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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,167 2,641 3,233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.90% 8.07% 8.32%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.72% 60.12% 59.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,026 1,741 2,154
10th Percentile £168 £170 £175
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £409 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.91% -3.76% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £556 £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 279 222 226
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.06 £17.76 £15.82
Median hourly rate £24.00 £21.28 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.78% -3.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £53.75 £27.31 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +36.46% -10.14% -1.45%

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 5,216 4,393 5,428
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.72% 13.43% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,305 2,796 3,553
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £326
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £585
90th Percentile £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.67% -0.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 356 270 323
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.85
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.08 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.77% -16.42% -29.41%
75th Percentile £63.75 £57.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.83 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.81 £24.33 £39.25
% change year-on-year +6.06% -38.01% +27.02%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -7 2,757 £415 +1.84% 912
UK excluding London -14 2,041 £402 +7.20% 720
London -14 933 £425 - 251
Work from Home -11 614 £468 +3.89% 302
South East -8 567 £475 -3.06% 219
North of England -7 505 £325 - 166
North West +3 298 £335 -4.29% 83
South West -15 280 £475 +35.71% 106
Midlands -18 263 £385 -3.75% 114
East of England -5 193 £335 - 112
Yorkshire -14 179 £282 -13.23% 62
Scotland -4 166 £375 -16.67% 23
West Midlands -28 166 £425 -1.16% 74
East Midlands +5 93 £270 +35.00% 40
Wales +4 64 £446 +62.27% 14
North East -32 32 £260 -0.95% 30
Northern Ireland -6 16 £139 -30.75% 4
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
1 258 (8.15%) SharePoint
2 242 (7.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 68 (2.15%) IIS
4 57 (1.80%) Confluence
5 18 (0.57%) nginx
5 18 (0.57%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.51%) Apache
7 14 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.22%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.19%) Documentum
10 6 (0.19%) NetWeaver
11 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.16%) Appian
11 5 (0.16%) Camunda
11 5 (0.16%) SAS
12 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.095%) JBoss
Applications
1 213 (6.73%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.31%) 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 (0.095%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.095%) Houdini
6 3 (0.095%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.063%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.032%) InDesign
8 1 (0.032%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.77%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.32%) Finacle
2 10 (0.32%) 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 (0.095%) assyst
8 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.032%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.032%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 994 (31.39%) Microsoft 365
2 989 (31.23%) Azure
3 494 (15.60%) Entra ID
4 332 (10.48%) AWS
5 143 (4.52%) OneDrive
6 115 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 99 (3.13%) GCP
8 78 (2.46%) Azure Monitor
9 76 (2.40%) SaaS
10 72 (2.27%) Power Platform
11 70 (2.21%) GitHub
12 62 (1.96%) IaaS
13 48 (1.52%) PaaS
14 45 (1.42%) Azure Sentinel
15 39 (1.23%) OpenShift
16 29 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
18 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
19 24 (0.76%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 474 (14.97%) DNS
2 355 (11.21%) Firewall
3 338 (10.67%) DHCP
4 278 (8.78%) VPN
5 226 (7.14%) TCP/IP
6 160 (5.05%) WAN
7 156 (4.93%) LAN
