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

6 months to
27 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,957 2,513 3,567
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.80% 8.29% 8.23%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.01% 59.88% 60.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,899 1,694 2,399
10th Percentile £166 £180 £165
25th Percentile £222 £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 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £400 £438
% change year-on-year +3.75% -8.57% +11.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 251 177 295
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.96 £16.95 £14.45
Median hourly rate £25.26 £18.87 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.86% -0.68% -22.83%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £63.75 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.51 £18.87 £18.00
% change year-on-year +35.16% +4.83% -20.00%

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 4,847 4,197 5,886
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.51% 13.84% 13.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,093 2,732 3,870
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.63% -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 330 212 434
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.41 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.83 £22.25 £24.34
Median % change year-on-year +20.58% -8.59% -44.59%
75th Percentile £63.75 £41.48 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.26 £65.98 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £18.87 £30.50
% change year-on-year +40.28% -38.13% -18.67%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 2,584 £425 - 874
UK excluding London -13 1,958 £415 +3.75% 810
London -20 835 £425 -2.86% 204
Work from Home -8 635 £476 +0.47% 304
South East -8 525 £475 -3.06% 262
North of England -7 458 £365 +1.96% 177
Midlands -17 276 £335 +21.82% 116
South West -13 257 £488 +8.33% 130
North West -7 237 £364 -1.69% 100
East of England -1 216 £318 +14.39% 86
Yorkshire -12 202 £365 -8.75% 56
Scotland -3 171 £425 -1.39% 30
West Midlands -24 171 £450 +50.00% 53
East Midlands +10 100 £244 +21.88% 63
Wales +9 52 £360 +25.22% 19
North East -38 23 £290 -3.33% 27
Northern Ireland -6 15 £139 -30.75% 26
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
1 232 (7.85%) Microsoft Exchange
2 190 (6.43%) SharePoint
3 60 (2.03%) 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 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 4 (0.14%) Documentum
16 4 (0.14%) TPMS
16 4 (0.14%) WebSphere
17 3 (0.10%) CloudStack
Applications
1 189 (6.39%) 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 (0.068%) Acrobat
6 2 (0.068%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.034%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 41 (1.39%) Remedy ITSM
2 18 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.41%) 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
1 884 (29.90%) Azure
2 814 (27.53%) Microsoft 365
3 379 (12.82%) Entra ID
4 304 (10.28%) AWS
5 114 (3.86%) OneDrive
6 90 (3.04%) GCP
7 81 (2.74%) Azure DevOps
8 75 (2.54%) SaaS
9 68 (2.30%) GitHub
10 62 (2.10%) IaaS
11 60 (2.03%) Power Platform
12 52 (1.76%) PaaS
13 49 (1.66%) Azure Monitor
14 39 (1.32%) OpenShift
15 38 (1.29%) 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
1 399 (13.49%) DNS
2 307 (10.38%) Firewall
3 278 (9.40%) DHCP
4 217 (7.34%) VPN
5 184 (6.22%) WAN
6 181 (6.12%) TCP/IP
7 180 (6.09%) LAN
8 150 (5.07%) Wi-Fi
9 93 (3.15%) SAN
10 65 (2.20%) Network Security
11 59 (2.00%) VLAN
12 46 (1.56%) BGP
13 44 (1.49%) SD-WAN
14 43 (1.45%) NAS
15 42 (1.42%) SSL
16 41 (1.39%) Internet
17 38 (1.29%) VoIP
18 36 (1.22%) OSPF
19 35 (1.18%) SNMP
20 34 (1.15%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 252 (8.52%) SQL Server
2 60 (2.03%) Oracle Database
3 38 (1.29%) Power BI
4 30 (1.01%) Relational Database
5 28 (0.95%) 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 16 (0.54%) 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 (6.12%) JIRA
2 54 (1.83%) Git
3 53 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 45 (1.52%) MSI
5 42 (1.42%) GitLab
6 38 (1.29%) 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 1,023 (34.60%) Social Skills
2 326 (11.02%) Analytical Skills
3 316 (10.69%) Finance
4 204 (6.90%) Public Sector
5 152 (5.14%) Banking
6 114 (3.86%) Legal
7 105 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
8 82 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
9 59 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 53 (1.79%) Retail
11 47 (1.59%) Military
12 41 (1.39%) Manufacturing
13 37 (1.25%) Investment Banking
14 36 (1.22%) Front Office
15 30 (1.01%) Law
15 30 (1.01%) Telecoms
16 27 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
17 26 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 23 (0.78%) French Language
19 18 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 386 (13.05%) Support Engineer
2 374 (12.65%) IT Support
3 288 (9.74%) Analyst
4 268 (9.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 257 (8.69%) IT Engineer
6 212 (7.17%) IT Support Engineer
7 184 (6.22%) Senior
8 154 (5.21%) Architect
9 119 (4.02%) Desktop Support
10 107 (3.62%) Desktop Engineer
