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

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 17
Rank change year-on-year -6 -5 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,136 2,627 3,257
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.85% 7.93% 8.38%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.28% 59.66% 59.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,992 1,730 2,208
10th Percentile £165 £171 £175
25th Percentile £225 £225 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £415 £446
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -6.95% +1.36%
75th Percentile £556 £564 £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 286 212 232
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.35 £11.15
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £15.64
Median hourly rate £25.51 £19.68 £21.59
Median % change year-on-year +29.60% -8.85% -10.04%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £52.18
90th Percentile £71.71 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.14
% change year-on-year +36.46% -6.32% -7.39%

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 5,202 4,403 5,431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.29% 13.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,287 2,818 3,615
10th Percentile £193 £200 £200
25th Percentile £320 £313 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.16% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +1.28% -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 260 335
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.45
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 £72.05 £67.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £22.56 £42.50
% change year-on-year +18.17% -46.92% +45.05%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -5 2,746 £425 +3.66% 1,166
UK excluding London -13 2,037 £415 +3.75% 920
London -15 913 £425 -0.12% 365
Work from Home -7 643 £475 +3.26% 405
South East -7 593 £475 -3.06% 296
North of England -7 474 £328 -0.76% 214
South West -12 283 £488 +23.42% 112
Midlands -20 267 £400 - 116
North West -4 263 £335 -5.37% 130
East of England -2 199 £340 +36.00% 124
Yorkshire -17 186 £355 +13.60% 60
West Midlands -26 172 £450 +5.88% 74
Scotland -5 163 £400 -13.98% 43
East Midlands +8 91 £270 +36.71% 42
Wales +3 56 £425 +54.55% 33
North East -38 29 £250 -4.76% 30
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
1 248 (7.91%) Microsoft Exchange
2 246 (7.84%) SharePoint
3 69 (2.20%) IIS
4 60 (1.91%) Confluence
5 18 (0.57%) nginx
6 17 (0.54%) Apache
7 16 (0.51%) Tomcat
8 14 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.41%) 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
1 200 (6.38%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.22%) 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 57 (1.82%) 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%) Dynamics CRM
5 6 (0.19%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.096%) assyst
8 2 (0.064%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.064%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.032%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.032%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 979 (31.22%) Azure
2 960 (30.61%) Microsoft 365
3 473 (15.08%) Entra ID
4 331 (10.55%) AWS
5 137 (4.37%) OneDrive
6 109 (3.48%) Azure DevOps
7 104 (3.32%) GCP
8 75 (2.39%) GitHub
8 75 (2.39%) SaaS
9 74 (2.36%) Power Platform
10 73 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
11 66 (2.10%) IaaS
12 52 (1.66%) PaaS
13 43 (1.37%) Azure Sentinel
14 38 (1.21%) OpenShift
15 30 (0.96%) AWS CloudFormation
16 29 (0.92%) GitHub Actions
17 26 (0.83%) Google Workspace
18 25 (0.80%) Amazon EC2
18 25 (0.80%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 480 (15.31%) DNS
2 363 (11.58%) Firewall
3 329 (10.49%) DHCP
4 264 (8.42%) VPN
5 224 (7.14%) TCP/IP
6 163 (5.20%) LAN
7 157 (5.01%) WAN
8 140 (4.46%) Wi-Fi
9 97 (3.09%) SAN
10 81 (2.58%) Network Security
11 74 (2.36%) VLAN
12 51 (1.63%) SSL
13 48 (1.53%) BGP
13 48 (1.53%) NAS
