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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -7 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,775 2,280 2,793
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.08% 8.33% 8.52%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.23% 60.70% 59.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,796 1,546 1,860
10th Percentile £171 £170 £180
25th Percentile £225 £220 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £418 £410 £425
Median % change year-on-year +2.01% -3.65% -2.86%
75th Percentile £556 £572 £575
90th Percentile £653 £660 £653
UK median daily rate £425 £413 £425
% change year-on-year +3.03% -2.94% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 248 195 178
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.28 £11.44
25th Percentile £17.44 £17.79 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.75 £20.00 £21.70
Median % change year-on-year +28.75% -7.81% -7.68%
75th Percentile £60.08 £35.14 £59.69
90th Percentile £74.78 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.00 £22.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year +11.11% +2.27% -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 4,459 3,756 4,659
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.77% 13.72% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,868 2,478 3,038
10th Percentile £190 £191 £200
25th Percentile £310 £308 £332
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £451 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.39% -5.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £469 £460 £475
% change year-on-year +1.96% -3.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 314 242 263
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.51 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.05 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £32.50 £24.25 £39.50
Median % change year-on-year +34.02% -38.61% -7.06%
75th Percentile £67.47 £59.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.90 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £36.17
% change year-on-year +2.47% -30.46% -14.91%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -12 927 £425 -1.45% 897
South East -8 565 £475 -3.06% 409
North of England -4 506 £325 - 296
North West +4 308 £340 -3.00% 154
South West -15 279 £488 +35.42% 177
Midlands -17 275 £385 -3.75% 196
East of England -3 206 £275 -19.71% 204
West Midlands -24 176 £419 -5.90% 129
Yorkshire -15 167 £279 -3.13% 97
East Midlands -1 95 £275 +37.50% 67
North East -27 35 £270 -1.82% 58
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
1 234 (8.43%) SharePoint
2 228 (8.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 57 (2.05%) IIS
4 54 (1.95%) Confluence
5 18 (0.65%) nginx
5 18 (0.65%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.61%) Apache
7 11 (0.40%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.22%) 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 (0.072%) SharePoint 2013
13 2 (0.072%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 179 (6.45%) Microsoft Office
2 64 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.072%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.036%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.036%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.036%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (2.02%) 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 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.072%) assyst
8 1 (0.036%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.036%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.036%) ResourceLink
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
1 916 (33.01%) Microsoft 365
2 880 (31.71%) Azure
3 458 (16.50%) Entra ID
4 310 (11.17%) AWS
5 137 (4.94%) OneDrive
6 105 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
7 92 (3.32%) GCP
8 76 (2.74%) Azure Monitor
9 70 (2.52%) SaaS
10 65 (2.34%) Power Platform
11 57 (2.05%) IaaS
12 56 (2.02%) GitHub
13 43 (1.55%) PaaS
14 41 (1.48%) Azure Sentinel
15 29 (1.05%) OpenShift
16 27 (0.97%) Google Workspace
17 26 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
18 20 (0.72%) Amazon EC2
18 20 (0.72%) Datadog
19 19 (0.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 445 (16.04%) DNS
2 322 (11.60%) DHCP
3 318 (11.46%) Firewall
4 231 (8.32%) VPN
5 209 (7.53%) TCP/IP
6 128 (4.61%) WAN
7 124 (4.47%) LAN
8 122 (4.40%) Wi-Fi
