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 29 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,966 2,522 3,573
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.80% 8.26% 8.23%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.00% 59.78% 60.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,905 1,694 2,407
10th Percentile £166 £180 £165
25th Percentile £225 £231 £235
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £674 £671
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £400 £430
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% +10.97%
Number of hourly rates quoted 253 180 296
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.95 £14.38
Median hourly rate £25.15 £18.87 £19.09
Median % change year-on-year +33.28% -1.15% -20.23%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £67.97 £63.88 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.21 £18.87 £18.00
% change year-on-year +33.57% +4.83% -18.18%

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 4,862 4,219 5,910
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.51% 13.81% 13.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,101 2,739 3,890
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £581 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 216 436
10th Percentile £14.70 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.41 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.66 £22.25 £24.93
Median % change year-on-year +19.82% -10.74% -41.35%
75th Percentile £63.75 £42.56 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.18 £66.25 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.22 £18.87 £31.25
% change year-on-year +38.95% -39.62% -6.72%

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 29 June 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 29 June 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 29 June 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 -6 2,593 £425 - 904
UK excluding London -13 1,964 £420 +5.00% 828
London -21 839 £425 -3.41% 216
Work from Home -8 634 £477 +0.42% 306
South East -8 527 £475 -3.06% 275
North of England -6 460 £365 +1.96% 170
Midlands -16 274 £338 +22.73% 117
South West -13 258 £488 +8.33% 136
North West -6 238 £364 -1.09% 98
East of England -1 218 £300 +8.08% 92
Yorkshire -13 203 £365 -9.32% 53
Scotland -3 171 £425 -2.24% 32
West Midlands -24 171 £450 +50.00% 57
East Midlands +11 98 £263 +31.25% 60
Wales +6 53 £375 +30.43% 19
North East -38 23 £290 -3.33% 25
Northern Ireland -6 15 £139 -30.75% 24
Channel Islands +2 2 £500 -

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
1 235 (7.92%) Microsoft Exchange
2 190 (6.41%) SharePoint
3 60 (2.02%) IIS
4 56 (1.89%) Confluence
5 19 (0.64%) Tomcat
6 18 (0.61%) Apache
7 16 (0.54%) nginx
8 14 (0.47%) Skype for Business
9 11 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 10 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.30%) NetWeaver
12 8 (0.27%) HCL Notes
13 7 (0.24%) Appian
14 6 (0.20%) SAS
15 5 (0.17%) Camunda
16 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 4 (0.13%) Documentum
16 4 (0.13%) TPMS
16 4 (0.13%) WebSphere
17 3 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 189 (6.37%) Microsoft Office
2 66 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.24%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.17%) PTC Creo
5 5 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.067%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.067%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.034%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 41 (1.38%) Remedy ITSM
2 18 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.40%) Teamcenter
4 10 (0.34%) Finacle
5 5 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
5 5 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
6 3 (0.10%) assyst
7 1 (0.034%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.034%) Dynamics GP
7 1 (0.034%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.034%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.034%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.034%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.034%) Oracle General Ledger
7 1 (0.034%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.034%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 1 (0.034%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.034%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.034%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.034%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 886 (29.87%) Azure
2 817 (27.55%) Microsoft 365
3 381 (12.85%) Entra ID
4 305 (10.28%) AWS
5 114 (3.84%) OneDrive
6 90 (3.03%) GCP
7 81 (2.73%) Azure DevOps
