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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,262 2,662 3,191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.00% 8.08% 8.28%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.03% 59.78% 58.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,070 1,775 2,078
10th Percentile £165 £163 £178
25th Percentile £223 £213 £246
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.86%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £663 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £358 £424
% change year-on-year +12.29% -15.57% +9.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 331 233 180
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £14.55
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £17.92
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%
75th Percentile £65.00 £37.50 £57.84
90th Percentile £74.68 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% +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 5,345 4,453 5,451
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.82% 13.51% 14.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,363 2,846 3,476
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £674 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 399 281 270
10th Percentile £14.49 £15.50 £15.96
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.30
Median hourly rate £27.00 £25.15 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.36% -49.70% +5.26%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.74 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £55.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -54.27% +19.88%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 2,845 £416 +4.00% 2,318
UK excluding London -12 2,109 £402 +12.29% 1,551
London -7 956 £420 -1.18% 903
Work from Home -13 610 £470 +5.38% 763
South East -6 556 £484 +19.38% 464
North of England -5 510 £325 +6.56% 304
North West +5 307 £335 +1.52% 169
Midlands -15 290 £400 +9.59% 273
South West -18 270 £519 +44.10% 196
East of England +1 241 £240 -31.43% 202
West Midlands -22 192 £402 +0.50% 175
Scotland -5 169 £250 -44.44% 90
Yorkshire -17 167 £245 +19.08% 95
East Midlands +2 96 £275 +22.22% 98
Wales +10 68 £446 +62.27% 30
North East -29 41 £275 - 46
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 24
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
1 267 (8.19%) SharePoint
2 244 (7.48%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.12%) IIS
4 57 (1.75%) Confluence
5 19 (0.58%) nginx
5 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.55%) Apache
7 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.34%) 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
12 3 (0.092%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
12 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 228 (6.99%) 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%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.092%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.092%) Houdini
7 3 (0.092%) NUKE
8 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 55 (1.69%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) 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 (0.092%) assyst
6 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.031%) Monis
8 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
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
Cloud Services
1 1,026 (31.45%) Microsoft 365
2 996 (30.53%) Azure
3 521 (15.97%) Entra ID
4 335 (10.27%) AWS
5 148 (4.54%) OneDrive
6 119 (3.65%) Azure DevOps
7 110 (3.37%) GCP
8 79 (2.42%) SaaS
9 75 (2.30%) Azure Monitor
10 73 (2.24%) GitHub
11 71 (2.18%) Power Platform
12 61 (1.87%) IaaS
13 47 (1.44%) PaaS
14 41 (1.26%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.13%) OpenShift
16 30 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
17 29 (0.89%) Google Workspace
18 28 (0.86%) GitHub Actions
19 24 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
20 21 (0.64%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 482 (14.78%) DNS
2 344 (10.55%) DHCP
3 337 (10.33%) Firewall
4 277 (8.49%) VPN
5 248 (7.60%) TCP/IP
6 142 (4.35%) WAN
7 139 (4.26%) LAN
8 131 (4.02%) Wi-Fi
9 102 (3.13%) Network Security
10 93 (2.85%) SAN
11 91 (2.79%) VLAN
12 56 (1.72%) Wireless
13 51 (1.56%) SSL
14 44 (1.35%) Internet
15 43 (1.32%) NAS
16 35 (1.07%) Skype
17 34 (1.04%) BGP
18 33 (1.01%) VSAN
19 32 (0.98%) HTTP
