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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,086 2,634 3,393
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.81% 8.00% 8.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.33% 59.51% 60.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,960 1,747 2,285
10th Percentile £170 £177 £167
25th Percentile £225 £225 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £415 £426
Median % change year-on-year +2.37% -2.54% -5.33%
75th Percentile £556 £564 £575
90th Percentile £650 £663 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +3.75% -11.11% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 276 206 268
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.33 £11.94
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.33 £15.21
Median hourly rate £25.13 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.17% -5.65% -16.67%
75th Percentile £54.25 £25.15 £40.06
90th Percentile £69.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.27
% change year-on-year +36.46% +3.28% -16.95%

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 5,115 4,426 5,633
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.44% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,248 2,856 3,718
10th Percentile £193 £200 £193
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.41% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £465
% change year-on-year - -3.25% +3.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 250 384
10th Percentile £15.63 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.68 £18.11 £16.30
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.88% -43.11%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.11 £67.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £21.59 £31.00
% change year-on-year +22.60% -30.35% +3.33%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -7 2,704 £422 +2.18% 951
UK excluding London -14 2,032 £415 +3.75% 819
London -17 880 £418 -3.13% 244
Work from Home -10 640 £475 +1.17% 311
South East -8 578 £475 -3.46% 284
North of England -10 482 £344 -0.29% 188
Midlands -20 274 £384 +18.00% 107
South West -13 267 £488 +21.88% 104
North West -9 255 £344 -3.91% 94
East of England -2 206 £335 +34.00% 108
Yorkshire -10 203 £358 +5.93% 66
West Midlands -27 174 £450 +12.50% 62
Scotland -6 164 £413 -5.71% 29
East Midlands +9 95 £270 +35.00% 45
Wales +3 58 £408 +48.18% 20
North East -41 28 £270 -1.82% 34
Northern Ireland -2 18 £139 -28.97% 10
Channel Islands +3 2 £518 - 2

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
1 243 (7.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 240 (7.78%) SharePoint
3 68 (2.20%) IIS
4 63 (2.04%) Confluence
5 18 (0.58%) Apache
5 18 (0.58%) nginx
6 17 (0.55%) Tomcat
7 14 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.36%) HCL Notes
8 11 (0.36%) Skype for Business
9 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
9 9 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.19%) Appian
10 6 (0.19%) Documentum
11 5 (0.16%) Camunda
11 5 (0.16%) SAS
12 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.097%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.097%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 201 (6.51%) Microsoft Office
2 74 (2.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.13%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.097%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.097%) Houdini
7 3 (0.097%) NUKE
8 2 (0.065%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.065%) PTC Creo
9 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.032%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 54 (1.75%) Remedy ITSM
2 16 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.32%) Finacle
4 8 (0.26%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.19%) OpenText MBPM
5 6 (0.19%) Oracle BPM
6 4 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.097%) assyst
8 2 (0.065%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.065%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.032%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
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
1 939 (30.43%) Azure
2 917 (29.71%) Microsoft 365
3 440 (14.26%) Entra ID
4 326 (10.56%) AWS
5 132 (4.28%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.34%) GCP
7 100 (3.24%) Azure DevOps
8 80 (2.59%) SaaS
9 68 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
9 68 (2.20%) GitHub
9 68 (2.20%) Power Platform
10 64 (2.07%) IaaS
11 56 (1.81%) PaaS
