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

6 months to
18 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,073 2,630 3,520
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.81% 8.08% 8.36%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.21% 59.91% 60.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,953 1,744 2,352
10th Percentile £170 £178 £165
25th Percentile £225 £230 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £674 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £422 £400 £449
% change year-on-year +5.38% -10.91% +15.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 274 201 289
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.33 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.33 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.13 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.17% -5.65% -16.67%
75th Percentile £54.75 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £67.95 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.13
% change year-on-year +36.46% +4.08% -17.59%

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 5,104 4,390 5,797
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.65% 13.49% 13.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,242 2,834 3,795
10th Percentile £191 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £320
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.54% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £465
% change year-on-year - -3.23% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 347 245 418
10th Percentile £15.79 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.60 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £21.95 £31.25
% change year-on-year +20.59% -29.76% +6.66%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 2,688 £425 +2.41% 869
UK excluding London -13 2,030 £422 +5.38% 782
London -18 869 £415 -7.72% 198
Work from Home -12 646 £475 - 286
South East -8 562 £475 -3.46% 281
North of England -9 478 £355 +1.31% 187
Midlands -18 278 £335 +11.67% 101
South West -10 270 £488 +8.33% 95
North West -10 251 £350 -2.23% 106
East of England -1 212 £335 +34.00% 98
Yorkshire -11 204 £365 -8.75% 50
West Midlands -28 172 £450 +38.46% 53
Scotland -4 167 £413 -7.04% 31
East Midlands +10 101 £270 +35.00% 48
Wales +6 59 £408 +48.18% 20
North East -31 27 £270 -1.82% 37
Northern Ireland -2 17 £139 -28.97% 4
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
1 238 (7.74%) Microsoft Exchange
2 228 (7.42%) SharePoint
3 67 (2.18%) IIS
4 61 (1.99%) Confluence
5 19 (0.62%) nginx
5 19 (0.62%) Tomcat
6 17 (0.55%) Apache
7 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.36%) Skype for Business
9 10 (0.33%) HCL Notes
10 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
11 7 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.20%) Appian
12 6 (0.20%) Documentum
13 5 (0.16%) Camunda
13 5 (0.16%) SAS
14 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
15 3 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2010
15 3 (0.098%) WebSphere
Applications
1 193 (6.28%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.34%) 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 2 (0.065%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.065%) Houdini
8 2 (0.065%) NUKE
9 1 (0.033%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 49 (1.59%) 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
7 2 (0.065%) 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
1 932 (30.33%) Azure
2 886 (28.83%) Microsoft 365
3 425 (13.83%) Entra ID
4 324 (10.54%) AWS
5 128 (4.17%) OneDrive
6 98 (3.19%) Azure DevOps
7 97 (3.16%) GCP
8 76 (2.47%) SaaS
9 66 (2.15%) GitHub
10 65 (2.12%) Power Platform
11 64 (2.08%) IaaS
12 63 (2.05%) Azure Monitor
13 56 (1.82%) PaaS
14 42 (1.37%) Azure Sentinel
15 39 (1.27%) OpenShift
16 31 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.88%) Google Workspace
18 26 (0.85%) Azure AKS
18 26 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 444 (14.45%) DNS
2 328 (10.67%) Firewall
3 302 (9.83%) DHCP
4 237 (7.71%) VPN
5 210 (6.83%) TCP/IP
6 178 (5.79%) LAN
7 165 (5.37%) WAN
8 151 (4.91%) Wi-Fi
9 101 (3.29%) SAN
10 73 (2.38%) Network Security
11 64 (2.08%) VLAN
