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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,747 2,266 2,834
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.01% 8.15% 8.55%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.77% 60.91% 60.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,771 1,533 1,929
10th Percentile £170 £168 £178
25th Percentile £225 £221 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £409 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.91% -9.11% +5.88%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £673 £657
UK median daily rate £425 £413 £450
% change year-on-year +3.03% -8.33% +4.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 240 188 200
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.12 £11.06
25th Percentile £17.84 £17.33 £15.04
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -10.14% -6.67%
75th Percentile £60.08 £28.50 £58.56
90th Percentile £74.10 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.75 £20.00 £21.80
% change year-on-year +28.75% -8.26% -3.11%

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 4,447 3,720 4,710
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.73% 13.38% 14.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,861 2,459 3,135
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £339
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £450 £493
Median % change year-on-year +4.89% -8.72% -1.40%
75th Percentile £575 £586 £588
90th Percentile £669 £681 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £460 £475
% change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 305 236 289
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £12.41
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.13 £16.86
Median hourly rate £34.13 £23.00 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% -32.35% -8.94%
75th Percentile £67.25 £59.00 £68.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.92 £24.58 £27.50
% change year-on-year +5.45% -10.62% -31.25%

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 17 August 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 17 August 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 17 August 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 -12 923 £425 - 292
South East -7 571 £475 -3.06% 301
North of England -5 497 £335 +3.08% 229
South West -9 289 £488 +35.42% 119
North West +3 284 £350 - 118
Midlands -22 258 £382 -4.50% 128
East of England -4 192 £338 +6.22% 116
Yorkshire -16 187 £324 +12.61% 75
West Midlands -32 164 £425 -0.93% 86
East Midlands +5 90 £270 +35.00% 42
North East -35 30 £250 -4.76% 45
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 (8.63%) Microsoft Exchange
2 229 (8.34%) SharePoint
3 58 (2.11%) Confluence
4 57 (2.07%) IIS
5 19 (0.69%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.58%) Apache
6 16 (0.58%) nginx
7 12 (0.44%) Tomcat
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 7 (0.25%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.22%) Documentum
11 5 (0.18%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Camunda
12 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
14 2 (0.073%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 169 (6.15%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.15%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.11%) Houdini
7 3 (0.11%) NUKE
8 2 (0.073%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.073%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.036%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.036%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.036%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 57 (2.07%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.36%) Finacle
3 7 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.18%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.073%) assyst
7 1 (0.036%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.036%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP BRIM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.036%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.036%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.036%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 881 (32.07%) Azure
2 874 (31.82%) Microsoft 365
3 447 (16.27%) Entra ID
4 309 (11.25%) AWS
5 130 (4.73%) OneDrive
6 101 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
7 91 (3.31%) GCP
8 73 (2.66%) SaaS
9 71 (2.58%) Azure Monitor
10 65 (2.37%) IaaS
10 65 (2.37%) Power Platform
11 63 (2.29%) GitHub
12 49 (1.78%) PaaS
13 41 (1.49%) Azure Sentinel
14 28 (1.02%) OpenShift
15 27 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.95%) Google Workspace
