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 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,054 2,618 3,468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.79% 8.01% 8.44%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.18% 59.80% 60.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,946 1,732 2,333
10th Percentile £170 £178 £165
25th Percentile £225 £225 £246
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £421 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -0.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £672 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £400 £449
% change year-on-year +3.75% -10.91% +19.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 204 279
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.33 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.33 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -16.67%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £70.05 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.27
% change year-on-year +36.46% +3.28% -16.95%

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 5,075 4,378 5,709
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.62% 13.40% 13.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,226 2,816 3,762
10th Percentile £193 £200 £190
25th Percentile £320 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.08% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 247 395
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.88% -43.11%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.23 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £21.59 £27.50
% change year-on-year +23.48% -21.49% -7.25%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 2,678 £422 +1.57% 959
UK excluding London -13 2,012 £415 +3.75% 831
London -17 868 £416 -5.03% 236
Work from Home -11 637 £475 - 316
South East -8 573 £475 -5.00% 275
North of England -9 477 £347 -0.86% 198
Midlands -16 277 £375 +25.00% 106
South West -12 265 £488 +21.88% 108
North West -8 251 £350 -2.23% 104
Yorkshire -12 203 £360 +2.86% 64
East of England -2 201 £336 +34.50% 107
West Midlands -26 175 £444 +21.58% 57
Scotland -5 159 £413 -5.71% 32
East Midlands +10 97 £266 +33.13% 49
Wales +6 58 £408 +48.18% 22
North East -37 27 £270 -1.82% 36
Northern Ireland +3 17 £139 -27.11% 10
Channel Islands +3 2 £518 - 2

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
1 241 (7.89%) Microsoft Exchange
2 237 (7.76%) SharePoint
3 67 (2.19%) IIS
4 61 (2.00%) Confluence
5 17 (0.56%) Apache
5 17 (0.56%) nginx
5 17 (0.56%) Tomcat
6 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
7 11 (0.36%) HCL Notes
7 11 (0.36%) Skype for Business
8 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
8 9 (0.29%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.20%) Appian
9 6 (0.20%) Documentum
10 5 (0.16%) Camunda
10 5 (0.16%) SAS
11 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.098%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 197 (6.45%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.39%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
4 7 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.13%) Acrobat
5 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.098%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.065%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.065%) Houdini
7 2 (0.065%) NUKE
7 2 (0.065%) PTC Creo
8 1 (0.033%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 52 (1.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 16 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.33%) Finacle
4 8 (0.26%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
5 6 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.098%) assyst
7 3 (0.098%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.065%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.065%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.033%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.033%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.033%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.033%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.033%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.033%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.033%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.033%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.033%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 937 (30.68%) Azure
2 899 (29.44%) Microsoft 365
3 437 (14.31%) Entra ID
4 326 (10.67%) AWS
5 132 (4.32%) OneDrive
6 102 (3.34%) GCP
7 100 (3.27%) Azure DevOps
8 79 (2.59%) SaaS
9 68 (2.23%) Azure Monitor
10 67 (2.19%) GitHub
10 67 (2.19%) Power Platform
