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

6 months to
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,084 2,633 3,634
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.88% 8.15% 8.38%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.92% 60.00% 60.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,979 1,754 2,431
10th Percentile £165 £180 £165
25th Percentile £225 £232 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £421 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -0.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £663 £656
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £400 £430
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% +8.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 193 304
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.17 £12.08
25th Percentile £17.94 £16.95 £14.66
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -15.93%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £69.00 £63.75 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.13
% change year-on-year +36.46% +4.08% -17.59%

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 5,062 4,388 5,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.59% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,243 2,836 3,899
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £316 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% -2.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £580 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £460
% change year-on-year - -2.17% +0.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 237 441
10th Percentile £15.76 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.98 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.50 £23.00 £24.86
Median % change year-on-year +15.22% -7.46% -41.52%
75th Percentile £63.75 £49.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.18 £66.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £20.75 £30.50
% change year-on-year +27.57% -31.97% +2.87%

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 9 July 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 9 July 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 9 July 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 2,692 £425 +2.41% 1,012
UK excluding London -12 2,034 £420 +5.00% 939
London -19 878 £425 -2.86% 228
Work from Home -8 651 £475 +2.26% 345
South East -9 551 £475 -3.06% 299
North of England -9 477 £363 +3.57% 232
Midlands -17 280 £340 +15.25% 121
South West -12 270 £489 +8.61% 127
North West -6 254 £358 +1.23% 124
East of England 0 218 £300 +17.82% 104
Yorkshire -16 202 £365 -10.70% 74
Scotland 0 177 £425 -2.86% 38
West Midlands -25 176 £450 +50.00% 61
East Midlands +9 99 £273 +36.25% 60
Wales +10 57 £390 +35.65% 22
North East -35 25 £275 -4.35% 42
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -28.97% 30
Channel Islands +3 3 £518 - 4

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
1 240 (7.78%) Microsoft Exchange
2 210 (6.81%) SharePoint
3 63 (2.04%) IIS
4 58 (1.88%) Confluence
5 19 (0.62%) Apache
5 19 (0.62%) Tomcat
6 18 (0.58%) nginx
7 14 (0.45%) Skype for Business
8 13 (0.42%) Oracle Workflow
9 10 (0.32%) WebLogic
10 9 (0.29%) HCL Notes
10 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
11 7 (0.23%) Appian
12 6 (0.19%) Documentum
13 5 (0.16%) Camunda
13 5 (0.16%) SAS
14 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.097%) CloudStack
15 3 (0.097%) Exchange Server 2010
15 3 (0.097%) WebSphere
Applications
1 189 (6.13%) Microsoft Office
2 68 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.16%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.16%) PTC Creo
5 5 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.097%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.032%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.032%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (0.032%) Houdini
7 1 (0.032%) InDesign
7 1 (0.032%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 44 (1.43%) Remedy ITSM
2 20 (0.65%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.39%) Teamcenter
4 10 (0.32%) Finacle
5 6 (0.19%) OpenText MBPM
5 6 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.097%) assyst
8 1 (0.032%) Dynamics CRM
8 1 (0.032%) Dynamics GP
8 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.032%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.032%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.032%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 928 (30.09%) Azure
2 864 (28.02%) Microsoft 365
3 411 (13.33%) Entra ID
4 317 (10.28%) AWS
5 121 (3.92%) OneDrive
6 94 (3.05%) GCP
7 92 (2.98%) Azure DevOps
