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 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,259 2,665 3,195
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.97% 8.07% 8.29%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.09% 59.59% 58.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,083 1,769 2,109
10th Percentile £170 £168 £178
25th Percentile £224 £219 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £408 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.29% -4.12% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £651
UK excluding London median daily rate £404 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +7.60% -11.76% +6.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 318 224 188
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £13.87
25th Percentile £16.90 £18.12 £17.44
Median hourly rate £25.51 £23.00 £24.17
Median % change year-on-year +10.89% -4.82% +7.40%
75th Percentile £56.32 £33.33 £56.56
90th Percentile £74.43 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £22.19 £24.18
% change year-on-year +16.04% -8.23% +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 5,335 4,472 5,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.54% 14.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,366 2,860 3,510
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £305 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £585
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.67% -0.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 269 281
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.05 £18.82 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -47.05% +5.57%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.75 £68.00
90th Percentile £74.36 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +3.38% -49.70% +14.29%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -8 2,827 £416 +2.09% 1,565
UK excluding London -13 2,106 £404 +7.60% 1,191
London -12 947 £420 -1.18% 546
Work from Home -11 618 £465 +3.33% 523
South East -9 557 £484 +1.79% 389
North of England -3 510 £325 - 228
North West +4 310 £344 -1.71% 119
Midlands -16 287 £400 +6.67% 187
South West -15 283 £488 +28.71% 151
East of England -1 221 £250 -28.57% 175
West Midlands -24 189 £402 +0.50% 122
Scotland -4 173 £313 -30.56% 63
Yorkshire -19 166 £270 -1.82% 77
East Midlands +7 96 £275 +37.50% 65
Wales +7 70 £446 +62.27% 19
North East -32 38 £270 -1.82% 38
Northern Ireland -4 16 £139 -30.75% 16
Channel Islands -1 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
1 266 (8.16%) SharePoint
2 249 (7.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 75 (2.30%) IIS
4 58 (1.78%) Confluence
5 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.55%) Apache
6 18 (0.55%) nginx
7 14 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.40%) 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%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.15%) SAS
10 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.092%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 227 (6.97%) Microsoft Office
2 74 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.092%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.092%) Houdini
7 3 (0.092%) NUKE
8 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.72%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 9 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.21%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.21%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.092%) assyst
7 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
8 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Monis
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 1,026 (31.48%) Microsoft 365
2 991 (30.41%) Azure
3 514 (15.77%) Entra ID
4 334 (10.25%) AWS
5 149 (4.57%) OneDrive
6 118 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (3.22%) GCP
8 78 (2.39%) Azure Monitor
9 77 (2.36%) SaaS
10 74 (2.27%) Power Platform
11 69 (2.12%) GitHub
12 64 (1.96%) IaaS
13 48 (1.47%) PaaS
14 43 (1.32%) Azure Sentinel
15 38 (1.17%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (0.83%) Google Workspace
18 26 (0.80%) GitHub Actions
19 24 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.68%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 480 (14.73%) DNS
2 343 (10.52%) Firewall
3 340 (10.43%) DHCP
4 271 (8.32%) VPN
5 233 (7.15%) TCP/IP
6 145 (4.45%) WAN
7 139 (4.27%) LAN
8 132 (4.05%) Wi-Fi
9 94 (2.88%) Network Security
10 93 (2.85%) SAN
11 89 (2.73%) VLAN
12 57 (1.75%) Wireless
