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 24 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,952 2,525 3,554
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.80% 8.41% 8.18%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.89% 60.31% 60.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,895 1,712 2,393
10th Percentile £165 £181 £165
25th Percentile £222 £237 £235
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.56%
75th Percentile £557 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £414 £400 £430
% change year-on-year +3.44% -6.98% +10.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 249 179 293
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.12 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.25 £16.95 £14.27
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.30
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% +3.11% -23.75%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £29.38
90th Percentile £68.40 £63.75 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.85 £17.72
% change year-on-year +36.64% +6.35% -21.09%

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 4,848 4,187 5,862
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.52% 13.94% 13.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,096 2,731 3,861
10th Percentile £190 £200 £188
25th Percentile £313 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.43% -2.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £584 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £455
% change year-on-year - -1.10% -1.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 214 432
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.44 £16.00
Median hourly rate £28.00 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +27.27% -9.02% -45.18%
75th Percentile £64.38 £41.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.23 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.08 £18.87 £27.50
% change year-on-year +43.51% -31.38% -26.67%

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 24 June 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 24 June 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 24 June 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 2,583 £425 - 882
UK excluding London -14 1,951 £414 +3.44% 810
London -21 832 £425 -2.86% 206
Work from Home -13 627 £480 +1.32% 290
South East -8 520 £475 -5.00% 265
North of England -8 464 £365 +3.11% 171
Midlands -13 277 £336 +22.27% 119
South West -13 257 £488 +0.52% 131
North West -7 243 £350 -4.89% 97
East of England -3 215 £335 +3.00% 88
Yorkshire -14 203 £365 -8.75% 55
West Midlands -24 172 £450 +50.00% 55
Scotland -4 169 £425 - 27
East Midlands +10 100 £244 +21.88% 64
Wales +4 47 £375 +30.43% 20
North East -39 22 £326 +8.75% 24
Northern Ireland -6 14 £139 -30.75% 26
Channel Islands +2 2 £500 -

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
1 232 (7.86%) Microsoft Exchange
2 190 (6.44%) SharePoint
3 60 (2.03%) IIS
4 57 (1.93%) Confluence
5 19 (0.64%) Tomcat
6 18 (0.61%) Apache
7 16 (0.54%) nginx
8 14 (0.47%) Skype for Business
9 11 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
10 10 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 9 (0.30%) NetWeaver
12 8 (0.27%) HCL Notes
13 7 (0.24%) Appian
13 7 (0.24%) SAS
14 5 (0.17%) Camunda
14 5 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 4 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 4 (0.14%) Documentum
15 4 (0.14%) TPMS
16 3 (0.10%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 188 (6.37%) Microsoft Office
2 67 (2.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 23 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.24%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.17%) PTC Creo
5 5 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.14%) Acrobat
7 2 (0.068%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.034%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 42 (1.42%) Remedy ITSM
2 18 (0.61%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.41%) Teamcenter
4 9 (0.30%) Finacle
5 5 (0.17%) OpenText MBPM
5 5 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
6 3 (0.10%) assyst
6 3 (0.10%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 2 (0.068%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.068%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 2 (0.068%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 1 (0.034%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.034%) Dynamics GP
8 1 (0.034%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.034%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.034%) Oracle EBS
8 1 (0.034%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.034%) Oracle FAH
