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

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 22 19 16
Rank change year-on-year -3 -3 -1
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,848 2,963 4,284
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 7.80% 8.20% 9.52%
As % of the Operating Systems category 59.17% 58.22% 63.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,916 1,850 2,859
10th Percentile £163 £180 £160
25th Percentile £204 £240 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £390 £425 £410
Median % change year-on-year -8.24% +3.66% -3.53%
75th Percentile £538 £560 £575
90th Percentile £625 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £325 £384 £385
% change year-on-year -15.36% -0.26% +4.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 132 254
10th Percentile £15.30 £15.22 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.37 £19.27 £17.72
Median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.02% +9.91% +7.32%
75th Percentile £39.21 £57.62 £54.55
90th Percentile £65.60 £67.50 £67.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £21.00
% change year-on-year -9.02% +15.14% +11.58%

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 4,813 5,089 6,782
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.19% 14.09% 15.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,116 3,119 4,612
10th Percentile £180 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £325 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £563 £586 £608
90th Percentile £662 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £440 £441
% change year-on-year -9.09% -0.23% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 205 345
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.10 £14.66
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.50 £17.75
Median hourly rate £25.08 £50.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.85% +66.67% +20.00%
75th Percentile £54.75 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.84 £70.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £51.25 £27.00
% change year-on-year -51.22% +89.81% +20.00%

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 5 December 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 5 December 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 5 December 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 -2 2,536 £375 -7.41% 1,281
UK excluding London -2 1,900 £325 -15.36% 1,241
London -14 779 £425 - 231
Work from Home -10 571 £425 -5.56% 454
South East +2 519 £350 -15.66% 443
North of England -3 409 £248 -37.94% 274
South West +4 328 £425 +0.47% 134
Midlands -4 305 £383 +9.29% 190
North West -3 233 £305 -28.24% 144
West Midlands -4 212 £430 +32.31% 123
East of England 0 203 £225 -35.71% 156
Yorkshire -12 148 £230 -34.33% 109
Scotland -14 109 £425 -2.86% 46
East Midlands +2 93 £210 -44.00% 66
Wales -2 43 £180 -18.18% 30
North East +2 31 £189 -41.02% 30
Northern Ireland -13 15 £203 +21.26% 10

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
1 252 (8.85%) Microsoft Exchange
2 181 (6.36%) SharePoint
3 82 (2.88%) Confluence
4 53 (1.86%) Apache
5 45 (1.58%) IIS
6 25 (0.88%) WebSphere
7 23 (0.81%) WebLogic
8 22 (0.77%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.70%) JBoss
10 15 (0.53%) Exchange Server 2010
10 15 (0.53%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.49%) nginx
12 13 (0.46%) Exchange Server 2013
13 11 (0.39%) WebSphere Application Server
14 10 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2003
14 10 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2007
14 10 (0.35%) iPlanet
14 10 (0.35%) Office Communications Server
15 9 (0.32%) SAS
15 9 (0.32%) Tomcat
Applications
1 281 (9.87%) Microsoft Office
2 94 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 29 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.35%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 9 (0.32%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.18%) 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 18 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
2 7 (0.25%) assyst
3 5 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.14%) Maximo
4 4 (0.14%) Oracle 11i
5 3 (0.11%) ION MarketView
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%) OpenText MBPM
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.035%) Pegasus Opera
7 1 (0.035%) Primavera
7 1 (0.035%) RMDS
7 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.035%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 732 (25.70%) Microsoft 365
2 638 (22.40%) Azure
3 271 (9.52%) AWS
4 232 (8.15%) Entra ID
5 84 (2.95%) OneDrive
