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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,252 2,637 3,163
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.97% 8.05% 8.30%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.06% 59.62% 58.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,083 1,745 2,091
10th Percentile £170 £169 £178
25th Percentile £223 £219 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -3.53% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £550 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £405 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +8.00% -11.76% +7.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 313 221 186
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £13.87
25th Percentile £17.00 £18.10 £17.50
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%
75th Percentile £56.43 £30.25 £57.19
90th Percentile £74.61 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.64 £24.18
% change year-on-year +18.99% -10.50% +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 5,326 4,423 5,380
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.51% 14.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,366 2,826 3,480
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £305 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £452 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.76% -4.84% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £685
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £449 £450
% change year-on-year +0.33% -0.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 385 265 279
10th Percentile £14.47 £15.50 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -48.21% +5.84%
75th Percentile £65.22 £58.75 £68.38
90th Percentile £74.54 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.33 £25.15 £52.50
% change year-on-year +4.69% -52.10% +20.00%

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 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 9 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 9 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 2,825 £418 +2.52% 2,036
UK excluding London -13 2,108 £405 +8.00% 1,352
London -13 939 £425 - 876
Work from Home -13 624 £465 +3.33% 879
South East -8 563 £484 +1.79% 425
North of England -4 514 £325 - 274
North West +5 313 £335 -4.29% 147
Midlands -16 287 £400 - 189
South West -13 285 £488 +32.65% 180
East of England 0 217 £245 -30.00% 209
West Midlands -23 187 £402 -5.41% 126
Scotland -4 170 £350 -22.22% 68
Yorkshire -14 168 £273 -0.91% 86
East Midlands +4 96 £275 +37.50% 63
Wales +7 68 £446 +62.27% 22
North East -33 37 £270 -1.82% 53
Northern Ireland -3 16 £139 -30.75% 23
Channel Islands -1 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
1 266 (8.18%) SharePoint
2 246 (7.56%) Microsoft Exchange
3 77 (2.37%) IIS
4 56 (1.72%) Confluence
5 18 (0.55%) Apache
5 18 (0.55%) nginx
5 18 (0.55%) Skype for Business
6 14 (0.43%) Oracle Workflow
7 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.40%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.18%) Documentum
9 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.15%) Appian
9 5 (0.15%) Camunda
9 5 (0.15%) NetWeaver
9 5 (0.15%) SAS
9 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
11 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2010
11 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 228 (7.01%) Microsoft Office
2 74 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.092%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.092%) Houdini
7 3 (0.092%) NUKE
8 2 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.72%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 9 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.092%) assyst
7 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.062%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.062%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.031%) ResourceLink
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
9 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,029 (31.64%) Microsoft 365
2 995 (30.60%) Azure
3 517 (15.90%) Entra ID
4 340 (10.46%) AWS
5 148 (4.55%) OneDrive
6 119 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
7 107 (3.29%) GCP
8 81 (2.49%) Azure Monitor
9 77 (2.37%) SaaS
10 76 (2.34%) Power Platform
11 67 (2.06%) GitHub
12 63 (1.94%) IaaS
13 47 (1.45%) PaaS
14 44 (1.35%) Azure Sentinel
15 41 (1.26%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.86%) Google Workspace
18 25 (0.77%) Amazon EC2
