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 16 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,063 2,626 3,555
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.82% 8.08% 8.34%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.41% 59.83% 60.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,956 1,736 2,375
10th Percentile £170 £178 £165
25th Percentile £225 £231 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £659
UK excluding London median daily rate £421 £400 £444
% change year-on-year +5.19% -9.81% +14.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 267 201 301
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.33 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.55 £17.33 £14.72
Median hourly rate £25.26 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.86% -5.65% -15.54%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £68.80 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.13
% change year-on-year +36.46% +4.08% -16.64%

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 5,070 4,389 5,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.51% 13.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,235 2,824 3,818
10th Percentile £191 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £315
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £464 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.27% -2.37% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £576 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 244 435
10th Percentile £15.73 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -6.12% -42.35%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.81 £64.38
90th Percentile £70.02 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £21.90 £30.50
% change year-on-year +20.73% -28.20% +4.10%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 2,675 £425 +2.39% 921
UK excluding London -13 2,020 £421 +5.19% 859
London -17 868 £420 -6.67% 188
Work from Home -10 648 £475 - 316
South East -8 555 £475 -3.46% 297
North of England -10 477 £355 +1.31% 205
Midlands -18 276 £335 +11.67% 112
South West -11 270 £488 +8.33% 108
North West -8 251 £350 -2.23% 113
East of England -2 210 £300 +8.08% 100
Yorkshire -12 203 £365 -8.75% 61
West Midlands -25 172 £450 +38.46% 57
Scotland -6 169 £425 -5.56% 32
East Midlands +11 99 £270 +35.00% 55
Wales +10 59 £408 +48.18% 22
North East -37 27 £270 -1.82% 38
Northern Ireland -3 17 £139 -28.97% 19
Channel Islands +3 2 £518 - 2

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
1 240 (7.84%) Microsoft Exchange
2 228 (7.44%) SharePoint
3 67 (2.19%) IIS
4 57 (1.86%) Confluence
5 19 (0.62%) Tomcat
6 18 (0.59%) nginx
7 16 (0.52%) Apache
8 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
9 12 (0.39%) Skype for Business
10 10 (0.33%) HCL Notes
11 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
12 7 (0.23%) Appian
12 7 (0.23%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.20%) Documentum
14 5 (0.16%) Camunda
14 5 (0.16%) SAS
15 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
16 3 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2010
16 3 (0.098%) WebSphere
Applications
1 194 (6.33%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.098%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.098%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.098%) PTC Creo
8 1 (0.033%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.033%) Houdini
8 1 (0.033%) InDesign
8 1 (0.033%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 46 (1.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 18 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.33%) Finacle
3 10 (0.33%) Teamcenter
4 6 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
4 6 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
5 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.098%) assyst
7 2 (0.065%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.033%) Dynamics GP
8 1 (0.033%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.033%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.033%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.033%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.033%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.033%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 923 (30.13%) Azure
2 884 (28.86%) Microsoft 365
3 422 (13.78%) Entra ID
4 321 (10.48%) AWS
5 129 (4.21%) OneDrive
6 98 (3.20%) Azure DevOps
7 95 (3.10%) GCP
8 76 (2.48%) SaaS
9 66 (2.15%) GitHub
10 64 (2.09%) IaaS
10 64 (2.09%) Power Platform
11 58 (1.89%) Azure Monitor