8 142 (4.48%) Wi-Fi
9 97 (3.06%) SAN
10 90 (2.84%) Network Security
11 88 (2.78%) VLAN
12 48 (1.52%) NAS
12 48 (1.52%) Wireless
13 45 (1.42%) Internet
13 45 (1.42%) SSL
14 38 (1.20%) VSAN
15 34 (1.07%) Skype
16 32 (1.01%) BGP
16 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
17 28 (0.88%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (9.38%) SQL Server
2 58 (1.83%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.67%) Power BI
4 35 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
4 35 (1.11%) Relational Database
4 35 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 24 (0.76%) MySQL
6 22 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
7 17 (0.54%) RDBMS
8 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 12 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
11 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
11 11 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
12 10 (0.32%) Db2
13 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
13 8 (0.25%) MS Access
14 7 (0.22%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 165 (5.21%) JIRA
2 76 (2.40%) Git
3 55 (1.74%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.58%) MSI
5 40 (1.26%) GitLab
6 27 (0.85%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.54%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 9 (0.28%) Selenium
9 8 (0.25%) Artifactory
9 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.19%) Chocolatey
11 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
12 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,156 (36.50%) Social Skills
2 395 (12.47%) Analytical Skills
3 375 (11.84%) Finance
4 176 (5.56%) Public Sector
5 160 (5.05%) Banking
6 113 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
7 89 (2.81%) Legal
8 77 (2.43%) Organisational Skills
9 73 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 57 (1.80%) Manufacturing
11 55 (1.74%) Retail
12 50 (1.58%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.29%) Front Office
14 36 (1.14%) Law
15 35 (1.11%) Investment Banking
16 30 (0.95%) Military
17 28 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.79%) French Language
19 24 (0.76%) Financial Institution
20 22 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 501 (15.82%) Support Engineer
2 426 (13.45%) IT Support
3 333 (10.51%) IT Engineer
4 325 (10.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 277 (8.75%) IT Support Engineer
6 265 (8.37%) Analyst
7 242 (7.64%) Senior
8 142 (4.48%) Desktop Support
9 128 (4.04%) 2nd Line Support
10 123 (3.88%) Architect
11 118 (3.73%) Desktop Engineer
11 118 (3.73%) Lead
12 114 (3.60%) Cloud Engineer
13 108 (3.41%) Windows Engineer
14 107 (3.38%) Developer
15 102 (3.22%) Consultant
15 102 (3.22%) Support Analyst
16 86 (2.72%) 1st Line Support
17 84 (2.65%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.59%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (8.34%) Terraform
2 134 (4.23%) .NET
3 114 (3.60%) REST
4 68 (2.15%) .NET Framework
5 44 (1.39%) Middleware
6 36 (1.14%) JSON
7 34 (1.07%) LDAP
8 32 (1.01%) WinForms
9 29 (0.92%) WPF
9 29 (0.92%) XML
10 27 (0.85%) HTML
10 27 (0.85%) Kafka
10 27 (0.85%) Software Packaging
11 22 (0.69%) ARM Templates
12 21 (0.66%) CSS
12 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
12 21 (0.66%) SAML
13 20 (0.63%) RESTful
14 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
14 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 368 (11.62%) Onboarding
2 183 (5.78%) Data Centre
3 161 (5.08%) PKI
4 95 (3.00%) Management Information System
5 86 (2.72%) Clustering
6 82 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
7 80 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
8 78 (2.46%) Driving Licence
9 75 (2.37%) Cloud Native
10 71 (2.24%) Video Conferencing
11 67 (2.12%) Replication
11 67 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
12 50 (1.58%) Security Posture
13 47 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
14 42 (1.33%) Enterprise Storage
14 42 (1.33%) Virtual Team
15 40 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
16 39 (1.23%) Operational Technology
17 37 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
17 37 (1.17%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 846 (26.71%) Windows Server
2 779 (24.60%) Linux
3 554 (17.49%) Windows 10
4 195 (6.16%) Mac OS
5 141 (4.45%) Unix
6 135 (4.26%) Android
7 134 (4.23%) Apple iOS