19 24 (0.74%) GitHub Actions
20 23 (0.71%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 481 (14.79%) DNS
2 345 (10.61%) Firewall
3 341 (10.49%) DHCP
4 274 (8.43%) VPN
5 232 (7.13%) TCP/IP
6 152 (4.67%) WAN
7 148 (4.55%) LAN
8 139 (4.27%) Wi-Fi
9 94 (2.89%) Network Security
10 92 (2.83%) SAN
11 87 (2.68%) VLAN
12 54 (1.66%) Wireless
13 49 (1.51%) SSL
14 46 (1.41%) NAS
15 44 (1.35%) Internet
16 37 (1.14%) VSAN
17 34 (1.05%) Skype
18 30 (0.92%) SD-WAN
19 29 (0.89%) BGP
19 29 (0.89%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 299 (9.19%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.88%) Oracle Database
3 57 (1.75%) Power BI
4 40 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 39 (1.20%) PostgreSQL
6 38 (1.17%) Relational Database
7 24 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
7 24 (0.74%) MySQL
8 18 (0.55%) RDBMS
9 16 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 13 (0.40%) Oracle Reports
12 11 (0.34%) Db2
12 11 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
12 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
13 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
13 8 (0.25%) MS Access
13 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 162 (4.98%) JIRA
2 73 (2.24%) Git
3 57 (1.75%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.48%) MSI
5 45 (1.38%) GitLab
6 24 (0.74%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
9 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.22%) Selenium
10 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 5 (0.15%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.15%) Claude Code
12 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
12 5 (0.15%) Robot Framework
General
1 1,195 (36.75%) Social Skills
2 406 (12.48%) Analytical Skills
3 374 (11.50%) Finance
4 170 (5.23%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.83%) Banking
6 120 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
7 91 (2.80%) Legal
8 76 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 75 (2.31%) Organisational Skills
10 62 (1.91%) Manufacturing
11 53 (1.63%) Telecoms
12 51 (1.57%) Retail
13 43 (1.32%) Front Office
14 41 (1.26%) Law
15 35 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 29 (0.89%) Military
17 28 (0.86%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.77%) French Language
19 24 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
20 22 (0.68%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 525 (16.14%) Support Engineer
2 446 (13.71%) IT Support
3 351 (10.79%) IT Engineer
4 338 (10.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 293 (9.01%) IT Support Engineer
6 277 (8.52%) Analyst
7 256 (7.87%) Senior
8 144 (4.43%) Desktop Support
9 126 (3.87%) Architect
10 124 (3.81%) 2nd Line Support
11 123 (3.78%) Desktop Engineer
12 122 (3.75%) Windows Engineer
13 120 (3.69%) Lead
14 115 (3.54%) Cloud Engineer
15 105 (3.23%) Developer
16 103 (3.17%) Support Analyst
17 102 (3.14%) Consultant
18 88 (2.71%) 1st Line Support
19 85 (2.61%) Service Analyst
20 83 (2.55%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (8.21%) Terraform
2 139 (4.27%) .NET
3 117 (3.60%) REST
4 67 (2.06%) .NET Framework
5 43 (1.32%) Middleware
6 42 (1.29%) JSON
7 40 (1.23%) LDAP
8 32 (0.98%) XML
9 30 (0.92%) WPF
10 29 (0.89%) Kafka
10 29 (0.89%) WinForms
11 28 (0.86%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.83%) HTML
13 25 (0.77%) ARM Templates
14 21 (0.65%) Elastic Stack
15 19 (0.58%) .NET Core
15 19 (0.58%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.58%) CSS
15 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
16 18 (0.55%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 381 (11.72%) Onboarding
2 189 (5.81%) Data Centre
3 159 (4.89%) PKI
4 103 (3.17%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.68%) Hybrid Cloud
6 85 (2.61%) Clustering
7 82 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
8 79 (2.43%) Driving Licence
9 78 (2.40%) Cloud Native
10 74 (2.28%) Replication
10 74 (2.28%) Video Conferencing
11 58 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
12 56 (1.72%) Security Posture
13 46 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
14 42 (1.29%) Virtual Team
15 41 (1.26%) Linux Command Line
15 41 (1.26%) Operational Technology
16 40 (1.23%) CMDB
16 40 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
16 40 (1.23%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 899 (27.64%) Windows Server
2 783 (24.08%) Linux
3 563 (17.31%) Windows 10
4 201 (6.18%) Mac OS
5 147 (4.52%) Unix
6 139 (4.27%) Apple iOS
