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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -7 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,699 2,267 2,917
As % of all contract jobs in England 5.93% 8.21% 8.64%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.66% 60.65% 61.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,723 1,536 1,995
10th Percentile £170 £175 £175
25th Percentile £225 £225 £255
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £440
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -6.25% -
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £674 £663
UK median daily rate £425 £415 £426
% change year-on-year +2.37% -2.43% -3.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 236 185 217
10th Percentile £16.05 £15.21 £11.07
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.33 £14.72
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -18.77%
75th Percentile £56.00 £28.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.13 £19.27 £21.00
% change year-on-year +30.41% -8.24% -10.64%

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 4,377 3,738 4,767
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.62% 13.54% 14.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,810 2,495 3,186
10th Percentile £191 £200 £200
25th Percentile £313 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £480
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% -4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £663 £679 £688
UK median daily rate £472 £463 £475
% change year-on-year +1.95% -2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 298 230 315
10th Percentile £16.07 £15.50 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.13 £16.65
Median hourly rate £32.50 £23.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.30% -16.36% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.92 £24.00 £27.00
% change year-on-year +8.00% -11.11% -36.47%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -15 898 £425 - 343
South East -8 580 £475 -3.26% 313
North of England -10 466 £337 -1.03% 209
South West -9 277 £488 +8.33% 128
Midlands -24 261 £400 +23.08% 134
North West -7 252 £340 -5.17% 115
East of England -3 201 £339 +42.63% 120
Yorkshire -10 192 £365 +12.31% 61
West Midlands -30 169 £450 +12.50% 82
East Midlands +5 88 £270 +35.00% 52
North East -39 26 £270 -1.82% 39
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
1 226 (8.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 213 (7.89%) SharePoint
3 57 (2.11%) Confluence
4 56 (2.07%) IIS
5 17 (0.63%) nginx
6 15 (0.56%) Apache
7 14 (0.52%) Tomcat
8 11 (0.41%) Skype for Business
9 9 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
9 9 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.22%) Appian
10 6 (0.22%) Documentum
11 5 (0.19%) Camunda
12 4 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.15%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.11%) Apache Solr
13 3 (0.11%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.11%) NetWeaver
13 3 (0.11%) Tuxedo
14 2 (0.074%) WebSphere Portal
Applications
1 165 (6.11%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 14 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
5 4 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 4 (0.15%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.074%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.037%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.037%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.037%) InDesign
8 1 (0.037%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 55 (2.04%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.37%) Finacle
3 8 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.26%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.26%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.22%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.074%) assyst
8 1 (0.037%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.037%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.037%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.037%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.037%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.037%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 846 (31.34%) Azure
2 833 (30.86%) Microsoft 365
3 408 (15.12%) Entra ID
4 301 (11.15%) AWS
5 120 (4.45%) OneDrive
6 92 (3.41%) Azure DevOps
6 92 (3.41%) GCP
7 73 (2.70%) SaaS
8 62 (2.30%) GitHub
8 62 (2.30%) IaaS
9 61 (2.26%) Azure Monitor
10 58 (2.15%) Power Platform
11 52 (1.93%) PaaS
12 39 (1.44%) Azure Sentinel
13 27 (1.00%) AWS CloudFormation
14 24 (0.89%) Azure AKS
