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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,845 2,329 2,793
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.16% 8.37% 8.48%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.45% 60.78% 59.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,813 1,588 1,827
10th Percentile £171 £163 £181
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 £661 £650 £650
UK median daily rate £425 £400 £425
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 206 147
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £14.26
25th Percentile £18.38 £18.11 £16.75
Median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.42 £42.11 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.80 £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 4,556 3,832 4,724
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.87% 13.78% 14.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,903 2,527 3,010
10th Percentile £190 £189 £200
25th Percentile £313 £289 £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 £680
UK median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 349 253 231
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.50 £15.49
25th Percentile £19.33 £18.87 £20.40
Median hourly rate £38.50 £25.15 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.08% -56.26% +20.22%
75th Percentile £68.00 £62.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.60 £67.00 -
UK median hourly rate £27.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +7.36% -49.70% +5.26%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -7 956 £420 -1.18% 904
South East -6 556 £484 +19.38% 466
North of England -5 510 £325 +6.56% 304
North West +5 307 £335 +1.52% 169
Midlands -15 290 £400 +9.59% 272
South West -18 270 £519 +44.10% 196
East of England +1 241 £240 -31.43% 202
West Midlands -22 192 £402 +0.50% 175
Yorkshire -17 167 £245 +19.08% 95
East Midlands +2 96 £275 +22.22% 97
North East -29 41 £275 - 46
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 (8.44%) SharePoint
2 229 (8.05%) Microsoft Exchange
3 57 (2.00%) IIS
4 52 (1.83%) Confluence
5 19 (0.67%) nginx
5 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.60%) Apache
7 10 (0.35%) 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 (0.070%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 2 (0.070%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 191 (6.71%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (2.21%) 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%) NUKE
8 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.070%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.035%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.035%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.035%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 55 (1.93%) 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 (0.070%) 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
1 928 (32.62%) Microsoft 365
2 891 (31.32%) Azure
3 475 (16.70%) Entra ID
4 310 (10.90%) AWS
5 138 (4.85%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
7 96 (3.37%) GCP
8 73 (2.57%) SaaS
9 70 (2.46%) Azure Monitor
10 63 (2.21%) GitHub
11 61 (2.14%) Power Platform
12 58 (2.04%) IaaS
13 45 (1.58%) PaaS
14 38 (1.34%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.95%) Google Workspace
16 26 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 26 (0.91%) OpenShift
17 23 (0.81%) GitHub Actions
18 22 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
19 21 (0.74%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 452 (15.89%) DNS
2 326 (11.46%) DHCP
3 313 (11.00%) Firewall
4 239 (8.40%) VPN
5 226 (7.94%) TCP/IP
6 117 (4.11%) WAN
7 116 (4.08%) Wi-Fi
8 112 (3.94%) LAN
9 91 (3.20%) Network Security
10 86 (3.02%) SAN
10 86 (3.02%) VLAN
11 47 (1.65%) Wireless
12 46 (1.62%) SSL
13 39 (1.37%) Internet
13 39 (1.37%) NAS
14 35 (1.23%) Skype
15 32 (1.12%) VSAN
16 31 (1.09%) BGP
17 29 (1.02%) VoIP
18 25 (0.88%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 251 (8.82%) SQL Server
2 55 (1.93%) Oracle Database
3 51 (1.79%) Power BI
4 29 (1.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 27 (0.95%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.81%) Relational Database