20 31 (0.95%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 291 (8.92%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.84%) Oracle Database
3 55 (1.69%) Power BI
4 40 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
4 40 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 38 (1.16%) Relational Database
6 25 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
7 22 (0.67%) MySQL
8 18 (0.55%) RDBMS
9 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 15 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
10 15 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
10 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 11 (0.34%) Db2
11 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
12 10 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
13 8 (0.25%) MS Access
13 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.21%) MongoDB
14 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 161 (4.94%) JIRA
2 78 (2.39%) Git
3 59 (1.81%) Jenkins
4 49 (1.50%) GitLab
5 47 (1.44%) MSI
6 34 (1.04%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 14 (0.43%) Artifactory
10 10 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 9 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
13 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
13 6 (0.18%) Selenium
13 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 5 (0.15%) Chocolatey
14 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
14 5 (0.15%) Robot Framework
14 5 (0.15%) SonarQube
General
1 1,205 (36.94%) Social Skills
2 402 (12.32%) Analytical Skills
3 379 (11.62%) Finance
4 164 (5.03%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.81%) Banking
6 123 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 85 (2.61%) Legal
8 78 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 75 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
10 59 (1.81%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.72%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.59%) Retail
13 44 (1.35%) Front Office
13 44 (1.35%) Law
14 39 (1.20%) Military
15 36 (1.10%) 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
1 521 (15.97%) Support Engineer
2 447 (13.70%) IT Support
3 344 (10.55%) IT Engineer
4 338 (10.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 287 (8.80%) IT Support Engineer
6 284 (8.71%) Analyst
7 258 (7.91%) Senior
8 144 (4.41%) Desktop Support
9 126 (3.86%) Architect
10 125 (3.83%) 2nd Line Support
10 125 (3.83%) Desktop Engineer
11 121 (3.71%) Lead
11 121 (3.71%) Windows Engineer
12 118 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
13 107 (3.28%) Developer
14 103 (3.16%) Support Analyst
15 95 (2.91%) Consultant
16 87 (2.67%) 1st Line Support
17 85 (2.61%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.51%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (8.19%) Terraform
2 139 (4.26%) .NET
3 120 (3.68%) REST
4 62 (1.90%) .NET Framework
5 52 (1.59%) Middleware
6 44 (1.35%) JSON
7 41 (1.26%) LDAP
8 35 (1.07%) WPF
9 33 (1.01%) WinForms
10 32 (0.98%) XML
11 29 (0.89%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.83%) HTML
13 24 (0.74%) ARM Templates
13 24 (0.74%) Kafka
13 24 (0.74%) Web Services
14 20 (0.61%) .NET Core
14 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
15 19 (0.58%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.58%) CSS
15 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 381 (11.68%) Onboarding
2 193 (5.92%) Data Centre
3 163 (5.00%) PKI
4 106 (3.25%) Management Information System
5 88 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 87 (2.67%) Driving Licence
7 86 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
8 81 (2.48%) Clustering
9 78 (2.39%) Video Conferencing
10 75 (2.30%) Cloud Native
11 71 (2.18%) Replication
12 61 (1.87%) Security Posture
13 56 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
14 43 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
14 43 (1.32%) Operational Technology
15 41 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
15 41 (1.26%) Virtual Team
16 39 (1.20%) Smartphone
17 38 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
18 36 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 896 (27.47%) Windows Server
2 792 (24.28%) Linux
3 575 (17.63%) Windows 10
4 204 (6.25%) Mac OS
5 147 (4.51%) Unix
6 146 (4.48%) Apple iOS
7 141 (4.32%) Android
8 140 (4.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 72 (2.21%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.69%) Windows 7
11 52 (1.59%) Ubuntu
12 45 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
