Windows Contract Job Trends in Central London

Microsoft Windows
London > Central London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Central London requiring Windows skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 40 27 18
Rank change year-on-year -13 -9 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 125 144 208
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 4.87% 7.02% 9.00%
As % of the Operating Systems category 56.31% 56.47% 66.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 87 94 144
10th Percentile £167 £218 £155
25th Percentile £200 £264 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £380 £408 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.75% -9.44% -
75th Percentile £628 £563 £579
90th Percentile £668 £682 £655
London median daily rate £425 £425 £400
% change year-on-year - +6.25% -19.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 4 3
10th Percentile £19.28 £20.33 £23.90
25th Percentile £19.31 £22.53 £25.06
Median hourly rate £20.25 £26.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -23.58% -1.85% +20.00%
75th Percentile £21.81 £69.56 £28.19
90th Percentile £22.23 £140.33 £28.90
London median hourly rate £21.00 £23.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year -8.70% +4.55% -14.43%

All Operating Systems
Central London

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 Central London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 222 255 311
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 8.65% 12.43% 13.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 149 178 214
10th Percentile £181 £253 £211
25th Percentile £294 £350 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £496 £510
Median % change year-on-year +0.91% -2.84% +2.00%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £638
90th Percentile £675 £725 £725
London median daily rate £475 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -4.14% -0.90% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 5 3
10th Percentile £19.28 £20.82 £23.90
25th Percentile £19.31 £23.75 £25.06
Median hourly rate £20.25 £27.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.36% +1.85% -46.00%
75th Percentile £21.81 £30.25 £28.19
90th Percentile £22.23 £124.60 £28.90
London median hourly rate £21.00 £25.15 £22.00
% change year-on-year -16.50% +14.32% -49.81%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend in Central London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Windows relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London.

Windows job vacancy trend in Central London

Windows
Daily Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Windows.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Windows

Windows
Daily Rate Histogram in Central London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows in Central London over the 6 months to 15 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Windows in Central London

Windows
Hourly Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Windows.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Windows

Windows
Contract Job Locations in Central London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Windows within the Central London region over the 6 months to 15 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
City of London -18 103 £420 +3.07% 40
City of Westminster -12 3 £600 +33.33% 6
Kensington and Chelsea - 3 £150 -
West End of London -11 2 £453 +94.62% 3
Southwark - 1 £188 - 1
Windows
London

