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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 17
Rank change year-on-year -5 -5 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,869 2,486 3,770
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.60% 8.50% 8.51%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.34% 59.20% 62.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,925 1,701 2,547
10th Percentile £162 £181 £156
25th Percentile £207 £225 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £408 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year -4.12% +6.25% -9.60%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £640 £675 £668
UK excluding London median daily rate £363 £400 £375
% change year-on-year -9.38% +6.67% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 108 278
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.25 £12.25
25th Percentile £16.44 £16.95 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.46 £22.09 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -2.85% +24.66% -19.45%
75th Percentile £42.14 £29.00 £25.00
90th Percentile £67.84 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.28 £21.80 £17.60
% change year-on-year -2.39% +23.87% -8.74%

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 4,755 4,199 5,994
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 10.93% 14.35% 13.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,120 2,761 4,003
10th Percentile £181 £200 £180
25th Percentile £290 £319 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £457
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +3.94% -11.26%
75th Percentile £565 £600 £591
90th Percentile £655 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £450 £431
% change year-on-year -7.89% +4.53% -9.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 160 402
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.48 £12.90
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.51 £15.50
Median hourly rate £22.80 £27.75 £22.08
Median % change year-on-year -17.85% +25.71% -16.70%
75th Percentile £59.50 £64.06 £59.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.98 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £24.66 £22.00
% change year-on-year -8.76% +12.09% -15.38%

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 20 March 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 20 March 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 20 March 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 -5 2,526 £408 -1.51% 986
UK excluding London -9 1,919 £363 -9.38% 888
London -21 761 £430 +1.18% 227
Work from Home -19 579 £450 -2.70% 357
South East -2 532 £450 -4.76% 287
North of England -8 477 £290 -17.14% 208
Midlands -16 265 £325 - 123
South West -4 259 £450 -16.28% 116
North West -6 257 £260 -25.71% 134
East of England +5 213 £240 +6.43% 99
Yorkshire -14 193 £355 -11.25% 61
West Midlands -27 156 £449 +38.00% 69
Scotland -6 132 £425 -2.86% 50
East Midlands -2 106 £200 -20.00% 54
Wales -2 48 £200 -45.21% 14
North East -12 30 £184 -38.75% 19
Northern Ireland -14 8 £175 +9.38% 7
Channel Islands +4 1 - - 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
1 248 (8.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 168 (5.86%) SharePoint
3 58 (2.02%) Confluence
4 45 (1.57%) IIS
5 27 (0.94%) Apache
6 22 (0.77%) WebLogic
7 13 (0.45%) Skype for Business
8 12 (0.42%) Tomcat
8 12 (0.42%) TPMS
8 12 (0.42%) Tuxedo
9 11 (0.38%) SAS
10 10 (0.35%) nginx
11 6 (0.21%) NetWeaver
11 6 (0.21%) WebSphere
12 5 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.14%) OpenStack
14 3 (0.10%) ArcGIS
14 3 (0.10%) Exchange Server 2010
14 3 (0.10%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 231 (8.05%) Microsoft Office
2 69 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.42%) MS Visio
5 9 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
6 5 (0.17%) PTC Creo
7 3 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.035%) InDesign
8 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 29 (1.01%) Remedy ITSM
2 17 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.24%) assyst
3 7 (0.24%) Teamcenter
4 4 (0.14%) Oracle 11i
5 3 (0.10%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 2 (0.070%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.070%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.070%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.070%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.070%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.070%) SystmOne
7 1 (0.035%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.035%) Eikon