17 24 (0.87%) Azure AKS
18 23 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
19 22 (0.80%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 440 (16.02%) DNS
2 321 (11.69%) Firewall
3 312 (11.36%) DHCP
4 227 (8.26%) VPN
5 209 (7.61%) TCP/IP
6 131 (4.77%) LAN
7 129 (4.70%) WAN
8 128 (4.66%) Wi-Fi
9 90 (3.28%) SAN
10 74 (2.69%) VLAN
11 69 (2.51%) Network Security
12 44 (1.60%) NAS
13 43 (1.57%) SSL
14 39 (1.42%) Internet
14 39 (1.42%) VSAN
15 38 (1.38%) Wireless
16 34 (1.24%) Skype
17 33 (1.20%) BGP
18 26 (0.95%) VoIP
19 24 (0.87%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (9.57%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.89%) Power BI
3 51 (1.86%) Oracle Database
4 25 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 23 (0.84%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.80%) MySQL
6 22 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 15 (0.55%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 12 (0.44%) Db2
10 11 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
10 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
11 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
11 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
12 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
13 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.18%) Big Data
13 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 157 (5.72%) JIRA
2 65 (2.37%) Git
3 47 (1.71%) MSI
4 44 (1.60%) Jenkins
5 38 (1.38%) GitLab
6 32 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.62%) Eclipse
8 16 (0.58%) Bitbucket
9 10 (0.36%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.29%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.25%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.25%) Selenium
11 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
13 4 (0.15%) Claude Code
13 4 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
13 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
13 4 (0.15%) Xcode
General
1 1,013 (36.88%) Social Skills
2 337 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
2 337 (12.27%) Finance
3 157 (5.72%) Banking
4 148 (5.39%) Public Sector
5 93 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
6 76 (2.77%) Legal
7 73 (2.66%) Organisational Skills
8 59 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 54 (1.97%) Retail
10 50 (1.82%) Manufacturing
11 42 (1.53%) Front Office
12 39 (1.42%) Telecoms
13 36 (1.31%) Law
13 36 (1.31%) Military
14 35 (1.27%) Investment Banking
15 28 (1.02%) Spanish Language
16 25 (0.91%) Financial Institution
17 23 (0.84%) French Language
18 19 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 436 (15.87%) Support Engineer
2 381 (13.87%) IT Support
3 294 (10.70%) IT Engineer
4 283 (10.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 247 (8.99%) IT Support Engineer
6 240 (8.74%) Analyst
7 219 (7.97%) Senior
8 126 (4.59%) 2nd Line Support
9 120 (4.37%) Desktop Support
10 113 (4.11%) Architect
11 106 (3.86%) Desktop Engineer
12 104 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
13 100 (3.64%) Lead
14 96 (3.49%) Support Analyst
15 92 (3.35%) Developer
16 83 (3.02%) Windows Engineer
17 78 (2.84%) Consultant
18 77 (2.80%) 1st Line Support
19 76 (2.77%) IT Analyst
20 72 (2.62%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 111 (4.04%) .NET
2 99 (3.60%) REST
3 62 (2.26%) .NET Framework
4 29 (1.06%) WPF
5 28 (1.02%) JSON
5 28 (1.02%) Middleware
6 27 (0.98%) LDAP
7 26 (0.95%) WinForms
8 23 (0.84%) CSS
9 21 (0.76%) HTML
9 21 (0.76%) Web Services
10 20 (0.73%) ARM Templates
11 19 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
11 19 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
11 19 (0.69%) Software Packaging
12 18 (0.66%) .NET Core
12 18 (0.66%) 802.1X
12 18 (0.66%) Kafka
13 17 (0.62%) RESTful
13 17 (0.62%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 322 (11.72%) Onboarding
2 148 (5.39%) Data Centre
3 143 (5.21%) PKI
4 84 (3.06%) Clustering
5 82 (2.99%) Management Information System
6 78 (2.84%) Hybrid Cloud
7 73 (2.66%) Cloud Native
8 71 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
9 62 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
9 62 (2.26%) Video Conferencing
10 54 (1.97%) Driving Licence
11 53 (1.93%) Replication
12 46 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
13 45 (1.64%) Security Posture
14 40 (1.46%) Virtual Team
15 39 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
16 34 (1.24%) CMDB
17 32 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
18 30 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
19 29 (1.06%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 722 (26.28%) Windows Server
