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 1 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,845 2,399 3,621
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.02% 8.20% 8.31%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.48% 58.74% 62.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,881 1,660 2,492
10th Percentile £162 £180 £160
25th Percentile £213 £238 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £415 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year -2.35% +6.25% -11.11%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £395 £400 £400
% change year-on-year -1.31% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 228 130 276
10th Percentile £14.85 £15.21 £11.90
25th Percentile £17.69 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £23.75 £18.82 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.20% +4.56% -20.00%
75th Percentile £63.75 £27.29 £25.41
90th Percentile £74.78 £63.30 £62.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.58 £18.82 £17.69
% change year-on-year +30.58% +6.39% -11.55%

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 4,704 4,084 5,803
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.95% 13.96% 13.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,064 2,692 3,912
10th Percentile £185 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £320 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £469
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +1.28% -7.13%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £588
90th Percentile £658 £699 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 179 396
10th Percentile £16.01 £16.22 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.32 £18.11 £15.44
Median hourly rate £42.50 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.77% +9.91% -44.02%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £22.94 £22.00
% change year-on-year +107.08% +4.26% -29.60%

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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1 May 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 -5 2,472 £415 -1.19% 914
UK excluding London -10 1,877 £395 -1.31% 829
London -22 774 £440 -2.22% 203
Work from Home -14 575 £475 +2.70% 318
South East -5 500 £467 -6.60% 282
North of England -14 462 £325 - 188
Midlands -16 277 £325 +19.82% 95
North West -4 258 £261 -22.59% 101
South West -13 227 £450 -16.28% 124
East of England +3 209 £350 +55.56% 101
Yorkshire -23 187 £365 +12.31% 66
West Midlands -25 160 £450 +62.16% 48
Scotland 0 150 £425 -5.56% 31
East Midlands +7 112 £220 +6.67% 47
Wales 0 51 £200 -32.20% 32
North East -23 21 £188 -14.77% 27
Northern Ireland -5 13 £175 -12.50% 9
Channel Islands -1 2 £500 +68.07%

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 (8.37%) Microsoft Exchange
2 154 (5.41%) SharePoint
3 54 (1.90%) IIS
4 49 (1.72%) Confluence
5 22 (0.77%) Apache
6 19 (0.67%) WebLogic
7 14 (0.49%) Tomcat
8 13 (0.46%) nginx
9 12 (0.42%) SAS
9 12 (0.42%) Tuxedo
10 11 (0.39%) Skype for Business
11 10 (0.35%) TPMS
12 7 (0.25%) WebSphere
13 6 (0.21%) NetWeaver
14 5 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
15 4 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 3 (0.11%) Exchange Server 2010
16 3 (0.11%) OpenStack
17 2 (0.070%) Apache ServiceMix
17 2 (0.070%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 197 (6.92%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 25 (0.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.39%) MS Visio
5 9 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.18%) Acrobat
6 5 (0.18%) PTC Creo
6 5 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.070%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.035%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 41 (1.44%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.28%) Teamcenter
4 7 (0.25%) assyst
5 4 (0.14%) Finacle
6 3 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
6 3 (0.11%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 2 (0.070%) Dynamics CRM
7 2 (0.070%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.070%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 2 (0.070%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 1 (0.035%) Eikon
8 1 (0.035%) Fidessa
8 1 (0.035%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.035%) Oracle EBS
8 1 (0.035%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.035%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.035%) Oracle Payables
8 1 (0.035%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.035%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 803 (28.22%) Microsoft 365
