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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,279 2,668 3,169
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.98% 8.09% 8.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.04% 59.66% 58.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,076 1,770 2,036
10th Percentile £170 £163 £178
25th Percentile £223 £211 £245
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -0.29%
75th Percentile £560 £540 £575
90th Percentile £668 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +14.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 249 169
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.47 £15.21
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £22.58 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +14.06% -6.64% -3.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £30.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.68 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £21.73 £24.18
% change year-on-year +18.59% -10.13% +7.47%

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 5,372 4,472 5,424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.55% 14.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,384 2,847 3,419
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £291 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £670 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 300 257
10th Percentile £14.47 £15.50 £16.15
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.87 £21.80
Median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -52.55% +15.52%
75th Percentile £66.00 £55.03 £69.69
90th Percentile £74.54 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £57.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -55.88% +24.23%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 2,862 £416 +4.00% 2,579
UK excluding London -13 2,119 £402 +14.86% 1,745
London -8 960 £416 -2.12% 987
Work from Home -12 620 £465 +5.08% 925
South East -7 563 £475 +26.67% 450
North of England -6 504 £325 +11.59% 346
North West +5 299 £344 +5.85% 189
Midlands -14 297 £400 +3.23% 310
South West -17 265 £533 +46.90% 203
East of England -1 249 £238 -32.14% 237
West Midlands -24 201 £402 +0.50% 189
Yorkshire -15 168 £260 +29.51% 123
Scotland -5 166 £250 -44.44% 115
East Midlands +2 95 £275 +4.76% 120
Wales +9 70 £446 +62.27% 42
North East -28 42 £283 +13.80% 40
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 76
Channel Islands -3 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
1 266 (8.11%) SharePoint
2 246 (7.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.10%) IIS
4 60 (1.83%) Confluence
5 21 (0.64%) nginx
6 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
7 17 (0.52%) Apache
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
9 11 (0.34%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.18%) Documentum
11 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.15%) Appian
11 5 (0.15%) Camunda
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.091%) CICS
13 3 (0.091%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.091%) Exchange Server 2010
13 3 (0.091%) OpenStack
Applications
1 231 (7.04%) Microsoft Office
2 71 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.091%) Houdini
7 3 (0.091%) NUKE
8 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.061%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.030%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.030%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.030%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 53 (1.62%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.30%) Finacle
3 7 (0.21%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.21%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.091%) assyst
6 3 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.091%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.030%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.030%) Monis
8 1 (0.030%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.030%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.030%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.030%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.030%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.030%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,036 (31.59%) Microsoft 365
2 993 (30.28%) Azure
3 529 (16.13%) Entra ID
4 338 (10.31%) AWS
5 146 (4.45%) OneDrive
6 119 (3.63%) Azure DevOps
7 115 (3.51%) GCP
8 78 (2.38%) SaaS
9 75 (2.29%) Azure Monitor
10 74 (2.26%) GitHub
11 69 (2.10%) Power Platform
12 61 (1.86%) IaaS
13 45 (1.37%) PaaS
