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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,107 2,622 3,286
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.83% 7.97% 8.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.40% 59.71% 60.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,972 1,729 2,224
10th Percentile £165 £171 £175
25th Percentile £225 £225 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £415 £448
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -7.31% +1.47%
75th Percentile £556 £563 £575
90th Percentile £650 £659 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +3.13% -11.11% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 281 209 233
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.33 £11.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £15.65
Median hourly rate £25.75 £19.27 £21.59
Median % change year-on-year +33.63% -10.75% -8.13%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £51.91
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -6.56%

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 5,144 4,391 5,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.65% 13.34% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,245 2,817 3,626
10th Percentile £190 £200 £200
25th Percentile £315 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.17% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £658 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £470
% change year-on-year +1.11% -4.26% +4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 256 336
10th Percentile £14.80 £15.50 £12.46
25th Percentile £17.68 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.85 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.88 £22.53 £40.00
% change year-on-year +23.75% -43.68% +36.52%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -6 2,723 £425 +3.79% 1,199
UK excluding London -13 2,022 £413 +3.13% 950
London -14 904 £425 -0.12% 364
Work from Home -8 635 £475 +5.56% 411
South East -8 588 £475 -3.06% 305
North of England -8 470 £325 -1.29% 226
South West -11 281 £488 +21.88% 118
Midlands -22 263 £400 +6.67% 126
North West -4 259 £328 -6.43% 140
East of England -2 200 £336 +34.50% 125
Yorkshire -17 187 £355 +9.23% 58
West Midlands -29 171 £450 +12.50% 80
Scotland -4 164 £388 -16.67% 37
East Midlands +8 88 £270 +36.71% 46
Wales +3 54 £425 +54.55% 31
North East -37 28 £260 -5.45% 34
Northern Ireland -2 17 £139 -30.75% 12
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
1 245 (7.89%) SharePoint
2 244 (7.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 68 (2.19%) IIS
4 61 (1.96%) Confluence
5 18 (0.58%) nginx
6 17 (0.55%) Apache
7 16 (0.51%) Tomcat
8 14 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.42%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.29%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.19%) Appian
12 6 (0.19%) Documentum
13 5 (0.16%) Camunda
13 5 (0.16%) SAS
14 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.13%) Apache Solr
14 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
15 3 (0.097%) CloudStack
Applications
1 201 (6.47%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.13%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.097%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.097%) Houdini
7 3 (0.097%) NUKE
8 2 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.032%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 59 (1.90%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.32%) Finacle
4 7 (0.23%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.23%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.16%) Dynamics CRM
7 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 3 (0.097%) assyst
9 2 (0.064%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.064%) 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
1 966 (31.09%) Azure
2 944 (30.38%) Microsoft 365
3 460 (14.81%) Entra ID
4 332 (10.69%) AWS
5 136 (4.38%) OneDrive
6 108 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
7 106 (3.41%) GCP
8 75 (2.41%) SaaS
9 74 (2.38%) Power Platform
10 73 (2.35%) GitHub
11 67 (2.16%) Azure Monitor
12 64 (2.06%) IaaS
13 53 (1.71%) PaaS
14 43 (1.38%) Azure Sentinel
15 36 (1.16%) OpenShift
16 30 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
18 25 (0.80%) Amazon EC2
19 24 (0.77%) Google Workspace
20 23 (0.74%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 469 (15.09%) DNS
2 357 (11.49%) Firewall
3 321 (10.33%) DHCP
4 256 (8.24%) VPN
5 218 (7.02%) TCP/IP
