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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 22 17
Rank change year-on-year -3 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,901 2,580 3,881
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 7.21% 8.47% 8.69%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.21% 59.00% 62.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,985 1,676 2,610
10th Percentile £161 £181 £156
25th Percentile £204 £223 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £544 £565 £575
90th Percentile £644 £650 £667
UK excluding London median daily rate £325 £375 £370
% change year-on-year -13.33% +1.35% -7.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 97 261
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.67 £18.13 £15.50
Median hourly rate £21.90 £22.88 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.26% +14.38% -9.09%
75th Percentile £41.94 £29.00 £40.00
90th Percentile £67.75 £64.25 £62.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £22.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year -4.44% +25.00% -6.64%

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 4,818 4,373 6,243
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.98% 14.36% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,191 2,738 4,177
10th Percentile £178 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £313 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year -7.37% +2.70% -10.19%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £689 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £406 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -4.41% - -10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 149 389
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.91 £20.94 £17.00
Median hourly rate £23.25 £29.00 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -19.83% +14.85% -2.88%
75th Percentile £53.75 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £69.99 £69.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £27.50 £25.25
% change year-on-year -18.18% +8.91% -2.42%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 0 2,574 £400 - 1,081
UK excluding London -5 1,965 £325 -13.33% 1,039
London -17 760 £450 +12.50% 235
Work from Home -16 577 £425 -5.56% 371
South East -2 512 £403 -5.29% 375
North of England -7 466 £263 -25.00% 226
South West +1 311 £425 -8.85% 124
Midlands -6 290 £275 -15.38% 126
North West -7 260 £235 -32.86% 127
East of England +7 225 £225 -16.67% 111
West Midlands -17 174 £388 +19.23% 84
Yorkshire -13 173 £320 -8.57% 85
Scotland -8 122 £425 - 72
East Midlands +7 115 £225 -19.28% 42
Wales -1 48 £200 -20.00% 22
North East -5 36 £188 -41.41% 20
Northern Ireland -14 9 £163 -7.14% 4
Channel Islands +3 1 - - 3

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
1 247 (8.51%) Microsoft Exchange
2 183 (6.31%) SharePoint
3 62 (2.14%) Confluence
4 45 (1.55%) IIS
5 36 (1.24%) Apache
6 22 (0.76%) WebLogic
7 17 (0.59%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.45%) nginx
8 13 (0.45%) TPMS
8 13 (0.45%) WebSphere
9 10 (0.34%) SAS
9 10 (0.34%) Tuxedo
10 9 (0.31%) JBoss
10 9 (0.31%) Tomcat
11 7 (0.24%) iPlanet
11 7 (0.24%) WebSphere Application Server
12 6 (0.21%) SharePoint Server
13 4 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.14%) OpenStack
14 3 (0.10%) CMS
Applications
1 264 (9.10%) Microsoft Office
2 81 (2.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 27 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.17%) PTC Creo
5 5 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.14%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 2 (0.069%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.069%) Windchill
8 1 (0.034%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.034%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.034%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.034%) Adobe Premiere
8 1 (0.034%) InDesign
8 1 (0.034%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.034%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 29 (1.00%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.28%) Teamcenter
4 7 (0.24%) assyst
5 4 (0.14%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.10%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 2 (0.069%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.069%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 2 (0.069%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 2 (0.069%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.069%) SAP MDG
7 2 (0.069%) SystmOne
8 1 (0.034%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.034%) Eikon
8 1 (0.034%) Fidessa
