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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,257 2,659 3,169
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.98% 8.06% 8.28%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.15% 59.65% 58.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,083 1,763 2,095
10th Percentile £170 £169 £178
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £409 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.91% -3.76% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +8.00% -11.76% +7.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 315 222 187
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £13.87
25th Percentile £16.90 £18.11 £17.44
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +5.13%
75th Percentile £56.43 £32.14 £56.88
90th Percentile £74.54 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.05% -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 5,326 4,458 5,392
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.77% 13.51% 14.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,359 2,851 3,485
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.42% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.67% -0.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 388 266 280
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.19 £18.59 £19.91
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £48.03
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -47.64% +6.75%
75th Percentile £65.22 £58.75 £68.19
90th Percentile £74.43 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £51.25
% change year-on-year +3.38% -50.93% +18.84%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -8 2,824 £420 +3.07% 1,290
UK excluding London -13 2,106 £405 +8.00% 1,064
London -14 943 £425 - 380
Work from Home -14 621 £465 +3.33% 429
South East -8 559 £484 +1.79% 344
North of England -3 514 £325 - 222
North West +4 311 £344 -1.71% 117
South West -11 285 £488 +30.00% 126
Midlands -14 285 £400 - 166
East of England -3 216 £245 -30.00% 159
West Midlands -24 186 £402 -3.71% 111
Scotland -7 173 £313 -30.56% 56
Yorkshire -15 169 £275 - 70
East Midlands +1 96 £275 +37.50% 55
Wales +9 69 £446 +62.27% 14
North East -32 38 £270 -1.82% 43
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 13
Channel Islands -1 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
1 265 (8.14%) SharePoint
2 246 (7.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 77 (2.36%) IIS
4 58 (1.78%) Confluence
5 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.55%) Apache
6 18 (0.55%) nginx
7 14 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.40%) 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%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.15%) SAS
10 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.092%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 225 (6.91%) Microsoft Office
2 75 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
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
9 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.72%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 9 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.21%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.21%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.092%) assyst
7 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
8 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,021 (31.35%) Microsoft 365
2 993 (30.49%) Azure
3 514 (15.78%) Entra ID
4 337 (10.35%) AWS
5 147 (4.51%) OneDrive
6 118 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (3.22%) GCP
8 80 (2.46%) Azure Monitor
9 77 (2.36%) SaaS
10 74 (2.27%) Power Platform
11 67 (2.06%) GitHub
12 64 (1.96%) IaaS
13 48 (1.47%) PaaS
14 44 (1.35%) Azure Sentinel
15 40 (1.23%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (0.83%) Google Workspace
18 25 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
19 24 (0.74%) GitHub Actions
20 23 (0.71%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 485 (14.89%) DNS
2 343 (10.53%) DHCP
2 343 (10.53%) Firewall
3 270 (8.29%) VPN
4 233 (7.15%) TCP/IP
5 146 (4.48%) WAN
6 141 (4.33%) LAN
7 134 (4.11%) Wi-Fi
8 93 (2.86%) SAN
9 92 (2.82%) Network Security
10 88 (2.70%) VLAN
11 54 (1.66%) Wireless
12 49 (1.50%) SSL
13 46 (1.41%) NAS
14 44 (1.35%) Internet
15 37 (1.14%) VSAN
16 35 (1.07%) Skype
17 29 (0.89%) HTTP
17 29 (0.89%) VoIP
