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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,163 2,624 3,229
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.89% 7.93% 8.33%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.47% 59.90% 59.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,016 1,729 2,184
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% +3.45%
75th Percentile £556 £563 £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 287 215 233
10th Percentile £15.42 £15.21 £11.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £15.63
Median hourly rate £25.75 £20.00 £21.59
Median % change year-on-year +28.75% -7.36% -4.04%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.20 £53.00
90th Percentile £72.80 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.14
% change year-on-year +36.46% -6.32% -5.48%

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 5,231 4,381 5,436
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.74% 13.24% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,309 2,796 3,612
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £319 £308 £338
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 £455 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +1.11% -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 362 264 336
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.46
25th Percentile £17.53 £18.13 £17.52
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 £72.45 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £23.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +15.91% -40.26% +40.00%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 2,764 £425 +3.91% 1,247
UK excluding London -13 2,048 £413 +4.43% 983
London -12 923 £425 - 385
Work from Home -10 636 £475 +3.26% 410
South East -8 583 £475 -3.06% 307
North of England -6 499 £335 +3.08% 245
South West -11 288 £488 +35.42% 111
North West +2 287 £350 - 133
Midlands -21 262 £400 - 132
East of England -4 192 £338 +6.22% 128
Yorkshire -15 186 £335 +21.82% 82
West Midlands -31 168 £430 +0.23% 89
Scotland -7 162 £375 -19.35% 40
East Midlands +4 90 £270 +35.00% 43
Wales +2 62 £425 +54.55% 27
North East -33 30 £250 -4.76% 39
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 24
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
1 251 (7.94%) SharePoint
2 249 (7.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.18%) IIS
4 62 (1.96%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.54%) Apache
7 16 (0.51%) nginx
8 14 (0.44%) HCL Notes
8 14 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
8 14 (0.44%) Tomcat
9 9 (0.28%) 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%) CloudStack
Applications
1 208 (6.58%) Microsoft Office
2 70 (2.21%) 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%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.095%) NUKE
8 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.032%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 57 (1.80%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.44%) 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 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
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
9 1 (0.032%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 987 (31.20%) Azure
2 964 (30.48%) Microsoft 365
3 480 (15.18%) Entra ID
4 333 (10.53%) AWS
5 138 (4.36%) OneDrive
6 115 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 103 (3.26%) GCP
8 78 (2.47%) SaaS
9 76 (2.40%) Power Platform
10 75 (2.37%) Azure Monitor
11 73 (2.31%) GitHub
12 69 (2.18%) IaaS
13 53 (1.68%) PaaS
14 44 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
15 39 (1.23%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
19 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
20 25 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 486 (15.37%) DNS
2 361 (11.41%) Firewall
3 344 (10.88%) DHCP
4 272 (8.60%) VPN
5 227 (7.18%) TCP/IP
6 169 (5.34%) LAN
7 166 (5.25%) WAN
8 146 (4.62%) Wi-Fi
9 101 (3.19%) SAN
10 81 (2.56%) VLAN
11 80 (2.53%) Network Security
12 50 (1.58%) NAS
13 48 (1.52%) SSL
14 45 (1.42%) Wireless
15 44 (1.39%) BGP
16 43 (1.36%) Internet
17 39 (1.23%) VSAN