14 43 (1.31%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.13%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
17 30 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.79%) Google Workspace
19 23 (0.70%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 483 (14.73%) DNS
2 345 (10.52%) DHCP
3 337 (10.28%) Firewall
4 280 (8.54%) VPN
5 249 (7.59%) TCP/IP
6 139 (4.24%) WAN
7 137 (4.18%) LAN
8 128 (3.90%) Wi-Fi
9 105 (3.20%) Network Security
10 90 (2.74%) SAN
11 87 (2.65%) VLAN
12 60 (1.83%) Wireless
13 55 (1.68%) SSL
14 42 (1.28%) Internet
15 41 (1.25%) NAS
16 39 (1.19%) BGP
17 34 (1.04%) HTTP
17 34 (1.04%) Skype
18 31 (0.95%) VoIP
19 30 (0.91%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 288 (8.78%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.83%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.65%) Power BI
4 41 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
5 39 (1.19%) Relational Database
5 39 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 26 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
7 22 (0.67%) MySQL
8 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
9 15 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (0.46%) Db2
9 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
10 14 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
12 10 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
13 8 (0.24%) MS Access
13 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
15 6 (0.18%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 157 (4.79%) JIRA
2 83 (2.53%) Git
3 62 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 51 (1.56%) GitLab
5 50 (1.52%) MSI
6 38 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 14 (0.43%) Artifactory
10 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 11 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
14 6 (0.18%) Robot Framework
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 5 (0.15%) Claude Code
15 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,213 (36.99%) Social Skills
2 405 (12.35%) Analytical Skills
3 386 (11.77%) Finance
4 162 (4.94%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.79%) Banking
6 123 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
7 87 (2.65%) Legal
8 80 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 73 (2.23%) Organisational Skills
10 60 (1.83%) Manufacturing
11 58 (1.77%) Telecoms
12 53 (1.62%) Retail
13 43 (1.31%) Front Office
14 42 (1.28%) Law
15 40 (1.22%) Military
16 34 (1.04%) Investment Banking
17 26 (0.79%) Police
17 26 (0.79%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.76%) French Language
18 25 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 525 (16.01%) Support Engineer
2 448 (13.66%) IT Support
3 338 (10.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 338 (10.31%) IT Engineer
4 286 (8.72%) IT Support Engineer
5 275 (8.39%) Analyst
6 257 (7.84%) Senior
7 149 (4.54%) Desktop Support
8 128 (3.90%) Desktop Engineer
9 127 (3.87%) Architect
10 125 (3.81%) 2nd Line Support
11 124 (3.78%) Lead
12 120 (3.66%) Cloud Engineer
12 120 (3.66%) Windows Engineer
13 109 (3.32%) Developer
14 102 (3.11%) Support Analyst
15 97 (2.96%) Consultant
16 84 (2.56%) Service Analyst
17 83 (2.53%) 1st Line Support
17 83 (2.53%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (8.23%) Terraform
2 147 (4.48%) .NET
3 123 (3.75%) REST
4 65 (1.98%) .NET Framework
5 56 (1.71%) Middleware
6 45 (1.37%) JSON
7 42 (1.28%) LDAP
8 40 (1.22%) WPF
9 34 (1.04%) WinForms
10 32 (0.98%) XML
11 28 (0.85%) Software Packaging
12 26 (0.79%) HTML
12 26 (0.79%) Web Services
13 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
13 23 (0.70%) ARM Templates
13 23 (0.70%) Kafka
14 21 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
15 20 (0.61%) RESTful
16 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
17 18 (0.55%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 391 (11.92%) Onboarding
2 200 (6.10%) Data Centre
3 163 (4.97%) PKI
4 108 (3.29%) Management Information System
5 90 (2.74%) Driving Licence
6 88 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
7 87 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
8 81 (2.47%) Video Conferencing
9 77 (2.35%) Cloud Native
9 77 (2.35%) Clustering
10 68 (2.07%) Replication
11 59 (1.80%) Security Posture
12 57 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.34%) Operational Technology
14 42 (1.28%) Legacy Systems
14 42 (1.28%) Linux Command Line
15 40 (1.22%) Virtual Team
16 38 (1.16%) Smartphone
17 37 (1.13%) CMDB
17 37 (1.13%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 909 (27.72%) Windows Server
