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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 30 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -8 -3 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,248 2,687 3,120
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.95% 8.11% 8.23%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.32% 59.16% 58.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,055 1,789 1,971
10th Percentile £176 £163 £180
25th Percentile £225 £206 £244
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -
75th Percentile £569 £538 £569
90th Percentile £663 £625 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +17.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 346 253 160
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.12 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.05 £17.75 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £22.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +17.05% -9.02% +7.47%
75th Percentile £60.00 £28.00 £64.63
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.29 £24.18
% change year-on-year +20.95% -11.95% +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 5,297 4,542 5,324
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.70% 13.71% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,338 2,903 3,293
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% -4.04%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £653 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £448
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.03% -0.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 404 305 252
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £22.95
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -54.27% +25.47%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £25.00 £57.50
% change year-on-year +3.08% -56.52% +38.85%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 2,833 £425 +6.25% 2,484
UK excluding London -13 2,087 £413 +17.86% 1,479
London -4 957 £420 -1.24% 1,070
Work from Home -9 616 £470 +7.43% 893
South East -7 557 £484 +32.47% 375
North of England -9 488 £340 +14.12% 306
North West +1 290 £350 +7.69% 162
Midlands -15 290 £401 +0.25% 244
South West -18 267 £550 +57.14% 202
East of England 0 246 £222 -36.71% 183
West Midlands -21 202 £425 +6.25% 131
Scotland -6 159 £299 -33.67% 94
Yorkshire -10 158 £260 +18.18% 112
East Midlands 0 87 £275 +22.22% 113
Wales +10 70 £468 +61.21% 46
North East -28 42 £273 +22.06% 38
Northern Ireland +3 18 £102 -49.00% 51
Channel Islands -3 2 £535 - 4

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
1 264 (8.13%) SharePoint
2 239 (7.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 73 (2.25%) IIS
4 62 (1.91%) Confluence
5 28 (0.86%) nginx
6 22 (0.68%) 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
11 6 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2013
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%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 228 (7.02%) Microsoft Office
2 70 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.092%) Houdini
6 3 (0.092%) NUKE
7 2 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.062%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.062%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 1 (0.031%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 47 (1.45%) Remedy ITSM
2 9 (0.28%) Finacle
3 8 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 5 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
6 3 (0.092%) SAP FI
7 2 (0.062%) assyst
7 2 (0.062%) Dynamics GP
8 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.031%) Monis
8 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
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 Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 1,024 (31.53%) Microsoft 365
2 992 (30.54%) Azure
3 547 (16.84%) Entra ID
4 335 (10.31%) AWS
5 149 (4.59%) OneDrive
6 117 (3.60%) Azure DevOps
7 114 (3.51%) GCP
8 82 (2.52%) Azure Monitor
9 76 (2.34%) GitHub
10 66 (2.03%) Power Platform
11 65 (2.00%) SaaS
12 59 (1.82%) IaaS
13 47 (1.45%) Azure Sentinel
14 41 (1.26%) PaaS
15 37 (1.14%) OpenShift
16 34 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
17 33 (1.02%) GitHub Actions
