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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,255 2,665 3,196
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.97% 8.07% 8.28%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.99% 59.73% 58.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,080 1,767 2,103
10th Percentile £170 £167 £178
25th Percentile £223 £216 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £408 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.29% -4.12% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £651 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +8.00% -11.76% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 318 230 188
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £13.87
25th Percentile £17.00 £18.13 £17.33
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.17
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.82% +7.40%
75th Percentile £59.75 £34.69 £56.56
90th Percentile £74.43 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £22.19 £24.18
% change year-on-year +16.04% -8.23% +11.17%

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 5,337 4,462 5,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.52% 14.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,371 2,848 3,506
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £304 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £687
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.78% -0.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 390 275 280
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.53 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £19.91
Median hourly rate £26.33 £25.15 £48.78
Median % change year-on-year +4.69% -48.44% +8.41%
75th Percentile £65.17 £58.13 £68.19
90th Percentile £74.36 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £50.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -49.70% +14.29%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 2,830 £416 +2.09% 1,697
UK excluding London -13 2,098 £405 +8.00% 1,263
London -11 954 £418 -1.71% 597
Work from Home -10 620 £463 +2.78% 903
South East -9 555 £500 +11.06% 407
North of England -5 510 £325 - 237
North West +3 309 £340 -3.00% 127
Midlands -17 285 £399 +9.18% 197
South West -15 280 £488 +30.00% 163
East of England 0 225 £245 -30.00% 191
West Midlands -24 189 £402 +0.50% 133
Scotland -8 169 £275 -38.89% 66
Yorkshire -14 165 £273 +4.81% 77
East Midlands +5 94 £275 +29.41% 64
Wales +7 69 £446 +62.27% 24
North East -29 40 £273 -0.91% 39
Northern Ireland -3 16 £139 -30.75% 17
Channel Islands -2 3 £518 -

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
1 267 (8.20%) SharePoint
2 249 (7.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 73 (2.24%) IIS
4 58 (1.78%) Confluence
5 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.55%) Apache
6 18 (0.55%) nginx
7 14 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.40%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.18%) Documentum
10 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.15%) Appian
10 5 (0.15%) Camunda
10 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
11 4 (0.12%) NetWeaver
11 4 (0.12%) SAS
12 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 227 (6.97%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.092%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.092%) Houdini
7 3 (0.092%) NUKE
8 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.72%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 8 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.092%) assyst
7 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
8 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Monis
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
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
Cloud Services
1 1,025 (31.49%) Microsoft 365
2 988 (30.35%) Azure
3 515 (15.82%) Entra ID
4 332 (10.20%) AWS
5 149 (4.58%) OneDrive
6 118 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 108 (3.32%) GCP
8 78 (2.40%) SaaS
9 76 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
10 74 (2.27%) Power Platform
11 70 (2.15%) GitHub
12 65 (2.00%) IaaS
13 49 (1.51%) PaaS
14 43 (1.32%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.14%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
17 29 (0.89%) Google Workspace
18 27 (0.83%) GitHub Actions
19 23 (0.71%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 476 (14.62%) DNS
2 338 (10.38%) DHCP
3 337 (10.35%) Firewall
4 272 (8.36%) VPN
5 238 (7.31%) TCP/IP
6 144 (4.42%) WAN
7 138 (4.24%) LAN
