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 20 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 21 19 14
Rank change year-on-year -2 -5 0
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,382 2,639 4,124
As % of all contract jobs in England 8.46% 8.35% 10.06%
As % of the Operating Systems category 59.79% 58.79% 63.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,594 1,668 2,758
10th Percentile £163 £187 £163
25th Percentile £205 £250 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £395 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year -7.06% - -
75th Percentile £538 £575 £586
90th Percentile £638 £646 £675
UK median daily rate £400 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.88% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 246 123 249
10th Percentile £13.33 £15.27 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.14 £18.08 £17.72
Median hourly rate £21.02 £24.18 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.07% +2.89% +10.59%
75th Percentile £29.69 £65.00 £56.06
90th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £21.75 £24.18 £22.50
% change year-on-year -10.05% +7.47% +11.39%

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 3,984 4,489 6,461
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 14.15% 14.21% 15.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,593 2,766 4,430
10th Percentile £185 £203 £185
25th Percentile £270 £330 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £585 £625
90th Percentile £663 £688 £713
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £495
% change year-on-year -5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 301 204 334
10th Percentile £15.22 £16.25 £14.74
25th Percentile £18.13 £22.44 £18.50
Median hourly rate £23.00 £58.00 £44.42
Median % change year-on-year -60.34% +30.56% +77.68%
75th Percentile £43.75 £70.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 - £76.53
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £52.50 £41.41
% change year-on-year -54.29% +26.77% +72.55%

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 20 October 2025.

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 20 October 2025.

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 20 October 2025. 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 -14 747 £425 - 445
South East +3 488 £365 -14.12% 577
North of England -4 346 £300 -29.41% 353
South West +6 322 £350 -22.22% 213
Midlands -8 274 £375 -1.32% 177
East of England 0 211 £318 -33.14% 178
West Midlands -6 199 £400 +8.84% 80
North West -7 189 £334 -25.89% 206
Yorkshire -11 133 £250 -37.50% 109
East Midlands -8 74 £200 -46.67% 96
North East +3 24 £200 -37.98% 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
1 218 (9.15%) Microsoft Exchange
2 158 (6.63%) SharePoint
3 78 (3.27%) Confluence
4 51 (2.14%) Apache
5 39 (1.64%) IIS
6 25 (1.05%) WebSphere
7 20 (0.84%) JBoss
8 18 (0.76%) Skype for Business
9 14 (0.59%) nginx
9 14 (0.59%) SharePoint Server
10 13 (0.55%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.46%) Exchange Server 2010
11 11 (0.46%) Exchange Server 2013
11 11 (0.46%) WebSphere Application Server
12 10 (0.42%) Exchange Server 2003
12 10 (0.42%) Exchange Server 2007
12 10 (0.42%) iPlanet
12 10 (0.42%) Office Communications Server
13 7 (0.29%) Tomcat
14 5 (0.21%) Documentum
Applications
1 204 (8.56%) Microsoft Office
2 82 (3.44%) Microsoft Excel
3 12 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.42%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 9 (0.38%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.084%) Photoshop
8 2 (0.084%) Windchill
9 1 (0.042%) Adobe After Effects
9 1 (0.042%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.042%) InDesign
9 1 (0.042%) InfoPath
9 1 (0.042%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 12 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 7 (0.29%) Maximo
3 5 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.17%) Oracle 11i
5 3 (0.13%) ION MarketView
6 2 (0.084%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.084%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.084%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.084%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.084%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.042%) Alphatax
7 1 (0.042%) assyst
7 1 (0.042%) Eikon
7 1 (0.042%) Eze OMS
7 1 (0.042%) OpenText MBPM
7 1 (0.042%) Oracle BPM
7 1 (0.042%) RMDS
7 1 (0.042%) SAP SCM
7 1 (0.042%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 657 (27.58%) Microsoft 365
2 552 (23.17%) Azure
