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 29 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,187 2,665 3,213
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.91% 8.09% 8.34%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.66% 59.86% 59.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,041 1,756 2,137
10th Percentile £170 £170 £175
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -2.94% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £554 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +7.20% -11.76% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 223 212
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.00
25th Percentile £16.95 £17.89 £16.00
Median hourly rate £24.00 £22.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £54.63 £28.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £19.64 £21.59
% change year-on-year +31.14% -9.06% +0.86%

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 5,254 4,452 5,403
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.51% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,327 2,832 3,524
10th Percentile £192 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £451 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.11% -5.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 271 306
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -29.32% -16.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% -47.37% +52.00%

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 29 August 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 29 August 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 29 August 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 2,772 £415 +1.84% 1,948
UK excluding London -14 2,047 £402 +7.20% 1,309
London -14 941 £425 - 814
Work from Home -13 616 £465 +3.33% 655
South East -8 568 £475 -3.06% 411
North of England -7 498 £325 - 293
North West +3 300 £335 -4.29% 153
South West -14 282 £475 +35.71% 167
Midlands -17 268 £393 -1.88% 179
East of England -4 196 £300 -12.41% 207
Yorkshire -18 171 £297 -8.54% 102
West Midlands -26 168 £425 -1.16% 114
Scotland -5 167 £375 -16.67% 54
East Midlands +5 96 £273 +36.25% 64
Wales +3 65 £446 +62.27% 21
North East -31 31 £250 -4.76% 52
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 18
Channel Islands +1 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
1 261 (8.19%) SharePoint
2 243 (7.62%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (2.07%) IIS
4 57 (1.79%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.56%) nginx
7 17 (0.53%) Apache
8 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.19%) Documentum
9 6 (0.19%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.16%) Appian
10 5 (0.16%) Camunda
10 5 (0.16%) SAS
10 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.094%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.094%) WebSphere
Applications
1 212 (6.65%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.22%) 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%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.063%) MS Visio
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
2 10 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
4 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.094%) assyst
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 ERP
9 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
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
1 998 (31.31%) Microsoft 365
2 993 (31.16%) Azure
3 497 (15.59%) Entra ID
4 336 (10.54%) AWS
5 145 (4.55%) OneDrive
6 119 (3.73%) Azure DevOps
7 100 (3.14%) GCP
8 79 (2.48%) Azure Monitor
9 76 (2.38%) SaaS
10 72 (2.26%) GitHub
10 72 (2.26%) Power Platform
11 61 (1.91%) IaaS
12 47 (1.47%) PaaS
13 46 (1.44%) Azure Sentinel
14 42 (1.32%) OpenShift
15 29 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
18 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
19 24 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 476 (14.94%) DNS
2 354 (11.11%) Firewall
3 340 (10.67%) DHCP
4 276 (8.66%) VPN
5 229 (7.19%) TCP/IP
6 157 (4.93%) WAN
7 153 (4.80%) LAN
8 139 (4.36%) Wi-Fi
9 97 (3.04%) SAN
10 91 (2.86%) Network Security
11 89 (2.79%) VLAN
12 49 (1.54%) Wireless
13 48 (1.51%) NAS
14 45 (1.41%) Internet
14 45 (1.41%) SSL
15 38 (1.19%) VSAN
16 35 (1.10%) Skype
17 31 (0.97%) BGP
17 31 (0.97%) SD-WAN
18 28 (0.88%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (9.35%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.88%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.66%) Power BI
4 37 (1.16%) PostgreSQL
5 36 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 35 (1.10%) Relational Database
7 22 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 21 (0.66%) MySQL
9 17 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
9 17 (0.53%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 12 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.31%) Db2
14 10 (0.31%) Oracle Reports
15 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
15 8 (0.25%) MS Access
16 7 (0.22%) NoSQL
16 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 162 (5.08%) JIRA
2 74 (2.32%) Git
3 57 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.47%) MSI
5 44 (1.38%) GitLab
6 26 (0.82%) 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%) Selenium
9 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
12 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,161 (36.43%) Social Skills
2 394 (12.36%) Analytical Skills
3 375 (11.77%) Finance
4 176 (5.52%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.93%) Banking
6 114 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
7 88 (2.76%) Legal
8 77 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
9 75 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 60 (1.88%) Manufacturing
11 55 (1.73%) Retail
12 51 (1.60%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.29%) Front Office
14 39 (1.22%) 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 24 (0.75%) Financial Institution
20 22 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 507 (15.91%) Support Engineer
2 429 (13.46%) IT Support
3 337 (10.57%) IT Engineer
4 335 (10.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 280 (8.79%) IT Support Engineer
6 267 (8.38%) Analyst
7 247 (7.75%) Senior
8 142 (4.46%) Desktop Support
9 128 (4.02%) 2nd Line Support
10 121 (3.80%) Architect
11 118 (3.70%) Desktop Engineer