8 132 (4.06%) Wi-Fi
9 95 (2.92%) Network Security
10 92 (2.83%) SAN
11 89 (2.73%) VLAN
12 55 (1.69%) Wireless
13 49 (1.51%) SSL
14 45 (1.38%) NAS
15 43 (1.32%) Internet
16 35 (1.08%) Skype
16 35 (1.08%) VSAN
17 31 (0.95%) VoIP
18 28 (0.86%) HTTP
18 28 (0.86%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (9.12%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 57 (1.75%) Power BI
4 41 (1.26%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.20%) Relational Database
7 24 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
7 24 (0.74%) MySQL
8 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
9 16 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 15 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
10 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 11 (0.34%) Db2
11 11 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
11 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
12 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
12 8 (0.25%) MS Access
12 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
13 7 (0.22%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 164 (5.04%) JIRA
2 73 (2.24%) Git
3 55 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.44%) MSI
5 45 (1.38%) GitLab
6 30 (0.92%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 14 (0.43%) Eclipse
9 13 (0.40%) Artifactory
10 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
13 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
13 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 5 (0.15%) Chocolatey
14 5 (0.15%) Claude Code
14 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
14 5 (0.15%) Robot Framework
14 5 (0.15%) Selenium
General
1 1,195 (36.71%) Social Skills
2 401 (12.32%) Analytical Skills
3 381 (11.71%) Finance
4 168 (5.16%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.82%) Banking
6 122 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
7 90 (2.76%) Legal
8 76 (2.33%) Organisational Skills
9 75 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 60 (1.84%) Manufacturing
11 52 (1.60%) Retail
11 52 (1.60%) Telecoms
12 43 (1.32%) Front Office
13 41 (1.26%) Law
14 38 (1.17%) Military
15 35 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.86%) Spanish Language
17 26 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
18 25 (0.77%) French Language
19 23 (0.71%) Police
Job Titles
1 523 (16.07%) Support Engineer
2 449 (13.79%) IT Support
3 347 (10.66%) IT Engineer
4 339 (10.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 290 (8.91%) IT Support Engineer
6 281 (8.63%) Analyst
7 260 (7.99%) Senior
8 146 (4.49%) Desktop Support
9 126 (3.87%) Architect
10 124 (3.81%) Desktop Engineer
11 123 (3.78%) 2nd Line Support
12 121 (3.72%) Lead
13 119 (3.66%) Cloud Engineer
14 118 (3.63%) Windows Engineer
15 105 (3.23%) Developer
15 105 (3.23%) Support Analyst
16 102 (3.13%) Consultant
17 89 (2.73%) 1st Line Support
18 85 (2.61%) Service Analyst
19 83 (2.55%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (8.33%) Terraform
2 137 (4.21%) .NET
3 120 (3.69%) REST
4 63 (1.94%) .NET Framework
5 48 (1.47%) Middleware
6 42 (1.29%) JSON
7 41 (1.26%) LDAP
8 32 (0.98%) XML
9 30 (0.92%) WPF
10 29 (0.89%) WinForms
11 28 (0.86%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.83%) HTML
13 24 (0.74%) ARM Templates
13 24 (0.74%) Kafka
14 23 (0.71%) Web Services
15 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
15 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
16 19 (0.58%) .NET Core
16 19 (0.58%) ASP.NET
16 19 (0.58%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 376 (11.55%) Onboarding
2 189 (5.81%) Data Centre
3 162 (4.98%) PKI
4 105 (3.23%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
6 84 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
7 82 (2.52%) Clustering
8 80 (2.46%) Driving Licence
9 77 (2.37%) Cloud Native
10 74 (2.27%) Video Conferencing
11 73 (2.24%) Replication
12 56 (1.72%) Security Posture
13 54 (1.66%) Self-Motivation
14 45 (1.38%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
15 42 (1.29%) Operational Technology
16 40 (1.23%) Enterprise Storage
16 40 (1.23%) Virtual Team
17 39 (1.20%) Smartphone
18 37 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 896 (27.53%) Windows Server
2 794 (24.39%) Linux
3 567 (17.42%) Windows 10
4 205 (6.30%) Mac OS
5 150 (4.61%) Unix
6 146 (4.49%) Apple iOS
7 143 (4.39%) Android
8 136 (4.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (2.27%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.69%) Windows 7
11 52 (1.60%) Ubuntu
12 46 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
