Microsoft Windows
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Windows skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Windows over the 6 months to 7 December 2023 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
7 Dec 2023
Same period 2022 Same period 2021
Rank 16 16 16
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Windows 4,265 7,167 8,146
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 9.50% 9.34% 9.09%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.93% 57.34% 58.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,853 4,936 5,629
10th Percentile £160 £160 £140
25th Percentile £213 £219 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £403 £425 £420
Median % change year-on-year -5.29% +1.19% +5.33%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £550
90th Percentile £675 £675 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £385 £373 £300
% change year-on-year +3.36% +24.17% -11.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 248 433 580
10th Percentile £14.16 £12.32 £12.24
25th Percentile £17.72 £15.75 £13.97
Median hourly rate £22.00 £20.50 £16.95
Median % change year-on-year +7.32% +20.94% -0.29%
75th Percentile £53.94 £57.50 £24.75
90th Percentile £65.60 £65.75 £49.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £18.75 £16.00
% change year-on-year +12.00% +17.19% -

All Operating Systems
UK

Windows is in the Operating Systems category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 6,777 12,500 13,948
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.10% 16.28% 15.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,614 8,587 9,640
10th Percentile £183 £185 £163
25th Percentile £300 £345 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £513 £490
Median % change year-on-year -6.34% +4.59% +13.25%
75th Percentile £612 £625 £588
90th Percentile £700 £725 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £449 £450 £400
% change year-on-year -0.28% +12.50% +3.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 559 726
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.16 £12.25
25th Percentile £17.75 £16.50 £14.25
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.00 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% +38.89% -2.70%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £46.22
90th Percentile £73.75 £74.50 £62.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £22.50 £17.00
% change year-on-year +20.00% +32.35% -1.85%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Windows as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Windows in the UK

Windows
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Windows.

Daily rate trend for Windows in the UK

Windows
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Daily rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Windows.

Hourly rate trend for Windows in the UK

Windows
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Top 18 Contract 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 7 December 2023. 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 3,792 £400 -5.88% 2,463
UK excluding London 0 2,355 £385 +3.36% 2,004
London +10 1,652 £450 -5.26% 574
Work from Home +1 1,187 £465 -2.62% 874
South East +1 750 £333 -20.83% 577
North of England -2 466 £375 +15.03% 493
Midlands +2 356 £350 +7.69% 344
South West -6 317 £470 +10.59% 258
North West -5 264 £400 +14.29% 223
West Midlands +4 226 £375 - 213
Scotland 0 215 £500 +33.33% 113
East of England -5 190 £420 +55.56% 209
Yorkshire -4 179 £350 +27.27% 205
East Midlands +2 125 £225 +5.26% 131
Wales +11 84 £300 -11.11% 42
North East +22 28 £183 -54.38% 71
Northern Ireland -5 9 £149 -33.89% 28
Channel Islands - 1 £200 -