2 791 (27.80%) Azure
3 319 (11.21%) Entra ID
4 238 (8.37%) AWS
5 79 (2.78%) GCP
5 79 (2.78%) SaaS
6 76 (2.67%) OneDrive
7 73 (2.57%) Azure DevOps
8 61 (2.14%) IaaS
9 55 (1.93%) GitHub
10 54 (1.90%) PaaS
11 46 (1.62%) Google Workspace
12 43 (1.51%) Power Platform
13 40 (1.41%) Azure Monitor
14 31 (1.09%) Azure Sentinel
14 31 (1.09%) OpenShift
15 26 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
16 19 (0.67%) AWS CloudFormation
16 19 (0.67%) Azure AKS
16 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 397 (13.95%) DNS
2 323 (11.35%) Firewall
3 269 (9.46%) DHCP
4 208 (7.31%) VPN
5 177 (6.22%) WAN
6 176 (6.19%) LAN
7 173 (6.08%) TCP/IP
8 150 (5.27%) Wi-Fi
9 80 (2.81%) Network Security
10 70 (2.46%) SAN
11 65 (2.28%) VLAN
12 47 (1.65%) Wireless
13 44 (1.55%) SD-WAN
14 39 (1.37%) BGP
15 38 (1.34%) SSL
16 37 (1.30%) Skype
17 36 (1.27%) VoIP
18 35 (1.23%) OSPF
19 34 (1.20%) SNMP
20 33 (1.16%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 201 (7.07%) SQL Server
2 57 (2.00%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.20%) Relational Database
4 29 (1.02%) MySQL
5 25 (0.88%) PostgreSQL
6 22 (0.77%) Power BI
7 19 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
8 15 (0.53%) DB2
9 14 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
10 13 (0.46%) MongoDB
11 11 (0.39%) NoSQL
11 11 (0.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 9 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
13 8 (0.28%) GIS
14 7 (0.25%) BigQuery
14 7 (0.25%) RDBMS
14 7 (0.25%) Sybase ASE
15 6 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
15 6 (0.21%) SAP HANA
16 5 (0.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 170 (5.98%) JIRA
2 57 (2.00%) GitLab
3 53 (1.86%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.76%) Git
5 46 (1.62%) MSI
6 34 (1.20%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.74%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.63%) Burp Suite
9 17 (0.60%) Metasploit
10 12 (0.42%) Artifactory
11 11 (0.39%) Android Studio
11 11 (0.39%) Chocolatey
12 10 (0.35%) Bitbucket
12 10 (0.35%) InstallShield
12 10 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
13 9 (0.32%) Browser DevTools
13 9 (0.32%) Xcode
14 7 (0.25%) AdminStudio
14 7 (0.25%) JUnit
14 7 (0.25%) Selenium
General
1 991 (34.83%) Social Skills
2 280 (9.84%) Finance
3 262 (9.21%) Analytical Skills
4 224 (7.87%) Public Sector
5 146 (5.13%) Banking
6 125 (4.39%) Legal
7 107 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
8 71 (2.50%) Organisational Skills
9 63 (2.21%) Military
10 47 (1.65%) Manufacturing
11 40 (1.41%) Telecoms
12 39 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 39 (1.37%) Retail
13 37 (1.30%) Law
14 36 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
15 29 (1.02%) Front Office
15 29 (1.02%) Investment Banking
16 20 (0.70%) Local Government
16 20 (0.70%) Police
17 17 (0.60%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 366 (12.86%) IT Support
2 337 (11.85%) Support Engineer
3 322 (11.32%) Analyst
4 231 (8.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 220 (7.73%) IT Engineer
6 180 (6.33%) IT Support Engineer
7 178 (6.26%) Architect
7 178 (6.26%) Senior
8 128 (4.50%) Support Analyst
9 124 (4.36%) Desktop Support
10 105 (3.69%) Developer
11 98 (3.44%) Windows Engineer
12 97 (3.41%) Desktop Engineer
13 96 (3.37%) IT Analyst
14 94 (3.30%) Lead
15 90 (3.16%) Technical Support
16 87 (3.06%) 2nd Line Support
17 71 (2.50%) 1st Line Support
17 71 (2.50%) Consultant
17 71 (2.50%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (3.37%) .NET
2 85 (2.99%) REST
3 54 (1.90%) .NET Framework
4 43 (1.51%) LDAP
5 41 (1.44%) SAML
6 36 (1.27%) Kafka
6 36 (1.27%) Middleware
7 29 (1.02%) OAuth
7 29 (1.02%) WinForms
7 29 (1.02%) WPF
8 28 (0.98%) Microsoft Graph
9 27 (0.95%) 802.1X
9 27 (0.95%) Web Services
10 21 (0.74%) Node.js
11 20 (0.70%) OpenID
12 19 (0.67%) CSS
12 19 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
12 19 (0.67%) React
12 19 (0.67%) Software Packaging
13 17 (0.60%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 228 (8.01%) Onboarding
2 132 (4.64%) Data Centre
3 105 (3.69%) PKI
4 90 (3.16%) Enterprise Software
5 76 (2.67%) Clustering
5 76 (2.67%) Driving Licence
6 70 (2.46%) Self-Motivation
7 60 (2.11%) Replication
8 50 (1.76%) Legacy Systems
9 47 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
9 47 (1.65%) Management Information System
10 44 (1.55%) Security Posture
10 44 (1.55%) Smartphone
11 40 (1.41%) Virtual Team
12 34 (1.20%) Cloud Native
13 32 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.09%) Analytical Mindset
14 31 (1.09%) Security Operations Centre
15 30 (1.05%) CMDB