14 44 (1.40%) Internet
15 43 (1.37%) Wireless
16 38 (1.21%) VSAN
17 36 (1.15%) OSPF
18 31 (0.99%) SD-WAN
19 30 (0.96%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (9.69%) SQL Server
2 62 (1.98%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.69%) Power BI
4 35 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 34 (1.08%) Relational Database
6 33 (1.05%) PostgreSQL
7 27 (0.86%) MySQL
8 21 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (0.54%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
11 15 (0.48%) Db2
11 15 (0.48%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 14 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 13 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
14 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
15 10 (0.32%) MongoDB
15 10 (0.32%) NoSQL
15 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
16 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
17 8 (0.26%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 173 (5.52%) JIRA
2 77 (2.46%) Git
3 57 (1.82%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.59%) MSI
5 42 (1.34%) GitLab
6 37 (1.18%) 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%) Toad
General
1 1,149 (36.64%) Social Skills
2 393 (12.53%) Analytical Skills
3 360 (11.48%) Finance
4 193 (6.15%) Public Sector
5 159 (5.07%) Banking
6 107 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
7 100 (3.19%) Legal
8 78 (2.49%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 58 (1.85%) Retail
11 57 (1.82%) Manufacturing
12 45 (1.43%) Military
13 41 (1.31%) Front Office
13 41 (1.31%) Telecoms
14 36 (1.15%) Law
15 34 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.89%) Spanish Language
17 26 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 23 (0.73%) French Language
19 21 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 473 (15.08%) Support Engineer
2 419 (13.36%) IT Support
3 320 (10.20%) IT Engineer
4 313 (9.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 276 (8.80%) Analyst
6 268 (8.55%) IT Support Engineer
7 237 (7.56%) Senior
8 135 (4.30%) Desktop Support
9 132 (4.21%) Architect
10 127 (4.05%) 2nd Line Support
11 116 (3.70%) Lead
12 115 (3.67%) Developer
13 114 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
14 110 (3.51%) Desktop Engineer
15 102 (3.25%) Support Analyst
16 98 (3.13%) Windows Engineer
17 97 (3.09%) Consultant
18 87 (2.77%) IT Analyst
19 86 (2.74%) 1st Line Support
20 83 (2.65%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (4.15%) .NET
2 118 (3.76%) REST
3 68 (2.17%) .NET Framework
4 43 (1.37%) Middleware
5 34 (1.08%) JSON
5 34 (1.08%) WinForms
6 33 (1.05%) LDAP
7 31 (0.99%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.96%) HTML
8 30 (0.96%) WPF
9 29 (0.92%) XML
10 27 (0.86%) Web Services
11 26 (0.83%) CSS
12 25 (0.80%) Kafka
12 25 (0.80%) Software Packaging
13 22 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
14 21 (0.67%) Elastic Stack
14 21 (0.67%) RESTful
15 19 (0.61%) SAML
16 18 (0.57%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 340 (10.84%) Onboarding
2 174 (5.55%) Data Centre
3 164 (5.23%) PKI
4 95 (3.03%) Clustering
5 86 (2.74%) Management Information System
6 84 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
7 79 (2.52%) Cloud Native
8 76 (2.42%) Hybrid Cloud
9 73 (2.33%) Driving Licence
10 67 (2.14%) Self-Motivation
11 63 (2.01%) Replication
12 60 (1.91%) Video Conferencing
13 57 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
14 55 (1.75%) Security Posture
15 45 (1.43%) Virtual Team
16 40 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
16 40 (1.28%) Operational Technology
17 38 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
18 37 (1.18%) Linux Command Line
19 36 (1.15%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 812 (25.89%) Windows Server
2 784 (25.00%) Linux
3 527 (16.80%) Windows 10
4 193 (6.15%) Mac OS
5 163 (5.20%) Unix
6 135 (4.30%) Android
7 133 (4.24%) Apple iOS
8 124 (3.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 78 (2.49%) Windows Server 2019
