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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,142 2,624 3,222
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.87% 7.93% 8.32%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.41% 59.87% 59.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,008 1,729 2,181
10th Percentile £165 £170 £175
25th Percentile £225 £225 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -8.33% +4.65%
75th Percentile £556 £564 £575
90th Percentile £650 £660 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £395 £450
% change year-on-year +4.43% -12.22% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 215 231
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.21 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £15.44
Median hourly rate £25.75 £20.00 £21.80
Median % change year-on-year +28.75% -8.26% -3.11%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.20 £53.38
90th Percentile £73.49 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.64
% change year-on-year +36.46% -8.59% -3.13%

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 5,201 4,383 5,417
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.72% 13.24% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,296 2,796 3,598
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £318 £308 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £453 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +0.67% -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 358 264 332
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.53 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £25.92 £24.58 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.45% -10.62% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.80 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.65 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £23.00 £39.25
% change year-on-year +15.91% -41.40% +42.73%

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 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 17 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 17 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 2,747 £425 +3.91% 1,582
UK excluding London -13 2,028 £413 +4.43% 1,088
London -12 923 £425 - 644
Work from Home -10 631 £475 +2.54% 486
South East -7 571 £475 -3.06% 351
North of England -5 497 £335 +3.08% 265
South West -9 289 £488 +35.42% 142
North West +3 284 £350 - 147
Midlands -22 258 £382 -4.50% 134
East of England -4 192 £338 +6.22% 142
Yorkshire -16 187 £324 +12.61% 85
West Midlands -32 164 £425 -0.93% 90
Scotland -7 159 £375 -19.35% 49
East Midlands +5 90 £270 +35.00% 44
Wales +2 62 £425 +54.55% 25
North East -35 30 £250 -4.76% 43
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 13
Channel Islands +3 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 (8.05%) SharePoint
2 249 (7.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.20%) IIS
4 61 (1.94%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.54%) Apache
7 16 (0.51%) nginx
8 14 (0.45%) HCL Notes
8 14 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
8 14 (0.45%) Tomcat
9 9 (0.29%) 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%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 206 (6.56%) Microsoft Office
2 70 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.13%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.095%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.095%) Houdini
7 3 (0.095%) NUKE
8 2 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.064%) MS Visio
9 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.032%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 57 (1.81%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.45%) 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
5 6 (0.19%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.095%) assyst
8 2 (0.064%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.064%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.032%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 982 (31.25%) Azure
2 962 (30.62%) Microsoft 365
3 483 (15.37%) Entra ID
4 336 (10.69%) AWS
5 141 (4.49%) OneDrive
6 115 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
7 103 (3.28%) GCP
8 77 (2.45%) SaaS
9 76 (2.42%) Power Platform
10 75 (2.39%) Azure Monitor
11 73 (2.32%) GitHub
12 68 (2.16%) IaaS
13 52 (1.65%) PaaS
14 44 (1.40%) Azure Sentinel
15 40 (1.27%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.99%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (0.86%) Google Workspace
19 26 (0.83%) Azure AKS
20 25 (0.80%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 473 (15.05%) DNS
