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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,230 2,632 3,184
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.97% 8.05% 8.29%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.00% 59.67% 58.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,059 1,750 2,098
10th Percentile £169 £165 £178
25th Percentile £223 £213 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £408 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.29% -4.12% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £656 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £365 £425
% change year-on-year +12.33% -14.12% +9.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 321 227 183
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.43 £14.30
25th Percentile £17.00 £18.10 £17.57
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%
75th Percentile £60.00 £34.38 £57.56
90th Percentile £74.32 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.65 £24.18
% change year-on-year +18.94% -10.46% +11.17%

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 5,295 4,411 5,436
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.49% 14.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,336 2,820 3,502
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £581
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £445 £450
% change year-on-year +1.12% -1.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 391 272 275
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.54
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.74 £20.15
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -49.19% +6.02%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.81 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.32 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £52.75
% change year-on-year +29.22% -52.32% +14.97%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 2,811 £416 +4.00% 2,640
UK excluding London -13 2,085 £410 +12.33% 1,723
London -10 947 £418 -1.71% 1,092
Work from Home -12 615 £463 +3.47% 1,145
South East -9 551 £500 +13.00% 504
North of England -4 503 £325 - 330
North West +2 304 £340 -0.66% 184
Midlands -15 284 £400 +6.67% 287
South West -14 277 £500 +36.05% 223
East of England 0 228 £240 -31.43% 237
West Midlands -23 187 £402 +0.50% 188
Scotland -5 168 £263 -41.67% 111
Yorkshire -11 164 £275 +7.84% 102
East Midlands +2 95 £275 +29.41% 99
Wales +8 69 £446 +62.27% 42
North East -23 39 £275 - 51
Northern Ireland -1 16 £139 -30.75% 29
Channel Islands -3 3 £518 -

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
1 264 (8.17%) SharePoint
2 244 (7.55%) Microsoft Exchange
3 71 (2.20%) IIS
4 57 (1.76%) Confluence
5 19 (0.59%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.56%) Apache
6 18 (0.56%) nginx
7 14 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.37%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.19%) Documentum
11 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.15%) Appian
11 5 (0.15%) Camunda
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.12%) NetWeaver
12 4 (0.12%) SAS
13 3 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.093%) JBoss
Applications
1 226 (7.00%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.093%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.093%) Houdini
7 3 (0.093%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.093%) NUKE
8 2 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 55 (1.70%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 8 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.093%) assyst
7 3 (0.093%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.093%) ResourceLink
8 2 (0.062%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.062%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Monis
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 1,021 (31.61%) Microsoft 365
2 978 (30.28%) Azure
3 512 (15.85%) Entra ID
4 332 (10.28%) AWS
5 148 (4.58%) OneDrive
6 116 (3.59%) Azure DevOps
7 107 (3.31%) GCP
8 78 (2.41%) SaaS
9 76 (2.35%) Azure Monitor
10 72 (2.23%) Power Platform
11 70 (2.17%) GitHub
12 63 (1.95%) IaaS
13 47 (1.46%) PaaS
14 42 (1.30%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.15%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.96%) AWS CloudFormation
17 29 (0.90%) Google Workspace
18 27 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
19 23 (0.71%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 472 (14.61%) DNS
2 336 (10.40%) DHCP
3 332 (10.28%) Firewall
