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 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,248 2,684 3,142
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.96% 8.09% 8.27%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.49% 59.09% 58.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,060 1,788 1,983
10th Percentile £175 £163 £180
25th Percentile £225 £206 £245
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £569 £538 £568
90th Percentile £668 £625 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +17.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 347 253 162
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.12 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.11 £17.69 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +17.05% -9.02% +7.47%
75th Percentile £60.00 £28.00 £63.38
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.29 £24.18
% change year-on-year +20.95% -11.95% +9.91%

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 5,282 4,542 5,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.69% 13.69% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,333 2,906 3,308
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £281 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -4.04%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £653 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £448
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.03% -0.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 305 251
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.80
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -54.27% +25.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £57.25
% change year-on-year +3.08% -56.33% +41.97%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 -8 2,836 £422 +5.38% 2,578
UK excluding London -13 2,088 £413 +17.86% 1,554
London -1 959 £420 -1.29% 1,080
Work from Home -11 614 £470 +7.43% 921
South East -7 557 £482 +31.99% 395
North of England -8 491 £344 +14.21% 322
North West +3 292 £350 +7.69% 173
Midlands -14 289 £401 +0.25% 257
South West -18 266 £550 +57.14% 211
East of England 0 246 £222 -36.71% 200
West Midlands -22 201 £425 +6.25% 145
Yorkshire -13 159 £275 +25.00% 113
Scotland -7 158 £322 -28.44% 92
East Midlands -3 87 £275 +22.22% 112
Wales +8 71 £468 +61.21% 43
North East -26 42 £273 +22.06% 42
Northern Ireland +4 18 £102 -49.00% 56
Channel Islands -4 2 £535 - 3

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
1 263 (8.10%) SharePoint
2 238 (7.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 73 (2.25%) IIS
4 62 (1.91%) Confluence
5 28 (0.86%) nginx
6 22 (0.68%) Apache
7 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
8 15 (0.46%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.43%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.18%) Documentum
11 6 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
12 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.15%) Appian
12 5 (0.15%) Camunda
12 5 (0.15%) CICS
12 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 228 (7.02%) Microsoft Office
2 70 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.092%) Houdini
6 3 (0.092%) NUKE
7 2 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.062%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.062%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 1 (0.031%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 47 (1.45%) Remedy ITSM
2 9 (0.28%) Finacle
3 8 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 5 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
6 3 (0.092%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.062%) assyst
7 2 (0.062%) Dynamics GP
8 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
8 1 (0.031%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,022 (31.47%) Microsoft 365
2 990 (30.48%) Azure
3 546 (16.81%) Entra ID
4 337 (10.38%) AWS
5 148 (4.56%) OneDrive
6 117 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
7 115 (3.54%) GCP
8 82 (2.52%) Azure Monitor
9 75 (2.31%) GitHub
10 66 (2.03%) Power Platform
11 65 (2.00%) SaaS
12 58 (1.79%) IaaS
13 46 (1.42%) Azure Sentinel
14 41 (1.26%) PaaS
15 37 (1.14%) OpenShift
16 34 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
17 33 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
18 29 (0.89%) Google Workspace
19 24 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
19 24 (0.74%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 483 (14.87%) DNS
