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

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,267 2,652 3,099
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.98% 8.08% 8.23%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.16% 59.32% 58.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,073 1,770 1,955
10th Percentile £175 £163 £179
25th Percentile £225 £208 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -0.58%
75th Percentile £564 £538 £565
90th Percentile £669 £631 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +17.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 352 247 164
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.18 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.89 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £22.58 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +14.06% -6.64% +7.47%
75th Percentile £60.08 £30.00 £61.13
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.73 £24.18
% change year-on-year +18.50% -10.13% +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 5,342 4,471 5,280
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.62% 14.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,366 2,855 3,271
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £283 £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 £449
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.35% -0.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 301 253
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.00
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -52.10% +20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £56.75
% change year-on-year +3.38% -55.68% +41.29%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 2,848 £425 +6.25% 2,711
UK excluding London -14 2,102 £413 +17.86% 1,844
London -6 958 £420 -1.18% 1,015
Work from Home -10 622 £475 +8.57% 1,002
South East -7 557 £478 +27.33% 488
North of England -7 499 £340 +11.31% 371
North West +4 296 £350 +6.06% 202
Midlands -15 294 £402 +0.50% 302
South West -18 263 £545 +50.34% 226
East of England 0 251 £223 -36.29% 248
West Midlands -22 199 £425 +6.25% 166
Yorkshire -13 163 £279 +26.59% 127
Scotland -6 159 £322 -28.44% 117
East Midlands +3 94 £275 +22.22% 134
Wales +6 73 £468 +61.21% 58
North East -20 45 £275 +10.00% 49
Northern Ireland +2 17 £139 -30.75% 63
Channel Islands -4 2 £535 - 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
1 265 (8.11%) SharePoint
2 241 (7.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 73 (2.23%) IIS
4 62 (1.90%) Confluence
5 23 (0.70%) nginx
6 22 (0.67%) Apache
7 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
8 15 (0.46%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.43%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.18%) Documentum
12 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.15%) Appian
12 5 (0.15%) Camunda
12 5 (0.15%) CICS
12 5 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
12 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 227 (6.95%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.20%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.092%) Houdini
6 3 (0.092%) NUKE
7 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.061%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 48 (1.47%) Remedy ITSM
2 9 (0.28%) 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 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
5 3 (0.092%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.061%) assyst
6 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
7 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.031%) Monis
7 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
7 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.031%) SAP Oil and Gas
7 1 (0.031%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,032 (31.59%) Microsoft 365
2 1,000 (30.61%) Azure
3 547 (16.74%) Entra ID
4 346 (10.59%) AWS
5 144 (4.41%) OneDrive
6 124 (3.80%) GCP
7 118 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
8 76 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
8 76 (2.33%) GitHub
9 73 (2.23%) SaaS
10 67 (2.05%) Power Platform
11 65 (1.99%) IaaS
12 47 (1.44%) PaaS
13 42 (1.29%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.13%) OpenShift
15 33 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 31 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