Windows
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Central London 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 22 (17.60%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (9.60%) SharePoint
3 3 (2.40%) Confluence
4 2 (1.60%) Exchange Server 2013
4 2 (1.60%) IIS
Applications
1 10 (8.00%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (5.60%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (3.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (4.80%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 44 (35.20%) Microsoft 365
2 34 (27.20%) Azure
3 22 (17.60%) Entra ID
4 12 (9.60%) AWS
4 12 (9.60%) OneDrive
5 9 (7.20%) SaaS
6 7 (5.60%) Azure Monitor
6 7 (5.60%) GitHub
7 6 (4.80%) Azure AKS
7 6 (4.80%) GCP
7 6 (4.80%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (4.00%) IaaS
8 5 (4.00%) OpenShift
8 5 (4.00%) PaaS
8 5 (4.00%) Power Platform
9 3 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (1.60%) Serverless
11 1 (0.80%) Azure ExpressRoute
11 1 (0.80%) Azure Key Vault
11 1 (0.80%) Azure Stack
Communications & Networking
1 33 (26.40%) DNS
2 23 (18.40%) DHCP
3 18 (14.40%) Firewall
3 18 (14.40%) VPN
4 13 (10.40%) TCP/IP
5 6 (4.80%) LAN
5 6 (4.80%) Wi-Fi
6 5 (4.00%) WAN
7 4 (3.20%) VLAN
8 3 (2.40%) SMTP
8 3 (2.40%) Unified Communications
9 2 (1.60%) DMZ
9 2 (1.60%) SAN
9 2 (1.60%) SSL
9 2 (1.60%) Value-Added Service
9 2 (1.60%) Wireshark
10 1 (0.80%) BGP
10 1 (0.80%) MPLS
10 1 (0.80%) Network Security
10 1 (0.80%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (20.00%) SQL Server
2 5 (4.00%) Oracle Database
2 5 (4.00%) Power BI
2 5 (4.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 4 (3.20%) SQL Server Analysis Services
3 4 (3.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 3 (2.40%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (2.40%) Big Data
4 3 (2.40%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.80%) Db2
5 1 (0.80%) MongoDB
5 1 (0.80%) NoSQL
5 1 (0.80%) Oracle BI EE
5 1 (0.80%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 13 (10.40%) JIRA
2 5 (4.00%) Jenkins
3 3 (2.40%) Artifactory
3 3 (2.40%) Git
3 3 (2.40%) MSI
4 2 (1.60%) Bitbucket
4 2 (1.60%) Fiddler
4 2 (1.60%) GitLab
4 2 (1.60%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.80%) Claude Code
5 1 (0.80%) Gradle
5 1 (0.80%) Subversion
General
1 36 (28.80%) Social Skills
2 23 (18.40%) Finance
3 14 (11.20%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (5.60%) Banking
5 3 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (2.40%) Front Office
5 3 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (1.60%) Financial Institution
6 2 (1.60%) Law
6 2 (1.60%) Organisational Skills
6 2 (1.60%) Public Sector
6 2 (1.60%) Telecoms
7 1 (0.80%) Mandarin Language
7 1 (0.80%) Military
Job Titles
1 37 (29.60%) Support Engineer
2 18 (14.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 14 (11.20%) Analyst
3 14 (11.20%) IT Support
4 12 (9.60%) IT Engineer
5 11 (8.80%) Desktop Support
6 10 (8.00%) IT Support Engineer
7 9 (7.20%) Support Analyst
8 7 (5.60%) Senior
9 6 (4.80%) Cloud Engineer
9 6 (4.80%) Desktop Engineer
9 6 (4.80%) Developer
9 6 (4.80%) Infrastructure Support
9 6 (4.80%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
9 6 (4.80%) IT Analyst
10 5 (4.00%) 2nd Line Support
10 5 (4.00%) Active Directory Engineer
10 5 (4.00%) C# Developer
10 5 (4.00%) Desktop Support Engineer
10 5 (4.00%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (10.40%) .NET
2 8 (6.40%) .NET Framework
3 2 (1.60%) 802.1X
3 2 (1.60%) OpenTelemetry
3 2 (1.60%) PCRE
3 2 (1.60%) Regular Expression
4 1 (0.80%) .NET Core
4 1 (0.80%) ASP.NET
4 1 (0.80%) Blazor
4 1 (0.80%) Kafka
4 1 (0.80%) LDAP
4 1 (0.80%) Oracle Fusion
4 1 (0.80%) REST
4 1 (0.80%) Spring
4 1 (0.80%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 18 (14.40%) Onboarding
2 11 (8.80%) Video Conferencing
3 8 (6.40%) Clustering
3 8 (6.40%) Data Centre
4 7 (5.60%) PKI
5 5 (4.00%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (3.20%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (3.20%) iPhone
7 3 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (2.40%) Virtual Team
8 2 (1.60%) AI Agents
8 2 (1.60%) Cloud Native
8 2 (1.60%) Enterprise Storage