18 34 (1.07%) Skype
19 32 (1.01%) OSPF
19 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (9.64%) SQL Server
2 59 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 56 (1.77%) Power BI
4 36 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 33 (1.04%) Relational Database
6 31 (0.98%) PostgreSQL
7 25 (0.79%) MySQL
8 21 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
9 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (0.51%) RDBMS
9 16 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 13 (0.41%) Db2
12 12 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
14 9 (0.28%) SAP HANA
15 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
15 8 (0.25%) MS Access
15 8 (0.25%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 170 (5.37%) JIRA
2 77 (2.43%) Git
3 58 (1.83%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.58%) MSI
5 42 (1.33%) GitLab
6 37 (1.17%) Visual Studio
7 18 (0.57%) Bitbucket
8 17 (0.54%) Eclipse
9 10 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.28%) Artifactory
11 8 (0.25%) Chocolatey
11 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
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 1,153 (36.45%) Social Skills
2 397 (12.55%) Analytical Skills
3 368 (11.63%) Finance
4 183 (5.79%) Public Sector
5 162 (5.12%) Banking
6 107 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
7 97 (3.07%) Legal
8 76 (2.40%) Organisational Skills
9 70 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 57 (1.80%) Retail
11 55 (1.74%) Manufacturing
12 48 (1.52%) Telecoms
13 42 (1.33%) Front Office
14 38 (1.20%) Military
15 37 (1.17%) Law
16 35 (1.11%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.89%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.79%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.73%) French Language
20 21 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 480 (15.18%) Support Engineer
2 421 (13.31%) IT Support
3 324 (10.24%) IT Engineer
4 323 (10.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 273 (8.63%) Analyst
6 269 (8.50%) IT Support Engineer
7 241 (7.62%) Senior
8 141 (4.46%) Desktop Support
9 133 (4.20%) Architect
10 129 (4.08%) 2nd Line Support
11 116 (3.67%) Desktop Engineer
11 116 (3.67%) Lead
12 115 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
13 110 (3.48%) Developer
14 104 (3.29%) Support Analyst
15 103 (3.26%) Windows Engineer
16 100 (3.16%) Consultant
17 85 (2.69%) 1st Line Support
17 85 (2.69%) IT Analyst
18 83 (2.62%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 131 (4.14%) .NET
2 117 (3.70%) REST
3 67 (2.12%) .NET Framework
4 41 (1.30%) Middleware
5 36 (1.14%) JSON
6 33 (1.04%) LDAP
6 33 (1.04%) WinForms
7 29 (0.92%) WPF
7 29 (0.92%) XML
8 28 (0.89%) 802.1X
8 28 (0.89%) HTML
9 27 (0.85%) Kafka
10 25 (0.79%) Software Packaging
10 25 (0.79%) Web Services
11 23 (0.73%) CSS
12 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
12 21 (0.66%) RESTful
13 20 (0.63%) ARM Templates
13 20 (0.63%) SAML
14 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 351 (11.10%) Onboarding
2 185 (5.85%) Data Centre
3 168 (5.31%) PKI
4 97 (3.07%) Clustering
5 89 (2.81%) Management Information System
6 84 (2.66%) Enterprise Software
7 80 (2.53%) Hybrid Cloud
8 79 (2.50%) Cloud Native
8 79 (2.50%) Driving Licence
9 66 (2.09%) Video Conferencing
10 65 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
11 64 (2.02%) Replication
12 51 (1.61%) Security Posture
13 50 (1.58%) Legacy Systems
14 44 (1.39%) Virtual Team
15 39 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
16 38 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.20%) Linux Command Line
16 38 (1.20%) Operational Technology
17 35 (1.11%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 823 (26.02%) Windows Server
2 781 (24.69%) Linux
3 536 (16.95%) Windows 10
4 194 (6.13%) Mac OS
5 152 (4.81%) Unix
6 140 (4.43%) Android
7 136 (4.30%) Apple iOS
8 123 (3.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 77 (2.43%) Windows Server 2019
10 56 (1.77%) Windows 7
11 48 (1.52%) Windows Server 2016
12 42 (1.33%) Ubuntu
13 39 (1.23%) Windows Server 2012
14 38 (1.20%) AIX
15 27 (0.85%) CentOS
16 23 (0.73%) VMS
