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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,160 2,604 3,220
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.90% 7.92% 8.31%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.49% 59.93% 59.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,023 1,714 2,179
10th Percentile £170 £169 £175
25th Percentile £225 £221 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -8.33% +4.65%
75th Percentile £556 £564 £575
90th Percentile £650 £660 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £394 £450
% change year-on-year +4.70% -12.44% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 282 214 231
10th Percentile £15.33 £15.19 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £15.44
Median hourly rate £25.75 £19.68 £21.80
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% -9.72% -3.11%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £53.38
90th Percentile £73.74 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.64
% change year-on-year +36.46% -8.59% -3.13%

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 5,224 4,345 5,413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.22% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,316 2,770 3,594
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £318 £308 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £461 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.98% -2.89% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £668 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 263 331
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.42
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +6.12% -10.91% -30.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.70 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.33 £23.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +18.83% -40.26% +40.00%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 2,755 £425 +3.91% 906
UK excluding London -13 2,038 £413 +4.70% 831
London -13 927 £425 - 191
Work from Home -7 631 £475 +3.26% 272
South East -8 573 £475 -3.06% 286
North of England -6 501 £325 - 196
North West +2 290 £344 -1.71% 100
South West -12 287 £488 +35.42% 95
Midlands -23 256 £384 -4.13% 113
East of England -4 192 £339 +1.12% 111
Yorkshire -20 184 £313 +8.70% 67
Scotland -5 164 £375 -19.35% 27
West Midlands -28 162 £425 -0.47% 79
East Midlands +5 90 £270 +35.00% 34
Wales +2 63 £425 +54.55% 18
North East -31 31 £250 -4.76% 38
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 16
Channel Islands +1 2 £518 -

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
1 254 (8.04%) SharePoint
2 249 (7.88%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.18%) IIS
4 60 (1.90%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.54%) Apache
6 17 (0.54%) nginx
7 15 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
7 15 (0.47%) Tomcat
8 14 (0.44%) HCL Notes
9 9 (0.28%) NetWeaver
10 8 (0.25%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.19%) Documentum
12 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.16%) Appian
12 5 (0.16%) Camunda
12 5 (0.16%) SAS
13 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
14 3 (0.095%) WebSphere
Applications
1 207 (6.55%) Microsoft Office
2 70 (2.22%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.095%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.095%) Houdini
6 3 (0.095%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.032%) InDesign
8 1 (0.032%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 57 (1.80%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.44%) 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 (0.095%) assyst
8 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.032%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle BRM
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
Cloud Services
1 988 (31.27%) Azure
2 970 (30.70%) Microsoft 365
3 488 (15.44%) Entra ID
4 337 (10.66%) AWS
5 141 (4.46%) OneDrive
6 116 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (3.32%) GCP
8 77 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
9 76 (2.41%) SaaS
10 75 (2.37%) Power Platform
11 73 (2.31%) GitHub
12 67 (2.12%) IaaS
13 51 (1.61%) PaaS
14 44 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
15 40 (1.27%) OpenShift
16 32 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
19 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
20 25 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 476 (15.06%) DNS
2 352 (11.14%) Firewall
3 337 (10.66%) DHCP
4 274 (8.67%) VPN
5 227 (7.18%) TCP/IP
