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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 20 18
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,825 2,327 2,769
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.13% 8.38% 8.47%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.42% 60.82% 59.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,807 1,586 1,818
10th Percentile £172 £165 £180
25th Percentile £225 £213 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £416 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -5.88% -1.16%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £656 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 280 202 150
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.16 £13.87
25th Percentile £17.98 £18.10 £16.32
Median hourly rate £25.77 £21.38 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +20.53% -10.17% -4.80%
75th Percentile £65.00 £41.62 £64.88
90th Percentile £76.60 £65.00 £65.00
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 4,526 3,826 4,686
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.82% 13.78% 14.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,891 2,525 2,996
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.32% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 246 235
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £15.22
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.59 £20.15
Median hourly rate £38.00 £25.15 £57.25
Median % change year-on-year +51.09% -56.07% +22.62%
75th Percentile £67.84 £59.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.35 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £49.25
% change year-on-year +6.00% -48.93% +5.48%

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 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 16 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 16 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 -11 951 £420 -1.18% 1,154
South East -7 549 £500 +21.83% 502
North of England -4 509 £325 - 347
North West +6 305 £335 - 195
Midlands -13 285 £399 +13.45% 315
South West -16 276 £500 +33.33% 233
East of England 0 234 £240 -31.43% 230
West Midlands -25 189 £402 +0.50% 204
Yorkshire -21 168 £279 +16.04% 108
East Midlands +3 94 £275 +22.22% 111
North East -25 40 £275 - 50
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
1 239 (8.46%) SharePoint
2 230 (8.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 58 (2.05%) IIS
4 51 (1.81%) Confluence
5 19 (0.67%) nginx
5 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.60%) Apache
7 11 (0.39%) 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 (0.071%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 2 (0.071%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 191 (6.76%) 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%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.11%) NUKE
8 2 (0.071%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 55 (1.95%) 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 (0.071%) 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
1 923 (32.67%) Microsoft 365
2 884 (31.29%) Azure
3 473 (16.74%) Entra ID
4 309 (10.94%) AWS
5 138 (4.88%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
7 95 (3.36%) GCP
8 73 (2.58%) SaaS
9 72 (2.55%) Azure Monitor
10 61 (2.16%) GitHub
10 61 (2.16%) Power Platform
11 60 (2.12%) IaaS
12 45 (1.59%) PaaS
13 39 (1.38%) Azure Sentinel
14 27 (0.96%) Google Workspace
15 26 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (0.92%) OpenShift
16 23 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
17 22 (0.78%) Amazon EC2
18 20 (0.71%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 446 (15.79%) DNS
2 320 (11.33%) DHCP
3 310 (10.97%) Firewall
4 237 (8.39%) VPN
5 223 (7.89%) TCP/IP
6 118 (4.18%) Wi-Fi
7 117 (4.14%) WAN
8 109 (3.86%) LAN
9 87 (3.08%) Network Security
10 83 (2.94%) SAN
10 83 (2.94%) VLAN
11 45 (1.59%) Wireless
12 44 (1.56%) SSL
13 39 (1.38%) NAS
14 38 (1.35%) Internet
15 35 (1.24%) Skype
16 33 (1.17%) VSAN
17 28 (0.99%) VoIP
18 24 (0.85%) BGP
18 24 (0.85%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 253 (8.96%) SQL Server
2 54 (1.91%) Oracle Database
3 51 (1.81%) Power BI
