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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 17
Rank change year-on-year -5 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,727 2,238 2,877
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.98% 8.10% 8.63%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.81% 60.70% 60.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,752 1,511 1,951
10th Percentile £170 £171 £178
25th Percentile £225 £225 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -8.89% +4.65%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £673 £660
UK median daily rate £425 £415 £447
% change year-on-year +2.41% -7.21% +1.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 240 184 203
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.19 £11.07
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.33 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.76 £18.87 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.51% -10.14% -10.64%
75th Percentile £60.08 £28.00 £58.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.51 £19.36 £21.80
% change year-on-year +31.74% -11.19% -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 4,412 3,687 4,738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.68% 13.34% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,836 2,442 3,142
10th Percentile £190 £200 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £450 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.06% -8.07% -2.10%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £669 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £475 £460 £475
% change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 304 231 294
10th Percentile £16.03 £15.50 £12.44
25th Percentile £19.31 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £34.68 £23.00 £34.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.76% -33.33% -13.75%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.56
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.92 £24.00 £27.50
% change year-on-year +8.00% -12.73% -31.80%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -14 897 £425 - 376
South East -8 583 £475 -3.06% 302
North of England -8 486 £338 +2.42% 212
South West -12 282 £488 +32.65% 112
North West -1 276 £350 -2.23% 126
Midlands -22 264 £400 - 117
East of England -2 198 £340 +36.00% 126
Yorkshire -15 185 £337 +12.17% 62
West Midlands -31 169 £450 +5.88% 78
East Midlands +7 91 £270 +35.00% 39
North East -37 29 £250 -4.76% 31
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 (8.58%) Microsoft Exchange
2 221 (8.10%) SharePoint
3 58 (2.13%) Confluence
4 57 (2.09%) IIS
5 18 (0.66%) nginx
5 18 (0.66%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.59%) Apache
7 14 (0.51%) Tomcat
8 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 8 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.22%) Documentum
11 5 (0.18%) Appian
11 5 (0.18%) Camunda
12 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.15%) Apache Solr
12 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
14 2 (0.073%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 167 (6.12%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.51%) 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%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.11%) NUKE
8 2 (0.073%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.037%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.037%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.037%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 56 (2.05%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.37%) Finacle
3 7 (0.26%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.26%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.26%) 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 (0.037%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.037%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.037%) SAP BRIM
7 1 (0.037%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.037%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.037%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.037%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.037%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.037%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 868 (31.83%) Azure
2 858 (31.46%) Microsoft 365
3 431 (15.80%) Entra ID
4 299 (10.96%) AWS
5 124 (4.55%) OneDrive
6 96 (3.52%) Azure DevOps
7 88 (3.23%) GCP
8 70 (2.57%) SaaS
9 69 (2.53%) Azure Monitor
10 63 (2.31%) IaaS
11 62 (2.27%) Power Platform
12 61 (2.24%) GitHub
13 48 (1.76%) PaaS
14 39 (1.43%) Azure Sentinel