7 21 (0.74%) MySQL
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 15 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 11 (0.39%) Geospatial Data
10 10 (0.35%) Db2
10 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
11 9 (0.32%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.28%) NoSQL
12 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (0.25%) MongoDB
14 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
15 4 (0.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 147 (5.17%) JIRA
2 67 (2.36%) Git
3 47 (1.65%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.58%) MSI
5 44 (1.55%) GitLab
6 29 (1.02%) Visual Studio
7 15 (0.53%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.53%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.46%) Artifactory
9 10 (0.35%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.21%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.21%) Selenium
12 5 (0.18%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
12 5 (0.18%) Robot Framework
12 5 (0.18%) SonarQube
12 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 4 (0.14%) Claude Code
13 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,055 (37.08%) Social Skills
2 347 (12.20%) Analytical Skills
3 345 (12.13%) Finance
4 149 (5.24%) Banking
5 128 (4.50%) Public Sector
6 108 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (2.64%) Legal
8 70 (2.46%) Organisational Skills
9 66 (2.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 55 (1.93%) Manufacturing
11 49 (1.72%) Telecoms
12 48 (1.69%) Retail
13 43 (1.51%) Front Office
14 42 (1.48%) Law
15 38 (1.34%) Military
16 36 (1.27%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.98%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.88%) French Language
19 24 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
20 22 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 468 (16.45%) Support Engineer
2 395 (13.88%) IT Support
3 308 (10.83%) IT Engineer
4 300 (10.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 256 (9.00%) IT Support Engineer
6 251 (8.82%) Analyst
7 230 (8.08%) Senior
8 124 (4.36%) Desktop Support
9 121 (4.25%) 2nd Line Support
10 116 (4.08%) Desktop Engineer
11 109 (3.83%) Cloud Engineer
12 108 (3.80%) Lead
13 104 (3.66%) Architect
14 99 (3.48%) Windows Engineer
15 93 (3.27%) Support Analyst
16 84 (2.95%) Developer
17 78 (2.74%) 1st Line Support
18 75 (2.64%) Consultant
19 74 (2.60%) IT Analyst
20 73 (2.57%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (8.61%) Terraform
2 112 (3.94%) .NET
3 101 (3.55%) REST
4 55 (1.93%) .NET Framework
5 38 (1.34%) LDAP
6 36 (1.27%) JSON
6 36 (1.27%) Middleware
7 34 (1.20%) WPF
8 26 (0.91%) WinForms
9 24 (0.84%) ARM Templates
10 23 (0.81%) Software Packaging
11 20 (0.70%) HTML
12 19 (0.67%) .NET Core
12 19 (0.67%) CSS
12 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Graph
13 18 (0.63%) Elastic Stack
14 17 (0.60%) Web Services
14 17 (0.60%) XML
15 16 (0.56%) Node.js
15 16 (0.56%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 351 (12.34%) Onboarding
2 156 (5.48%) Data Centre
3 142 (4.99%) PKI
4 99 (3.48%) Management Information System
5 85 (2.99%) Hybrid Cloud
6 77 (2.71%) Clustering
7 74 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
8 70 (2.46%) Cloud Native
8 70 (2.46%) Video Conferencing
9 65 (2.28%) Driving Licence
10 59 (2.07%) Replication
11 56 (1.97%) Security Posture
12 55 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
13 41 (1.44%) Virtual Team
14 36 (1.27%) Legacy Systems
15 34 (1.20%) CMDB
15 34 (1.20%) Enterprise Storage
16 33 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
17 31 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
17 31 (1.09%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 796 (27.98%) Windows Server
2 682 (23.97%) Linux
3 515 (18.10%) Windows 10
4 185 (6.50%) Mac OS
5 132 (4.64%) Apple iOS
6 125 (4.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 124 (4.36%) Android
8 105 (3.69%) Unix
9 66 (2.32%) Windows Server 2019
10 51 (1.79%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.62%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.34%) CentOS
12 38 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 19 (0.67%) VMS
