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

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 16
Rank change year-on-year -6 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,533 2,136 3,377
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.89% 8.63% 8.91%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.89% 60.51% 64.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,697 1,508 2,294
10th Percentile £161 £181 £156
25th Percentile £204 £230 £208
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £408 £413 £385
Median % change year-on-year -1.21% +7.14% -14.44%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £640 £675 £654
UK median daily rate £405 £425 £400
% change year-on-year -4.71% +6.25% -9.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 83 267
10th Percentile £13.39 £15.23 £12.15
25th Percentile £16.59 £16.95 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.48 £21.28 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +0.94% +20.09% -20.93%
75th Percentile £41.94 £33.88 £25.14
90th Percentile £66.42 £68.15 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £21.46 £22.50 £17.86
% change year-on-year -4.62% +25.98% -18.82%

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 4,160 3,530 5,274
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 11.31% 14.27% 13.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,748 2,381 3,577
10th Percentile £180 £200 £179
25th Percentile £275 £313 £270
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +5.56% -13.46%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £588
90th Percentile £669 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £447 £475 £453
% change year-on-year -5.89% +4.86% -12.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 311 129 374
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.45 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.38 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.58 £29.00 £22.21
Median % change year-on-year -22.16% +30.56% -16.18%
75th Percentile £60.00 £66.00 £59.00
90th Percentile £68.75 £71.05 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £22.80 £28.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year -18.58% +24.44% -15.09%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 16 March 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 -17 764 £439 +3.24% 201
South East -3 529 £428 -7.57% 295
North of England -8 483 £275 -21.63% 194
South West -6 261 £450 -14.29% 115
North West -8 261 £260 -28.28% 119
Midlands -15 261 £320 -1.54% 117
East of England +4 214 £238 +5.32% 96
Yorkshire -12 194 £325 -18.75% 60
West Midlands -26 154 £450 +36.36% 58
East Midlands 0 104 £200 -20.00% 58
North East -10 31 £184 -38.75% 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
1 217 (8.57%) Microsoft Exchange
2 164 (6.47%) SharePoint
3 56 (2.21%) Confluence
4 40 (1.58%) IIS
5 21 (0.83%) Apache
6 20 (0.79%) WebLogic
7 13 (0.51%) Skype for Business
8 11 (0.43%) Tuxedo
9 10 (0.39%) TPMS
10 5 (0.20%) nginx
10 5 (0.20%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 3 (0.12%) SAS
12 3 (0.12%) SharePoint Server
13 2 (0.079%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.079%) CMS
13 2 (0.079%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 210 (8.29%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.20%) Acrobat
6 5 (0.20%) PTC Creo
7 4 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.079%) InDesign
9 1 (0.039%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.039%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.039%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.039%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 28 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.28%) Teamcenter
4 5 (0.20%) assyst
5 4 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 2 (0.079%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 2 (0.079%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.079%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.079%) SystmOne
8 1 (0.039%) Aladdin
8 1 (0.039%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.039%) Eikon
8 1 (0.039%) Fidessa
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.039%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.039%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 738 (29.14%) Microsoft 365
2 634 (25.03%) Azure
3 272 (10.74%) Entra ID
4 178 (7.03%) AWS
5 87 (3.43%) OneDrive
6 66 (2.61%) SaaS
7 63 (2.49%) GCP
8 55 (2.17%) Azure DevOps
9 51 (2.01%) Google Workspace