15 23 (0.85%) Google Workspace
16 22 (0.82%) Datadog
16 22 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
16 22 (0.82%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 418 (15.49%) DNS
2 323 (11.97%) Firewall
3 288 (10.67%) DHCP
4 203 (7.52%) VPN
5 194 (7.19%) TCP/IP
6 146 (5.41%) LAN
7 137 (5.08%) WAN
8 120 (4.45%) Wi-Fi
9 86 (3.19%) SAN
10 67 (2.48%) Network Security
10 67 (2.48%) VLAN
11 46 (1.70%) BGP
11 46 (1.70%) SSL
12 38 (1.41%) Internet
12 38 (1.41%) NAS
12 38 (1.41%) Wireless
13 36 (1.33%) OSPF
14 33 (1.22%) VSAN
15 29 (1.07%) VoIP
16 28 (1.04%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 263 (9.74%) SQL Server
2 53 (1.96%) Oracle Database
3 46 (1.70%) Power BI
4 26 (0.96%) PostgreSQL
5 25 (0.93%) Relational Database
6 24 (0.89%) MySQL
7 22 (0.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 19 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (0.63%) Db2
10 13 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
11 12 (0.44%) RDBMS
11 12 (0.44%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 12 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 11 (0.41%) MongoDB
12 11 (0.41%) NoSQL
13 10 (0.37%) Geospatial Data
14 8 (0.30%) Data Warehouse
15 6 (0.22%) GIS
16 5 (0.19%) Azure SQL Database
16 5 (0.19%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 163 (6.04%) JIRA
2 60 (2.22%) Git
3 46 (1.70%) MSI
4 45 (1.67%) Jenkins
5 39 (1.44%) GitLab
6 32 (1.19%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.63%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.52%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.33%) Chocolatey
10 8 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.26%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.22%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.22%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.22%) Xcode
13 5 (0.19%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.19%) Selenium
14 4 (0.15%) Maven
14 4 (0.15%) Robot Framework
General
1 988 (36.61%) Social Skills
2 325 (12.04%) Finance
3 321 (11.89%) Analytical Skills
4 159 (5.89%) Public Sector
5 157 (5.82%) Banking
6 95 (3.52%) Documentation Skills
7 78 (2.89%) Legal
8 77 (2.85%) Organisational Skills
9 56 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 53 (1.96%) Retail
11 45 (1.67%) Manufacturing
11 45 (1.67%) Military
12 40 (1.48%) Front Office
13 38 (1.41%) Telecoms
14 35 (1.30%) Law
15 34 (1.26%) Investment Banking
16 27 (1.00%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.93%) Financial Institution
18 23 (0.85%) French Language
19 20 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 405 (15.01%) Support Engineer
2 369 (13.67%) IT Support
3 276 (10.23%) IT Engineer
4 266 (9.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 249 (9.23%) Analyst
6 231 (8.56%) IT Support Engineer
7 217 (8.04%) Senior
8 124 (4.59%) 2nd Line Support
9 110 (4.08%) Desktop Support
10 109 (4.04%) Architect
11 100 (3.71%) Cloud Engineer
12 98 (3.63%) Desktop Engineer
12 98 (3.63%) Developer
13 97 (3.59%) Lead
14 94 (3.48%) Support Analyst
15 81 (3.00%) IT Analyst
16 75 (2.78%) Consultant
17 74 (2.74%) Windows Engineer
18 73 (2.70%) 1st Line Support
19 69 (2.56%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (3.93%) .NET
2 96 (3.56%) REST
3 61 (2.26%) .NET Framework
4 31 (1.15%) 802.1X
5 28 (1.04%) WPF
6 27 (1.00%) LDAP
6 27 (1.00%) Middleware
6 27 (1.00%) WinForms
7 24 (0.89%) CSS
7 24 (0.89%) Microsoft Graph
7 24 (0.89%) Web Services
8 22 (0.82%) JSON
9 21 (0.78%) Software Packaging
10 20 (0.74%) HTML
11 19 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
11 19 (0.70%) Kafka
12 16 (0.59%) ARM Templates
12 16 (0.59%) RESTful
12 16 (0.59%) SAML
12 16 (0.59%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 301 (11.15%) Onboarding
2 149 (5.52%) Data Centre
2 149 (5.52%) PKI
3 87 (3.22%) Clustering
4 76 (2.82%) Management Information System
5 73 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
6 70 (2.59%) Cloud Native
7 61 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
7 61 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
8 55 (2.04%) Video Conferencing
9 53 (1.96%) Driving Licence
10 52 (1.93%) Replication
11 50 (1.85%) Security Posture
12 47 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
13 42 (1.56%) Virtual Team
14 36 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
15 33 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
16 30 (1.11%) Enterprise Storage
17 29 (1.07%) Linux Command Line
18 28 (1.04%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 683 (25.31%) Windows Server
2 658 (24.38%) Linux
3 473 (17.53%) Windows 10
4 176 (6.52%) Mac OS