4 271 (8.39%) VPN
5 240 (7.43%) TCP/IP
6 143 (4.43%) WAN
7 137 (4.24%) LAN
8 133 (4.12%) Wi-Fi
9 95 (2.94%) Network Security
10 91 (2.82%) SAN
11 88 (2.72%) VLAN
12 54 (1.67%) Wireless
13 49 (1.52%) SSL
14 44 (1.36%) NAS
15 43 (1.33%) Internet
16 35 (1.08%) Skype
17 34 (1.05%) VSAN
18 30 (0.93%) VoIP
19 28 (0.87%) HTTP
19 28 (0.87%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (9.13%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.86%) Oracle Database
3 55 (1.70%) Power BI
4 40 (1.24%) PostgreSQL
4 40 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 39 (1.21%) Relational Database
6 23 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
6 23 (0.71%) MySQL
7 19 (0.59%) RDBMS
8 16 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 15 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
9 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 11 (0.34%) Db2
10 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
11 10 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
12 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
12 8 (0.25%) MS Access
12 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
13 7 (0.22%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 161 (4.98%) JIRA
2 73 (2.26%) Git
3 55 (1.70%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.46%) MSI
5 45 (1.39%) GitLab
6 31 (0.96%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 13 (0.40%) Artifactory
10 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
11 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
13 6 (0.19%) Browser DevTools
13 6 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 5 (0.15%) Chocolatey
14 5 (0.15%) Claude Code
14 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
14 5 (0.15%) Robot Framework
14 5 (0.15%) Selenium
General
1 1,195 (37.00%) Social Skills
2 398 (12.32%) Analytical Skills
3 375 (11.61%) Finance
4 166 (5.14%) Public Sector
5 155 (4.80%) Banking
6 122 (3.78%) Documentation Skills
7 89 (2.76%) Legal
8 74 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 74 (2.29%) Organisational Skills
9 60 (1.86%) Manufacturing
10 53 (1.64%) Telecoms
11 52 (1.61%) Retail
12 43 (1.33%) Front Office
13 41 (1.27%) Law
14 39 (1.21%) Military
15 35 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.87%) Spanish Language
17 26 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
18 25 (0.77%) French Language
19 23 (0.71%) Police
Job Titles
1 518 (16.04%) Support Engineer
2 447 (13.84%) IT Support
3 345 (10.68%) IT Engineer
4 338 (10.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 287 (8.89%) IT Support Engineer
6 280 (8.67%) Analyst
7 259 (8.02%) Senior
8 143 (4.43%) Desktop Support
9 126 (3.90%) 2nd Line Support
10 124 (3.84%) Architect
11 123 (3.81%) Desktop Engineer
12 121 (3.75%) Lead
13 119 (3.68%) Cloud Engineer
14 117 (3.62%) Windows Engineer
15 107 (3.31%) Developer
16 104 (3.22%) Support Analyst
17 100 (3.10%) Consultant
18 88 (2.72%) 1st Line Support
19 85 (2.63%) Service Analyst
20 83 (2.57%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (8.30%) Terraform
2 137 (4.24%) .NET
3 118 (3.65%) REST
4 63 (1.95%) .NET Framework
5 47 (1.46%) Middleware
6 42 (1.30%) JSON
7 41 (1.27%) LDAP
8 32 (0.99%) XML
9 30 (0.93%) WPF
10 29 (0.90%) WinForms
11 28 (0.87%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.84%) HTML
13 24 (0.74%) ARM Templates
13 24 (0.74%) Kafka
13 24 (0.74%) Web Services
14 20 (0.62%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (0.62%) Microsoft Graph
15 19 (0.59%) .NET Core
15 19 (0.59%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.59%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 377 (11.67%) Onboarding
2 188 (5.82%) Data Centre
3 159 (4.92%) PKI
4 105 (3.25%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 84 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
7 80 (2.48%) Clustering
8 79 (2.45%) Driving Licence
9 77 (2.38%) Cloud Native
10 74 (2.29%) Video Conferencing
11 72 (2.23%) Replication
12 56 (1.73%) Security Posture
13 53 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
14 45 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.30%) Linux Command Line
15 42 (1.30%) Operational Technology
16 40 (1.24%) Virtual Team
17 39 (1.21%) Enterprise Storage
17 39 (1.21%) Smartphone
18 35 (1.08%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 886 (27.43%) Windows Server
2 784 (24.27%) Linux
3 567 (17.55%) Windows 10
4 206 (6.38%) Mac OS
5 149 (4.61%) Unix
6 146 (4.52%) Apple iOS
7 141 (4.37%) Android