4 29 (1.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 28 (0.99%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
6 24 (0.85%) Relational Database
7 22 (0.78%) MySQL
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
9 11 (0.39%) RDBMS
10 10 (0.35%) Db2
11 9 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) MongoDB
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
Development Applications
1 146 (5.17%) JIRA
2 64 (2.27%) Git
3 46 (1.63%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.59%) MSI
5 41 (1.45%) GitLab
6 28 (0.99%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.53%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 13 (0.46%) Artifactory
10 9 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.21%) Selenium
13 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.18%) Chocolatey
13 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
13 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
13 5 (0.18%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,048 (37.10%) Social Skills
2 344 (12.18%) Analytical Skills
2 344 (12.18%) Finance
3 148 (5.24%) Banking
4 131 (4.64%) Public Sector
5 107 (3.79%) Documentation Skills
6 76 (2.69%) Legal
7 68 (2.41%) Organisational Skills
8 63 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 56 (1.98%) Manufacturing
10 48 (1.70%) Retail
11 47 (1.66%) Telecoms
12 41 (1.45%) Front Office
13 39 (1.38%) Law
14 38 (1.35%) Military
15 36 (1.27%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.99%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.88%) French Language
18 24 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
19 21 (0.74%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 464 (16.42%) Support Engineer
2 393 (13.91%) IT Support
3 306 (10.83%) IT Engineer
4 298 (10.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 254 (8.99%) IT Support Engineer
6 248 (8.78%) Analyst
7 231 (8.18%) Senior
8 123 (4.35%) Desktop Support
9 121 (4.28%) 2nd Line Support
10 115 (4.07%) Desktop Engineer
11 109 (3.86%) Cloud Engineer
12 108 (3.82%) Lead
13 102 (3.61%) Architect
14 98 (3.47%) Windows Engineer
15 94 (3.33%) Support Analyst
16 84 (2.97%) Developer
17 79 (2.80%) 1st Line Support
18 77 (2.73%) Consultant
19 75 (2.65%) IT Analyst
20 73 (2.58%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (8.64%) Terraform
2 112 (3.96%) .NET
3 100 (3.54%) REST
4 56 (1.98%) .NET Framework
5 38 (1.35%) LDAP
6 35 (1.24%) Middleware
7 34 (1.20%) JSON
8 32 (1.13%) WPF
9 24 (0.85%) ARM Templates
9 24 (0.85%) Software Packaging
9 24 (0.85%) WinForms
10 20 (0.71%) HTML
10 20 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
11 19 (0.67%) .NET Core
11 19 (0.67%) CSS
12 18 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
13 17 (0.60%) Web Services
13 17 (0.60%) XML
14 16 (0.57%) Node.js
14 16 (0.57%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 351 (12.42%) Onboarding
2 153 (5.42%) Data Centre
3 141 (4.99%) PKI
4 96 (3.40%) Management Information System
5 84 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
6 76 (2.69%) Clustering
7 74 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
8 71 (2.51%) Cloud Native
9 67 (2.37%) Video Conferencing
10 60 (2.12%) Replication
11 58 (2.05%) Driving Licence
12 53 (1.88%) Security Posture
13 52 (1.84%) Self-Motivation
14 40 (1.42%) Virtual Team
15 39 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
16 35 (1.24%) CMDB
16 35 (1.24%) Enterprise Storage
17 33 (1.17%) Linux Command Line
18 31 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
18 31 (1.10%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 787 (27.86%) Windows Server
2 677 (23.96%) Linux
3 511 (18.09%) Windows 10
4 189 (6.69%) Mac OS
5 133 (4.71%) Apple iOS
6 125 (4.42%) Android
7 120 (4.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 106 (3.75%) Unix
9 66 (2.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 50 (1.77%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.63%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.35%) Windows Server 2012
13 37 (1.31%) CentOS
14 34 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 19 (0.67%) VMS
16 18 (0.64%) AIX
17 17 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
18 16 (0.57%) Solaris
19 15 (0.53%) Rocky
