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 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 22 19 15
Rank change year-on-year -3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,866 2,979 4,410
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 7.95% 8.17% 9.65%
As % of the Operating Systems category 59.35% 58.10% 63.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,927 1,847 2,931
10th Percentile £163 £181 £160
25th Percentile £204 £243 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £425 £415
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% +2.41% -2.35%
75th Percentile £538 £556 £575
90th Percentile £625 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £325 £400 £388
% change year-on-year -18.75% +3.23% +6.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 302 136 258
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.22 £14.17
25th Percentile £17.71 £18.11 £17.72
Median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.02% +7.47% +9.76%
75th Percentile £32.08 £57.62 £55.23
90th Percentile £65.00 £67.50 £66.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £24.18 £22.00
% change year-on-year -11.25% +9.91% +17.33%

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 4,829 5,127 6,959
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.40% 14.06% 15.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,119 3,125 4,717
10th Percentile £181 £200 £182
25th Percentile £273 £326 £305
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -5.88%
75th Percentile £565 £583 £611
90th Percentile £656 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £406 £440 £440
% change year-on-year -7.67% - -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 372 215 348
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.10 £15.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.50 £18.50
Median hourly rate £24.50 £50.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -51.00% +53.85% +30.00%
75th Percentile £45.00 £67.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.23 £70.00 £75.46
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £51.25 £27.50
% change year-on-year -53.17% +86.36% +22.22%

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 November 2025.

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 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Top 17 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 November 2025. 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 -3 2,551 £390 -5.45% 1,442
UK excluding London 0 1,906 £325 -18.75% 1,385
London -12 799 £438 +6.06% 300
Work from Home -9 580 £425 -5.56% 508
South East +2 511 £360 -15.29% 523
North of England -6 404 £273 -31.88% 239
South West +4 332 £425 - 182
Midlands -5 307 £383 +2.00% 207
North West -4 224 £325 -27.78% 123
West Midlands -7 214 £425 +21.43% 123
East of England +2 208 £225 -39.19% 144
Yorkshire -11 152 £250 -28.62% 99
Scotland -16 115 £450 +5.88% 75
East Midlands +1 93 £210 -44.00% 81
Wales -1 45 £230 +15.00% 34
North East +3 31 £189 -41.02% 17
Northern Ireland -11 16 £203 +21.26% 17

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 (9.32%) Microsoft Exchange
2 179 (6.25%) SharePoint
3 83 (2.90%) Confluence
4 54 (1.88%) Apache
5 42 (1.47%) IIS
6 25 (0.87%) WebSphere
7 22 (0.77%) Skype for Business
8 21 (0.73%) JBoss
9 18 (0.63%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.52%) Exchange Server 2010
10 15 (0.52%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.49%) Exchange Server 2013
11 14 (0.49%) nginx
12 11 (0.38%) WebSphere Application Server
13 10 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2003
13 10 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2007
13 10 (0.35%) iPlanet
13 10 (0.35%) Office Communications Server
14 9 (0.31%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.24%) SAS
Applications
1 278 (9.70%) Microsoft Office
2 92 (3.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 25 (0.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.35%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 8 (0.28%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.070%) Adobe Premiere
7 2 (0.070%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.070%) Windchill
8 1 (0.035%) Acrobat
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.035%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.035%) InDesign
8 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.035%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 22 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
2 7 (0.24%) assyst
3 5 (0.17%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.14%) Maximo
5 3 (0.10%) ION MarketView
5 3 (0.10%) Oracle 11i
6 2 (0.070%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.070%) Eikon
6 2 (0.070%) Fidessa