12 44 (1.43%) Azure Sentinel
13 37 (1.20%) OpenShift
14 32 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
15 27 (0.87%) Azure AKS
15 27 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
16 26 (0.84%) Amazon EC2
16 26 (0.84%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 450 (14.58%) DNS
2 340 (11.02%) Firewall
3 306 (9.92%) DHCP
4 248 (8.04%) VPN
5 212 (6.87%) TCP/IP
6 177 (5.74%) LAN
7 163 (5.28%) WAN
8 152 (4.93%) Wi-Fi
9 98 (3.18%) SAN
10 75 (2.43%) Network Security
11 67 (2.17%) VLAN
12 53 (1.72%) SSL
13 49 (1.59%) BGP
14 48 (1.56%) NAS
15 43 (1.39%) Internet
16 39 (1.26%) Wireless
17 37 (1.20%) OSPF
18 34 (1.10%) VoIP
19 31 (1.00%) SNMP
20 30 (0.97%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (9.56%) SQL Server
2 62 (2.01%) Oracle Database
3 48 (1.56%) Power BI
4 33 (1.07%) PostgreSQL
5 31 (1.00%) Relational Database
6 30 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 25 (0.81%) MySQL
8 22 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
9 21 (0.68%) Db2
10 17 (0.55%) Data Warehouse
11 15 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (0.49%) RDBMS
12 12 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 11 (0.36%) NoSQL
14 10 (0.32%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.32%) MongoDB
14 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
14 10 (0.32%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
15 9 (0.29%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 186 (6.03%) JIRA
2 73 (2.37%) Git
3 58 (1.88%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.56%) MSI
5 41 (1.33%) GitLab
6 38 (1.23%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.45%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.26%) Artifactory
9 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.19%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.19%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.19%) Xcode
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Maven
12 5 (0.16%) Selenium
General
1 1,121 (36.33%) Social Skills
2 369 (11.96%) Analytical Skills
3 344 (11.15%) Finance
4 204 (6.61%) Public Sector
5 160 (5.18%) Banking
6 107 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
7 101 (3.27%) Legal
8 84 (2.72%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.81%) Retail
11 50 (1.62%) Manufacturing
12 48 (1.56%) Military
13 37 (1.20%) Front Office
13 37 (1.20%) Telecoms
14 34 (1.10%) Investment Banking
14 34 (1.10%) Law
15 27 (0.87%) Spanish Language
16 25 (0.81%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.71%) French Language
18 20 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 442 (14.32%) Support Engineer
2 406 (13.16%) IT Support
3 298 (9.66%) IT Engineer
4 296 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 287 (9.30%) Analyst
6 251 (8.13%) IT Support Engineer
7 223 (7.23%) Senior
8 130 (4.21%) Architect
9 124 (4.02%) 2nd Line Support
9 124 (4.02%) Desktop Support
10 116 (3.76%) Developer
11 108 (3.50%) Cloud Engineer
11 108 (3.50%) Lead
12 106 (3.43%) Support Analyst
13 104 (3.37%) Desktop Engineer
14 96 (3.11%) Consultant
15 91 (2.95%) IT Analyst
15 91 (2.95%) Windows Engineer
16 83 (2.69%) Service Analyst
17 82 (2.66%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (3.92%) .NET
2 114 (3.69%) REST
3 66 (2.14%) .NET Framework
4 39 (1.26%) Middleware
5 34 (1.10%) WinForms
6 33 (1.07%) LDAP
7 31 (1.00%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.97%) JSON
9 29 (0.94%) Web Services
10 28 (0.91%) Kafka
10 28 (0.91%) Microsoft Graph
10 28 (0.91%) WPF
11 26 (0.84%) Software Packaging
11 26 (0.84%) XML
12 25 (0.81%) HTML
13 23 (0.75%) CSS
14 22 (0.71%) RESTful
15 21 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
16 18 (0.58%) SAML
17 17 (0.55%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 320 (10.37%) Onboarding
2 164 (5.31%) Data Centre
3 162 (5.25%) PKI
4 85 (2.75%) Clustering
5 82 (2.66%) Enterprise Software
6 81 (2.62%) Management Information System
7 78 (2.53%) Cloud Native
8 75 (2.43%) Driving Licence
9 68 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
10 61 (1.98%) Replication
11 58 (1.88%) Hybrid Cloud
12 56 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
12 56 (1.81%) Security Posture
13 55 (1.78%) Video Conferencing
14 45 (1.46%) Virtual Team
15 42 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
16 38 (1.23%) Smartphone
17 36 (1.17%) Operational Technology
18 35 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 764 (24.76%) Linux
2 758 (24.56%) Windows Server
3 510 (16.53%) Windows 10