15 27 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
16 25 (0.92%) Google Workspace
16 25 (0.92%) OpenShift
17 24 (0.88%) Azure AKS
18 23 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
19 21 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 443 (16.24%) DNS
2 330 (12.10%) Firewall
3 311 (11.40%) DHCP
4 220 (8.07%) VPN
5 205 (7.52%) TCP/IP
6 146 (5.35%) LAN
7 141 (5.17%) WAN
8 126 (4.62%) Wi-Fi
9 87 (3.19%) SAN
10 72 (2.64%) VLAN
11 69 (2.53%) Network Security
12 47 (1.72%) SSL
13 45 (1.65%) BGP
14 41 (1.50%) NAS
15 39 (1.43%) Internet
16 38 (1.39%) VSAN
17 36 (1.32%) Wireless
18 35 (1.28%) OSPF
19 33 (1.21%) Skype
20 28 (1.03%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 260 (9.53%) SQL Server
2 53 (1.94%) Oracle Database
3 49 (1.80%) Power BI
4 24 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 23 (0.84%) MySQL
5 23 (0.84%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.81%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
8 14 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 14 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 13 (0.48%) Db2
10 12 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
11 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
11 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
12 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
12 8 (0.29%) NoSQL
13 5 (0.18%) Azure SQL Database
13 5 (0.18%) Big Data
13 5 (0.18%) GIS
Development Applications
1 158 (5.79%) JIRA
2 61 (2.24%) Git
3 47 (1.72%) MSI
4 41 (1.50%) Jenkins
5 36 (1.32%) GitLab
6 32 (1.17%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.62%) Eclipse
8 15 (0.55%) Bitbucket
9 10 (0.37%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 7 (0.26%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.26%) Chocolatey
10 7 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
11 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
11 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
11 5 (0.18%) Selenium
12 4 (0.15%) Android Studio
12 4 (0.15%) Maven
12 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
12 4 (0.15%) Xcode
General
1 1,001 (36.71%) Social Skills
2 328 (12.03%) Analytical Skills
2 328 (12.03%) Finance
3 155 (5.68%) Banking
4 153 (5.61%) Public Sector
5 93 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
6 75 (2.75%) Organisational Skills
7 74 (2.71%) Legal
8 55 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 55 (2.02%) Retail
9 52 (1.91%) Manufacturing
10 42 (1.54%) Military
11 41 (1.50%) Front Office
12 38 (1.39%) Telecoms
13 35 (1.28%) Law
14 34 (1.25%) Investment Banking
15 28 (1.03%) Spanish Language
16 25 (0.92%) Financial Institution
17 23 (0.84%) French Language
18 20 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 424 (15.55%) Support Engineer
2 374 (13.71%) IT Support
3 287 (10.52%) IT Engineer
4 277 (10.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 245 (8.98%) Analyst
6 241 (8.84%) IT Support Engineer
7 216 (7.92%) Senior
8 125 (4.58%) 2nd Line Support
9 115 (4.22%) Desktop Support
10 109 (4.00%) Architect
11 104 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
11 104 (3.81%) Desktop Engineer
12 99 (3.63%) Lead
13 93 (3.41%) Developer
14 92 (3.37%) Support Analyst
15 81 (2.97%) Windows Engineer
16 78 (2.86%) IT Analyst
17 77 (2.82%) Consultant
18 76 (2.79%) 1st Line Support
19 72 (2.64%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 109 (4.00%) .NET
2 99 (3.63%) REST
3 63 (2.31%) .NET Framework
4 30 (1.10%) 802.1X
4 30 (1.10%) WPF
5 29 (1.06%) Middleware
6 28 (1.03%) LDAP
7 27 (0.99%) JSON
7 27 (0.99%) WinForms
8 24 (0.88%) CSS
9 22 (0.81%) Web Services
10 21 (0.77%) HTML
11 20 (0.73%) Microsoft Graph
12 19 (0.70%) ARM Templates
12 19 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
13 18 (0.66%) Software Packaging
14 17 (0.62%) .NET Core
14 17 (0.62%) XML
15 16 (0.59%) RESTful
15 16 (0.59%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 304 (11.15%) Onboarding
2 151 (5.54%) Data Centre
3 150 (5.50%) PKI
4 93 (3.41%) Clustering
5 77 (2.82%) Management Information System
6 74 (2.71%) Hybrid Cloud
7 72 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
8 71 (2.60%) Cloud Native
9 60 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
10 57 (2.09%) Video Conferencing
11 52 (1.91%) Driving Licence
11 52 (1.91%) Replication
12 50 (1.83%) Security Posture
13 47 (1.72%) Legacy Systems
14 39 (1.43%) Virtual Team
15 38 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
16 34 (1.25%) CMDB
17 31 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
18 29 (1.06%) Enterprise Storage
18 29 (1.06%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 711 (26.07%) Windows Server