11 65 (2.13%) IaaS
12 57 (1.87%) PaaS
13 44 (1.44%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.21%) OpenShift
15 32 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.88%) Azure AKS
18 26 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
18 26 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 444 (14.54%) DNS
2 336 (11.00%) Firewall
3 304 (9.95%) DHCP
4 245 (8.02%) VPN
5 210 (6.88%) TCP/IP
6 175 (5.73%) LAN
7 163 (5.34%) WAN
8 152 (4.98%) Wi-Fi
9 98 (3.21%) SAN
10 75 (2.46%) Network Security
11 65 (2.13%) VLAN
12 51 (1.67%) SSL
13 48 (1.57%) BGP
14 47 (1.54%) NAS
15 43 (1.41%) Internet
16 40 (1.31%) Wireless
17 37 (1.21%) OSPF
18 34 (1.11%) VoIP
19 31 (1.02%) SD-WAN
19 31 (1.02%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 287 (9.40%) SQL Server
2 62 (2.03%) Oracle Database
3 46 (1.51%) Power BI
4 34 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
5 33 (1.08%) Relational Database
6 27 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 25 (0.82%) MySQL
8 22 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
9 21 (0.69%) Db2
10 17 (0.56%) Data Warehouse
11 15 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (0.49%) RDBMS
12 11 (0.36%) NoSQL
13 10 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
13 10 (0.33%) MongoDB
13 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
14 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
14 9 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 9 (0.29%) Sybase ASE
15 8 (0.26%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 185 (6.06%) JIRA
2 70 (2.29%) Git
3 58 (1.90%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.57%) MSI
5 40 (1.31%) GitLab
6 38 (1.24%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.56%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.43%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.29%) Chocolatey
10 8 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.23%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.20%) Xcode
13 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.16%) Maven
13 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,100 (36.02%) Social Skills
2 361 (11.82%) Analytical Skills
3 337 (11.03%) Finance
4 203 (6.65%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.17%) Banking
6 108 (3.54%) Documentation Skills
7 99 (3.24%) Legal
8 83 (2.72%) Organisational Skills
9 63 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.83%) Retail
11 48 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 47 (1.54%) Military
13 37 (1.21%) Telecoms
14 36 (1.18%) Front Office
15 34 (1.11%) Law
16 33 (1.08%) Investment Banking
17 26 (0.85%) Spanish Language
18 24 (0.79%) Financial Institution
19 22 (0.72%) French Language
20 21 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 426 (13.95%) Support Engineer
2 396 (12.97%) IT Support
3 293 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 285 (9.33%) Analyst
4 285 (9.33%) IT Engineer
5 240 (7.86%) IT Support Engineer
6 220 (7.20%) Senior
7 132 (4.32%) Architect
8 122 (3.99%) Desktop Support
9 121 (3.96%) 2nd Line Support
10 116 (3.80%) Developer
11 108 (3.54%) Lead
12 107 (3.50%) Cloud Engineer
13 104 (3.41%) Support Analyst
14 102 (3.34%) Desktop Engineer
15 95 (3.11%) Consultant
16 90 (2.95%) Windows Engineer
17 89 (2.91%) IT Analyst
18 81 (2.65%) Service Analyst
19 80 (2.62%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (3.96%) .NET
2 112 (3.67%) REST
3 65 (2.13%) .NET Framework
4 38 (1.24%) Middleware
5 34 (1.11%) WinForms
6 33 (1.08%) LDAP
7 31 (1.02%) 802.1X
8 29 (0.95%) JSON
8 29 (0.95%) Web Services
9 28 (0.92%) Microsoft Graph
9 28 (0.92%) WPF
10 27 (0.88%) Kafka
10 27 (0.88%) Software Packaging
11 26 (0.85%) XML
12 25 (0.82%) HTML
13 24 (0.79%) CSS
14 22 (0.72%) RESTful
15 21 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
16 18 (0.59%) SAML
17 17 (0.56%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 310 (10.15%) Onboarding
2 161 (5.27%) Data Centre
3 158 (5.17%) PKI
4 82 (2.69%) Clustering
5 81 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
6 80 (2.62%) Management Information System
7 76 (2.49%) Cloud Native
8 73 (2.39%) Driving Licence
9 69 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
10 60 (1.96%) Replication
11 57 (1.87%) Hybrid Cloud
12 56 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
12 56 (1.83%) Security Posture
13 52 (1.70%) Video Conferencing
14 45 (1.47%) Virtual Team
15 41 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
17 35 (1.15%) Operational Technology
18 34 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
18 34 (1.11%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 757 (24.79%) Linux
2 747 (24.46%) Windows Server
