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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,266 2,633 3,120
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.98% 8.08% 8.24%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.00% 59.58% 58.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,074 1,754 1,980
10th Percentile £172 £163 £180
25th Percentile £225 £208 £244
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £560 £538 £570
90th Percentile £668 £625 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +17.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 341 244 167
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.19 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%
75th Percentile £61.50 £30.88 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% +9.91%

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 5,354 4,419 5,323
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.80% 13.55% 14.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,381 2,820 3,321
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £280 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £662 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 295 255
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.10
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.53
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +19.02%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £69.22
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.20
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.25% +32.23%

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 29 September 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 29 September 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 29 September 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 2,855 £420 +5.00% 2,106
UK excluding London -12 2,109 £413 +17.86% 1,436
London -5 956 £416 -2.12% 721
Work from Home -11 615 £465 +6.29% 788
South East -7 565 £475 +26.67% 343
North of England -6 500 £325 +7.47% 302
North West +6 295 £344 +3.69% 160
Midlands -14 293 £400 +3.23% 268
South West -17 264 £535 +52.86% 176
East of England -1 249 £235 -32.86% 195
West Midlands -22 199 £413 +3.13% 160
Yorkshire -13 168 £279 +39.25% 111
Scotland -9 161 £250 -44.44% 80
East Midlands +3 93 £275 +22.22% 107
Wales +8 72 £446 +62.27% 45
North East -24 42 £283 +13.80% 36
Northern Ireland -1 16 £139 -30.75% 57
Channel Islands -2 2 £535 -

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
1 268 (8.21%) SharePoint
2 242 (7.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 70 (2.14%) IIS
4 59 (1.81%) Confluence
5 20 (0.61%) nginx
6 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
7 17 (0.52%) Apache
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
9 10 (0.31%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.18%) Documentum
11 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.15%) Appian
11 5 (0.15%) Camunda
12 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
12 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.12%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.092%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.092%) IBM Transformation Extender
13 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 231 (7.07%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.092%) Houdini
6 3 (0.092%) NUKE
7 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.061%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 53 (1.62%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 7 (0.21%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.21%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.092%) assyst
5 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.031%) Monis
7 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,027 (31.45%) Microsoft 365
2 986 (30.19%) Azure
3 535 (16.38%) Entra ID
4 341 (10.44%) AWS
5 146 (4.47%) OneDrive
6 122 (3.74%) GCP
7 117 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (2.48%) SaaS
9 74 (2.27%) GitHub
10 73 (2.24%) Azure Monitor
11 68 (2.08%) Power Platform
12 61 (1.87%) IaaS
13 45 (1.38%) PaaS
14 43 (1.32%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.13%) OpenShift
16 32 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
18 28 (0.86%) Google Workspace
19 23 (0.70%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.67%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 486 (14.88%) DNS
2 345 (10.56%) DHCP
