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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,181 2,641 3,223
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.93% 8.07% 8.35%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.78% 59.72% 59.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,045 1,738 2,138
10th Percentile £168 £170 £175
25th Percentile £222 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £411 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.34% -3.24% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £552 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +7.20% -11.76% +12.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 287 221 212
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.00
25th Percentile £16.90 £17.98 £16.00
Median hourly rate £24.00 £22.19 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.16% +0.86% -2.22%
75th Percentile £54.63 £28.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £20.00 £21.59
% change year-on-year +28.75% -7.36% -0.74%

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 5,234 4,422 5,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.76% 13.50% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,318 2,811 3,542
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.94% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 364 269 306
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.55 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -29.32% -16.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +2.74% -47.05% +37.68%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 2,764 £415 +1.84% 1,995
UK excluding London -14 2,056 £402 +7.20% 1,377
London -12 927 £425 - 816
Work from Home -11 611 £466 +3.61% 677
South East -7 568 £475 -1.35% 403
North of England -6 503 £325 - 297
North West +4 304 £335 -4.29% 158
South West -15 279 £478 +34.51% 178
Midlands -16 272 £400 - 194
East of England -4 198 £275 -19.71% 215
West Midlands -25 173 £425 -4.49% 126
Yorkshire -18 171 £279 -14.31% 98
Scotland -5 168 £350 -22.22% 60
East Midlands +3 95 £275 +37.50% 68
Wales +5 65 £446 +62.27% 23
North East -35 32 £260 -5.45% 54
Northern Ireland -1 16 £139 -30.75% 47
Channel Islands 0 3 £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
1 259 (8.14%) SharePoint
2 241 (7.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (2.07%) IIS
4 56 (1.76%) Confluence
5 18 (0.57%) nginx
5 18 (0.57%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.53%) Apache
7 14 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.19%) Documentum
9 6 (0.19%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.16%) Appian
10 5 (0.16%) Camunda
10 5 (0.16%) SAS
10 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.094%) OpenStack
Applications
1 214 (6.73%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.094%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.094%) Houdini
6 3 (0.094%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.094%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.76%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
2 10 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
4 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.094%) assyst
6 3 (0.094%) Oracle EBS
7 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.031%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
8 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,003 (31.53%) Microsoft 365
2 991 (31.15%) Azure
3 502 (15.78%) Entra ID
4 334 (10.50%) AWS
5 146 (4.59%) OneDrive
6 120 (3.77%) Azure DevOps
7 100 (3.14%) GCP
8 80 (2.51%) Azure Monitor
9 75 (2.36%) Power Platform
9 75 (2.36%) SaaS
10 68 (2.14%) GitHub
11 60 (1.89%) IaaS
12 46 (1.45%) Azure Sentinel
13 44 (1.38%) PaaS
14 41 (1.29%) OpenShift
15 29 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.88%) Google Workspace
17 26 (0.82%) GitHub Actions
18 24 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
19 23 (0.72%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 476 (14.96%) DNS
2 351 (11.03%) Firewall
3 339 (10.66%) DHCP
4 274 (8.61%) VPN
5 229 (7.20%) TCP/IP
6 154 (4.84%) WAN
7 152 (4.78%) LAN
8 139 (4.37%) Wi-Fi
9 95 (2.99%) SAN
10 91 (2.86%) Network Security
11 89 (2.80%) VLAN
12 49 (1.54%) Wireless
13 48 (1.51%) SSL
14 46 (1.45%) NAS
15 45 (1.41%) Internet
16 38 (1.19%) VSAN
17 34 (1.07%) Skype
18 31 (0.97%) BGP
