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

 6 months to
24 Sep 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -7 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,863 2,329 2,743
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.15% 8.37% 8.42%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.50% 60.59% 58.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,821 1,578 1,771
10th Percentile £173 £164 £183
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 £645
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 295 220 139
10th Percentile £16.11 £15.12 £15.07
25th Percentile £19.11 £18.07 £17.44
Median hourly rate £25.77 £21.73 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +18.59% -10.13% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.22 £37.86 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.10 £65.00 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £22.58 £24.18
% change year-on-year +14.06% -6.64% -0.29%

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 4,581 3,844 4,660
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.83% 13.81% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,915 2,520 2,931
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £310 £289 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.42% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK median daily rate £470 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 270 222
10th Percentile £16.11 £15.50 £16.03
25th Percentile £19.42 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.08 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.54% -58.21% +25.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £58.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.80 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £53.00
% change year-on-year +6.00% -52.55% +15.52%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -7 963 £416 -2.12% 965
South East -8 562 £479 +27.80% 475
North of England -5 505 £325 +8.33% 334
North West +8 302 £344 +5.04% 193
Midlands -14 299 £400 +6.67% 312
South West -16 265 £533 +52.14% 216
East of England -1 247 £238 -32.14% 237
West Midlands -23 202 £402 +0.50% 198
Yorkshire -16 166 £245 +22.04% 109
East Midlands 0 96 £275 +22.22% 114
North East -29 42 £283 +13.00% 38
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
1 240 (8.38%) SharePoint
2 232 (8.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 58 (2.03%) IIS
4 53 (1.85%) Confluence
5 20 (0.70%) nginx
6 19 (0.66%) Skype for Business
7 16 (0.56%) Apache
8 10 (0.35%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.21%) Documentum
11 5 (0.17%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.17%) Appian
11 5 (0.17%) Camunda
11 5 (0.17%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.14%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.10%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.10%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 3 (0.10%) OpenStack
14 2 (0.070%) SAS
Applications
1 194 (6.78%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.14%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.10%) Houdini
7 3 (0.10%) 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 53 (1.85%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.35%) Finacle
3 7 (0.24%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
4 5 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
5 4 (0.14%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.10%) 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
1 937 (32.73%) Microsoft 365
2 892 (31.16%) Azure
3 483 (16.87%) Entra ID
4 316 (11.04%) AWS
5 139 (4.86%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
7 102 (3.56%) GCP
8 73 (2.55%) SaaS
9 71 (2.48%) Azure Monitor
10 63 (2.20%) GitHub
11 59 (2.06%) Power Platform
12 58 (2.03%) IaaS
13 44 (1.54%) PaaS
14 39 (1.36%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
17 24 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
17 24 (0.84%) Google Workspace
18 22 (0.77%) Datadog
19 21 (0.73%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 457 (15.96%) DNS
2 327 (11.42%) DHCP
3 315 (11.00%) Firewall
4 243 (8.49%) VPN
5 228 (7.96%) TCP/IP
6 116 (4.05%) Wi-Fi
7 114 (3.98%) WAN
8 110 (3.84%) LAN
9 93 (3.25%) Network Security
10 87 (3.04%) SAN
11 84 (2.93%) VLAN
12 51 (1.78%) Wireless
13 49 (1.71%) SSL
14 40 (1.40%) Internet
15 39 (1.36%) NAS
16 35 (1.22%) Skype
17 33 (1.15%) BGP
18 31 (1.08%) VSAN
19 29 (1.01%) VoIP
