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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,162 2,637 3,234
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.90% 8.04% 8.31%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.81% 59.89% 59.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,022 1,741 2,162
10th Percentile £167 £170 £175
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £449
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -8.64% +3.76%
75th Percentile £556 £560 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £388 £450
% change year-on-year +6.45% -13.89% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 219 233
10th Percentile £15.33 £15.47 £11.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.60 £15.63
Median hourly rate £25.51 £20.00 £21.80
Median % change year-on-year +27.53% -8.26% -3.11%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £53.75
90th Percentile £73.74 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.64
% change year-on-year +36.46% -8.59% -3.11%

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 5,200 4,403 5,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.43% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,294 2,806 3,569
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £316 £308 £333
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £687
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £470
% change year-on-year - -4.26% +4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 268 331
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.54 £12.42
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.48 £17.22
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.83 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.71% -9.71% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.26 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.80 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.25 £23.50 £38.25
% change year-on-year +28.72% -38.56% +39.09%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 2,752 £420 +3.07% 956
UK excluding London -14 2,047 £413 +6.45% 853
London -12 918 £425 +0.59% 211
Work from Home -11 628 £475 +5.56% 293
South East -9 569 £475 -5.00% 302
North of England -4 505 £328 +0.77% 193
North West +2 293 £344 -1.71% 94
South West -15 286 £488 +39.29% 101
Midlands -20 259 £384 -4.13% 124
East of England -3 197 £335 - 120
Yorkshire -16 184 £313 - 72
Scotland -4 165 £375 -18.03% 28
West Midlands -28 164 £419 -2.39% 83
East Midlands +5 91 £273 +36.25% 41
Wales +5 64 £425 +54.55% 17
North East -26 32 £260 -0.95% 37
Northern Ireland -5 16 £139 -30.75% 4
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
1 255 (8.06%) SharePoint
2 244 (7.72%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.18%) IIS
4 59 (1.87%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.51%) Apache
6 16 (0.51%) nginx
7 15 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
8 14 (0.44%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
10 9 (0.28%) NetWeaver
11 7 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.19%) Documentum
13 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
13 5 (0.16%) Appian
13 5 (0.16%) Camunda
13 5 (0.16%) SAS
14 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
15 3 (0.095%) CloudStack
15 3 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 210 (6.64%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.28%) 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 58 (1.83%) 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
1 982 (31.06%) Azure
2 977 (30.90%) Microsoft 365
3 483 (15.28%) Entra ID
4 336 (10.63%) AWS
5 140 (4.43%) OneDrive
6 117 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 102 (3.23%) GCP
8 78 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
9 75 (2.37%) Power Platform
9 75 (2.37%) SaaS
10 73 (2.31%) GitHub
11 65 (2.06%) IaaS
12 50 (1.58%) PaaS
13 44 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
14 39 (1.23%) OpenShift
15 32 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
18 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
19 25 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 472 (14.93%) DNS
2 353 (11.16%) Firewall
3 335 (10.59%) DHCP
4 276 (8.73%) VPN
5 229 (7.24%) TCP/IP
6 157 (4.97%) LAN
6 157 (4.97%) WAN
7 142 (4.49%) Wi-Fi
8 99 (3.13%) SAN
9 88 (2.78%) VLAN
10 86 (2.72%) Network Security
11 48 (1.52%) NAS
12 47 (1.49%) Wireless
13 45 (1.42%) SSL
14 43 (1.36%) Internet
15 39 (1.23%) VSAN
16 35 (1.11%) Skype
17 32 (1.01%) BGP
17 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
18 27 (0.85%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (9.68%) SQL Server
2 59 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 56 (1.77%) 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%) Oracle BI EE
16 8 (0.25%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 172 (5.44%) JIRA
2 77 (2.44%) Git
3 60 (1.90%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.49%) MSI
5 43 (1.36%) 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%) Chocolatey
12 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
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 1,149 (36.34%) Social Skills
2 396 (12.52%) Analytical Skills
3 375 (11.86%) Finance
4 179 (5.66%) Public Sector
5 163 (5.15%) Banking
6 108 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
7 90 (2.85%) Legal
8 77 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
9 70 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 58 (1.83%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.77%) Retail
12 49 (1.55%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.30%) Front Office
14 37 (1.17%) Law
14 37 (1.17%) Military
15 34 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.89%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.79%) Financial Institution
17 25 (0.79%) French Language
18 22 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 493 (15.59%) Support Engineer