2 350 (11.14%) Firewall
3 332 (10.57%) DHCP
4 272 (8.66%) VPN
5 226 (7.19%) TCP/IP
6 155 (4.93%) LAN
7 153 (4.87%) WAN
8 144 (4.58%) Wi-Fi
9 100 (3.18%) SAN
10 81 (2.58%) Network Security
11 80 (2.55%) VLAN
12 50 (1.59%) NAS
13 47 (1.50%) SSL
14 45 (1.43%) Wireless
15 44 (1.40%) Internet
16 39 (1.24%) VSAN
17 34 (1.08%) BGP
17 34 (1.08%) Skype
18 32 (1.02%) SD-WAN
19 27 (0.86%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 302 (9.61%) SQL Server
2 59 (1.88%) Oracle Database
3 56 (1.78%) Power BI
4 36 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 33 (1.05%) Relational Database
6 31 (0.99%) PostgreSQL
7 25 (0.80%) MySQL
8 21 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
9 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (0.51%) RDBMS
9 16 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 15 (0.48%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 12 (0.38%) Db2
11 12 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
12 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
13 9 (0.29%) Oracle Reports
13 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
14 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
14 8 (0.25%) MS Access
14 8 (0.25%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 170 (5.41%) JIRA
2 77 (2.45%) Git
3 58 (1.85%) Jenkins
4 49 (1.56%) MSI
5 42 (1.34%) GitLab
6 37 (1.18%) Visual Studio
7 18 (0.57%) Bitbucket
8 17 (0.54%) Eclipse
9 10 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.29%) Artifactory
11 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 7 (0.22%) Chocolatey
12 7 (0.22%) Selenium
12 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
13 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
13 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
13 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
13 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,152 (36.66%) Social Skills
2 398 (12.67%) Analytical Skills
3 366 (11.65%) Finance
4 183 (5.82%) Public Sector
5 162 (5.16%) Banking
6 106 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
7 94 (2.99%) Legal
8 76 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
9 69 (2.20%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 57 (1.81%) Retail
11 55 (1.75%) Manufacturing
12 45 (1.43%) Telecoms
13 42 (1.34%) Front Office
14 37 (1.18%) Law
15 36 (1.15%) Military
16 35 (1.11%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.89%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.80%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.73%) French Language
20 21 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 482 (15.34%) Support Engineer
2 424 (13.49%) IT Support
3 325 (10.34%) IT Engineer
4 321 (10.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 272 (8.66%) IT Support Engineer
6 268 (8.53%) Analyst
7 237 (7.54%) Senior
8 140 (4.46%) Desktop Support
9 134 (4.26%) Architect
10 129 (4.11%) 2nd Line Support
11 115 (3.66%) Cloud Engineer
11 115 (3.66%) Desktop Engineer
12 113 (3.60%) Lead
13 110 (3.50%) Developer
14 105 (3.34%) Support Analyst
15 103 (3.28%) Windows Engineer
16 100 (3.18%) Consultant
17 86 (2.74%) 1st Line Support
18 83 (2.64%) IT Analyst
19 81 (2.58%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (4.17%) .NET
2 117 (3.72%) REST
3 67 (2.13%) .NET Framework
4 41 (1.30%) Middleware
5 36 (1.15%) JSON
6 33 (1.05%) WinForms
7 32 (1.02%) LDAP
8 29 (0.92%) WPF
8 29 (0.92%) XML
9 28 (0.89%) HTML
10 27 (0.86%) Kafka
11 25 (0.80%) Software Packaging
11 25 (0.80%) Web Services
12 23 (0.73%) CSS
13 21 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
13 21 (0.67%) RESTful
14 20 (0.64%) ARM Templates
14 20 (0.64%) SAML
15 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 353 (11.23%) Onboarding
2 177 (5.63%) Data Centre
3 159 (5.06%) PKI
4 89 (2.83%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.77%) Clustering
6 82 (2.61%) Enterprise Software
7 81 (2.58%) Hybrid Cloud
8 80 (2.55%) Cloud Native
9 78 (2.48%) Driving Licence
10 66 (2.10%) Video Conferencing
11 65 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
12 64 (2.04%) Replication
13 52 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
14 50 (1.59%) Security Posture
15 43 (1.37%) Virtual Team
16 40 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
17 38 (1.21%) Operational Technology
18 37 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
18 37 (1.18%) Linux Command Line
19 35 (1.11%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 819 (26.07%) Windows Server
2 777 (24.73%) Linux
3 535 (17.03%) Windows 10
4 195 (6.21%) Mac OS
5 152 (4.84%) Unix
6 142 (4.52%) Android
7 138 (4.39%) Apple iOS