8 2 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
9 1 (0.80%) BYOD
9 1 (0.80%) Fat Client
9 1 (0.80%) iPad
9 1 (0.80%) Life Science
9 1 (0.80%) Linux Command Line
9 1 (0.80%) Web Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 41 (32.80%) Windows Server
2 19 (15.20%) Linux
2 19 (15.20%) Mac OS
3 16 (12.80%) Windows 10
4 6 (4.80%) VMS
4 6 (4.80%) Windows 7
5 5 (4.00%) Windows Server 2012
6 4 (3.20%) Android
7 3 (2.40%) Apple iOS
7 3 (2.40%) Unix
7 3 (2.40%) Windows Server 2008
7 3 (2.40%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (1.60%) OpenVMS
9 1 (0.80%) Mac OS X
9 1 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 1 (0.80%) SUSE
9 1 (0.80%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.80%) Windows Server 2003
9 1 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (28.00%) Problem-Solving
2 24 (19.20%) Migration
3 23 (18.40%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 22 (17.60%) ITIL
5 16 (12.80%) ITSM
6 15 (12.00%) Customer Service
7 12 (9.60%) CI/CD
7 12 (9.60%) DevOps
8 11 (8.80%) High Availability
9 10 (8.00%) Change Control
9 10 (8.00%) Incident Management
9 10 (8.00%) Infrastructure as Code
9 10 (8.00%) Service Delivery
9 10 (8.00%) Service Management
10 9 (7.20%) AI
10 9 (7.20%) Asset Management
10 9 (7.20%) Disaster Recovery
10 9 (7.20%) Problem Management
10 9 (7.20%) Root Cause Analysis
10 9 (7.20%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 36 (28.80%) PowerShell
2 19 (15.20%) SQL
3 13 (10.40%) C#
4 11 (8.80%) Python
5 6 (4.80%) Bash
6 5 (4.00%) Java
6 5 (4.00%) PL/SQL
6 5 (4.00%) T-SQL
7 3 (2.40%) C++
8 2 (1.60%) Perl
9 1 (0.80%) Korn
9 1 (0.80%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.80%) VB
Qualifications
1 29 (23.20%) Security Cleared
2 16 (12.80%) SC Cleared
3 8 (6.40%) DV Cleared
4 7 (5.60%) Degree
5 5 (4.00%) A+ Certification
6 3 (2.40%) CCNA
6 3 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
6 3 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
7 2 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.80%) BC Cleared
8 1 (0.80%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.80%) CCNP
8 1 (0.80%) CESG Certified Professional
8 1 (0.80%) CISA
8 1 (0.80%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.80%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
8 1 (0.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 1 (0.80%) MCSE
8 1 (0.80%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (10.40%) SLA
2 9 (7.20%) QA
3 2 (1.60%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (1.60%) Data Quality
3 2 (1.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (1.60%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.80%) GDPR
4 1 (0.80%) Government Security Classifications
4 1 (0.80%) GRC
System Software
1 59 (47.20%) Active Directory
2 20 (16.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 12 (9.60%) VMware ESXi
4 9 (7.20%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (5.60%) Virtual Desktop
6 6 (4.80%) Hyper-V
7 5 (4.00%) Docker
7 5 (4.00%) vSphere
8 4 (3.20%) BitLocker
8 4 (3.20%) Microsoft App-V
9 3 (2.40%) Terminal Services
10 2 (1.60%) Firmware
11 1 (0.80%) UAG
11 1 (0.80%) Virtual Servers
11 1 (0.80%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.80%) zsh
Systems Management
1 26 (20.80%) Microsoft Intune
2 14 (11.20%) Kubernetes
3 13 (10.40%) SCCM
4 12 (9.60%) Terraform
5 10 (8.00%) Ansible
5 10 (8.00%) vCenter Server
6 4 (3.20%) ITRS Geneos
6 4 (3.20%) Microsoft Clustering
6 4 (3.20%) Puppet
6 4 (3.20%) WSUS
7 3 (2.40%) Jamf Pro
7 3 (2.40%) Nagios
7 3 (2.40%) SCOM
7 3 (2.40%) vMotion
8 2 (1.60%) FortiGate
8 2 (1.60%) Grafana
8 2 (1.60%) Nessus
8 2 (1.60%) NetBackup
8 2 (1.60%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.80%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 68 (54.40%) Microsoft
2 27 (21.60%) VMware
3 22 (17.60%) ServiceNow
4 20 (16.00%) Citrix
5 11 (8.80%) Oracle
6 9 (7.20%) Cisco
7 8 (6.40%) Apple
8 6 (4.80%) Bloomberg
8 6 (4.80%) Remedy
9 5 (4.00%) Dynatrace
9 5 (4.00%) Google
9 5 (4.00%) HP
9 5 (4.00%) Splunk
9 5 (4.00%) Symantec
10 4 (3.20%) ION Trading
11 3 (2.40%) Adobe
11 3 (2.40%) BMC
11 3 (2.40%) Commvault
11 3 (2.40%) EMC
11 3 (2.40%) F5