4 198 (6.42%) Mac OS
5 162 (5.25%) Unix
6 140 (4.54%) Android
7 138 (4.47%) Apple iOS
8 124 (4.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (2.43%) Windows Server 2019
10 52 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
11 40 (1.30%) Ubuntu
12 39 (1.26%) AIX
12 39 (1.26%) Windows 7
13 35 (1.13%) Windows Server 2012
14 23 (0.75%) Solaris
15 22 (0.71%) CentOS
16 21 (0.68%) VMS
17 17 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
18 10 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 702 (22.75%) Problem-Solving
2 514 (16.66%) ITIL
3 478 (15.49%) Customer Service
4 384 (12.44%) Migration
5 382 (12.38%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 346 (11.21%) ITSM
7 291 (9.43%) DevOps
8 281 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
9 270 (8.75%) CI/CD
10 268 (8.68%) Agile
11 244 (7.91%) Service Management
12 217 (7.03%) Infrastructure as Code
13 202 (6.55%) Change Management
13 202 (6.55%) High Availability
14 190 (6.16%) Stakeholder Management
15 179 (5.80%) Cybersecurity
16 178 (5.77%) Service Delivery
17 170 (5.51%) Validation
18 168 (5.44%) Disaster Recovery
19 157 (5.09%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 674 (21.84%) PowerShell
2 323 (10.47%) Python
3 313 (10.14%) SQL
4 165 (5.35%) Bash
5 150 (4.86%) C#
6 78 (2.53%) Java
7 69 (2.24%) JavaScript
8 62 (2.01%) T-SQL
9 61 (1.98%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.56%) C++
11 40 (1.30%) Bicep
12 25 (0.81%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 22 (0.71%) Perl
14 22 (0.71%) VB
15 21 (0.68%) VBA
15 21 (0.68%) VBScript
16 16 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
16 16 (0.52%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.49%) C
Qualifications
1 917 (29.71%) Security Cleared
2 576 (18.66%) SC Cleared
3 307 (9.95%) Degree
4 304 (9.85%) DV Cleared
5 118 (3.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 102 (3.31%) Cisco Certification
7 74 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.20%) CISSP
9 67 (2.17%) Azure Certification
10 61 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (1.75%) AWS Certification
12 44 (1.43%) CCNA
13 42 (1.36%) MCSE
14 37 (1.20%) A+ Certification
15 35 (1.13%) CCNP
16 28 (0.91%) DBS Check
17 27 (0.87%) ITIL Certification
17 27 (0.87%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 25 (0.81%) CISM
18 25 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 141 (4.57%) SLA
2 119 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 88 (2.85%) NIST
4 87 (2.82%) QA
5 41 (1.33%) GDPR
6 28 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
7 26 (0.84%) PCI DSS
8 25 (0.81%) NCSC
9 16 (0.52%) Data Quality
9 16 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.49%) PMO
11 14 (0.45%) GxP
12 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
13 11 (0.36%) GRC
13 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.29%) GMP
15 9 (0.29%) WCAG
16 8 (0.26%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,211 (39.24%) Active Directory
2 411 (13.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 168 (5.44%) Hyper-V
4 131 (4.24%) VMware ESXi
5 109 (3.53%) vSphere
6 102 (3.31%) Docker
7 101 (3.27%) Virtual Machines
8 80 (2.59%) Virtual Desktop
9 68 (2.20%) VMware NSX
10 41 (1.33%) Firmware
11 33 (1.07%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.78%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.58%) KVM
14 16 (0.52%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
16 8 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
18 6 (0.19%) UAG
Systems Management
1 425 (13.77%) Microsoft Intune
2 282 (9.14%) SCCM
3 249 (8.07%) Terraform
4 215 (6.97%) Ansible
5 167 (5.41%) Kubernetes
6 109 (3.53%) vCenter Server
7 64 (2.07%) SCOM
8 55 (1.78%) Jamf Pro
9 42 (1.36%) Progress Chef
10 39 (1.26%) FortiGate
10 39 (1.26%) WSUS
11 35 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
12 32 (1.04%) Puppet
13 28 (0.91%) Grafana
13 28 (0.91%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.81%) Nagios
15 24 (0.78%) Packer
16 22 (0.71%) ZABBIX
17 20 (0.65%) Nessus
17 20 (0.65%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,344 (43.55%) Microsoft
2 547 (17.73%) VMware
3 321 (10.40%) ServiceNow
4 213 (6.90%) Cisco
5 200 (6.48%) Oracle
6 197 (6.38%) Citrix
7 134 (4.34%) Splunk
8 93 (3.01%) Apple
9 89 (2.88%) SolarWinds
10 85 (2.75%) CyberArk
11 78 (2.53%) Red Hat
12 75 (2.43%) HP
13 74 (2.40%) Google
14 70 (2.27%) BeyondTrust
15 65 (2.11%) Dell
15 65 (2.11%) Remedy
16 57 (1.85%) F5
17 53 (1.72%) Juniper
18 52 (1.69%) IBM
19 44 (1.43%) BMC