19 30 (0.94%) SD-WAN
20 27 (0.85%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 298 (9.37%) SQL Server
2 59 (1.85%) Oracle Database
3 56 (1.76%) Power BI
4 39 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 38 (1.19%) PostgreSQL
6 36 (1.13%) Relational Database
7 24 (0.75%) MySQL
8 22 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (0.53%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 12 (0.38%) Oracle Reports
13 11 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.31%) Db2
15 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
15 8 (0.25%) MS Access
16 7 (0.22%) NoSQL
16 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 159 (5.00%) JIRA
2 73 (2.29%) Git
3 57 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.48%) MSI
5 44 (1.38%) GitLab
6 25 (0.79%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
9 8 (0.25%) Selenium
9 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 5 (0.16%) Chocolatey
11 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
11 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
11 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
11 5 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,158 (36.40%) Social Skills
2 399 (12.54%) Analytical Skills
3 370 (11.63%) Finance
4 172 (5.41%) Public Sector
5 152 (4.78%) Banking
6 114 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
7 89 (2.80%) Legal
8 77 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
9 75 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 60 (1.89%) Manufacturing
11 54 (1.70%) Retail
12 51 (1.60%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.29%) Front Office
14 38 (1.19%) Law
15 33 (1.04%) Investment Banking
16 30 (0.94%) Military
17 28 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.79%) French Language
19 24 (0.75%) Financial Institution
20 23 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 511 (16.06%) Support Engineer
2 435 (13.67%) IT Support
3 342 (10.75%) IT Engineer
4 328 (10.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 285 (8.96%) IT Support Engineer
6 265 (8.33%) Analyst
7 249 (7.83%) Senior
8 141 (4.43%) Desktop Support
9 128 (4.02%) 2nd Line Support
10 122 (3.84%) Architect
11 121 (3.80%) Lead
12 117 (3.68%) Desktop Engineer
13 115 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
14 109 (3.43%) Windows Engineer
15 104 (3.27%) Support Analyst
16 101 (3.18%) Consultant
17 100 (3.14%) Developer
18 87 (2.73%) 1st Line Support
19 84 (2.64%) Service Analyst
20 83 (2.61%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (8.36%) Terraform
2 133 (4.18%) .NET
3 118 (3.71%) REST
4 65 (2.04%) .NET Framework
5 44 (1.38%) Middleware
6 36 (1.13%) JSON
7 33 (1.04%) LDAP
8 31 (0.97%) XML
9 29 (0.91%) WinForms
10 28 (0.88%) Kafka
10 28 (0.88%) Software Packaging
10 28 (0.88%) WPF
11 27 (0.85%) HTML
12 23 (0.72%) ARM Templates
13 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (0.63%) CSS
15 19 (0.60%) .NET Core
15 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
16 18 (0.57%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 371 (11.66%) Onboarding
2 185 (5.82%) Data Centre
3 160 (5.03%) PKI
4 97 (3.05%) Management Information System
5 88 (2.77%) Clustering
6 85 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
7 80 (2.51%) Driving Licence
8 79 (2.48%) Cloud Native
9 78 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
10 72 (2.26%) Video Conferencing
11 71 (2.23%) Replication
12 59 (1.85%) Self-Motivation
13 48 (1.51%) Security Posture
14 45 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.32%) Virtual Team
16 41 (1.29%) Enterprise Storage
17 40 (1.26%) Operational Technology
18 39 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
19 38 (1.19%) CMDB
19 38 (1.19%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 871 (27.38%) Windows Server
2 774 (24.33%) Linux
3 551 (17.32%) Windows 10
4 199 (6.26%) Mac OS
5 143 (4.50%) Unix
6 134 (4.21%) Android
6 134 (4.21%) Apple iOS
7 131 (4.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 76 (2.39%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.73%) Windows 7
10 51 (1.60%) Ubuntu
11 48 (1.51%) Windows Server 2016
12 41 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 35 (1.10%) AIX
14 32 (1.01%) CentOS
15 24 (0.75%) VMS
16 18 (0.57%) Solaris
16 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