2 665 (24.21%) Linux
3 484 (17.62%) Windows 10
4 183 (6.66%) Mac OS
5 128 (4.66%) Apple iOS
6 126 (4.59%) Android
7 113 (4.11%) Unix
8 109 (3.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 67 (2.44%) Windows Server 2019
10 46 (1.67%) Windows 7
11 42 (1.53%) Ubuntu
12 39 (1.42%) Windows Server 2016
13 35 (1.27%) Windows Server 2012
14 27 (0.98%) CentOS
15 26 (0.95%) AIX
16 20 (0.73%) VMS
17 19 (0.69%) Windows Server 2008
18 16 (0.58%) Solaris
19 11 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
20 10 (0.36%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 677 (24.65%) Problem-Solving
2 504 (18.35%) ITIL
3 429 (15.62%) Customer Service
4 364 (13.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 356 (12.96%) ITSM
6 329 (11.98%) Migration
7 285 (10.37%) Continuous Improvement
8 277 (10.08%) DevOps
9 253 (9.21%) Service Management
10 249 (9.06%) Agile
11 246 (8.96%) CI/CD
12 224 (8.15%) Infrastructure as Code
13 205 (7.46%) Change Management
14 190 (6.92%) Stakeholder Management
15 171 (6.22%) High Availability
16 168 (6.12%) Disaster Recovery
17 158 (5.75%) Service Delivery
18 155 (5.64%) Cybersecurity
19 154 (5.61%) Root Cause Analysis
20 152 (5.53%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 692 (25.19%) PowerShell
2 306 (11.14%) Python
3 279 (10.16%) SQL
4 168 (6.12%) Bash
5 139 (5.06%) C#
6 68 (2.48%) JavaScript
7 67 (2.44%) Java
8 50 (1.82%) T-SQL
9 46 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 45 (1.64%) Bicep
11 44 (1.60%) C++
12 28 (1.02%) VB
13 26 (0.95%) VBScript
14 24 (0.87%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.62%) Perl
15 17 (0.62%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.62%) TypeScript
16 12 (0.44%) C
17 11 (0.40%) VBA
18 9 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 865 (31.49%) Security Cleared
2 528 (19.22%) SC Cleared
3 319 (11.61%) DV Cleared
4 281 (10.23%) Degree
5 108 (3.93%) Microsoft Certification
6 82 (2.99%) Azure Certification
7 76 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 75 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
9 61 (2.22%) CISSP
10 51 (1.86%) AWS Certification
11 48 (1.75%) A+ Certification
12 45 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
13 38 (1.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 32 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 28 (1.02%) CCNA
16 27 (0.98%) CCNP
16 27 (0.98%) MCSE
17 25 (0.91%) CISM
17 25 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
18 23 (0.84%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 140 (5.10%) SLA
2 109 (3.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 81 (2.95%) NIST
4 78 (2.84%) QA
5 28 (1.02%) NCSC
6 27 (0.98%) GDPR
7 25 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
8 24 (0.87%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (0.47%) Accessibility
11 12 (0.44%) Data Quality
12 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.40%) WCAG
13 10 (0.36%) GRC
14 9 (0.33%) PMO
15 8 (0.29%) NIST 800
16 7 (0.25%) GxP
17 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
17 6 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,130 (41.14%) Active Directory
2 395 (14.38%) VMware Infrastructure
3 166 (6.04%) Hyper-V
4 133 (4.84%) VMware ESXi
5 116 (4.22%) vSphere
6 101 (3.68%) Docker
7 93 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.99%) VMware NSX
9 79 (2.88%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (1.46%) BitLocker
11 32 (1.16%) Firmware
12 20 (0.73%) vCloud
13 19 (0.69%) Microsoft App-V
14 13 (0.47%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.40%) KVM
16 8 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.25%) NFS
18 6 (0.22%) XenApp
18 6 (0.22%) XenDesktop
19 5 (0.18%) UAG
Systems Management
1 413 (15.03%) Microsoft Intune
2 279 (10.16%) SCCM
3 249 (9.06%) Terraform
4 217 (7.90%) Ansible
5 151 (5.50%) Kubernetes
6 115 (4.19%) vCenter Server
7 77 (2.80%) SCOM
8 46 (1.67%) Jamf Pro
8 46 (1.67%) WSUS
9 36 (1.31%) Progress Chef
10 32 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
11 29 (1.06%) Puppet
12 27 (0.98%) FortiGate
13 24 (0.87%) Grafana
13 24 (0.87%) Packer
14 23 (0.84%) Nagios
14 23 (0.84%) Prometheus
14 23 (0.84%) VxRail
14 23 (0.84%) WMI
15 20 (0.73%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,278 (46.52%) Microsoft
2 536 (19.51%) VMware
3 326 (11.87%) ServiceNow
4 173 (6.30%) Cisco
5 167 (6.08%) Citrix
6 156 (5.68%) Oracle
7 103 (3.75%) Splunk
8 89 (3.24%) Apple
9 84 (3.06%) CyberArk
10 71 (2.58%) Google
11 70 (2.55%) SolarWinds
12 64 (2.33%) HP
12 64 (2.33%) Remedy
13 63 (2.29%) Red Hat
14 59 (2.15%) BeyondTrust
15 50 (1.82%) Dell
16 46 (1.67%) BMC
17 40 (1.46%) Juniper
18 39 (1.42%) IBM
19 38 (1.38%) Meraki