6 162 (5.21%) LAN
7 152 (4.89%) WAN
8 138 (4.44%) Wi-Fi
9 97 (3.12%) SAN
10 80 (2.57%) Network Security
11 75 (2.41%) VLAN
12 52 (1.67%) SSL
13 48 (1.54%) BGP
14 47 (1.51%) NAS
15 43 (1.38%) Internet
16 42 (1.35%) Wireless
17 36 (1.16%) OSPF
18 35 (1.13%) VSAN
19 32 (1.03%) VoIP
20 29 (0.93%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (9.78%) SQL Server
2 62 (2.00%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.74%) Power BI
4 36 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 33 (1.06%) PostgreSQL
5 33 (1.06%) Relational Database
6 27 (0.87%) MySQL
7 21 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
8 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (0.51%) Db2
8 16 (0.51%) RDBMS
8 16 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 15 (0.48%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 14 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
11 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
11 11 (0.35%) MongoDB
11 11 (0.35%) NoSQL
12 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
13 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
14 8 (0.26%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 177 (5.70%) JIRA
2 76 (2.45%) Git
3 57 (1.83%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.61%) MSI
5 41 (1.32%) GitLab
6 37 (1.19%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.55%) Bitbucket
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 10 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
10 8 (0.26%) Artifactory
10 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
12 5 (0.16%) Android Studio
12 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.16%) Maven
12 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (0.16%) Selenium
12 5 (0.16%) Xcode
General
1 1,137 (36.59%) Social Skills
2 386 (12.42%) Analytical Skills
3 357 (11.49%) Finance
4 192 (6.18%) Public Sector
5 160 (5.15%) Banking
6 107 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
7 98 (3.15%) Legal
8 81 (2.61%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.80%) Retail
11 51 (1.64%) Manufacturing
12 46 (1.48%) Military
13 40 (1.29%) Front Office
13 40 (1.29%) Telecoms
14 36 (1.16%) Law
15 34 (1.09%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.90%) Spanish Language
17 26 (0.84%) Financial Institution
18 23 (0.74%) French Language
19 21 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 463 (14.90%) Support Engineer
2 413 (13.29%) IT Support
3 315 (10.14%) IT Engineer
4 309 (9.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 277 (8.92%) Analyst
6 264 (8.50%) IT Support Engineer
7 233 (7.50%) Senior
8 132 (4.25%) Desktop Support
9 129 (4.15%) Architect
10 125 (4.02%) 2nd Line Support
11 115 (3.70%) Developer
12 114 (3.67%) Lead
13 112 (3.60%) Cloud Engineer
14 109 (3.51%) Desktop Engineer
15 103 (3.32%) Support Analyst
16 94 (3.03%) Consultant
17 93 (2.99%) Windows Engineer
18 88 (2.83%) IT Analyst
19 85 (2.74%) 1st Line Support
20 84 (2.70%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (4.15%) .NET
2 117 (3.77%) REST
3 68 (2.19%) .NET Framework
4 40 (1.29%) Middleware
5 34 (1.09%) WinForms
6 32 (1.03%) LDAP
7 31 (1.00%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.97%) HTML
8 30 (0.97%) JSON
8 30 (0.97%) WPF
9 29 (0.93%) XML
10 27 (0.87%) Web Services
11 26 (0.84%) CSS
12 25 (0.80%) Kafka
13 24 (0.77%) Software Packaging
14 22 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
15 21 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
15 21 (0.68%) RESTful
16 19 (0.61%) SAML
17 18 (0.58%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 340 (10.94%) Onboarding
2 170 (5.47%) Data Centre
3 163 (5.25%) PKI
4 94 (3.03%) Clustering
5 84 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
6 83 (2.67%) Management Information System
7 79 (2.54%) Cloud Native
8 73 (2.35%) Driving Licence
9 70 (2.25%) Hybrid Cloud
10 66 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
11 63 (2.03%) Replication
12 60 (1.93%) Video Conferencing
13 56 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
13 56 (1.80%) Security Posture
14 45 (1.45%) Virtual Team
15 40 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
17 37 (1.19%) Operational Technology
17 37 (1.19%) Smartphone
18 36 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 795 (25.59%) Windows Server
2 775 (24.94%) Linux
3 524 (16.87%) Windows 10
4 189 (6.08%) Mac OS
5 162 (5.21%) Unix
6 138 (4.44%) Android
7 135 (4.35%) Apple iOS