8 123 (3.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (2.39%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.75%) Windows 7
11 48 (1.53%) Windows Server 2016
12 42 (1.34%) Ubuntu
13 38 (1.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 35 (1.11%) AIX
15 27 (0.86%) CentOS
16 23 (0.73%) VMS
17 20 (0.64%) Windows Server 2008
18 17 (0.54%) Solaris
19 11 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
20 10 (0.32%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 753 (23.97%) Problem-Solving
2 558 (17.76%) ITIL
3 504 (16.04%) Customer Service
4 410 (13.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 403 (12.83%) ITSM
6 402 (12.79%) Migration
7 313 (9.96%) DevOps
8 312 (9.93%) Continuous Improvement
9 284 (9.04%) Service Management
10 273 (8.69%) CI/CD
11 268 (8.53%) Agile
12 245 (7.80%) Infrastructure as Code
13 228 (7.26%) Change Management
14 205 (6.52%) Stakeholder Management
15 199 (6.33%) High Availability
16 195 (6.21%) Service Delivery
17 192 (6.11%) Disaster Recovery
18 181 (5.76%) Cybersecurity
19 175 (5.57%) Incident Management
20 171 (5.44%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 751 (23.90%) PowerShell
2 334 (10.63%) Python
3 317 (10.09%) SQL
4 183 (5.82%) Bash
5 156 (4.96%) C#
6 78 (2.48%) Java
7 69 (2.20%) JavaScript
8 61 (1.94%) T-SQL
9 55 (1.75%) PL/SQL
10 46 (1.46%) Bicep
10 46 (1.46%) C++
11 30 (0.95%) VBScript
12 28 (0.89%) VB
13 25 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
14 22 (0.70%) Perl
15 21 (0.67%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.57%) VBA
17 17 (0.54%) TypeScript
18 13 (0.41%) C
19 10 (0.32%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 956 (30.43%) Security Cleared
2 606 (19.29%) SC Cleared
3 325 (10.34%) DV Cleared
4 293 (9.33%) Degree
5 122 (3.88%) Microsoft Certification
6 98 (3.12%) Cisco Certification
7 84 (2.67%) Azure Certification
8 78 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (1.97%) CISSP
10 59 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (1.72%) AWS Certification
12 52 (1.65%) A+ Certification
13 44 (1.40%) CCNA
14 41 (1.30%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 36 (1.15%) MCSE
16 35 (1.11%) CCNP
17 34 (1.08%) DBS Check
18 33 (1.05%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 28 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
20 25 (0.80%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 160 (5.09%) SLA
2 110 (3.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.99%) QA
4 83 (2.64%) NIST
5 40 (1.27%) GDPR
6 31 (0.99%) NCSC
7 26 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
8 24 (0.76%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.48%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.48%) Disclosure Scotland
11 13 (0.41%) Accessibility
11 13 (0.41%) GxP
11 13 (0.41%) PMO
12 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.35%) WCAG
13 10 (0.32%) GRC
14 8 (0.25%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 8 (0.25%) GMP
14 8 (0.25%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,271 (40.45%) Active Directory
2 446 (14.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 197 (6.27%) Hyper-V
4 139 (4.42%) VMware ESXi
5 122 (3.88%) vSphere
6 107 (3.41%) Docker
7 100 (3.18%) Virtual Machines
8 92 (2.93%) Virtual Desktop
9 82 (2.61%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.27%) BitLocker
11 38 (1.21%) Firmware
12 20 (0.64%) vCloud
13 19 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
14 13 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.38%) KVM
16 9 (0.29%) NFS
17 8 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
18 6 (0.19%) etcd
18 6 (0.19%) XenApp
18 6 (0.19%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 443 (14.10%) Microsoft Intune
2 316 (10.06%) SCCM
3 271 (8.63%) Terraform
4 237 (7.54%) Ansible
5 170 (5.41%) Kubernetes
6 116 (3.69%) vCenter Server
7 81 (2.58%) SCOM
8 51 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
9 48 (1.53%) WSUS
10 42 (1.34%) Progress Chef
11 37 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
12 31 (0.99%) Puppet
13 28 (0.89%) FortiGate
14 27 (0.86%) NetBackup
15 25 (0.80%) Grafana
15 25 (0.80%) Nagios
15 25 (0.80%) Packer
15 25 (0.80%) Prometheus
16 24 (0.76%) WMI
17 23 (0.73%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,434 (45.64%) Microsoft
2 598 (19.03%) VMware
3 364 (11.58%) ServiceNow
4 212 (6.75%) Cisco
5 200 (6.37%) Oracle
6 188 (5.98%) Citrix
7 118 (3.76%) Splunk
8 101 (3.21%) Apple
9 94 (2.99%) CyberArk
10 80 (2.55%) SolarWinds
11 78 (2.48%) Google
12 73 (2.32%) BeyondTrust
12 73 (2.32%) Red Hat
13 71 (2.26%) HP
14 64 (2.04%) Remedy
15 57 (1.81%) Dell
16 49 (1.56%) Palo Alto
17 48 (1.53%) BMC
18 45 (1.43%) F5
18 45 (1.43%) Meraki