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 8 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 22 17
Rank change year-on-year -4 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,454 2,056 3,186
As % of all contract jobs in England 6.06% 8.48% 8.65%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.30% 60.24% 63.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,642 1,460 2,212
10th Percentile £163 £179 £160
25th Percentile £213 £238 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £415 £420 £400
Median % change year-on-year -1.19% +5.00% -11.11%
75th Percentile £543 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £688 £675
UK median daily rate £415 £425 £400
% change year-on-year -2.35% +6.25% -11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 188 108 264
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £11.80
25th Percentile £18.38 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £26.47 £18.65 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.93% +3.61% -18.94%
75th Percentile £65.00 £24.75 £25.00
90th Percentile £75.45 £57.48 £65.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £18.82 £18.00
% change year-on-year +33.63% +4.56% -20.00%

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 4,003 3,413 5,013
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 9.88% 14.09% 13.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,645 2,314 3,424
10th Percentile £185 £200 £183
25th Percentile £310 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £465
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +2.15% -9.27%
75th Percentile £569 £600 £588
90th Percentile £659 £700 £700
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £468
% change year-on-year -5.26% +1.50% -7.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 154 363
10th Percentile £16.01 £15.22 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.13 £17.44 £14.95
Median hourly rate £47.50 £23.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +105.18% +5.23% -41.21%
75th Percentile £67.84 £63.63 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £23.40 £22.08
% change year-on-year +102.99% +6.00% -42.66%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 -22 762 £443 -1.67% 237
South East -5 510 £467 -6.60% 325
North of England -12 450 £335 +4.69% 196
Midlands -16 271 £325 +19.82% 111
North West -5 256 £274 -15.69% 108
South West -13 226 £450 -14.29% 115
East of England +3 212 £350 +47.37% 105
Yorkshire -20 180 £370 +19.35% 72
West Midlands -22 157 £442 +59.37% 61
East Midlands +8 109 £225 +9.09% 50
North East -24 18 £225 -13.46% 21
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
1 210 (8.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 144 (5.87%) SharePoint
3 52 (2.12%) IIS
4 49 (2.00%) Confluence
5 17 (0.69%) WebLogic
6 16 (0.65%) Apache
7 11 (0.45%) Skype for Business
7 11 (0.45%) Tuxedo
8 9 (0.37%) nginx
8 9 (0.37%) Tomcat
9 8 (0.33%) TPMS
10 5 (0.20%) SAS
11 4 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 4 (0.16%) OpenStack
11 4 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
12 2 (0.081%) Apache Pulsar
12 2 (0.081%) Appian
12 2 (0.081%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.081%) WordPress
Applications
1 164 (6.68%) Microsoft Office
2 61 (2.49%) Microsoft Excel
3 23 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.20%) PTC Creo
7 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.041%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 43 (1.75%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.33%) Teamcenter
4 6 (0.24%) assyst
5 4 (0.16%) Finacle
6 3 (0.12%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.12%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 2 (0.081%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.081%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 2 (0.081%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 1 (0.041%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.041%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.041%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.041%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.041%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 703 (28.65%) Azure
2 702 (28.61%) Microsoft 365
3 292 (11.90%) Entra ID
4 214 (8.72%) AWS
5 69 (2.81%) SaaS
6 68 (2.77%) Azure DevOps
6 68 (2.77%) GCP
7 64 (2.61%) OneDrive
8 59 (2.40%) IaaS
9 52 (2.12%) GitHub
10 50 (2.04%) PaaS
11 39 (1.59%) Power Platform
