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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,258 2,639 3,185
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.99% 8.08% 8.30%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.17% 59.85% 58.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,065 1,758 2,069
10th Percentile £170 £163 £178
25th Percentile £225 £213 £248
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.30%
75th Percentile £556 £542 £575
90th Percentile £663 £638 £646
UK excluding London median daily rate £404 £358 £420
% change year-on-year +12.87% -14.88% +8.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 335 237 179
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.25 £14.53
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.10 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +2.89%
75th Percentile £65.00 £33.75 £59.38
90th Percentile £74.87 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £21.38 £24.18
% change year-on-year +20.53% -11.58% +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 4,409 5,439
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.80% 13.50% 14.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,347 2,817 3,466
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £330
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 £673 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 284 268
10th Percentile £14.17 £15.50 £15.89
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.86 £20.50
Median hourly rate £28.00 £25.15 £51.25
Median % change year-on-year +11.33% -50.93% +11.70%
75th Percentile £67.25 £58.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.94 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £55.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -54.27% +25.71%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 2,837 £416 +4.00% 2,367
UK excluding London -13 2,107 £404 +12.87% 1,542
London -7 953 £416 -2.12% 952
Work from Home -13 611 £470 +5.15% 842
South East -7 557 £500 +24.88% 435
North of England -5 507 £325 +7.47% 308
North West +5 305 £344 +5.04% 171
Midlands -15 290 £400 +9.59% 273
South West -17 264 £528 +50.71% 200
East of England 0 244 £240 -31.43% 210
West Midlands -25 194 £402 +0.50% 177
Scotland -5 170 £250 -44.44% 85
Yorkshire -16 165 £225 +11.66% 97
East Midlands +3 95 £273 +21.11% 96
Wales +9 70 £446 +62.27% 32
North East -25 42 £283 +7.62% 45
Northern Ireland 0 16 £139 -30.75% 28
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 (8.10%) SharePoint
2 245 (7.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.12%) IIS
4 57 (1.75%) Confluence
5 19 (0.58%) nginx
5 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.52%) Apache
7 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.34%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.18%) Documentum
10 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.15%) Appian
10 5 (0.15%) Camunda
10 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.092%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.092%) Exchange Server 2013
12 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 229 (7.03%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.092%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.092%) Houdini
7 3 (0.092%) NUKE
8 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 55 (1.69%) 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 6 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.092%) assyst
6 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.031%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.031%) Monis
8 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,020 (31.31%) Microsoft 365
2 988 (30.33%) Azure
3 519 (15.93%) Entra ID
4 336 (10.31%) AWS
5 147 (4.51%) OneDrive
6 120 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
7 114 (3.50%) GCP
8 79 (2.42%) SaaS
9 75 (2.30%) Azure Monitor
10 73 (2.24%) GitHub
11 70 (2.15%) Power Platform
12 62 (1.90%) IaaS
13 46 (1.41%) PaaS
14 41 (1.26%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.14%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
17 30 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.80%) Google Workspace
19 23 (0.71%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.68%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 482 (14.79%) DNS
2 343 (10.53%) DHCP
3 338 (10.37%) Firewall
4 274 (8.41%) VPN
5 246 (7.55%) TCP/IP
6 140 (4.30%) WAN
7 137 (4.21%) LAN
8 131 (4.02%) Wi-Fi
9 104 (3.19%) Network Security
10 93 (2.85%) SAN