6 80 (2.81%) SaaS
7 70 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
8 69 (2.42%) GitHub
9 65 (2.28%) GCP
10 60 (2.11%) IaaS
11 44 (1.54%) Google Workspace
12 42 (1.47%) PaaS
13 40 (1.40%) Power Platform
14 35 (1.23%) Amazon S3
15 34 (1.19%) Amazon EC2
16 33 (1.16%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 32 (1.12%) Azure Monitor
18 30 (1.05%) Azure Sentinel
19 28 (0.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 25 (0.88%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 345 (12.11%) DNS
2 334 (11.73%) Firewall
3 212 (7.44%) DHCP
4 198 (6.95%) TCP/IP
5 164 (5.76%) VPN
6 100 (3.51%) Wi-Fi
7 92 (3.23%) LAN
8 87 (3.05%) Network Security
8 87 (3.05%) WAN
9 65 (2.28%) Wireless
10 64 (2.25%) VLAN
11 63 (2.21%) SSH
12 61 (2.14%) SAN
13 55 (1.93%) HTTP
14 53 (1.86%) Cisco IOS
15 36 (1.26%) SSL
16 32 (1.12%) Skype
17 31 (1.09%) FTP
17 31 (1.09%) SMTP
17 31 (1.09%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 131 (4.60%) SQL Server
2 88 (3.09%) Oracle Database
3 64 (2.25%) Relational Database
4 47 (1.65%) MySQL
5 30 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
5 30 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
6 16 (0.56%) Power BI
7 14 (0.49%) Oracle Reports
8 11 (0.39%) Amazon Aurora
8 11 (0.39%) GIS
8 11 (0.39%) NoSQL
9 10 (0.35%) BigQuery
10 9 (0.32%) RDBMS
11 8 (0.28%) DB2
11 8 (0.28%) SAP HANA
12 7 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (0.25%) Data Lake
12 7 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
12 7 (0.25%) MongoDB
13 6 (0.21%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 166 (5.83%) JIRA
2 109 (3.83%) Git
3 106 (3.72%) Jenkins
4 49 (1.72%) GitLab
5 42 (1.47%) Eclipse
6 41 (1.44%) Visual Studio
7 33 (1.16%) MSI
8 31 (1.09%) Bitbucket
9 24 (0.84%) Vagrant
10 21 (0.74%) Android Studio
11 20 (0.70%) Browser DevTools
12 19 (0.67%) Xcode
13 18 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
14 15 (0.53%) InstallShield
15 14 (0.49%) Artifactory
15 14 (0.49%) Bitbucket Server
15 14 (0.49%) CA Release Automation
16 13 (0.46%) IntelliJ
17 12 (0.42%) AdminStudio
17 12 (0.42%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 1,072 (37.64%) Social Skills
2 364 (12.78%) Finance
3 269 (9.45%) Public Sector
4 255 (8.95%) Analytical Skills
5 138 (4.85%) Banking
6 122 (4.28%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (2.91%) Legal
8 68 (2.39%) Manufacturing
9 63 (2.21%) Organisational Skills
10 55 (1.93%) Telecoms
11 54 (1.90%) Military
12 52 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 49 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
14 44 (1.54%) Retail
15 40 (1.40%) Marketing
16 29 (1.02%) Aerospace
17 28 (0.98%) Electronics
17 28 (0.98%) Games
18 24 (0.84%) Front Office
19 23 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 443 (15.55%) Support Engineer
2 346 (12.15%) Analyst
3 321 (11.27%) IT Support
4 198 (6.95%) IT Engineer
5 161 (5.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 160 (5.62%) Windows Engineer
7 147 (5.16%) Support Analyst
8 146 (5.13%) Desktop Support
9 145 (5.09%) Desktop Engineer
10 140 (4.92%) IT Support Engineer
11 136 (4.78%) Architect
12 135 (4.74%) Deployment Engineer
13 133 (4.67%) Senior
14 115 (4.04%) 2nd Line Support
15 113 (3.97%) Developer
16 110 (3.86%) Technical Support
17 105 (3.69%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 104 (3.65%) Platform Engineer
19 92 (3.23%) Administrator
20 81 (2.84%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (2.67%) .NET
2 54 (1.90%) LDAP
3 48 (1.69%) Middleware
4 43 (1.51%) .NET Framework
4 43 (1.51%) REST
5 39 (1.37%) Web Services
6 38 (1.33%) OAuth
7 36 (1.26%) AngularJS
7 36 (1.26%) Node.js
7 36 (1.26%) SAML
8 35 (1.23%) WPF
9 33 (1.16%) React
10 30 (1.05%) OpenID
10 30 (1.05%) XML
11 26 (0.91%) CSS
11 26 (0.91%) SOAP
12 23 (0.81%) Kafka
13 21 (0.74%) Ajax
14 20 (0.70%) GraphQL
15 19 (0.67%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 116 (4.07%) Onboarding
2 96 (3.37%) Data Centre
3 94 (3.30%) PKI
4 77 (2.70%) Driving Licence
5 68 (2.39%) Replication
6 62 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
6 62 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
7 60 (2.11%) Management Information System
8 42 (1.47%) Security Posture
8 42 (1.47%) Smartphone
9 36 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
10 34 (1.19%) iPhone
11 33 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
11 33 (1.16%) NHS
11 33 (1.16%) Video Conferencing
12 32 (1.12%) Mobile App
13 31 (1.09%) Public Cloud
14 30 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
15 29 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
16 28 (0.98%) iPad