2 340 (10.47%) Firewall
3 337 (10.38%) DHCP
4 288 (8.87%) VPN
5 256 (7.88%) TCP/IP
6 133 (4.09%) LAN
7 130 (4.00%) WAN
8 126 (3.88%) Wi-Fi
9 109 (3.36%) Network Security
10 88 (2.71%) SAN
11 83 (2.56%) VLAN
12 60 (1.85%) Wireless
13 52 (1.60%) SSL
14 40 (1.23%) BGP
14 40 (1.23%) Internet
15 38 (1.17%) NAS
16 34 (1.05%) Skype
17 33 (1.02%) HTTP
17 33 (1.02%) VoIP
18 29 (0.89%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 290 (8.93%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.85%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.63%) Power BI
4 47 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.20%) Relational Database
7 34 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 24 (0.74%) MySQL
9 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 17 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
10 17 (0.52%) Db2
11 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
12 14 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
15 8 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
15 8 (0.25%) MS Access
16 7 (0.22%) MongoDB
16 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 159 (4.90%) JIRA
2 90 (2.77%) Git
3 75 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 58 (1.79%) GitLab
5 51 (1.57%) MSI
6 38 (1.17%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.52%) Artifactory
7 17 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 10 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.22%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
14 6 (0.18%) Robot Framework
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SonarQube
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 6 (0.18%) Toad
General
1 1,196 (36.82%) Social Skills
2 388 (11.95%) Finance
3 386 (11.88%) Analytical Skills
4 159 (4.90%) Public Sector
5 154 (4.74%) Banking
6 116 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
7 84 (2.59%) Legal
8 78 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 76 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
10 65 (2.00%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.72%) Telecoms
12 51 (1.57%) Retail
13 41 (1.26%) Front Office
13 41 (1.26%) Law
14 38 (1.17%) Military
15 33 (1.02%) Police
16 32 (0.99%) Investment Banking
17 25 (0.77%) Financial Institution
18 24 (0.74%) Aerospace
18 24 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 532 (16.38%) Support Engineer
2 442 (13.61%) IT Support
3 340 (10.47%) IT Engineer
4 320 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 289 (8.90%) IT Support Engineer
6 269 (8.28%) Analyst
7 262 (8.07%) Senior
8 147 (4.53%) Desktop Support
9 132 (4.06%) Desktop Engineer
10 129 (3.97%) 2nd Line Support
10 129 (3.97%) Architect
11 123 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
12 120 (3.69%) Lead
13 117 (3.60%) Windows Engineer
14 109 (3.36%) Developer
15 97 (2.99%) Consultant
16 95 (2.92%) Support Analyst
17 84 (2.59%) Desktop Support Engineer
17 84 (2.59%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.52%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 289 (8.90%) Terraform
2 153 (4.71%) .NET
3 126 (3.88%) REST
4 68 (2.09%) .NET Framework
5 58 (1.79%) Middleware
6 50 (1.54%) LDAP
7 48 (1.48%) JSON
8 43 (1.32%) WPF
9 34 (1.05%) XML
10 30 (0.92%) Web Services
10 30 (0.92%) WinForms
11 29 (0.89%) Software Packaging
12 28 (0.86%) ARM Templates
13 27 (0.83%) Kafka
14 25 (0.77%) HTML
15 24 (0.74%) .NET Core
16 20 (0.62%) RESTful
17 19 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
18 18 (0.55%) React
18 18 (0.55%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 391 (12.04%) Onboarding
2 204 (6.28%) Data Centre
3 165 (5.08%) PKI
4 109 (3.36%) Management Information System
5 95 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
6 90 (2.77%) Hybrid Cloud
7 89 (2.74%) Driving Licence
8 83 (2.56%) Video Conferencing
9 81 (2.49%) Cloud Native
10 75 (2.31%) Clustering
11 69 (2.12%) Replication
12 66 (2.03%) Security Posture
13 52 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
14 46 (1.42%) Operational Technology
15 41 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
16 40 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
17 39 (1.20%) CMDB
18 38 (1.17%) Smartphone
18 38 (1.17%) Virtual Team
19 37 (1.14%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 919 (28.29%) Windows Server
2 794 (24.45%) Linux
3 572 (17.61%) Windows 10
4 191 (5.88%) Mac OS