2 659 (24.17%) Linux
3 479 (17.57%) Windows 10
4 175 (6.42%) Mac OS
5 121 (4.44%) Apple iOS
6 117 (4.29%) Android
6 117 (4.29%) Unix
7 110 (4.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 69 (2.53%) Windows Server 2019
9 44 (1.61%) Windows 7
10 40 (1.47%) Ubuntu
11 39 (1.43%) Windows Server 2016
12 37 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
13 30 (1.10%) AIX
14 24 (0.88%) CentOS
15 21 (0.77%) Windows Server 2008
16 20 (0.73%) Solaris
16 20 (0.73%) VMS
17 10 (0.37%) Rocky
17 10 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 671 (24.61%) Problem-Solving
2 497 (18.23%) ITIL
3 424 (15.55%) Customer Service
4 359 (13.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 339 (12.43%) ITSM
6 318 (11.66%) Migration
7 281 (10.30%) Continuous Improvement
8 271 (9.94%) DevOps
9 250 (9.17%) Agile
10 243 (8.91%) CI/CD
11 240 (8.80%) Service Management
12 216 (7.92%) Infrastructure as Code
13 203 (7.44%) Change Management
14 181 (6.64%) High Availability
14 181 (6.64%) Stakeholder Management
15 161 (5.90%) Disaster Recovery
16 159 (5.83%) Cybersecurity
17 157 (5.76%) Service Delivery
18 153 (5.61%) Incident Management
19 147 (5.39%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 668 (24.50%) PowerShell
2 295 (10.82%) Python
3 275 (10.08%) SQL
4 162 (5.94%) Bash
5 141 (5.17%) C#
6 69 (2.53%) JavaScript
7 67 (2.46%) Java
8 51 (1.87%) T-SQL
9 49 (1.80%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.72%) C++
11 43 (1.58%) Bicep
12 28 (1.03%) VB
13 25 (0.92%) VBScript
14 24 (0.88%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.62%) Perl
15 17 (0.62%) TypeScript
16 16 (0.59%) Shell Script
17 15 (0.55%) C
18 12 (0.44%) VBA
19 11 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 863 (31.65%) Security Cleared
2 522 (19.14%) SC Cleared
3 317 (11.62%) DV Cleared
4 281 (10.30%) Degree
5 110 (4.03%) Microsoft Certification
6 80 (2.93%) Cisco Certification
7 73 (2.68%) Azure Certification
8 72 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
9 63 (2.31%) CISSP
10 49 (1.80%) AWS Certification
11 45 (1.65%) A+ Certification
11 45 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
12 35 (1.28%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 32 (1.17%) MCSE
13 32 (1.17%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 28 (1.03%) CCNA
14 28 (1.03%) CCNP
15 24 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
16 23 (0.84%) CISM
16 23 (0.84%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 135 (4.95%) SLA
2 109 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 80 (2.93%) NIST
4 77 (2.82%) QA
5 28 (1.03%) GDPR
6 27 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.99%) NCSC
7 23 (0.84%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 13 (0.48%) Accessibility
10 12 (0.44%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.40%) WCAG
12 10 (0.37%) GRC
12 10 (0.37%) PMO
13 8 (0.29%) GxP
13 8 (0.29%) NIST 800
13 8 (0.29%) SOC 2
14 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,110 (40.70%) Active Directory
2 388 (14.23%) VMware Infrastructure
3 163 (5.98%) Hyper-V
4 131 (4.80%) VMware ESXi
5 112 (4.11%) vSphere
6 101 (3.70%) Docker
7 94 (3.45%) Virtual Machines
8 79 (2.90%) VMware NSX
9 75 (2.75%) Virtual Desktop
10 38 (1.39%) BitLocker
11 32 (1.17%) Firmware
12 21 (0.77%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.66%) vCloud
14 12 (0.44%) KVM
14 12 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.29%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.26%) NFS
17 6 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
17 6 (0.22%) XenApp
17 6 (0.22%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 400 (14.67%) Microsoft Intune
2 264 (9.68%) SCCM
3 241 (8.84%) Terraform
4 210 (7.70%) Ansible
5 151 (5.54%) Kubernetes
6 113 (4.14%) vCenter Server
7 74 (2.71%) SCOM
8 47 (1.72%) Jamf Pro
9 44 (1.61%) WSUS
10 39 (1.43%) FortiGate
11 36 (1.32%) Progress Chef
12 32 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
13 29 (1.06%) Puppet
14 24 (0.88%) Packer
15 23 (0.84%) Nagios
16 22 (0.81%) VxRail
16 22 (0.81%) WMI
17 21 (0.77%) Grafana
17 21 (0.77%) Prometheus
18 20 (0.73%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,246 (45.69%) Microsoft
2 526 (19.29%) VMware
3 315 (11.55%) ServiceNow
4 182 (6.67%) Cisco
5 171 (6.27%) Citrix
6 158 (5.79%) Oracle
7 118 (4.33%) Splunk
8 87 (3.19%) Apple
9 83 (3.04%) CyberArk
10 81 (2.97%) SolarWinds
11 68 (2.49%) Google
12 67 (2.46%) Remedy
13 64 (2.35%) HP
13 64 (2.35%) Red Hat
14 56 (2.05%) BeyondTrust
15 53 (1.94%) Juniper
16 52 (1.91%) Dell
17 45 (1.65%) BMC
18 43 (1.58%) F5
19 42 (1.54%) IBM