18 28 (0.86%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (9.30%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 57 (1.75%) Power BI
4 40 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 39 (1.20%) PostgreSQL
6 38 (1.17%) Relational Database
7 24 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
7 24 (0.74%) MySQL
8 18 (0.55%) RDBMS
9 17 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
11 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 11 (0.34%) Db2
12 11 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
12 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
13 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
13 8 (0.25%) MS Access
13 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 163 (5.00%) JIRA
2 73 (2.24%) Git
3 55 (1.69%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.44%) MSI
5 46 (1.41%) GitLab
6 24 (0.74%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 10 (0.31%) Artifactory
9 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
10 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
10 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.21%) Selenium
11 7 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 5 (0.15%) Chocolatey
13 5 (0.15%) Claude Code
13 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
13 5 (0.15%) Robot Framework
General
1 1,191 (36.57%) Social Skills
2 404 (12.40%) Analytical Skills
3 377 (11.58%) Finance
4 170 (5.22%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.82%) Banking
6 124 (3.81%) Documentation Skills
7 95 (2.92%) Legal
8 76 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 75 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
10 63 (1.93%) Manufacturing
11 53 (1.63%) Retail
11 53 (1.63%) Telecoms
12 43 (1.32%) Front Office
13 40 (1.23%) Law
14 35 (1.07%) Investment Banking
15 30 (0.92%) Military
16 28 (0.86%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.77%) French Language
17 25 (0.77%) Pharmaceutical
18 22 (0.68%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 521 (16.00%) Support Engineer
2 441 (13.54%) IT Support
3 346 (10.62%) IT Engineer
4 338 (10.38%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 287 (8.81%) IT Support Engineer
6 277 (8.50%) Analyst
7 260 (7.98%) Senior
8 145 (4.45%) Desktop Support
9 127 (3.90%) Architect
10 124 (3.81%) 2nd Line Support
10 124 (3.81%) Desktop Engineer
11 121 (3.72%) Lead
11 121 (3.72%) Windows Engineer
12 118 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
13 104 (3.19%) Developer
14 103 (3.16%) Support Analyst
15 101 (3.10%) Consultant
16 88 (2.70%) 1st Line Support
17 85 (2.61%) Azure Engineer
18 84 (2.58%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (8.26%) Terraform
2 140 (4.30%) .NET
3 120 (3.68%) REST
4 67 (2.06%) .NET Framework
5 45 (1.38%) Middleware
6 42 (1.29%) JSON
7 41 (1.26%) LDAP
8 32 (0.98%) XML
9 30 (0.92%) WPF
10 29 (0.89%) Software Packaging
10 29 (0.89%) WinForms
11 28 (0.86%) Kafka
12 27 (0.83%) HTML
13 25 (0.77%) ARM Templates
14 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
15 19 (0.58%) .NET Core
15 19 (0.58%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.58%) CSS
16 18 (0.55%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 378 (11.61%) Onboarding
2 190 (5.83%) Data Centre
3 161 (4.94%) PKI
4 103 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
6 84 (2.58%) Clustering
7 83 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
8 82 (2.52%) Driving Licence
9 78 (2.39%) Cloud Native
10 74 (2.27%) Replication
11 73 (2.24%) Video Conferencing
12 57 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
13 56 (1.72%) Security Posture
14 48 (1.47%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.29%) Linux Command Line
15 42 (1.29%) Virtual Team
16 41 (1.26%) Operational Technology
17 40 (1.23%) Enterprise Storage
18 38 (1.17%) CMDB
19 37 (1.14%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 902 (27.69%) Windows Server
2 790 (24.26%) Linux
3 561 (17.22%) Windows 10
4 200 (6.14%) Mac OS
5 150 (4.61%) Unix
6 139 (4.27%) Apple iOS
7 138 (4.24%) Android
8 137 (4.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (2.30%) Windows Server 2019
10 56 (1.72%) Windows 7
11 51 (1.57%) Ubuntu
12 47 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
13 43 (1.32%) Windows Server 2012
14 38 (1.17%) CentOS
15 33 (1.01%) AIX
16 23 (0.71%) VMS
17 18 (0.55%) Solaris
17 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.43%) Rocky