13 42 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
14 38 (1.17%) CentOS
15 34 (1.04%) AIX
16 22 (0.68%) VMS
17 19 (0.58%) Solaris
18 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
19 15 (0.46%) Rocky
20 13 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 772 (23.72%) Problem-Solving
2 604 (18.56%) ITIL
3 567 (17.42%) Customer Service
4 434 (13.33%) ITSM
5 430 (13.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 413 (12.69%) Migration
7 347 (10.66%) Continuous Improvement
8 316 (9.71%) Service Management
9 313 (9.62%) DevOps
10 269 (8.26%) CI/CD
11 265 (8.14%) Infrastructure as Code
12 264 (8.11%) Agile
13 236 (7.25%) Stakeholder Management
14 223 (6.85%) Change Management
15 220 (6.76%) Root Cause Analysis
16 209 (6.42%) Disaster Recovery
17 198 (6.08%) Cybersecurity
18 193 (5.93%) Validation
19 192 (5.90%) Service Delivery
20 184 (5.65%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 784 (24.09%) PowerShell
2 334 (10.26%) Python
3 326 (10.02%) SQL
4 188 (5.78%) Bash
5 157 (4.82%) C#
6 72 (2.21%) T-SQL
7 71 (2.18%) Java
8 59 (1.81%) JavaScript
8 59 (1.81%) PL/SQL
9 51 (1.57%) Bicep
10 32 (0.98%) C++
11 29 (0.89%) VB
11 29 (0.89%) VBScript
12 21 (0.65%) Perl
13 19 (0.58%) VBA
14 18 (0.55%) Shell Script
15 17 (0.52%) Search Processing Language
15 17 (0.52%) TypeScript
16 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
17 9 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,005 (30.88%) Security Cleared
2 615 (18.89%) SC Cleared
3 373 (11.46%) DV Cleared
4 301 (9.25%) Degree
5 127 (3.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 94 (2.89%) Azure Certification
7 86 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
9 73 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
10 63 (1.94%) CISSP
11 57 (1.75%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.69%) AWS Certification
13 52 (1.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 42 (1.29%) CCNA
14 42 (1.29%) DBS Check
15 36 (1.11%) CCNP
16 35 (1.08%) MCSE
17 33 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 32 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
19 30 (0.92%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 169 (5.19%) SLA
2 111 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (2.83%) QA
4 85 (2.61%) NIST
5 35 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (1.01%) GDPR
7 28 (0.86%) NCSC
8 23 (0.71%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
11 14 (0.43%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 13 (0.40%) GRC
13 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 12 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 12 (0.37%) WCAG
14 11 (0.34%) GMP
14 11 (0.34%) PMO
15 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,337 (41.08%) Active Directory
2 488 (14.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 225 (6.91%) Hyper-V
4 161 (4.95%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.06%) vSphere
6 114 (3.50%) Docker
7 110 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
8 101 (3.10%) Virtual Desktop
9 79 (2.43%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.23%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.04%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) NFS
14 15 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
14 15 (0.46%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.37%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.34%) KVM
16 11 (0.34%) XenApp
17 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
18 8 (0.25%) UAG
Systems Management
1 453 (13.92%) Microsoft Intune
2 358 (11.00%) SCCM
3 233 (7.16%) Ansible
4 162 (4.98%) Kubernetes
5 126 (3.87%) vCenter Server
6 101 (3.10%) SCOM
7 52 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
8 46 (1.41%) WSUS
9 33 (1.01%) Progress Chef
10 32 (0.98%) Grafana
10 32 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.92%) Prometheus
12 28 (0.86%) NetBackup
12 28 (0.86%) WMI
13 26 (0.80%) Puppet
14 25 (0.77%) VxRail
15 23 (0.71%) Nagios
15 23 (0.71%) Packer
16 21 (0.65%) Microsoft Clustering
17 20 (0.61%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 1,533 (47.10%) Microsoft
2 636 (19.54%) VMware
3 382 (11.74%) ServiceNow
4 228 (7.00%) Cisco
5 205 (6.30%) Oracle
6 176 (5.41%) Citrix
7 112 (3.44%) Apple
8 109 (3.35%) Splunk
9 98 (3.01%) CyberArk
10 86 (2.64%) Google
11 80 (2.46%) Red Hat
12 79 (2.43%) BeyondTrust
13 76 (2.33%) SolarWinds
14 60 (1.84%) Remedy
15 59 (1.81%) Dell
16 55 (1.69%) HP
17 52 (1.60%) NetApp
18 46 (1.41%) Palo Alto
19 45 (1.38%) BMC
20 43 (1.32%) Meraki