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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,283 2,674 3,147
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.98% 8.07% 8.26%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.00% 59.49% 58.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,086 1,776 2,003
10th Percentile £173 £163 £178
25th Percentile £225 £208 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £560 £538 £565
90th Percentile £668 £625 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +17.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 247 166
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.12 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.05 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £22.58 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +14.06% -6.64% +7.47%
75th Percentile £60.92 £30.13 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% +11.17%

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 5,382 4,495 5,355
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.80% 13.57% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,397 2,859 3,345
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £282 £325
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 £660 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 406 299 254
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.08
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.85
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.30 £69.45
90th Percentile £74.32 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.20
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.25% +39.93%

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 2 October 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 2 October 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 2 October 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 -8 2,862 £425 +6.25% 2,786
UK excluding London -14 2,121 £413 +17.86% 1,853
London -4 955 £416 -2.12% 1,091
Work from Home -13 620 £470 +7.43% 963
South East -8 564 £482 +30.20% 500
North of England -5 507 £344 +12.79% 366
North West +3 298 £350 +6.06% 202
Midlands -16 296 £400 - 299
South West -16 267 £540 +48.97% 239
East of England -1 246 £235 -32.86% 254
West Midlands -23 202 £407 +1.81% 169
Yorkshire -15 169 £282 +34.29% 131
Scotland -7 163 £275 -38.89% 117
East Midlands +2 93 £275 +22.22% 129
Wales +4 72 £468 +65.49% 60
North East -24 45 £283 +13.00% 39
Northern Ireland +3 17 £139 -30.75% 46
Channel Islands -3 2 £535 -

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
1 267 (8.13%) SharePoint
2 245 (7.46%) Microsoft Exchange
3 74 (2.25%) IIS
4 63 (1.92%) Confluence
5 21 (0.64%) Apache
6 19 (0.58%) nginx
6 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
7 15 (0.46%) Tomcat
8 14 (0.43%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.18%) Documentum
11 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.15%) Appian
11 5 (0.15%) Camunda
11 5 (0.15%) CICS
11 5 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
12 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
12 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
12 4 (0.12%) WebLogic
13 3 (0.091%) JBoss
Applications
1 231 (7.04%) Microsoft Office
2 70 (2.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.091%) Houdini
6 3 (0.091%) NUKE
7 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.061%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.030%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.030%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 50 (1.52%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.30%) Finacle
3 7 (0.21%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.21%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.091%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.061%) assyst
6 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.030%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.030%) Monis
7 1 (0.030%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.030%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.030%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.030%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.030%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.030%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 1,033 (31.47%) Microsoft 365
2 1,001 (30.49%) Azure
3 545 (16.60%) Entra ID
4 346 (10.54%) AWS
5 147 (4.48%) OneDrive
6 125 (3.81%) GCP
7 119 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
8 78 (2.38%) SaaS
9 75 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
10 74 (2.25%) GitHub
11 66 (2.01%) Power Platform
12 65 (1.98%) IaaS
13 48 (1.46%) PaaS
14 42 (1.28%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.13%) OpenShift