6 156 (4.94%) LAN
6 156 (4.94%) WAN
7 143 (4.53%) Wi-Fi
8 98 (3.10%) SAN
9 84 (2.66%) VLAN
10 83 (2.63%) Network Security
11 48 (1.52%) NAS
12 47 (1.49%) SSL
13 45 (1.42%) Wireless
14 44 (1.39%) Internet
15 39 (1.23%) VSAN
16 34 (1.08%) BGP
16 34 (1.08%) Skype
17 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
18 27 (0.85%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (9.65%) SQL Server
2 59 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 56 (1.77%) Power BI
4 36 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 35 (1.11%) Relational Database
6 33 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
7 25 (0.79%) MySQL
8 21 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (0.54%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 13 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.32%) Db2
14 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
15 9 (0.28%) SAP HANA
16 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
16 8 (0.25%) MS Access
16 8 (0.25%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 173 (5.47%) JIRA
2 79 (2.50%) Git
3 59 (1.87%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.49%) MSI
5 42 (1.33%) GitLab
6 37 (1.17%) Visual Studio
7 19 (0.60%) Bitbucket
8 17 (0.54%) Eclipse
9 10 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.28%) Artifactory
11 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 7 (0.22%) Chocolatey
12 7 (0.22%) Selenium
12 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
13 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
14 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
14 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
14 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
14 5 (0.16%) Robot Framework
General
1 1,151 (36.42%) Social Skills
2 400 (12.66%) Analytical Skills
3 375 (11.87%) Finance
4 180 (5.70%) Public Sector
5 162 (5.13%) Banking
6 105 (3.32%) Documentation Skills
7 91 (2.88%) Legal
8 75 (2.37%) Organisational Skills
9 69 (2.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 57 (1.80%) Retail
11 56 (1.77%) Manufacturing
12 48 (1.52%) Telecoms
13 40 (1.27%) Front Office
14 37 (1.17%) Law
15 36 (1.14%) Military
16 33 (1.04%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.89%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.79%) Financial Institution
19 24 (0.76%) French Language
20 21 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 487 (15.41%) Support Engineer
2 423 (13.39%) IT Support
3 327 (10.35%) IT Engineer
4 323 (10.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 273 (8.64%) IT Support Engineer
6 269 (8.51%) Analyst
7 243 (7.69%) Senior
8 140 (4.43%) Desktop Support
9 132 (4.18%) Architect
10 128 (4.05%) 2nd Line Support
11 116 (3.67%) Cloud Engineer
12 115 (3.64%) Desktop Engineer
13 114 (3.61%) Lead
14 111 (3.51%) Developer
15 105 (3.32%) Support Analyst
15 105 (3.32%) Windows Engineer
16 100 (3.16%) Consultant
17 86 (2.72%) 1st Line Support
18 83 (2.63%) IT Analyst
19 81 (2.56%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (4.21%) .NET
2 119 (3.77%) REST
3 67 (2.12%) .NET Framework
4 43 (1.36%) Middleware
5 36 (1.14%) JSON
6 33 (1.04%) WinForms
7 31 (0.98%) LDAP
8 30 (0.95%) XML
9 29 (0.92%) WPF
10 28 (0.89%) HTML
11 27 (0.85%) Kafka
12 26 (0.82%) Software Packaging
12 26 (0.82%) Web Services
13 23 (0.73%) CSS
14 21 (0.66%) ARM Templates
14 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 21 (0.66%) RESTful
15 20 (0.63%) SAML
16 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
16 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 357 (11.30%) Onboarding
2 179 (5.66%) Data Centre
3 161 (5.09%) PKI
4 91 (2.88%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.75%) Clustering
6 83 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
7 81 (2.56%) Cloud Native
8 80 (2.53%) Hybrid Cloud
9 78 (2.47%) Driving Licence
10 67 (2.12%) Video Conferencing
11 65 (2.06%) Replication
11 65 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
12 52 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
13 50 (1.58%) Security Posture
14 43 (1.36%) Virtual Team
15 40 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
15 40 (1.27%) Operational Technology
16 38 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.20%) Enterprise Storage
17 36 (1.14%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 834 (26.39%) Windows Server
2 785 (24.84%) Linux
3 544 (17.22%) Windows 10
4 192 (6.08%) Mac OS
5 150 (4.75%) Unix
6 140 (4.43%) Android
7 139 (4.40%) Apple iOS
8 129 (4.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 77 (2.44%) Windows Server 2019
