Windows Contract Job Trends

Microsoft Windows
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Windows skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,293 2,662 3,191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.00% 8.08% 8.28%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.05% 59.78% 58.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,090 1,775 2,078
10th Percentile £166 £163 £178
25th Percentile £225 £213 £246
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.86%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £663 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £404 £358 £424
% change year-on-year +12.71% -15.57% +9.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 233 180
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £14.55
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £17.92
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%
75th Percentile £65.00 £37.50 £57.84
90th Percentile £74.84 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% +9.91%

All Operating Systems
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 5,394 4,453 5,451
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.83% 13.51% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,393 2,846 3,476
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £674 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 281 270
10th Percentile £14.21 £15.50 £15.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -49.70% +5.26%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.90 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £55.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -54.27% +19.88%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Windows job vacancy trend in the UK

Windows
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Windows.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Windows

Windows
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows over the 6 months to 19 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Windows.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Windows

Windows
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows over the 6 months to 19 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Windows within the UK over the 6 months to 19 September 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
England -7 2,871 £418 +4.44% 2,412
UK excluding London -13 2,128 £404 +12.71% 1,579
London -7 966 £420 -1.18% 960
Work from Home -15 617 £470 +5.38% 796
South East -7 561 £492 +21.36% 459
North of England -5 513 £325 +6.56% 319
North West +4 309 £344 +4.24% 179
Midlands -16 294 £400 +9.59% 277
South West -18 270 £519 +44.10% 205
East of England +1 245 £240 -31.43% 208
West Midlands -23 196 £402 +0.50% 180
Scotland -5 170 £250 -44.44% 85
Yorkshire -17 167 £245 +19.08% 100
East Midlands +3 96 £275 +22.22% 97
Wales +10 70 £446 +62.27% 30
North East -32 42 £283 +2.73% 46
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 27
Channel Islands -3 3 £518 -