8 126 (3.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (2.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.74%) Windows 7
11 50 (1.58%) Ubuntu
11 50 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
12 41 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.14%) AIX
14 32 (1.01%) CentOS
15 24 (0.76%) VMS
16 18 (0.57%) Solaris
16 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.35%) Debian
17 11 (0.35%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 754 (23.81%) Problem-Solving
2 581 (18.35%) ITIL
3 527 (16.64%) Customer Service
4 419 (13.23%) ITSM
5 413 (13.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 401 (12.66%) Migration
7 321 (10.14%) Continuous Improvement
8 303 (9.57%) DevOps
9 296 (9.35%) Service Management
10 253 (7.99%) CI/CD
11 249 (7.86%) Infrastructure as Code
12 248 (7.83%) Agile
13 225 (7.10%) Change Management
14 209 (6.60%) Stakeholder Management
15 202 (6.38%) Disaster Recovery
16 198 (6.25%) High Availability
17 192 (6.06%) Service Delivery
18 191 (6.03%) Cybersecurity
19 185 (5.84%) Root Cause Analysis
20 177 (5.59%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 759 (23.97%) PowerShell
2 331 (10.45%) Python
3 311 (9.82%) SQL
4 181 (5.72%) Bash
5 146 (4.61%) C#
6 73 (2.31%) Java
7 60 (1.89%) T-SQL
8 55 (1.74%) JavaScript
9 53 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.52%) Bicep
11 34 (1.07%) C++
12 30 (0.95%) VBScript
13 28 (0.88%) VB
14 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (0.66%) Perl
16 19 (0.60%) Shell Script
17 18 (0.57%) VBA
18 16 (0.51%) TypeScript
19 12 (0.38%) C
20 11 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 957 (30.22%) Security Cleared
2 597 (18.85%) SC Cleared
3 336 (10.61%) DV Cleared
4 291 (9.19%) Degree
5 122 (3.85%) Microsoft Certification
6 98 (3.09%) Cisco Certification
7 85 (2.68%) Azure Certification
8 74 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
9 62 (1.96%) CISSP
10 55 (1.74%) AWS Certification
11 54 (1.71%) A+ Certification
12 47 (1.48%) CCNA
13 44 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 39 (1.23%) DBS Check
15 38 (1.20%) CCNP
16 35 (1.11%) MCSE
17 32 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 28 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
19 27 (0.85%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 163 (5.15%) SLA
2 113 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 97 (3.06%) QA
4 81 (2.56%) NIST
5 35 (1.11%) GDPR
6 31 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
7 29 (0.92%) NCSC
8 22 (0.69%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
10 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.44%) Accessibility
11 14 (0.44%) GxP
12 13 (0.41%) PMO
13 11 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.35%) GRC
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 9 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 9 (0.28%) GMP
System Software
1 1,294 (40.86%) Active Directory
2 466 (14.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 207 (6.54%) Hyper-V
4 144 (4.55%) VMware ESXi
5 129 (4.07%) vSphere
6 107 (3.38%) Docker
7 98 (3.09%) Virtual Desktop
8 97 (3.06%) Virtual Machines
9 82 (2.59%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 39 (1.23%) Firmware
12 22 (0.69%) vCloud
13 18 (0.57%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.35%) KVM
16 10 (0.32%) XenApp
16 10 (0.32%) XenDesktop
17 9 (0.28%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 9 (0.28%) NFS
18 7 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 446 (14.08%) Microsoft Intune
2 330 (10.42%) SCCM
3 232 (7.33%) Ansible
4 163 (5.15%) Kubernetes
5 119 (3.76%) vCenter Server
6 83 (2.62%) SCOM
7 50 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
8 48 (1.52%) WSUS
9 37 (1.17%) Progress Chef
9 37 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
10 28 (0.88%) FortiGate
10 28 (0.88%) NetBackup
10 28 (0.88%) Puppet
11 27 (0.85%) Prometheus
11 27 (0.85%) WMI
12 26 (0.82%) Nagios
13 25 (0.79%) Grafana
13 25 (0.79%) Packer
14 22 (0.69%) VxRail
14 22 (0.69%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,471 (46.45%) Microsoft
2 610 (19.26%) VMware
3 368 (11.62%) ServiceNow
4 221 (6.98%) Cisco
5 199 (6.28%) Oracle
6 182 (5.75%) Citrix
7 117 (3.69%) Splunk
8 108 (3.41%) Apple
9 97 (3.06%) CyberArk
10 78 (2.46%) Google
10 78 (2.46%) SolarWinds
11 76 (2.40%) BeyondTrust
12 73 (2.31%) Red Hat
13 69 (2.18%) HP
14 60 (1.89%) Remedy
15 55 (1.74%) Dell
16 50 (1.58%) Palo Alto
17 49 (1.55%) NetApp
18 48 (1.52%) BMC
19 46 (1.45%) Meraki