17 13 (0.41%) Rocky
18 11 (0.35%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 757 (23.80%) Problem-Solving
2 589 (18.52%) ITIL
3 535 (16.82%) Customer Service
4 429 (13.49%) ITSM
5 418 (13.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 400 (12.57%) Migration
7 328 (10.31%) Continuous Improvement
8 307 (9.65%) DevOps
9 306 (9.62%) Service Management
10 255 (8.02%) CI/CD
10 255 (8.02%) Infrastructure as Code
11 245 (7.70%) Agile
12 224 (7.04%) Change Management
13 222 (6.98%) Stakeholder Management
14 205 (6.44%) Disaster Recovery
15 195 (6.13%) Service Delivery
16 194 (6.10%) Root Cause Analysis
17 190 (5.97%) Cybersecurity
17 190 (5.97%) High Availability
18 178 (5.60%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 771 (24.24%) PowerShell
2 330 (10.37%) Python
3 316 (9.93%) SQL
4 186 (5.85%) Bash
5 143 (4.50%) C#
6 69 (2.17%) Java
7 64 (2.01%) T-SQL
8 53 (1.67%) JavaScript
9 51 (1.60%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.51%) Bicep
11 30 (0.94%) VBScript
12 28 (0.88%) C++
12 28 (0.88%) VB
13 24 (0.75%) Search Processing Language
14 22 (0.69%) Perl
15 20 (0.63%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.57%) VBA
17 16 (0.50%) TypeScript
18 11 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
19 10 (0.31%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 967 (30.40%) Security Cleared
2 602 (18.92%) SC Cleared
3 347 (10.91%) DV Cleared
4 293 (9.21%) Degree
5 127 (3.99%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (2.89%) Cisco Certification
7 90 (2.83%) Azure Certification
8 74 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
9 67 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
10 62 (1.95%) CISSP
11 55 (1.73%) A+ Certification
11 55 (1.73%) AWS Certification
12 51 (1.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 46 (1.45%) CCNA
14 41 (1.29%) DBS Check
15 38 (1.19%) CCNP
16 35 (1.10%) MCSE
17 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 27 (0.85%) CISM
18 27 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 164 (5.16%) SLA
2 113 (3.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 93 (2.92%) QA
4 81 (2.55%) NIST
5 35 (1.10%) GDPR
6 33 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 30 (0.94%) NCSC
8 22 (0.69%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.50%) Data Quality
9 16 (0.50%) GxP
10 15 (0.47%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
12 12 (0.38%) PMO
12 12 (0.38%) WCAG
13 11 (0.35%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 11 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.35%) GMP
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.31%) GRC
System Software
1 1,300 (40.87%) Active Directory
2 470 (14.78%) VMware Infrastructure
3 215 (6.76%) Hyper-V
4 152 (4.78%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.15%) vSphere
6 110 (3.46%) Docker
7 100 (3.14%) Virtual Machines
8 96 (3.02%) Virtual Desktop
9 82 (2.58%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.23%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.13%) Firmware
12 24 (0.75%) vCloud
13 16 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.35%) KVM
16 10 (0.31%) NFS
16 10 (0.31%) XenApp
17 9 (0.28%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
18 6 (0.19%) Squid
Systems Management
1 443 (13.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 341 (10.72%) SCCM
3 234 (7.36%) Ansible
4 163 (5.12%) Kubernetes
5 120 (3.77%) vCenter Server
6 97 (3.05%) SCOM
7 51 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
8 49 (1.54%) WSUS
9 36 (1.13%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.04%) Prometheus
10 33 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.94%) Grafana
12 27 (0.85%) Puppet
12 27 (0.85%) WMI
13 26 (0.82%) Nagios
13 26 (0.82%) NetBackup
14 25 (0.79%) FortiGate
15 24 (0.75%) Packer
16 22 (0.69%) VxRail
17 21 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,480 (46.53%) Microsoft
2 620 (19.49%) VMware
3 378 (11.88%) ServiceNow
4 225 (7.07%) Cisco
5 199 (6.26%) Oracle
6 172 (5.41%) Citrix
7 116 (3.65%) Splunk
8 111 (3.49%) Apple
9 96 (3.02%) CyberArk
10 80 (2.51%) Google
11 79 (2.48%) SolarWinds
12 77 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
12 77 (2.42%) Red Hat
13 67 (2.11%) HP
14 60 (1.89%) Remedy
15 57 (1.79%) Dell
16 48 (1.51%) BMC
16 48 (1.51%) NetApp
16 48 (1.51%) Palo Alto
17 43 (1.35%) Meraki