8 1 (0.034%) Oracle Receivables
8 1 (0.034%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 885 (29.98%) Azure
2 813 (27.54%) Microsoft 365
3 376 (12.74%) Entra ID
4 302 (10.23%) AWS
5 117 (3.96%) OneDrive
6 90 (3.05%) GCP
7 79 (2.68%) Azure DevOps
8 77 (2.61%) SaaS
9 67 (2.27%) GitHub
10 61 (2.07%) IaaS
11 59 (2.00%) Power Platform
12 52 (1.76%) PaaS
13 45 (1.52%) Azure Monitor
14 39 (1.32%) OpenShift
15 38 (1.29%) Azure Sentinel
16 31 (1.05%) GitHub Actions
17 30 (1.02%) Google Workspace
18 26 (0.88%) AWS CloudFormation
19 23 (0.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
20 22 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 392 (13.28%) DNS
2 304 (10.30%) Firewall
3 276 (9.35%) DHCP
4 214 (7.25%) VPN
5 188 (6.37%) WAN
6 182 (6.17%) TCP/IP
7 181 (6.13%) LAN
8 147 (4.98%) Wi-Fi
9 89 (3.01%) SAN
10 66 (2.24%) Network Security
11 59 (2.00%) VLAN
12 45 (1.52%) BGP
13 44 (1.49%) SD-WAN
14 41 (1.39%) Internet
14 41 (1.39%) NAS
15 40 (1.36%) SSL
16 38 (1.29%) VoIP
17 36 (1.22%) Wireless
18 35 (1.19%) OSPF
18 35 (1.19%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 246 (8.33%) SQL Server
2 60 (2.03%) Oracle Database
3 37 (1.25%) Power BI
4 29 (0.98%) Relational Database
5 26 (0.88%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (0.85%) MySQL
7 18 (0.61%) Amazon RDS
7 18 (0.61%) Elasticsearch
8 16 (0.54%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (0.54%) Db2
9 15 (0.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 13 (0.44%) NoSQL
11 12 (0.41%) RDBMS
12 10 (0.34%) GIS
12 10 (0.34%) MongoDB
13 9 (0.30%) SAP HANA
14 8 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
14 8 (0.27%) Oracle BI EE
14 8 (0.27%) Sybase ASE
15 7 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 183 (6.20%) JIRA
2 53 (1.80%) Git
3 51 (1.73%) Jenkins
4 44 (1.49%) MSI
5 42 (1.42%) GitLab
6 38 (1.29%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.58%) Eclipse
8 10 (0.34%) Burp Suite
9 9 (0.30%) Chocolatey
9 9 (0.30%) Metasploit
10 8 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.20%) Artifactory
12 6 (0.20%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.20%) Xcode
13 5 (0.17%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.17%) Maven
13 5 (0.17%) Selenium
General
1 1,014 (34.35%) Social Skills
2 324 (10.98%) Analytical Skills
3 315 (10.67%) Finance
4 201 (6.81%) Public Sector
5 153 (5.18%) Banking
6 118 (4.00%) Legal
7 105 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
8 79 (2.68%) Organisational Skills
9 57 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 53 (1.80%) Retail
11 49 (1.66%) Military
12 42 (1.42%) Manufacturing
13 37 (1.25%) Investment Banking
14 35 (1.19%) Front Office
15 31 (1.05%) Law
16 29 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
16 29 (0.98%) Telecoms
17 26 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 23 (0.78%) French Language
19 18 (0.61%) Police
Job Titles
1 383 (12.97%) Support Engineer
2 370 (12.53%) IT Support
3 292 (9.89%) Analyst
4 265 (8.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 251 (8.50%) IT Engineer
6 208 (7.05%) IT Support Engineer
7 180 (6.10%) Senior
8 159 (5.39%) Architect
9 120 (4.07%) Desktop Support
10 109 (3.69%) Desktop Engineer
10 109 (3.69%) Support Analyst
11 104 (3.52%) 2nd Line Support
12 101 (3.42%) Developer
13 100 (3.39%) Lead
14 91 (3.08%) IT Analyst
15 90 (3.05%) Windows Engineer
16 89 (3.01%) Consultant
17 82 (2.78%) Technical Support
18 80 (2.71%) Cloud Engineer
19 73 (2.47%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (3.46%) .NET
2 97 (3.29%) REST
3 59 (2.00%) .NET Framework
4 43 (1.46%) LDAP
5 34 (1.15%) Microsoft Graph
5 34 (1.15%) SAML
6 31 (1.05%) Middleware
7 30 (1.02%) 802.1X
8 27 (0.91%) Software Packaging
9 26 (0.88%) Kafka
9 26 (0.88%) Web Services
9 26 (0.88%) WinForms
9 26 (0.88%) WPF
10 25 (0.85%) OAuth
11 22 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
12 20 (0.68%) CSS
13 18 (0.61%) JSON
14 17 (0.58%) Node.js
14 17 (0.58%) RESTful
15 16 (0.54%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 273 (9.25%) Onboarding
2 162 (5.49%) Data Centre
3 130 (4.40%) PKI
4 88 (2.98%) Enterprise Software
5 74 (2.51%) Clustering
6 71 (2.41%) Self-Motivation
7 67 (2.27%) Management Information System
8 61 (2.07%) Driving Licence
9 60 (2.03%) Cloud Native
10 56 (1.90%) Replication
11 55 (1.86%) Security Posture
12 54 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
13 52 (1.76%) Hybrid Cloud
13 52 (1.76%) Virtual Team
14 41 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
15 35 (1.19%) Smartphone
16 34 (1.15%) CMDB
17 32 (1.08%) Operational Technology
18 31 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
19 30 (1.02%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 733 (24.83%) Linux