8 1 (0.034%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.034%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.034%) Primavera
8 1 (0.034%) RMDS
8 1 (0.034%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 815 (28.09%) Microsoft 365
2 735 (25.34%) Azure
3 275 (9.48%) Entra ID
4 245 (8.45%) AWS
5 107 (3.69%) OneDrive
6 74 (2.55%) SaaS
7 71 (2.45%) GCP
8 55 (1.90%) Azure DevOps
8 55 (1.90%) Google Workspace
9 48 (1.65%) GitHub
10 43 (1.48%) IaaS
11 36 (1.24%) Power Platform
12 33 (1.14%) PaaS
13 28 (0.97%) Azure Sentinel
14 25 (0.86%) OpenShift
15 24 (0.83%) Azure Monitor
15 24 (0.83%) Nutanix
16 20 (0.69%) AWS CloudFormation
17 19 (0.65%) GitHub Actions
18 17 (0.59%) Sauce Labs
Communications & Networking
1 395 (13.62%) DNS
2 316 (10.89%) Firewall
3 250 (8.62%) DHCP
4 203 (7.00%) TCP/IP
5 191 (6.58%) VPN
6 143 (4.93%) WAN
7 140 (4.83%) Wi-Fi
8 139 (4.79%) LAN
9 84 (2.90%) Network Security
10 72 (2.48%) VLAN
11 69 (2.38%) Wireless
12 49 (1.69%) HTTP
13 48 (1.65%) SSH
14 42 (1.45%) SAN
15 41 (1.41%) Skype
16 38 (1.31%) SSL
17 37 (1.28%) Kerberos
18 35 (1.21%) VoIP
19 31 (1.07%) Cisco IOS
19 31 (1.07%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 141 (4.86%) SQL Server
2 66 (2.28%) Oracle Database
3 49 (1.69%) Relational Database
4 41 (1.41%) MySQL
5 30 (1.03%) PostgreSQL
6 13 (0.45%) DB2
6 13 (0.45%) Power BI
7 12 (0.41%) BigQuery
7 12 (0.41%) GIS
7 12 (0.41%) NoSQL
8 11 (0.38%) Data Warehouse
8 11 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
8 11 (0.38%) MongoDB
8 11 (0.38%) Oracle Reports
9 9 (0.31%) Amazon RDS
10 7 (0.24%) Data Lake
11 6 (0.21%) Amazon Aurora
11 6 (0.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 5 (0.17%) Oracle Database 10g
12 5 (0.17%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 159 (5.48%) JIRA
2 72 (2.48%) Git
3 71 (2.45%) Jenkins
4 60 (2.07%) GitLab
5 44 (1.52%) MSI
6 25 (0.86%) Visual Studio
7 24 (0.83%) Eclipse
8 20 (0.69%) Burp Suite
8 20 (0.69%) Metasploit
9 19 (0.65%) Android Studio
10 17 (0.59%) Xcode
11 16 (0.55%) Browser DevTools
12 15 (0.52%) Artifactory
13 13 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.38%) InstallShield
15 8 (0.28%) Bitbucket
15 8 (0.28%) Chocolatey
16 7 (0.24%) AdminStudio
16 7 (0.24%) Bitbucket Server
16 7 (0.24%) CA Release Automation
General
1 1,061 (36.57%) Social Skills
2 298 (10.27%) Finance
3 258 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
4 253 (8.72%) Public Sector
5 130 (4.48%) Banking
6 124 (4.27%) Documentation Skills
7 114 (3.93%) Legal
8 86 (2.96%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.21%) Manufacturing
10 58 (2.00%) Military
11 42 (1.45%) Telecoms
12 41 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 41 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
13 34 (1.17%) Retail
14 25 (0.86%) Aerospace
15 24 (0.83%) Marketing
16 21 (0.72%) Law
17 20 (0.69%) Front Office
17 20 (0.69%) Investment Banking
18 19 (0.65%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 414 (14.27%) Support Engineer
2 375 (12.93%) IT Support
3 374 (12.89%) Analyst
4 212 (7.31%) IT Engineer
5 190 (6.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 169 (5.83%) IT Support Engineer
7 166 (5.72%) Architect
8 155 (5.34%) Support Analyst
9 154 (5.31%) Senior
10 148 (5.10%) Desktop Support
11 130 (4.48%) Windows Engineer
12 128 (4.41%) Technical Support
13 124 (4.27%) Desktop Engineer
14 123 (4.24%) 2nd Line Support
15 109 (3.76%) Developer
16 101 (3.48%) Lead
17 98 (3.38%) Deployment Engineer
18 96 (3.31%) Desktop Support Engineer
19 87 (3.00%) IT Analyst
20 74 (2.55%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (2.76%) .NET
2 62 (2.14%) REST
3 60 (2.07%) LDAP
4 53 (1.83%) OAuth
5 51 (1.76%) SAML
6 45 (1.55%) .NET Framework
7 41 (1.41%) Middleware
8 35 (1.21%) React
9 33 (1.14%) OpenID
9 33 (1.14%) WPF
10 29 (1.00%) AngularJS
10 29 (1.00%) Kafka
11 27 (0.93%) CSS
12 25 (0.86%) Microsoft Graph
12 25 (0.86%) Web Services
13 21 (0.72%) OAuth2
13 21 (0.72%) WinForms
14 20 (0.69%) SOAP
15 18 (0.62%) Apache NiFi
15 18 (0.62%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 188 (6.48%) Onboarding
2 108 (3.72%) Data Centre
3 107 (3.69%) PKI
4 94 (3.24%) Driving Licence
5 83 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
6 66 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
7 60 (2.07%) Smartphone
8 56 (1.93%) Management Information System
9 52 (1.79%) Replication
10 47 (1.62%) Security Posture
11 41 (1.41%) Clustering
12 40 (1.38%) Hybrid Cloud
13 37 (1.28%) NHS
14 36 (1.24%) Legacy Systems
15 35 (1.21%) Security Operations Centre
16 33 (1.14%) Product Ownership
17 31 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
17 31 (1.07%) Virtual Team