3 212 (8.90%) Entra ID
4 209 (8.77%) AWS
5 79 (3.32%) OneDrive
6 72 (3.02%) SaaS
7 53 (2.23%) IaaS
8 47 (1.97%) GCP
9 43 (1.81%) Google Workspace
10 42 (1.76%) Azure DevOps
11 39 (1.64%) GitHub
11 39 (1.64%) PaaS
12 35 (1.47%) Amazon S3
13 34 (1.43%) Power Platform
14 33 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
15 32 (1.34%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 29 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 28 (1.18%) OpenShift
18 27 (1.13%) Azure Sentinel
19 26 (1.09%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 305 (12.80%) DNS
2 250 (10.50%) Firewall
3 183 (7.68%) DHCP
4 178 (7.47%) TCP/IP
5 143 (6.00%) VPN
6 91 (3.82%) LAN
7 89 (3.74%) WAN
8 81 (3.40%) SAN
9 70 (2.94%) Wi-Fi
10 64 (2.69%) Network Security
11 56 (2.35%) VLAN
12 54 (2.27%) Wireless
13 52 (2.18%) SSH
14 46 (1.93%) Cisco IOS
15 42 (1.76%) HTTP
16 32 (1.34%) SMTP
17 29 (1.22%) FTP
18 28 (1.18%) SSL
19 25 (1.05%) Internet
20 23 (0.97%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (4.66%) SQL Server
2 64 (2.69%) Oracle Database
3 54 (2.27%) Relational Database
4 39 (1.64%) MySQL
5 35 (1.47%) Amazon RDS
6 24 (1.01%) PostgreSQL
7 13 (0.55%) NoSQL
7 13 (0.55%) Power BI
8 11 (0.46%) Amazon Aurora
8 11 (0.46%) DB2
8 11 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
9 10 (0.42%) GIS
9 10 (0.42%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 8 (0.34%) MongoDB
10 8 (0.34%) RDBMS
11 7 (0.29%) Big Data
11 7 (0.29%) Elasticsearch
11 7 (0.29%) SAP HANA
12 5 (0.21%) HPCC
13 4 (0.17%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 131 (5.50%) JIRA
2 97 (4.07%) Git
3 89 (3.74%) Jenkins
4 37 (1.55%) GitLab
5 34 (1.43%) Eclipse
6 29 (1.22%) MSI
7 25 (1.05%) Vagrant
8 22 (0.92%) Visual Studio
9 20 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
10 17 (0.71%) Bitbucket
11 16 (0.67%) Browser DevTools
12 15 (0.63%) Android Studio
12 15 (0.63%) Bitbucket Server
12 15 (0.63%) CA Release Automation
12 15 (0.63%) Xcode
13 13 (0.55%) AdminStudio
13 13 (0.55%) Postman
14 12 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 12 (0.50%) SonarQube
15 11 (0.46%) InstallShield
General
1 865 (36.31%) Social Skills
2 345 (14.48%) Finance
3 215 (9.03%) Public Sector
4 204 (8.56%) Analytical Skills
5 118 (4.95%) Banking
6 90 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
7 61 (2.56%) Legal
7 61 (2.56%) Organisational Skills
8 56 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 55 (2.31%) Manufacturing
10 44 (1.85%) Military
11 40 (1.68%) Presentation Skills
11 40 (1.68%) Retail
12 39 (1.64%) Telecoms
13 31 (1.30%) Games
14 28 (1.18%) Marketing
15 26 (1.09%) Front Office
16 22 (0.92%) Aerospace
16 22 (0.92%) Financial Institution
17 20 (0.84%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 377 (15.83%) Support Engineer
2 268 (11.25%) Analyst
3 234 (9.82%) IT Support
4 156 (6.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 153 (6.42%) Windows Engineer
6 143 (6.00%) IT Engineer
7 142 (5.96%) Desktop Engineer
8 141 (5.92%) Desktop Support
9 124 (5.21%) Architect
10 122 (5.12%) Support Analyst
11 119 (5.00%) Deployment Engineer
12 111 (4.66%) Senior
13 108 (4.53%) 2nd Line Support
14 104 (4.37%) Desktop Support Engineer
15 96 (4.03%) Technical Support
16 90 (3.78%) IT Support Engineer
17 83 (3.48%) Platform Engineer
18 80 (3.36%) Administrator
19 76 (3.19%) Developer
20 66 (2.77%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (2.60%) .NET
2 49 (2.06%) Middleware
3 39 (1.64%) LDAP
4 36 (1.51%) Web Services
5 34 (1.43%) .NET Framework
5 34 (1.43%) Node.js
5 34 (1.43%) WPF
6 29 (1.22%) AngularJS
7 28 (1.18%) XML
8 27 (1.13%) React
8 27 (1.13%) REST
8 27 (1.13%) SOAP
9 21 (0.88%) CSS
10 19 (0.80%) OAuth
11 17 (0.71%) Ajax
11 17 (0.71%) SAML
12 16 (0.67%) GraphQL
13 15 (0.63%) Kafka
13 15 (0.63%) RESTful
13 15 (0.63%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 86 (3.61%) Onboarding
2 80 (3.36%) Data Centre
3 76 (3.19%) PKI
4 60 (2.52%) Replication
5 59 (2.48%) Driving Licence
6 57 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
7 49 (2.06%) Management Information System
8 44 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
9 38 (1.60%) iPhone
10 37 (1.55%) iPad
11 32 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
12 31 (1.30%) Video Conferencing
13 29 (1.22%) NHS
13 29 (1.22%) Smartphone
14 27 (1.13%) Security Posture
15 24 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
16 22 (0.92%) Fat Client
16 22 (0.92%) Thin Client
17 21 (0.88%) CMDB
17 21 (0.88%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 550 (23.09%) Linux
2 521 (21.87%) Windows 10
