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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,765 2,317 2,820
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.04% 8.35% 8.53%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.04% 60.97% 59.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,786 1,566 1,878
10th Percentile £171 £171 £180
25th Percentile £225 £220 £255
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £415 £408 £425
Median % change year-on-year +1.84% -4.12% -2.30%
75th Percentile £556 £568 £575
90th Percentile £650 £660 £651
UK median daily rate £425 £413 £425
% change year-on-year +3.03% -2.94% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 242 196 181
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.31 £11.44
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.70 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.75 £19.32 £21.80
Median % change year-on-year +33.32% -11.40% -5.22%
75th Percentile £55.88 £30.88 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.61 £65.00 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £22.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -2.22%

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 4,457 3,800 4,710
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.74% 13.69% 14.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,863 2,501 3,073
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £310 £307 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.33% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £588
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £469 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 311 243 266
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.51 £12.50
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £32.50 £24.00 £39.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.42% -38.46% -8.24%
75th Percentile £67.36 £58.88 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.68 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £35.58
% change year-on-year +2.47% -29.32% -16.28%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -14 931 £425 - 372
South East -6 571 £475 -2.86% 332
North of England -6 498 £325 - 233
North West +4 299 £335 -4.29% 118
South West -15 281 £475 +35.71% 126
Midlands -17 269 £385 -3.75% 153
East of England -4 197 £300 -12.41% 166
Yorkshire -17 172 £313 -3.85% 78
West Midlands -25 170 £419 -2.62% 98
East Midlands +3 95 £275 +37.50% 53
North East -30 31 £250 -4.76% 47
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
1 235 (8.50%) SharePoint
2 227 (8.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 54 (1.95%) Confluence
3 54 (1.95%) IIS
4 19 (0.69%) Skype for Business
5 18 (0.65%) nginx
6 16 (0.58%) Apache
7 11 (0.40%) Tomcat
8 7 (0.25%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.22%) 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 (0.072%) CMS
13 2 (0.072%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 177 (6.40%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) Houdini
6 3 (0.11%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.11%) NUKE
7 2 (0.072%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.036%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.036%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.036%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (2.03%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.36%) 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
7 2 (0.072%) assyst
8 1 (0.036%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.036%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.036%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.036%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.036%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.036%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.036%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.036%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.036%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 903 (32.66%) Microsoft 365
2 884 (31.97%) Azure
3 452 (16.35%) Entra ID
4 310 (11.21%) AWS
5 136 (4.92%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 88 (3.18%) GCP
8 74 (2.68%) Azure Monitor
9 69 (2.50%) SaaS
10 61 (2.21%) Power Platform
11 60 (2.17%) GitHub
12 58 (2.10%) IaaS
13 44 (1.59%) PaaS
14 43 (1.56%) Azure Sentinel
15 30 (1.08%) OpenShift
16 26 (0.94%) Google Workspace
17 25 (0.90%) AWS CloudFormation
18 23 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
19 22 (0.80%) Azure AKS