8 76 (2.56%) SaaS
9 68 (2.29%) GitHub
10 63 (2.12%) IaaS
11 60 (2.02%) Power Platform
12 53 (1.79%) PaaS
13 49 (1.65%) Azure Monitor
14 39 (1.31%) OpenShift
15 38 (1.28%) Azure Sentinel
16 32 (1.08%) GitHub Actions
17 29 (0.98%) Google Workspace
18 27 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
19 23 (0.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 22 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 401 (13.52%) DNS
2 308 (10.38%) Firewall
3 279 (9.41%) DHCP
4 218 (7.35%) VPN
5 185 (6.24%) WAN
6 181 (6.10%) LAN
6 181 (6.10%) TCP/IP
7 150 (5.06%) Wi-Fi
8 94 (3.17%) SAN
9 65 (2.19%) Network Security
10 59 (1.99%) VLAN
11 46 (1.55%) BGP
12 44 (1.48%) NAS
12 44 (1.48%) SD-WAN
13 42 (1.42%) Internet
13 42 (1.42%) SSL
14 38 (1.28%) VoIP
15 36 (1.21%) OSPF
16 35 (1.18%) SNMP
17 34 (1.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 252 (8.50%) SQL Server
2 60 (2.02%) Oracle Database
3 38 (1.28%) Power BI
4 30 (1.01%) Relational Database
5 28 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
6 27 (0.91%) MySQL
7 18 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
7 18 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
7 18 (0.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 17 (0.57%) Db2
9 14 (0.47%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (0.44%) NoSQL
10 13 (0.44%) RDBMS
11 10 (0.34%) GIS
11 10 (0.34%) MongoDB
12 9 (0.30%) SAP HANA
13 8 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
13 8 (0.27%) Oracle BI EE
13 8 (0.27%) Sybase ASE
14 7 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 181 (6.10%) JIRA
2 54 (1.82%) Git
3 53 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.52%) MSI
5 42 (1.42%) GitLab
6 38 (1.28%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.57%) Eclipse
8 9 (0.30%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.24%) Bitbucket
10 7 (0.24%) Burp Suite
11 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 6 (0.20%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.20%) Metasploit
11 6 (0.20%) Xcode
12 5 (0.17%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.17%) Maven
12 5 (0.17%) Selenium
General
1 1,026 (34.59%) Social Skills
2 328 (11.06%) Analytical Skills
3 317 (10.69%) Finance
4 205 (6.91%) Public Sector
5 152 (5.12%) Banking
6 114 (3.84%) Legal
7 105 (3.54%) Documentation Skills
8 82 (2.76%) Organisational Skills
9 59 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 53 (1.79%) Retail
11 47 (1.58%) Military
12 41 (1.38%) Manufacturing
13 37 (1.25%) Investment Banking
14 36 (1.21%) Front Office
15 31 (1.05%) Telecoms
16 29 (0.98%) Law
17 27 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
18 26 (0.88%) Spanish Language
19 23 (0.78%) French Language
20 18 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 388 (13.08%) Support Engineer
2 379 (12.78%) IT Support
3 289 (9.74%) Analyst
4 270 (9.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 260 (8.77%) IT Engineer
6 215 (7.25%) IT Support Engineer
7 186 (6.27%) Senior
8 155 (5.23%) Architect
9 117 (3.94%) Desktop Support
10 108 (3.64%) 2nd Line Support
11 106 (3.57%) Desktop Engineer
11 106 (3.57%) Support Analyst
12 102 (3.44%) Developer
12 102 (3.44%) Lead
13 91 (3.07%) IT Analyst
13 91 (3.07%) Windows Engineer
14 90 (3.03%) Consultant
15 83 (2.80%) Cloud Engineer
16 79 (2.66%) Technical Support
17 73 (2.46%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (3.47%) .NET
2 97 (3.27%) REST
3 59 (1.99%) .NET Framework
4 43 (1.45%) LDAP
5 33 (1.11%) SAML
6 31 (1.05%) 802.1X
6 31 (1.05%) Middleware
7 30 (1.01%) Microsoft Graph
8 28 (0.94%) Software Packaging
9 27 (0.91%) WinForms
10 26 (0.88%) Web Services
10 26 (0.88%) WPF
11 25 (0.84%) Kafka
11 25 (0.84%) OAuth
12 24 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
13 20 (0.67%) CSS
14 19 (0.64%) JSON
15 17 (0.57%) Node.js
15 17 (0.57%) RESTful
16 16 (0.54%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 271 (9.14%) Onboarding
2 164 (5.53%) Data Centre
3 134 (4.52%) PKI
4 84 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
5 77 (2.60%) Clustering
6 71 (2.39%) Self-Motivation
7 69 (2.33%) Management Information System
8 64 (2.16%) Driving Licence
9 61 (2.06%) Cloud Native
10 59 (1.99%) Replication
11 55 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
12 54 (1.82%) Security Posture
13 52 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
13 52 (1.75%) Virtual Team
14 39 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
15 32 (1.08%) CMDB
15 32 (1.08%) Linux Command Line
15 32 (1.08%) Operational Technology
15 32 (1.08%) Smartphone
16 31 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 734 (24.75%) Linux
2 713 (24.04%) Windows Server
3 488 (16.45%) Windows 10