11 90 (2.76%) VLAN
12 58 (1.78%) Wireless
13 53 (1.63%) SSL
14 44 (1.35%) Internet
15 42 (1.29%) NAS
16 36 (1.10%) BGP
17 35 (1.07%) Skype
18 33 (1.01%) HTTP
18 33 (1.01%) VSAN
19 31 (0.95%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (9.02%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 55 (1.69%) Power BI
4 40 (1.23%) PostgreSQL
4 40 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 38 (1.17%) Relational Database
6 26 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
7 22 (0.68%) MySQL
8 18 (0.55%) RDBMS
9 16 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 15 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
10 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 12 (0.37%) Db2
12 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
13 10 (0.31%) Elasticsearch
14 8 (0.25%) MS Access
14 8 (0.25%) NoSQL
15 7 (0.21%) MongoDB
15 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 157 (4.82%) JIRA
2 81 (2.49%) Git
3 61 (1.87%) Jenkins
4 49 (1.50%) GitLab
4 49 (1.50%) MSI
5 37 (1.14%) Visual Studio
6 17 (0.52%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.40%) Artifactory
9 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 10 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
13 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
13 6 (0.18%) Rational DOORS
13 6 (0.18%) Selenium
13 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 5 (0.15%) Claude Code
14 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
14 5 (0.15%) Robot Framework
General
1 1,202 (36.89%) Social Skills
2 403 (12.37%) Analytical Skills
3 377 (11.57%) Finance
4 160 (4.91%) Public Sector
5 154 (4.73%) Banking
6 122 (3.74%) Documentation Skills
7 86 (2.64%) Legal
8 77 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 73 (2.24%) Organisational Skills
10 59 (1.81%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.72%) Telecoms
12 54 (1.66%) Retail
13 43 (1.32%) Law
14 40 (1.23%) Front Office
14 40 (1.23%) Military
15 33 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 26 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
16 26 (0.80%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.77%) French Language
17 25 (0.77%) Police
Job Titles
1 521 (15.99%) Support Engineer
2 449 (13.78%) IT Support
3 341 (10.47%) IT Engineer
4 337 (10.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 286 (8.78%) IT Support Engineer
6 277 (8.50%) Analyst
7 253 (7.77%) Senior
8 145 (4.45%) Desktop Support
9 128 (3.93%) Architect
10 125 (3.84%) 2nd Line Support
10 125 (3.84%) Desktop Engineer
11 121 (3.71%) Lead
12 119 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
13 118 (3.62%) Windows Engineer
14 108 (3.31%) Developer
15 103 (3.16%) Support Analyst
16 96 (2.95%) Consultant
17 84 (2.58%) Service Analyst
18 83 (2.55%) 1st Line Support
19 80 (2.46%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (8.16%) Terraform
2 145 (4.45%) .NET
3 120 (3.68%) REST
4 65 (2.00%) .NET Framework
5 51 (1.57%) Middleware
6 44 (1.35%) JSON
7 42 (1.29%) LDAP
8 39 (1.20%) WPF
9 34 (1.04%) WinForms
10 32 (0.98%) XML
11 29 (0.89%) Software Packaging
12 26 (0.80%) HTML
12 26 (0.80%) Web Services
13 23 (0.71%) .NET Core
13 23 (0.71%) ARM Templates
13 23 (0.71%) Kafka
14 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (0.61%) RESTful
15 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
16 18 (0.55%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 381 (11.69%) Onboarding
2 198 (6.08%) Data Centre
3 163 (5.00%) PKI
4 107 (3.28%) Management Information System
5 88 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 87 (2.67%) Driving Licence
6 87 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
7 81 (2.49%) Clustering
8 78 (2.39%) Video Conferencing
9 74 (2.27%) Cloud Native
10 70 (2.15%) Replication
11 59 (1.81%) Security Posture
12 56 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
13 44 (1.35%) Operational Technology
14 43 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
15 41 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
15 41 (1.26%) Virtual Team
16 39 (1.20%) Smartphone
17 38 (1.17%) Enterprise Storage
18 35 (1.07%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 902 (27.69%) Windows Server
2 796 (24.43%) Linux
3 570 (17.50%) Windows 10
4 205 (6.29%) Mac OS
5 148 (4.54%) Unix
6 145 (4.45%) Apple iOS
7 144 (4.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 142 (4.36%) Android
9 73 (2.24%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.69%) Windows 7
11 52 (1.60%) Ubuntu