17 29 (0.89%) Google Workspace
18 23 (0.70%) Amazon S3
19 22 (0.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 480 (14.69%) DNS
2 337 (10.32%) DHCP
3 329 (10.07%) Firewall
4 277 (8.48%) VPN
5 250 (7.65%) TCP/IP
6 130 (3.98%) LAN
7 129 (3.95%) WAN
8 128 (3.92%) Wi-Fi
9 104 (3.18%) Network Security
10 90 (2.75%) SAN
11 81 (2.48%) VLAN
12 59 (1.81%) Wireless
13 54 (1.65%) SSL
14 41 (1.25%) Internet
15 40 (1.22%) BGP
15 40 (1.22%) NAS
16 34 (1.04%) Skype
16 34 (1.04%) VoIP
17 33 (1.01%) HTTP
18 27 (0.83%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (9.06%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.84%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.65%) Power BI
4 44 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.19%) Relational Database
7 29 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
8 24 (0.73%) MySQL
9 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 17 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
10 17 (0.52%) Db2
11 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
12 14 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.28%) Azure SQL Database
15 8 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
15 8 (0.24%) MS Access
16 7 (0.21%) MongoDB
16 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 158 (4.84%) JIRA
2 87 (2.66%) Git
3 68 (2.08%) Jenkins
4 54 (1.65%) GitLab
5 51 (1.56%) MSI
6 38 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.49%) Artifactory
7 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 10 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Octopus Deploy
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 1,198 (36.67%) Social Skills
2 387 (11.85%) Finance
3 385 (11.78%) Analytical Skills
4 166 (5.08%) Public Sector
5 154 (4.71%) Banking
6 120 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (2.54%) Legal
8 80 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 73 (2.23%) Organisational Skills
10 64 (1.96%) Manufacturing
11 57 (1.74%) Telecoms
12 51 (1.56%) Retail
13 42 (1.29%) Front Office
14 40 (1.22%) Law
14 40 (1.22%) Military
15 34 (1.04%) Investment Banking
16 31 (0.95%) Police
17 25 (0.77%) Financial Institution
18 24 (0.73%) Aerospace
18 24 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 532 (16.28%) Support Engineer
2 444 (13.59%) IT Support
3 341 (10.44%) IT Engineer
4 325 (9.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 290 (8.88%) IT Support Engineer
6 275 (8.42%) Analyst
7 259 (7.93%) Senior
8 148 (4.53%) Desktop Support
9 131 (4.01%) Desktop Engineer
10 127 (3.89%) Architect
11 126 (3.86%) 2nd Line Support
12 125 (3.83%) Cloud Engineer
13 122 (3.73%) Lead
14 120 (3.67%) Windows Engineer
15 110 (3.37%) Developer
16 96 (2.94%) Support Analyst
17 95 (2.91%) Consultant
18 85 (2.60%) Service Analyst
19 83 (2.54%) Desktop Support Engineer
20 82 (2.51%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (8.63%) Terraform
2 148 (4.53%) .NET
3 123 (3.76%) REST
4 64 (1.96%) .NET Framework
5 58 (1.78%) Middleware
6 48 (1.47%) JSON
7 47 (1.44%) LDAP
8 39 (1.19%) WPF
9 34 (1.04%) XML
10 30 (0.92%) Web Services
10 30 (0.92%) WinForms
11 27 (0.83%) Kafka
11 27 (0.83%) Software Packaging
12 25 (0.77%) HTML
13 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
13 23 (0.70%) ARM Templates
14 20 (0.61%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (0.61%) RESTful
15 18 (0.55%) ASP.NET
15 18 (0.55%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 392 (12.00%) Onboarding
2 202 (6.18%) Data Centre
3 164 (5.02%) PKI
4 109 (3.34%) Management Information System
5 98 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
6 89 (2.72%) Driving Licence
7 86 (2.63%) Hybrid Cloud
8 82 (2.51%) Video Conferencing
9 80 (2.45%) Cloud Native
10 75 (2.30%) Clustering
11 68 (2.08%) Replication
12 64 (1.96%) Security Posture
13 51 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
14 46 (1.41%) Operational Technology
15 43 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
16 40 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
17 39 (1.19%) CMDB
17 39 (1.19%) Virtual Team
18 38 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
18 38 (1.16%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 921 (28.19%) Windows Server
2 792 (24.24%) Linux
3 577 (17.66%) Windows 10
4 203 (6.21%) Mac OS
5 151 (4.62%) Apple iOS
6 146 (4.47%) Android
