Windows Contracts in the North of England

Microsoft Windows
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North of England requiring Windows skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Windows over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 12 12 12
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 336 456 630
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 10.20% 9.56% 10.81%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.32% 62.90% 69.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 218 313 449
10th Percentile £150 £150 £150
25th Percentile £183 £200 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £325 £350 £375
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% -6.67% +44.23%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £538
90th Percentile £587 £750 £633
England median daily rate £420 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +5.00% -11.11% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 66 50
10th Percentile £13.00 - £13.88
25th Percentile £16.25 £10.95 £17.56
Median hourly rate £17.75 £14.25 £26.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.56% -46.23% +51.43%
75th Percentile £19.56 £17.72 £43.66
90th Percentile £34.16 £19.22 £49.52
England median hourly rate £18.77 £17.72 £22.50
% change year-on-year +5.90% -21.24% +12.50%

All Operating Systems
North of 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 the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 557 725 911
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 16.90% 15.21% 15.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 353 495 652
10th Percentile £163 £167 £165
25th Percentile £210 £275 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £425 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% -10.53% +18.75%
75th Percentile £538 £531 £575
90th Percentile £635 £650 £675
England median daily rate £475 £463 £513
% change year-on-year +2.70% -9.76% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 80 57
10th Percentile £13.00 - £13.98
25th Percentile £16.25 £10.95 £17.75
Median hourly rate £18.00 £16.00 £28.70
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% -44.25% +63.35%
75th Percentile £19.75 £19.44 £43.75
90th Percentile £41.50 £30.68 £49.52
England median hourly rate £24.18 £22.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +9.91% -42.11% +76.74%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Job postings citing Windows as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Job vacancy trend for Windows in the North of England

Windows
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Windows in the North of England.

Daily rate trend for Windows in the North of England

Windows
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows in the North of England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Windows in the North of England

Windows
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Windows in the North of England.

Hourly rate trend for Windows in the North of England

Windows
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows in the North of England over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the North of England

Windows
Contract Job Locations in the North of 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 North of England region over the 6 months to 1 May 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
North West 0 186 £338 -3.57% 202
Yorkshire +4 123 £325 - 123
North East -2 27 £220 -48.96% 51
Windows
England

