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 1 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,293 2,668 3,126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.00% 8.07% 8.26%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.13% 59.55% 58.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,090 1,778 1,987
10th Percentile £173 £163 £178
25th Percentile £225 £208 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £560 £538 £565
90th Percentile £668 £630 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +17.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 245 166
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.21 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +7.47%
75th Percentile £60.92 £30.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% +11.17%

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 5,387 4,480 5,321
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.81% 13.55% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,401 2,858 3,320
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £281 £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 £663 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 297 254
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.08
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.85
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £69.45
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.20
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.25% +39.93%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 2,875 £420 +5.00% 2,566
UK excluding London -13 2,126 £413 +17.86% 1,799
London -5 963 £416 -2.12% 915
Work from Home -11 622 £468 +6.86% 915
South East -7 565 £484 +28.93% 481
North of England -5 506 £340 +12.72% 357
North West +2 297 £350 +6.87% 195
Midlands -16 297 £400 - 295
South West -18 268 £540 +48.97% 236
East of England -1 249 £235 -32.86% 250
West Midlands -21 203 £402 +0.50% 167
Yorkshire -13 170 £282 +40.47% 130
Scotland -5 164 £263 -41.67% 104
East Midlands +3 93 £275 +22.22% 127
Wales +5 71 £468 +65.49% 61
North East -21 44 £283 +13.80% 38
Northern Ireland +3 17 £139 -30.75% 45
Channel Islands -3 2 £535 -

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
1 269 (8.17%) SharePoint
2 245 (7.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 74 (2.25%) IIS
4 63 (1.91%) Confluence
5 21 (0.64%) Apache
6 19 (0.58%) nginx
6 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
7 14 (0.43%) Tomcat
8 13 (0.39%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
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%) CICS
11 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
11 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
11 4 (0.12%) WebLogic
12 3 (0.091%) JBoss
12 3 (0.091%) OpenStack
Applications
1 232 (7.05%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.091%) Houdini
6 3 (0.091%) NUKE
7 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.061%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.030%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.030%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 51 (1.55%) 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 5 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.091%) assyst
5 3 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.091%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.030%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.030%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.030%) Monis
7 1 (0.030%) SAP BRIM
7 1 (0.030%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.030%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.030%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.030%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 1,036 (31.46%) Microsoft 365
2 1,001 (30.40%) Azure
3 545 (16.55%) Entra ID
4 344 (10.45%) AWS
5 148 (4.49%) OneDrive
6 124 (3.77%) GCP
7 119 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (2.46%) SaaS
9 75 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
10 74 (2.25%) GitHub
11 67 (2.03%) Power Platform
12 63 (1.91%) IaaS
13 47 (1.43%) PaaS
14 43 (1.31%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.12%) OpenShift
16 32 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
18 29 (0.88%) Google Workspace
19 22 (0.67%) Amazon EC2
19 22 (0.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 490 (14.88%) DNS
2 345 (10.48%) DHCP
3 337 (10.23%) Firewall
4 283 (8.59%) VPN
5 248 (7.53%) TCP/IP
6 133 (4.04%) LAN
6 133 (4.04%) WAN
7 127 (3.86%) Wi-Fi
8 105 (3.19%) Network Security
9 90 (2.73%) SAN
10 83 (2.52%) VLAN
11 60 (1.82%) Wireless
12 55 (1.67%) SSL
13 42 (1.28%) Internet