7 145 (4.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 144 (4.41%) Unix
9 73 (2.23%) Windows Server 2019
10 54 (1.65%) Windows 7
11 48 (1.47%) Ubuntu
12 44 (1.35%) Windows Server 2012
12 44 (1.35%) Windows Server 2016
13 40 (1.22%) CentOS
14 30 (0.92%) AIX
15 20 (0.61%) Solaris
16 18 (0.55%) VMS
17 16 (0.49%) Rocky
17 16 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 772 (23.63%) Problem-Solving
2 617 (18.89%) ITIL
3 570 (17.45%) Customer Service
4 443 (13.56%) ITSM
5 423 (12.95%) Migration
6 421 (12.89%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 368 (11.26%) Continuous Improvement
8 331 (10.13%) Service Management
9 325 (9.95%) DevOps
10 305 (9.34%) CI/CD
11 293 (8.97%) Infrastructure as Code
12 267 (8.17%) Stakeholder Management
13 262 (8.02%) Agile
14 241 (7.38%) Root Cause Analysis
15 235 (7.19%) Change Management
16 228 (6.98%) Disaster Recovery
17 221 (6.76%) Cybersecurity
18 218 (6.67%) Validation
19 187 (5.72%) Service Delivery
20 182 (5.57%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 791 (24.21%) PowerShell
2 347 (10.62%) Python
3 315 (9.64%) SQL
4 203 (6.21%) Bash
5 169 (5.17%) C#
6 78 (2.39%) Java
6 78 (2.39%) T-SQL
7 60 (1.84%) JavaScript
8 53 (1.62%) Bicep
8 53 (1.62%) PL/SQL
9 38 (1.16%) C++
10 29 (0.89%) VB
10 29 (0.89%) VBScript
11 21 (0.64%) Perl
12 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
12 19 (0.58%) VBA
13 15 (0.46%) Groovy
13 15 (0.46%) TypeScript
14 13 (0.40%) Go
15 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 994 (30.43%) Security Cleared
2 598 (18.30%) SC Cleared
3 384 (11.75%) DV Cleared
4 294 (9.00%) Degree
5 124 (3.80%) Microsoft Certification
6 90 (2.75%) Azure Certification
7 88 (2.69%) Cisco Certification
8 76 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
9 68 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
10 63 (1.93%) CISSP
11 56 (1.71%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.68%) AWS Certification
13 50 (1.53%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 48 (1.47%) DBS Check
15 45 (1.38%) CCNA
16 42 (1.29%) CCNP
17 36 (1.10%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.04%) MCSE
19 33 (1.01%) CISM
20 30 (0.92%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 172 (5.26%) SLA
2 107 (3.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 89 (2.72%) QA
4 85 (2.60%) NIST
5 38 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
6 31 (0.95%) GDPR
7 30 (0.92%) NCSC
8 26 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) GRC
10 16 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 16 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 16 (0.49%) GxP
11 13 (0.40%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
13 11 (0.34%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
13 11 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 10 (0.31%) GMP
System Software
1 1,367 (41.84%) Active Directory
2 490 (15.00%) VMware Infrastructure
3 226 (6.92%) Hyper-V
4 153 (4.68%) VMware ESXi
5 138 (4.22%) vSphere
6 126 (3.86%) Docker
7 111 (3.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 107 (3.28%) Virtual Machines
9 73 (2.23%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.22%) BitLocker
11 38 (1.16%) 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%) XenApp
18 11 (0.34%) KVM
19 10 (0.31%) Microsoft Virtual Server
19 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 467 (14.29%) Microsoft Intune
2 364 (11.14%) SCCM
3 233 (7.13%) Ansible
4 171 (5.23%) Kubernetes
5 118 (3.61%) vCenter Server
6 102 (3.12%) SCOM
7 50 (1.53%) Jamf Pro
8 42 (1.29%) WSUS
9 40 (1.22%) Grafana
10 36 (1.10%) Prometheus
11 34 (1.04%) Progress Chef
12 32 (0.98%) NetBackup
13 30 (0.92%) WMI
14 28 (0.86%) Puppet
14 28 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
15 25 (0.77%) VxRail
16 21 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
16 21 (0.64%) Nagios
16 21 (0.64%) Packer
17 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,572 (48.12%) Microsoft
2 638 (19.53%) VMware
3 377 (11.54%) ServiceNow
4 241 (7.38%) Cisco
5 201 (6.15%) Oracle
6 176 (5.39%) Citrix
7 114 (3.49%) Apple
8 105 (3.21%) CyberArk
8 105 (3.21%) Splunk
9 93 (2.85%) Google
10 83 (2.54%) Red Hat
11 77 (2.36%) BeyondTrust
12 76 (2.33%) SolarWinds
13 58 (1.78%) Dell
14 57 (1.74%) Palo Alto
15 52 (1.59%) Remedy
16 51 (1.56%) NetApp
17 44 (1.35%) HP
18 42 (1.29%) CrowdStrike
18 42 (1.29%) Meraki