2 422 (13.35%) IT Support
3 329 (10.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 328 (10.37%) IT Engineer
5 274 (8.67%) IT Support Engineer
6 265 (8.38%) Analyst
7 243 (7.69%) Senior
8 140 (4.43%) Desktop Support
9 129 (4.08%) 2nd Line Support
9 129 (4.08%) Architect
10 115 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
11 114 (3.61%) Desktop Engineer
12 113 (3.57%) Lead
13 109 (3.45%) Developer
14 106 (3.35%) Windows Engineer
15 102 (3.23%) Consultant
16 101 (3.19%) Support Analyst
17 86 (2.72%) 1st Line Support
18 83 (2.62%) Service Analyst
19 82 (2.59%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (8.57%) Terraform
2 135 (4.27%) .NET
3 117 (3.70%) REST
4 69 (2.18%) .NET Framework
5 44 (1.39%) Middleware
6 36 (1.14%) JSON
7 33 (1.04%) LDAP
8 32 (1.01%) WinForms
9 29 (0.92%) WPF
9 29 (0.92%) XML
10 27 (0.85%) HTML
10 27 (0.85%) Kafka
10 27 (0.85%) Software Packaging
11 25 (0.79%) Web Services
12 22 (0.70%) ARM Templates
13 21 (0.66%) CSS
13 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
13 21 (0.66%) RESTful
14 20 (0.63%) SAML
15 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 362 (11.45%) Onboarding
2 182 (5.76%) Data Centre
3 164 (5.19%) PKI
4 90 (2.85%) Management Information System
5 88 (2.78%) Clustering
6 84 (2.66%) Enterprise Software
7 82 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
8 79 (2.50%) Driving Licence
9 78 (2.47%) Cloud Native
10 69 (2.18%) Video Conferencing
11 67 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
12 66 (2.09%) Replication
13 50 (1.58%) Security Posture
14 48 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.33%) Virtual Team
16 40 (1.27%) 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
1 839 (26.53%) Windows Server
2 791 (25.02%) Linux
3 544 (17.20%) Windows 10
4 192 (6.07%) Mac OS
5 148 (4.68%) Unix
6 137 (4.33%) Android
7 136 (4.30%) Apple iOS
8 128 (4.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 76 (2.40%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.74%) Windows 7
11 50 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
12 47 (1.49%) Ubuntu
13 41 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
14 36 (1.14%) AIX
15 31 (0.98%) CentOS
16 23 (0.73%) VMS
17 18 (0.57%) Solaris
17 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
19 10 (0.32%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 749 (23.69%) Problem-Solving
2 571 (18.06%) ITIL
3 513 (16.22%) Customer Service
4 417 (13.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 412 (13.03%) ITSM
6 400 (12.65%) Migration
7 314 (9.93%) Continuous Improvement
8 312 (9.87%) DevOps
9 290 (9.17%) Service Management
10 271 (8.57%) CI/CD
11 264 (8.35%) Agile
12 251 (7.94%) Infrastructure as Code
13 222 (7.02%) Change Management
14 205 (6.48%) Stakeholder Management
15 200 (6.33%) Disaster Recovery
16 199 (6.29%) High Availability
17 194 (6.14%) Service Delivery
18 187 (5.91%) Cybersecurity
19 183 (5.79%) Validation
20 179 (5.66%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 764 (24.16%) PowerShell
2 340 (10.75%) Python
3 318 (10.06%) SQL
4 187 (5.91%) Bash
5 161 (5.09%) C#
6 76 (2.40%) Java
7 65 (2.06%) JavaScript
8 61 (1.93%) T-SQL
9 54 (1.71%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.52%) Bicep
11 45 (1.42%) C++
12 30 (0.95%) VBScript
13 28 (0.89%) VB
14 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (0.66%) Perl
15 21 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.57%) VBA
17 16 (0.51%) TypeScript
18 12 (0.38%) C
19 11 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 968 (30.61%) Security Cleared
2 610 (19.29%) SC Cleared
3 335 (10.59%) DV Cleared
4 295 (9.33%) Degree
5 122 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 100 (3.16%) Cisco Certification
7 84 (2.66%) Azure Certification
8 77 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
10 61 (1.93%) CISSP
11 55 (1.74%) AWS Certification
12 53 (1.68%) A+ Certification
13 47 (1.49%) CCNA
14 42 (1.33%) 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 25 (0.79%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (5.09%) SLA
2 110 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 98 (3.10%) QA
4 82 (2.59%) NIST
5 38 (1.20%) GDPR
6 30 (0.95%) NCSC
7 27 (0.85%) 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%) GxP
12 13 (0.41%) Accessibility
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 7 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,288 (40.73%) Active Directory
2 465 (14.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 206 (6.51%) Hyper-V
4 140 (4.43%) VMware ESXi
5 129 (4.08%) vSphere
6 109 (3.45%) Docker
7 96 (3.04%) Virtual Machines
8 94 (2.97%) Virtual Desktop
9 82 (2.59%) VMware NSX
10 42 (1.33%) Firmware
11 40 (1.27%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.63%) vCloud
13 17 (0.54%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.35%) KVM
16 9 (0.28%) NFS
16 9 (0.28%) XenApp
16 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
17 8 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
18 7 (0.22%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 442 (13.98%) Microsoft Intune
2 325 (10.28%) SCCM
3 239 (7.56%) Ansible
4 168 (5.31%) Kubernetes
5 116 (3.67%) vCenter Server
6 81 (2.56%) SCOM
7 49 (1.55%) Jamf Pro
8 47 (1.49%) WSUS
9 42 (1.33%) Progress Chef
10 37 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
11 32 (1.01%) Puppet
12 29 (0.92%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.85%) NetBackup
14 26 (0.82%) Nagios
14 26 (0.82%) WMI
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 1,460 (46.17%) Microsoft
2 611 (19.32%) VMware
3 368 (11.64%) ServiceNow
4 220 (6.96%) Cisco
5 204 (6.45%) Oracle
6 184 (5.82%) Citrix
7 118 (3.73%) Splunk
8 104 (3.29%) Apple
9 97 (3.07%) CyberArk
10 81 (2.56%) Google
11 78 (2.47%) SolarWinds
12 76 (2.40%) BeyondTrust
13 73 (2.31%) Red Hat
14 70 (2.21%) HP
15 62 (1.96%) Remedy
16 57 (1.80%) Dell
17 51 (1.61%) Palo Alto
18 50 (1.58%) BMC
19 47 (1.49%) NetApp
20 46 (1.45%) Meraki