10 46 (1.82%) IaaS
11 43 (1.70%) GitHub
12 41 (1.62%) Power Platform
13 38 (1.50%) PaaS
14 28 (1.11%) Azure Monitor
15 23 (0.91%) Azure Sentinel
16 22 (0.87%) AWS CloudFormation
17 21 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
18 18 (0.71%) OpenShift
19 17 (0.67%) Nutanix
20 16 (0.63%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 332 (13.11%) DNS
2 295 (11.65%) Firewall
3 220 (8.69%) DHCP
4 166 (6.55%) VPN
5 165 (6.51%) TCP/IP
6 143 (5.65%) LAN
7 141 (5.57%) WAN
8 135 (5.33%) Wi-Fi
9 72 (2.84%) Network Security
10 60 (2.37%) VLAN
10 60 (2.37%) Wireless
11 41 (1.62%) SAN
12 38 (1.50%) BGP
13 31 (1.22%) SSH
14 30 (1.18%) Skype
15 29 (1.14%) SSL
15 29 (1.14%) VoIP
16 28 (1.11%) Cisco ISE
16 28 (1.11%) Junos
16 28 (1.11%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (5.84%) SQL Server
2 45 (1.78%) Oracle Database
3 41 (1.62%) Relational Database
4 36 (1.42%) MySQL
5 22 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
6 17 (0.67%) Power BI
7 13 (0.51%) BigQuery
7 13 (0.51%) DB2
8 11 (0.43%) MongoDB
8 11 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
9 9 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
9 9 (0.36%) NoSQL
10 7 (0.28%) SAP HANA
11 6 (0.24%) Data Warehouse
11 6 (0.24%) GIS
12 5 (0.20%) Amazon RDS
12 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 4 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
13 4 (0.16%) Oracle Database 10g
Development Applications
1 157 (6.20%) JIRA
2 54 (2.13%) GitLab
2 54 (2.13%) Jenkins
3 46 (1.82%) Git
4 41 (1.62%) MSI
5 33 (1.30%) Visual Studio
6 26 (1.03%) Eclipse
7 17 (0.67%) Burp Suite
7 17 (0.67%) Metasploit
8 16 (0.63%) Android Studio
9 14 (0.55%) Artifactory
9 14 (0.55%) Xcode
10 12 (0.47%) Browser DevTools
11 10 (0.39%) Chocolatey
12 9 (0.36%) Bitbucket
13 8 (0.32%) JUnit
14 7 (0.28%) Robot Framework
14 7 (0.28%) Selenium
14 7 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
15 6 (0.24%) Toad
General
1 921 (36.36%) Social Skills
2 238 (9.40%) Finance
3 209 (8.25%) Analytical Skills
3 209 (8.25%) Public Sector
4 132 (5.21%) Banking
5 107 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
6 98 (3.87%) Legal
7 80 (3.16%) Organisational Skills
8 58 (2.29%) Military
9 43 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
10 39 (1.54%) Manufacturing
11 36 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 33 (1.30%) Retail
13 25 (0.99%) Law
13 25 (0.99%) Telecoms
14 20 (0.79%) Aerospace
14 20 (0.79%) Investment Banking
15 19 (0.75%) Local Government
16 16 (0.63%) Front Office
17 15 (0.59%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 355 (14.02%) Support Engineer
2 352 (13.90%) IT Support
3 328 (12.95%) Analyst
4 208 (8.21%) IT Engineer
5 175 (6.91%) IT Support Engineer
6 159 (6.28%) Architect
7 157 (6.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 152 (6.00%) Senior
9 144 (5.68%) Support Analyst
10 119 (4.70%) Desktop Support
11 112 (4.42%) Technical Support
12 109 (4.30%) 2nd Line Support
13 107 (4.22%) Desktop Engineer
14 103 (4.07%) Developer
15 97 (3.83%) Windows Engineer
16 83 (3.28%) Lead
17 82 (3.24%) IT Analyst
18 78 (3.08%) Desktop Support Engineer
19 70 (2.76%) IT Support Analyst
20 69 (2.72%) Deployment Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (3.08%) .NET
2 59 (2.33%) REST
3 47 (1.86%) .NET Framework
4 45 (1.78%) OAuth
5 42 (1.66%) SAML
6 39 (1.54%) LDAP
7 32 (1.26%) Middleware
8 29 (1.14%) Web Services
9 28 (1.11%) WPF
10 25 (0.99%) AngularJS
10 25 (0.99%) CSS
10 25 (0.99%) React
11 24 (0.95%) Kafka
11 24 (0.95%) Microsoft Graph
11 24 (0.95%) WinForms
12 22 (0.87%) 802.1X
12 22 (0.87%) OpenID
13 21 (0.83%) OAuth2
14 20 (0.79%) Node.js
15 19 (0.75%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 171 (6.75%) Onboarding
2 102 (4.03%) Data Centre
3 100 (3.95%) PKI
4 77 (3.04%) Enterprise Software
5 76 (3.00%) Driving Licence
6 67 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
7 56 (2.21%) Smartphone
8 53 (2.09%) Clustering
9 48 (1.89%) Replication
10 46 (1.82%) Management Information System
11 40 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
11 40 (1.58%) Security Posture
12 38 (1.50%) Product Ownership
13 33 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
13 33 (1.30%) Legacy Systems
13 33 (1.30%) NHS
14 31 (1.22%) CMDB
15 28 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
16 26 (1.03%) Virtual Team
17 23 (0.91%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 593 (23.41%) Linux
2 551 (21.75%) Windows Server
3 546 (21.56%) Windows 10
4 141 (5.57%) Android