20 26 (0.91%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (8.77%) SQL Server
2 56 (1.96%) Oracle Database
3 50 (1.75%) Power BI
4 28 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 27 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.80%) Relational Database
7 22 (0.77%) MySQL
8 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 14 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.38%) Db2
9 11 (0.38%) Geospatial Data
10 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
11 9 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.24%) MongoDB
14 5 (0.17%) ObjectStore
15 4 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 142 (4.96%) JIRA
2 70 (2.44%) Git
3 49 (1.71%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.68%) MSI
5 46 (1.61%) GitLab
6 33 (1.15%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.52%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.52%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.45%) Artifactory
9 11 (0.38%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 10 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.24%) Rational DOORS
12 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
13 5 (0.17%) Chocolatey
13 5 (0.17%) Robot Framework
13 5 (0.17%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
14 4 (0.14%) Zephyr
General
1 1,063 (37.13%) Social Skills
2 351 (12.26%) Analytical Skills
2 351 (12.26%) Finance
3 150 (5.24%) Banking
4 126 (4.40%) Public Sector
5 108 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
6 75 (2.62%) Legal
7 70 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
8 67 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 56 (1.96%) Manufacturing
10 50 (1.75%) Telecoms
11 49 (1.71%) Retail
12 42 (1.47%) Front Office
13 40 (1.40%) Law
14 39 (1.36%) Military
15 34 (1.19%) Investment Banking
16 26 (0.91%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.87%) French Language
18 24 (0.84%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 472 (16.49%) Support Engineer
2 397 (13.87%) IT Support
3 305 (10.65%) IT Engineer
4 302 (10.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 256 (8.94%) IT Support Engineer
6 243 (8.49%) Analyst
7 229 (8.00%) Senior
8 129 (4.51%) Desktop Support
9 122 (4.26%) 2nd Line Support
10 119 (4.16%) Desktop Engineer
11 109 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
11 109 (3.81%) Lead
12 107 (3.74%) Architect
13 98 (3.42%) Windows Engineer
14 92 (3.21%) Support Analyst
15 85 (2.97%) Developer
16 76 (2.65%) Consultant
17 74 (2.58%) 1st Line Support
17 74 (2.58%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 73 (2.55%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (8.63%) Terraform
2 118 (4.12%) .NET
3 104 (3.63%) REST
4 57 (1.99%) .NET Framework
5 40 (1.40%) LDAP
6 38 (1.33%) Middleware
6 38 (1.33%) WPF
7 37 (1.29%) JSON
8 28 (0.98%) WinForms
9 23 (0.80%) ARM Templates
9 23 (0.80%) Software Packaging
10 21 (0.73%) .NET Core
11 19 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
11 19 (0.66%) HTML
11 19 (0.66%) Microsoft Graph
11 19 (0.66%) Web Services
12 18 (0.63%) CSS
13 17 (0.59%) RESTful
13 17 (0.59%) SAML
13 17 (0.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 361 (12.61%) Onboarding
2 163 (5.69%) Data Centre
3 143 (4.99%) PKI
4 101 (3.53%) Management Information System
5 87 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
6 76 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
7 75 (2.62%) Clustering
8 71 (2.48%) Cloud Native
9 70 (2.44%) Video Conferencing
10 67 (2.34%) Driving Licence
11 59 (2.06%) Replication
12 55 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
13 54 (1.89%) Security Posture
14 40 (1.40%) Virtual Team
15 37 (1.29%) CMDB
16 36 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
17 33 (1.15%) Enterprise Storage
17 33 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
18 32 (1.12%) Operational Technology
19 31 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 808 (28.22%) Windows Server
2 697 (24.35%) Linux
3 517 (18.06%) Windows 10
4 191 (6.67%) Mac OS
5 134 (4.68%) Apple iOS
6 132 (4.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 127 (4.44%) Android
8 108 (3.77%) Unix
9 67 (2.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 51 (1.78%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.61%) Windows 7
12 39 (1.36%) CentOS
12 39 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
13 35 (1.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 20 (0.70%) Solaris
14 20 (0.70%) VMS
