux
3 510 (17.98%) Windows 10
4 186 (6.56%) Mac OS
5 131 (4.62%) Apple iOS
6 129 (4.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 125 (4.41%) Android
8 106 (3.74%) Unix
9 67 (2.36%) Windows Server 2019
10 51 (1.80%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.62%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.34%) CentOS
13 37 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
14 34 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 19 (0.67%) AIX
15 19 (0.67%) VMS
16 18 (0.63%) Solaris
17 17 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
18 15 (0.53%) Rocky
19 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 694 (24.46%) Problem-Solving
2 544 (19.18%) ITIL
3 476 (16.78%) Customer Service
4 384 (13.54%) ITSM
5 383 (13.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 346 (12.20%) Migration
7 331 (11.67%) Continuous Improvement
8 283 (9.98%) Service Management
9 276 (9.73%) DevOps
10 254 (8.95%) CI/CD
11 246 (8.67%) Infrastructure as Code
12 233 (8.21%) Agile
13 224 (7.90%) Stakeholder Management
14 207 (7.30%) Root Cause Analysis
15 206 (7.26%) Change Management
16 193 (6.80%) Disaster Recovery
17 179 (6.31%) Cybersecurity
18 163 (5.75%) Technical Leadership
19 161 (5.68%) Validation
20 160 (5.64%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 704 (24.81%) PowerShell
2 313 (11.03%) Python
3 277 (9.76%) SQL
4 180 (6.34%) Bash
5 141 (4.97%) C#
6 64 (2.26%) T-SQL
7 63 (2.22%) Java
8 60 (2.11%) JavaScript
9 49 (1.73%) Bicep
9 49 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 35 (1.23%) C++
11 30 (1.06%) VB
12 25 (0.88%) VBScript
13 17 (0.60%) Perl
14 16 (0.56%) TypeScript
15 15 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 13 (0.46%) Search Processing Language
16 13 (0.46%) VBA
17 11 (0.39%) Go
17 11 (0.39%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 903 (31.83%) Security Cleared
2 524 (18.47%) SC Cleared
3 375 (13.22%) DV Cleared
4 284 (10.01%) Degree
5 111 (3.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (3.24%) Azure Certification
7 68 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
7 68 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 64 (2.26%) CISSP
9 54 (1.90%) AWS Certification
10 52 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
11 49 (1.73%) A+ Certification
12 44 (1.55%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 33 (1.16%) CISM
13 33 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 32 (1.13%) DBS Check
15 31 (1.09%) ITIL Certification
16 30 (1.06%) CCNA
16 30 (1.06%) CCNP
17 26 (0.92%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 153 (5.39%) SLA
2 111 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 84 (2.96%) NIST
4 76 (2.68%) QA
5 39 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.95%) NCSC
7 22 (0.78%) PCI DSS
8 21 (0.74%) GDPR
9 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
9 15 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
9 15 (0.53%) GRC
9 15 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 12 (0.42%) WCAG
11 11 (0.39%) Data Quality
12 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.35%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.32%) GxP
14 8 (0.28%) PMO
15 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,190 (41.95%) Active Directory
2 443 (15.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 193 (6.80%) Hyper-V
4 151 (5.32%) VMware ESXi
5 133 (4.69%) vSphere
6 112 (3.95%) Docker
7 103 (3.63%) Virtual Machines
8 83 (2.93%) Virtual Desktop
9 77 (2.71%) VMware NSX
10 36 (1.27%) BitLocker
11 29 (1.02%) Firmware
12 24 (0.85%) vCloud
13 16 (0.56%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
15 14 (0.49%) NFS
16 12 (0.42%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.39%) XenApp
18 9 (0.32%) KVM
18 9 (0.32%) XenDesktop
19 6 (0.21%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 417 (14.70%) Microsoft Intune
2 317 (11.17%) SCCM
3 214 (7.54%) Ansible
4 148 (5.22%) Kubernetes
5 123 (4.34%) vCenter Server
6 99 (3.49%) SCOM
7 45 (1.59%) Jamf Pro
8 40 (1.41%) WSUS
9 33 (1.16%) Grafana
10 30 (1.06%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
12 27 (0.95%) Progress Chef
13 26 (0.92%) VxRail
13 26 (0.92%) WMI
14 25 (0.88%) Puppet
15 23 (0.81%) Nagios
15 23 (0.81%) NetBackup
16 21 (0.74%) Packer
17 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Clustering
18 19 (0.67%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,372 (48.36%) Microsoft
2 584 (20.59%) VMware
3 331 (11.67%) ServiceNow
4 199 (7.01%) Cisco
5 162 (5.71%) Oracle
6 156 (5.50%) Citrix
7 94 (3.31%) Apple
7 94 (3.31%) Splunk
8 90 (3.17%) CyberArk
9 78 (2.75%) Google
10 71 (2.50%) Red Hat
11 70 (2.47%) SolarWinds
12 64 (2.26%) BeyondTrust
13 59 (2.08%) Remedy
14 56 (1.97%) Dell
15 45 (1.59%) HP
16 41 (1.45%) NetApp
17 40 (1.41%) BMC
17 40 (1.41%) Palo Alto
18 36 (1.27%) Zscaler