3 441 (18.51%) Windows Server
4 157 (6.59%) Unix
5 136 (5.71%) Mac OS
6 114 (4.79%) Android
7 93 (3.90%) Apple iOS
8 78 (3.27%) Windows Server 2019
9 73 (3.06%) Windows Server 2016
10 66 (2.77%) Windows 7
11 58 (2.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 37 (1.55%) Ubuntu
13 35 (1.47%) Windows Server 2003
14 34 (1.43%) Windows Server 2012
15 33 (1.39%) VMS
16 23 (0.97%) Amazon Linux
16 23 (0.97%) CentOS
17 21 (0.88%) AIX
18 14 (0.59%) Solaris
19 13 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 409 (17.17%) Problem-Solving
2 358 (15.03%) ITIL
3 303 (12.72%) Customer Service
4 248 (10.41%) Migration
5 220 (9.24%) Agile
6 207 (8.69%) DevOps
7 198 (8.31%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 166 (6.97%) Service Management
9 153 (6.42%) ITSM
10 145 (6.09%) CI/CD
11 144 (6.05%) Cybersecurity
12 127 (5.33%) Change Management
13 112 (4.70%) Stakeholder Management
14 107 (4.49%) Continuous Improvement
15 101 (4.24%) Incident Response
16 99 (4.16%) SIEM
17 98 (4.11%) User Experience
18 95 (3.99%) Cloud Security
19 94 (3.95%) Patch Management
20 90 (3.78%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 431 (18.09%) PowerShell
2 288 (12.09%) Python
3 230 (9.66%) SQL
4 116 (4.87%) C#
5 109 (4.58%) Java
6 90 (3.78%) Bash
7 75 (3.15%) JavaScript
8 66 (2.77%) C++
9 63 (2.64%) Perl
10 40 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 40 (1.68%) VB
11 33 (1.39%) Groovy
11 33 (1.39%) Shell Script
12 31 (1.30%) VBA
13 26 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
14 25 (1.05%) VBScript
15 20 (0.84%) C
15 20 (0.84%) PHP
16 17 (0.71%) VB.NET
17 13 (0.55%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 666 (27.96%) Security Cleared
2 444 (18.64%) SC Cleared
3 194 (8.14%) Degree
4 183 (7.68%) DV Cleared
5 163 (6.84%) Microsoft Certification
6 59 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
7 53 (2.23%) Azure Certification
8 45 (1.89%) MCSE
9 44 (1.85%) A+ Certification
10 41 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
11 39 (1.64%) DBS Check
12 34 (1.43%) CISSP
13 33 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 31 (1.30%) AWS Certification
14 31 (1.30%) ITIL Certification
15 23 (0.97%) CCNP
16 22 (0.92%) CCNA
16 22 (0.92%) MCP
17 19 (0.80%) BPSS Clearance
18 18 (0.76%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (4.11%) SLA
2 60 (2.52%) GDPR
2 60 (2.52%) QA
3 50 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 48 (2.02%) NIST
5 16 (0.67%) HIPAA
6 13 (0.55%) PCI DSS
7 11 (0.46%) Accessibility
8 10 (0.42%) PMO
9 9 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
9 9 (0.38%) NCSC
10 4 (0.17%) SEPA
10 4 (0.17%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.13%) ECSS
11 3 (0.13%) GLBA
11 3 (0.13%) GxP
11 3 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.084%) GAAP
12 2 (0.084%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.084%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 859 (36.06%) Active Directory
2 229 (9.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 105 (4.41%) Docker
4 75 (3.15%) Hyper-V
5 62 (2.60%) Virtual Desktop
6 61 (2.56%) vSphere
7 57 (2.39%) Virtual Machines
8 55 (2.31%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (1.34%) Virtual Servers
10 28 (1.18%) VMware NSX
11 26 (1.09%) Microsoft App-V
12 25 (1.05%) DFS Replication
12 25 (1.05%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 21 (0.88%) NFS
14 16 (0.67%) Firmware
15 14 (0.59%) BitLocker
16 13 (0.55%) Terminal Services
17 10 (0.42%) ISA Server
17 10 (0.42%) Postfix
17 10 (0.42%) Squid
Systems Management
1 374 (15.70%) SCCM
2 255 (10.71%) Microsoft Intune
3 130 (5.46%) Terraform
4 116 (4.87%) Ansible
5 66 (2.77%) Kubernetes
6 50 (2.10%) vCenter Server
7 48 (2.02%) WSUS
8 41 (1.72%) Grafana
9 34 (1.43%) Jamf Pro
10 29 (1.22%) Prometheus
11 26 (1.09%) Nessus
12 25 (1.05%) Microsoft Clustering
12 25 (1.05%) Puppet
13 23 (0.97%) Progress Chef
14 20 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 19 (0.80%) SCOM
15 19 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
16 14 (0.59%) Proxmox
16 14 (0.59%) Tivoli
17 13 (0.55%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,059 (44.46%) Microsoft
2 330 (13.85%) VMware
3 226 (9.49%) ServiceNow
4 182 (7.64%) Oracle
5 158 (6.63%) Cisco
6 147 (6.17%) Splunk
7 146 (6.13%) Citrix
8 65 (2.73%) Apple
9 61 (2.56%) IBM
10 59 (2.48%) NetApp
11 57 (2.39%) HP
12 53 (2.23%) Red Hat
13 52 (2.18%) Dell
14 49 (2.06%) Google
14 49 (2.06%) Veeam
15 45 (1.89%) SolarWinds
16 41 (1.72%) AppDynamics
17 34 (1.43%) CyberArk
17 34 (1.43%) SAP
18 32 (1.34%) Juniper