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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,253 2,641 3,155
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.98% 8.05% 8.26%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.09% 59.60% 58.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,061 1,759 2,009
10th Percentile £171 £163 £180
25th Percentile £225 £208 £245
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -1.16%
75th Percentile £560 £538 £570
90th Percentile £668 £625 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +17.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 245 167
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.40 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%
75th Percentile £61.72 £30.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% +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 5,325 4,431 5,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.50% 14.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,357 2,828 3,368
10th Percentile £190 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £276 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £662 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 400 296 256
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.13
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.66
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +14.43%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £69.77
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.68% +29.70%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -7 2,843 £420 +4.94% 2,092
UK excluding London -13 2,104 £413 +17.86% 1,435
London -5 948 £416 -2.12% 720
Work from Home -10 613 £465 +6.29% 779
South East -7 563 £475 +30.14% 337
North of England -7 499 £325 +8.33% 300
North West +5 294 £344 +3.69% 163
Midlands -15 292 £400 +3.23% 265
South West -17 263 £535 +52.86% 176
East of England -1 250 £235 -32.86% 192
West Midlands -23 198 £407 +1.81% 160
Yorkshire -14 168 £279 +39.25% 103
Scotland -8 160 £250 -44.44% 90
East Midlands +2 93 £275 +22.22% 104
Wales +8 72 £446 +62.27% 49
North East -24 42 £283 +13.80% 39
Northern Ireland -1 16 £139 -30.75% 59
Channel Islands -2 2 £535 -

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 (8.18%) SharePoint
2 241 (7.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.12%) IIS
4 59 (1.81%) Confluence
5 20 (0.61%) nginx
6 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
7 17 (0.52%) Apache
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
9 10 (0.31%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.18%) Documentum
11 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.15%) Appian
11 5 (0.15%) Camunda
12 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
12 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.12%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.092%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.092%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 230 (7.07%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.092%) Houdini
6 3 (0.092%) NUKE
7 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.061%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 52 (1.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.092%) assyst
5 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.031%) Monis
7 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,025 (31.51%) Microsoft 365
2 981 (30.16%) Azure
3 529 (16.26%) Entra ID
4 337 (10.36%) AWS
5 145 (4.46%) OneDrive
6 118 (3.63%) GCP
7 117 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
8 79 (2.43%) SaaS
9 74 (2.27%) GitHub
10 73 (2.24%) Azure Monitor
11 68 (2.09%) Power Platform
12 61 (1.88%) IaaS
13 45 (1.38%) PaaS
14 43 (1.32%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.14%) OpenShift
16 32 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
18 28 (0.86%) Google Workspace
19 23 (0.71%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.68%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 484 (14.88%) DNS
2 344 (10.57%) DHCP
3 332 (10.21%) Firewall
4 278 (8.55%) VPN
5 246 (7.56%) TCP/IP
6 134 (4.12%) WAN
7 132 (4.06%) LAN
8 126 (3.87%) Wi-Fi
9 104 (3.20%) Network Security
10 89 (2.74%) SAN
11 83 (2.55%) VLAN
12 60 (1.84%) Wireless
13 54 (1.66%) SSL
14 41 (1.26%) Internet
15 40 (1.23%) NAS
16 39 (1.20%) BGP
17 35 (1.08%) Skype
18 33 (1.01%) HTTP