7 1 (0.035%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.035%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 813 (28.34%) Microsoft 365
2 749 (26.11%) Azure
3 300 (10.46%) Entra ID
4 219 (7.63%) AWS
5 98 (3.42%) OneDrive
6 71 (2.47%) GCP
7 70 (2.44%) SaaS
8 67 (2.34%) Azure DevOps
9 54 (1.88%) Google Workspace
10 49 (1.71%) GitHub
11 47 (1.64%) IaaS
12 42 (1.46%) Power Platform
13 41 (1.43%) PaaS
14 33 (1.15%) Azure Monitor
15 30 (1.05%) Azure Sentinel
16 25 (0.87%) OpenShift
17 24 (0.84%) AWS CloudFormation
17 24 (0.84%) GitHub Actions
18 23 (0.80%) Nutanix
19 17 (0.59%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 386 (13.45%) DNS
2 334 (11.64%) Firewall
3 249 (8.68%) DHCP
4 189 (6.59%) VPN
5 185 (6.45%) TCP/IP
6 164 (5.72%) WAN
7 163 (5.68%) Wi-Fi
8 162 (5.65%) LAN
9 78 (2.72%) Network Security
10 62 (2.16%) VLAN
11 59 (2.06%) Wireless
12 57 (1.99%) SAN
13 40 (1.39%) BGP
14 39 (1.36%) SSL
15 38 (1.32%) Skype
16 37 (1.29%) SSH
17 36 (1.25%) SD-WAN
17 36 (1.25%) VoIP
18 34 (1.19%) HTTP
19 30 (1.05%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (5.89%) SQL Server
2 57 (1.99%) Oracle Database
3 39 (1.36%) Relational Database
4 37 (1.29%) MySQL
5 25 (0.87%) PostgreSQL
6 17 (0.59%) Power BI
7 16 (0.56%) Data Warehouse
8 14 (0.49%) DB2
8 14 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
9 13 (0.45%) BigQuery
10 12 (0.42%) MongoDB
10 12 (0.42%) Oracle Reports
11 11 (0.38%) SAP HANA
12 10 (0.35%) GIS
13 9 (0.31%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.24%) Sybase ASE
15 6 (0.21%) Amazon RDS
15 6 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
15 6 (0.21%) Data Lake
15 6 (0.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 173 (6.03%) JIRA
2 66 (2.30%) GitLab
2 66 (2.30%) Jenkins
3 58 (2.02%) Git
4 41 (1.43%) MSI
5 34 (1.19%) Visual Studio
6 25 (0.87%) Eclipse
7 17 (0.59%) Burp Suite
7 17 (0.59%) Metasploit
8 15 (0.52%) Android Studio
8 15 (0.52%) Artifactory
9 13 (0.45%) Xcode
10 11 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
11 10 (0.35%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.35%) Chocolatey
12 9 (0.31%) InstallShield
13 8 (0.28%) JUnit
14 7 (0.24%) Robot Framework
14 7 (0.24%) Selenium
15 6 (0.21%) Toad
General
1 1,027 (35.80%) Social Skills
2 271 (9.45%) Finance
3 259 (9.03%) Analytical Skills
4 243 (8.47%) Public Sector
5 135 (4.71%) Banking
6 130 (4.53%) Legal
7 112 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
8 84 (2.93%) Organisational Skills
9 60 (2.09%) Military
10 57 (1.99%) Manufacturing
11 43 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
12 37 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 37 (1.29%) Telecoms
13 36 (1.25%) Retail
14 27 (0.94%) Law
15 21 (0.73%) Investment Banking
16 20 (0.70%) Aerospace
16 20 (0.70%) Local Government
17 17 (0.59%) Front Office
18 15 (0.52%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 384 (13.38%) IT Support
2 381 (13.28%) Support Engineer
3 363 (12.65%) Analyst
4 224 (7.81%) IT Engineer
5 187 (6.52%) IT Support Engineer
6 185 (6.45%) Architect
7 181 (6.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 163 (5.68%) Senior
9 151 (5.26%) Support Analyst
10 126 (4.39%) Desktop Support
11 111 (3.87%) Windows Engineer
12 109 (3.80%) Developer
12 109 (3.80%) Technical Support
13 107 (3.73%) 2nd Line Support
14 103 (3.59%) Desktop Engineer
15 93 (3.24%) Lead
16 87 (3.03%) IT Analyst
17 80 (2.79%) Consultant
18 75 (2.61%) Desktop Support Engineer
19 73 (2.54%) Deployment Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (3.03%) .NET
2 73 (2.54%) REST
3 53 (1.85%) LDAP
4 50 (1.74%) .NET Framework
5 48 (1.67%) SAML
6 47 (1.64%) OAuth
7 36 (1.25%) Middleware
8 32 (1.12%) Kafka
9 31 (1.08%) Web Services
10 28 (0.98%) Microsoft Graph
11 27 (0.94%) OpenID
11 27 (0.94%) WPF
12 25 (0.87%) WinForms
13 24 (0.84%) CSS
13 24 (0.84%) React
14 23 (0.80%) AngularJS
15 22 (0.77%) 802.1X
16 21 (0.73%) OAuth2
17 20 (0.70%) Apache NiFi
17 20 (0.70%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 194 (6.76%) Onboarding
2 124 (4.32%) Data Centre
3 108 (3.76%) PKI
4 85 (2.96%) Enterprise Software
5 84 (2.93%) Driving Licence
6 68 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
7 54 (1.88%) Clustering
8 52 (1.81%) Management Information System
9 51 (1.78%) Smartphone
10 50 (1.74%) Replication
11 46 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
12 45 (1.57%) Security Posture
13 42 (1.46%) Hybrid Cloud
14 40 (1.39%) Product Ownership
15 38 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
16 37 (1.29%) Security Operations Centre
17 35 (1.22%) Virtual Team