Windows
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 72 (21.43%) Microsoft Exchange
2 48 (14.29%) SharePoint
3 16 (4.76%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 5 (1.49%) IIS
4 5 (1.49%) JBoss
5 4 (1.19%) Skype for Business
6 3 (0.89%) Confluence
7 2 (0.60%) BizTalk Server
8 1 (0.30%) nginx
8 1 (0.30%) SAS
8 1 (0.30%) SharePoint Server
8 1 (0.30%) Traefik
Applications
1 63 (18.75%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (2.68%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
5 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.30%) Adobe Creative Suite
Business Applications
1 4 (1.19%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 118 (35.12%) Microsoft 365
2 79 (23.51%) Azure
3 57 (16.96%) Entra ID
4 19 (5.65%) AWS
5 15 (4.46%) OneDrive
6 13 (3.87%) IaaS
7 11 (3.27%) Google Workspace
8 10 (2.98%) GCP
9 8 (2.38%) GitHub
10 5 (1.49%) Collibra
10 5 (1.49%) Microsoft Purview
10 5 (1.49%) OpenShift
11 4 (1.19%) Amazon OpenSearch
12 3 (0.89%) AWS CloudFormation
12 3 (0.89%) Nutanix
12 3 (0.89%) PaaS
12 3 (0.89%) SaaS
12 3 (0.89%) Virtual Private Cloud
13 2 (0.60%) Amazon EC2
13 2 (0.60%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 73 (21.73%) DNS
2 45 (13.39%) DHCP
3 36 (10.71%) VPN
4 32 (9.52%) Firewall
5 23 (6.85%) LAN
6 17 (5.06%) Network Security
7 16 (4.76%) WAN
8 13 (3.87%) Wi-Fi
9 12 (3.57%) SAN
9 12 (3.57%) TCP/IP
10 11 (3.27%) Intrusion Detection
10 11 (3.27%) VoIP
11 10 (2.98%) Remote Desktop
11 10 (2.98%) VLAN
11 10 (2.98%) Wireless
12 8 (2.38%) Skype
12 8 (2.38%) SMTP
13 6 (1.79%) NAS
14 5 (1.49%) Internet
14 5 (1.49%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.85%) SQL Server
2 20 (5.95%) Oracle Database
3 5 (1.49%) Elasticsearch
3 5 (1.49%) RDBMS
3 5 (1.49%) Relational Database
4 4 (1.19%) MongoDB
5 2 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (0.60%) GIS
5 2 (0.60%) MSDE
5 2 (0.60%) MySQL
5 2 (0.60%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 1 (0.30%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (0.30%) DB2
6 1 (0.30%) DTS
6 1 (0.30%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 10 (2.98%) Git
1 10 (2.98%) Jenkins
2 9 (2.68%) GitLab
3 8 (2.38%) JIRA
4 6 (1.79%) SonarQube
5 5 (1.49%) Bitbucket Server
5 5 (1.49%) CA Release Automation
5 5 (1.49%) Sonatype Nexus
5 5 (1.49%) TeamCity
6 3 (0.89%) Hudson
7 2 (0.60%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.30%) MSI
8 1 (0.30%) Selenium
General
1 133 (39.58%) Social Skills
2 38 (11.31%) Analytical Skills
3 32 (9.52%) Banking
4 22 (6.55%) Public Sector
5 21 (6.25%) Finance
6 17 (5.06%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (4.17%) Telecoms
8 12 (3.57%) Organisational Skills
9 9 (2.68%) Legal
9 9 (2.68%) Manufacturing
10 7 (2.08%) Military
11 6 (1.79%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (1.19%) French Language
12 4 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (1.19%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.60%) Aviation
13 2 (0.60%) Fire and Rescue
13 2 (0.60%) Local Government
13 2 (0.60%) Police
13 2 (0.60%) Swedish Language
Job Titles
1 49 (14.58%) Support Engineer
2 43 (12.80%) Analyst
3 37 (11.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 28 (8.33%) IT Engineer
4 28 (8.33%) Service Analyst
5 27 (8.04%) Service Desk Analyst
6 26 (7.74%) 2nd Line Engineer
7 25 (7.44%) IT Support
8 24 (7.14%) Desktop Support
9 23 (6.85%) 2nd Line Support
10 21 (6.25%) Desktop Engineer
11 20 (5.95%) Windows Engineer
12 19 (5.65%) Architect
12 19 (5.65%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
13 18 (5.36%) Desktop Support Engineer
14 17 (5.06%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
14 17 (5.06%) Deployment Engineer
15 16 (4.76%) Infrastructure Specialist
16 13 (3.87%) 2nd Line Desktop Support
16 13 (3.87%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (2.38%) REST
2 5 (1.49%) Elastic Stack
2 5 (1.49%) OpenTelemetry
2 5 (1.49%) Spring Boot
3 4 (1.19%) Middleware
4 3 (0.89%) .NET
4 3 (0.89%) Software Packaging
5 2 (0.60%) ASP.NET
6 1 (0.30%) cloud-init
6 1 (0.30%) JSON
6 1 (0.30%) Kafka
6 1 (0.30%) Keycloak
6 1 (0.30%) LDAP
6 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Graph
6 1 (0.30%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 21 (6.25%) Management Information System
2 20 (5.95%) Linux Command Line
3 15 (4.46%) Data Centre
4 14 (4.17%) Hybrid Cloud