8 123 (3.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 78 (2.51%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.51%) Windows Server 2016
11 44 (1.42%) Windows 7
12 41 (1.32%) Ubuntu
13 38 (1.22%) AIX
13 38 (1.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 24 (0.77%) CentOS
15 23 (0.74%) VMS
16 22 (0.71%) Solaris
17 21 (0.68%) Windows Server 2008
18 10 (0.32%) Rocky
19 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 734 (23.62%) Problem-Solving
2 544 (17.51%) ITIL
3 492 (15.84%) Customer Service
4 399 (12.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 387 (12.46%) Migration
6 375 (12.07%) ITSM
7 305 (9.82%) DevOps
8 302 (9.72%) Continuous Improvement
9 273 (8.79%) Agile
10 269 (8.66%) CI/CD
11 260 (8.37%) Service Management
12 230 (7.40%) Infrastructure as Code
13 222 (7.15%) Change Management
14 209 (6.73%) High Availability
15 195 (6.28%) Service Delivery
16 192 (6.18%) Stakeholder Management
17 187 (6.02%) Cybersecurity
18 179 (5.76%) Disaster Recovery
19 169 (5.44%) Incident Management
20 162 (5.21%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 715 (23.01%) PowerShell
2 329 (10.59%) Python
3 315 (10.14%) SQL
4 176 (5.66%) Bash
5 157 (5.05%) C#
6 76 (2.45%) Java
7 74 (2.38%) JavaScript
8 63 (2.03%) T-SQL
9 58 (1.87%) PL/SQL
10 49 (1.58%) C++
11 42 (1.35%) Bicep
12 25 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
13 24 (0.77%) Perl
14 21 (0.68%) VB
14 21 (0.68%) VBScript
15 20 (0.64%) Shell Script
15 20 (0.64%) VBA
16 18 (0.58%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.48%) C
18 12 (0.39%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 946 (30.45%) Security Cleared
2 591 (19.02%) SC Cleared
3 321 (10.33%) DV Cleared
4 301 (9.69%) Degree
5 126 (4.06%) Microsoft Certification
6 104 (3.35%) Cisco Certification
7 75 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 72 (2.32%) Azure Certification
9 66 (2.12%) CISSP
10 63 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
11 53 (1.71%) AWS Certification
12 45 (1.45%) A+ Certification
12 45 (1.45%) CCNA
13 42 (1.35%) MCSE
14 37 (1.19%) CCNP
15 33 (1.06%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 32 (1.03%) DBS Check
17 31 (1.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 28 (0.90%) ITIL Certification
19 23 (0.74%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (4.96%) SLA
2 120 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 93 (2.99%) QA
4 88 (2.83%) NIST
5 40 (1.29%) GDPR
6 29 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
7 28 (0.90%) NCSC
8 23 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.48%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.45%) GxP
11 14 (0.45%) PMO
12 13 (0.42%) Accessibility
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 10 (0.32%) GRC
15 9 (0.29%) GMP
15 9 (0.29%) SOC 2
16 8 (0.26%) 21 CFR Part 11
System Software
1 1,249 (40.20%) Active Directory
2 426 (13.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 184 (5.92%) Hyper-V
4 138 (4.44%) VMware ESXi
5 117 (3.77%) vSphere
6 108 (3.48%) Docker
7 97 (3.12%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 77 (2.48%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.29%) Firmware
11 32 (1.03%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.68%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.58%) vCloud
14 14 (0.45%) KVM
15 10 (0.32%) Virtual Servers
16 9 (0.29%) NFS
17 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
18 7 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
18 7 (0.23%) XenApp
18 7 (0.23%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 426 (13.71%) Microsoft Intune
2 283 (9.11%) SCCM
3 259 (8.34%) Terraform
4 230 (7.40%) Ansible
5 170 (5.47%) Kubernetes
6 115 (3.70%) vCenter Server
7 75 (2.41%) SCOM
8 49 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
9 42 (1.35%) WSUS
10 41 (1.32%) Progress Chef
11 39 (1.26%) FortiGate
12 35 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
13 32 (1.03%) Puppet
14 28 (0.90%) NetBackup
15 25 (0.80%) Nagios
15 25 (0.80%) Packer
16 23 (0.74%) Prometheus
16 23 (0.74%) WMI
17 22 (0.71%) Grafana
17 22 (0.71%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,378 (44.35%) Microsoft
2 573 (18.44%) VMware
3 344 (11.07%) ServiceNow
4 220 (7.08%) Cisco
5 206 (6.63%) Oracle
6 195 (6.28%) Citrix
7 136 (4.38%) Splunk
8 92 (2.96%) Apple
8 92 (2.96%) CyberArk
8 92 (2.96%) SolarWinds
9 74 (2.38%) BeyondTrust
9 74 (2.38%) HP
10 73 (2.35%) Google
10 73 (2.35%) Red Hat
11 70 (2.25%) Remedy
12 62 (2.00%) Dell
13 57 (1.83%) F5
14 55 (1.77%) Juniper
15 49 (1.58%) BMC
16 48 (1.54%) Palo Alto