16 29 (1.02%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 722 (25.38%) Linux
2 656 (23.06%) Windows Server
3 500 (17.57%) Windows 10
4 173 (6.08%) Mac OS
5 151 (5.31%) Unix
6 150 (5.27%) Android
7 125 (4.39%) Apple iOS
8 94 (3.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 78 (2.74%) Windows Server 2016
10 72 (2.53%) Windows Server 2019
11 50 (1.76%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.27%) AIX
14 22 (0.77%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.74%) VMS
16 20 (0.70%) Windows Server 2003
17 19 (0.67%) Solaris
18 13 (0.46%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.35%) CentOS
20 9 (0.32%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 594 (20.88%) Problem-Solving
2 443 (15.57%) Customer Service
3 410 (14.41%) ITIL
4 326 (11.46%) Migration
5 306 (10.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 291 (10.23%) Agile
7 254 (8.93%) DevOps
8 239 (8.40%) CI/CD
9 232 (8.15%) ITSM
10 188 (6.61%) Disaster Recovery
11 187 (6.57%) Cybersecurity
12 177 (6.22%) Continuous Improvement
13 176 (6.19%) Service Management
14 172 (6.05%) Change Management
15 164 (5.76%) High Availability
16 147 (5.17%) SIEM
17 135 (4.75%) Stakeholder Management
18 134 (4.71%) Infrastructure as Code
19 129 (4.53%) Computer Science
20 122 (4.29%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 599 (21.05%) PowerShell
2 287 (10.09%) Python
3 270 (9.49%) SQL
4 135 (4.75%) C#
5 103 (3.62%) Bash
6 80 (2.81%) Java
7 71 (2.50%) JavaScript
8 63 (2.21%) PL/SQL
9 51 (1.79%) C++
10 46 (1.62%) T-SQL
11 34 (1.20%) Perl
12 27 (0.95%) Kusto Query Language
13 25 (0.88%) VB
14 23 (0.81%) Shell Script
15 22 (0.77%) Search Processing Language
16 18 (0.63%) VBScript
17 15 (0.53%) VBA
18 14 (0.49%) Go
19 12 (0.42%) Bicep
19 12 (0.42%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 866 (30.44%) Security Cleared
2 576 (20.25%) SC Cleared
3 282 (9.91%) Degree
4 265 (9.31%) DV Cleared
5 109 (3.83%) Microsoft Certification
6 88 (3.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 74 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
8 46 (1.62%) MCSE
9 45 (1.58%) Azure Certification
10 43 (1.51%) BPSS Clearance
10 43 (1.51%) CISSP
11 36 (1.27%) CompTIA Security+
11 36 (1.27%) ITIL Certification
12 35 (1.23%) CCNA
13 32 (1.12%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 31 (1.09%) AWS Certification
15 29 (1.02%) A+ Certification
16 28 (0.98%) MCSA
17 18 (0.63%) CompTIA CySA+
18 17 (0.60%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 110 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 91 (3.20%) QA
3 89 (3.13%) GDPR
3 89 (3.13%) SLA
4 74 (2.60%) NIST
5 44 (1.55%) PCI DSS
6 30 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 25 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
8 18 (0.63%) NCSC
9 15 (0.53%) PMO
10 12 (0.42%) NIST 800
11 11 (0.39%) Data Quality
11 11 (0.39%) MiFID
12 10 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
12 10 (0.35%) FINRA
12 10 (0.35%) GLBA
13 7 (0.25%) DICOM
14 6 (0.21%) HIPAA
14 6 (0.21%) HL7
14 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,057 (37.15%) Active Directory
2 329 (11.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 150 (5.27%) Hyper-V
4 89 (3.13%) vSphere
5 88 (3.09%) Docker
6 83 (2.92%) VMware ESXi
7 77 (2.71%) Virtual Machines
8 54 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
9 38 (1.34%) Firmware
10 37 (1.30%) VMware NSX
11 32 (1.12%) BitLocker
12 25 (0.88%) Microsoft App-V
13 22 (0.77%) KVM
14 13 (0.46%) XenApp
14 13 (0.46%) XenDesktop
15 10 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.21%) etcd
17 5 (0.18%) Terminal Services
18 4 (0.14%) NFS
18 4 (0.14%) Snort
Systems Management
1 361 (12.69%) Microsoft Intune
2 286 (10.05%) SCCM
3 186 (6.54%) Ansible
4 168 (5.91%) Terraform
5 133 (4.67%) Kubernetes
6 67 (2.36%) vCenter Server
7 64 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (1.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 44 (1.55%) WSUS
10 40 (1.41%) Jamf Pro
11 38 (1.34%) FortiGate
11 38 (1.34%) Grafana
12 31 (1.09%) Prometheus
13 27 (0.95%) Nagios
14 23 (0.81%) Nessus
14 23 (0.81%) SCOM
15 21 (0.74%) Progress Chef
16 20 (0.70%) ZABBIX
17 19 (0.67%) Tivoli
18 18 (0.63%) Netcool
Vendors
1 1,215 (42.71%) Microsoft
2 431 (15.15%) VMware
3 221 (7.77%) ServiceNow
4 211 (7.42%) Citrix
5 196 (6.89%) Cisco
6 182 (6.40%) Oracle
7 155 (5.45%) Splunk
8 86 (3.02%) HP
9 72 (2.53%) Dell
10 69 (2.43%) SolarWinds
11 57 (2.00%) IBM
12 56 (1.97%) Apple
12 56 (1.97%) Google
12 56 (1.97%) Red Hat
13 54 (1.90%) Remedy
14 48 (1.69%) F5
15 47 (1.65%) CyberArk
15 47 (1.65%) Palo Alto
16 39 (1.37%) Juniper
16 39 (1.37%) Veeam