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 7 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,121 2,617 3,273
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.84% 7.96% 8.39%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.44% 59.74% 60.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,982 1,728 2,215
10th Percentile £164 £171 £175
25th Percentile £225 £225 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £416 £449
Median % change year-on-year +2.16% -7.35% +2.05%
75th Percentile £556 £565 £575
90th Percentile £650 £659 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +3.75% -11.11% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 209 233
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.33 £11.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £15.65
Median hourly rate £25.00 £19.27 £21.59
Median % change year-on-year +29.74% -10.75% -9.09%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £51.91
90th Percentile £71.88 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -6.98%

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 5,164 4,381 5,453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.67% 13.33% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,262 2,811 3,624
10th Percentile £190 £200 £200
25th Percentile £318 £313 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.11% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £662 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £457 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +1.44% -5.16% +5.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 356 256 336
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.46
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.92 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.00% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.63 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.25 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £22.53 £40.00
% change year-on-year +18.33% -43.68% +36.52%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 -6 2,735 £425 +3.03% 1,191
UK excluding London -13 2,029 £415 +3.75% 946
London -14 910 £425 - 367
Work from Home -8 639 £475 +3.26% 413
South East -8 594 £475 -3.06% 306
North of England -8 470 £328 +0.77% 225
South West -11 282 £488 +8.33% 113
Midlands -21 264 £400 +3.23% 115
North West -3 258 £328 -6.43% 141
East of England -3 198 £338 +35.00% 128
Yorkshire -16 188 £360 +15.20% 58
West Midlands -29 171 £450 +9.76% 74
Scotland -5 163 £400 -13.98% 42
East Midlands +5 89 £270 +36.71% 41
Wales +7 56 £425 +54.55% 34
North East -39 28 £260 -5.45% 32
Northern Ireland -1 17 £139 -30.75% 13
Channel Islands +3 2 £518 - 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
1 246 (7.88%) SharePoint
2 245 (7.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.21%) IIS
4 60 (1.92%) Confluence
5 18 (0.58%) nginx
6 17 (0.54%) Apache
7 16 (0.51%) Tomcat
8 14 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.42%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.35%) Skype for Business
11 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
12 8 (0.26%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.19%) Appian
13 6 (0.19%) Documentum
14 5 (0.16%) Camunda
14 5 (0.16%) SAS
15 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 4 (0.13%) Apache Solr
15 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
16 3 (0.096%) CloudStack
Applications
1 201 (6.44%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.34%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.13%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.096%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.096%) Houdini
7 3 (0.096%) NUKE
8 2 (0.064%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.032%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 59 (1.89%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.32%) Finacle
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.16%) Dynamics CRM
7 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 3 (0.096%) assyst
9 2 (0.064%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.064%) SAP FI
10 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
10 1 (0.032%) Oracle BRM
10 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
10 1 (0.032%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 975 (31.24%) Azure
2 953 (30.54%) Microsoft 365
3 467 (14.96%) Entra ID
4 331 (10.61%) AWS
5 137 (4.39%) OneDrive
6 108 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
7 104 (3.33%) GCP
8 75 (2.40%) Power Platform
9 74 (2.37%) GitHub
9 74 (2.37%) SaaS
10 73 (2.34%) Azure Monitor
11 63 (2.02%) IaaS
12 52 (1.67%) PaaS
13 43 (1.38%) Azure Sentinel
