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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,273 2,663 3,169
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.99% 8.08% 8.29%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.06% 59.68% 58.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,081 1,773 2,071
10th Percentile £170 £165 £175
25th Percentile £225 £213 £244
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 £656 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £363 £424
% change year-on-year +10.90% -14.50% +9.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 329 229 183
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.47 £14.30
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £17.57
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%
75th Percentile £65.00 £35.00 £57.56
90th Percentile £74.74 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £21.73 £24.18
% change year-on-year +18.59% -10.13% +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 5,360 4,462 5,414
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.81% 13.55% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,377 2,854 3,463
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £579
90th Percentile £675 £672 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 398 274 274
10th Percentile £14.35 £15.50 £15.53
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £20.07
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £49.25
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -48.93% +5.48%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.44 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.78 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +29.22% -52.10% +14.43%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 2,850 £416 +4.00% 2,811
UK excluding London -13 2,115 £402 +10.90% 1,819
London -10 956 £420 -1.18% 1,156
Work from Home -10 621 £465 +3.68% 963
South East -8 555 £492 +19.88% 515
North of England -4 510 £325 - 363
North West +5 306 £335 - 203
Midlands -17 289 £391 +11.32% 316
South West -16 278 £500 +33.33% 243
East of England +1 240 £240 -31.43% 235
West Midlands -24 192 £402 +0.50% 202
Scotland -5 169 £250 -44.44% 109
Yorkshire -22 168 £279 +16.04% 118
East Midlands +4 95 £273 +21.11% 114
Wales +10 69 £446 +62.27% 38
North East -26 40 £275 - 49
Northern Ireland -3 16 £139 -30.75% 32
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
1 269 (8.22%) SharePoint
2 246 (7.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 71 (2.17%) IIS
4 57 (1.74%) Confluence
5 19 (0.58%) nginx
5 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.55%) Apache
7 14 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.37%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.18%) Documentum
11 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.15%) Appian
11 5 (0.15%) Camunda
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.12%) NetWeaver
12 4 (0.12%) SAS
13 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.092%) JBoss
Applications
1 228 (6.97%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.23%) 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%) Microsoft Project
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 55 (1.68%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 8 (0.24%) 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%) Monis
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
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 1,029 (31.44%) Microsoft 365
2 1,002 (30.61%) Azure
3 524 (16.01%) Entra ID
4 338 (10.33%) AWS
5 149 (4.55%) OneDrive
6 119 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 110 (3.36%) GCP
8 79 (2.41%) SaaS
9 77 (2.35%) Azure Monitor
10 72 (2.20%) GitHub
10 72 (2.20%) Power Platform
11 63 (1.92%) IaaS
12 47 (1.44%) PaaS
13 42 (1.28%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.13%) OpenShift
15 30 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (0.89%) Google Workspace
17 27 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
18 24 (0.73%) Amazon EC2
19 21 (0.64%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 481 (14.70%) DNS
2 342 (10.45%) DHCP
3 340 (10.39%) Firewall
4 277 (8.46%) VPN
5 250 (7.64%) TCP/IP
6 145 (4.43%) WAN
7 141 (4.31%) LAN
8 133 (4.06%) Wi-Fi
9 101 (3.09%) Network Security
10 92 (2.81%) SAN
11 90 (2.75%) VLAN
12 55 (1.68%) Wireless
13 53 (1.62%) SSL
14 44 (1.34%) Internet
14 44 (1.34%) NAS
15 35 (1.07%) Skype
16 34 (1.04%) VSAN
17 33 (1.01%) BGP
18 32 (0.98%) HTTP
19 30 (0.92%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (9.01%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.86%) Oracle Database
3 55 (1.68%) Power BI
4 41 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.19%) Relational Database
7 26 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
8 23 (0.70%) MySQL
9 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.49%) 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%) Geospatial Data
13 10 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
14 8 (0.24%) MongoDB
14 8 (0.24%) MS Access
14 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
15 7 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 161 (4.92%) JIRA
2 77 (2.35%) Git
3 58 (1.77%) 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 (0.27%) Sonatype Nexus
12 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
14 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 5 (0.15%) AdminStudio
15 5 (0.15%) Chocolatey
15 5 (0.15%) InstallShield
15 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,205 (36.82%) Social Skills
2 401 (12.25%) Analytical Skills
3 380 (11.61%) Finance
4 168 (5.13%) Public Sector
5 156 (4.77%) Banking
6 123 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
7 86 (2.63%) Legal
8 75 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 75 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
9 60 (1.83%) Manufacturing
10 57 (1.74%) Telecoms
11 51 (1.56%) Retail
12 42 (1.28%) Front Office
12 42 (1.28%) Law
13 39 (1.19%) Military
14 36 (1.10%) Investment Banking
15 28 (0.86%) Spanish Language