20 20 (0.72%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 444 (16.06%) DNS
2 325 (11.75%) Firewall
3 321 (11.61%) DHCP
4 234 (8.46%) VPN
5 210 (7.59%) TCP/IP
6 130 (4.70%) WAN
7 125 (4.52%) LAN
8 123 (4.45%) Wi-Fi
9 87 (3.15%) SAN
10 84 (3.04%) VLAN
11 80 (2.89%) Network Security
12 42 (1.52%) NAS
12 42 (1.52%) Wireless
13 41 (1.48%) SSL
14 40 (1.45%) Internet
15 38 (1.37%) VSAN
16 35 (1.27%) Skype
17 29 (1.05%) BGP
18 27 (0.98%) VoIP
19 24 (0.87%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 253 (9.15%) SQL Server
2 52 (1.88%) Oracle Database
3 49 (1.77%) Power BI
4 26 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
5 25 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 22 (0.80%) Relational Database
7 20 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
8 19 (0.69%) MySQL
9 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 15 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 11 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
10 11 (0.40%) Geospatial Data
10 11 (0.40%) RDBMS
11 10 (0.36%) Db2
12 8 (0.29%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (0.29%) MongoDB
13 7 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 5 (0.18%) Big Data
14 5 (0.18%) ObjectStore
15 4 (0.14%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 150 (5.42%) JIRA
2 64 (2.31%) Git
3 45 (1.63%) Jenkins
3 45 (1.63%) MSI
4 40 (1.45%) GitLab
5 21 (0.76%) Visual Studio
6 14 (0.51%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 8 (0.29%) Artifactory
8 8 (0.29%) Eclipse
8 8 (0.29%) Selenium
9 7 (0.25%) Browser DevTools
9 7 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 5 (0.18%) AdminStudio
10 5 (0.18%) Chocolatey
10 5 (0.18%) InstallShield
11 4 (0.14%) Claude Code
11 4 (0.14%) Octopus Deploy
11 4 (0.14%) Robot Framework
11 4 (0.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,011 (36.56%) Social Skills
2 341 (12.33%) Finance
3 337 (12.19%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (5.39%) Banking
5 133 (4.81%) Public Sector
6 101 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
7 75 (2.71%) Legal
8 72 (2.60%) Organisational Skills
9 63 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 55 (1.99%) Manufacturing
11 52 (1.88%) Retail
12 44 (1.59%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.48%) Front Office
14 36 (1.30%) Law
15 33 (1.19%) Investment Banking
16 30 (1.08%) Military
17 28 (1.01%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.90%) French Language
19 24 (0.87%) Financial Institution
20 21 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 455 (16.46%) Support Engineer
2 384 (13.89%) IT Support
3 305 (11.03%) IT Engineer
4 292 (10.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 253 (9.15%) IT Support Engineer
6 235 (8.50%) Analyst
7 225 (8.14%) Senior
8 124 (4.48%) 2nd Line Support
9 122 (4.41%) Desktop Support
10 108 (3.91%) Desktop Engineer
11 106 (3.83%) Lead
12 105 (3.80%) Cloud Engineer
13 98 (3.54%) Architect
14 95 (3.44%) Support Analyst
15 88 (3.18%) Windows Engineer
16 81 (2.93%) Consultant
16 81 (2.93%) Developer
17 78 (2.82%) 1st Line Support
18 74 (2.68%) IT Analyst
19 73 (2.64%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (8.90%) Terraform
2 109 (3.94%) .NET
3 99 (3.58%) REST
4 61 (2.21%) .NET Framework
5 29 (1.05%) LDAP
5 29 (1.05%) Middleware
6 28 (1.01%) JSON
6 28 (1.01%) WPF
7 23 (0.83%) ARM Templates
7 23 (0.83%) WinForms
8 22 (0.80%) Software Packaging
9 20 (0.72%) CSS
9 20 (0.72%) HTML
10 19 (0.69%) .NET Core
10 19 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
10 19 (0.69%) Kafka
10 19 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
11 16 (0.58%) SAML
11 16 (0.58%) XML
12 15 (0.54%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 336 (12.15%) Onboarding
2 149 (5.39%) Data Centre
3 143 (5.17%) PKI
4 89 (3.22%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.97%) Clustering
5 82 (2.97%) Hybrid Cloud
6 73 (2.64%) Cloud Native
7 65 (2.35%) Enterprise Software
7 65 (2.35%) Video Conferencing
8 60 (2.17%) Self-Motivation
9 58 (2.10%) Driving Licence
10 56 (2.03%) Replication
11 43 (1.56%) Security Posture
12 41 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
13 40 (1.45%) Virtual Team
14 37 (1.34%) CMDB
14 37 (1.34%) Enterprise Storage
15 34 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
16 31 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
17 30 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 763 (27.59%) Windows Server
2 659 (23.83%) Linux
3 497 (17.97%) Windows 10
4 180 (6.51%) Mac OS
5 122 (4.41%) Apple iOS