15 19 (0.66%) AIX
16 18 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
17 15 (0.52%) Rocky
18 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 705 (24.62%) Problem-Solving
2 553 (19.32%) ITIL
3 483 (16.87%) Customer Service
4 389 (13.59%) ITSM
5 387 (13.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 355 (12.40%) Migration
7 335 (11.70%) Continuous Improvement
8 290 (10.13%) Service Management
9 277 (9.68%) DevOps
10 261 (9.12%) CI/CD
11 253 (8.84%) Infrastructure as Code
12 235 (8.21%) Agile
13 230 (8.03%) Stakeholder Management
14 211 (7.37%) Root Cause Analysis
15 210 (7.33%) Change Management
16 196 (6.85%) Disaster Recovery
17 182 (6.36%) Cybersecurity
18 166 (5.80%) Technical Leadership
18 166 (5.80%) Validation
19 162 (5.66%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 709 (24.76%) PowerShell
2 319 (11.14%) Python
3 274 (9.57%) SQL
4 181 (6.32%) Bash
5 142 (4.96%) C#
6 64 (2.24%) Java
7 63 (2.20%) T-SQL
8 60 (2.10%) JavaScript
9 50 (1.75%) Bicep
10 49 (1.71%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.29%) C++
12 30 (1.05%) VB
13 25 (0.87%) VBScript
14 17 (0.59%) Perl
15 16 (0.56%) TypeScript
16 15 (0.52%) Shell Script
17 13 (0.45%) VBA
18 12 (0.42%) Search Processing Language
19 11 (0.38%) Go
19 11 (0.38%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 909 (31.75%) Security Cleared
2 529 (18.48%) SC Cleared
3 377 (13.17%) DV Cleared
4 288 (10.06%) Degree
5 112 (3.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (3.21%) Azure Certification
7 68 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
8 67 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
9 64 (2.24%) CISSP
10 54 (1.89%) AWS Certification
11 52 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
12 50 (1.75%) A+ Certification
13 44 (1.54%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 33 (1.15%) CISM
14 33 (1.15%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 32 (1.12%) DBS Check
15 32 (1.12%) ITIL Certification
16 30 (1.05%) CCNA
16 30 (1.05%) CCNP
17 26 (0.91%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (5.38%) SLA
2 111 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 83 (2.90%) NIST
4 76 (2.65%) QA
5 39 (1.36%) Cyber Essentials
6 28 (0.98%) NCSC
7 22 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 21 (0.73%) GDPR
9 16 (0.56%) GRC
10 15 (0.52%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 15 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 12 (0.42%) WCAG
12 10 (0.35%) Data Quality
12 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.35%) ISO 31000
13 9 (0.31%) GxP
14 8 (0.28%) PMO
15 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,207 (42.16%) Active Directory
2 454 (15.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 199 (6.95%) Hyper-V
4 152 (5.31%) VMware ESXi
5 137 (4.79%) vSphere
6 113 (3.95%) Docker
7 104 (3.63%) Virtual Machines
8 84 (2.93%) Virtual Desktop
9 78 (2.72%) VMware NSX
10 36 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 30 (1.05%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 17 (0.59%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
15 14 (0.49%) NFS
16 13 (0.45%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 12 (0.42%) XenApp
18 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
19 9 (0.31%) KVM
20 7 (0.24%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 422 (14.74%) Microsoft Intune
2 324 (11.32%) SCCM
3 217 (7.58%) Ansible
4 149 (5.20%) Kubernetes
5 123 (4.30%) vCenter Server
6 99 (3.46%) SCOM
7 46 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
8 40 (1.40%) WSUS
9 34 (1.19%) Grafana
10 31 (1.08%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.98%) Progress Chef
11 28 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 27 (0.94%) WMI
13 26 (0.91%) Puppet
13 26 (0.91%) VxRail
14 24 (0.84%) NetBackup
15 22 (0.77%) Nagios
16 21 (0.73%) Packer
17 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Clustering
18 18 (0.63%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 1,391 (48.59%) Microsoft
2 595 (20.78%) VMware
3 332 (11.60%) ServiceNow
4 200 (6.99%) Cisco
5 163 (5.69%) Oracle
6 157 (5.48%) Citrix
7 96 (3.35%) Apple
8 94 (3.28%) CyberArk
9 93 (3.25%) Splunk
10 78 (2.72%) Google
11 72 (2.51%) Red Hat
12 68 (2.38%) SolarWinds
13 65 (2.27%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.99%) Dell
14 57 (1.99%) Remedy
15 44 (1.54%) HP
16 40 (1.40%) NetApp
16 40 (1.40%) Palo Alto
17 37 (1.29%) BMC
18 36 (1.26%) Fortinet
2,581 Windows jobs in England