Windows
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 267 (8.11%) SharePoint
2 245 (7.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 70 (2.13%) IIS
4 58 (1.76%) Confluence
5 19 (0.58%) nginx
5 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.55%) Apache
7 13 (0.39%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.33%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.18%) Documentum
10 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.15%) Appian
10 5 (0.15%) Camunda
10 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.091%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.091%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.091%) Exchange Server 2013
12 3 (0.091%) OpenStack
Applications
1 229 (6.95%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.091%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.091%) Houdini
7 3 (0.091%) NUKE
8 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.030%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.030%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 55 (1.67%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.30%) Finacle
3 7 (0.21%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.21%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.091%) assyst
6 3 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.091%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.030%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.030%) Monis
8 1 (0.030%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.030%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.030%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.030%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.030%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.030%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,030 (31.28%) Microsoft 365
2 1,007 (30.58%) Azure
3 524 (15.91%) Entra ID
4 340 (10.32%) AWS
5 148 (4.49%) OneDrive
6 123 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
7 114 (3.46%) GCP
8 81 (2.46%) SaaS
9 75 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
9 75 (2.28%) GitHub
10 71 (2.16%) Power Platform
11 62 (1.88%) IaaS
12 47 (1.43%) PaaS
13 41 (1.25%) Azure Sentinel
14 38 (1.15%) OpenShift
15 31 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 30 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
17 29 (0.88%) Google Workspace
18 24 (0.73%) Amazon EC2
19 22 (0.67%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 483 (14.67%) DNS
2 344 (10.45%) DHCP
3 342 (10.39%) Firewall
4 278 (8.44%) VPN
5 250 (7.59%) TCP/IP
6 143 (4.34%) WAN
7 140 (4.25%) LAN
8 132 (4.01%) Wi-Fi
9 104 (3.16%) Network Security
10 94 (2.85%) SAN
11 91 (2.76%) VLAN
12 57 (1.73%) Wireless
13 53 (1.61%) SSL
14 44 (1.34%) Internet
15 43 (1.31%) NAS
16 36 (1.09%) BGP
17 35 (1.06%) Skype
18 33 (1.00%) HTTP
18 33 (1.00%) VSAN
19 31 (0.94%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (8.93%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.85%) Oracle Database
3 55 (1.67%) Power BI
4 40 (1.21%) PostgreSQL
4 40 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 38 (1.15%) Relational Database
6 26 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
7 22 (0.67%) MySQL
8 18 (0.55%) RDBMS
9 16 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 15 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
10 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 11 (0.33%) Db2
11 11 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
12 10 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
13 8 (0.24%) MS Access
13 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.21%) MongoDB
14 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 162 (4.92%) JIRA
2 83 (2.52%) Git
3 61 (1.85%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.52%) GitLab
5 49 (1.49%) MSI
6 37 (1.12%) Visual Studio
7 18 (0.55%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 14 (0.43%) Artifactory
10 11 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 10 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
12 9 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
13 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
14 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
14 6 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
15 5 (0.15%) Robot Framework
15 5 (0.15%) SonarQube
General
1 1,213 (36.84%) Social Skills
2 404 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
3 382 (11.60%) Finance
4 164 (4.98%) Public Sector
5 159 (4.83%) Banking
6 123 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
7 85 (2.58%) Legal
8 78 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 75 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
10 59 (1.79%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.70%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.58%) Retail
13 44 (1.34%) Front Office
13 44 (1.34%) Law
14 40 (1.21%) Military
15 37 (1.12%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.85%) Spanish Language
17 26 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
18 25 (0.76%) French Language
18 25 (0.76%) Police
Job Titles
1 524 (15.91%) Support Engineer
2 450 (13.67%) IT Support
3 345 (10.48%) IT Engineer
4 339 (10.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 288 (8.75%) IT Support Engineer
6 286 (8.69%) Analyst
7 259 (7.87%) Senior
8 145 (4.40%) Desktop Support
9 129 (3.92%) Architect
10 126 (3.83%) 2nd Line Support
10 126 (3.83%) Desktop Engineer
11 121 (3.67%) Lead
11 121 (3.67%) Windows Engineer
12 120 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
13 109 (3.31%) Developer
14 103 (3.13%) Support Analyst
15 96 (2.92%) Consultant
16 87 (2.64%) 1st Line Support
17 85 (2.58%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.49%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (8.20%) Terraform
2 145 (4.40%) .NET
3 122 (3.70%) REST
4 65 (1.97%) .NET Framework
5 52 (1.58%) Middleware
6 44 (1.34%) JSON
7 42 (1.28%) LDAP
8 39 (1.18%) WPF
9 34 (1.03%) WinForms
10 32 (0.97%) XML
