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 24 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,164 2,663 3,233
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.90% 8.07% 8.32%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.78% 59.96% 59.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,018 1,756 2,157
10th Percentile £165 £170 £175
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £430
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -4.65% -2.26%
75th Percentile £556 £560 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £383 £425
% change year-on-year +5.10% -10.00% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 223 226
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.19 £17.77 £15.82
Median hourly rate £24.88 £21.28 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.89% -3.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £55.00 £26.63 £53.75
90th Percentile £72.20 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +36.46% -10.14% -1.45%

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 5,206 4,441 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.46% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,292 2,828 3,561
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £307 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £455
% change year-on-year +0.67% -1.76% +1.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 272 323
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.63 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.85
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.08 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.69% -16.42% -27.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.60 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £24.33 £39.25
% change year-on-year +9.58% -38.01% +33.96%

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 24 August 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 24 August 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 24 August 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 2,751 £415 +1.84% 974
UK excluding London -14 2,048 £402 +5.10% 865
London -13 918 £425 +1.19% 227
Work from Home -14 617 £465 +3.33% 309
South East -8 568 £475 -3.26% 307
North of England -5 506 £325 - 196
North West +3 297 £335 -4.29% 95
South West -15 283 £478 +36.43% 106
Midlands -20 260 £385 -3.75% 125
East of England -4 198 £335 +5.43% 119
Yorkshire -16 181 £313 +4.17% 73
Scotland -3 167 £375 -19.35% 26
West Midlands -28 165 £425 -1.16% 84
East Midlands +6 91 £273 +36.25% 41
Wales +3 64 £446 +62.27% 16
North East -31 32 £260 -0.95% 38
Northern Ireland -4 16 £139 -30.75% 6
Channel Islands +1 2 £518 - 1

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
1 253 (8.00%) SharePoint
2 243 (7.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 70 (2.21%) IIS
4 59 (1.86%) Confluence
5 18 (0.57%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.51%) Apache
6 16 (0.51%) nginx
7 15 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
9 9 (0.28%) NetWeaver
10 7 (0.22%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.19%) Documentum
12 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.16%) Appian
12 5 (0.16%) Camunda
12 5 (0.16%) SAS
13 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2010
14 3 (0.095%) OpenStack
Applications
1 210 (6.64%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.31%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.095%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.095%) Houdini
6 3 (0.095%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.063%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.032%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 57 (1.80%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.32%) Finacle
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
7 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 3 (0.095%) assyst
9 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
10 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
10 1 (0.032%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.032%) Oracle BRM
10 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 983 (31.07%) Microsoft 365
2 979 (30.94%) Azure
3 485 (15.33%) Entra ID
4 333 (10.52%) AWS
5 141 (4.46%) OneDrive
6 117 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 101 (3.19%) GCP
8 78 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
9 74 (2.34%) Power Platform
9 74 (2.34%) SaaS
10 72 (2.28%) GitHub
11 64 (2.02%) IaaS
12 49 (1.55%) PaaS
13 44 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
14 39 (1.23%) OpenShift
15 29 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