3 333 (10.20%) Firewall
4 280 (8.57%) VPN
5 246 (7.53%) TCP/IP
6 133 (4.07%) WAN
7 132 (4.04%) LAN
8 127 (3.89%) Wi-Fi
9 105 (3.21%) Network Security
10 89 (2.73%) SAN
11 85 (2.60%) VLAN
12 60 (1.84%) Wireless
13 55 (1.68%) SSL
14 41 (1.26%) Internet
15 40 (1.22%) BGP
15 40 (1.22%) NAS
16 35 (1.07%) Skype
17 33 (1.01%) HTTP
18 32 (0.98%) VoIP
19 27 (0.83%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 292 (8.94%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.84%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.65%) Power BI
4 42 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.19%) Relational Database
7 26 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
8 22 (0.67%) MySQL
9 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
11 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 14 (0.43%) Db2
12 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
13 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.28%) Elasticsearch
15 8 (0.24%) MS Access
15 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
16 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
17 6 (0.18%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 155 (4.75%) JIRA
2 85 (2.60%) Git
3 64 (1.96%) Jenkins
4 52 (1.59%) GitLab
5 50 (1.53%) MSI
6 37 (1.13%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Artifactory
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 10 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
14 6 (0.18%) Robot Framework
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
15 5 (0.15%) Zephyr
General
1 1,204 (36.86%) Social Skills
2 399 (12.22%) Analytical Skills
3 383 (11.73%) Finance
4 158 (4.84%) Public Sector
5 156 (4.78%) Banking
6 124 (3.80%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (2.54%) Legal
8 80 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 73 (2.24%) Organisational Skills
10 60 (1.84%) Manufacturing
11 57 (1.75%) Telecoms
12 51 (1.56%) Retail
13 43 (1.32%) Front Office
14 42 (1.29%) Law
15 40 (1.22%) Military
16 35 (1.07%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.86%) Police
18 25 (0.77%) Aerospace
18 25 (0.77%) Spanish Language
19 24 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 529 (16.20%) Support Engineer
2 443 (13.56%) IT Support
3 340 (10.41%) IT Engineer
4 337 (10.32%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 287 (8.79%) IT Support Engineer
6 272 (8.33%) Analyst
7 258 (7.90%) Senior
8 150 (4.59%) Desktop Support
9 129 (3.95%) Desktop Engineer
10 128 (3.92%) Architect
11 125 (3.83%) 2nd Line Support
12 123 (3.77%) Cloud Engineer
13 122 (3.74%) Lead
13 122 (3.74%) Windows Engineer
14 109 (3.34%) Developer
15 96 (2.94%) Support Analyst
16 95 (2.91%) Consultant
17 83 (2.54%) Desktop Support Engineer
17 83 (2.54%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.51%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (8.33%) Terraform
2 149 (4.56%) .NET
3 121 (3.70%) REST
4 66 (2.02%) .NET Framework
5 53 (1.62%) Middleware
6 45 (1.38%) JSON
7 44 (1.35%) LDAP
8 40 (1.22%) WPF
9 32 (0.98%) WinForms
9 32 (0.98%) XML
10 27 (0.83%) Software Packaging
11 26 (0.80%) HTML
11 26 (0.80%) Web Services
12 24 (0.73%) Kafka
13 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
13 23 (0.70%) ARM Templates
14 21 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
15 20 (0.61%) RESTful
16 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
17 18 (0.55%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 396 (12.12%) Onboarding
2 203 (6.22%) Data Centre
3 164 (5.02%) PKI
4 108 (3.31%) Management Information System
5 88 (2.69%) Driving Licence
5 88 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
6 86 (2.63%) Hybrid Cloud
7 81 (2.48%) Video Conferencing
8 77 (2.36%) Cloud Native
8 77 (2.36%) Clustering
9 65 (1.99%) Replication
10 61 (1.87%) Security Posture
11 56 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
12 44 (1.35%) Operational Technology
13 42 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
14 40 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
14 40 (1.22%) Virtual Team
15 39 (1.19%) Enterprise Storage
16 38 (1.16%) Smartphone
17 35 (1.07%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 914 (27.99%) Windows Server
2 790 (24.19%) Linux
3 573 (17.54%) Windows 10
4 208 (6.37%) Mac OS
5 146 (4.47%) Apple iOS
6 143 (4.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 143 (4.38%) Unix
7 139 (4.26%) Android