8 77 (2.50%) SaaS
9 67 (2.17%) GitHub
10 64 (2.08%) Power Platform
11 62 (2.01%) IaaS
12 55 (1.78%) Azure Monitor
12 55 (1.78%) PaaS
13 40 (1.30%) OpenShift
14 38 (1.23%) Azure Sentinel
15 32 (1.04%) GitHub Actions
16 29 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (0.94%) Google Workspace
17 24 (0.78%) Amazon EC2
17 24 (0.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 442 (14.33%) DNS
2 314 (10.18%) Firewall
3 300 (9.73%) DHCP
4 230 (7.46%) VPN
5 193 (6.26%) TCP/IP
6 185 (6.00%) LAN
7 179 (5.80%) WAN
8 149 (4.83%) Wi-Fi
9 98 (3.18%) SAN
10 70 (2.27%) Network Security
11 62 (2.01%) VLAN
12 48 (1.56%) BGP
13 46 (1.49%) NAS
13 46 (1.49%) SSL
14 44 (1.43%) Internet
15 38 (1.23%) OSPF
15 38 (1.23%) SD-WAN
16 37 (1.20%) VoIP
17 36 (1.17%) Wireless
18 33 (1.07%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 265 (8.59%) SQL Server
2 62 (2.01%) Oracle Database
3 42 (1.36%) Power BI
4 34 (1.10%) Relational Database
5 30 (0.97%) PostgreSQL
6 28 (0.91%) MySQL
7 21 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 20 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
9 19 (0.62%) Db2
10 18 (0.58%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
12 14 (0.45%) NoSQL
12 14 (0.45%) RDBMS
13 11 (0.36%) MongoDB
14 10 (0.32%) GIS
14 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
15 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
16 8 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
16 8 (0.26%) Oracle BI EE
16 8 (0.26%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 182 (5.90%) JIRA
2 63 (2.04%) Git
3 57 (1.85%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.56%) MSI
5 43 (1.39%) GitLab
6 38 (1.23%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 9 (0.29%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
11 6 (0.19%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.19%) Artifactory
11 6 (0.19%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.19%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.19%) Xcode
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Maven
12 5 (0.16%) Selenium
13 4 (0.13%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,083 (35.12%) Social Skills
2 343 (11.12%) Analytical Skills
3 321 (10.41%) Finance
4 212 (6.87%) Public Sector
5 153 (4.96%) Banking
6 112 (3.63%) Legal
7 108 (3.50%) Documentation Skills
8 89 (2.89%) Organisational Skills
9 62 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 53 (1.72%) Retail
11 44 (1.43%) Military
12 43 (1.39%) Manufacturing
13 37 (1.20%) Front Office
14 35 (1.13%) Investment Banking
15 33 (1.07%) Telecoms
16 31 (1.01%) Law
17 25 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
17 25 (0.81%) Spanish Language
18 22 (0.71%) French Language
19 20 (0.65%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 422 (13.68%) Support Engineer
2 395 (12.81%) IT Support
3 297 (9.63%) Analyst
4 287 (9.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 278 (9.01%) IT Engineer
6 234 (7.59%) IT Support Engineer
7 196 (6.36%) Senior
8 153 (4.96%) Architect
9 123 (3.99%) Desktop Support
10 117 (3.79%) 2nd Line Support
11 114 (3.70%) Developer
12 111 (3.60%) Lead
13 109 (3.53%) Desktop Engineer
14 105 (3.40%) Support Analyst
15 97 (3.15%) Consultant
16 94 (3.05%) Cloud Engineer
17 93 (3.02%) Windows Engineer
18 92 (2.98%) IT Analyst
19 84 (2.72%) Service Analyst
20 81 (2.63%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 113 (3.66%) .NET
2 108 (3.50%) REST
3 64 (2.08%) .NET Framework
4 44 (1.43%) LDAP
5 35 (1.13%) Middleware
6 34 (1.10%) SAML
7 31 (1.01%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.97%) WinForms
9 29 (0.94%) Microsoft Graph
9 29 (0.94%) Software Packaging
9 29 (0.94%) WPF
10 28 (0.91%) Web Services
11 26 (0.84%) Kafka
12 25 (0.81%) Elastic Stack
13 24 (0.78%) OAuth
14 22 (0.71%) CSS
15 21 (0.68%) JSON
16 20 (0.65%) RESTful
17 19 (0.62%) HTML
18 17 (0.55%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 292 (9.47%) Onboarding
2 164 (5.32%) Data Centre
3 147 (4.77%) PKI
4 87 (2.82%) Enterprise Software
5 81 (2.63%) Clustering
6 77 (2.50%) Management Information System
7 73 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
8 68 (2.20%) Driving Licence
9 67 (2.17%) Cloud Native
9 67 (2.17%) Replication
10 58 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
11 53 (1.72%) Security Posture
12 51 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
12 51 (1.65%) Virtual Team
13 43 (1.39%) Video Conferencing
14 40 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
15 37 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
16 34 (1.10%) Operational Technology
16 34 (1.10%) Smartphone
17 31 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 754 (24.45%) Windows Server