12 117 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
12 117 (3.67%) Lead
13 110 (3.45%) Windows Engineer
14 105 (3.29%) Support Analyst
15 103 (3.23%) Consultant
15 103 (3.23%) Developer
16 86 (2.70%) 1st Line Support
17 84 (2.64%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.57%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (8.47%) Terraform
2 132 (4.14%) .NET
3 117 (3.67%) REST
4 66 (2.07%) .NET Framework
5 43 (1.35%) Middleware
6 36 (1.13%) JSON
7 34 (1.07%) LDAP
8 30 (0.94%) WinForms
9 29 (0.91%) XML
10 28 (0.88%) Kafka
10 28 (0.88%) Software Packaging
10 28 (0.88%) WPF
11 27 (0.85%) HTML
12 23 (0.72%) ARM Templates
13 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (0.63%) CSS
15 19 (0.60%) .NET Core
15 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
15 19 (0.60%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 368 (11.55%) Onboarding
2 185 (5.80%) Data Centre
3 162 (5.08%) PKI
4 96 (3.01%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.73%) Clustering
6 86 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
7 80 (2.51%) Cloud Native
7 80 (2.51%) Driving Licence
8 78 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
9 71 (2.23%) Video Conferencing
10 70 (2.20%) Replication
11 65 (2.04%) Self-Motivation
12 48 (1.51%) Security Posture
13 46 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
14 44 (1.38%) Enterprise Storage
15 42 (1.32%) Virtual Team
16 40 (1.26%) Operational Technology
17 39 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
18 38 (1.19%) CMDB
18 38 (1.19%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 866 (27.17%) Windows Server
2 784 (24.60%) Linux
3 554 (17.38%) Windows 10
4 195 (6.12%) Mac OS
5 142 (4.46%) Unix
6 133 (4.17%) Android
7 132 (4.14%) Apple iOS
8 130 (4.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 76 (2.38%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.73%) Windows 7
11 51 (1.60%) Ubuntu
12 50 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
13 41 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
14 36 (1.13%) AIX
15 33 (1.04%) CentOS
16 24 (0.75%) VMS
17 18 (0.56%) Solaris
17 18 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
18 12 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
19 11 (0.35%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 755 (23.69%) Problem-Solving
2 586 (18.39%) ITIL
3 534 (16.76%) Customer Service
4 426 (13.37%) ITSM
5 425 (13.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 404 (12.68%) Migration
7 325 (10.20%) Continuous Improvement
8 309 (9.70%) DevOps
9 298 (9.35%) Service Management
10 258 (8.10%) CI/CD
10 258 (8.10%) Infrastructure as Code
11 249 (7.81%) Agile
12 226 (7.09%) Change Management
13 217 (6.81%) Stakeholder Management
14 207 (6.50%) Disaster Recovery
15 196 (6.15%) High Availability
16 195 (6.12%) Service Delivery
17 193 (6.06%) Root Cause Analysis
18 190 (5.96%) Cybersecurity
19 179 (5.62%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 773 (24.25%) PowerShell
2 336 (10.54%) Python
3 316 (9.92%) SQL
4 185 (5.80%) Bash
5 145 (4.55%) C#
6 71 (2.23%) Java
7 60 (1.88%) T-SQL
8 53 (1.66%) JavaScript
9 51 (1.60%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.51%) Bicep
11 30 (0.94%) C++
11 30 (0.94%) VBScript
12 28 (0.88%) VB
13 25 (0.78%) Search Processing Language
14 22 (0.69%) Perl
15 19 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.56%) VBA
17 16 (0.50%) TypeScript
18 12 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
19 10 (0.31%) C
Qualifications
1 970 (30.44%) Security Cleared
2 607 (19.05%) SC Cleared
3 346 (10.86%) DV Cleared
4 294 (9.22%) Degree
5 124 (3.89%) Microsoft Certification
6 95 (2.98%) Cisco Certification
7 87 (2.73%) Azure Certification
8 74 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
9 64 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
10 62 (1.95%) CISSP
11 56 (1.76%) AWS Certification
12 54 (1.69%) A+ Certification
13 47 (1.47%) CCNA
14 46 (1.44%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 39 (1.22%) CCNP
15 39 (1.22%) DBS Check
16 35 (1.10%) MCSE
17 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 28 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
19 27 (0.85%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 163 (5.11%) SLA
2 114 (3.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.95%) QA
4 81 (2.54%) NIST
5 35 (1.10%) GDPR
6 33 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 30 (0.94%) NCSC
8 23 (0.72%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.50%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.44%) Accessibility
11 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.44%) GxP
12 13 (0.41%) PMO
13 11 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 10 (0.31%) GRC
15 9 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 9 (0.28%) GMP
System Software
1 1,305 (40.95%) Active Directory
2 475 (14.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 215 (6.75%) Hyper-V
4 147 (4.61%) VMware ESXi
5 131 (4.11%) vSphere
6 110 (3.45%) Docker
7 97 (3.04%) Virtual Machines
8 96 (3.01%) Virtual Desktop
9 81 (2.54%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.13%) Firmware
12 22 (0.69%) vCloud
13 18 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.35%) KVM
16 10 (0.31%) NFS
16 10 (0.31%) XenApp
17 9 (0.28%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
18 6 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 444 (13.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 339 (10.64%) SCCM
3 236 (7.41%) Ansible
4 168 (5.27%) Kubernetes
5 121 (3.80%) vCenter Server
6 92 (2.89%) SCOM
7 50 (1.57%) Jamf Pro
8 48 (1.51%) WSUS
9 37 (1.16%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
11 31 (0.97%) Prometheus
12 28 (0.88%) Grafana
12 28 (0.88%) NetBackup
12 28 (0.88%) Puppet
13 27 (0.85%) Nagios
13 27 (0.85%) WMI
14 26 (0.82%) FortiGate
15 25 (0.78%) Packer
16 22 (0.69%) VxRail
16 22 (0.69%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,478 (46.38%) Microsoft
2 622 (19.52%) VMware
3 374 (11.74%) ServiceNow
4 223 (7.00%) Cisco
5 197 (6.18%) Oracle
6 177 (5.55%) Citrix
7 116 (3.64%) Splunk
8 108 (3.39%) Apple
9 96 (3.01%) CyberArk
10 80 (2.51%) SolarWinds
11 79 (2.48%) Google
12 77 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
13 76 (2.38%) Red Hat
14 68 (2.13%) HP
15 60 (1.88%) Remedy
16 55 (1.73%) Dell
17 51 (1.60%) NetApp
18 49 (1.54%) Palo Alto
19 48 (1.51%) BMC
20 45 (1.41%) Meraki