14 38 (1.22%) OpenShift
15 30 (0.96%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (0.93%) GitHub Actions
17 25 (0.80%) Amazon EC2
17 25 (0.80%) Azure AKS
17 25 (0.80%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 475 (15.22%) DNS
2 360 (11.53%) Firewall
3 326 (10.45%) DHCP
4 260 (8.33%) VPN
5 222 (7.11%) TCP/IP
6 161 (5.16%) LAN
7 154 (4.93%) WAN
8 140 (4.49%) Wi-Fi
9 96 (3.08%) SAN
10 80 (2.56%) Network Security
11 74 (2.37%) VLAN
12 51 (1.63%) SSL
13 47 (1.51%) BGP
13 47 (1.51%) NAS
14 43 (1.38%) Internet
15 42 (1.35%) Wireless
16 37 (1.19%) VSAN
17 36 (1.15%) OSPF
18 31 (0.99%) SD-WAN
18 31 (0.99%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (9.74%) SQL Server
2 62 (1.99%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.73%) Power BI
4 35 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 33 (1.06%) Relational Database
6 32 (1.03%) PostgreSQL
7 27 (0.87%) MySQL
8 21 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
9 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
9 16 (0.51%) RDBMS
10 15 (0.48%) Db2
10 15 (0.48%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 14 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
11 14 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
13 10 (0.32%) MongoDB
13 10 (0.32%) NoSQL
13 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
14 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
15 8 (0.26%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 174 (5.58%) JIRA
2 76 (2.44%) Git
3 57 (1.83%) Jenkins
4 49 (1.57%) MSI
5 41 (1.31%) GitLab
6 37 (1.19%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.54%) Bitbucket
7 17 (0.54%) Eclipse
8 10 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
10 8 (0.26%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.22%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.16%) Maven
12 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (0.16%) Selenium
13 4 (0.13%) Xcode
General
1 1,143 (36.62%) Social Skills
2 388 (12.43%) Analytical Skills
3 359 (11.50%) Finance
4 192 (6.15%) Public Sector
5 160 (5.13%) Banking
6 106 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
7 97 (3.11%) Legal
8 82 (2.63%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 58 (1.86%) Retail
11 53 (1.70%) Manufacturing
12 45 (1.44%) Military
13 41 (1.31%) Telecoms
14 40 (1.28%) Front Office
15 36 (1.15%) Law
16 34 (1.09%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.90%) Spanish Language
18 26 (0.83%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.74%) French Language
20 21 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 468 (15.00%) Support Engineer
2 418 (13.39%) IT Support
3 318 (10.19%) IT Engineer
4 313 (10.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 275 (8.81%) Analyst
6 267 (8.55%) IT Support Engineer
7 237 (7.59%) Senior
8 131 (4.20%) Desktop Support
9 130 (4.17%) Architect
10 125 (4.01%) 2nd Line Support
11 115 (3.68%) Developer
11 115 (3.68%) Lead
12 113 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
13 108 (3.46%) Desktop Engineer
14 102 (3.27%) Support Analyst
15 96 (3.08%) Windows Engineer
16 95 (3.04%) Consultant
17 88 (2.82%) IT Analyst
18 86 (2.76%) 1st Line Support
19 83 (2.66%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (4.13%) .NET
2 117 (3.75%) REST
3 68 (2.18%) .NET Framework
4 40 (1.28%) Middleware
5 34 (1.09%) WinForms
6 32 (1.03%) LDAP
7 31 (0.99%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.96%) HTML
8 30 (0.96%) JSON
8 30 (0.96%) WPF
9 29 (0.93%) XML
10 27 (0.87%) Web Services
11 26 (0.83%) CSS
12 25 (0.80%) Kafka
13 24 (0.77%) Software Packaging
14 22 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
15 21 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
15 21 (0.67%) RESTful
16 19 (0.61%) SAML
17 18 (0.58%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 341 (10.93%) Onboarding
2 171 (5.48%) Data Centre
3 165 (5.29%) PKI
4 95 (3.04%) Clustering
5 85 (2.72%) Management Information System
6 84 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
7 79 (2.53%) Cloud Native
8 76 (2.44%) Hybrid Cloud
9 73 (2.34%) Driving Licence
10 68 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
11 63 (2.02%) Replication
12 59 (1.89%) Video Conferencing
13 57 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
14 55 (1.76%) Security Posture
15 45 (1.44%) Virtual Team
16 40 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
17 38 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
17 38 (1.22%) Operational Technology
18 36 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
19 35 (1.12%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 803 (25.73%) Windows Server