Windows
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 307 (7.20%) SharePoint
2 155 (3.63%) MS Exchange
3 123 (2.88%) Confluence
4 118 (2.77%) IIS
5 50 (1.17%) Apache
6 38 (0.89%) Skype for Business
7 37 (0.87%) Tomcat
8 35 (0.82%) BizTalk Server
9 31 (0.73%) CMS
10 25 (0.59%) nginx
11 24 (0.56%) Exchange Server 2013
12 19 (0.45%) WebSphere
13 16 (0.38%) SharePoint Server
14 15 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2010
15 13 (0.30%) SAS
16 11 (0.26%) Exchange Server 2007
17 10 (0.23%) IBM Notes
18 8 (0.19%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
18 8 (0.19%) JBoss
18 8 (0.19%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 500 (11.72%) Microsoft Office
2 134 (3.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 56 (1.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 40 (0.94%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
5 8 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
6 6 (0.14%) CATIA
7 5 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 3 (0.070%) Notepad++
9 2 (0.047%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.047%) InCopy
9 2 (0.047%) InDesign
9 2 (0.047%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.047%) Siemens NX
10 1 (0.023%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.023%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 29 (0.68%) ION MarketView
2 23 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
3 15 (0.35%) assyst
4 9 (0.21%) Loan IQ
5 6 (0.14%) DELMIA
5 6 (0.14%) ENOVIA
6 4 (0.094%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.094%) Elite 3E
7 3 (0.070%) Dynamics GP
7 3 (0.070%) Dynamics NAV
7 3 (0.070%) Eikon
7 3 (0.070%) Sage X3
7 3 (0.070%) Shopify
7 3 (0.070%) SystmOne
7 3 (0.070%) Teamcenter
8 2 (0.047%) Fidessa
8 2 (0.047%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.023%) Endur
9 1 (0.023%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.023%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,276 (29.92%) Microsoft 365
2 1,164 (27.29%) Azure
3 458 (10.74%) AWS
4 325 (7.62%) Entra ID
5 137 (3.21%) Azure DevOps
6 134 (3.14%) OneDrive
7 130 (3.05%) GCP
8 113 (2.65%) IaaS
9 90 (2.11%) Power Platform
10 85 (1.99%) SaaS
11 81 (1.90%) GitHub
12 79 (1.85%) PaaS
13 70 (1.64%) Azure Logic Apps
14 68 (1.59%) Serverless
15 64 (1.50%) Cloud Computing
16 57 (1.34%) Azure Storage
17 49 (1.15%) Azure Functions
18 47 (1.10%) Azure AKS
19 45 (1.06%) AWS CloudFormation
20 44 (1.03%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 535 (12.54%) Firewall
2 517 (12.12%) DNS
3 321 (7.53%) DHCP
4 248 (5.81%) VPN
5 232 (5.44%) LAN
6 227 (5.32%) SAN
7 217 (5.09%) TCP/IP
8 214 (5.02%) WAN
9 119 (2.79%) Wireless
10 107 (2.51%) Network Security
11 104 (2.44%) VLAN
12 99 (2.32%) Wi-Fi
13 74 (1.74%) Skype
14 72 (1.69%) Remote Desktop
15 66 (1.55%) VoIP
16 61 (1.43%) NAS
17 53 (1.24%) Internet
18 43 (1.01%) BGP
19 41 (0.96%) HTTP
20 40 (0.94%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (7.39%) SQL Server
2 123 (2.88%) Relational Database
3 107 (2.51%) MySQL
4 65 (1.52%) Power BI
5 62 (1.45%) MongoDB
6 49 (1.15%) Azure SQL Database
7 36 (0.84%) PostgreSQL
8 35 (0.82%) Oracle Database
9 30 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
10 28 (0.66%) Big Data
10 28 (0.66%) DB2
11 25 (0.59%) Elasticsearch
12 19 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 17 (0.40%) Data Lake
14 14 (0.33%) RDBMS
15 13 (0.30%) Data Warehouse
15 13 (0.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 10 (0.23%) NoSQL
17 9 (0.21%) HDInsight
18 8 (0.19%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 198 (4.64%) JIRA
2 172 (4.03%) Git
3 159 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 74 (1.74%) Bitbucket
5 72 (1.69%) Visual Studio
6 55 (1.29%) GitLab
7 35 (0.82%) TeamCity