18 30 (1.03%) Data Protection Act
18 30 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 706 (24.34%) Linux
2 627 (21.61%) Windows 10
3 598 (20.61%) Windows Server
4 173 (5.96%) Unix
5 166 (5.72%) Mac OS
6 150 (5.17%) Android
7 119 (4.10%) Apple iOS
8 78 (2.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 71 (2.45%) Windows Server 2016
10 61 (2.10%) Windows Server 2019
11 54 (1.86%) Windows 7
12 41 (1.41%) Windows Server 2012
13 30 (1.03%) Windows Server 2003
14 27 (0.93%) AIX
15 19 (0.65%) Solaris
16 18 (0.62%) VMS
17 15 (0.52%) Ubuntu
18 13 (0.45%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.34%) Mac OS X
20 6 (0.21%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 555 (19.13%) Problem-Solving
2 490 (16.89%) Customer Service
3 418 (14.41%) ITIL
4 314 (10.82%) Agile
5 292 (10.07%) Migration
6 271 (9.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 244 (8.41%) DevOps
8 236 (8.14%) Service Management
9 232 (8.00%) ITSM
10 223 (7.69%) Cybersecurity
11 215 (7.41%) CI/CD
12 201 (6.93%) Continuous Improvement
13 151 (5.21%) Change Management
14 145 (5.00%) Disaster Recovery
15 139 (4.79%) Service Delivery
16 135 (4.65%) Stakeholder Management
17 130 (4.48%) Computer Science
18 126 (4.34%) SIEM
19 124 (4.27%) User Experience
20 122 (4.21%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 556 (19.17%) PowerShell
2 332 (11.44%) Python
3 244 (8.41%) SQL
4 122 (4.21%) Bash
5 121 (4.17%) Java
6 115 (3.96%) C#
7 72 (2.48%) JavaScript
8 65 (2.24%) Perl
9 57 (1.96%) PL/SQL
10 56 (1.93%) C++
11 38 (1.31%) T-SQL
12 31 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
13 30 (1.03%) Shell Script
14 29 (1.00%) VBScript
15 28 (0.97%) VB
16 24 (0.83%) VBA
17 15 (0.52%) Go
18 14 (0.48%) C
19 13 (0.45%) Bicep
19 13 (0.45%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 883 (30.44%) Security Cleared
2 568 (19.58%) SC Cleared
3 315 (10.86%) Degree
4 259 (8.93%) DV Cleared
5 161 (5.55%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
7 60 (2.07%) Azure Certification
8 56 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
9 51 (1.76%) MCSE
10 44 (1.52%) ITIL Certification
11 41 (1.41%) A+ Certification
12 39 (1.34%) CISSP
13 36 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
14 35 (1.21%) CompTIA Security+
15 33 (1.14%) CCNA
16 32 (1.10%) AWS Certification
17 28 (0.97%) CCNP
18 27 (0.93%) MCSA
19 26 (0.90%) Microsoft Certified Professional
20 23 (0.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 99 (3.41%) GDPR
2 95 (3.27%) SLA
3 82 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 70 (2.41%) QA
5 59 (2.03%) NIST
6 37 (1.28%) PCI DSS
7 25 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 19 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials
9 14 (0.48%) PMO
10 13 (0.45%) GLBA
11 12 (0.41%) MiFID
12 10 (0.34%) NCSC
13 9 (0.31%) FINRA
14 7 (0.24%) COBIT
14 7 (0.24%) HIPAA
14 7 (0.24%) NIST 800
14 7 (0.24%) SOC 2
15 6 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
16 5 (0.17%) Accessibility
16 5 (0.17%) GxP
System Software
1 1,066 (36.75%) Active Directory
2 277 (9.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 115 (3.96%) Docker
4 111 (3.83%) Hyper-V
5 66 (2.28%) Virtual Desktop
6 63 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (2.10%) vSphere
8 50 (1.72%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (1.21%) VMware NSX
10 26 (0.90%) BitLocker
11 24 (0.83%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.65%) Firmware
13 14 (0.48%) Virtual Servers
14 13 (0.45%) KVM
15 9 (0.31%) DFS Replication
15 9 (0.31%) XenApp
16 7 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
16 7 (0.24%) Terminal Services
16 7 (0.24%) XenDesktop
17 6 (0.21%) NFS
Systems Management
1 382 (13.17%) SCCM
2 346 (11.93%) Microsoft Intune
3 174 (6.00%) Terraform
4 156 (5.38%) Ansible
5 120 (4.14%) Kubernetes
6 85 (2.93%) Single Sign-On
7 73 (2.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 66 (2.28%) vCenter Server
9 50 (1.72%) Jamf Pro
10 44 (1.52%) Grafana
11 31 (1.07%) WSUS
12 30 (1.03%) Prometheus
13 27 (0.93%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.93%) SCOM
14 24 (0.83%) Nessus
15 19 (0.65%) Nmap
16 18 (0.62%) WMI
17 15 (0.52%) Progress Chef
18 12 (0.41%) Puppet
19 11 (0.38%) CASB
Vendors
1 1,240 (42.74%) Microsoft
2 378 (13.03%) VMware
3 264 (9.10%) ServiceNow
4 198 (6.83%) Oracle
5 183 (6.31%) Cisco
6 180 (6.20%) Citrix
7 152 (5.24%) Splunk
8 74 (2.55%) Dell
9 73 (2.52%) Apple
10 72 (2.48%) HP
11 63 (2.17%) SolarWinds
12 58 (2.00%) Red Hat
13 56 (1.93%) Google
14 50 (1.72%) IBM
14 50 (1.72%) Veeam
15 45 (1.55%) SAP
16 44 (1.52%) Remedy
17 41 (1.41%) Juniper
18 39 (1.34%) Palo Alto
19 37 (1.28%) CrowdStrike