6 2 (0.070%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.070%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.070%) SystmOne
6 2 (0.070%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.035%) Aladdin
7 1 (0.035%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.035%) Eze OMS
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle BPM
7 1 (0.035%) RMDS
7 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.035%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 743 (25.92%) Microsoft 365
2 646 (22.54%) Azure
3 276 (9.63%) AWS
4 241 (8.41%) Entra ID
5 88 (3.07%) OneDrive
6 81 (2.83%) SaaS
7 73 (2.55%) GitHub
8 66 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
9 65 (2.27%) GCP
10 57 (1.99%) IaaS
11 46 (1.61%) Google Workspace
12 42 (1.47%) Power Platform
13 40 (1.40%) PaaS
14 37 (1.29%) Azure Sentinel
15 35 (1.22%) Amazon S3
16 34 (1.19%) Amazon EC2
17 33 (1.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 29 (1.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 29 (1.01%) Azure Monitor
19 26 (0.91%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 344 (12.00%) DNS
2 334 (11.65%) Firewall
3 212 (7.40%) DHCP
4 205 (7.15%) TCP/IP
5 165 (5.76%) VPN
6 104 (3.63%) Wi-Fi
7 95 (3.31%) LAN
8 90 (3.14%) WAN
9 85 (2.97%) Network Security
10 65 (2.27%) VLAN
11 63 (2.20%) SSH
12 61 (2.13%) SAN
12 61 (2.13%) Wireless
13 55 (1.92%) Cisco IOS
14 54 (1.88%) HTTP
15 35 (1.22%) SSL
16 32 (1.12%) FTP
16 32 (1.12%) SMTP
16 32 (1.12%) VoIP
17 31 (1.08%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (4.54%) SQL Server
2 84 (2.93%) Oracle Database
3 65 (2.27%) Relational Database
4 45 (1.57%) MySQL
5 31 (1.08%) Amazon RDS
5 31 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
6 18 (0.63%) Power BI
7 13 (0.45%) Oracle Reports
8 11 (0.38%) Amazon Aurora
8 11 (0.38%) GIS
8 11 (0.38%) NoSQL
9 10 (0.35%) BigQuery
9 10 (0.35%) RDBMS
10 9 (0.31%) DB2
11 8 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
11 8 (0.28%) SAP HANA
12 7 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (0.24%) Data Lake
12 7 (0.24%) Data Warehouse
12 7 (0.24%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 169 (5.90%) JIRA
2 119 (4.15%) Git
3 112 (3.91%) Jenkins
4 51 (1.78%) GitLab
5 41 (1.43%) Eclipse
6 39 (1.36%) Visual Studio
7 31 (1.08%) Bitbucket
8 30 (1.05%) MSI
9 25 (0.87%) Vagrant
10 20 (0.70%) Android Studio
11 19 (0.66%) Browser DevTools
11 19 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
12 18 (0.63%) Xcode
13 17 (0.59%) InstallShield
14 15 (0.52%) AdminStudio
14 15 (0.52%) Bitbucket Server
14 15 (0.52%) CA Release Automation
15 14 (0.49%) Artifactory
15 14 (0.49%) Postman
16 13 (0.45%) IntelliJ
General
1 1,078 (37.61%) Social Skills
2 380 (13.26%) Finance
3 271 (9.46%) Public Sector
4 270 (9.42%) Analytical Skills
5 137 (4.78%) Banking
6 124 (4.33%) Documentation Skills
7 80 (2.79%) Legal
8 67 (2.34%) Manufacturing
9 61 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
10 55 (1.92%) Telecoms
11 54 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 51 (1.78%) Military
13 49 (1.71%) Presentation Skills
14 43 (1.50%) Retail
15 39 (1.36%) Marketing
16 31 (1.08%) Games
17 27 (0.94%) Electronics
18 26 (0.91%) Aerospace
19 25 (0.87%) Front Office
20 21 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 449 (15.67%) Support Engineer
2 348 (12.14%) Analyst
3 315 (10.99%) IT Support
4 196 (6.84%) IT Engineer
5 169 (5.90%) Windows Engineer
6 163 (5.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 153 (5.34%) Desktop Engineer
8 152 (5.30%) Desktop Support
9 151 (5.27%) Support Analyst
10 140 (4.88%) Architect
11 138 (4.82%) IT Support Engineer
12 137 (4.78%) Deployment Engineer
12 137 (4.78%) Senior
13 119 (4.15%) 2nd Line Support
14 114 (3.98%) Developer
15 109 (3.80%) Desktop Support Engineer
16 108 (3.77%) Technical Support
17 107 (3.73%) Platform Engineer
18 94 (3.28%) Administrator
19 81 (2.83%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 79 (2.76%) .NET
2 54 (1.88%) LDAP
3 51 (1.78%) Middleware
4 44 (1.54%) REST
5 42 (1.47%) WPF
6 41 (1.43%) .NET Framework
7 40 (1.40%) Web Services
8 36 (1.26%) OAuth
9 35 (1.22%) AngularJS
9 35 (1.22%) Node.js
10 34 (1.19%) SAML
11 31 (1.08%) XML
12 30 (1.05%) React
13 28 (0.98%) OpenID
14 24 (0.84%) SOAP
15 23 (0.80%) CSS
16 20 (0.70%) Ajax
16 20 (0.70%) Kafka
17 19 (0.66%) GraphQL
17 19 (0.66%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 111 (3.87%) Onboarding
2 100 (3.49%) Data Centre
3 94 (3.28%) PKI
4 78 (2.72%) Driving Licence
5 68 (2.37%) Replication
6 63 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
7 62 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
8 56 (1.95%) Management Information System
9 41 (1.43%) Security Posture
10 37 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
11 36 (1.26%) Smartphone
12 35 (1.22%) iPhone
13 34 (1.19%) Video Conferencing
14 33 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
14 33 (1.15%) NHS