2 802 (24.46%) Linux
3 575 (17.54%) Windows 10
4 208 (6.34%) Mac OS
5 147 (4.48%) Unix
6 146 (4.45%) Apple iOS
7 145 (4.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 141 (4.30%) Android
9 72 (2.20%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.68%) Windows 7
11 49 (1.49%) Ubuntu
12 45 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
13 43 (1.31%) Windows Server 2012
14 41 (1.25%) CentOS
15 33 (1.01%) AIX
16 22 (0.67%) Solaris
17 20 (0.61%) VMS
18 19 (0.58%) Windows Server 2008
19 15 (0.46%) Rocky
20 12 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 791 (24.12%) Problem-Solving
2 618 (18.85%) ITIL
3 574 (17.51%) Customer Service
4 445 (13.57%) ITSM
5 430 (13.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 425 (12.96%) Migration
7 361 (11.01%) Continuous Improvement
8 327 (9.97%) Service Management
9 316 (9.64%) DevOps
10 291 (8.87%) CI/CD
11 275 (8.39%) Infrastructure as Code
12 257 (7.84%) Agile
12 257 (7.84%) Stakeholder Management
13 232 (7.08%) Root Cause Analysis
14 230 (7.01%) Change Management
15 214 (6.53%) Disaster Recovery
16 213 (6.50%) Validation
17 207 (6.31%) Cybersecurity
18 189 (5.76%) Service Delivery
19 182 (5.55%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 775 (23.64%) PowerShell
2 345 (10.52%) Python
3 317 (9.67%) SQL
4 193 (5.89%) Bash
5 169 (5.15%) C#
6 74 (2.26%) Java
6 74 (2.26%) T-SQL
7 61 (1.86%) JavaScript
8 57 (1.74%) PL/SQL
9 51 (1.56%) Bicep
10 38 (1.16%) C++
11 29 (0.88%) VB
11 29 (0.88%) VBScript
12 21 (0.64%) Perl
13 19 (0.58%) VBA
14 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
15 16 (0.49%) TypeScript
16 12 (0.37%) Go
16 12 (0.37%) Groovy
16 12 (0.37%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 1,002 (30.56%) Security Cleared
2 601 (18.33%) SC Cleared
3 387 (11.80%) DV Cleared
4 301 (9.18%) Degree
5 126 (3.84%) Microsoft Certification
6 95 (2.90%) Azure Certification
7 90 (2.74%) Cisco Certification
8 73 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
9 70 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
10 65 (1.98%) CISSP
11 57 (1.74%) A+ Certification
12 56 (1.71%) AWS Certification
13 51 (1.56%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 47 (1.43%) CCNA
15 45 (1.37%) DBS Check
16 40 (1.22%) CCNP
17 35 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.04%) MCSE
19 33 (1.01%) CISM
20 32 (0.98%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 172 (5.25%) SLA
2 110 (3.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 93 (2.84%) QA
4 83 (2.53%) NIST
5 39 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (1.01%) GDPR
7 29 (0.88%) NCSC
8 22 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) GRC
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 13 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.37%) Disclosure Scotland
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.30%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,358 (41.42%) Active Directory
2 501 (15.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 226 (6.89%) Hyper-V
4 158 (4.82%) VMware ESXi
5 142 (4.33%) vSphere
6 123 (3.75%) Docker
7 111 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
8 101 (3.08%) Virtual Desktop
9 77 (2.35%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.19%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.04%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.49%) NFS
15 15 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
16 13 (0.40%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 12 (0.37%) XenApp
18 11 (0.34%) KVM
19 10 (0.30%) XenDesktop
20 8 (0.24%) UAG
Systems Management
1 460 (14.03%) Microsoft Intune
2 360 (10.98%) SCCM
3 228 (6.95%) Ansible
4 166 (5.06%) Kubernetes
5 123 (3.75%) vCenter Server
6 105 (3.20%) SCOM
7 54 (1.65%) Jamf Pro
8 41 (1.25%) WSUS
9 36 (1.10%) Grafana
10 33 (1.01%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.01%) Prometheus
11 32 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
12 31 (0.95%) NetBackup
13 29 (0.88%) WMI
14 27 (0.82%) Puppet
14 27 (0.82%) VxRail
15 25 (0.76%) Nagios
16 22 (0.67%) Packer
17 20 (0.61%) Failover Clustering
17 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,559 (47.54%) Microsoft
2 650 (19.82%) VMware
3 379 (11.56%) ServiceNow
4 243 (7.41%) Cisco
5 197 (6.01%) Oracle
6 172 (5.25%) Citrix
7 111 (3.39%) Apple
8 106 (3.23%) Splunk
9 102 (3.11%) CyberArk
10 86 (2.62%) Google
11 82 (2.50%) Red Hat
12 80 (2.44%) BeyondTrust
13 79 (2.41%) SolarWinds
14 61 (1.86%) Dell
15 57 (1.74%) Remedy
16 54 (1.65%) Palo Alto
17 50 (1.52%) NetApp
18 47 (1.43%) HP
19 42 (1.28%) CrowdStrike
20 41 (1.25%) Meraki