5 124 (4.59%) Apple iOS
6 122 (4.52%) Android
6 122 (4.52%) Unix
7 109 (4.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 69 (2.56%) Windows Server 2019
9 40 (1.48%) Ubuntu
10 39 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
11 35 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 33 (1.22%) Windows 7
13 30 (1.11%) AIX
14 23 (0.85%) CentOS
15 20 (0.74%) Solaris
16 19 (0.70%) VMS
16 19 (0.70%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.37%) Rocky
18 9 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 644 (23.86%) Problem-Solving
2 478 (17.71%) ITIL
3 412 (15.26%) Customer Service
4 347 (12.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 318 (11.78%) Migration
6 314 (11.63%) ITSM
7 267 (9.89%) Continuous Improvement
8 261 (9.67%) DevOps
9 247 (9.15%) Agile
10 241 (8.93%) CI/CD
11 222 (8.23%) Service Management
12 202 (7.48%) Infrastructure as Code
13 193 (7.15%) Change Management
14 175 (6.48%) High Availability
14 175 (6.48%) Stakeholder Management
15 152 (5.63%) Cybersecurity
16 151 (5.59%) Service Delivery
17 150 (5.56%) Disaster Recovery
17 150 (5.56%) SIEM
18 146 (5.41%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 630 (23.34%) PowerShell
2 293 (10.86%) Python
3 278 (10.30%) SQL
4 154 (5.71%) Bash
5 138 (5.11%) C#
6 70 (2.59%) JavaScript
7 69 (2.56%) Java
8 52 (1.93%) T-SQL
9 49 (1.82%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.78%) C++
11 38 (1.41%) Bicep
12 24 (0.89%) Search Processing Language
13 22 (0.82%) VB
14 18 (0.67%) VBScript
15 17 (0.63%) Perl
15 17 (0.63%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.59%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.56%) C
18 14 (0.52%) VBA
19 13 (0.48%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 834 (30.90%) Security Cleared
2 502 (18.60%) SC Cleared
3 305 (11.30%) DV Cleared
4 291 (10.78%) Degree
5 109 (4.04%) Microsoft Certification
6 83 (3.08%) Cisco Certification
7 72 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
8 69 (2.56%) Azure Certification
9 62 (2.30%) CISSP
10 50 (1.85%) AWS Certification
11 49 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
12 43 (1.59%) A+ Certification
13 33 (1.22%) MCSE
14 31 (1.15%) CCNA
15 30 (1.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 29 (1.07%) CCNP
17 28 (1.04%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 25 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.85%) CISM
19 23 (0.85%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 136 (5.04%) SLA
2 115 (4.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 84 (3.11%) NIST
4 74 (2.74%) QA
5 30 (1.11%) GDPR
6 28 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 24 (0.89%) PCI DSS
8 23 (0.85%) NCSC
9 16 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 12 (0.44%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.41%) Accessibility
11 11 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.37%) GRC
12 10 (0.37%) PMO
13 9 (0.33%) WCAG
14 8 (0.30%) GxP
14 8 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 8 (0.30%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,085 (40.20%) Active Directory
2 367 (13.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 146 (5.41%) Hyper-V
4 126 (4.67%) VMware ESXi
5 104 (3.85%) vSphere
6 100 (3.71%) Docker
7 90 (3.33%) Virtual Machines
8 74 (2.74%) VMware NSX
9 72 (2.67%) Virtual Desktop
10 33 (1.22%) Firmware
11 32 (1.19%) BitLocker
12 23 (0.85%) Microsoft App-V
13 16 (0.59%) vCloud
14 12 (0.44%) KVM
15 8 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.30%) VMware Workstation
16 7 (0.26%) NFS
16 7 (0.26%) XenApp
16 7 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 6 (0.22%) UAG
Systems Management
1 400 (14.82%) Microsoft Intune
2 252 (9.34%) SCCM
3 232 (8.60%) Terraform
4 204 (7.56%) Ansible
5 151 (5.59%) Kubernetes
6 110 (4.08%) vCenter Server
7 69 (2.56%) SCOM
8 45 (1.67%) Jamf Pro
9 39 (1.44%) FortiGate
10 38 (1.41%) WSUS
11 35 (1.30%) Progress Chef
12 30 (1.11%) Puppet
12 30 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
13 24 (0.89%) Grafana
14 23 (0.85%) Nagios
14 23 (0.85%) Packer
14 23 (0.85%) Prometheus
15 20 (0.74%) ZABBIX
16 19 (0.70%) Nessus
16 19 (0.70%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,195 (44.28%) Microsoft
2 497 (18.41%) VMware
3 299 (11.08%) ServiceNow
4 181 (6.71%) Cisco
5 176 (6.52%) Citrix
6 160 (5.93%) Oracle
7 118 (4.37%) Splunk
8 81 (3.00%) SolarWinds
9 80 (2.96%) Apple
9 80 (2.96%) CyberArk
10 66 (2.45%) Google
10 66 (2.45%) HP
11 65 (2.41%) Red Hat
11 65 (2.41%) Remedy
12 59 (2.19%) BeyondTrust
13 54 (2.00%) Juniper
14 53 (1.96%) Dell
15 44 (1.63%) IBM
16 43 (1.59%) BMC
16 43 (1.59%) F5