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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,188 2,596 3,177
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.94% 8.03% 8.34%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.77% 59.50% 59.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,047 1,714 2,112
10th Percentile £169 £169 £178
25th Percentile £222 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -3.53% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £656 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +10.00% -11.76% +10.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 295 218 201
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.06 £18.11 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% +2.22% -4.26%
75th Percentile £55.75 £30.00 £55.00
90th Percentile £74.54 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.28 £22.00
% change year-on-year +21.01% -3.27% -

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 5,246 4,363 5,368
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.50% 14.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,323 2,781 3,503
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £582
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 264 293
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.77 £13.85
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.74 £18.27
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -37.13% -9.03%
75th Percentile £65.22 £58.70 £67.50
90th Percentile £74.46 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £49.00
% change year-on-year +6.00% -48.67% +22.00%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -6 2,767 £420 +3.07% 2,068
UK excluding London -14 2,057 £413 +10.00% 1,381
London -14 929 £425 - 895
Work from Home -13 617 £465 +3.33% 671
South East -8 557 £484 -1.33% 424
North of England -3 505 £325 - 287
North West +4 308 £340 -3.00% 150
South West -14 278 £488 +37.32% 177
Midlands -16 273 £385 -3.75% 198
East of England -2 207 £300 -14.29% 206
West Midlands -23 174 £425 -1.16% 131
Scotland -5 168 £350 -22.22% 67
Yorkshire -14 166 £275 - 92
East Midlands +3 95 £275 +37.50% 67
Wales +4 65 £446 +62.27% 21
North East -24 35 £270 -1.82% 58
Northern Ireland -1 16 £139 -30.75% 44
Channel Islands 0 3 £518 - 1

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
1 260 (8.16%) SharePoint
2 244 (7.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 74 (2.32%) IIS
4 56 (1.76%) Confluence
5 18 (0.56%) Apache
5 18 (0.56%) nginx
5 18 (0.56%) Skype for Business
6 14 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
7 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.19%) Documentum
9 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.16%) Appian
9 5 (0.16%) Camunda
9 5 (0.16%) NetWeaver
9 5 (0.16%) SAS
9 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
11 3 (0.094%) CloudStack
11 3 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 215 (6.74%) Microsoft Office
2 74 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.094%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.094%) Houdini
6 3 (0.094%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.094%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.76%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 9 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.094%) assyst
7 3 (0.094%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.031%) ResourceLink
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
9 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,015 (31.84%) Microsoft 365
2 981 (30.77%) Azure
3 504 (15.81%) Entra ID
4 337 (10.57%) AWS
5 147 (4.61%) OneDrive
6 118 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (3.29%) GCP
8 80 (2.51%) Azure Monitor
9 77 (2.42%) SaaS
10 76 (2.38%) Power Platform
11 65 (2.04%) GitHub
12 60 (1.88%) IaaS
13 45 (1.41%) PaaS
14 44 (1.38%) Azure Sentinel
15 41 (1.29%) OpenShift
16 30 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.88%) Google Workspace
18 24 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
19 23 (0.72%) GitHub Actions
20 22 (0.69%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 476 (14.93%) DNS
2 344 (10.79%) Firewall
3 339 (10.63%) DHCP
4 269 (8.44%) VPN
5 229 (7.18%) TCP/IP
6 150 (4.71%) WAN
7 147 (4.61%) LAN
8 136 (4.27%) Wi-Fi
9 93 (2.92%) Network Security
10 92 (2.89%) SAN
11 87 (2.73%) VLAN
12 53 (1.66%) Wireless