11 29 (0.88%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.82%) HTML
13 26 (0.79%) Web Services
14 24 (0.73%) ARM Templates
14 24 (0.73%) Kafka
15 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
16 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
16 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
16 20 (0.61%) RESTful
17 19 (0.58%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 385 (11.69%) Onboarding
2 197 (5.98%) Data Centre
3 164 (4.98%) PKI
4 107 (3.25%) Management Information System
5 89 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 87 (2.64%) Driving Licence
6 87 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
7 81 (2.46%) Clustering
8 78 (2.37%) Video Conferencing
9 75 (2.28%) Cloud Native
10 71 (2.16%) Replication
11 61 (1.85%) Security Posture
12 57 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.34%) Operational Technology
14 43 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
15 41 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
15 41 (1.25%) Virtual Team
16 39 (1.18%) Smartphone
17 38 (1.15%) Enterprise Storage
18 36 (1.09%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 907 (27.54%) Windows Server
2 803 (24.39%) Linux
3 578 (17.55%) Windows 10
4 206 (6.26%) Mac OS
5 148 (4.49%) Unix
6 146 (4.43%) Apple iOS
7 145 (4.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 141 (4.28%) Android
9 73 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.67%) Windows 7
11 52 (1.58%) Ubuntu
12 45 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
13 42 (1.28%) Windows Server 2012
14 39 (1.18%) CentOS
15 33 (1.00%) AIX
16 22 (0.67%) VMS
17 21 (0.64%) Solaris
18 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
19 15 (0.46%) Rocky
20 12 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 787 (23.90%) Problem-Solving
2 614 (18.65%) ITIL
3 573 (17.40%) Customer Service
4 440 (13.36%) ITSM
5 433 (13.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 419 (12.72%) Migration
7 360 (10.93%) Continuous Improvement
8 323 (9.81%) Service Management
9 321 (9.75%) DevOps
10 287 (8.72%) CI/CD
11 270 (8.20%) Infrastructure as Code
12 263 (7.99%) Agile
13 251 (7.62%) Stakeholder Management
14 231 (7.01%) Root Cause Analysis
15 229 (6.95%) Change Management
16 216 (6.56%) Disaster Recovery
17 206 (6.26%) Validation
18 205 (6.23%) Cybersecurity
19 192 (5.83%) Service Delivery
20 183 (5.56%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 788 (23.93%) PowerShell
2 342 (10.39%) Python
3 320 (9.72%) SQL
4 195 (5.92%) Bash
5 168 (5.10%) C#
6 75 (2.28%) T-SQL
7 73 (2.22%) Java
8 61 (1.85%) JavaScript
9 58 (1.76%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.55%) Bicep
11 36 (1.09%) C++
12 30 (0.91%) VB
13 29 (0.88%) VBScript
14 22 (0.67%) Perl
15 20 (0.61%) VBA
16 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.52%) TypeScript
17 14 (0.43%) Search Processing Language
18 12 (0.36%) Go
18 12 (0.36%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,006 (30.55%) Security Cleared
2 605 (18.37%) SC Cleared
3 385 (11.69%) DV Cleared
4 301 (9.14%) Degree
5 127 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 96 (2.92%) Azure Certification
7 89 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
8 73 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
9 72 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
10 65 (1.97%) CISSP
11 57 (1.73%) A+ Certification
12 56 (1.70%) AWS Certification
13 53 (1.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 45 (1.37%) CCNA
14 45 (1.37%) DBS Check
15 38 (1.15%) CCNP
16 34 (1.03%) MCSE
16 34 (1.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 33 (1.00%) CISM
17 33 (1.00%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 173 (5.25%) SLA
2 114 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.85%) QA
4 88 (2.67%) NIST
5 39 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
6 34 (1.03%) GDPR
7 28 (0.85%) NCSC
8 22 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 15 (0.46%) GRC
10 15 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.43%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
12 12 (0.36%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.36%) WCAG
13 11 (0.33%) PMO
14 10 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.30%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,354 (41.12%) Active Directory
2 492 (14.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 223 (6.77%) Hyper-V
4 161 (4.89%) VMware ESXi
5 141 (4.28%) vSphere
6 120 (3.64%) Docker
7 110 (3.34%) Virtual Machines
8 102 (3.10%) Virtual Desktop
9 79 (2.40%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.12%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.03%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) NFS
14 16 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
16 12 (0.36%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.36%) XenApp
17 11 (0.33%) KVM
18 10 (0.30%) XenDesktop
19 8 (0.24%) UAG
Systems Management
1 458 (13.91%) Microsoft Intune
2 359 (10.90%) SCCM
3 233 (7.08%) Ansible
4 168 (5.10%) Kubernetes
5 128 (3.89%) vCenter Server
6 105 (3.19%) SCOM
7 53 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
8 45 (1.37%) WSUS
9 35 (1.06%) Grafana
10 33 (1.00%) Prometheus
11 32 (0.97%) Progress Chef
11 32 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
12 30 (0.91%) NetBackup
13 28 (0.85%) WMI
14 27 (0.82%) VxRail
15 26 (0.79%) Puppet
16 25 (0.76%) Nagios
17 23 (0.70%) Packer
18 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Clustering
19 20 (0.61%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 1,555 (47.22%) Microsoft
2 644 (19.56%) VMware
3 384 (11.66%) ServiceNow
4 242 (7.35%) Cisco
5 200 (6.07%) Oracle
6 179 (5.44%) Citrix
7 110 (3.34%) Splunk
8 109 (3.31%) Apple
9 99 (3.01%) CyberArk
10 87 (2.64%) Google
11 83 (2.52%) Red Hat
12 80 (2.43%) SolarWinds
13 79 (2.40%) BeyondTrust
14 61 (1.85%) Dell
15 59 (1.79%) Remedy
16 53 (1.61%) Palo Alto
17 51 (1.55%) NetApp
18 50 (1.52%) HP
19 42 (1.28%) BMC
19 42 (1.28%) Meraki