19 32 (0.98%) VoIP
20 27 (0.83%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 290 (8.91%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.84%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.66%) Power BI
4 42 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
5 39 (1.20%) Relational Database
5 39 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 26 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
7 22 (0.68%) MySQL
8 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
9 15 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 14 (0.43%) Db2
10 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
10 14 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
12 9 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
13 8 (0.25%) MS Access
13 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
15 6 (0.18%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 155 (4.76%) JIRA
2 84 (2.58%) Git
3 63 (1.94%) Jenkins
4 51 (1.57%) GitLab
5 50 (1.54%) MSI
6 37 (1.14%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 14 (0.43%) Artifactory
10 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 9 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.22%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
14 6 (0.18%) Robot Framework
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
15 5 (0.15%) Zephyr
General
1 1,201 (36.92%) Social Skills
2 399 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
3 381 (11.71%) Finance
4 158 (4.86%) Public Sector
5 155 (4.76%) Banking
6 124 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (2.55%) Legal
8 79 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 73 (2.24%) Organisational Skills
10 60 (1.84%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.72%) Telecoms
12 51 (1.57%) Retail
13 43 (1.32%) Front Office
14 42 (1.29%) Law
15 40 (1.23%) Military
16 34 (1.05%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.86%) Police
18 25 (0.77%) Spanish Language
19 24 (0.74%) Aerospace
19 24 (0.74%) French Language
Job Titles
1 527 (16.20%) Support Engineer
2 445 (13.68%) IT Support
3 339 (10.42%) IT Engineer
4 336 (10.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 286 (8.79%) IT Support Engineer
6 270 (8.30%) Analyst
7 257 (7.90%) Senior
8 149 (4.58%) Desktop Support
9 128 (3.93%) Desktop Engineer
10 127 (3.90%) Architect
11 126 (3.87%) 2nd Line Support
12 122 (3.75%) Cloud Engineer
12 122 (3.75%) Lead
12 122 (3.75%) Windows Engineer
13 109 (3.35%) Developer
14 96 (2.95%) Support Analyst
15 94 (2.89%) Consultant
16 82 (2.52%) Administrator
16 82 (2.52%) Desktop Support Engineer
16 82 (2.52%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (8.30%) Terraform
2 148 (4.55%) .NET
3 120 (3.69%) REST
4 66 (2.03%) .NET Framework
5 53 (1.63%) Middleware
6 45 (1.38%) JSON
7 42 (1.29%) LDAP
8 40 (1.23%) WPF
9 32 (0.98%) WinForms
9 32 (0.98%) XML
10 27 (0.83%) Software Packaging
11 26 (0.80%) HTML
11 26 (0.80%) Web Services
12 23 (0.71%) .NET Core
12 23 (0.71%) ARM Templates
12 23 (0.71%) Kafka
13 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
13 20 (0.61%) RESTful
14 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
15 18 (0.55%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 393 (12.08%) Onboarding
2 200 (6.15%) Data Centre
3 163 (5.01%) PKI
4 107 (3.29%) Management Information System
5 90 (2.77%) Driving Licence
6 87 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
7 86 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
8 81 (2.49%) Video Conferencing
9 76 (2.34%) Cloud Native
9 76 (2.34%) Clustering
10 64 (1.97%) Replication
11 61 (1.88%) Security Posture
12 56 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.35%) Operational Technology
14 42 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
15 40 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
15 40 (1.23%) Virtual Team
16 38 (1.17%) Enterprise Storage
16 38 (1.17%) Smartphone
17 35 (1.08%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 909 (27.94%) Windows Server
2 786 (24.16%) Linux
3 572 (17.58%) Windows 10
4 208 (6.39%) Mac OS
5 146 (4.49%) Apple iOS
6 143 (4.40%) Unix
7 142 (4.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 139 (4.27%) Android
9 71 (2.18%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.69%) Windows 7
11 48 (1.48%) Ubuntu
12 44 (1.35%) Windows Server 2012
12 44 (1.35%) Windows Server 2016
13 40 (1.23%) CentOS