8 33 (0.77%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 29 (0.68%) MSI
10 26 (0.61%) Subversion
11 24 (0.56%) Artifactory
12 18 (0.42%) Hudson
12 18 (0.42%) Selenium
13 17 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
14 16 (0.38%) Rational DOORS
15 14 (0.33%) Robot Framework
16 13 (0.30%) Axure RP
17 12 (0.28%) Visual Studio Code
18 11 (0.26%) GoCD
19 9 (0.21%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,121 (26.28%) Social Skills
2 661 (15.50%) Finance
3 386 (9.05%) Public Sector
4 316 (7.41%) Analytical Skills
5 297 (6.96%) Banking
6 153 (3.59%) Organisational Skills
7 125 (2.93%) Telecoms
8 103 (2.42%) Legal
8 103 (2.42%) Manufacturing
9 97 (2.27%) Front Office
10 90 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
11 81 (1.90%) Law
11 81 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
12 77 (1.81%) Investment Banking
13 74 (1.74%) Electronics
13 74 (1.74%) Marketing
14 52 (1.22%) Financial Institution
14 52 (1.22%) Retail
15 51 (1.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 42 (0.98%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 621 (14.56%) Support Engineer
2 495 (11.61%) Analyst
3 388 (9.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 295 (6.92%) Senior
5 293 (6.87%) IT Support
6 272 (6.38%) Developer
7 226 (5.30%) Desktop Support
8 220 (5.16%) Service Analyst
9 217 (5.09%) Architect
10 215 (5.04%) Service Desk Analyst
11 214 (5.02%) Windows Engineer
12 211 (4.95%) IT Engineer
13 205 (4.81%) 2nd Line Support
14 194 (4.55%) Desktop Engineer
15 157 (3.68%) Administrator
16 143 (3.35%) DevOps Engineer
17 141 (3.31%) 2nd Line Engineer
18 134 (3.14%) Desktop Support Engineer
19 132 (3.09%) Support Analyst
20 130 (3.05%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 212 (4.97%) .NET
2 83 (1.95%) LDAP
3 77 (1.81%) REST
4 73 (1.71%) Middleware
5 63 (1.48%) Web Services
6 61 (1.43%) XML
7 56 (1.31%) .NET Framework
8 54 (1.27%) JSON
9 52 (1.22%) HTML
9 52 (1.22%) WPF
10 48 (1.13%) .NET Core
11 39 (0.91%) ASP.NET
12 38 (0.89%) RESTful
12 38 (0.89%) SOAP
13 36 (0.84%) WCF
14 34 (0.80%) Blazor
15 32 (0.75%) SAML
16 30 (0.70%) CSS
16 30 (0.70%) Rendezvous
17 29 (0.68%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 233 (5.46%) Data Centre
2 200 (4.69%) Management Information System
3 189 (4.43%) PKI
4 97 (2.27%) Driving Licence
5 92 (2.16%) Self-Motivation
6 86 (2.02%) NHS
7 75 (1.76%) Clustering
8 72 (1.69%) Public Cloud
9 70 (1.64%) Video Conferencing
10 67 (1.57%) Cloud Native
10 67 (1.57%) Onboarding
10 67 (1.57%) Replication
11 61 (1.43%) Smartphone
12 56 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
13 55 (1.29%) Client/Server
13 55 (1.29%) Virtual Team
14 53 (1.24%) Private Cloud
15 51 (1.20%) CMDB
15 51 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
16 48 (1.13%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 1,242 (29.12%) Windows Server
2 1,138 (26.68%) Linux
3 939 (22.02%) Windows 10
4 387 (9.07%) Unix
5 277 (6.49%) Windows Server 2012
6 238 (5.58%) Windows 7
7 225 (5.28%) Windows Server 2016
8 216 (5.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 204 (4.78%) Windows Server 2019
10 175 (4.10%) Apple iOS
11 167 (3.92%) Android
12 145 (3.40%) Mac OS
13 90 (2.11%) Windows Server 2008
14 88 (2.06%) Ubuntu
15 65 (1.52%) Solaris
16 53 (1.24%) CentOS
17 47 (1.10%) Mac OS X
18 43 (1.01%) AIX
19 40 (0.94%) Windows Server 2003
20 35 (0.82%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 654 (15.33%) ITIL
2 568 (13.32%) Customer Service
3 561 (13.15%) Problem-Solving
4 517 (12.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 501 (11.75%) DevOps
6 440 (10.32%) Agile
7 438 (10.27%) Migration
8 329 (7.71%) CI/CD
9 232 (5.44%) Service Management
10 204 (4.78%) Cybersecurity
11 201 (4.71%) Change Management