9 85 (3.06%) SAN
10 83 (2.99%) Network Security
11 82 (2.95%) VLAN
12 46 (1.66%) SSL
13 44 (1.59%) Wireless
14 41 (1.48%) Internet
14 41 (1.48%) NAS
15 38 (1.37%) VSAN
16 35 (1.26%) Skype
17 29 (1.05%) BGP
18 28 (1.01%) VoIP
19 24 (0.86%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 255 (9.19%) SQL Server
2 53 (1.91%) Oracle Database
2 53 (1.91%) Power BI
3 29 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 26 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
5 23 (0.83%) MySQL
5 23 (0.83%) Relational Database
6 20 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
8 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
9 10 (0.36%) Db2
9 10 (0.36%) Elasticsearch
10 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
11 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
12 6 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
14 3 (0.11%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 152 (5.48%) JIRA
2 62 (2.23%) Git
3 46 (1.66%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.62%) MSI
5 41 (1.48%) GitLab
6 19 (0.68%) Visual Studio
7 14 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 8 (0.29%) Artifactory
9 8 (0.29%) Eclipse
10 7 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.25%) Selenium
10 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
11 5 (0.18%) Chocolatey
11 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
11 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
11 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 4 (0.14%) Claude Code
12 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,021 (36.79%) Social Skills
2 343 (12.36%) Analytical Skills
3 337 (12.14%) Finance
4 146 (5.26%) Banking
5 132 (4.76%) Public Sector
6 102 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
7 78 (2.81%) Legal
8 70 (2.52%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 54 (1.95%) Manufacturing
11 49 (1.77%) Retail
12 46 (1.66%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.48%) Front Office
14 37 (1.33%) Law
15 34 (1.23%) Investment Banking
16 30 (1.08%) Military
17 28 (1.01%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.90%) French Language
19 24 (0.86%) Financial Institution
20 21 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 459 (16.54%) Support Engineer
2 385 (13.87%) IT Support
3 307 (11.06%) IT Engineer
4 289 (10.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 255 (9.19%) IT Support Engineer
6 233 (8.40%) Analyst
7 227 (8.18%) Senior
8 122 (4.40%) 2nd Line Support
8 122 (4.40%) Desktop Support
9 110 (3.96%) Desktop Engineer
10 109 (3.93%) Lead
11 103 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
12 101 (3.64%) Architect
13 95 (3.42%) Windows Engineer
14 92 (3.32%) Support Analyst
15 80 (2.88%) Developer
16 79 (2.85%) 1st Line Support
17 78 (2.81%) Consultant
18 73 (2.63%) IT Analyst
19 72 (2.59%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 242 (8.72%) Terraform
2 110 (3.96%) .NET
3 99 (3.57%) REST
4 61 (2.20%) .NET Framework
5 30 (1.08%) Middleware
6 29 (1.05%) LDAP
6 29 (1.05%) WPF
7 28 (1.01%) JSON
8 24 (0.86%) ARM Templates
9 22 (0.79%) Software Packaging
9 22 (0.79%) WinForms
10 20 (0.72%) CSS
10 20 (0.72%) HTML
11 19 (0.68%) .NET Core
11 19 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
11 19 (0.68%) Kafka
11 19 (0.68%) Microsoft Graph
12 17 (0.61%) XML
13 16 (0.58%) SAML
14 15 (0.54%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 345 (12.43%) Onboarding
2 149 (5.37%) Data Centre
3 143 (5.15%) PKI
4 93 (3.35%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.95%) Clustering
6 81 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
7 72 (2.59%) Cloud Native
8 67 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
9 65 (2.34%) Video Conferencing
10 61 (2.20%) Replication
11 56 (2.02%) Driving Licence
12 55 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
13 49 (1.77%) Security Posture
14 41 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
15 40 (1.44%) Virtual Team
16 37 (1.33%) CMDB
17 35 (1.26%) Enterprise Storage
18 34 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
19 31 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
19 31 (1.12%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 778 (28.04%) Windows Server
2 660 (23.78%) Linux
3 497 (17.91%) Windows 10
4 182 (6.56%) Mac OS
5 122 (4.40%) Apple iOS
6 118 (4.25%) Android
7 117 (4.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 104 (3.75%) Unix