2 777 (24.90%) Linux
3 523 (16.76%) Windows 10
4 191 (6.12%) Mac OS
5 160 (5.13%) Unix
6 135 (4.33%) Android
7 133 (4.26%) Apple iOS
8 123 (3.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 77 (2.47%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.51%) Windows Server 2016
11 44 (1.41%) Windows 7
12 41 (1.31%) Ubuntu
13 39 (1.25%) Windows Server 2012
14 38 (1.22%) AIX
15 24 (0.77%) CentOS
15 24 (0.77%) VMS
16 22 (0.70%) Solaris
16 22 (0.70%) Windows Server 2008
17 10 (0.32%) Rocky
18 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 738 (23.65%) Problem-Solving
2 548 (17.56%) ITIL
3 501 (16.05%) Customer Service
4 404 (12.94%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 386 (12.37%) Migration
6 379 (12.14%) ITSM
7 309 (9.90%) DevOps
8 305 (9.77%) Continuous Improvement
9 271 (8.68%) Agile
9 271 (8.68%) CI/CD
10 262 (8.39%) Service Management
11 236 (7.56%) Infrastructure as Code
12 224 (7.18%) Change Management
13 210 (6.73%) High Availability
14 197 (6.31%) Service Delivery
15 193 (6.18%) Stakeholder Management
16 189 (6.06%) Cybersecurity
17 184 (5.90%) Disaster Recovery
18 172 (5.51%) Incident Management
19 164 (5.25%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 726 (23.26%) PowerShell
2 332 (10.64%) Python
3 314 (10.06%) SQL
4 180 (5.77%) Bash
5 159 (5.09%) C#
6 75 (2.40%) Java
7 73 (2.34%) JavaScript
8 62 (1.99%) T-SQL
9 58 (1.86%) PL/SQL
10 49 (1.57%) C++
11 43 (1.38%) Bicep
12 25 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.74%) Perl
14 21 (0.67%) VB
14 21 (0.67%) VBScript
15 20 (0.64%) Shell Script
15 20 (0.64%) VBA
16 18 (0.58%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.48%) C
18 12 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 951 (30.47%) Security Cleared
2 598 (19.16%) SC Cleared
3 323 (10.35%) DV Cleared
4 300 (9.61%) Degree
5 126 (4.04%) Microsoft Certification
6 102 (3.27%) Cisco Certification
7 76 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 72 (2.31%) Azure Certification
9 66 (2.11%) CISSP
10 62 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
11 53 (1.70%) AWS Certification
12 45 (1.44%) A+ Certification
13 43 (1.38%) CCNA
14 42 (1.35%) MCSE
15 36 (1.15%) CCNP
16 34 (1.09%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 33 (1.06%) DBS Check
18 32 (1.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 28 (0.90%) ITIL Certification
20 23 (0.74%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 153 (4.90%) SLA
2 121 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 93 (2.98%) QA
4 89 (2.85%) NIST
5 39 (1.25%) GDPR
6 29 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
6 29 (0.93%) NCSC
7 24 (0.77%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
8 16 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 15 (0.48%) Data Quality
10 14 (0.45%) GxP
10 14 (0.45%) PMO
11 13 (0.42%) Accessibility
12 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.35%) WCAG
13 10 (0.32%) GRC
14 9 (0.29%) GMP
14 9 (0.29%) SOC 2
15 8 (0.26%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,253 (40.15%) Active Directory
2 435 (13.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 189 (6.06%) Hyper-V
4 139 (4.45%) VMware ESXi
5 119 (3.81%) vSphere
6 108 (3.46%) Docker
7 101 (3.24%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.63%) Virtual Desktop
9 78 (2.50%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.28%) Firmware
11 32 (1.03%) BitLocker
12 21 (0.67%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.58%) vCloud
14 14 (0.45%) KVM
15 10 (0.32%) Virtual Servers
16 9 (0.29%) NFS
17 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
18 7 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
18 7 (0.22%) XenApp
18 7 (0.22%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 433 (13.87%) Microsoft Intune
2 283 (9.07%) SCCM
3 264 (8.46%) Terraform
4 233 (7.47%) Ansible
5 173 (5.54%) Kubernetes
6 115 (3.68%) vCenter Server
7 78 (2.50%) SCOM
8 52 (1.67%) Jamf Pro
9 43 (1.38%) WSUS
10 41 (1.31%) Progress Chef
11 39 (1.25%) FortiGate
12 37 (1.19%) Single Sign-On
13 32 (1.03%) Puppet
14 28 (0.90%) NetBackup
15 26 (0.83%) Packer
16 25 (0.80%) Nagios
17 24 (0.77%) Prometheus
18 23 (0.74%) Grafana
18 23 (0.74%) WMI
19 22 (0.70%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,394 (44.67%) Microsoft
2 581 (18.62%) VMware
3 347 (11.12%) ServiceNow
4 220 (7.05%) Cisco
5 206 (6.60%) Oracle
6 193 (6.18%) Citrix
7 136 (4.36%) Splunk
8 97 (3.11%) Apple
9 92 (2.95%) CyberArk
9 92 (2.95%) SolarWinds
10 74 (2.37%) Google
10 74 (2.37%) HP
11 73 (2.34%) BeyondTrust
12 72 (2.31%) Red Hat
13 70 (2.24%) Remedy
14 62 (1.99%) Dell
15 57 (1.83%) F5
16 55 (1.76%) Juniper
17 49 (1.57%) BMC
18 48 (1.54%) Palo Alto