2 753 (24.42%) Linux
3 512 (16.60%) Windows 10
4 195 (6.32%) Mac OS
5 161 (5.22%) Unix
6 140 (4.54%) Android
6 140 (4.54%) Apple iOS
7 118 (3.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 80 (2.59%) Windows Server 2019
9 59 (1.91%) Windows Server 2016
10 50 (1.62%) Windows 7
11 40 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
12 36 (1.17%) AIX
12 36 (1.17%) Ubuntu
13 24 (0.78%) Solaris
14 22 (0.71%) VMS
15 17 (0.55%) CentOS
15 17 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
16 16 (0.52%) Windows Server 2003
17 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 688 (22.31%) Problem-Solving
2 486 (15.76%) ITIL
3 450 (14.59%) Customer Service
4 368 (11.93%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 360 (11.67%) Migration
6 323 (10.47%) ITSM
7 296 (9.60%) DevOps
8 269 (8.72%) Agile
9 261 (8.46%) CI/CD
9 261 (8.46%) Continuous Improvement
10 226 (7.33%) Service Management
11 216 (7.00%) High Availability
12 196 (6.36%) Infrastructure as Code
13 192 (6.23%) Change Management
14 172 (5.58%) Disaster Recovery
15 171 (5.54%) Stakeholder Management
16 170 (5.51%) Cybersecurity
17 167 (5.42%) Service Delivery
18 152 (4.93%) Validation
19 151 (4.90%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 656 (21.27%) PowerShell
2 320 (10.38%) Python
3 299 (9.70%) SQL
4 143 (4.64%) C#
5 134 (4.35%) Bash
6 76 (2.46%) Java
7 67 (2.17%) JavaScript
8 57 (1.85%) PL/SQL
8 57 (1.85%) T-SQL
9 51 (1.65%) C++
10 27 (0.88%) Perl
11 25 (0.81%) VB
12 24 (0.78%) Bicep
12 24 (0.78%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.75%) VBScript
14 21 (0.68%) Shell Script
15 20 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
16 17 (0.55%) VBA
17 16 (0.52%) TypeScript
18 14 (0.45%) C
Qualifications
1 912 (29.57%) Security Cleared
2 586 (19.00%) SC Cleared
3 311 (10.08%) Degree
4 288 (9.34%) DV Cleared
5 122 (3.96%) Microsoft Certification
6 101 (3.27%) Cisco Certification
7 83 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
8 65 (2.11%) CISSP
9 60 (1.95%) Azure Certification
10 56 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
11 49 (1.59%) AWS Certification
12 48 (1.56%) MCSE
13 45 (1.46%) CCNA
14 35 (1.13%) CCNP
15 32 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 29 (0.94%) A+ Certification
17 28 (0.91%) CompTIA Security+
17 28 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
18 25 (0.81%) DBS Check
18 25 (0.81%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 126 (4.09%) SLA
2 119 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 90 (2.92%) NIST
4 89 (2.89%) QA
5 54 (1.75%) GDPR
6 29 (0.94%) PCI DSS
6 29 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 26 (0.84%) Cyber Essentials
8 24 (0.78%) NCSC
9 15 (0.49%) Disclosure Scotland
10 14 (0.45%) Data Quality
11 13 (0.42%) PMO
12 11 (0.36%) Accessibility
12 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.32%) GRC
13 10 (0.32%) NIST 800
13 10 (0.32%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.29%) GxP
15 8 (0.26%) GMP
15 8 (0.26%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,177 (38.16%) Active Directory
2 401 (13.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 164 (5.32%) Hyper-V
4 126 (4.09%) VMware ESXi
5 114 (3.70%) vSphere
6 106 (3.44%) Virtual Machines
7 99 (3.21%) Docker
8 77 (2.50%) Virtual Desktop
9 65 (2.11%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.30%) Firmware
11 38 (1.23%) BitLocker
12 28 (0.91%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.58%) KVM
14 14 (0.45%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
15 9 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 418 (13.55%) Microsoft Intune
2 277 (8.98%) SCCM
3 219 (7.10%) Terraform
4 204 (6.61%) Ansible
5 160 (5.19%) Kubernetes
6 100 (3.24%) vCenter Server
7 57 (1.85%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (1.75%) SCOM
8 54 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
9 42 (1.36%) FortiGate
10 40 (1.30%) WSUS
11 37 (1.20%) Progress Chef
12 34 (1.10%) Grafana
12 34 (1.10%) Prometheus
13 33 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 30 (0.97%) Puppet
15 25 (0.81%) Nagios
16 22 (0.71%) Packer
16 22 (0.71%) ZABBIX
17 21 (0.68%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,322 (42.87%) Microsoft
2 523 (16.96%) VMware
3 292 (9.47%) ServiceNow
4 217 (7.04%) Cisco
5 207 (6.71%) Citrix
6 195 (6.32%) Oracle
7 138 (4.47%) Splunk
8 89 (2.89%) Apple
9 82 (2.66%) SolarWinds
10 79 (2.56%) HP
11 74 (2.40%) CyberArk
11 74 (2.40%) Red Hat
12 73 (2.37%) Dell
13 67 (2.17%) Google
14 64 (2.08%) BeyondTrust
15 59 (1.91%) F5
16 55 (1.78%) Remedy
17 54 (1.75%) IBM
18 52 (1.69%) Juniper
19 45 (1.46%) Palo Alto