12 188 (4.41%) Infrastructure as Code
13 184 (4.31%) ITSM
14 159 (3.73%) Incident Management
15 154 (3.61%) Configuration Management
16 148 (3.47%) Service Delivery
17 140 (3.28%) Disaster Recovery
18 137 (3.21%) Software Engineering
19 133 (3.12%) Project Management
20 128 (3.00%) Continuous Integration
Programming Languages
1 816 (19.13%) PowerShell
2 521 (12.22%) Python
3 516 (12.10%) SQL
4 243 (5.70%) C#
5 216 (5.06%) Java
6 193 (4.53%) Bash
7 152 (3.56%) JavaScript
8 149 (3.49%) C++
9 92 (2.16%) Perl
10 82 (1.92%) Go
11 80 (1.88%) T-SQL
12 65 (1.52%) Shell Script
13 63 (1.48%) C
14 59 (1.38%) Ruby
15 51 (1.20%) VBScript
16 49 (1.15%) PL/SQL
17 42 (0.98%) VB
18 29 (0.68%) VBA
19 13 (0.30%) PHP
20 10 (0.23%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 983 (23.05%) Security Cleared
2 582 (13.65%) SC Cleared
3 433 (10.15%) Degree
4 381 (8.93%) DV Cleared
5 115 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
6 75 (1.76%) ITIL Certification
7 67 (1.57%) Cisco Certification
8 65 (1.52%) Computer Science Degree
9 57 (1.34%) DBS Check
10 55 (1.29%) CCNA
10 55 (1.29%) MCSE
11 51 (1.20%) Azure Certification
12 49 (1.15%) A+ Certification
12 49 (1.15%) MCP
13 34 (0.80%) MCSA
14 31 (0.73%) CISSP
14 31 (0.73%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 25 (0.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 21 (0.49%) CCNP
17 20 (0.47%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 222 (5.21%) SLA
2 64 (1.50%) QA
3 47 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 25 (0.59%) GDPR
5 21 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
6 20 (0.47%) NIST
7 16 (0.38%) Accessibility
8 15 (0.35%) Data Quality
9 12 (0.28%) PCI DSS
10 10 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 10 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
10 10 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 9 (0.21%) ISO 9001
12 7 (0.16%) Government Security Classifications
12 7 (0.16%) JSP 440
12 7 (0.16%) NCSC
13 5 (0.12%) ISAE 3402
13 5 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 12207
14 4 (0.094%) ISO 9000
14 4 (0.094%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,692 (39.67%) Active Directory
2 551 (12.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 227 (5.32%) Hyper-V
4 176 (4.13%) Docker
5 136 (3.19%) Virtual Machines
6 130 (3.05%) Virtual Desktop
7 116 (2.72%) VMware ESXi
8 107 (2.51%) vSphere
9 50 (1.17%) XenDesktop
10 47 (1.10%) BitLocker
11 46 (1.08%) Firmware
12 43 (1.01%) NFS
12 43 (1.01%) XenApp
13 40 (0.94%) VMware NSX
14 31 (0.73%) Virtual Servers
15 26 (0.61%) Microsoft App-V
16 14 (0.33%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 13 (0.30%) VMware Workstation
18 12 (0.28%) Terminal Services
19 10 (0.23%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 561 (13.15%) SCCM
2 381 (8.93%) Microsoft Intune
3 318 (7.46%) Ansible
4 256 (6.00%) Kubernetes
5 226 (5.30%) Terraform
6 122 (2.86%) SCOM
7 103 (2.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 93 (2.18%) WSUS
9 90 (2.11%) Puppet
10 73 (1.71%) vCenter Server
11 68 (1.59%) Progress Chef
12 63 (1.48%) Packer
13 51 (1.20%) ITRS Geneos
14 50 (1.17%) Jamf Pro
15 47 (1.10%) Grafana
15 47 (1.10%) Single Sign-On
16 46 (1.08%) Nagios
17 38 (0.89%) BladeLogic
18 37 (0.87%) NetBackup
19 36 (0.84%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 1,660 (38.92%) Microsoft
2 861 (20.19%) VMware
3 331 (7.76%) Cisco
4 322 (7.55%) Citrix
5 274 (6.42%) ServiceNow
6 240 (5.63%) Oracle
7 224 (5.25%) Red Hat
8 219 (5.13%) HP
9 175 (4.10%) Apple
10 139 (3.26%) Splunk
11 119 (2.79%) Google
12 111 (2.60%) Atlassian
13 104 (2.44%) SAP
14 99 (2.32%) NetApp
15 95 (2.23%) Dell
16 88 (2.06%) IBM
17 84 (1.97%) EMC
18 74 (1.74%) Veeam
19 70 (1.64%) Bloomberg
20 60 (1.41%) Remedy