2 705 (23.88%) Windows Server
3 489 (16.57%) Windows 10
4 181 (6.13%) Mac OS
5 154 (5.22%) Unix
6 140 (4.74%) Apple iOS
7 138 (4.67%) Android
8 109 (3.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (2.54%) Windows Server 2019
10 59 (2.00%) Windows Server 2016
11 51 (1.73%) Windows 7
12 38 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.15%) AIX
14 29 (0.98%) Ubuntu
15 24 (0.81%) Solaris
16 21 (0.71%) VMS
17 17 (0.58%) Windows Server 2008
18 16 (0.54%) Windows Server 2003
19 13 (0.44%) CentOS
20 9 (0.30%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 653 (22.12%) Problem-Solving
2 445 (15.07%) ITIL
3 429 (14.53%) Customer Service
4 348 (11.79%) Migration
5 340 (11.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 299 (10.13%) ITSM
7 275 (9.32%) DevOps
8 272 (9.21%) Agile
9 253 (8.57%) CI/CD
10 231 (7.83%) Continuous Improvement
11 210 (7.11%) High Availability
12 206 (6.98%) Service Management
13 195 (6.61%) Change Management
14 173 (5.86%) Infrastructure as Code
15 172 (5.83%) Disaster Recovery
16 160 (5.42%) Cybersecurity
17 154 (5.22%) Stakeholder Management
18 152 (5.15%) Service Delivery
19 143 (4.84%) SIEM
20 142 (4.81%) Runbook
Programming Languages
1 623 (21.10%) PowerShell
2 302 (10.23%) Python
3 282 (9.55%) SQL
4 130 (4.40%) C#
5 119 (4.03%) Bash
6 68 (2.30%) Java
7 66 (2.24%) JavaScript
8 55 (1.86%) PL/SQL
9 50 (1.69%) C++
10 47 (1.59%) T-SQL
11 27 (0.91%) Perl
12 24 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
12 24 (0.81%) VB
13 23 (0.78%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.78%) Shell Script
14 21 (0.71%) Bicep
15 20 (0.68%) VBScript
16 14 (0.47%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.44%) C
17 13 (0.44%) VBA
Qualifications
1 851 (28.83%) Security Cleared
2 555 (18.80%) SC Cleared
3 313 (10.60%) Degree
4 258 (8.74%) DV Cleared
5 112 (3.79%) Microsoft Certification
6 97 (3.29%) Cisco Certification
7 82 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
8 66 (2.24%) CISSP
9 55 (1.86%) Azure Certification
10 48 (1.63%) BPSS Clearance
11 47 (1.59%) AWS Certification
11 47 (1.59%) MCSE
12 43 (1.46%) CCNA
13 32 (1.08%) CCNP
14 30 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 29 (0.98%) CompTIA Security+
16 28 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
17 27 (0.91%) MCSA
18 26 (0.88%) CISM
19 23 (0.78%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 126 (4.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 113 (3.83%) SLA
3 91 (3.08%) NIST
4 86 (2.91%) QA
5 67 (2.27%) GDPR
6 36 (1.22%) PCI DSS
7 32 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 25 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
9 19 (0.64%) NCSC
10 13 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
10 13 (0.44%) PMO
11 12 (0.41%) Data Quality
12 11 (0.37%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.37%) SOC 2
13 10 (0.34%) FINRA
13 10 (0.34%) GRC
13 10 (0.34%) MiFID
13 10 (0.34%) NIST 800
14 8 (0.27%) Accessibility
15 6 (0.20%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,093 (37.03%) Active Directory
2 369 (12.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 155 (5.25%) Hyper-V
4 114 (3.86%) VMware ESXi
5 102 (3.46%) vSphere
6 95 (3.22%) Virtual Machines
7 90 (3.05%) Docker
8 69 (2.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 55 (1.86%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.36%) Firmware
11 38 (1.29%) BitLocker
12 28 (0.95%) Microsoft App-V
13 20 (0.68%) KVM
14 12 (0.41%) vCloud
15 11 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
16 10 (0.34%) XenDesktop
17 9 (0.30%) XenApp
18 8 (0.27%) VMware Workstation
19 6 (0.20%) etcd
19 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 393 (13.31%) Microsoft Intune
2 259 (8.77%) SCCM
3 196 (6.64%) Terraform
4 191 (6.47%) Ansible
5 138 (4.67%) Kubernetes
6 86 (2.91%) vCenter Server
7 53 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 51 (1.73%) Jamf Pro
9 46 (1.56%) FortiGate
10 40 (1.36%) SCOM
10 40 (1.36%) WSUS
11 37 (1.25%) Progress Chef
12 36 (1.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 30 (1.02%) Grafana
13 30 (1.02%) Prometheus
14 27 (0.91%) Puppet
15 24 (0.81%) Nagios
16 21 (0.71%) ZABBIX
17 20 (0.68%) Nessus
17 20 (0.68%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 1,253 (42.45%) Microsoft
2 475 (16.09%) VMware
3 261 (8.84%) ServiceNow
4 224 (7.59%) Cisco
5 193 (6.54%) Citrix
6 186 (6.30%) Oracle
7 136 (4.61%) Splunk
8 80 (2.71%) HP
9 78 (2.64%) SolarWinds
10 73 (2.47%) Apple
11 71 (2.41%) Red Hat
12 69 (2.34%) Dell
13 63 (2.13%) Google
14 61 (2.07%) CyberArk
15 59 (2.00%) F5
16 54 (1.83%) BeyondTrust
16 54 (1.83%) Remedy
17 53 (1.80%) IBM
18 51 (1.73%) Palo Alto
19 48 (1.63%) Juniper