19 13 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 772 (23.70%) Problem-Solving
2 599 (18.39%) ITIL
3 556 (17.07%) Customer Service
4 437 (13.42%) ITSM
5 429 (13.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 411 (12.62%) Migration
7 344 (10.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 314 (9.64%) Service Management
9 309 (9.49%) DevOps
10 261 (8.01%) CI/CD
10 261 (8.01%) Infrastructure as Code
11 258 (7.92%) Agile
12 233 (7.15%) Stakeholder Management
13 221 (6.79%) Change Management
14 217 (6.66%) Root Cause Analysis
15 211 (6.48%) Disaster Recovery
16 195 (5.99%) Cybersecurity
17 193 (5.93%) Service Delivery
18 187 (5.74%) High Availability
19 185 (5.68%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 789 (24.22%) PowerShell
2 335 (10.29%) Python
3 326 (10.01%) SQL
4 186 (5.71%) Bash
5 150 (4.61%) C#
6 72 (2.21%) T-SQL
7 71 (2.18%) Java
8 59 (1.81%) PL/SQL
9 53 (1.63%) JavaScript
10 51 (1.57%) Bicep
11 29 (0.89%) VB
11 29 (0.89%) VBScript
12 26 (0.80%) C++
13 22 (0.68%) Perl
14 19 (0.58%) Search Processing Language
14 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
14 19 (0.58%) VBA
15 17 (0.52%) TypeScript
16 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
17 9 (0.28%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,005 (30.86%) Security Cleared
2 616 (18.91%) SC Cleared
3 374 (11.48%) DV Cleared
4 299 (9.18%) Degree
5 125 (3.84%) Microsoft Certification
6 93 (2.86%) Azure Certification
7 89 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
8 75 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
9 71 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
10 62 (1.90%) CISSP
11 56 (1.72%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.69%) AWS Certification
13 52 (1.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 43 (1.32%) CCNA
15 42 (1.29%) DBS Check
16 38 (1.17%) CCNP
17 35 (1.07%) MCSE
18 33 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 29 (0.89%) CISM
20 28 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 169 (5.19%) SLA
2 111 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 97 (2.98%) QA
4 83 (2.55%) NIST
5 35 (1.07%) GDPR
6 34 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 30 (0.92%) NCSC
8 23 (0.71%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) Data Quality
10 16 (0.49%) GxP
11 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
12 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
12 14 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 13 (0.40%) GRC
14 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 12 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 12 (0.37%) WCAG
15 11 (0.34%) GMP
15 11 (0.34%) PMO
16 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,339 (41.11%) Active Directory
2 489 (15.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 227 (6.97%) Hyper-V
4 160 (4.91%) VMware ESXi
5 133 (4.08%) vSphere
6 113 (3.47%) Docker
7 110 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
8 102 (3.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 80 (2.46%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.23%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.04%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) NFS
14 15 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
15 14 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.34%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 11 (0.34%) KVM
17 10 (0.31%) XenApp
18 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
19 7 (0.21%) UAG
Systems Management
1 451 (13.85%) Microsoft Intune
2 354 (10.87%) SCCM
3 233 (7.15%) Ansible
4 164 (5.04%) Kubernetes
5 125 (3.84%) vCenter Server
6 101 (3.10%) SCOM
7 51 (1.57%) Jamf Pro
8 47 (1.44%) WSUS
9 34 (1.04%) Progress Chef
10 32 (0.98%) Prometheus
11 31 (0.95%) Grafana
11 31 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
12 28 (0.86%) NetBackup
12 28 (0.86%) WMI
13 25 (0.77%) Puppet
14 24 (0.74%) VxRail
15 23 (0.71%) Nagios
15 23 (0.71%) Packer
16 22 (0.68%) FortiGate
17 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,520 (46.67%) Microsoft
2 638 (19.59%) VMware
3 383 (11.76%) ServiceNow
4 226 (6.94%) Cisco
5 208 (6.39%) Oracle
6 177 (5.43%) Citrix
7 112 (3.44%) Apple
7 112 (3.44%) Splunk
8 98 (3.01%) CyberArk
9 83 (2.55%) Google
10 82 (2.52%) Red Hat
11 79 (2.43%) BeyondTrust
12 77 (2.36%) SolarWinds
13 60 (1.84%) Dell
13 60 (1.84%) HP
13 60 (1.84%) Remedy
14 52 (1.60%) NetApp
15 47 (1.44%) Palo Alto
16 45 (1.38%) BMC
17 43 (1.32%) Meraki