7 138 (4.24%) Android
7 138 (4.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 74 (2.28%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.69%) Windows 7
10 51 (1.57%) Ubuntu
11 47 (1.45%) Windows Server 2016
12 42 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 37 (1.14%) CentOS
14 34 (1.05%) AIX
15 23 (0.71%) VMS
16 18 (0.55%) Solaris
16 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
17 14 (0.43%) Rocky
18 11 (0.34%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 772 (23.74%) Problem-Solving
2 603 (18.54%) ITIL
3 555 (17.07%) Customer Service
4 437 (13.44%) ITSM
5 428 (13.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 403 (12.39%) Migration
7 340 (10.46%) Continuous Improvement
8 312 (9.59%) Service Management
9 307 (9.44%) DevOps
10 259 (7.96%) CI/CD
10 259 (7.96%) Infrastructure as Code
11 253 (7.78%) Agile
12 232 (7.13%) Stakeholder Management
13 224 (6.89%) Change Management
14 212 (6.52%) Root Cause Analysis
15 207 (6.37%) Disaster Recovery
16 196 (6.03%) Cybersecurity
17 193 (5.93%) Service Delivery
18 186 (5.72%) High Availability
19 185 (5.69%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 786 (24.17%) PowerShell
2 336 (10.33%) Python
3 324 (9.96%) SQL
4 187 (5.75%) Bash
5 149 (4.58%) C#
6 71 (2.18%) Java
7 70 (2.15%) T-SQL
8 57 (1.75%) PL/SQL
9 53 (1.63%) JavaScript
10 51 (1.57%) Bicep
11 30 (0.92%) VBScript
12 29 (0.89%) VB
13 27 (0.83%) C++
14 22 (0.68%) Perl
14 22 (0.68%) Search Processing Language
15 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 19 (0.58%) VBA
16 17 (0.52%) TypeScript
17 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
18 9 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 1,000 (30.75%) Security Cleared
2 615 (18.91%) SC Cleared
3 373 (11.47%) DV Cleared
4 301 (9.26%) Degree
5 127 (3.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 94 (2.89%) Azure Certification
7 91 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
9 70 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
10 64 (1.97%) CISSP
11 56 (1.72%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.69%) AWS Certification
13 53 (1.63%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 44 (1.35%) CCNA
15 42 (1.29%) DBS Check
16 39 (1.20%) CCNP
17 36 (1.11%) MCSE
18 33 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 29 (0.89%) CISM
20 28 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 173 (5.32%) SLA
2 112 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.89%) QA
4 82 (2.52%) NIST
5 35 (1.08%) GDPR
6 34 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
7 30 (0.92%) NCSC
8 23 (0.71%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.46%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
12 12 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 11 (0.34%) GRC
13 11 (0.34%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) GMP
System Software
1 1,338 (41.14%) Active Directory
2 487 (14.98%) VMware Infrastructure
3 226 (6.95%) Hyper-V
4 156 (4.80%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.06%) vSphere
6 113 (3.47%) Docker
7 110 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
8 100 (3.08%) Virtual Desktop
9 80 (2.46%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.23%) BitLocker
11 34 (1.05%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) NFS
14 16 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
15 14 (0.43%) Virtual Servers
16 11 (0.34%) KVM
16 11 (0.34%) XenApp
17 10 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
18 6 (0.18%) etcd
Systems Management
1 450 (13.84%) Microsoft Intune
2 351 (10.79%) SCCM
3 232 (7.13%) Ansible
4 165 (5.07%) Kubernetes
5 122 (3.75%) vCenter Server
6 101 (3.11%) SCOM
7 51 (1.57%) Jamf Pro
8 47 (1.45%) WSUS
9 34 (1.05%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.01%) Prometheus
10 33 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.92%) Grafana
12 28 (0.86%) NetBackup
12 28 (0.86%) WMI
13 25 (0.77%) Puppet
14 24 (0.74%) FortiGate
14 24 (0.74%) Nagios
15 23 (0.71%) Packer
15 23 (0.71%) VxRail
16 21 (0.65%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,517 (46.65%) Microsoft
2 636 (19.56%) VMware
3 385 (11.84%) ServiceNow
4 228 (7.01%) Cisco
5 205 (6.30%) Oracle
6 178 (5.47%) Citrix
7 116 (3.57%) Splunk
8 113 (3.47%) Apple
9 96 (2.95%) CyberArk
10 84 (2.58%) Google
11 82 (2.52%) Red Hat
12 78 (2.40%) SolarWinds
13 77 (2.37%) BeyondTrust
14 61 (1.88%) HP
15 60 (1.85%) Remedy
16 57 (1.75%) Dell
17 51 (1.57%) NetApp
18 47 (1.45%) Palo Alto
19 46 (1.41%) BMC
20 44 (1.35%) Meraki