20 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 682 (24.14%) Problem-Solving
2 539 (19.08%) ITIL
3 473 (16.74%) Customer Service
4 381 (13.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 379 (13.42%) ITSM
6 340 (12.04%) Migration
7 324 (11.47%) Continuous Improvement
8 284 (10.05%) Service Management
9 277 (9.81%) DevOps
10 249 (8.81%) CI/CD
11 245 (8.67%) Infrastructure as Code
12 242 (8.57%) Agile
13 219 (7.75%) Stakeholder Management
14 204 (7.22%) Change Management
15 201 (7.12%) Root Cause Analysis
16 187 (6.62%) Disaster Recovery
17 178 (6.30%) Cybersecurity
18 161 (5.70%) Technical Leadership
19 159 (5.63%) Incident Management
20 156 (5.52%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 712 (25.20%) PowerShell
2 308 (10.90%) Python
3 277 (9.81%) SQL
4 174 (6.16%) Bash
5 135 (4.78%) C#
6 61 (2.16%) Java
7 60 (2.12%) JavaScript
7 60 (2.12%) T-SQL
8 50 (1.77%) Bicep
8 50 (1.77%) PL/SQL
9 33 (1.17%) C++
10 29 (1.03%) VB
11 25 (0.88%) VBScript
12 17 (0.60%) TypeScript
13 16 (0.57%) Perl
14 15 (0.53%) Search Processing Language
15 14 (0.50%) Shell Script
16 12 (0.42%) VBA
17 9 (0.32%) Groovy
18 8 (0.28%) Go
Qualifications
1 903 (31.96%) Security Cleared
2 531 (18.80%) SC Cleared
3 367 (12.99%) DV Cleared
4 285 (10.09%) Degree
5 113 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (3.26%) Azure Certification
7 71 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
8 65 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
9 61 (2.16%) CISSP
10 54 (1.91%) AWS Certification
11 52 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
12 48 (1.70%) A+ Certification
13 45 (1.59%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 33 (1.17%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 30 (1.06%) CISM
16 29 (1.03%) DBS Check
17 28 (0.99%) CCNP
17 28 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
18 27 (0.96%) CCNA
19 26 (0.92%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (5.38%) SLA
2 110 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 81 (2.87%) NIST
4 74 (2.62%) QA
5 36 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.96%) NCSC
7 22 (0.78%) PCI DSS
8 21 (0.74%) GDPR
9 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
10 14 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 14 (0.50%) GRC
10 14 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 12 (0.42%) Data Quality
11 12 (0.42%) WCAG
12 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 9 (0.32%) GxP
13 9 (0.32%) ISO 31000
14 8 (0.28%) PMO
15 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,184 (41.91%) Active Directory
2 437 (15.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 193 (6.83%) Hyper-V
4 149 (5.27%) VMware ESXi
5 127 (4.50%) vSphere
6 108 (3.82%) Docker
7 104 (3.68%) Virtual Machines
8 85 (3.01%) Virtual Desktop
9 76 (2.69%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.31%) BitLocker
11 27 (0.96%) Firmware
12 24 (0.85%) vCloud
13 15 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.50%) NFS
15 13 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
16 12 (0.42%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.42%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
18 9 (0.32%) KVM
19 6 (0.21%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 423 (14.97%) Microsoft Intune
2 318 (11.26%) SCCM
3 212 (7.50%) Ansible
4 144 (5.10%) Kubernetes
5 122 (4.32%) vCenter Server
6 96 (3.40%) SCOM
7 48 (1.70%) Jamf Pro
8 43 (1.52%) WSUS
9 30 (1.06%) Grafana
10 28 (0.99%) Progress Chef
10 28 (0.99%) Prometheus
10 28 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.92%) WMI
12 25 (0.88%) VxRail
13 24 (0.85%) Puppet
14 22 (0.78%) Packer
15 21 (0.74%) NetBackup
16 20 (0.71%) Microsoft Clustering
17 19 (0.67%) FortiGate
17 19 (0.67%) Nagios
Vendors
1 1,370 (48.50%) Microsoft
2 575 (20.35%) VMware
3 335 (11.86%) ServiceNow
4 191 (6.76%) Cisco
5 162 (5.73%) Oracle
6 154 (5.45%) Citrix
7 97 (3.43%) Apple
8 93 (3.29%) Splunk
9 89 (3.15%) CyberArk
10 77 (2.73%) Google
11 68 (2.41%) Red Hat
12 65 (2.30%) SolarWinds
13 64 (2.27%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (2.09%) Remedy
15 53 (1.88%) Dell
16 49 (1.73%) HP
17 40 (1.42%) BMC
17 40 (1.42%) NetApp
18 36 (1.27%) Meraki
18 36 (1.27%) Palo Alto