10 56 (1.77%) Windows 7
11 49 (1.55%) Windows Server 2016
12 46 (1.46%) Ubuntu
13 40 (1.27%) Windows Server 2012
14 35 (1.11%) AIX
15 31 (0.98%) CentOS
16 23 (0.73%) VMS
17 21 (0.66%) Windows Server 2008
18 19 (0.60%) Solaris
19 11 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
20 10 (0.32%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 760 (24.05%) Problem-Solving
2 565 (17.88%) ITIL
3 514 (16.27%) Customer Service
4 414 (13.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 407 (12.88%) ITSM
6 404 (12.78%) Migration
7 316 (10.00%) DevOps
8 312 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
9 289 (9.15%) Service Management
10 276 (8.73%) CI/CD
11 271 (8.58%) Agile
12 249 (7.88%) Infrastructure as Code
13 229 (7.25%) Change Management
14 205 (6.49%) Stakeholder Management
15 199 (6.30%) High Availability
16 195 (6.17%) Service Delivery
17 193 (6.11%) Disaster Recovery
18 184 (5.82%) Cybersecurity
19 177 (5.60%) Root Cause Analysis
19 177 (5.60%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 758 (23.99%) PowerShell
2 339 (10.73%) Python
3 317 (10.03%) SQL
4 183 (5.79%) Bash
5 158 (5.00%) C#
6 80 (2.53%) Java
7 69 (2.18%) JavaScript
8 61 (1.93%) T-SQL
9 56 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.49%) Bicep
11 46 (1.46%) C++
12 30 (0.95%) VBScript
13 28 (0.89%) VB
14 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
15 22 (0.70%) Perl
16 21 (0.66%) Shell Script
17 18 (0.57%) VBA
18 17 (0.54%) TypeScript
19 13 (0.41%) C
20 10 (0.32%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 967 (30.60%) Security Cleared
2 613 (19.40%) SC Cleared
3 329 (10.41%) DV Cleared
4 295 (9.34%) Degree
5 122 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 99 (3.13%) Cisco Certification
7 85 (2.69%) Azure Certification
8 78 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (1.96%) CISSP
10 61 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
11 55 (1.74%) AWS Certification
12 53 (1.68%) A+ Certification
13 45 (1.42%) CCNA
14 42 (1.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 36 (1.14%) CCNP
16 35 (1.11%) DBS Check
16 35 (1.11%) MCSE
17 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 26 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
19 25 (0.79%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (5.13%) SLA
2 110 (3.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 95 (3.01%) QA
4 83 (2.63%) NIST
5 39 (1.23%) GDPR
6 31 (0.98%) NCSC
7 26 (0.82%) Cyber Essentials
8 24 (0.76%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.47%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.44%) GxP
12 13 (0.41%) Accessibility
12 13 (0.41%) PMO
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 10 (0.32%) GRC
15 9 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 9 (0.28%) GMP
16 8 (0.25%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,285 (40.66%) Active Directory
2 460 (14.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 203 (6.42%) Hyper-V
4 142 (4.49%) VMware ESXi
5 125 (3.96%) vSphere
6 109 (3.45%) Docker
7 98 (3.10%) Virtual Desktop
7 98 (3.10%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.59%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.27%) BitLocker
10 39 (1.23%) Firmware
11 20 (0.63%) vCloud
12 17 (0.54%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.32%) KVM
15 9 (0.28%) NFS
15 9 (0.28%) XenApp
15 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
16 8 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.22%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 445 (14.08%) Microsoft Intune
2 319 (10.09%) SCCM
3 272 (8.61%) Terraform
4 240 (7.59%) Ansible
5 171 (5.41%) Kubernetes
6 114 (3.61%) vCenter Server
7 82 (2.59%) SCOM
8 49 (1.55%) Jamf Pro
9 48 (1.52%) WSUS
10 43 (1.36%) Progress Chef
11 37 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
12 32 (1.01%) Puppet
13 28 (0.89%) FortiGate
13 28 (0.89%) NetBackup
14 25 (0.79%) Grafana
14 25 (0.79%) Nagios
14 25 (0.79%) Packer
14 25 (0.79%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.79%) WMI
15 23 (0.73%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,450 (45.89%) Microsoft
2 610 (19.30%) VMware
3 366 (11.58%) ServiceNow
4 216 (6.84%) Cisco
5 204 (6.46%) Oracle
6 189 (5.98%) Citrix
7 117 (3.70%) Splunk
8 104 (3.29%) Apple
9 95 (3.01%) CyberArk
10 82 (2.59%) Google
11 80 (2.53%) SolarWinds
12 76 (2.41%) Red Hat
13 74 (2.34%) BeyondTrust
14 71 (2.25%) HP
15 61 (1.93%) Remedy
16 57 (1.80%) Dell
17 51 (1.61%) Palo Alto
18 49 (1.55%) BMC
19 46 (1.46%) Meraki
20 45 (1.42%) F5