6 118 (4.27%) Android
7 112 (4.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 101 (3.65%) Unix
9 68 (2.46%) Windows Server 2019
10 50 (1.81%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.66%) Windows 7
12 40 (1.45%) Windows Server 2016
13 37 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
14 32 (1.16%) CentOS
15 24 (0.87%) AIX
16 21 (0.76%) VMS
17 17 (0.61%) Windows Server 2008
18 15 (0.54%) Solaris
19 12 (0.43%) Windows Server 2003
20 11 (0.40%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 671 (24.27%) Problem-Solving
2 520 (18.81%) ITIL
3 452 (16.35%) Customer Service
4 374 (13.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 372 (13.45%) ITSM
6 327 (11.83%) Migration
7 299 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
8 272 (9.84%) DevOps
9 265 (9.58%) Service Management
10 235 (8.50%) Infrastructure as Code
11 229 (8.28%) Agile
11 229 (8.28%) CI/CD
12 204 (7.38%) Change Management
13 194 (7.02%) Stakeholder Management
14 180 (6.51%) Disaster Recovery
15 170 (6.15%) Root Cause Analysis
16 166 (6.00%) High Availability
17 163 (5.90%) Cybersecurity
18 160 (5.79%) Service Delivery
19 159 (5.75%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 705 (25.50%) PowerShell
2 305 (11.03%) Python
3 270 (9.76%) SQL
4 168 (6.08%) Bash
5 122 (4.41%) C#
6 59 (2.13%) Java
7 53 (1.92%) JavaScript
8 49 (1.77%) T-SQL
9 47 (1.70%) Bicep
10 42 (1.52%) PL/SQL
11 28 (1.01%) C++
11 28 (1.01%) VB
12 26 (0.94%) VBScript
13 24 (0.87%) Search Processing Language
14 17 (0.61%) Perl
15 16 (0.58%) TypeScript
16 15 (0.54%) Shell Script
17 11 (0.40%) VBA
18 10 (0.36%) Kusto Query Language
19 9 (0.33%) C
Qualifications
1 875 (31.65%) Security Cleared
2 523 (18.92%) SC Cleared
3 342 (12.37%) DV Cleared
4 280 (10.13%) Degree
5 110 (3.98%) Microsoft Certification
6 84 (3.04%) Azure Certification
7 71 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
7 71 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
8 61 (2.21%) CISSP
9 53 (1.92%) AWS Certification
10 48 (1.74%) A+ Certification
11 45 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
12 42 (1.52%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 32 (1.16%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 31 (1.12%) CCNA
15 30 (1.08%) CCNP
16 28 (1.01%) DBS Check
17 27 (0.98%) CISM
18 26 (0.94%) MCSE
19 25 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 145 (5.24%) SLA
2 113 (4.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 79 (2.86%) NIST
4 78 (2.82%) QA
5 32 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.98%) NCSC
7 23 (0.83%) GDPR
7 23 (0.83%) PCI DSS
8 15 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (0.51%) Accessibility
10 13 (0.47%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 11 (0.40%) HIPAA
11 11 (0.40%) WCAG
12 10 (0.36%) GRC
13 9 (0.33%) PMO
14 7 (0.25%) GxP
15 6 (0.22%) ISO 31000
15 6 (0.22%) NIST 800
15 6 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,154 (41.74%) Active Directory
2 419 (15.15%) VMware Infrastructure
3 181 (6.55%) Hyper-V
4 143 (5.17%) VMware ESXi
5 125 (4.52%) vSphere
6 103 (3.73%) Docker
7 89 (3.22%) Virtual Machines
8 83 (3.00%) VMware NSX
9 80 (2.89%) Virtual Desktop
10 40 (1.45%) BitLocker
11 31 (1.12%) Firmware
12 24 (0.87%) vCloud
13 17 (0.61%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.51%) Virtual Servers
15 10 (0.36%) XenApp
16 9 (0.33%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 9 (0.33%) KVM
16 9 (0.33%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.25%) NFS
18 6 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 408 (14.76%) Microsoft Intune
2 301 (10.89%) SCCM
3 216 (7.81%) Ansible
4 147 (5.32%) Kubernetes
5 122 (4.41%) vCenter Server
6 88 (3.18%) SCOM
7 46 (1.66%) WSUS
8 44 (1.59%) Jamf Pro
9 31 (1.12%) Progress Chef
10 29 (1.05%) Prometheus
10 29 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
11 27 (0.98%) Grafana
12 26 (0.94%) Puppet
13 25 (0.90%) Nagios
13 25 (0.90%) WMI
14 24 (0.87%) FortiGate
15 23 (0.83%) Packer
16 22 (0.80%) VxRail
17 20 (0.72%) Microsoft Clustering
17 20 (0.72%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,308 (47.31%) Microsoft
2 557 (20.14%) VMware
3 331 (11.97%) ServiceNow
4 184 (6.65%) Cisco
5 153 (5.53%) Citrix
5 153 (5.53%) Oracle
6 100 (3.62%) Splunk
7 95 (3.44%) Apple
8 87 (3.15%) CyberArk
9 72 (2.60%) Google
10 69 (2.50%) SolarWinds
11 64 (2.31%) Red Hat
12 62 (2.24%) BeyondTrust
12 62 (2.24%) HP
13 60 (2.17%) Remedy
14 50 (1.81%) Dell
15 46 (1.66%) BMC
16 41 (1.48%) NetApp
17 38 (1.37%) Meraki
18 37 (1.34%) Fortinet