12 45 (1.38%) Windows Server 2016
13 41 (1.26%) Windows Server 2012
14 39 (1.20%) CentOS
15 32 (0.98%) AIX
16 22 (0.68%) VMS
17 21 (0.64%) Solaris
18 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
19 15 (0.46%) Rocky
20 12 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 784 (24.06%) Problem-Solving
2 610 (18.72%) ITIL
3 569 (17.46%) Customer Service
4 442 (13.57%) ITSM
5 428 (13.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 416 (12.77%) Migration
7 359 (11.02%) Continuous Improvement
8 320 (9.82%) Service Management
9 315 (9.67%) DevOps
10 283 (8.69%) CI/CD
11 266 (8.16%) Infrastructure as Code
12 257 (7.89%) Agile
13 250 (7.67%) Stakeholder Management
14 230 (7.06%) Root Cause Analysis
15 228 (7.00%) Change Management
16 217 (6.66%) Disaster Recovery
17 205 (6.29%) Validation
18 204 (6.26%) Cybersecurity
19 188 (5.77%) Service Delivery
20 182 (5.59%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 772 (23.70%) PowerShell
2 339 (10.41%) Python
3 321 (9.85%) SQL
4 195 (5.99%) Bash
5 167 (5.13%) C#
6 76 (2.33%) T-SQL
7 73 (2.24%) Java
8 60 (1.84%) JavaScript
9 58 (1.78%) PL/SQL
10 50 (1.53%) Bicep
11 36 (1.10%) C++
12 30 (0.92%) VB
13 29 (0.89%) VBScript
14 22 (0.68%) Perl
15 20 (0.61%) VBA
16 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
17 16 (0.49%) TypeScript
18 13 (0.40%) Search Processing Language
19 12 (0.37%) Go
19 12 (0.37%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 995 (30.54%) Security Cleared
2 597 (18.32%) SC Cleared
3 383 (11.76%) DV Cleared
4 297 (9.12%) Degree
5 124 (3.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 95 (2.92%) Azure Certification
7 89 (2.73%) Cisco Certification
8 73 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
9 70 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
10 65 (2.00%) CISSP
11 57 (1.75%) A+ Certification
12 56 (1.72%) AWS Certification
13 51 (1.57%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 45 (1.38%) CCNA
14 45 (1.38%) DBS Check
15 38 (1.17%) CCNP
16 34 (1.04%) ITIL Certification
16 34 (1.04%) MCSE
16 34 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 33 (1.01%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 172 (5.28%) SLA
2 112 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.89%) QA
4 86 (2.64%) NIST
5 39 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (1.01%) GDPR
7 28 (0.86%) NCSC
8 22 (0.68%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 15 (0.46%) GRC
10 15 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
12 13 (0.40%) Data Quality
13 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 12 (0.37%) WCAG
14 11 (0.34%) PMO
15 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
15 10 (0.31%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,339 (41.10%) Active Directory
2 490 (15.04%) VMware Infrastructure
3 220 (6.75%) Hyper-V
4 161 (4.94%) VMware ESXi
5 140 (4.30%) vSphere
6 120 (3.68%) Docker
7 110 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
8 101 (3.10%) Virtual Desktop
9 78 (2.39%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.14%) BitLocker
11 35 (1.07%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) NFS
14 16 (0.49%) Virtual Servers
15 15 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
16 12 (0.37%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 11 (0.34%) KVM
17 11 (0.34%) XenApp
18 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
19 8 (0.25%) UAG
Systems Management
1 451 (13.84%) Microsoft Intune
2 355 (10.90%) SCCM
3 230 (7.06%) Ansible
4 165 (5.06%) Kubernetes
5 127 (3.90%) vCenter Server
6 105 (3.22%) SCOM
7 52 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
8 42 (1.29%) WSUS
9 35 (1.07%) Grafana
10 32 (0.98%) Progress Chef
10 32 (0.98%) Prometheus
10 32 (0.98%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.92%) NetBackup
12 28 (0.86%) WMI
13 27 (0.83%) VxRail
14 26 (0.80%) Puppet
15 24 (0.74%) Nagios
16 22 (0.68%) Packer
17 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Clustering
18 20 (0.61%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 1,537 (47.18%) Microsoft
2 642 (19.71%) VMware
3 378 (11.60%) ServiceNow
4 239 (7.34%) Cisco
5 200 (6.14%) Oracle
6 176 (5.40%) Citrix
7 109 (3.35%) Apple
8 107 (3.28%) Splunk
9 99 (3.04%) CyberArk
10 86 (2.64%) Google
11 82 (2.52%) Red Hat
12 79 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
12 79 (2.42%) SolarWinds
13 61 (1.87%) Dell
14 59 (1.81%) Remedy
15 54 (1.66%) Palo Alto
16 51 (1.57%) NetApp
17 48 (1.47%) HP
18 42 (1.29%) Meraki
19 41 (1.26%) CrowdStrike