5 9 (2.68%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (2.08%) Onboarding
7 7 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
8 6 (1.79%) NHS
9 5 (1.49%) Replication
9 5 (1.49%) Video Conferencing
10 4 (1.19%) Clustering
10 4 (1.19%) Robotics
10 4 (1.19%) Smartphone
11 3 (0.89%) Driving Licence
11 3 (0.89%) Fat Client
11 3 (0.89%) IVR
11 3 (0.89%) Mainframe
11 3 (0.89%) Security Posture
11 3 (0.89%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 104 (30.95%) Windows Server
2 81 (24.11%) Linux
3 77 (22.92%) Windows 10
4 24 (7.14%) Windows Server 2016
5 18 (5.36%) Apple iOS
6 17 (5.06%) Windows Server 2019
7 16 (4.76%) Windows Server 2012
8 14 (4.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (3.57%) Unix
10 11 (3.27%) VMS
11 10 (2.98%) Windows 7
12 9 (2.68%) Android
12 9 (2.68%) Windows Server 2003
13 7 (2.08%) Mac OS
13 7 (2.08%) Windows XP
14 6 (1.79%) Windows Server 2008
15 5 (1.49%) Windows 8
16 4 (1.19%) HPUX
16 4 (1.19%) Solaris
17 3 (0.89%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (26.19%) Problem-Solving
2 66 (19.64%) Infrastructure Engineering
3 61 (18.15%) ITIL
4 57 (16.96%) Customer Service
5 46 (13.69%) ITSM
6 37 (11.01%) Migration
7 33 (9.82%) Agile
8 31 (9.23%) DevOps
9 28 (8.33%) Microservices
10 25 (7.44%) Disaster Recovery
11 23 (6.85%) High Availability
12 22 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
13 21 (6.25%) Service Management
14 19 (5.65%) Project Delivery
14 19 (5.65%) Roadmaps
15 18 (5.36%) Change Management
15 18 (5.36%) CI/CD
15 18 (5.36%) Collaborative Working
15 18 (5.36%) Patch Management
15 18 (5.36%) Security Management
Programming Languages
1 61 (18.15%) PowerShell
2 26 (7.74%) Bash
3 23 (6.85%) SQL
4 22 (6.55%) Perl
5 18 (5.36%) PL/SQL
6 14 (4.17%) Python
7 5 (1.49%) VB
7 5 (1.49%) VBScript
8 4 (1.19%) Shell Script
9 3 (0.89%) Java
10 2 (0.60%) ActionScript
10 2 (0.60%) ActionScript 2.0
10 2 (0.60%) C
10 2 (0.60%) Ruby
10 2 (0.60%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.30%) C#
11 1 (0.30%) Go
Qualifications
1 51 (15.18%) Security Cleared
2 47 (13.99%) SC Cleared
3 42 (12.50%) Microsoft Certification
4 24 (7.14%) Cisco Certification
5 20 (5.95%) Degree
6 13 (3.87%) DBS Check
7 12 (3.57%) Azure Certification
8 10 (2.98%) A+ Certification
9 5 (1.49%) MCP
9 5 (1.49%) MCSE
10 4 (1.19%) CCNA
10 4 (1.19%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
11 3 (0.89%) BPSS Clearance
12 2 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
12 2 (0.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 1 (0.30%) CCNP
13 1 (0.30%) MCSA
13 1 (0.30%) PMI Certification
13 1 (0.30%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.14%) SLA
2 5 (1.49%) GDPR
3 3 (0.89%) QA
4 2 (0.60%) NCSC
4 2 (0.60%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 202 (60.12%) Active Directory
2 44 (13.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (4.76%) vSphere
4 14 (4.17%) VMware ESXi
5 11 (3.27%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (2.98%) Hyper-V
7 9 (2.68%) BitLocker
7 9 (2.68%) VMware NSX
8 8 (2.38%) Docker
9 7 (2.08%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (1.19%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.89%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 1 (0.30%) Firmware
12 1 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.30%) Terminal Services
12 1 (0.30%) Veritas Cluster Server
Systems Management
1 47 (13.99%) Microsoft Intune
2 40 (11.90%) SCCM
3 20 (5.95%) WSUS
4 18 (5.36%) vCenter Server
5 17 (5.06%) Ansible
6 12 (3.57%) Kubernetes
7 9 (2.68%) Single Sign-On
8 8 (2.38%) Grafana
9 7 (2.08%) Progress Chef
9 7 (2.08%) Prometheus
10 5 (1.49%) AppManager
10 5 (1.49%) Kibana
10 5 (1.49%) SmoothWall
10 5 (1.49%) Terraform
10 5 (1.49%) vRealize
11 4 (1.19%) Dell DRAC
11 4 (1.19%) NetApp OnCommand
12 3 (0.89%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 3 (0.89%) Backup Exec
12 3 (0.89%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 172 (51.19%) Microsoft
2 64 (19.05%) VMware
3 33 (9.82%) Cisco
4 32 (9.52%) ServiceNow
5 27 (8.04%) Citrix
6 26 (7.74%) Oracle
7 19 (5.65%) Apple
8 15 (4.46%) Google
8 15 (4.46%) Splunk
9 12 (3.57%) Dell
10 9 (2.68%) CyberArk
10 9 (2.68%) IBM
10 9 (2.68%) Red Hat
11 8 (2.38%) HP
12 6 (1.79%) AppDynamics
12 6 (1.79%) Ivanti
12 6 (1.79%) Tanium
13 5 (1.49%) SolarWinds
13 5 (1.49%) Veeam
13 5 (1.49%) Zscaler