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

6 months to
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,292 2,652 3,101
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 6.00% 8.08% 8.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.06% 59.57% 58.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,092 1,768 1,968
10th Percentile £173 £163 £180
25th Percentile £225 £208 £245
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £560 £538 £569
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 343 243 164
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.17 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.13 £18.11
Median hourly rate £25.75 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +11.96% -4.88% +7.47%
75th Percentile £62.30 £31.51 £61.13
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £22.10 £24.18
% change year-on-year +16.63% -8.62% +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 5,391 4,452 5,287
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.82% 13.56% 14.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,404 2,843 3,296
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £281 £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 £662 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 405 294 252
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.03
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.95
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +19.77%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £69.77
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.68% +37.02%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 2,876 £421 +5.19% 2,184
UK excluding London -13 2,126 £413 +17.86% 1,484
London -6 962 £416 -2.12% 759
Work from Home -11 621 £469 +7.14% 804
South East -7 567 £479 +27.80% 353
North of England -6 505 £325 +7.47% 309
North West +5 297 £344 +5.04% 163
Midlands -15 297 £400 - 258
South West -18 267 £540 +54.29% 190
East of England -1 250 £238 -32.14% 205
West Midlands -20 203 £402 +0.50% 151
Yorkshire -16 169 £282 +41.00% 115
Scotland -5 162 £250 -44.44% 97
East Midlands +4 93 £275 +22.22% 106
Wales +7 72 £446 +62.27% 46
North East -22 44 £283 +13.80% 36
Northern Ireland 0 17 £139 -30.75% 54
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
1 271 (8.23%) SharePoint
2 247 (7.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 74 (2.25%) IIS
4 62 (1.88%) Confluence
5 20 (0.61%) Apache
5 20 (0.61%) nginx
6 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
7 13 (0.39%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
7 13 (0.39%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.18%) Documentum
9 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.15%) Appian
9 5 (0.15%) Camunda
9 5 (0.15%) CICS
10 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
10 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
10 4 (0.12%) WebLogic
11 3 (0.091%) JBoss
11 3 (0.091%) NetWeaver
Applications
1 233 (7.08%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.33%) 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 53 (1.61%) 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%) assyst
5 3 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.091%) ResourceLink
6 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
7 1 (0.030%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.030%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.030%) Monis
7 1 (0.030%) SAP BRIM
7 1 (0.030%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.030%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.030%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.030%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,035 (31.44%) Microsoft 365
2 994 (30.19%) Azure
3 540 (16.40%) Entra ID
4 345 (10.48%) AWS
5 149 (4.53%) OneDrive
6 123 (3.74%) GCP
7 118 (3.58%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (2.46%) SaaS
9 75 (2.28%) Azure Monitor
10 74 (2.25%) GitHub
11 68 (2.07%) Power Platform
12 63 (1.91%) IaaS
13 47 (1.43%) PaaS
14 43 (1.31%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.12%) OpenShift
16 32 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (0.94%) GitHub Actions
18 29 (0.88%) Google Workspace
19 23 (0.70%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.67%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 489 (14.85%) DNS
2 346 (10.51%) DHCP
3 337 (10.24%) Firewall
4 283 (8.60%) VPN
5 248 (7.53%) TCP/IP