3 500 (16.37%) Windows 10
4 194 (6.35%) Mac OS
5 162 (5.30%) Unix
6 139 (4.55%) Android
7 137 (4.49%) Apple iOS
8 122 (3.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 76 (2.49%) Windows Server 2019
10 52 (1.70%) Windows Server 2016
11 40 (1.31%) Ubuntu
12 39 (1.28%) AIX
13 37 (1.21%) Windows 7
14 35 (1.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 23 (0.75%) Solaris
16 22 (0.72%) VMS
17 21 (0.69%) CentOS
18 16 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
20 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 692 (22.66%) Problem-Solving
2 511 (16.73%) ITIL
3 468 (15.32%) Customer Service
4 379 (12.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 374 (12.25%) Migration
6 338 (11.07%) ITSM
7 293 (9.59%) DevOps
8 274 (8.97%) Continuous Improvement
9 271 (8.87%) CI/CD
10 270 (8.84%) Agile
11 238 (7.79%) Service Management
12 213 (6.97%) Infrastructure as Code
13 200 (6.55%) Change Management
14 199 (6.52%) High Availability
15 186 (6.09%) Stakeholder Management
16 176 (5.76%) Cybersecurity
16 176 (5.76%) Service Delivery
17 164 (5.37%) Validation
18 162 (5.30%) Disaster Recovery
19 155 (5.08%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 665 (21.77%) PowerShell
2 322 (10.54%) Python
3 310 (10.15%) SQL
4 162 (5.30%) Bash
5 149 (4.88%) C#
6 78 (2.55%) Java
7 70 (2.29%) JavaScript
8 62 (2.03%) T-SQL
9 60 (1.96%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.54%) C++
11 40 (1.31%) Bicep
12 25 (0.82%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.75%) Perl
13 23 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 22 (0.72%) VB
15 21 (0.69%) VBA
15 21 (0.69%) VBScript
16 17 (0.56%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
18 15 (0.49%) C
Qualifications
1 907 (29.70%) Security Cleared
2 568 (18.60%) SC Cleared
3 305 (9.99%) Degree
4 302 (9.89%) DV Cleared
5 119 (3.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 103 (3.37%) Cisco Certification
7 75 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.23%) CISSP
9 67 (2.19%) Azure Certification
10 60 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
11 53 (1.74%) AWS Certification
12 45 (1.47%) CCNA
13 42 (1.38%) MCSE
14 36 (1.18%) A+ Certification
15 35 (1.15%) CCNP
16 27 (0.88%) DBS Check
16 27 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 26 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
18 25 (0.82%) CISM
18 25 (0.82%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 139 (4.55%) SLA
2 118 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 87 (2.85%) NIST
4 86 (2.82%) QA
5 40 (1.31%) GDPR
6 29 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
7 26 (0.85%) NCSC
7 26 (0.85%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
8 16 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 15 (0.49%) Data Quality
9 15 (0.49%) PMO
10 13 (0.43%) Accessibility
10 13 (0.43%) GxP
11 11 (0.36%) GRC
11 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
12 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
12 10 (0.33%) WCAG
13 9 (0.29%) GMP
13 9 (0.29%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,194 (39.10%) Active Directory
2 408 (13.36%) VMware Infrastructure
3 168 (5.50%) Hyper-V
4 129 (4.22%) VMware ESXi
5 109 (3.57%) vSphere
6 103 (3.37%) Docker
7 102 (3.34%) Virtual Machines
8 77 (2.52%) Virtual Desktop
9 66 (2.16%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.21%) Firmware
11 33 (1.08%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.79%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.59%) KVM
14 15 (0.49%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
16 8 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
18 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 423 (13.85%) Microsoft Intune
2 279 (9.14%) SCCM
3 242 (7.92%) Terraform
4 209 (6.84%) Ansible
5 165 (5.40%) Kubernetes
6 107 (3.50%) vCenter Server
7 62 (2.03%) SCOM
8 54 (1.77%) Jamf Pro
9 40 (1.31%) Progress Chef
10 39 (1.28%) FortiGate
10 39 (1.28%) WSUS
11 35 (1.15%) Single Sign-On
12 30 (0.98%) Puppet
13 28 (0.92%) Grafana
13 28 (0.92%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.82%) Nagios
15 23 (0.75%) Packer
16 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
17 20 (0.65%) Tivoli
17 20 (0.65%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,323 (43.32%) Microsoft
2 536 (17.55%) VMware
3 310 (10.15%) ServiceNow
4 212 (6.94%) Cisco
5 200 (6.55%) Oracle
6 197 (6.45%) Citrix
7 134 (4.39%) Splunk
8 93 (3.05%) Apple
9 89 (2.91%) SolarWinds
10 82 (2.69%) CyberArk
11 78 (2.55%) Red Hat
12 76 (2.49%) HP
13 71 (2.32%) Google
14 69 (2.26%) BeyondTrust
15 65 (2.13%) Dell
16 63 (2.06%) Remedy
17 58 (1.90%) F5
18 52 (1.70%) IBM
18 52 (1.70%) Juniper
19 44 (1.44%) Palo Alto