8 136 (4.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (2.29%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.70%) Windows 7
11 52 (1.61%) Ubuntu
12 46 (1.42%) Windows Server 2016
13 42 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
14 38 (1.18%) CentOS
15 33 (1.02%) AIX
16 22 (0.68%) VMS
17 19 (0.59%) Solaris
18 18 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
19 15 (0.46%) Rocky
20 12 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 767 (23.75%) Problem-Solving
2 600 (18.58%) ITIL
3 564 (17.46%) Customer Service
4 434 (13.44%) ITSM
5 428 (13.25%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 408 (12.63%) Migration
7 347 (10.74%) Continuous Improvement
8 314 (9.72%) Service Management
9 308 (9.54%) DevOps
10 267 (8.27%) CI/CD
11 262 (8.11%) Infrastructure as Code
12 260 (8.05%) Agile
13 235 (7.28%) Stakeholder Management
14 220 (6.81%) Change Management
15 218 (6.75%) Root Cause Analysis
16 207 (6.41%) Disaster Recovery
17 197 (6.10%) Cybersecurity
18 191 (5.91%) Service Delivery
18 191 (5.91%) Validation
19 183 (5.67%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 776 (24.02%) PowerShell
2 332 (10.28%) Python
3 323 (10.00%) SQL
4 188 (5.82%) Bash
5 156 (4.83%) C#
6 72 (2.23%) T-SQL
7 70 (2.17%) Java
8 59 (1.83%) JavaScript
8 59 (1.83%) PL/SQL
9 51 (1.58%) Bicep
10 33 (1.02%) C++
11 29 (0.90%) VB
11 29 (0.90%) VBScript
12 21 (0.65%) Perl
13 19 (0.59%) VBA
14 17 (0.53%) Shell Script
14 17 (0.53%) TypeScript
15 16 (0.50%) Search Processing Language
16 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
17 9 (0.28%) Go
Qualifications
1 996 (30.84%) Security Cleared
2 610 (18.89%) SC Cleared
3 370 (11.46%) DV Cleared
4 298 (9.23%) Degree
5 127 (3.93%) Microsoft Certification
6 94 (2.91%) Azure Certification
7 86 (2.66%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
9 73 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
10 62 (1.92%) CISSP
11 57 (1.76%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.70%) AWS Certification
13 52 (1.61%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 42 (1.30%) CCNA
14 42 (1.30%) DBS Check
15 36 (1.11%) CCNP
16 35 (1.08%) MCSE
17 33 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 32 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
19 30 (0.93%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 169 (5.23%) SLA
2 110 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 91 (2.82%) QA
4 84 (2.60%) NIST
5 35 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (1.02%) GDPR
7 28 (0.87%) NCSC
8 22 (0.68%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.50%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
11 14 (0.43%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 13 (0.40%) GRC
13 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 12 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 12 (0.37%) WCAG
14 11 (0.34%) GMP
14 11 (0.34%) PMO
15 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,325 (41.02%) Active Directory
2 484 (14.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 221 (6.84%) Hyper-V
4 157 (4.86%) VMware ESXi
5 131 (4.06%) vSphere
6 113 (3.50%) Docker
7 109 (3.37%) Virtual Machines
8 101 (3.13%) Virtual Desktop
9 78 (2.41%) VMware NSX
10 38 (1.18%) BitLocker
11 33 (1.02%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 17 (0.53%) NFS
14 15 (0.46%) Virtual Servers
15 13 (0.40%) Microsoft App-V
16 12 (0.37%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.34%) KVM
17 11 (0.34%) XenApp
18 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
19 8 (0.25%) UAG
Systems Management
1 452 (13.99%) Microsoft Intune
2 356 (11.02%) SCCM
3 228 (7.06%) Ansible
4 161 (4.98%) Kubernetes
5 124 (3.84%) vCenter Server
6 101 (3.13%) SCOM
7 53 (1.64%) Jamf Pro
8 46 (1.42%) WSUS
9 33 (1.02%) Progress Chef
10 32 (0.99%) Grafana
10 32 (0.99%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.93%) Prometheus
12 28 (0.87%) NetBackup
12 28 (0.87%) WMI
13 25 (0.77%) Puppet
13 25 (0.77%) VxRail
14 23 (0.71%) Packer
15 22 (0.68%) Nagios
16 21 (0.65%) Microsoft Clustering
17 20 (0.62%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 1,527 (47.28%) Microsoft
2 632 (19.57%) VMware
3 378 (11.70%) ServiceNow
4 229 (7.09%) Cisco
5 203 (6.28%) Oracle
6 173 (5.36%) Citrix
7 110 (3.41%) Apple
8 108 (3.34%) Splunk
9 98 (3.03%) CyberArk
10 85 (2.63%) Google
11 79 (2.45%) BeyondTrust
11 79 (2.45%) Red Hat
12 76 (2.35%) SolarWinds
13 59 (1.83%) Remedy
14 57 (1.76%) Dell
15 54 (1.67%) HP
16 49 (1.52%) NetApp
17 47 (1.46%) Palo Alto
18 43 (1.33%) BMC
18 43 (1.33%) Meraki