13 42 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
14 39 (1.20%) CentOS
15 31 (0.95%) AIX
16 22 (0.67%) VMS
17 19 (0.58%) Solaris
18 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
19 15 (0.46%) Rocky
20 12 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 778 (23.85%) Problem-Solving
2 607 (18.61%) ITIL
3 570 (17.47%) Customer Service
4 438 (13.43%) ITSM
5 431 (13.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 410 (12.57%) Migration
7 357 (10.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 320 (9.81%) Service Management
9 316 (9.69%) DevOps
10 281 (8.61%) CI/CD
11 267 (8.19%) Infrastructure as Code
12 260 (7.97%) Agile
13 249 (7.63%) Stakeholder Management
14 229 (7.02%) Root Cause Analysis
15 225 (6.90%) Change Management
16 212 (6.50%) Disaster Recovery
17 203 (6.22%) Cybersecurity
17 203 (6.22%) Validation
18 190 (5.82%) Service Delivery
19 182 (5.58%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 781 (23.94%) PowerShell
2 338 (10.36%) Python
3 318 (9.75%) SQL
4 192 (5.89%) Bash
5 162 (4.97%) C#
6 73 (2.24%) T-SQL
7 71 (2.18%) Java
8 61 (1.87%) JavaScript
9 58 (1.78%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.56%) Bicep
11 35 (1.07%) C++
12 30 (0.92%) VB
13 29 (0.89%) VBScript
14 21 (0.64%) Perl
15 20 (0.61%) VBA
16 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 17 (0.52%) TypeScript
17 14 (0.43%) Search Processing Language
18 11 (0.34%) Groovy
18 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 998 (30.59%) Security Cleared
2 600 (18.39%) SC Cleared
3 384 (11.77%) DV Cleared
4 297 (9.10%) Degree
5 127 (3.89%) Microsoft Certification
6 95 (2.91%) Azure Certification
7 88 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
8 73 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
9 72 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
10 64 (1.96%) CISSP
11 56 (1.72%) A+ Certification
11 56 (1.72%) AWS Certification
12 53 (1.62%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 45 (1.38%) CCNA
13 45 (1.38%) DBS Check
14 38 (1.16%) CCNP
15 34 (1.04%) MCSE
15 34 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 32 (0.98%) CISM
16 32 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 173 (5.30%) SLA
2 112 (3.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 91 (2.79%) QA
4 85 (2.61%) NIST
5 39 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (1.01%) GDPR
7 28 (0.86%) NCSC
8 21 (0.64%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 15 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.43%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.43%) GRC
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) GMP
14 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,344 (41.20%) Active Directory
2 488 (14.96%) VMware Infrastructure
3 223 (6.84%) Hyper-V
4 159 (4.87%) VMware ESXi
5 140 (4.29%) vSphere
6 119 (3.65%) Docker
7 110 (3.37%) Virtual Machines
8 102 (3.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 79 (2.42%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.13%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.04%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) NFS
14 15 (0.46%) Virtual Servers
15 13 (0.40%) Microsoft App-V
16 12 (0.37%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.37%) XenApp
17 11 (0.34%) KVM
18 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
19 8 (0.25%) UAG
Systems Management
1 458 (14.04%) Microsoft Intune
2 356 (10.91%) SCCM
3 232 (7.11%) Ansible
4 165 (5.06%) Kubernetes
5 127 (3.89%) vCenter Server
6 104 (3.19%) SCOM
7 53 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
8 45 (1.38%) WSUS
9 34 (1.04%) Grafana
10 32 (0.98%) Progress Chef
10 32 (0.98%) Prometheus
10 32 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
11 28 (0.86%) NetBackup
11 28 (0.86%) WMI
12 26 (0.80%) VxRail
13 25 (0.77%) Puppet
14 24 (0.74%) Nagios
15 23 (0.71%) Packer
16 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Clustering
17 20 (0.61%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 1,543 (47.30%) Microsoft
2 639 (19.59%) VMware
3 384 (11.77%) ServiceNow
4 238 (7.30%) Cisco
5 197 (6.04%) Oracle
6 176 (5.40%) Citrix
7 109 (3.34%) Apple
8 105 (3.22%) Splunk
9 98 (3.00%) CyberArk
10 85 (2.61%) Google
11 81 (2.48%) Red Hat
12 79 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
13 78 (2.39%) SolarWinds
14 59 (1.81%) Dell
14 59 (1.81%) Remedy
15 52 (1.59%) Palo Alto
16 50 (1.53%) NetApp
17 49 (1.50%) HP
18 42 (1.29%) BMC
18 42 (1.29%) Meraki