16 32 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
18 30 (0.91%) Google Workspace
19 22 (0.67%) Amazon EC2
19 22 (0.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 481 (14.65%) DNS
2 339 (10.33%) DHCP
3 331 (10.08%) Firewall
4 279 (8.50%) VPN
5 249 (7.58%) TCP/IP
6 132 (4.02%) LAN
6 132 (4.02%) WAN
7 128 (3.90%) Wi-Fi
8 104 (3.17%) Network Security
9 90 (2.74%) SAN
10 83 (2.53%) VLAN
11 60 (1.83%) Wireless
12 55 (1.68%) SSL
13 42 (1.28%) Internet
14 40 (1.22%) NAS
15 39 (1.19%) BGP
16 34 (1.04%) Skype
16 34 (1.04%) VoIP
17 32 (0.97%) HTTP
18 28 (0.85%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (9.08%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.86%) Oracle Database
3 52 (1.58%) Power BI
4 44 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.22%) Relational Database
5 40 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 29 (0.88%) Amazon RDS
7 24 (0.73%) MySQL
8 20 (0.61%) RDBMS
9 16 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (0.49%) Db2
9 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
12 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
13 9 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
14 8 (0.24%) MS Access
14 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
15 7 (0.21%) MongoDB
15 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 160 (4.87%) JIRA
2 85 (2.59%) Git
3 65 (1.98%) Jenkins
4 52 (1.58%) GitLab
4 52 (1.58%) MSI
5 37 (1.13%) Visual Studio
6 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
7 15 (0.46%) Artifactory
7 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
8 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 10 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
10 9 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
11 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
13 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
13 6 (0.18%) Robot Framework
13 6 (0.18%) Selenium
13 6 (0.18%) SonarQube
13 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,202 (36.61%) Social Skills
2 395 (12.03%) Analytical Skills
3 383 (11.67%) Finance
4 166 (5.06%) Public Sector
5 153 (4.66%) Banking
6 122 (3.72%) Documentation Skills
7 84 (2.56%) Legal
8 81 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 72 (2.19%) Organisational Skills
10 61 (1.86%) Manufacturing
11 58 (1.77%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.58%) Retail
13 41 (1.25%) Front Office
13 41 (1.25%) Military
14 40 (1.22%) Law
15 33 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.85%) Police
17 25 (0.76%) Aerospace
17 25 (0.76%) Financial Institution
17 25 (0.76%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 527 (16.05%) Support Engineer
2 444 (13.52%) IT Support
3 340 (10.36%) IT Engineer
4 333 (10.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 288 (8.77%) IT Support Engineer
6 274 (8.35%) Analyst
7 260 (7.92%) Senior
8 148 (4.51%) Desktop Support
9 130 (3.96%) Architect
10 129 (3.93%) Desktop Engineer
11 126 (3.84%) Cloud Engineer
12 125 (3.81%) 2nd Line Support
13 122 (3.72%) Lead
14 121 (3.69%) Windows Engineer
15 109 (3.32%) Developer
16 98 (2.99%) Consultant
17 95 (2.89%) Support Analyst
18 85 (2.59%) Service Analyst
19 82 (2.50%) Administrator
19 82 (2.50%) Desktop Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (8.38%) Terraform
2 150 (4.57%) .NET
3 121 (3.69%) REST
4 65 (1.98%) .NET Framework
5 58 (1.77%) Middleware
6 48 (1.46%) LDAP
7 46 (1.40%) JSON
8 41 (1.25%) WPF
9 32 (0.97%) WinForms
9 32 (0.97%) XML
10 30 (0.91%) Web Services
11 27 (0.82%) Software Packaging
12 25 (0.76%) HTML
12 25 (0.76%) Kafka
13 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
13 23 (0.70%) ARM Templates
14 21 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
15 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
15 20 (0.61%) RESTful
16 18 (0.55%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 394 (12.00%) Onboarding
2 203 (6.18%) Data Centre
3 162 (4.93%) PKI
4 108 (3.29%) Management Information System
5 96 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
6 90 (2.74%) Driving Licence
7 85 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
8 81 (2.47%) Cloud Native
8 81 (2.47%) Video Conferencing
9 76 (2.31%) Clustering
10 70 (2.13%) Replication
11 63 (1.92%) Security Posture
12 53 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
13 43 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
13 43 (1.31%) Operational Technology
14 40 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
15 39 (1.19%) Smartphone
15 39 (1.19%) Virtual Team
16 38 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
17 36 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 928 (28.27%) Windows Server
2 794 (24.19%) Linux
3 574 (17.48%) Windows 10