18 29 (0.89%) Google Workspace
19 24 (0.74%) Amazon EC2
19 24 (0.74%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 484 (14.90%) DNS
2 338 (10.41%) DHCP
2 338 (10.41%) Firewall
3 288 (8.87%) VPN
4 256 (7.88%) TCP/IP
5 133 (4.09%) LAN
6 130 (4.00%) WAN
7 126 (3.88%) Wi-Fi
8 108 (3.33%) Network Security
9 88 (2.71%) SAN
10 82 (2.52%) VLAN
11 60 (1.85%) Wireless
12 52 (1.60%) SSL
13 40 (1.23%) BGP
14 39 (1.20%) Internet
15 38 (1.17%) NAS
16 34 (1.05%) Skype
17 33 (1.02%) VoIP
18 32 (0.99%) HTTP
19 30 (0.92%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 288 (8.87%) SQL Server
2 62 (1.91%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.63%) Power BI
4 47 (1.45%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 39 (1.20%) Relational Database
7 34 (1.05%) Amazon RDS
8 24 (0.74%) MySQL
9 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
10 18 (0.55%) Data Warehouse
11 17 (0.52%) Db2
12 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
13 14 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
15 10 (0.31%) Azure SQL Database
16 8 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
16 8 (0.25%) MS Access
17 7 (0.22%) MongoDB
17 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 157 (4.83%) JIRA
2 89 (2.74%) Git
3 75 (2.31%) Jenkins
4 58 (1.79%) GitLab
5 51 (1.57%) MSI
6 38 (1.17%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.52%) Artifactory
7 17 (0.52%) 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 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.22%) 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 1,194 (36.76%) Social Skills
2 388 (11.95%) Finance
3 385 (11.85%) Analytical Skills
4 157 (4.83%) Public Sector
5 156 (4.80%) Banking
6 113 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
7 86 (2.65%) Legal
8 78 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 76 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
10 65 (2.00%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.72%) Telecoms
12 51 (1.57%) Retail
13 42 (1.29%) Law
14 41 (1.26%) Front Office
15 38 (1.17%) Military
16 33 (1.02%) Police
17 32 (0.99%) Investment Banking
18 26 (0.80%) Financial Institution
19 24 (0.74%) Aerospace
19 24 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 531 (16.35%) Support Engineer
2 441 (13.58%) IT Support
3 339 (10.44%) IT Engineer
4 322 (9.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 288 (8.87%) IT Support Engineer
6 270 (8.31%) Analyst
7 262 (8.07%) Senior
8 147 (4.53%) Desktop Support
9 132 (4.06%) Desktop Engineer
10 129 (3.97%) 2nd Line Support
10 129 (3.97%) Architect
11 123 (3.79%) Cloud Engineer
12 120 (3.69%) Lead
13 117 (3.60%) Windows Engineer
14 109 (3.36%) Developer
15 98 (3.02%) Consultant
16 96 (2.96%) Support Analyst
17 84 (2.59%) Desktop Support Engineer
17 84 (2.59%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.52%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (8.96%) Terraform
2 152 (4.68%) .NET
3 127 (3.91%) REST
4 68 (2.09%) .NET Framework
5 58 (1.79%) Middleware
6 50 (1.54%) LDAP
7 48 (1.48%) JSON
8 43 (1.32%) WPF
9 34 (1.05%) XML
10 30 (0.92%) Web Services
10 30 (0.92%) WinForms
11 28 (0.86%) ARM Templates
11 28 (0.86%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.83%) Kafka
13 25 (0.77%) HTML
14 24 (0.74%) .NET Core
15 20 (0.62%) RESTful
16 19 (0.58%) Elastic Stack
17 18 (0.55%) React
17 18 (0.55%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 391 (12.04%) Onboarding
2 204 (6.28%) Data Centre
3 165 (5.08%) PKI
4 110 (3.39%) Management Information System
5 95 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
6 91 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
7 89 (2.74%) Driving Licence
8 83 (2.56%) Video Conferencing
9 81 (2.49%) Cloud Native
10 75 (2.31%) Clustering
11 69 (2.12%) Replication
12 66 (2.03%) Security Posture
13 52 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
14 46 (1.42%) Operational Technology
15 41 (1.26%) Legacy Systems
16 40 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
17 39 (1.20%) CMDB
18 38 (1.17%) Smartphone
18 38 (1.17%) Virtual Team
19 37 (1.14%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 921 (28.36%) Windows Server
2 793 (24.42%) Linux
3 570 (17.55%) Windows 10
4 191 (5.88%) Mac OS