12 37 (1.51%) Google Workspace
13 35 (1.43%) Azure Monitor
14 26 (1.06%) Azure Sentinel
14 26 (1.06%) GitHub Actions
15 22 (0.90%) OpenShift
16 18 (0.73%) AWS CloudFormation
16 18 (0.73%) Azure AKS
17 16 (0.65%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 334 (13.61%) DNS
2 271 (11.04%) Firewall
3 233 (9.49%) DHCP
4 162 (6.60%) VPN
5 145 (5.91%) LAN
6 141 (5.75%) WAN
7 138 (5.62%) TCP/IP
8 110 (4.48%) Wi-Fi
9 64 (2.61%) Network Security
10 56 (2.28%) VLAN
11 55 (2.24%) SAN
12 46 (1.87%) Wireless
13 37 (1.51%) BGP
14 34 (1.39%) OSPF
15 32 (1.30%) Skype
16 31 (1.26%) SSL
17 29 (1.18%) BIG-IP
17 29 (1.18%) SNMP
17 29 (1.18%) VoIP
18 27 (1.10%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 181 (7.38%) SQL Server
2 44 (1.79%) Oracle Database
3 32 (1.30%) Relational Database
4 26 (1.06%) MySQL
5 24 (0.98%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (0.94%) Power BI
7 14 (0.57%) DB2
8 13 (0.53%) Elasticsearch
8 13 (0.53%) MongoDB
9 11 (0.45%) NoSQL
10 10 (0.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 7 (0.29%) BigQuery
11 7 (0.29%) RDBMS
12 6 (0.24%) GIS
12 6 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
13 5 (0.20%) Amazon RDS
13 5 (0.20%) Data Warehouse
13 5 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 4 (0.16%) Azure SQL Database
14 4 (0.16%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 162 (6.60%) JIRA
2 47 (1.92%) GitLab
3 43 (1.75%) MSI
4 41 (1.67%) Jenkins
5 36 (1.47%) Git
6 34 (1.39%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.86%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.73%) Burp Suite
9 17 (0.69%) Metasploit
10 10 (0.41%) Android Studio
10 10 (0.41%) Artifactory
10 10 (0.41%) Chocolatey
10 10 (0.41%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.37%) Bitbucket
11 9 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
11 9 (0.37%) InstallShield
11 9 (0.37%) Xcode
12 7 (0.29%) JUnit
12 7 (0.29%) Robot Framework
12 7 (0.29%) Selenium
General
1 841 (34.27%) Social Skills
2 247 (10.07%) Finance
3 219 (8.92%) Analytical Skills
4 182 (7.42%) Public Sector
5 139 (5.66%) Banking
6 100 (4.07%) Documentation Skills
7 94 (3.83%) Legal
8 72 (2.93%) Organisational Skills
9 60 (2.44%) Military
10 40 (1.63%) Retail
11 38 (1.55%) Law
12 36 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
13 35 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 30 (1.22%) Investment Banking
14 30 (1.22%) Manufacturing
14 30 (1.22%) Telecoms
15 28 (1.14%) Front Office
16 20 (0.81%) Local Government
16 20 (0.81%) Police
17 15 (0.61%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 313 (12.75%) IT Support
2 299 (12.18%) Support Engineer
3 278 (11.33%) Analyst
4 199 (8.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 190 (7.74%) IT Engineer
6 161 (6.56%) Senior
7 155 (6.32%) IT Support Engineer
8 144 (5.87%) Architect
9 113 (4.60%) Support Analyst
10 106 (4.32%) Desktop Support
11 99 (4.03%) Desktop Engineer
12 95 (3.87%) Developer
13 88 (3.59%) IT Analyst
14 87 (3.55%) 2nd Line Support
14 87 (3.55%) Technical Support
15 79 (3.22%) Lead
16 76 (3.10%) Windows Engineer
17 67 (2.73%) 1st Line Support
18 66 (2.69%) IT Support Analyst
19 64 (2.61%) Desktop Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 85 (3.46%) .NET
2 73 (2.97%) REST
3 51 (2.08%) .NET Framework
4 35 (1.43%) LDAP
5 33 (1.34%) SAML
6 31 (1.26%) Middleware
7 29 (1.18%) WinForms
7 29 (1.18%) WPF
8 28 (1.14%) Kafka
9 27 (1.10%) 802.1X
10 26 (1.06%) Microsoft Graph
10 26 (1.06%) OAuth
11 25 (1.02%) Web Services
12 20 (0.81%) Node.js
13 19 (0.77%) CSS
13 19 (0.77%) React
14 17 (0.69%) AngularJS
14 17 (0.69%) Software Packaging
15 15 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
15 15 (0.61%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 202 (8.23%) Onboarding
2 106 (4.32%) Data Centre
3 105 (4.28%) PKI
4 80 (3.26%) Enterprise Software
5 76 (3.10%) Clustering
6 57 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
7 56 (2.28%) Replication
8 54 (2.20%) Driving Licence
9 44 (1.79%) Hybrid Cloud
10 41 (1.67%) Management Information System
11 40 (1.63%) Smartphone
12 39 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
13 36 (1.47%) Security Posture
14 35 (1.43%) Virtual Team
15 32 (1.30%) Analytical Mindset
15 32 (1.30%) Cloud Native
16 29 (1.18%) Product Ownership
17 27 (1.10%) CMDB
18 26 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
19 25 (1.02%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 604 (24.61%) Linux
2 579 (23.59%) Windows Server