4 185 (6.24%) Mac OS
5 156 (5.26%) Unix
6 139 (4.69%) Apple iOS
7 136 (4.59%) Android
8 111 (3.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 76 (2.56%) Windows Server 2019
10 59 (1.99%) Windows Server 2016
11 51 (1.72%) Windows 7
12 41 (1.38%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.15%) AIX
14 33 (1.11%) Ubuntu
15 24 (0.81%) Solaris
16 22 (0.74%) VMS
17 17 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
18 16 (0.54%) Windows Server 2003
19 14 (0.47%) CentOS
20 9 (0.30%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 660 (22.25%) Problem-Solving
2 452 (15.24%) ITIL
3 429 (14.46%) Customer Service
4 347 (11.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 345 (11.63%) Migration
6 297 (10.01%) ITSM
7 279 (9.41%) DevOps
8 269 (9.07%) Agile
9 248 (8.36%) CI/CD
10 239 (8.06%) Continuous Improvement
11 211 (7.11%) High Availability
12 208 (7.01%) Service Management
13 191 (6.44%) Change Management
14 175 (5.90%) Infrastructure as Code
15 170 (5.73%) Disaster Recovery
16 162 (5.46%) Cybersecurity
17 161 (5.43%) Stakeholder Management
18 155 (5.23%) Service Delivery
19 144 (4.86%) SIEM
20 140 (4.72%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 627 (21.14%) PowerShell
2 302 (10.18%) Python
3 285 (9.61%) SQL
4 132 (4.45%) C#
5 120 (4.05%) Bash
6 68 (2.29%) Java
7 65 (2.19%) JavaScript
8 54 (1.82%) PL/SQL
9 50 (1.69%) C++
9 50 (1.69%) T-SQL
10 27 (0.91%) Perl
11 24 (0.81%) VB
12 23 (0.78%) Search Processing Language
13 22 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
13 22 (0.74%) Shell Script
14 21 (0.71%) Bicep
14 21 (0.71%) VBScript
15 14 (0.47%) TypeScript
15 14 (0.47%) VBA
16 13 (0.44%) C
Qualifications
1 863 (29.10%) Security Cleared
2 564 (19.02%) SC Cleared
3 313 (10.55%) Degree
4 260 (8.77%) DV Cleared
5 116 (3.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 100 (3.37%) Cisco Certification
7 83 (2.80%) Computer Science Degree
8 65 (2.19%) CISSP
9 57 (1.92%) Azure Certification
10 48 (1.62%) AWS Certification
10 48 (1.62%) MCSE
11 47 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
12 45 (1.52%) CCNA
13 34 (1.15%) CCNP
14 31 (1.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 29 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
16 28 (0.94%) CompTIA Security+
17 26 (0.88%) MCSA
18 25 (0.84%) CISM
19 22 (0.74%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 122 (4.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 116 (3.91%) SLA
3 91 (3.07%) NIST
4 89 (3.00%) QA
5 62 (2.09%) GDPR
6 34 (1.15%) PCI DSS
7 32 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 26 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
9 19 (0.64%) NCSC
10 13 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
11 12 (0.40%) Data Quality
12 11 (0.37%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.37%) PMO
13 10 (0.34%) GRC
13 10 (0.34%) NIST 800
13 10 (0.34%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.30%) Accessibility
15 7 (0.24%) FINRA
15 7 (0.24%) MiFID
16 6 (0.20%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,106 (37.29%) Active Directory
2 374 (12.61%) VMware Infrastructure
3 155 (5.23%) Hyper-V
4 114 (3.84%) VMware ESXi
5 103 (3.47%) vSphere
6 102 (3.44%) Virtual Machines
7 91 (3.07%) Docker
8 68 (2.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 55 (1.85%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.35%) Firmware
11 38 (1.28%) BitLocker
12 28 (0.94%) Microsoft App-V
13 19 (0.64%) KVM
14 12 (0.40%) vCloud
15 10 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
15 10 (0.34%) XenDesktop
16 9 (0.30%) XenApp
17 8 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
18 7 (0.24%) NFS
19 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 394 (13.28%) Microsoft Intune
2 263 (8.87%) SCCM
3 197 (6.64%) Terraform
4 189 (6.37%) Ansible
5 143 (4.82%) Kubernetes
6 86 (2.90%) vCenter Server
7 54 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
8 53 (1.79%) Jamf Pro
9 46 (1.55%) FortiGate
10 42 (1.42%) SCOM
11 41 (1.38%) WSUS
12 37 (1.25%) Progress Chef
13 34 (1.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (1.08%) Grafana
14 32 (1.08%) Prometheus
15 27 (0.91%) Puppet
16 24 (0.81%) Nagios
17 21 (0.71%) Nessus
17 21 (0.71%) ZABBIX
18 20 (0.67%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 1,256 (42.35%) Microsoft
2 482 (16.25%) VMware
3 263 (8.87%) ServiceNow
4 225 (7.59%) Cisco
5 197 (6.64%) Citrix
6 187 (6.30%) Oracle
7 137 (4.62%) Splunk
8 81 (2.73%) HP
9 77 (2.60%) Apple
9 77 (2.60%) SolarWinds
10 72 (2.43%) Red Hat
11 71 (2.39%) Dell
12 64 (2.16%) CyberArk
13 62 (2.09%) Google
14 59 (1.99%) F5
15 57 (1.92%) BeyondTrust
16 52 (1.75%) IBM
16 52 (1.75%) Remedy
17 50 (1.69%) Palo Alto
18 49 (1.65%) Juniper