8 71 (2.17%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.68%) Windows 7
10 48 (1.47%) Ubuntu
11 44 (1.35%) Windows Server 2012
11 44 (1.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 40 (1.22%) CentOS
13 31 (0.95%) AIX
14 21 (0.64%) Solaris
15 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
16 17 (0.52%) VMS
17 16 (0.49%) Rocky
18 12 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 783 (23.97%) Problem-Solving
2 614 (18.80%) ITIL
3 565 (17.30%) Customer Service
4 446 (13.66%) ITSM
5 430 (13.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 420 (12.86%) Migration
7 366 (11.21%) Continuous Improvement
8 327 (10.01%) Service Management
9 314 (9.61%) DevOps
10 292 (8.94%) CI/CD
11 280 (8.57%) Infrastructure as Code
12 262 (8.02%) Stakeholder Management
13 260 (7.96%) Agile
14 236 (7.23%) Root Cause Analysis
15 232 (7.10%) Change Management
16 219 (6.71%) Disaster Recovery
17 214 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
18 210 (6.43%) Validation
19 188 (5.76%) Service Delivery
20 186 (5.70%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 773 (23.67%) PowerShell
2 345 (10.56%) Python
3 317 (9.71%) SQL
4 194 (5.94%) Bash
5 172 (5.27%) C#
6 78 (2.39%) T-SQL
7 74 (2.27%) Java
8 63 (1.93%) JavaScript
9 55 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.56%) Bicep
11 39 (1.19%) C++
12 29 (0.89%) VB
12 29 (0.89%) VBScript
13 21 (0.64%) Perl
14 19 (0.58%) VBA
15 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 16 (0.49%) TypeScript
17 12 (0.37%) Go
17 12 (0.37%) Groovy
18 11 (0.34%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 1,003 (30.71%) Security Cleared
2 596 (18.25%) SC Cleared
3 392 (12.00%) DV Cleared
4 299 (9.15%) Degree
5 123 (3.77%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (2.82%) Azure Certification
7 89 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
9 68 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
10 65 (1.99%) CISSP
11 56 (1.71%) AWS Certification
12 55 (1.68%) A+ Certification
13 52 (1.59%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 46 (1.41%) CCNA
15 45 (1.38%) DBS Check
16 40 (1.22%) CCNP
17 35 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.04%) CISM
19 32 (0.98%) MCSE
20 31 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (5.33%) SLA
2 108 (3.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (2.82%) QA
4 83 (2.54%) NIST
5 38 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
6 32 (0.98%) GDPR
7 29 (0.89%) NCSC
8 24 (0.73%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) GRC
10 16 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 16 (0.49%) GxP
11 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
13 11 (0.34%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,356 (41.52%) Active Directory
2 493 (15.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 224 (6.86%) Hyper-V
4 154 (4.72%) VMware ESXi
5 139 (4.26%) vSphere
6 122 (3.74%) Docker
7 106 (3.25%) Virtual Machines
8 102 (3.12%) Virtual Desktop
9 76 (2.33%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.22%) BitLocker
11 35 (1.07%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) vCloud
13 19 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.46%) NFS
16 13 (0.40%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 12 (0.37%) XenApp
18 11 (0.34%) KVM
19 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
20 9 (0.28%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 462 (14.15%) Microsoft Intune
2 357 (10.93%) SCCM
3 227 (6.95%) Ansible
4 166 (5.08%) Kubernetes
5 121 (3.70%) vCenter Server
6 104 (3.18%) SCOM
7 53 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
8 42 (1.29%) WSUS
9 38 (1.16%) Grafana
10 35 (1.07%) Prometheus
11 33 (1.01%) Progress Chef
12 31 (0.95%) NetBackup
12 31 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
13 30 (0.92%) WMI
14 29 (0.89%) Puppet
15 25 (0.77%) VxRail
16 23 (0.70%) Nagios
17 22 (0.67%) Packer
18 19 (0.58%) Failover Clustering
18 19 (0.58%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,561 (47.80%) Microsoft
2 641 (19.63%) VMware
3 378 (11.57%) ServiceNow
4 240 (7.35%) Cisco
5 197 (6.03%) Oracle
6 171 (5.24%) Citrix
7 111 (3.40%) Apple
8 107 (3.28%) Splunk
9 104 (3.18%) CyberArk
10 90 (2.76%) Google
11 82 (2.51%) Red Hat
12 80 (2.45%) BeyondTrust
13 77 (2.36%) SolarWinds
14 60 (1.84%) Dell
15 57 (1.75%) Remedy
16 55 (1.68%) Palo Alto
17 48 (1.47%) NetApp
18 46 (1.41%) HP
19 42 (1.29%) CrowdStrike
20 41 (1.26%) Meraki