6 134 (4.07%) LAN
7 133 (4.04%) WAN
8 127 (3.86%) Wi-Fi
9 105 (3.19%) Network Security
10 90 (2.73%) SAN
11 85 (2.58%) VLAN
12 60 (1.82%) Wireless
13 55 (1.67%) SSL
14 42 (1.28%) Internet
15 40 (1.22%) BGP
15 40 (1.22%) NAS
16 35 (1.06%) Skype
17 33 (1.00%) HTTP
17 33 (1.00%) VoIP
18 28 (0.85%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (8.99%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.82%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.64%) Power BI
4 42 (1.28%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.18%) Relational Database
7 26 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
8 22 (0.67%) MySQL
9 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.49%) Db2
10 16 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
11 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
13 11 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.27%) Elasticsearch
15 8 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
15 8 (0.24%) MS Access
15 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
16 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 158 (4.80%) JIRA
2 86 (2.61%) Git
3 64 (1.94%) Jenkins
4 52 (1.58%) GitLab
5 50 (1.52%) MSI
6 37 (1.12%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Artifactory
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.33%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 10 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
14 6 (0.18%) Robot Framework
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SonarQube
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,211 (36.79%) Social Skills
2 399 (12.12%) Analytical Skills
3 386 (11.73%) Finance
4 162 (4.92%) Public Sector
5 157 (4.77%) Banking
6 124 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
7 84 (2.55%) Legal
8 80 (2.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 74 (2.25%) Organisational Skills
10 61 (1.85%) Manufacturing
11 57 (1.73%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.58%) Retail
13 43 (1.31%) Front Office
14 42 (1.28%) Law
15 41 (1.25%) Military
16 35 (1.06%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.85%) Police
18 25 (0.76%) Aerospace
18 25 (0.76%) Financial Institution
18 25 (0.76%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 534 (16.22%) Support Engineer
2 446 (13.55%) IT Support
3 344 (10.45%) IT Engineer
4 343 (10.42%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 290 (8.81%) IT Support Engineer
6 275 (8.35%) Analyst
7 261 (7.93%) Senior
8 151 (4.59%) Desktop Support
9 132 (4.01%) Desktop Engineer
10 130 (3.95%) Architect
11 126 (3.83%) 2nd Line Support
11 126 (3.83%) Cloud Engineer
12 123 (3.74%) Lead
13 122 (3.71%) Windows Engineer
14 110 (3.34%) Developer
15 96 (2.92%) Consultant
15 96 (2.92%) Support Analyst
16 85 (2.58%) Desktop Support Engineer
17 84 (2.55%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.49%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (8.38%) Terraform
2 150 (4.56%) .NET
3 121 (3.68%) REST
4 66 (2.00%) .NET Framework
5 57 (1.73%) Middleware
6 46 (1.40%) LDAP
7 45 (1.37%) JSON
8 41 (1.25%) WPF
9 32 (0.97%) WinForms
9 32 (0.97%) XML
10 29 (0.88%) Web Services
11 27 (0.82%) Software Packaging
12 26 (0.79%) HTML
13 25 (0.76%) Kafka
14 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
14 23 (0.70%) ARM Templates
15 21 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
16 20 (0.61%) RESTful
17 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
18 18 (0.55%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 396 (12.03%) Onboarding
2 205 (6.23%) Data Centre
3 164 (4.98%) PKI
4 109 (3.31%) Management Information System
5 90 (2.73%) Enterprise Software
6 89 (2.70%) Driving Licence
7 87 (2.64%) Hybrid Cloud
8 81 (2.46%) Video Conferencing
9 80 (2.43%) Cloud Native
10 77 (2.34%) Clustering
11 65 (1.97%) Replication
12 61 (1.85%) Security Posture
13 57 (1.73%) Self-Motivation
14 44 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
14 44 (1.34%) Operational Technology
15 40 (1.22%) Enterprise Storage
15 40 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
15 40 (1.22%) Smartphone
15 40 (1.22%) Virtual Team
16 35 (1.06%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 923 (28.04%) Windows Server
2 797 (24.21%) Linux
3 575 (17.47%) Windows 10
4 208 (6.32%) Mac OS
5 148 (4.50%) Apple iOS
6 145 (4.40%) Unix
7 143 (4.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 142 (4.31%) Android