13 49 (1.54%) SSL
14 46 (1.44%) NAS
15 44 (1.38%) Internet
16 38 (1.19%) VSAN
17 34 (1.07%) Skype
18 29 (0.91%) BGP
18 29 (0.91%) SD-WAN
18 29 (0.91%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (9.32%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.91%) Oracle Database
3 57 (1.79%) Power BI
4 40 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 39 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
6 37 (1.16%) Relational Database
7 24 (0.75%) MySQL
8 22 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
9 18 (0.56%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 13 (0.41%) Oracle Reports
13 11 (0.35%) Db2
13 11 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
14 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
14 8 (0.25%) MS Access
14 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
15 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 161 (5.05%) JIRA
2 72 (2.26%) Git
3 57 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.47%) MSI
5 45 (1.41%) GitLab
6 24 (0.75%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
9 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.22%) Selenium
10 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 5 (0.16%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
12 5 (0.16%) Robot Framework
General
1 1,167 (36.61%) Social Skills
2 402 (12.61%) Analytical Skills
3 368 (11.54%) Finance
4 169 (5.30%) Public Sector
5 154 (4.83%) Banking
6 117 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
7 89 (2.79%) Legal
8 76 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 74 (2.32%) Organisational Skills
10 59 (1.85%) Manufacturing
11 53 (1.66%) Telecoms
12 50 (1.57%) Retail
13 41 (1.29%) Front Office
14 40 (1.25%) Law
15 34 (1.07%) Investment Banking
16 30 (0.94%) Military
17 28 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.78%) French Language
19 23 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
20 22 (0.69%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 511 (16.03%) Support Engineer
2 435 (13.64%) IT Support
3 341 (10.70%) IT Engineer
4 329 (10.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 284 (8.91%) IT Support Engineer
6 266 (8.34%) Analyst
7 252 (7.90%) Senior
8 141 (4.42%) Desktop Support
9 124 (3.89%) 2nd Line Support
9 124 (3.89%) Architect
10 121 (3.80%) Lead
11 119 (3.73%) Desktop Engineer
12 117 (3.67%) Windows Engineer
13 113 (3.54%) Cloud Engineer
14 103 (3.23%) Developer
15 102 (3.20%) Support Analyst
16 101 (3.17%) Consultant
17 87 (2.73%) 1st Line Support
18 85 (2.67%) Service Analyst
19 82 (2.57%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (8.25%) Terraform
2 136 (4.27%) .NET
3 116 (3.64%) REST
4 67 (2.10%) .NET Framework
5 43 (1.35%) Middleware
6 40 (1.25%) JSON
7 38 (1.19%) LDAP
8 32 (1.00%) XML
9 29 (0.91%) WinForms
9 29 (0.91%) WPF
10 28 (0.88%) Kafka
10 28 (0.88%) Software Packaging
11 27 (0.85%) HTML
12 24 (0.75%) ARM Templates
13 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 19 (0.60%) .NET Core
14 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
14 19 (0.60%) CSS
14 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
15 18 (0.56%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 376 (11.79%) Onboarding
2 184 (5.77%) Data Centre
3 158 (4.96%) PKI
4 101 (3.17%) Management Information System
5 86 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 85 (2.67%) Clustering
7 80 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
8 78 (2.45%) Cloud Native
9 77 (2.42%) Driving Licence
10 73 (2.29%) Replication
10 73 (2.29%) Video Conferencing
11 58 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
12 54 (1.69%) Security Posture
13 46 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
14 42 (1.32%) Virtual Team
15 40 (1.25%) Operational Technology
16 39 (1.22%) CMDB
16 39 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
16 39 (1.22%) Enterprise Storage
16 39 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 886 (27.79%) Windows Server
2 772 (24.22%) Linux
3 550 (17.25%) Windows 10
4 199 (6.24%) Mac OS
5 147 (4.61%) Unix
6 135 (4.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 134 (4.20%) Android
7 134 (4.20%) Apple iOS
8 74 (2.32%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.73%) Windows 7
10 51 (1.60%) Ubuntu
11 48 (1.51%) Windows Server 2016
12 41 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.13%) CentOS