10 48 (1.53%) Windows Server 2016
11 43 (1.37%) Windows 7
12 41 (1.31%) Ubuntu
13 40 (1.28%) Windows Server 2012
14 39 (1.24%) 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
1 747 (23.82%) Problem-Solving
2 549 (17.51%) ITIL
3 498 (15.88%) Customer Service
4 403 (12.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 393 (12.53%) Migration
6 380 (12.12%) ITSM
7 309 (9.85%) DevOps
8 307 (9.79%) Continuous Improvement
9 272 (8.67%) CI/CD
10 270 (8.61%) Agile
11 263 (8.39%) Service Management
12 237 (7.56%) Infrastructure as Code
13 225 (7.17%) Change Management
14 212 (6.76%) High Availability
15 196 (6.25%) Service Delivery
16 194 (6.19%) Stakeholder Management
17 192 (6.12%) Cybersecurity
18 184 (5.87%) Disaster Recovery
19 172 (5.48%) Incident Management
20 168 (5.36%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 726 (23.15%) PowerShell
2 334 (10.65%) Python
3 315 (10.04%) SQL
4 180 (5.74%) Bash
5 159 (5.07%) C#
6 76 (2.42%) Java
7 72 (2.30%) JavaScript
8 62 (1.98%) T-SQL
9 58 (1.85%) PL/SQL
10 49 (1.56%) C++
11 43 (1.37%) Bicep
12 25 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.73%) Perl
14 22 (0.70%) VBScript
15 21 (0.67%) VB
16 20 (0.64%) Shell Script
16 20 (0.64%) VBA
17 18 (0.57%) TypeScript
18 15 (0.48%) C
19 12 (0.38%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 956 (30.48%) Security Cleared
2 604 (19.26%) SC Cleared
3 320 (10.20%) DV Cleared
4 300 (9.57%) Degree
5 125 (3.99%) Microsoft Certification
6 102 (3.25%) Cisco Certification
7 75 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 72 (2.30%) Azure Certification
9 66 (2.10%) CISSP
10 64 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
11 53 (1.69%) AWS Certification
12 46 (1.47%) A+ Certification
13 43 (1.37%) CCNA
14 41 (1.31%) MCSE
15 36 (1.15%) CCNP
16 35 (1.12%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 33 (1.05%) DBS Check
18 32 (1.02%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 28 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
20 23 (0.73%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 155 (4.94%) SLA
2 121 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 93 (2.97%) QA
4 90 (2.87%) NIST
5 41 (1.31%) GDPR
6 31 (0.99%) NCSC
7 29 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
8 24 (0.77%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.48%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.45%) GxP
11 14 (0.45%) PMO
12 13 (0.41%) Accessibility
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 10 (0.32%) GRC
15 9 (0.29%) GMP
15 9 (0.29%) SOC 2
16 8 (0.26%) 21 CFR Part 11
System Software
1 1,262 (40.24%) Active Directory
2 441 (14.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 193 (6.15%) Hyper-V
4 138 (4.40%) VMware ESXi
5 119 (3.79%) vSphere
6 107 (3.41%) Docker
7 102 (3.25%) Virtual Machines
8 86 (2.74%) Virtual Desktop
9 78 (2.49%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.28%) Firmware
11 31 (0.99%) BitLocker
12 20 (0.64%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.57%) vCloud
14 14 (0.45%) KVM
15 12 (0.38%) 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
1 434 (13.84%) Microsoft Intune
2 292 (9.31%) SCCM
3 264 (8.42%) Terraform
4 233 (7.43%) Ansible
5 172 (5.48%) Kubernetes
6 114 (3.64%) vCenter Server
7 78 (2.49%) SCOM
8 53 (1.69%) Jamf Pro
9 44 (1.40%) WSUS
10 41 (1.31%) Progress Chef
11 39 (1.24%) FortiGate
12 37 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
13 31 (0.99%) Puppet
14 28 (0.89%) NetBackup
15 26 (0.83%) Packer
16 25 (0.80%) Nagios
17 24 (0.77%) Prometheus
18 23 (0.73%) Grafana
18 23 (0.73%) WMI
19 22 (0.70%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,407 (44.87%) Microsoft
2 587 (18.72%) VMware
3 349 (11.13%) ServiceNow
4 220 (7.02%) Cisco
5 207 (6.60%) Oracle
6 194 (6.19%) Citrix
7 136 (4.34%) Splunk
8 98 (3.13%) Apple
9 92 (2.93%) CyberArk
9 92 (2.93%) SolarWinds
10 75 (2.39%) BeyondTrust
10 75 (2.39%) Google
11 74 (2.36%) HP
12 73 (2.33%) Red Hat
13 68 (2.17%) Remedy
14 62 (1.98%) Dell
15 57 (1.82%) F5
16 55 (1.75%) Juniper
17 50 (1.59%) Palo Alto
18 48 (1.53%) BMC