Operating Systems
1 723 (25.39%) Linux
2 587 (20.61%) Windows 10
3 545 (19.14%) Windows Server
4 192 (6.74%) Unix
5 159 (5.58%) Android
5 159 (5.58%) Mac OS
6 99 (3.48%) Apple iOS
7 82 (2.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 66 (2.32%) Windows Server 2016
9 63 (2.21%) Windows 7
10 58 (2.04%) Windows Server 2019
11 45 (1.58%) Windows Server 2012
12 40 (1.40%) VMS
13 35 (1.23%) Ubuntu
13 35 (1.23%) Windows Server 2003
14 28 (0.98%) AIX
15 21 (0.74%) Amazon Linux
16 18 (0.63%) CentOS
16 18 (0.63%) Solaris
17 14 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 504 (17.70%) Problem-Solving
2 417 (14.64%) ITIL
3 382 (13.41%) Customer Service
4 296 (10.39%) Migration
5 294 (10.32%) Agile
6 245 (8.60%) DevOps
7 238 (8.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 220 (7.72%) Service Management
9 215 (7.55%) CI/CD
10 206 (7.23%) ITSM
11 204 (7.16%) Cybersecurity
12 185 (6.50%) Continuous Improvement
13 158 (5.55%) Change Management
14 129 (4.53%) User Experience
15 123 (4.32%) Incident Response
16 122 (4.28%) Stakeholder Management
17 115 (4.04%) Cloud Security
18 112 (3.93%) Service Delivery
19 111 (3.90%) Incident Management
20 107 (3.76%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 524 (18.40%) PowerShell
2 365 (12.82%) Python
3 290 (10.18%) SQL
4 150 (5.27%) Java
5 145 (5.09%) C#
6 125 (4.39%) Bash
7 88 (3.09%) JavaScript
8 81 (2.84%) Perl
9 77 (2.70%) C++
10 47 (1.65%) PL/SQL
11 39 (1.37%) Shell Script
12 35 (1.23%) VB
13 32 (1.12%) Groovy
14 31 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
14 31 (1.09%) VBScript
15 27 (0.95%) T-SQL
15 27 (0.95%) VBA
16 25 (0.88%) C
17 23 (0.81%) PHP
18 18 (0.63%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 822 (28.86%) Security Cleared
2 571 (20.05%) SC Cleared
3 272 (9.55%) Degree
4 208 (7.30%) DV Cleared
5 193 (6.78%) Microsoft Certification
6 71 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
7 69 (2.42%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
9 53 (1.86%) A+ Certification
10 51 (1.79%) MCSE
11 40 (1.40%) ITIL Certification
12 39 (1.37%) AWS Certification
13 38 (1.33%) CISSP
14 34 (1.19%) CCNA
14 34 (1.19%) CCNP
15 31 (1.09%) DBS Check
16 29 (1.02%) BPSS Clearance
17 26 (0.91%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 25 (0.88%) MCSA
19 23 (0.81%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (3.13%) SLA
2 79 (2.77%) QA
3 72 (2.53%) GDPR
4 60 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 51 (1.79%) NIST
6 24 (0.84%) PCI DSS
7 15 (0.53%) HIPAA
8 14 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.46%) PMO
10 11 (0.39%) NCSC
11 9 (0.32%) Accessibility
12 8 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 7 (0.25%) GLBA
14 6 (0.21%) COBIT
15 5 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
16 4 (0.14%) SOC 2
17 3 (0.11%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 3 (0.11%) Data Quality
17 3 (0.11%) ECSS
17 3 (0.11%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,016 (35.67%) Active Directory
2 247 (8.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 129 (4.53%) Docker
4 86 (3.02%) Hyper-V
5 61 (2.14%) Virtual Desktop
6 54 (1.90%) Virtual Machines
7 48 (1.69%) VMware ESXi
7 48 (1.69%) vSphere
8 31 (1.09%) VMware NSX
9 24 (0.84%) DFS Replication
10 22 (0.77%) BitLocker
11 21 (0.74%) Firmware
12 20 (0.70%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.63%) NFS
14 16 (0.56%) Terminal Services
15 15 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
16 14 (0.49%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) ISA Server
17 10 (0.35%) Postfix
17 10 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 422 (14.82%) SCCM
2 295 (10.36%) Microsoft Intune
3 183 (6.43%) Terraform
4 150 (5.27%) Ansible
5 98 (3.44%) Kubernetes
6 60 (2.11%) vCenter Server
7 56 (1.97%) Single Sign-On
8 49 (1.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 45 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
10 42 (1.47%) Grafana
11 32 (1.12%) Progress Chef
12 31 (1.09%) WSUS
13 29 (1.02%) SCOM
14 28 (0.98%) Nessus
14 28 (0.98%) Prometheus
15 20 (0.70%) Puppet
16 18 (0.63%) Microsoft Clustering
17 16 (0.56%) Proxmox
18 15 (0.53%) WMI
19 14 (0.49%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,237 (43.43%) Microsoft
2 354 (12.43%) VMware
3 259 (9.09%) ServiceNow
4 235 (8.25%) Oracle
5 185 (6.50%) Cisco
6 176 (6.18%) Citrix
7 149 (5.23%) Splunk
8 84 (2.95%) Apple
9 76 (2.67%) HP
10 71 (2.49%) Red Hat
11 65 (2.28%) IBM
12 59 (2.07%) Dell
13 54 (1.90%) SAP
13 54 (1.90%) Veeam
14 48 (1.69%) Google
15 45 (1.58%) SolarWinds
16 43 (1.51%) AppDynamics
16 43 (1.51%) NetApp
17 41 (1.44%) CyberArk
18 38 (1.33%) Remedy