14 40 (1.21%) BGP
14 40 (1.21%) NAS
15 35 (1.06%) Skype
16 33 (1.00%) VoIP
17 32 (0.97%) HTTP
18 28 (0.85%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (9.02%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.82%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.61%) Power BI
4 43 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.18%) Relational Database
7 28 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
8 23 (0.70%) MySQL
9 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 17 (0.52%) Db2
11 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 15 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
12 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
14 11 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
15 8 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
15 8 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
15 8 (0.24%) MS Access
15 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
16 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 159 (4.83%) JIRA
2 85 (2.58%) Git
3 65 (1.97%) Jenkins
4 52 (1.58%) GitLab
4 52 (1.58%) MSI
5 37 (1.12%) Visual Studio
6 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.46%) Artifactory
7 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
8 11 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 10 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
10 9 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
11 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
13 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
13 6 (0.18%) Robot Framework
13 6 (0.18%) Selenium
13 6 (0.18%) SonarQube
13 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,203 (36.53%) Social Skills
2 397 (12.06%) Analytical Skills
3 388 (11.78%) Finance
4 165 (5.01%) Public Sector
5 156 (4.74%) Banking
6 122 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
7 84 (2.55%) Legal
8 80 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 73 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
10 61 (1.85%) Manufacturing
11 58 (1.76%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.58%) Retail
13 42 (1.28%) Front Office
14 41 (1.25%) Military
15 40 (1.21%) Law
16 34 (1.03%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.85%) Police
18 25 (0.76%) Aerospace
18 25 (0.76%) Financial Institution
18 25 (0.76%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 529 (16.06%) Support Engineer
2 445 (13.51%) IT Support
3 341 (10.36%) IT Engineer
4 339 (10.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 288 (8.75%) IT Support Engineer
6 274 (8.32%) Analyst
7 260 (7.90%) Senior
8 149 (4.52%) Desktop Support
9 130 (3.95%) Architect
9 130 (3.95%) Desktop Engineer
10 126 (3.83%) Cloud Engineer
11 125 (3.80%) 2nd Line Support
12 122 (3.70%) Lead
12 122 (3.70%) Windows Engineer
13 109 (3.31%) Developer
14 99 (3.01%) Consultant
15 96 (2.92%) Support Analyst
16 84 (2.55%) Service Analyst
17 83 (2.52%) Desktop Support Engineer
18 82 (2.49%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (8.32%) Terraform
2 150 (4.56%) .NET
3 122 (3.70%) REST
4 66 (2.00%) .NET Framework
5 58 (1.76%) Middleware
6 48 (1.46%) LDAP
7 46 (1.40%) JSON
8 41 (1.25%) WPF
9 32 (0.97%) WinForms
9 32 (0.97%) XML
10 30 (0.91%) Web Services
11 27 (0.82%) Software Packaging
12 25 (0.76%) HTML
12 25 (0.76%) Kafka
13 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
13 23 (0.70%) ARM Templates
14 21 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
15 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
15 20 (0.61%) RESTful
16 18 (0.55%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 396 (12.03%) Onboarding
2 206 (6.26%) Data Centre
3 166 (5.04%) PKI
4 108 (3.28%) Management Information System
5 94 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
6 89 (2.70%) Driving Licence
7 86 (2.61%) Hybrid Cloud
8 81 (2.46%) Cloud Native
8 81 (2.46%) Video Conferencing
9 79 (2.40%) Clustering
10 69 (2.10%) Replication
11 63 (1.91%) Security Posture
12 55 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
13 44 (1.34%) Operational Technology
14 40 (1.21%) Enterprise Storage
14 40 (1.21%) Linux Command Line
14 40 (1.21%) Smartphone
15 39 (1.18%) Virtual Team
16 36 (1.09%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 929 (28.21%) Windows Server
2 796 (24.17%) Linux
3 574 (17.43%) Windows 10
4 206 (6.26%) Mac OS
5 150 (4.56%) Apple iOS
6 146 (4.43%) Unix
7 144 (4.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 143 (4.34%) Android
9 72 (2.19%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.67%) Windows 7
11 48 (1.46%) Ubuntu
12 44 (1.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 43 (1.31%) Windows Server 2012