4 207 (6.31%) Mac OS
5 152 (4.63%) Apple iOS
6 146 (4.45%) Unix
7 145 (4.42%) Android
8 144 (4.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 72 (2.19%) Windows Server 2019
10 54 (1.64%) Windows 7
11 48 (1.46%) Ubuntu
12 45 (1.37%) Windows Server 2012
13 44 (1.34%) Windows Server 2016
14 40 (1.22%) CentOS
15 32 (0.97%) AIX
16 20 (0.61%) Solaris
17 19 (0.58%) VMS
18 17 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
19 16 (0.49%) Rocky
20 11 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 785 (23.91%) Problem-Solving
2 623 (18.98%) ITIL
3 567 (17.27%) Customer Service
4 447 (13.62%) ITSM
5 428 (13.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 426 (12.98%) Migration
7 369 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
8 331 (10.08%) Service Management
9 318 (9.69%) DevOps
10 299 (9.11%) CI/CD
11 288 (8.77%) Infrastructure as Code
12 268 (8.16%) Stakeholder Management
13 262 (7.98%) Agile
14 240 (7.31%) Root Cause Analysis
15 235 (7.16%) Change Management
16 227 (6.91%) Disaster Recovery
17 219 (6.67%) Validation
18 218 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
19 191 (5.82%) Service Delivery
20 185 (5.64%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 793 (24.15%) PowerShell
2 346 (10.54%) Python
3 317 (9.66%) SQL
4 200 (6.09%) Bash
5 173 (5.27%) C#
6 78 (2.38%) T-SQL
7 75 (2.28%) Java
8 61 (1.86%) JavaScript
9 53 (1.61%) PL/SQL
10 52 (1.58%) Bicep
11 39 (1.19%) C++
12 29 (0.88%) VB
12 29 (0.88%) VBScript
13 21 (0.64%) Perl
14 19 (0.58%) VBA
15 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
16 15 (0.46%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.40%) Go
18 12 (0.37%) Groovy
19 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 1,002 (30.52%) Security Cleared
2 604 (18.40%) SC Cleared
3 388 (11.82%) DV Cleared
4 298 (9.08%) Degree
5 125 (3.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 91 (2.77%) Azure Certification
7 88 (2.68%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
9 67 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
10 63 (1.92%) CISSP
11 56 (1.71%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.68%) AWS Certification
13 51 (1.55%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 47 (1.43%) DBS Check
15 45 (1.37%) CCNA
16 41 (1.25%) CCNP
17 38 (1.16%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.04%) MCSE
19 33 (1.01%) CISM
20 31 (0.94%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (5.30%) SLA
2 110 (3.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 91 (2.77%) QA
4 84 (2.56%) NIST
5 38 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
6 31 (0.94%) GDPR
7 30 (0.91%) NCSC
8 26 (0.79%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) GRC
10 16 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 16 (0.49%) GxP
11 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
13 11 (0.34%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.30%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,368 (41.67%) Active Directory
2 497 (15.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 229 (6.98%) Hyper-V
4 155 (4.72%) VMware ESXi
5 142 (4.33%) vSphere
6 121 (3.69%) Docker
7 109 (3.32%) Virtual Machines
8 108 (3.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 76 (2.31%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.19%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.10%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) vCloud
13 20 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.46%) NFS
16 14 (0.43%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 12 (0.37%) KVM
17 12 (0.37%) XenApp
18 10 (0.30%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.30%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 467 (14.22%) Microsoft Intune
2 367 (11.18%) SCCM
3 229 (6.98%) Ansible
4 167 (5.09%) Kubernetes
5 120 (3.66%) vCenter Server
6 104 (3.17%) SCOM
7 53 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
8 42 (1.28%) WSUS
9 38 (1.16%) Grafana
10 35 (1.07%) Prometheus
11 33 (1.01%) Progress Chef
12 32 (0.97%) NetBackup
13 31 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
14 30 (0.91%) WMI
15 28 (0.85%) Puppet
16 25 (0.76%) VxRail
17 23 (0.70%) Nagios
18 22 (0.67%) Packer
19 21 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
20 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,573 (47.91%) Microsoft
2 647 (19.71%) VMware
3 378 (11.51%) ServiceNow
4 240 (7.31%) Cisco
5 200 (6.09%) Oracle
6 177 (5.39%) Citrix
7 114 (3.47%) Apple
8 108 (3.29%) Splunk
9 104 (3.17%) CyberArk
10 93 (2.83%) Google
11 82 (2.50%) Red Hat
12 79 (2.41%) BeyondTrust
13 77 (2.35%) SolarWinds
14 59 (1.80%) Dell
15 57 (1.74%) Palo Alto
16 54 (1.64%) Remedy
17 51 (1.55%) NetApp
18 46 (1.40%) HP
19 43 (1.31%) Meraki
20 42 (1.28%) CrowdStrike