16 26 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
17 25 (0.76%) French Language
18 23 (0.70%) Police
Job Titles
1 522 (15.95%) Support Engineer
2 448 (13.69%) IT Support
3 344 (10.51%) IT Engineer
4 338 (10.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 287 (8.77%) IT Support Engineer
6 283 (8.65%) Analyst
7 259 (7.91%) Senior
8 144 (4.40%) Desktop Support
9 128 (3.91%) Architect
10 125 (3.82%) 2nd Line Support
10 125 (3.82%) Desktop Engineer
11 123 (3.76%) Lead
12 121 (3.70%) Windows Engineer
13 119 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
14 108 (3.30%) Developer
15 104 (3.18%) Support Analyst
16 100 (3.06%) Consultant
17 88 (2.69%) 1st Line Support
18 85 (2.60%) Service Analyst
19 83 (2.54%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (8.13%) Terraform
2 141 (4.31%) .NET
3 120 (3.67%) REST
4 63 (1.92%) .NET Framework
5 52 (1.59%) Middleware
6 44 (1.34%) JSON
7 42 (1.28%) LDAP
8 34 (1.04%) WPF
9 33 (1.01%) WinForms
10 32 (0.98%) XML
11 30 (0.92%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.82%) HTML
13 24 (0.73%) ARM Templates
13 24 (0.73%) Kafka
13 24 (0.73%) Web Services
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
Miscellaneous
1 383 (11.70%) Onboarding
2 193 (5.90%) Data Centre
3 163 (4.98%) PKI
4 105 (3.21%) Management Information System
5 88 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 87 (2.66%) Enterprise Software
7 80 (2.44%) Clustering
7 80 (2.44%) Driving Licence
8 77 (2.35%) Video Conferencing
9 76 (2.32%) Cloud Native
10 72 (2.20%) Replication
11 59 (1.80%) Security Posture
12 56 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
14 43 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
14 43 (1.31%) Operational Technology
15 40 (1.22%) Virtual Team
16 39 (1.19%) Enterprise Storage
16 39 (1.19%) Smartphone
17 36 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 900 (27.50%) Windows Server
2 797 (24.35%) Linux
3 577 (17.63%) Windows 10
4 208 (6.36%) Mac OS
5 149 (4.55%) Unix
6 148 (4.52%) Apple iOS
7 144 (4.40%) Android
8 141 (4.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (2.26%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.68%) Windows 7
11 51 (1.56%) Ubuntu
12 46 (1.41%) Windows Server 2016
13 42 (1.28%) Windows Server 2012
14 38 (1.16%) CentOS
15 32 (0.98%) 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
1 776 (23.71%) Problem-Solving
2 607 (18.55%) ITIL
3 567 (17.32%) Customer Service
4 437 (13.35%) ITSM
5 430 (13.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 414 (12.65%) Migration
7 358 (10.94%) Continuous Improvement
8 322 (9.84%) Service Management
9 320 (9.78%) DevOps
10 280 (8.55%) CI/CD
11 269 (8.22%) Infrastructure as Code
12 266 (8.13%) Agile
13 246 (7.52%) Stakeholder Management
14 227 (6.94%) Change Management
15 225 (6.87%) Root Cause Analysis
16 213 (6.51%) Disaster Recovery
17 206 (6.29%) Cybersecurity
18 201 (6.14%) Validation
19 192 (5.87%) Service Delivery
20 183 (5.59%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 786 (24.01%) PowerShell
2 338 (10.33%) Python
3 323 (9.87%) SQL
4 191 (5.84%) Bash
5 161 (4.92%) C#
6 73 (2.23%) T-SQL
7 72 (2.20%) Java
8 61 (1.86%) JavaScript
9 60 (1.83%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.56%) Bicep
11 36 (1.10%) 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 15 (0.46%) Search Processing Language
18 11 (0.34%) Groovy
18 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 1,006 (30.74%) Security Cleared
2 610 (18.64%) SC Cleared
3 379 (11.58%) DV Cleared
4 299 (9.14%) Degree
5 128 (3.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 95 (2.90%) Azure Certification
7 89 (2.72%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
9 73 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
10 63 (1.92%) CISSP
11 56 (1.71%) A+ Certification
11 56 (1.71%) AWS Certification
12 52 (1.59%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 45 (1.37%) CCNA
14 42 (1.28%) DBS Check
15 39 (1.19%) CCNP
16 35 (1.07%) MCSE
17 34 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 32 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
19 31 (0.95%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 171 (5.22%) SLA
2 112 (3.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (2.81%) QA
4 85 (2.60%) NIST
5 39 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (1.01%) GDPR
7 29 (0.89%) NCSC
8 22 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 14 (0.43%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.43%) GRC
11 14 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) GMP
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,347 (41.15%) Active Directory
2 494 (15.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 223 (6.81%) Hyper-V
4 160 (4.89%) VMware ESXi
5 140 (4.28%) vSphere
6 119 (3.64%) Docker
7 111 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
8 103 (3.15%) Virtual Desktop
9 79 (2.41%) VMware NSX
10 38 (1.16%) BitLocker
11 33 (1.01%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) 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 (0.24%) UAG
Systems Management
1 464 (14.18%) Microsoft Intune
2 359 (10.97%) SCCM
3 233 (7.12%) Ansible
4 164 (5.01%) Kubernetes
5 127 (3.88%) vCenter Server
6 103 (3.15%) SCOM
7 55 (1.68%) Jamf Pro
8 45 (1.37%) WSUS
9 33 (1.01%) Grafana
9 33 (1.01%) Progress Chef
10 32 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
11 31 (0.95%) Prometheus
12 28 (0.86%) NetBackup
12 28 (0.86%) WMI
13 26 (0.79%) VxRail
14 25 (0.76%) Nagios
14 25 (0.76%) Puppet
15 23 (0.70%) Packer
16 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Clustering
17 20 (0.61%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,548 (47.30%) Microsoft
2 645 (19.71%) VMware
3 384 (11.73%) ServiceNow
4 237 (7.24%) Cisco
5 204 (6.23%) Oracle
6 175 (5.35%) Citrix
7 112 (3.42%) Apple
8 108 (3.30%) Splunk
9 98 (2.99%) CyberArk
10 86 (2.63%) Google
11 81 (2.47%) Red Hat
12 79 (2.41%) BeyondTrust
12 79 (2.41%) SolarWinds
13 59 (1.80%) Remedy
14 58 (1.77%) Dell
15 53 (1.62%) HP
16 51 (1.56%) Palo Alto
17 49 (1.50%) NetApp
18 43 (1.31%) Meraki
19 42 (1.28%) BMC