13 48 (1.47%) SSL
14 46 (1.41%) NAS
15 44 (1.35%) Internet
16 35 (1.07%) Skype
16 35 (1.07%) VSAN
17 29 (0.89%) VoIP
18 28 (0.86%) HTTP
18 28 (0.86%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 302 (9.27%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 57 (1.75%) Power BI
4 41 (1.26%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.20%) Relational Database
7 24 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
7 24 (0.74%) MySQL
8 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
9 17 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
11 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 11 (0.34%) Db2
12 11 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
12 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
13 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
13 8 (0.25%) MS Access
13 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 164 (5.03%) JIRA
2 73 (2.24%) Git
3 55 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.44%) MSI
5 45 (1.38%) GitLab
6 24 (0.74%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 12 (0.37%) Artifactory
9 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
10 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
10 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 5 (0.15%) Chocolatey
13 5 (0.15%) Claude Code
13 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
13 5 (0.15%) Robot Framework
13 5 (0.15%) Selenium
General
1 1,194 (36.64%) Social Skills
2 401 (12.30%) Analytical Skills
3 380 (11.66%) Finance
4 167 (5.12%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.82%) Banking
6 123 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 92 (2.82%) Legal
8 76 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 75 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
10 61 (1.87%) Manufacturing
11 53 (1.63%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.60%) Retail
13 44 (1.35%) Front Office
14 40 (1.23%) Law
15 35 (1.07%) Investment Banking
16 30 (0.92%) Military
17 28 (0.86%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.77%) French Language
18 25 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
19 23 (0.71%) Police
Job Titles
1 522 (16.02%) Support Engineer
2 446 (13.69%) IT Support
3 348 (10.68%) IT Engineer
4 340 (10.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 289 (8.87%) IT Support Engineer
6 281 (8.62%) Analyst
7 260 (7.98%) Senior
8 145 (4.45%) Desktop Support
9 126 (3.87%) Architect
10 124 (3.80%) 2nd Line Support
11 123 (3.77%) Desktop Engineer
12 121 (3.71%) Lead
13 119 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
13 119 (3.65%) Windows Engineer
14 105 (3.22%) Developer
14 105 (3.22%) Support Analyst
15 102 (3.13%) Consultant
16 89 (2.73%) 1st Line Support
17 85 (2.61%) Service Analyst
18 84 (2.58%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (8.28%) Terraform
2 140 (4.30%) .NET
3 120 (3.68%) REST
4 66 (2.03%) .NET Framework
5 47 (1.44%) Middleware
6 42 (1.29%) JSON
7 41 (1.26%) LDAP
8 32 (0.98%) XML
9 30 (0.92%) WPF
10 29 (0.89%) WinForms
11 28 (0.86%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.83%) HTML
13 25 (0.77%) Kafka
14 24 (0.74%) ARM Templates
15 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
15 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
16 19 (0.58%) .NET Core
16 19 (0.58%) ASP.NET
16 19 (0.58%) CSS
17 18 (0.55%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 375 (11.51%) Onboarding
2 190 (5.83%) Data Centre
3 162 (4.97%) PKI
4 103 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
6 83 (2.55%) Clustering
6 83 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
7 82 (2.52%) Driving Licence
8 78 (2.39%) Cloud Native
9 74 (2.27%) Replication
9 74 (2.27%) Video Conferencing
10 55 (1.69%) Security Posture
10 55 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
11 47 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
12 42 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
12 42 (1.29%) Virtual Team
13 41 (1.26%) Operational Technology
14 40 (1.23%) Enterprise Storage
15 37 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
15 37 (1.14%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 902 (27.68%) Windows Server
2 792 (24.30%) Linux
3 562 (17.24%) Windows 10
4 202 (6.20%) Mac OS
5 151 (4.63%) Unix
6 140 (4.30%) Android
6 140 (4.30%) Apple iOS
7 138 (4.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 75 (2.30%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.69%) Windows 7
10 52 (1.60%) Ubuntu
11 47 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