3 460 (18.74%) Windows 10
4 151 (6.15%) Mac OS
5 129 (5.26%) Android
6 120 (4.89%) Unix
7 118 (4.81%) Apple iOS
8 71 (2.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 64 (2.61%) Windows Server 2016
10 58 (2.36%) Windows Server 2019
11 47 (1.92%) Windows 7
12 35 (1.43%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.39%) AIX
14 22 (0.90%) Ubuntu
15 17 (0.69%) Windows Server 2003
16 16 (0.65%) VMS
17 14 (0.57%) Solaris
18 11 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.41%) CentOS
20 9 (0.37%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 511 (20.82%) Problem-Solving
2 387 (15.77%) Customer Service
3 358 (14.59%) ITIL
4 267 (10.88%) Migration
5 265 (10.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 264 (10.76%) Agile
7 224 (9.13%) DevOps
8 219 (8.92%) CI/CD
9 210 (8.56%) ITSM
10 162 (6.60%) Continuous Improvement
10 162 (6.60%) Disaster Recovery
11 157 (6.40%) Change Management
12 153 (6.23%) Service Management
13 145 (5.91%) High Availability
14 143 (5.83%) Cybersecurity
15 121 (4.93%) SIEM
16 120 (4.89%) Stakeholder Management
17 118 (4.81%) Infrastructure as Code
18 107 (4.36%) Computer Science
19 98 (3.99%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 525 (21.39%) PowerShell
2 246 (10.02%) SQL
3 238 (9.70%) Python
4 130 (5.30%) C#
5 85 (3.46%) Bash
6 70 (2.85%) Java
6 70 (2.85%) JavaScript
7 53 (2.16%) PL/SQL
8 48 (1.96%) C++
9 43 (1.75%) T-SQL
10 27 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
11 24 (0.98%) Perl
12 23 (0.94%) VB
13 22 (0.90%) Search Processing Language
14 20 (0.81%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.69%) VBScript
16 14 (0.57%) VBA
17 12 (0.49%) Go
17 12 (0.49%) TypeScript
18 11 (0.45%) C
Qualifications
1 785 (31.99%) Security Cleared
2 509 (20.74%) SC Cleared
3 252 (10.27%) Degree
4 247 (10.07%) DV Cleared
5 99 (4.03%) Microsoft Certification
6 74 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 66 (2.69%) Cisco Certification
8 44 (1.79%) Azure Certification
9 40 (1.63%) CISSP
9 40 (1.63%) MCSE
10 33 (1.34%) BPSS Clearance
11 31 (1.26%) AWS Certification
12 30 (1.22%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 27 (1.10%) ITIL Certification
13 27 (1.10%) MCSA
14 25 (1.02%) CCNA
15 19 (0.77%) CompTIA Security+
16 18 (0.73%) A+ Certification
17 17 (0.69%) CISM
18 16 (0.65%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (4.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 81 (3.30%) GDPR
3 80 (3.26%) QA
4 77 (3.14%) SLA
5 70 (2.85%) NIST
6 42 (1.71%) PCI DSS
7 29 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 25 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.57%) NCSC
10 13 (0.53%) PMO
11 12 (0.49%) NIST 800
12 11 (0.45%) MiFID
13 10 (0.41%) Data Quality
13 10 (0.41%) FINRA
14 8 (0.33%) GLBA
15 6 (0.24%) DICOM
15 6 (0.24%) HIPAA
15 6 (0.24%) HL7
15 6 (0.24%) ISO 31000
16 5 (0.20%) GRC
System Software
1 923 (37.61%) Active Directory
2 298 (12.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 136 (5.54%) Hyper-V
4 82 (3.34%) Docker
5 79 (3.22%) vSphere
6 77 (3.14%) VMware ESXi
7 73 (2.97%) Virtual Machines
8 46 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
9 37 (1.51%) VMware NSX
10 33 (1.34%) Firmware
11 28 (1.14%) BitLocker
12 27 (1.10%) Microsoft App-V
13 21 (0.86%) KVM
14 12 (0.49%) XenApp
14 12 (0.49%) XenDesktop
15 5 (0.20%) etcd
15 5 (0.20%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
15 5 (0.20%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.16%) Job Entry Subsystem
Systems Management
1 326 (13.28%) Microsoft Intune
2 258 (10.51%) SCCM
3 162 (6.60%) Ansible
4 150 (6.11%) Terraform
5 121 (4.93%) Kubernetes
6 69 (2.81%) vCenter Server
7 47 (1.92%) Single Sign-On
8 40 (1.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 39 (1.59%) WSUS
10 34 (1.39%) FortiGate
11 30 (1.22%) Jamf Pro
12 29 (1.18%) SCOM
13 25 (1.02%) Grafana
13 25 (1.02%) Nagios
14 22 (0.90%) Nessus
15 21 (0.86%) Prometheus
16 18 (0.73%) Progress Chef
16 18 (0.73%) ZABBIX
17 17 (0.69%) Tivoli
18 16 (0.65%) Netcool
Vendors
1 1,046 (42.62%) Microsoft
2 393 (16.01%) VMware
3 201 (8.19%) ServiceNow
4 194 (7.91%) Citrix
5 152 (6.19%) Cisco
6 148 (6.03%) Oracle
7 124 (5.05%) Splunk
8 74 (3.02%) HP
9 65 (2.65%) SolarWinds
10 56 (2.28%) Dell
10 56 (2.28%) Remedy
11 49 (2.00%) Red Hat
12 48 (1.96%) IBM
13 46 (1.87%) Apple
14 45 (1.83%) CyberArk
14 45 (1.83%) Google
15 37 (1.51%) F5
15 37 (1.51%) Juniper
16 33 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
17 32 (1.30%) BMC