17 20 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
18 18 (0.57%) Solaris
19 12 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
20 10 (0.32%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 759 (24.00%) Problem-Solving
2 565 (17.86%) ITIL
3 505 (15.97%) Customer Service
4 413 (13.06%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 406 (12.84%) ITSM
6 399 (12.61%) Migration
7 311 (9.83%) Continuous Improvement
7 311 (9.83%) DevOps
8 289 (9.14%) Service Management
9 273 (8.63%) CI/CD
10 268 (8.47%) Agile
11 243 (7.68%) Infrastructure as Code
12 227 (7.18%) Change Management
13 209 (6.61%) High Availability
14 207 (6.54%) Stakeholder Management
15 195 (6.17%) Service Delivery
16 193 (6.10%) Disaster Recovery
17 187 (5.91%) Cybersecurity
18 176 (5.56%) Incident Management
19 172 (5.44%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 755 (23.87%) PowerShell
2 333 (10.53%) Python
3 317 (10.02%) SQL
4 183 (5.79%) Bash
5 156 (4.93%) C#
6 78 (2.47%) Java
7 69 (2.18%) JavaScript
8 61 (1.93%) T-SQL
9 55 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 46 (1.45%) Bicep
10 46 (1.45%) C++
11 30 (0.95%) VBScript
12 28 (0.89%) VB
13 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
14 22 (0.70%) Perl
15 21 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.57%) VBA
17 17 (0.54%) TypeScript
18 13 (0.41%) C
19 12 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 969 (30.64%) Security Cleared
2 609 (19.25%) SC Cleared
3 332 (10.50%) DV Cleared
4 295 (9.33%) Degree
5 123 (3.89%) Microsoft Certification
6 105 (3.32%) Cisco Certification
7 83 (2.62%) Azure Certification
8 79 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
9 64 (2.02%) CISSP
10 59 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (1.71%) AWS Certification
12 51 (1.61%) A+ Certification
13 44 (1.39%) CCNA
14 42 (1.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 38 (1.20%) MCSE
16 35 (1.11%) CCNP
17 34 (1.07%) DBS Check
18 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 28 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
20 26 (0.82%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (5.09%) SLA
2 110 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.97%) QA
4 83 (2.62%) NIST
5 40 (1.26%) GDPR
6 31 (0.98%) NCSC
7 27 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
8 22 (0.70%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.47%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) 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%) NIST 800
14 8 (0.25%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,273 (40.25%) Active Directory
2 447 (14.13%) VMware Infrastructure
3 197 (6.23%) Hyper-V
4 139 (4.39%) VMware ESXi
5 123 (3.89%) vSphere
6 107 (3.38%) Docker
7 101 (3.19%) Virtual Machines
8 92 (2.91%) Virtual Desktop
9 82 (2.59%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 38 (1.20%) Firmware
12 20 (0.63%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.63%) vCloud
13 13 (0.41%) KVM
13 13 (0.41%) Virtual Servers
14 9 (0.28%) NFS
15 8 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
16 6 (0.19%) etcd
16 6 (0.19%) XenApp
16 6 (0.19%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 443 (14.01%) Microsoft Intune
2 316 (9.99%) SCCM
3 271 (8.57%) Terraform
4 237 (7.49%) Ansible
5 172 (5.44%) Kubernetes
6 117 (3.70%) vCenter Server
7 81 (2.56%) SCOM
8 51 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
9 48 (1.52%) WSUS
10 42 (1.33%) Progress Chef
11 38 (1.20%) FortiGate
12 37 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
13 31 (0.98%) Puppet
14 27 (0.85%) NetBackup
15 25 (0.79%) Grafana
15 25 (0.79%) Nagios
15 25 (0.79%) Packer
15 25 (0.79%) Prometheus
16 24 (0.76%) WMI
17 23 (0.73%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,436 (45.40%) Microsoft
2 600 (18.97%) VMware
3 365 (11.54%) ServiceNow
4 222 (7.02%) Cisco
5 201 (6.35%) Oracle
6 191 (6.04%) Citrix
7 131 (4.14%) Splunk
8 100 (3.16%) Apple
9 95 (3.00%) CyberArk
10 90 (2.85%) SolarWinds
11 78 (2.47%) Google
12 73 (2.31%) BeyondTrust
12 73 (2.31%) Red Hat
13 72 (2.28%) HP
14 65 (2.06%) Remedy
15 60 (1.90%) Dell
16 55 (1.74%) F5
17 53 (1.68%) Juniper
18 49 (1.55%) Palo Alto
19 48 (1.52%) BMC