5 143 (4.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 140 (4.31%) Apple iOS
6 140 (4.31%) Unix
7 134 (4.13%) Android
8 76 (2.34%) Windows Server 2019
9 49 (1.51%) Windows 7
10 48 (1.48%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.42%) Windows Server 2012
12 42 (1.29%) Windows Server 2016
13 39 (1.20%) CentOS
14 30 (0.92%) AIX
15 21 (0.65%) 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
1 758 (23.34%) Problem-Solving
2 621 (19.12%) ITIL
3 571 (17.58%) Customer Service
4 444 (13.67%) ITSM
5 416 (12.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 416 (12.81%) Migration
6 374 (11.51%) Continuous Improvement
7 346 (10.65%) Service Management
8 335 (10.31%) DevOps
9 313 (9.64%) CI/CD
10 302 (9.30%) Infrastructure as Code
11 280 (8.62%) Stakeholder Management
12 267 (8.22%) Agile
13 243 (7.48%) Root Cause Analysis
14 236 (7.27%) Change Management
15 235 (7.24%) Disaster Recovery
16 230 (7.08%) Cybersecurity
17 221 (6.80%) Validation
18 189 (5.82%) Technical Leadership
19 187 (5.76%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 797 (24.54%) PowerShell
2 341 (10.50%) Python
3 314 (9.67%) SQL
4 207 (6.37%) Bash
5 170 (5.23%) C#
6 80 (2.46%) Java
7 79 (2.43%) T-SQL
8 63 (1.94%) JavaScript
9 58 (1.79%) Bicep
10 53 (1.63%) PL/SQL
11 38 (1.17%) C++
12 29 (0.89%) VB
12 29 (0.89%) VBScript
13 21 (0.65%) Perl
14 20 (0.62%) Groovy
15 19 (0.58%) Shell Script
15 19 (0.58%) VBA
16 15 (0.46%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.40%) Go
18 10 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 996 (30.67%) Security Cleared
2 594 (18.29%) SC Cleared
3 390 (12.01%) DV Cleared
4 285 (8.77%) Degree
5 121 (3.73%) Microsoft Certification
6 88 (2.71%) Azure Certification
7 87 (2.68%) Cisco Certification
8 76 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
9 66 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
10 63 (1.94%) CISSP
11 55 (1.69%) AWS Certification
12 54 (1.66%) A+ Certification
13 49 (1.51%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 48 (1.48%) DBS Check
15 44 (1.35%) CCNA
16 42 (1.29%) CCNP
17 36 (1.11%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.05%) CISM
19 33 (1.02%) MCSE
20 28 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 172 (5.30%) SLA
2 98 (3.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 89 (2.74%) QA
4 78 (2.40%) NIST
5 36 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
6 32 (0.99%) GDPR
7 29 (0.89%) NCSC
8 26 (0.80%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) Accessibility
9 17 (0.52%) GRC
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
14 10 (0.31%) GMP
15 9 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 1,356 (41.75%) Active Directory
2 488 (15.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 221 (6.80%) Hyper-V
4 150 (4.62%) VMware ESXi
5 140 (4.31%) vSphere
6 131 (4.03%) Docker
7 113 (3.48%) Virtual Desktop
8 106 (3.26%) Virtual Machines
9 70 (2.16%) VMware NSX
10 38 (1.17%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.11%) Firmware
12 24 (0.74%) vCloud
13 20 (0.62%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.46%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 15 (0.46%) NFS
16 12 (0.37%) XenApp
17 11 (0.34%) KVM
18 10 (0.31%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 472 (14.53%) Microsoft Intune
2 375 (11.55%) SCCM
3 236 (7.27%) Ansible
4 170 (5.23%) Kubernetes
5 117 (3.60%) vCenter Server
6 102 (3.14%) SCOM
7 51 (1.57%) Jamf Pro
8 41 (1.26%) Grafana
8 41 (1.26%) WSUS
9 36 (1.11%) Prometheus
10 34 (1.05%) Progress Chef
11 33 (1.02%) NetBackup
12 30 (0.92%) WMI
13 29 (0.89%) Puppet
13 29 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
14 25 (0.77%) VxRail
15 21 (0.65%) Failover Clustering
15 21 (0.65%) Nagios
16 20 (0.62%) FortiGate
16 20 (0.62%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,579 (48.61%) Microsoft
2 633 (19.49%) VMware
3 384 (11.82%) ServiceNow
4 241 (7.42%) Cisco
5 202 (6.22%) Oracle
6 176 (5.42%) Citrix
7 113 (3.48%) Apple
8 106 (3.26%) Splunk
9 98 (3.02%) CyberArk
10 94 (2.89%) Google
11 83 (2.56%) Red Hat
12 75 (2.31%) SolarWinds
13 70 (2.16%) BeyondTrust
14 59 (1.82%) Palo Alto
15 58 (1.79%) Dell
16 51 (1.57%) NetApp
16 51 (1.57%) Remedy
17 47 (1.45%) CrowdStrike
18 44 (1.35%) HP
19 41 (1.26%) Meraki