9 68 (2.45%) Windows Server 2019
10 50 (1.80%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.66%) Windows 7
12 37 (1.33%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.30%) Windows Server 2016
14 35 (1.26%) CentOS
15 22 (0.79%) AIX
16 21 (0.76%) VMS
17 17 (0.61%) Windows Server 2008
18 15 (0.54%) Solaris
19 14 (0.50%) Rocky
20 11 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 672 (24.22%) Problem-Solving
2 532 (19.17%) ITIL
3 451 (16.25%) Customer Service
4 375 (13.51%) ITSM
5 370 (13.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 326 (11.75%) Migration
7 308 (11.10%) Continuous Improvement
8 275 (9.91%) Service Management
9 273 (9.84%) DevOps
10 235 (8.47%) Infrastructure as Code
11 231 (8.32%) Agile
12 230 (8.29%) CI/CD
13 202 (7.28%) Change Management
13 202 (7.28%) Stakeholder Management
14 181 (6.52%) Root Cause Analysis
15 176 (6.34%) Disaster Recovery
16 161 (5.80%) Cybersecurity
16 161 (5.80%) Incident Management
17 160 (5.77%) High Availability
18 158 (5.69%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 705 (25.41%) PowerShell
2 301 (10.85%) Python
3 273 (9.84%) SQL
4 171 (6.16%) Bash
5 123 (4.43%) C#
6 60 (2.16%) Java
7 57 (2.05%) T-SQL
8 54 (1.95%) JavaScript
9 48 (1.73%) Bicep
10 46 (1.66%) PL/SQL
11 29 (1.05%) VB
12 26 (0.94%) VBScript
13 25 (0.90%) C++
14 22 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.61%) Perl
16 16 (0.58%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.54%) Shell Script
18 12 (0.43%) VBA
19 8 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
20 7 (0.25%) C
Qualifications
1 882 (31.78%) Security Cleared
2 522 (18.81%) SC Cleared
3 349 (12.58%) DV Cleared
4 284 (10.23%) Degree
5 112 (4.04%) Microsoft Certification
6 90 (3.24%) Azure Certification
7 71 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
8 69 (2.49%) Cisco Certification
9 63 (2.27%) CISSP
10 53 (1.91%) AWS Certification
11 49 (1.77%) A+ Certification
12 48 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
13 46 (1.66%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 32 (1.15%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 30 (1.08%) CCNP
16 29 (1.05%) CCNA
17 28 (1.01%) CISM
17 28 (1.01%) DBS Check
18 27 (0.97%) MCSE
19 25 (0.90%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 149 (5.37%) SLA
2 110 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 79 (2.85%) NIST
4 78 (2.81%) QA
5 32 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.97%) NCSC
7 22 (0.79%) PCI DSS
8 21 (0.76%) GDPR
9 15 (0.54%) Accessibility
9 15 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 14 (0.50%) Data Quality
11 12 (0.43%) WCAG
12 11 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.36%) GRC
14 8 (0.29%) GxP
14 8 (0.29%) PMO
15 7 (0.25%) ISO 31000
16 6 (0.22%) NIST 800
16 6 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,160 (41.80%) Active Directory
2 423 (15.24%) VMware Infrastructure
3 184 (6.63%) Hyper-V
4 146 (5.26%) VMware ESXi
5 126 (4.54%) vSphere
6 105 (3.78%) Docker
7 95 (3.42%) Virtual Machines
8 81 (2.92%) Virtual Desktop
8 81 (2.92%) VMware NSX
9 39 (1.41%) BitLocker
10 30 (1.08%) Firmware
11 24 (0.86%) vCloud
12 16 (0.58%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.50%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.40%) XenApp
15 10 (0.36%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 10 (0.36%) XenDesktop
16 9 (0.32%) KVM
17 7 (0.25%) NFS
18 6 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 408 (14.70%) Microsoft Intune
2 306 (11.03%) SCCM
3 213 (7.68%) Ansible
4 145 (5.23%) Kubernetes
5 120 (4.32%) vCenter Server
6 93 (3.35%) SCOM
7 47 (1.69%) WSUS
8 45 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
9 31 (1.12%) Progress Chef
9 31 (1.12%) Prometheus
10 29 (1.05%) Grafana
10 29 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
11 25 (0.90%) Puppet
11 25 (0.90%) WMI
12 24 (0.86%) FortiGate
13 23 (0.83%) Nagios
14 22 (0.79%) Packer
14 22 (0.79%) VxRail
15 20 (0.72%) Microsoft Clustering
15 20 (0.72%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,320 (47.57%) Microsoft
2 561 (20.22%) VMware
3 338 (12.18%) ServiceNow
4 190 (6.85%) Cisco
5 159 (5.73%) Oracle
6 154 (5.55%) Citrix
7 101 (3.64%) Splunk
8 98 (3.53%) Apple
9 87 (3.14%) CyberArk
10 76 (2.74%) Google
11 68 (2.45%) SolarWinds
12 67 (2.41%) Red Hat
13 62 (2.23%) BeyondTrust
14 60 (2.16%) Remedy
15 58 (2.09%) HP
16 49 (1.77%) Dell
17 45 (1.62%) BMC
18 41 (1.48%) NetApp
19 36 (1.30%) Meraki
20 35 (1.26%) Juniper