15 31 (1.08%) Mobile App
16 30 (1.05%) iPad
17 29 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
17 29 (1.01%) Legacy Systems
18 27 (0.94%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 722 (25.19%) Linux
2 595 (20.76%) Windows 10
3 537 (18.74%) Windows Server
4 185 (6.45%) Unix
5 160 (5.58%) Android
6 157 (5.48%) Mac OS
7 102 (3.56%) Apple iOS
8 85 (2.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 70 (2.44%) Windows 7
10 64 (2.23%) Windows Server 2016
11 59 (2.06%) Windows Server 2019
12 49 (1.71%) Windows Server 2012
13 41 (1.43%) VMS
14 37 (1.29%) Ubuntu
15 36 (1.26%) Windows Server 2003
16 26 (0.91%) AIX
17 23 (0.80%) CentOS
18 22 (0.77%) Amazon Linux
19 18 (0.63%) Solaris
20 14 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 510 (17.79%) Problem-Solving
2 419 (14.62%) ITIL
3 370 (12.91%) Customer Service
4 305 (10.64%) Migration
5 293 (10.22%) Agile
6 253 (8.83%) DevOps
7 234 (8.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 225 (7.85%) Service Management
9 220 (7.68%) Cybersecurity
10 208 (7.26%) CI/CD
11 206 (7.19%) ITSM
12 175 (6.11%) Continuous Improvement
13 160 (5.58%) Change Management
14 130 (4.54%) Incident Response
15 123 (4.29%) User Experience
16 120 (4.19%) Stakeholder Management
17 117 (4.08%) Cloud Security
18 113 (3.94%) Service Delivery
19 110 (3.84%) Incident Management
20 107 (3.73%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 531 (18.53%) PowerShell
2 372 (12.98%) Python
3 287 (10.01%) SQL
4 152 (5.30%) Java
5 151 (5.27%) C#
6 130 (4.54%) Bash
7 87 (3.04%) JavaScript
8 79 (2.76%) C++
8 79 (2.76%) Perl
9 43 (1.50%) PL/SQL
10 39 (1.36%) Shell Script
11 38 (1.33%) VB
12 34 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
13 33 (1.15%) Groovy
14 31 (1.08%) VBScript
15 29 (1.01%) C
15 29 (1.01%) VBA
16 24 (0.84%) PHP
16 24 (0.84%) T-SQL
17 15 (0.52%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 813 (28.37%) Security Cleared
2 572 (19.96%) SC Cleared
3 272 (9.49%) Degree
4 204 (7.12%) DV Cleared
5 197 (6.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 70 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
7 66 (2.30%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
9 53 (1.85%) MCSE
10 50 (1.74%) A+ Certification
11 44 (1.54%) CISSP
12 38 (1.33%) AWS Certification
12 38 (1.33%) ITIL Certification
13 34 (1.19%) CCNA
13 34 (1.19%) CCNP
14 33 (1.15%) DBS Check
15 30 (1.05%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 28 (0.98%) BPSS Clearance
17 26 (0.91%) MCSA
18 25 (0.87%) GCIH
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 90 (3.14%) SLA
2 79 (2.76%) QA
3 70 (2.44%) GDPR
4 62 (2.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 55 (1.92%) NIST
6 19 (0.66%) PCI DSS
7 18 (0.63%) HIPAA
8 14 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
9 12 (0.42%) NCSC
9 12 (0.42%) PMO
10 9 (0.31%) Accessibility
11 8 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.21%) COBIT
12 6 (0.21%) GLBA
13 5 (0.17%) Disclosure Scotland
14 4 (0.14%) SOC 2
15 3 (0.10%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 3 (0.10%) Data Quality
15 3 (0.10%) ECSS
15 3 (0.10%) GxP
System Software
1 1,021 (35.62%) Active Directory
2 255 (8.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 132 (4.61%) Docker
4 86 (3.00%) Hyper-V
5 65 (2.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 57 (1.99%) Virtual Machines
7 55 (1.92%) vSphere
8 49 (1.71%) VMware ESXi
9 31 (1.08%) VMware NSX
10 25 (0.87%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.87%) DFS Replication
10 25 (0.87%) Firmware
11 20 (0.70%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.66%) NFS
13 16 (0.56%) Terminal Services
14 15 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
15 14 (0.49%) XenApp
16 10 (0.35%) Brightmail
16 10 (0.35%) Dovecot
16 10 (0.35%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 428 (14.93%) SCCM
2 308 (10.75%) Microsoft Intune
3 180 (6.28%) Terraform
4 154 (5.37%) Ansible
5 100 (3.49%) Kubernetes
6 57 (1.99%) vCenter Server
7 54 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
8 46 (1.61%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 44 (1.54%) Grafana
10 43 (1.50%) Jamf Pro
11 33 (1.15%) Progress Chef
12 31 (1.08%) WSUS
13 30 (1.05%) Prometheus
14 28 (0.98%) SCOM
15 27 (0.94%) Nessus
16 25 (0.87%) Puppet
17 24 (0.84%) Microsoft Clustering
18 16 (0.56%) Proxmox
19 14 (0.49%) WMI
20 13 (0.45%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,265 (44.14%) Microsoft
2 363 (12.67%) VMware
3 255 (8.90%) ServiceNow
4 230 (8.03%) Oracle
5 186 (6.49%) Cisco
6 178 (6.21%) Citrix
7 153 (5.34%) Splunk
8 86 (3.00%) Apple
9 77 (2.69%) HP
10 72 (2.51%) Red Hat
11 64 (2.23%) IBM
12 59 (2.06%) Dell
13 55 (1.92%) Veeam
14 54 (1.88%) SAP
15 50 (1.74%) Google
16 46 (1.61%) SolarWinds
17 45 (1.57%) NetApp
18 44 (1.54%) AppDynamics
19 43 (1.50%) CyberArk
20 41 (1.43%) Remedy