5 143 (4.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 141 (4.34%) Unix
7 140 (4.31%) Apple iOS
8 134 (4.13%) Android
9 76 (2.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 49 (1.51%) Windows 7
11 48 (1.48%) Ubuntu
12 46 (1.42%) Windows Server 2012
13 42 (1.29%) Windows Server 2016
14 39 (1.20%) CentOS
15 30 (0.92%) AIX
16 21 (0.65%) Solaris
17 18 (0.55%) VMS
18 16 (0.49%) Rocky
18 16 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 759 (23.37%) Problem-Solving
2 620 (19.09%) ITIL
3 570 (17.55%) Customer Service
4 442 (13.61%) ITSM
5 415 (12.78%) Migration
6 414 (12.75%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 373 (11.48%) Continuous Improvement
8 343 (10.56%) Service Management
9 334 (10.28%) DevOps
10 312 (9.61%) CI/CD
11 300 (9.24%) Infrastructure as Code
12 278 (8.56%) Stakeholder Management
13 264 (8.13%) Agile
14 242 (7.45%) Root Cause Analysis
15 236 (7.27%) Change Management
16 235 (7.24%) Disaster Recovery
17 230 (7.08%) Cybersecurity
18 221 (6.80%) Validation
19 188 (5.79%) Technical Leadership
20 186 (5.73%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 798 (24.57%) PowerShell
2 343 (10.56%) Python
3 314 (9.67%) SQL
4 208 (6.40%) Bash
5 172 (5.30%) C#
6 79 (2.43%) Java
6 79 (2.43%) T-SQL
7 63 (1.94%) JavaScript
8 58 (1.79%) Bicep
9 53 (1.63%) PL/SQL
10 38 (1.17%) C++
11 29 (0.89%) VB
11 29 (0.89%) VBScript
12 21 (0.65%) Perl
13 20 (0.62%) Groovy
14 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.58%) VBA
15 15 (0.46%) TypeScript
16 13 (0.40%) Go
17 10 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 994 (30.60%) Security Cleared
2 593 (18.26%) SC Cleared
3 389 (11.98%) DV Cleared
4 286 (8.81%) Degree
5 121 (3.73%) Microsoft Certification
6 88 (2.71%) Azure Certification
7 87 (2.68%) Cisco Certification
8 76 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
9 66 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
10 63 (1.94%) CISSP
11 56 (1.72%) AWS Certification
12 54 (1.66%) A+ Certification
13 49 (1.51%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 48 (1.48%) DBS Check
15 44 (1.35%) CCNA
16 42 (1.29%) CCNP
17 36 (1.11%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.05%) CISM
19 33 (1.02%) MCSE
20 28 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 171 (5.26%) SLA
2 101 (3.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 88 (2.71%) QA
4 80 (2.46%) NIST
5 36 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
6 31 (0.95%) GDPR
7 29 (0.89%) NCSC
8 26 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) Accessibility
9 17 (0.52%) GRC
10 16 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 16 (0.49%) GxP
11 13 (0.40%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
13 11 (0.34%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) GMP
14 10 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1,358 (41.81%) Active Directory
2 485 (14.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 221 (6.80%) Hyper-V
4 150 (4.62%) VMware ESXi
5 139 (4.28%) vSphere
6 131 (4.03%) Docker
7 113 (3.48%) Virtual Desktop
8 105 (3.23%) Virtual Machines
9 70 (2.16%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.20%) BitLocker
11 37 (1.14%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 20 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.46%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 15 (0.46%) NFS
16 12 (0.37%) XenApp
17 11 (0.34%) KVM
18 10 (0.31%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 470 (14.47%) Microsoft Intune
2 375 (11.55%) SCCM
3 235 (7.24%) Ansible
4 170 (5.23%) Kubernetes
5 117 (3.60%) vCenter Server
6 102 (3.14%) SCOM
7 50 (1.54%) Jamf Pro
8 41 (1.26%) Grafana
8 41 (1.26%) WSUS
9 36 (1.11%) Prometheus
10 35 (1.08%) Progress Chef
11 33 (1.02%) NetBackup
12 30 (0.92%) WMI
13 29 (0.89%) Puppet
13 29 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
14 25 (0.77%) VxRail
15 21 (0.65%) Failover Clustering
15 21 (0.65%) Nagios
16 20 (0.62%) FortiGate
16 20 (0.62%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,574 (48.46%) Microsoft
2 630 (19.40%) VMware
3 383 (11.79%) ServiceNow
4 241 (7.42%) Cisco
5 201 (6.19%) Oracle
6 176 (5.42%) Citrix
7 112 (3.45%) Apple
8 104 (3.20%) Splunk
9 100 (3.08%) CyberArk
10 94 (2.89%) Google
11 82 (2.52%) Red Hat
12 75 (2.31%) SolarWinds
13 72 (2.22%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (1.82%) Palo Alto
15 58 (1.79%) Dell
16 51 (1.57%) NetApp
16 51 (1.57%) Remedy
17 47 (1.45%) CrowdStrike
18 44 (1.35%) HP
19 41 (1.26%) Meraki