18 34 (1.19%) CMDB
19 33 (1.15%) NHS
20 29 (1.01%) Cloud Native
Operating Systems
1 698 (24.33%) Linux
2 631 (21.99%) Windows Server
3 567 (19.76%) Windows 10
4 159 (5.54%) Unix
5 151 (5.26%) Android
5 151 (5.26%) Mac OS
6 115 (4.01%) Apple iOS
7 91 (3.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (2.54%) Windows Server 2016
9 61 (2.13%) Windows Server 2019
10 51 (1.78%) Windows 7
11 39 (1.36%) Windows Server 2012
12 36 (1.25%) AIX
13 31 (1.08%) Windows Server 2003
14 18 (0.63%) Solaris
15 15 (0.52%) Ubuntu
15 15 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
16 14 (0.49%) VMS
17 10 (0.35%) Mac OS X
18 8 (0.28%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 568 (19.80%) Problem-Solving
2 473 (16.49%) Customer Service
3 407 (14.19%) ITIL
4 317 (11.05%) Agile
5 302 (10.53%) Migration
6 273 (9.52%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 255 (8.89%) DevOps
8 233 (8.12%) CI/CD
9 227 (7.91%) ITSM
10 220 (7.67%) Cybersecurity
11 200 (6.97%) Continuous Improvement
12 197 (6.87%) Service Management
13 173 (6.03%) Change Management
14 168 (5.86%) Disaster Recovery
15 144 (5.02%) Stakeholder Management
16 140 (4.88%) High Availability
17 133 (4.64%) SIEM
18 130 (4.53%) Service Delivery
19 126 (4.39%) Computer Science
20 125 (4.36%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 602 (20.98%) PowerShell
2 323 (11.26%) Python
3 256 (8.92%) SQL
4 125 (4.36%) C#
5 121 (4.22%) Bash
6 99 (3.45%) Java
7 76 (2.65%) JavaScript
8 58 (2.02%) C++
8 58 (2.02%) PL/SQL
9 56 (1.95%) Perl
10 39 (1.36%) T-SQL
11 32 (1.12%) Kusto Query Language
12 24 (0.84%) Shell Script
13 23 (0.80%) VB
14 21 (0.73%) VBScript
15 14 (0.49%) VBA
16 13 (0.45%) Bicep
16 13 (0.45%) Go
17 12 (0.42%) Search Processing Language
18 11 (0.38%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 891 (31.06%) Security Cleared
2 594 (20.70%) SC Cleared
3 293 (10.21%) Degree
4 253 (8.82%) DV Cleared
5 129 (4.50%) Microsoft Certification
6 90 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
7 66 (2.30%) Cisco Certification
8 46 (1.60%) MCSE
9 44 (1.53%) Azure Certification
10 43 (1.50%) ITIL Certification
11 42 (1.46%) CISSP
12 38 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
12 38 (1.32%) CompTIA Security+
13 33 (1.15%) CCNA
14 32 (1.12%) AWS Certification
15 29 (1.01%) CCNP
16 27 (0.94%) A+ Certification
17 22 (0.77%) MCSA
18 21 (0.73%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 20 (0.70%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 94 (3.28%) GDPR
2 91 (3.17%) SLA
3 87 (3.03%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 86 (3.00%) QA
5 60 (2.09%) NIST
6 43 (1.50%) PCI DSS
7 24 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 19 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
9 16 (0.56%) PMO
10 15 (0.52%) NCSC
11 13 (0.45%) MiFID
12 12 (0.42%) GLBA
13 10 (0.35%) FINRA
14 9 (0.31%) NIST 800
15 8 (0.28%) Data Quality
15 8 (0.28%) SOC 2
16 5 (0.17%) GMP
16 5 (0.17%) GxP
16 5 (0.17%) HIPAA
17 4 (0.14%) DICOM
System Software
1 1,056 (36.81%) Active Directory
2 291 (10.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 118 (4.11%) Hyper-V
4 108 (3.76%) Docker
5 68 (2.37%) vSphere
6 57 (1.99%) Virtual Desktop
6 57 (1.99%) Virtual Machines
6 57 (1.99%) VMware ESXi
7 34 (1.19%) VMware NSX
8 30 (1.05%) Firmware
9 28 (0.98%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.84%) Microsoft App-V
11 16 (0.56%) KVM
12 10 (0.35%) XenApp
12 10 (0.35%) XenDesktop
13 8 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.24%) Terminal Services
15 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.17%) etcd
17 4 (0.14%) Snort
Systems Management
1 372 (12.97%) Microsoft Intune
2 329 (11.47%) SCCM
3 180 (6.27%) Terraform
4 176 (6.13%) Ansible
5 136 (4.74%) Kubernetes
6 79 (2.75%) Single Sign-On
7 69 (2.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 58 (2.02%) vCenter Server
9 45 (1.57%) Jamf Pro
10 38 (1.32%) Grafana
11 36 (1.25%) FortiGate
12 30 (1.05%) Prometheus
12 30 (1.05%) WSUS
13 23 (0.80%) SCOM
14 21 (0.73%) Progress Chef
15 17 (0.59%) Nessus
15 17 (0.59%) Puppet
15 17 (0.59%) WMI
16 16 (0.56%) Nagios
16 16 (0.56%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,235 (43.05%) Microsoft
2 397 (13.84%) VMware
3 246 (8.57%) ServiceNow
4 207 (7.22%) Citrix
5 187 (6.52%) Oracle
6 180 (6.27%) Cisco
7 153 (5.33%) Splunk
8 88 (3.07%) HP
9 72 (2.51%) Dell
10 69 (2.41%) Red Hat
11 65 (2.27%) SolarWinds
12 62 (2.16%) Google
13 61 (2.13%) Apple
14 55 (1.92%) IBM
15 45 (1.57%) Remedy
15 45 (1.57%) SAP
16 44 (1.53%) Juniper
17 43 (1.50%) Veeam
18 41 (1.43%) Palo Alto
19 38 (1.32%) F5