14 40 (1.21%) CentOS
15 31 (0.94%) AIX
16 20 (0.61%) Solaris
17 17 (0.52%) VMS
17 17 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
18 16 (0.49%) Rocky
19 12 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 787 (23.90%) Problem-Solving
2 624 (18.95%) ITIL
3 568 (17.25%) Customer Service
4 449 (13.63%) ITSM
5 434 (13.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 429 (13.03%) Migration
7 368 (11.18%) Continuous Improvement
8 332 (10.08%) Service Management
9 319 (9.69%) DevOps
10 299 (9.08%) CI/CD
11 287 (8.72%) Infrastructure as Code
12 266 (8.08%) Stakeholder Management
13 263 (7.99%) Agile
14 241 (7.32%) Root Cause Analysis
15 235 (7.14%) Change Management
16 226 (6.86%) Disaster Recovery
17 219 (6.65%) Validation
18 218 (6.62%) Cybersecurity
19 190 (5.77%) Service Delivery
20 187 (5.68%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 794 (24.11%) PowerShell
2 346 (10.51%) Python
3 320 (9.72%) SQL
4 200 (6.07%) Bash
5 173 (5.25%) C#
6 79 (2.40%) T-SQL
7 74 (2.25%) Java
8 62 (1.88%) JavaScript
9 54 (1.64%) PL/SQL
10 52 (1.58%) Bicep
11 39 (1.18%) C++
12 29 (0.88%) VB
12 29 (0.88%) VBScript
13 21 (0.64%) Perl
14 19 (0.58%) VBA
15 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 15 (0.46%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.39%) Go
18 12 (0.36%) Groovy
19 11 (0.33%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 1,007 (30.58%) Security Cleared
2 602 (18.28%) SC Cleared
3 392 (11.90%) DV Cleared
4 297 (9.02%) Degree
5 126 (3.83%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (2.79%) Azure Certification
7 89 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
9 67 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
10 64 (1.94%) CISSP
11 56 (1.70%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.67%) AWS Certification
13 52 (1.58%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 47 (1.43%) DBS Check
15 45 (1.37%) CCNA
16 41 (1.25%) CCNP
17 37 (1.12%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.03%) CISM
18 34 (1.03%) MCSE
19 32 (0.97%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 175 (5.31%) SLA
2 111 (3.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (2.79%) QA
4 84 (2.55%) NIST
5 38 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
6 32 (0.97%) GDPR
7 30 (0.91%) NCSC
8 26 (0.79%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) GRC
10 16 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 16 (0.49%) GxP
11 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 12 (0.36%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.36%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.36%) WCAG
13 11 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
13 11 (0.33%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.33%) PMO
14 10 (0.30%) GMP
System Software
1 1,374 (41.72%) Active Directory
2 498 (15.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 230 (6.98%) Hyper-V
4 156 (4.74%) VMware ESXi
5 142 (4.31%) vSphere
6 122 (3.70%) Docker
7 109 (3.31%) Virtual Machines
8 107 (3.25%) Virtual Desktop
9 76 (2.31%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.21%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.09%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) vCloud
13 20 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
14 18 (0.55%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.46%) NFS
16 14 (0.43%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 12 (0.36%) KVM
17 12 (0.36%) XenApp
18 10 (0.30%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.30%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 470 (14.27%) Microsoft Intune
2 367 (11.14%) SCCM
3 229 (6.95%) Ansible
4 168 (5.10%) Kubernetes
5 122 (3.70%) vCenter Server
6 104 (3.16%) SCOM
7 53 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
8 43 (1.31%) WSUS
9 38 (1.15%) Grafana
10 35 (1.06%) Prometheus
11 33 (1.00%) Progress Chef
12 32 (0.97%) NetBackup
13 31 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
14 30 (0.91%) WMI
15 29 (0.88%) Puppet
16 25 (0.76%) VxRail
17 23 (0.70%) Nagios
18 22 (0.67%) Packer
19 21 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
20 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,576 (47.86%) Microsoft
2 648 (19.68%) VMware
3 382 (11.60%) ServiceNow
4 242 (7.35%) Cisco
5 199 (6.04%) Oracle
6 178 (5.41%) Citrix
7 114 (3.46%) Apple
8 108 (3.28%) Splunk
9 105 (3.19%) CyberArk
10 91 (2.76%) Google
11 81 (2.46%) Red Hat
12 80 (2.43%) BeyondTrust
13 78 (2.37%) SolarWinds
14 60 (1.82%) Dell
15 57 (1.73%) Palo Alto
16 55 (1.67%) Remedy
17 52 (1.58%) NetApp
18 46 (1.40%) HP
19 43 (1.31%) Meraki
20 42 (1.28%) CrowdStrike