5 130 (5.13%) Unix
6 127 (5.01%) Mac OS
7 111 (4.38%) Apple iOS
8 66 (2.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 60 (2.37%) Windows Server 2016
10 48 (1.89%) Windows 7
11 43 (1.70%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (1.42%) Windows Server 2012
13 33 (1.30%) AIX
14 30 (1.18%) Windows Server 2003
15 14 (0.55%) Ubuntu
16 13 (0.51%) VMS
17 12 (0.47%) Solaris
17 12 (0.47%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.43%) Mac OS X
19 8 (0.32%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 498 (19.66%) Problem-Solving
2 452 (17.84%) Customer Service
3 357 (14.09%) ITIL
4 271 (10.70%) Agile
5 251 (9.91%) Migration
6 240 (9.47%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 215 (8.49%) DevOps
8 209 (8.25%) ITSM
9 201 (7.94%) CI/CD
10 179 (7.07%) Cybersecurity
10 179 (7.07%) Service Management
11 177 (6.99%) Continuous Improvement
12 159 (6.28%) Change Management
13 148 (5.84%) Disaster Recovery
14 127 (5.01%) Stakeholder Management
15 124 (4.90%) High Availability
15 124 (4.90%) User Experience
16 113 (4.46%) Service Delivery
17 104 (4.11%) Infrastructure as Code
18 102 (4.03%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 511 (20.17%) PowerShell
2 264 (10.42%) Python
3 225 (8.88%) SQL
4 121 (4.78%) C#
5 104 (4.11%) Bash
6 88 (3.47%) Java
7 75 (2.96%) JavaScript
8 54 (2.13%) C++
9 48 (1.89%) Perl
9 48 (1.89%) PL/SQL
10 39 (1.54%) T-SQL
11 32 (1.26%) Kusto Query Language
12 23 (0.91%) VB
13 22 (0.87%) VBScript
14 19 (0.75%) Shell Script
15 14 (0.55%) VBA
16 12 (0.47%) Bicep
17 11 (0.43%) Go
17 11 (0.43%) TypeScript
18 10 (0.39%) C
Qualifications
1 808 (31.90%) Security Cleared
2 532 (21.00%) SC Cleared
3 259 (10.23%) Degree
4 229 (9.04%) DV Cleared
5 125 (4.93%) Microsoft Certification
6 76 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 61 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
8 43 (1.70%) Azure Certification
8 43 (1.70%) MCSE
9 35 (1.38%) CISSP
10 33 (1.30%) ITIL Certification
11 31 (1.22%) CCNA
12 29 (1.14%) AWS Certification
13 28 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
14 26 (1.03%) CCNP
15 22 (0.87%) MCSA
16 21 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
16 21 (0.83%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 20 (0.79%) A+ Certification
18 19 (0.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (3.63%) GDPR
2 87 (3.43%) SLA
3 81 (3.20%) QA
4 77 (3.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 51 (2.01%) NIST
6 40 (1.58%) PCI DSS
7 22 (0.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 15 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.51%) MiFID
9 13 (0.51%) PMO
10 12 (0.47%) NCSC
11 10 (0.39%) FINRA
11 10 (0.39%) GLBA
12 9 (0.36%) NIST 800
13 7 (0.28%) Data Quality
14 4 (0.16%) GxP
14 4 (0.16%) HIPAA
14 4 (0.16%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.12%) COBIT
15 3 (0.12%) GMP
System Software
1 944 (37.27%) Active Directory
2 252 (9.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 106 (4.18%) Hyper-V
4 96 (3.79%) Docker
5 60 (2.37%) vSphere
6 56 (2.21%) Virtual Machines
7 50 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
8 49 (1.93%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (1.11%) VMware NSX
10 27 (1.07%) BitLocker
11 26 (1.03%) Firmware
12 25 (0.99%) Microsoft App-V
13 16 (0.63%) KVM
14 8 (0.32%) XenDesktop
15 7 (0.28%) Terminal Services
15 7 (0.28%) XenApp
16 6 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
17 4 (0.16%) etcd
17 4 (0.16%) NFS
17 4 (0.16%) Snort
Systems Management
1 340 (13.42%) Microsoft Intune
2 305 (12.04%) SCCM
3 157 (6.20%) Terraform
4 142 (5.61%) Ansible
5 121 (4.78%) Kubernetes
6 63 (2.49%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (2.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 56 (2.21%) vCenter Server
9 36 (1.42%) Jamf Pro
10 32 (1.26%) FortiGate
11 27 (1.07%) Grafana
12 24 (0.95%) SCOM
13 23 (0.91%) WSUS
14 21 (0.83%) Prometheus
15 17 (0.67%) WMI
16 16 (0.63%) Nmap
16 16 (0.63%) Progress Chef
16 16 (0.63%) Puppet
17 15 (0.59%) Nessus
18 12 (0.47%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,087 (42.91%) Microsoft
2 352 (13.90%) VMware
3 231 (9.12%) ServiceNow
4 193 (7.62%) Citrix
5 154 (6.08%) Oracle
6 145 (5.72%) Cisco
7 114 (4.50%) Splunk
8 64 (2.53%) HP
9 62 (2.45%) Red Hat
10 60 (2.37%) SolarWinds
11 58 (2.29%) Dell
12 56 (2.21%) Google
13 45 (1.78%) Apple
13 45 (1.78%) IBM
14 44 (1.74%) Remedy
15 43 (1.70%) Juniper
16 40 (1.58%) Veeam
17 35 (1.38%) CyberArk
18 32 (1.26%) F5
19 29 (1.14%) SAP