9 72 (2.19%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.67%) Windows 7
11 48 (1.46%) Ubuntu
12 44 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
12 44 (1.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 40 (1.22%) CentOS
14 31 (0.94%) AIX
15 21 (0.64%) Solaris
16 18 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
17 17 (0.52%) VMS
18 16 (0.49%) Rocky
19 12 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 785 (23.85%) Problem-Solving
2 620 (18.83%) ITIL
3 570 (17.31%) Customer Service
4 451 (13.70%) ITSM
5 436 (13.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 428 (13.00%) Migration
7 367 (11.15%) Continuous Improvement
8 332 (10.09%) Service Management
9 320 (9.72%) DevOps
10 296 (8.99%) CI/CD
11 286 (8.69%) Infrastructure as Code
12 265 (8.05%) Stakeholder Management
13 263 (7.99%) Agile
14 239 (7.26%) Root Cause Analysis
15 233 (7.08%) Change Management
16 221 (6.71%) Disaster Recovery
17 216 (6.56%) Validation
18 215 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
19 189 (5.74%) Service Delivery
20 187 (5.68%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 782 (23.75%) PowerShell
2 345 (10.48%) Python
3 321 (9.75%) SQL
4 197 (5.98%) Bash
5 173 (5.26%) C#
6 78 (2.37%) T-SQL
7 74 (2.25%) Java
8 63 (1.91%) JavaScript
9 55 (1.67%) PL/SQL
10 52 (1.58%) Bicep
11 39 (1.18%) 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 16 (0.49%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.39%) Go
18 12 (0.36%) Groovy
19 11 (0.33%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 1,011 (30.71%) Security Cleared
2 603 (18.32%) SC Cleared
3 394 (11.97%) DV Cleared
4 299 (9.08%) Degree
5 124 (3.77%) Microsoft Certification
6 92 (2.79%) Azure Certification
7 89 (2.70%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
9 68 (2.07%) Computer Science Degree
10 65 (1.97%) CISSP
11 57 (1.73%) AWS Certification
12 56 (1.70%) A+ Certification
13 52 (1.58%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 46 (1.40%) CCNA
15 45 (1.37%) DBS Check
16 40 (1.22%) CCNP
17 37 (1.12%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.03%) CISM
19 32 (0.97%) MCSE
19 32 (0.97%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 175 (5.32%) SLA
2 111 (3.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (2.79%) QA
4 84 (2.55%) NIST
5 38 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
6 32 (0.97%) 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 (0.36%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.36%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.36%) WCAG
13 11 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
13 11 (0.33%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.33%) PMO
14 10 (0.30%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,369 (41.59%) Active Directory
2 496 (15.07%) VMware Infrastructure
3 226 (6.87%) Hyper-V
4 155 (4.71%) VMware ESXi
5 140 (4.25%) vSphere
6 123 (3.74%) Docker
7 107 (3.25%) Virtual Machines
8 102 (3.10%) Virtual Desktop
9 77 (2.34%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.22%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.09%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) vCloud
13 19 (0.58%) Virtual Servers
14 16 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.46%) NFS
16 14 (0.43%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 12 (0.36%) KVM
17 12 (0.36%) XenApp
18 10 (0.30%) XenDesktop
19 9 (0.27%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 465 (14.13%) Microsoft Intune
2 360 (10.94%) SCCM
3 228 (6.93%) Ansible
4 168 (5.10%) Kubernetes
5 122 (3.71%) vCenter Server
6 104 (3.16%) SCOM
7 53 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
8 42 (1.28%) WSUS
9 38 (1.15%) Grafana
10 35 (1.06%) Prometheus
11 33 (1.00%) Progress Chef
12 32 (0.97%) NetBackup
13 31 (0.94%) Single Sign-On
14 30 (0.91%) WMI
15 29 (0.88%) Puppet
16 25 (0.76%) VxRail
17 23 (0.70%) Nagios
18 22 (0.67%) Packer
19 19 (0.58%) Failover Clustering
19 19 (0.58%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 1,571 (47.72%) Microsoft
2 646 (19.62%) VMware
3 382 (11.60%) ServiceNow
4 243 (7.38%) Cisco
5 197 (5.98%) Oracle
6 174 (5.29%) Citrix
7 112 (3.40%) Apple
8 108 (3.28%) Splunk
9 104 (3.16%) CyberArk
10 91 (2.76%) Google
11 82 (2.49%) Red Hat
12 80 (2.43%) BeyondTrust
13 79 (2.40%) SolarWinds
14 60 (1.82%) Dell
15 57 (1.73%) Remedy
16 56 (1.70%) Palo Alto
17 50 (1.52%) NetApp
18 46 (1.40%) HP
19 43 (1.31%) CrowdStrike
20 42 (1.28%) Meraki