12 49 (1.59%) SSL
13 48 (1.56%) NAS
14 47 (1.53%) BGP
15 43 (1.40%) Internet
16 37 (1.20%) Wireless
17 36 (1.17%) OSPF
17 36 (1.17%) VoIP
18 32 (1.04%) SNMP
19 30 (0.98%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (9.08%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.99%) Oracle Database
3 43 (1.40%) Power BI
4 34 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
4 34 (1.11%) Relational Database
5 26 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 25 (0.81%) MySQL
7 22 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
8 21 (0.68%) Db2
9 17 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
10 16 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
11 14 (0.46%) RDBMS
12 12 (0.39%) NoSQL
13 11 (0.36%) MongoDB
14 10 (0.33%) GIS
14 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
15 9 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
15 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
15 9 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 8 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 183 (5.96%) JIRA
2 68 (2.21%) Git
3 58 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.63%) MSI
5 40 (1.30%) Visual Studio
6 39 (1.27%) GitLab
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.42%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
10 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.23%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
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 1,096 (35.67%) Social Skills
2 352 (11.45%) Analytical Skills
3 329 (10.71%) Finance
4 211 (6.87%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.14%) Banking
6 107 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
7 100 (3.25%) Legal
8 85 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 51 (1.66%) Retail
11 47 (1.53%) Manufacturing
12 46 (1.50%) Military
13 36 (1.17%) Front Office
13 36 (1.17%) 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
18 21 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 429 (13.96%) Support Engineer
2 399 (12.98%) IT Support
3 291 (9.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 288 (9.37%) Analyst
5 287 (9.34%) IT Engineer
6 242 (7.88%) IT Support Engineer
7 213 (6.93%) Senior
8 138 (4.49%) Architect
9 124 (4.04%) Desktop Support
10 119 (3.87%) 2nd Line Support
11 117 (3.81%) Developer
12 109 (3.55%) Lead
13 107 (3.48%) Desktop Engineer
14 105 (3.42%) Support Analyst
15 104 (3.38%) Cloud Engineer
16 99 (3.22%) Consultant
17 91 (2.96%) IT Analyst
17 91 (2.96%) Windows Engineer
18 84 (2.73%) Service Analyst
19 81 (2.64%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (3.97%) .NET
2 112 (3.64%) REST
3 67 (2.18%) .NET Framework
4 41 (1.33%) LDAP
5 38 (1.24%) Middleware
6 34 (1.11%) WinForms
7 31 (1.01%) 802.1X
8 29 (0.94%) Microsoft Graph
8 29 (0.94%) Web Services
9 28 (0.91%) WPF
10 27 (0.88%) JSON
10 27 (0.88%) Kafka
10 27 (0.88%) Software Packaging
11 25 (0.81%) SAML
12 24 (0.78%) HTML
13 23 (0.75%) CSS
14 22 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
15 21 (0.68%) RESTful
15 21 (0.68%) XML
16 17 (0.55%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 305 (9.93%) Onboarding
2 167 (5.43%) Data Centre
3 155 (5.04%) PKI
4 84 (2.73%) Clustering
5 83 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
6 79 (2.57%) Management Information System
7 74 (2.41%) Cloud Native
8 71 (2.31%) Self-Motivation
9 68 (2.21%) Replication
10 67 (2.18%) Driving Licence
11 58 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
12 56 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
13 55 (1.79%) Security Posture
14 50 (1.63%) Video Conferencing
15 45 (1.46%) Virtual Team
16 39 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
17 38 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
18 35 (1.14%) Operational Technology
19 32 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
19 32 (1.04%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 759 (24.70%) Linux
2 752 (24.47%) Windows Server
3 505 (16.43%) Windows 10
4 195 (6.35%) Mac OS
5 159 (5.17%) Unix
6 137 (4.46%) Android
6 137 (4.46%) Apple iOS
7 124 (4.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 78 (2.54%) Windows Server 2019