14 31 (0.95%) AIX
15 21 (0.65%) Solaris
16 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
17 17 (0.52%) VMS
18 16 (0.49%) Rocky
19 12 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 782 (24.04%) Problem-Solving
2 613 (18.84%) ITIL
3 562 (17.28%) Customer Service
4 443 (13.62%) ITSM
5 428 (13.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 417 (12.82%) Migration
7 365 (11.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 326 (10.02%) Service Management
9 313 (9.62%) DevOps
10 291 (8.95%) CI/CD
11 279 (8.58%) Infrastructure as Code
12 260 (7.99%) Agile
13 258 (7.93%) Stakeholder Management
14 235 (7.22%) Root Cause Analysis
15 232 (7.13%) Change Management
16 216 (6.64%) Disaster Recovery
17 211 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
18 210 (6.46%) Validation
19 188 (5.78%) Service Delivery
20 185 (5.69%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 770 (23.67%) PowerShell
2 343 (10.54%) Python
3 314 (9.65%) SQL
4 193 (5.93%) Bash
5 170 (5.23%) C#
6 76 (2.34%) T-SQL
7 73 (2.24%) Java
8 62 (1.91%) JavaScript
9 55 (1.69%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.57%) Bicep
11 38 (1.17%) C++
12 29 (0.89%) VB
12 29 (0.89%) VBScript
13 21 (0.65%) Perl
14 19 (0.58%) VBA
15 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.49%) TypeScript
17 12 (0.37%) Go
17 12 (0.37%) Groovy
18 11 (0.34%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 1,001 (30.77%) Security Cleared
2 596 (18.32%) SC Cleared
3 391 (12.02%) DV Cleared
4 298 (9.16%) Degree
5 123 (3.78%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (2.83%) Azure Certification
7 87 (2.67%) Cisco Certification
8 73 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
9 68 (2.09%) Computer Science Degree
10 64 (1.97%) CISSP
11 56 (1.72%) AWS Certification
12 55 (1.69%) A+ Certification
13 52 (1.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 46 (1.41%) CCNA
15 45 (1.38%) DBS Check
16 39 (1.20%) CCNP
17 35 (1.08%) ITIL Certification
18 33 (1.01%) CISM
19 32 (0.98%) MCSE
20 31 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 173 (5.32%) SLA
2 107 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (2.83%) QA
4 81 (2.49%) NIST
5 38 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
6 31 (0.95%) GDPR
7 29 (0.89%) NCSC
8 23 (0.71%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) Accessibility
9 16 (0.49%) GRC
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 12 (0.37%) Data Quality
11 12 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 12 (0.37%) WCAG
12 11 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
12 11 (0.34%) PMO
13 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.31%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,351 (41.53%) Active Directory
2 493 (15.16%) VMware Infrastructure
3 224 (6.89%) Hyper-V
4 154 (4.73%) VMware ESXi
5 139 (4.27%) vSphere
6 121 (3.72%) Docker
7 106 (3.26%) Virtual Machines
8 102 (3.14%) Virtual Desktop
9 76 (2.34%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.23%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.05%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 19 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.46%) NFS
16 13 (0.40%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 12 (0.37%) XenApp
18 11 (0.34%) KVM
19 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
20 9 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 461 (14.17%) Microsoft Intune
2 357 (10.97%) SCCM
3 225 (6.92%) Ansible
4 165 (5.07%) Kubernetes
5 121 (3.72%) vCenter Server
6 104 (3.20%) SCOM
7 53 (1.63%) Jamf Pro
8 42 (1.29%) WSUS
9 36 (1.11%) Grafana
10 33 (1.01%) Prometheus
11 32 (0.98%) Progress Chef
12 31 (0.95%) NetBackup
12 31 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
13 30 (0.92%) WMI
14 28 (0.86%) Puppet
15 25 (0.77%) VxRail
16 23 (0.71%) Nagios
17 22 (0.68%) Packer
18 19 (0.58%) Failover Clustering
18 19 (0.58%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,556 (47.83%) Microsoft
2 640 (19.67%) VMware
3 376 (11.56%) ServiceNow
4 237 (7.29%) Cisco
5 196 (6.03%) Oracle
6 171 (5.26%) Citrix
7 110 (3.38%) Apple
8 106 (3.26%) Splunk
9 102 (3.14%) CyberArk
10 89 (2.74%) Google
11 82 (2.52%) Red Hat
12 79 (2.43%) BeyondTrust
13 77 (2.37%) SolarWinds
14 60 (1.84%) Dell
15 56 (1.72%) Remedy
16 54 (1.66%) Palo Alto
17 48 (1.48%) NetApp
18 46 (1.41%) HP
19 41 (1.26%) CrowdStrike
20 40 (1.23%) Zscaler