11 106 (3.58%) 2nd Line Support
12 105 (3.55%) Support Analyst
13 102 (3.45%) Developer
13 102 (3.45%) Lead
14 90 (3.04%) Consultant
14 90 (3.04%) IT Analyst
14 90 (3.04%) Windows Engineer
15 83 (2.81%) Cloud Engineer
16 79 (2.67%) Technical Support
17 73 (2.47%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (3.48%) .NET
2 97 (3.28%) REST
3 59 (2.00%) .NET Framework
4 42 (1.42%) LDAP
5 33 (1.12%) SAML
6 31 (1.05%) 802.1X
7 30 (1.01%) Microsoft Graph
7 30 (1.01%) Middleware
8 28 (0.95%) Software Packaging
9 27 (0.91%) WinForms
10 26 (0.88%) Web Services
10 26 (0.88%) WPF
11 25 (0.85%) Kafka
11 25 (0.85%) OAuth
12 24 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
13 20 (0.68%) CSS
14 19 (0.64%) JSON
15 17 (0.57%) Node.js
15 17 (0.57%) RESTful
16 16 (0.54%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 270 (9.13%) Onboarding
2 163 (5.51%) Data Centre
3 132 (4.46%) PKI
4 84 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
5 77 (2.60%) Clustering
6 71 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
7 68 (2.30%) Management Information System
8 64 (2.16%) Driving Licence
9 61 (2.06%) Cloud Native
10 59 (2.00%) Replication
11 55 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
12 54 (1.83%) Security Posture
13 52 (1.76%) Hybrid Cloud
13 52 (1.76%) Virtual Team
14 39 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
15 34 (1.15%) Smartphone
16 32 (1.08%) CMDB
16 32 (1.08%) Operational Technology
17 31 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
17 31 (1.05%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 732 (24.75%) Linux
2 710 (24.01%) Windows Server
3 489 (16.54%) Windows 10
4 183 (6.19%) Mac OS
5 155 (5.24%) Unix
6 140 (4.73%) Apple iOS
7 136 (4.60%) Android
8 111 (3.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 76 (2.57%) Windows Server 2019
10 59 (2.00%) Windows Server 2016
11 51 (1.72%) Windows 7
12 39 (1.32%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.15%) AIX
14 33 (1.12%) 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
1 655 (22.15%) Problem-Solving
2 450 (15.22%) ITIL
3 430 (14.54%) Customer Service
4 346 (11.70%) Migration
5 345 (11.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 297 (10.04%) ITSM
7 278 (9.40%) DevOps
8 268 (9.06%) Agile
9 248 (8.39%) CI/CD
10 238 (8.05%) Continuous Improvement
11 209 (7.07%) High Availability
11 209 (7.07%) Service Management
12 192 (6.49%) Change Management
13 175 (5.92%) Infrastructure as Code
14 171 (5.78%) Disaster Recovery
15 161 (5.44%) Stakeholder Management
16 160 (5.41%) Cybersecurity
17 154 (5.21%) Service Delivery
18 144 (4.87%) SIEM
19 140 (4.73%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 626 (21.17%) PowerShell
2 302 (10.21%) Python
3 285 (9.64%) SQL
4 132 (4.46%) C#
5 120 (4.06%) Bash
6 68 (2.30%) Java
7 65 (2.20%) JavaScript
8 54 (1.83%) 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
1 859 (29.05%) Security Cleared
2 561 (18.97%) SC Cleared
3 311 (10.52%) Degree
4 260 (8.79%) DV Cleared
5 115 (3.89%) Microsoft Certification
6 99 (3.35%) Cisco Certification
7 82 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 65 (2.20%) CISSP
9 57 (1.93%) Azure Certification
10 48 (1.62%) AWS Certification
11 47 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
11 47 (1.59%) MCSE
12 44 (1.49%) CCNA
13 34 (1.15%) CCNP
14 31 (1.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 29 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
16 28 (0.95%) CompTIA Security+
17 26 (0.88%) MCSA
18 25 (0.85%) CISM
19 22 (0.74%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 122 (4.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 115 (3.89%) SLA
3 91 (3.08%) NIST
4 89 (3.01%) QA
5 62 (2.10%) 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 (0.41%) 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%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,101 (37.23%) Active Directory
2 372 (12.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 155 (5.24%) Hyper-V
4 114 (3.86%) VMware ESXi
5 102 (3.45%) vSphere
6 101 (3.42%) Virtual Machines
7 91 (3.08%) Docker
8 67 (2.27%) Virtual Desktop
9 55 (1.86%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.35%) Firmware
11 38 (1.29%) BitLocker
12 28 (0.95%) Microsoft App-V
13 19 (0.64%) KVM
14 12 (0.41%) vCloud
15 10 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
15 10 (0.34%) XenDesktop
16 9 (0.30%) XenApp
17 8 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
18 6 (0.20%) etcd
18 6 (0.20%) NFS
Systems Management
1 393 (13.29%) Microsoft Intune
2 265 (8.96%) SCCM
3 197 (6.66%) Terraform
4 189 (6.39%) Ansible
5 142 (4.80%) Kubernetes
6 86 (2.91%) vCenter Server
7 53 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
8 52 (1.76%) Jamf Pro
9 46 (1.56%) FortiGate
10 42 (1.42%) SCOM
11 41 (1.39%) 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 (0.68%) Packer
Vendors
1 1,254 (42.41%) Microsoft
2 479 (16.20%) VMware
3 263 (8.89%) ServiceNow
4 225 (7.61%) Cisco
5 195 (6.59%) Citrix
6 186 (6.29%) Oracle
7 137 (4.63%) Splunk
8 81 (2.74%) HP
9 77 (2.60%) SolarWinds
10 74 (2.50%) Apple
11 72 (2.43%) Red Hat
12 70 (2.37%) Dell
13 63 (2.13%) CyberArk
14 62 (2.10%) Google
15 59 (2.00%) F5
16 56 (1.89%) BeyondTrust
17 52 (1.76%) IBM
17 52 (1.76%) Remedy
18 50 (1.69%) Palo Alto
19 49 (1.66%) Juniper