14 34 (1.07%) AIX
15 23 (0.72%) VMS
16 18 (0.56%) Solaris
16 18 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
17 14 (0.44%) Rocky
18 11 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 758 (23.78%) Problem-Solving
2 595 (18.66%) ITIL
3 535 (16.78%) Customer Service
4 432 (13.55%) ITSM
5 417 (13.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 397 (12.45%) Migration
7 335 (10.51%) Continuous Improvement
8 312 (9.79%) Service Management
9 305 (9.57%) DevOps
10 255 (8.00%) CI/CD
10 255 (8.00%) Infrastructure as Code
11 250 (7.84%) Agile
12 226 (7.09%) Stakeholder Management
13 224 (7.03%) Change Management
14 205 (6.43%) Root Cause Analysis
15 204 (6.40%) Disaster Recovery
16 192 (6.02%) Service Delivery
17 191 (5.99%) Cybersecurity
18 186 (5.83%) High Availability
19 183 (5.74%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 773 (24.25%) PowerShell
2 332 (10.41%) Python
3 317 (9.94%) SQL
4 186 (5.83%) Bash
5 146 (4.58%) C#
6 70 (2.20%) Java
7 68 (2.13%) T-SQL
8 55 (1.73%) PL/SQL
9 53 (1.66%) JavaScript
10 49 (1.54%) Bicep
11 30 (0.94%) VBScript
12 29 (0.91%) VB
13 27 (0.85%) C++
14 22 (0.69%) Perl
14 22 (0.69%) Search Processing Language
15 19 (0.60%) Shell Script
15 19 (0.60%) VBA
16 16 (0.50%) TypeScript
17 11 (0.35%) VB.NET
18 9 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 976 (30.61%) Security Cleared
2 602 (18.88%) SC Cleared
3 360 (11.29%) DV Cleared
4 297 (9.32%) Degree
5 126 (3.95%) Microsoft Certification
6 93 (2.92%) Azure Certification
7 89 (2.79%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
9 68 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
10 63 (1.98%) CISSP
11 55 (1.73%) A+ Certification
11 55 (1.73%) AWS Certification
12 52 (1.63%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 44 (1.38%) CCNA
14 41 (1.29%) DBS Check
15 38 (1.19%) CCNP
16 36 (1.13%) MCSE
17 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 28 (0.88%) CISM
18 28 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 168 (5.27%) SLA
2 111 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.95%) QA
4 81 (2.54%) NIST
5 34 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
5 34 (1.07%) GDPR
6 30 (0.94%) NCSC
7 22 (0.69%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.53%) Data Quality
9 15 (0.47%) Accessibility
9 15 (0.47%) GxP
9 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
11 12 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 12 (0.38%) WCAG
12 11 (0.35%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.35%) PMO
13 10 (0.31%) GMP
13 10 (0.31%) GRC
System Software
1 1,314 (41.22%) Active Directory
2 480 (15.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 222 (6.96%) Hyper-V
4 154 (4.83%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.14%) vSphere
6 112 (3.51%) Docker
7 106 (3.32%) Virtual Machines
8 97 (3.04%) Virtual Desktop
9 81 (2.54%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.22%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.07%) Firmware
12 24 (0.75%) vCloud
13 16 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
14 15 (0.47%) NFS
15 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.35%) KVM
16 11 (0.35%) XenApp
17 10 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
18 6 (0.19%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 443 (13.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 344 (10.79%) SCCM
3 231 (7.25%) Ansible
4 165 (5.18%) Kubernetes
5 121 (3.80%) vCenter Server
6 99 (3.11%) SCOM
7 51 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
8 48 (1.51%) WSUS
9 35 (1.10%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.04%) Prometheus
10 33 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.94%) Grafana
12 27 (0.85%) NetBackup
12 27 (0.85%) WMI
13 25 (0.78%) Puppet
14 24 (0.75%) FortiGate
14 24 (0.75%) Nagios
15 23 (0.72%) Packer
16 22 (0.69%) VxRail
17 21 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,487 (46.64%) Microsoft
2 628 (19.70%) VMware
3 382 (11.98%) ServiceNow
4 223 (6.99%) Cisco
5 203 (6.37%) Oracle
6 176 (5.52%) Citrix
7 114 (3.58%) Splunk
8 113 (3.54%) Apple
9 96 (3.01%) CyberArk
10 83 (2.60%) Google
11 79 (2.48%) Red Hat
12 77 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
13 76 (2.38%) SolarWinds
14 61 (1.91%) HP
15 60 (1.88%) Remedy
16 55 (1.73%) Dell
17 49 (1.54%) NetApp
18 47 (1.47%) Palo Alto
19 46 (1.44%) BMC
20 43 (1.35%) Meraki