12 41 (1.26%) Windows Server 2012
13 38 (1.17%) CentOS
14 34 (1.04%) AIX
15 23 (0.71%) VMS
16 18 (0.55%) Solaris
16 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
17 15 (0.46%) Rocky
18 13 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 775 (23.78%) Problem-Solving
2 602 (18.47%) ITIL
3 565 (17.34%) Customer Service
4 436 (13.38%) ITSM
5 431 (13.22%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 412 (12.64%) Migration
7 345 (10.59%) Continuous Improvement
8 318 (9.76%) Service Management
9 312 (9.57%) DevOps
10 264 (8.10%) Infrastructure as Code
11 262 (8.04%) CI/CD
12 259 (7.95%) Agile
13 235 (7.21%) Stakeholder Management
14 221 (6.78%) Change Management
15 220 (6.75%) Root Cause Analysis
16 210 (6.44%) Disaster Recovery
17 195 (5.98%) Cybersecurity
18 193 (5.92%) Service Delivery
19 186 (5.71%) High Availability
20 185 (5.68%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 786 (24.12%) PowerShell
2 334 (10.25%) Python
3 326 (10.00%) SQL
4 188 (5.77%) Bash
5 151 (4.63%) C#
6 72 (2.21%) T-SQL
7 71 (2.18%) Java
8 59 (1.81%) PL/SQL
9 53 (1.63%) JavaScript
10 51 (1.56%) Bicep
11 29 (0.89%) VB
11 29 (0.89%) VBScript
12 26 (0.80%) C++
13 21 (0.64%) Perl
14 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.58%) VBA
15 17 (0.52%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.52%) TypeScript
16 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
17 9 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,007 (30.90%) Security Cleared
2 617 (18.93%) SC Cleared
3 376 (11.54%) DV Cleared
4 302 (9.27%) Degree
5 126 (3.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 93 (2.85%) Azure Certification
7 86 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
8 75 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 71 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
10 61 (1.87%) CISSP
11 56 (1.72%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.69%) AWS Certification
13 52 (1.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 42 (1.29%) CCNA
15 41 (1.26%) DBS Check
16 36 (1.10%) CCNP
17 35 (1.07%) MCSE
18 33 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 29 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
20 28 (0.86%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 168 (5.15%) SLA
2 110 (3.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.88%) QA
4 83 (2.55%) NIST
5 34 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (1.01%) GDPR
7 30 (0.92%) NCSC
8 23 (0.71%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.46%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 12 (0.37%) GRC
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) GMP
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,339 (41.09%) Active Directory
2 490 (15.04%) VMware Infrastructure
3 227 (6.97%) Hyper-V
4 161 (4.94%) VMware ESXi
5 135 (4.14%) vSphere
6 114 (3.50%) Docker
7 110 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
8 101 (3.10%) Virtual Desktop
9 79 (2.42%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.23%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.04%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) NFS
14 15 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
15 14 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
16 12 (0.37%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.34%) KVM
17 11 (0.34%) XenApp
18 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
19 8 (0.25%) UAG
Systems Management
1 453 (13.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 356 (10.92%) SCCM
3 233 (7.15%) Ansible
4 162 (4.97%) Kubernetes
5 127 (3.90%) vCenter Server
6 101 (3.10%) SCOM
7 52 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
8 46 (1.41%) WSUS
9 33 (1.01%) Progress Chef
10 32 (0.98%) Grafana
10 32 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
11 31 (0.95%) Prometheus
12 28 (0.86%) NetBackup
12 28 (0.86%) WMI
13 26 (0.80%) Puppet
14 24 (0.74%) VxRail
15 23 (0.71%) Nagios
15 23 (0.71%) Packer
16 21 (0.64%) FortiGate
16 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,527 (46.85%) Microsoft
2 639 (19.61%) VMware
3 383 (11.75%) ServiceNow
4 228 (7.00%) Cisco
5 208 (6.38%) Oracle
6 178 (5.46%) Citrix
7 113 (3.47%) Apple
8 111 (3.41%) Splunk
9 98 (3.01%) CyberArk
10 83 (2.55%) Google
11 82 (2.52%) Red Hat
12 79 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
13 76 (2.33%) SolarWinds
14 60 (1.84%) Dell
14 60 (1.84%) Remedy
15 58 (1.78%) HP
16 52 (1.60%) NetApp
17 46 (1.41%) Palo Alto
18 45 (1.38%) BMC
19 43 (1.32%) Meraki