15 17 (0.60%) AIX
15 17 (0.60%) Windows Server 2008
16 16 (0.56%) Solaris
17 15 (0.53%) Rocky
18 12 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 690 (24.25%) Problem-Solving
2 542 (19.05%) ITIL
3 479 (16.84%) Customer Service
4 386 (13.57%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 380 (13.36%) ITSM
6 341 (11.99%) Migration
7 329 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 283 (9.95%) Service Management
9 277 (9.74%) DevOps
10 254 (8.93%) CI/CD
11 247 (8.68%) Infrastructure as Code
12 238 (8.37%) Agile
13 223 (7.84%) Stakeholder Management
14 207 (7.28%) Root Cause Analysis
15 203 (7.14%) Change Management
16 188 (6.61%) Disaster Recovery
17 178 (6.26%) Cybersecurity
18 162 (5.69%) Technical Leadership
19 161 (5.66%) Incident Management
20 160 (5.62%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 714 (25.10%) PowerShell
2 311 (10.93%) Python
3 274 (9.63%) SQL
4 177 (6.22%) Bash
5 137 (4.82%) C#
6 62 (2.18%) Java
7 61 (2.14%) JavaScript
7 61 (2.14%) T-SQL
8 50 (1.76%) Bicep
9 49 (1.72%) PL/SQL
10 34 (1.20%) C++
11 30 (1.05%) VB
12 25 (0.88%) VBScript
13 17 (0.60%) TypeScript
14 16 (0.56%) Perl
15 15 (0.53%) Shell Script
16 14 (0.49%) Search Processing Language
17 13 (0.46%) VBA
18 10 (0.35%) Groovy
19 9 (0.32%) Go
Qualifications
1 906 (31.85%) Security Cleared
2 527 (18.52%) SC Cleared
3 376 (13.22%) DV Cleared
4 284 (9.98%) Degree
5 114 (4.01%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (3.23%) Azure Certification
7 71 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
8 67 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
9 63 (2.21%) CISSP
10 54 (1.90%) AWS Certification
11 51 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
12 48 (1.69%) A+ Certification
13 46 (1.62%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 33 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 32 (1.12%) CISM
15 32 (1.12%) DBS Check
16 30 (1.05%) CCNA
16 30 (1.05%) CCNP
17 29 (1.02%) ITIL Certification
18 26 (0.91%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (5.41%) SLA
2 111 (3.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 83 (2.92%) NIST
4 74 (2.60%) QA
5 39 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.95%) NCSC
7 21 (0.74%) GDPR
7 21 (0.74%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.53%) Accessibility
8 15 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 15 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (0.49%) GRC
10 12 (0.42%) Data Quality
10 12 (0.42%) WCAG
11 10 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 9 (0.32%) GxP
12 9 (0.32%) ISO 31000
13 8 (0.28%) PMO
14 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
14 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,197 (42.07%) Active Directory
2 441 (15.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 196 (6.89%) Hyper-V
4 149 (5.24%) VMware ESXi
5 133 (4.67%) vSphere
6 111 (3.90%) Docker
7 103 (3.62%) Virtual Machines
8 84 (2.95%) Virtual Desktop
9 78 (2.74%) VMware NSX
10 36 (1.27%) BitLocker
11 28 (0.98%) Firmware
12 24 (0.84%) vCloud
13 15 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.49%) 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 (14.87%) Microsoft Intune
2 318 (11.18%) SCCM
3 216 (7.59%) Ansible
4 147 (5.17%) Kubernetes
5 123 (4.32%) vCenter Server
6 98 (3.44%) SCOM
7 46 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
8 43 (1.51%) WSUS
9 32 (1.12%) Grafana
10 30 (1.05%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 27 (0.95%) Progress Chef
13 26 (0.91%) WMI
14 25 (0.88%) VxRail
15 24 (0.84%) Puppet
16 22 (0.77%) Nagios
16 22 (0.77%) Packer
17 21 (0.74%) NetBackup
18 20 (0.70%) Microsoft Clustering
19 19 (0.67%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,379 (48.47%) Microsoft
2 581 (20.42%) VMware
3 337 (11.85%) ServiceNow
4 198 (6.96%) Cisco
5 160 (5.62%) Oracle
6 156 (5.48%) Citrix
7 94 (3.30%) Apple
8 92 (3.23%) Splunk
9 89 (3.13%) CyberArk
10 77 (2.71%) Google
11 71 (2.50%) Red Hat
12 68 (2.39%) SolarWinds
13 64 (2.25%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (2.07%) Remedy
15 54 (1.90%) Dell
16 45 (1.58%) HP
17 40 (1.41%) BMC
17 40 (1.41%) NetApp
18 38 (1.34%) Palo Alto
19 35 (1.23%) Meraki