12 56 (1.83%) PaaS
13 39 (1.27%) OpenShift
14 38 (1.24%) Azure Sentinel
15 30 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.88%) Google Workspace
18 25 (0.82%) Azure AKS
18 25 (0.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 442 (14.43%) DNS
2 319 (10.41%) Firewall
3 299 (9.76%) DHCP
4 231 (7.54%) VPN
5 202 (6.59%) TCP/IP
6 176 (5.75%) LAN
7 165 (5.39%) WAN
8 153 (5.00%) Wi-Fi
9 99 (3.23%) SAN
10 71 (2.32%) Network Security
11 63 (2.06%) VLAN
12 48 (1.57%) NAS
13 47 (1.53%) BGP
13 47 (1.53%) SSL
14 44 (1.44%) Internet
15 37 (1.21%) Wireless
16 36 (1.18%) OSPF
16 36 (1.18%) VoIP
17 33 (1.08%) SD-WAN
18 32 (1.04%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 275 (8.98%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.99%) Oracle Database
3 43 (1.40%) Power BI
4 36 (1.18%) Relational Database
5 34 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
6 27 (0.88%) MySQL
7 24 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 21 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 21 (0.69%) Db2
9 17 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
10 15 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
10 15 (0.49%) RDBMS
11 12 (0.39%) NoSQL
12 11 (0.36%) MongoDB
13 10 (0.33%) GIS
13 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
14 9 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
15 8 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
15 8 (0.26%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 178 (5.81%) JIRA
2 67 (2.19%) Git
3 59 (1.93%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.63%) MSI
5 41 (1.34%) GitLab
6 40 (1.31%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.56%) Eclipse
8 10 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
10 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.20%) Artifactory
12 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.20%) Xcode
13 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.16%) Maven
13 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
13 5 (0.16%) Selenium
General
1 1,094 (35.72%) Social Skills
2 350 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
3 326 (10.64%) Finance
4 206 (6.73%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.16%) Banking
6 106 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 104 (3.40%) Legal
8 85 (2.78%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 51 (1.67%) Retail
11 48 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 43 (1.40%) Military
13 36 (1.18%) Front Office
13 36 (1.18%) Investment Banking
14 34 (1.11%) Telecoms
15 32 (1.04%) Law
16 26 (0.85%) Spanish Language
17 22 (0.72%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.72%) French Language
17 22 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 427 (13.94%) Support Engineer
2 402 (13.12%) IT Support
3 293 (9.57%) Analyst
4 287 (9.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 285 (9.30%) IT Engineer
6 241 (7.87%) IT Support Engineer
7 206 (6.73%) Senior
8 142 (4.64%) Architect
9 125 (4.08%) Desktop Support
10 118 (3.85%) 2nd Line Support
11 117 (3.82%) Developer
12 114 (3.72%) Lead
13 107 (3.49%) Desktop Engineer
14 106 (3.46%) Support Analyst
15 103 (3.36%) Cloud Engineer
16 97 (3.17%) Consultant
17 93 (3.04%) IT Analyst
18 92 (3.00%) Windows Engineer
19 85 (2.78%) Service Analyst
20 82 (2.68%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (3.98%) .NET
2 112 (3.66%) REST
3 67 (2.19%) .NET Framework
4 44 (1.44%) LDAP
5 38 (1.24%) Middleware
6 34 (1.11%) WinForms
7 31 (1.01%) 802.1X
8 29 (0.95%) Microsoft Graph
8 29 (0.95%) SAML
8 29 (0.95%) Web Services
9 28 (0.91%) Software Packaging
9 28 (0.91%) WPF
10 27 (0.88%) JSON
10 27 (0.88%) Kafka
11 24 (0.78%) HTML
12 23 (0.75%) CSS
12 23 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
13 21 (0.69%) RESTful
13 21 (0.69%) XML
14 20 (0.65%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 300 (9.79%) Onboarding
2 165 (5.39%) Data Centre
3 152 (4.96%) PKI
4 83 (2.71%) Enterprise Software
5 82 (2.68%) Clustering
6 75 (2.45%) Management Information System
7 72 (2.35%) Cloud Native
8 71 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
9 70 (2.29%) Replication
10 66 (2.15%) Driving Licence
11 58 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
12 55 (1.80%) Security Posture
13 51 (1.67%) Hybrid Cloud
14 48 (1.57%) Video Conferencing
15 45 (1.47%) Virtual Team
16 39 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
17 38 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
18 34 (1.11%) Operational Technology
19 32 (1.04%) Smartphone