9 57 (1.85%) Windows Server 2016
10 41 (1.33%) Windows 7
11 39 (1.27%) AIX
12 38 (1.24%) Ubuntu
12 38 (1.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 25 (0.81%) Solaris
14 22 (0.72%) VMS
15 19 (0.62%) CentOS
16 18 (0.59%) Windows Server 2008
17 12 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 688 (22.39%) Problem-Solving
2 507 (16.50%) ITIL
3 455 (14.81%) Customer Service
4 374 (12.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 369 (12.01%) Migration
6 333 (10.84%) ITSM
7 295 (9.60%) DevOps
8 271 (8.82%) Agile
9 266 (8.66%) CI/CD
10 265 (8.62%) Continuous Improvement
11 234 (7.61%) Service Management
12 210 (6.83%) High Availability
12 210 (6.83%) Infrastructure as Code
13 197 (6.41%) Change Management
14 179 (5.82%) Stakeholder Management
15 175 (5.69%) Service Delivery
16 174 (5.66%) Cybersecurity
17 171 (5.56%) Disaster Recovery
18 158 (5.14%) Validation
19 155 (5.04%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 668 (21.74%) PowerShell
2 321 (10.45%) Python
3 306 (9.96%) SQL
4 155 (5.04%) Bash
5 149 (4.85%) C#
6 74 (2.41%) Java
7 68 (2.21%) JavaScript
8 63 (2.05%) PL/SQL
9 61 (1.99%) T-SQL
10 48 (1.56%) C++
11 33 (1.07%) Bicep
12 25 (0.81%) Search Processing Language
13 24 (0.78%) Perl
14 23 (0.75%) Shell Script
15 22 (0.72%) VB
15 22 (0.72%) VBScript
16 21 (0.68%) VBA
17 18 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
18 17 (0.55%) TypeScript
19 14 (0.46%) C
Qualifications
1 911 (29.65%) Security Cleared
2 575 (18.71%) SC Cleared
3 307 (9.99%) Degree
4 296 (9.63%) DV Cleared
5 123 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
6 99 (3.22%) Cisco Certification
7 76 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
8 65 (2.12%) CISSP
9 64 (2.08%) Azure Certification
10 61 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
11 52 (1.69%) AWS Certification
12 47 (1.53%) MCSE
13 44 (1.43%) CCNA
14 34 (1.11%) A+ Certification
15 33 (1.07%) CCNP
16 32 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 27 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
18 26 (0.85%) CompTIA Security+
18 26 (0.85%) DBS Check
18 26 (0.85%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (4.30%) SLA
2 116 (3.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 90 (2.93%) QA
4 87 (2.83%) NIST
5 47 (1.53%) GDPR
6 27 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.88%) PCI DSS
7 25 (0.81%) NCSC
8 22 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 17 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
10 14 (0.46%) Data Quality
10 14 (0.46%) GxP
10 14 (0.46%) PMO
11 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
12 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.33%) GMP
13 10 (0.33%) GRC
13 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.29%) NIST 800
14 9 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,193 (38.82%) Active Directory
2 411 (13.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 164 (5.34%) Hyper-V
4 132 (4.30%) VMware ESXi
5 113 (3.68%) vSphere
6 107 (3.48%) Virtual Machines
7 102 (3.32%) Docker
8 76 (2.47%) Virtual Desktop
9 71 (2.31%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.27%) Firmware
11 34 (1.11%) 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
1 419 (13.63%) Microsoft Intune
2 277 (9.01%) SCCM
3 231 (7.52%) Terraform
4 210 (6.83%) Ansible
5 161 (5.24%) Kubernetes
6 108 (3.51%) vCenter Server
7 60 (1.95%) SCOM
8 56 (1.82%) Jamf Pro
9 42 (1.37%) Single Sign-On
10 39 (1.27%) FortiGate
10 39 (1.27%) Progress Chef
10 39 (1.27%) WSUS
11 34 (1.11%) Grafana
12 29 (0.94%) Prometheus
12 29 (0.94%) Puppet
13 25 (0.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.81%) Nagios
14 23 (0.75%) Packer
15 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
16 21 (0.68%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,329 (43.25%) Microsoft
2 537 (17.47%) VMware
3 307 (9.99%) ServiceNow
4 217 (7.06%) Cisco
5 201 (6.54%) Citrix
6 198 (6.44%) Oracle
7 136 (4.43%) Splunk
8 92 (2.99%) Apple
9 87 (2.83%) SolarWinds
10 81 (2.64%) CyberArk
11 76 (2.47%) HP
12 75 (2.44%) Red Hat
13 69 (2.25%) Google
14 66 (2.15%) BeyondTrust
15 64 (2.08%) Dell
16 60 (1.95%) Remedy
17 57 (1.85%) F5
18 54 (1.76%) IBM
19 51 (1.66%) Juniper
20 43 (1.40%) Palo Alto