18 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
19 22 (0.70%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 468 (14.79%) DNS
2 350 (11.06%) Firewall
3 333 (10.52%) DHCP
4 273 (8.63%) VPN
5 230 (7.27%) TCP/IP
6 158 (4.99%) WAN
7 157 (4.96%) LAN
8 143 (4.52%) Wi-Fi
9 96 (3.03%) SAN
10 87 (2.75%) Network Security
10 87 (2.75%) VLAN
11 48 (1.52%) NAS
12 46 (1.45%) Wireless
13 45 (1.42%) SSL
14 44 (1.39%) Internet
15 39 (1.23%) VSAN
16 33 (1.04%) Skype
17 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
18 31 (0.98%) BGP
19 28 (0.88%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (9.58%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.90%) Oracle Database
3 55 (1.74%) Power BI
4 36 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 35 (1.11%) Relational Database
6 33 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
7 24 (0.76%) MySQL
8 20 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (0.54%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 12 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
13 11 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
14 10 (0.32%) Db2
15 9 (0.28%) SAP HANA
16 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
16 8 (0.25%) MS Access
16 8 (0.25%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 169 (5.34%) JIRA
2 77 (2.43%) Git
3 57 (1.80%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.52%) MSI
5 42 (1.33%) GitLab
6 36 (1.14%) Visual Studio
7 19 (0.60%) Bitbucket
8 17 (0.54%) Eclipse
9 10 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.28%) Selenium
11 8 (0.25%) Artifactory
11 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
13 6 (0.19%) Chocolatey
13 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
14 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
14 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
14 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
14 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,153 (36.44%) Social Skills
2 396 (12.52%) Analytical Skills
3 370 (11.69%) Finance
4 177 (5.59%) Public Sector
5 160 (5.06%) Banking
6 110 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
7 90 (2.84%) Legal
8 76 (2.40%) Organisational Skills
9 71 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 57 (1.80%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.77%) Retail
12 49 (1.55%) Telecoms
13 40 (1.26%) Front Office
14 37 (1.17%) Law
14 37 (1.17%) Military
15 33 (1.04%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.88%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.79%) French Language
18 24 (0.76%) Financial Institution
19 22 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 499 (15.77%) Support Engineer
2 424 (13.40%) IT Support
3 329 (10.40%) IT Engineer
4 325 (10.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 276 (8.72%) IT Support Engineer
6 264 (8.34%) Analyst
7 241 (7.62%) Senior
8 141 (4.46%) Desktop Support
9 128 (4.05%) 2nd Line Support
10 123 (3.89%) Architect
11 115 (3.63%) Cloud Engineer
11 115 (3.63%) Desktop Engineer
11 115 (3.63%) Lead
12 110 (3.48%) Developer
13 105 (3.32%) Windows Engineer
14 102 (3.22%) Consultant
15 101 (3.19%) Support Analyst
16 87 (2.75%) 1st Line Support
17 83 (2.62%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.59%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (8.38%) Terraform
2 136 (4.30%) .NET
3 116 (3.67%) REST
4 70 (2.21%) .NET Framework
5 44 (1.39%) Middleware
6 36 (1.14%) JSON
7 34 (1.07%) LDAP
8 33 (1.04%) WinForms
9 30 (0.95%) WPF
10 29 (0.92%) XML
11 27 (0.85%) HTML
11 27 (0.85%) Kafka
11 27 (0.85%) Software Packaging
12 25 (0.79%) Web Services
13 22 (0.70%) ARM Templates
14 21 (0.66%) CSS
14 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 21 (0.66%) RESTful
15 20 (0.63%) SAML
16 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 365 (11.54%) Onboarding
2 182 (5.75%) Data Centre
3 162 (5.12%) PKI
4 93 (2.94%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.75%) Clustering
6 84 (2.65%) Enterprise Software
7 82 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
8 80 (2.53%) Driving Licence
9 76 (2.40%) Cloud Native
10 69 (2.18%) Video Conferencing
11 68 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
12 63 (1.99%) Replication
13 50 (1.58%) Security Posture
14 48 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.33%) Virtual Team
16 41 (1.30%) Enterprise Storage
17 39 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
17 39 (1.23%) Operational Technology
18 38 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
19 37 (1.17%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 840 (26.55%) Windows Server
2 789 (24.94%) Linux
3 543 (17.16%) Windows 10
4 192 (6.07%) Mac OS
5 144 (4.55%) Unix