20 30 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 748 (24.42%) Linux
2 744 (24.29%) Windows Server
3 506 (16.52%) Windows 10
4 193 (6.30%) Mac OS
5 159 (5.19%) Unix
6 137 (4.47%) Apple iOS
7 136 (4.44%) Android
8 123 (4.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 79 (2.58%) Windows Server 2019
10 57 (1.86%) Windows Server 2016
11 44 (1.44%) Windows 7
12 40 (1.31%) Windows Server 2012
13 37 (1.21%) AIX
13 37 (1.21%) Ubuntu
14 24 (0.78%) Solaris
15 22 (0.72%) VMS
16 18 (0.59%) CentOS
16 18 (0.59%) Windows Server 2008
17 12 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 686 (22.40%) Problem-Solving
2 499 (16.29%) ITIL
3 455 (14.85%) Customer Service
4 368 (12.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 365 (11.92%) Migration
6 329 (10.74%) ITSM
7 292 (9.53%) DevOps
8 269 (8.78%) Agile
9 263 (8.59%) Continuous Improvement
10 261 (8.52%) CI/CD
11 229 (7.48%) Service Management
12 213 (6.95%) High Availability
13 205 (6.69%) Infrastructure as Code
14 195 (6.37%) Change Management
15 174 (5.68%) Stakeholder Management
16 172 (5.62%) Disaster Recovery
16 172 (5.62%) Service Delivery
17 171 (5.58%) Cybersecurity
18 155 (5.06%) SIEM
18 155 (5.06%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 654 (21.35%) PowerShell
2 317 (10.35%) Python
3 303 (9.89%) SQL
4 150 (4.90%) C#
5 145 (4.73%) Bash
6 74 (2.42%) Java
7 69 (2.25%) JavaScript
8 62 (2.02%) PL/SQL
9 61 (1.99%) T-SQL
10 48 (1.57%) C++
11 27 (0.88%) Bicep
12 25 (0.82%) Perl
12 25 (0.82%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.75%) VB
13 23 (0.75%) VBScript
14 21 (0.69%) Shell Script
14 21 (0.69%) VBA
15 18 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
16 17 (0.56%) TypeScript
17 14 (0.46%) C
Qualifications
1 904 (29.51%) Security Cleared
2 577 (18.84%) SC Cleared
3 309 (10.09%) Degree
4 290 (9.47%) DV Cleared
5 121 (3.95%) Microsoft Certification
6 99 (3.23%) Cisco Certification
7 79 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
8 64 (2.09%) CISSP
9 63 (2.06%) Azure Certification
10 60 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
11 51 (1.67%) AWS Certification
12 46 (1.50%) MCSE
13 44 (1.44%) CCNA
14 33 (1.08%) A+ Certification
14 33 (1.08%) CCNP
15 32 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 28 (0.91%) CompTIA Security+
17 26 (0.85%) DBS Check
17 26 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
17 26 (0.85%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 130 (4.24%) SLA
2 116 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 90 (2.94%) QA
4 88 (2.87%) NIST
5 50 (1.63%) GDPR
6 27 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.88%) PCI DSS
7 26 (0.85%) NCSC
8 25 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 17 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
10 14 (0.46%) Data Quality
11 13 (0.42%) PMO
12 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
12 12 (0.39%) GxP
13 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.33%) GMP
14 10 (0.33%) GRC
14 10 (0.33%) NIST 800
14 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,184 (38.65%) Active Directory
2 406 (13.25%) VMware Infrastructure
3 161 (5.26%) Hyper-V
4 131 (4.28%) VMware ESXi
5 110 (3.59%) vSphere
6 107 (3.49%) Virtual Machines
7 102 (3.33%) Docker
8 78 (2.55%) Virtual Desktop
9 69 (2.25%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.27%) Firmware
11 35 (1.14%) BitLocker
12 27 (0.88%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.59%) KVM
14 15 (0.49%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
15 9 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 416 (13.58%) Microsoft Intune
2 274 (8.95%) SCCM
3 221 (7.22%) Terraform
4 204 (6.66%) Ansible
5 158 (5.16%) Kubernetes
6 106 (3.46%) vCenter Server
7 59 (1.93%) SCOM
8 56 (1.83%) Jamf Pro
9 46 (1.50%) Single Sign-On
10 39 (1.27%) FortiGate
10 39 (1.27%) Progress Chef
10 39 (1.27%) WSUS
11 33 (1.08%) Grafana
12 30 (0.98%) Prometheus
12 30 (0.98%) Puppet
13 28 (0.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 25 (0.82%) Nagios
15 22 (0.72%) Packer
15 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
16 21 (0.69%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,328 (43.36%) Microsoft
2 528 (17.24%) VMware
3 301 (9.83%) ServiceNow
4 217 (7.08%) Cisco
5 203 (6.63%) Citrix
6 198 (6.46%) Oracle
7 138 (4.51%) Splunk
8 90 (2.94%) Apple
9 86 (2.81%) SolarWinds
10 79 (2.58%) CyberArk
11 76 (2.48%) HP
12 74 (2.42%) Red Hat
13 68 (2.22%) Google
14 64 (2.09%) BeyondTrust
15 63 (2.06%) Dell
16 58 (1.89%) F5
17 57 (1.86%) Remedy
18 54 (1.76%) IBM
19 51 (1.67%) Juniper
20 42 (1.37%) Palo Alto