6 134 (4.24%) Android
6 134 (4.24%) Apple iOS
7 124 (3.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 75 (2.37%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.74%) Windows 7
10 50 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
11 47 (1.49%) Ubuntu
12 41 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.14%) AIX
14 30 (0.95%) CentOS
15 23 (0.73%) VMS
16 18 (0.57%) Solaris
16 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.35%) Debian
17 11 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 755 (23.86%) Problem-Solving
2 574 (18.14%) ITIL
3 521 (16.47%) Customer Service
4 416 (13.15%) ITSM
5 414 (13.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 396 (12.52%) Migration
7 318 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
8 307 (9.70%) DevOps
9 293 (9.26%) Service Management
10 267 (8.44%) CI/CD
11 263 (8.31%) Agile
12 247 (7.81%) Infrastructure as Code
13 223 (7.05%) Change Management
14 203 (6.42%) Stakeholder Management
15 200 (6.32%) Disaster Recovery
16 198 (6.26%) High Availability
17 192 (6.07%) Service Delivery
18 187 (5.91%) Cybersecurity
19 183 (5.78%) Validation
20 181 (5.72%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 763 (24.12%) PowerShell
2 336 (10.62%) Python
3 318 (10.05%) SQL
4 185 (5.85%) Bash
5 161 (5.09%) C#
6 76 (2.40%) Java
7 65 (2.05%) JavaScript
8 62 (1.96%) T-SQL
9 55 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.52%) Bicep
11 45 (1.42%) C++
12 30 (0.95%) VBScript
13 29 (0.92%) VB
14 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (0.66%) Perl
16 19 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 19 (0.60%) VBA
17 16 (0.51%) TypeScript
18 12 (0.38%) C
19 11 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 963 (30.44%) Security Cleared
2 604 (19.09%) SC Cleared
3 334 (10.56%) DV Cleared
4 293 (9.26%) Degree
5 121 (3.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 99 (3.13%) Cisco Certification
7 83 (2.62%) Azure Certification
8 77 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
10 59 (1.86%) CISSP
11 55 (1.74%) AWS Certification
12 54 (1.71%) A+ Certification
13 47 (1.49%) CCNA
14 44 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 38 (1.20%) CCNP
15 38 (1.20%) DBS Check
16 35 (1.11%) MCSE
17 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 26 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
19 24 (0.76%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (5.09%) SLA
2 110 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 99 (3.13%) QA
4 82 (2.59%) NIST
5 37 (1.17%) GDPR
6 30 (0.95%) NCSC
7 28 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
8 22 (0.70%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
10 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.44%) Accessibility
11 14 (0.44%) GxP
12 13 (0.41%) PMO
13 11 (0.35%) GRC
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 9 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 9 (0.28%) GMP
15 8 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,286 (40.64%) Active Directory
2 462 (14.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 205 (6.48%) Hyper-V
4 142 (4.49%) VMware ESXi
5 128 (4.05%) vSphere
6 108 (3.41%) Docker
7 96 (3.03%) Virtual Desktop
7 96 (3.03%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.59%) VMware NSX
9 42 (1.33%) Firmware
10 40 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 22 (0.70%) vCloud
12 17 (0.54%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.35%) KVM
15 9 (0.28%) NFS
15 9 (0.28%) XenApp
15 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
16 8 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.22%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 439 (13.87%) Microsoft Intune
2 322 (10.18%) SCCM
3 235 (7.43%) Ansible
4 166 (5.25%) Kubernetes
5 118 (3.73%) vCenter Server
6 83 (2.62%) SCOM
7 50 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
8 47 (1.49%) WSUS
9 40 (1.26%) Progress Chef
10 36 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.95%) Puppet
12 28 (0.88%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.85%) NetBackup
13 27 (0.85%) WMI
14 26 (0.82%) Nagios
15 25 (0.79%) Packer
15 25 (0.79%) Prometheus
16 24 (0.76%) Grafana
17 23 (0.73%) VxRail
18 22 (0.70%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,464 (46.27%) Microsoft
2 607 (19.18%) VMware
3 370 (11.69%) ServiceNow
4 218 (6.89%) Cisco
5 205 (6.48%) Oracle
6 184 (5.82%) Citrix
7 118 (3.73%) Splunk
8 106 (3.35%) Apple
9 96 (3.03%) CyberArk
10 80 (2.53%) Google
11 78 (2.47%) SolarWinds
12 76 (2.40%) BeyondTrust
13 72 (2.28%) Red Hat
14 68 (2.15%) HP
15 61 (1.93%) Remedy
16 56 (1.77%) Dell
17 51 (1.61%) Palo Alto
18 49 (1.55%) BMC
19 47 (1.49%) NetApp
20 46 (1.45%) Meraki