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 3 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,195 2,620 3,191
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.96% 8.06% 8.33%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.80% 59.57% 59.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,057 1,732 2,117
10th Percentile £166 £170 £176
25th Percentile £222 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -2.94% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £555 £575
90th Percentile £653 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £379 £425
% change year-on-year +8.25% -10.88% +11.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 291 221 209
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £11.96
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.98 £16.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £22.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% +2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £55.00 £28.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £20.38 £21.59
% change year-on-year +26.38% -5.63% -1.86%

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 5,255 4,398 5,378
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.80% 13.53% 14.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,335 2,804 3,505
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 269 303
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.55 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £36.17
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -30.46% -14.91%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £66.01
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +3.38% -47.05% +28.21%

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 3 September 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 3 September 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 3 September 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 -7 2,775 £418 +2.01% 2,069
UK excluding London -14 2,067 £410 +8.25% 1,392
London -12 927 £425 -1.45% 893
Work from Home -10 613 £465 +3.33% 687
South East -8 565 £475 -3.06% 418
North of England -4 506 £325 - 295
North West +4 308 £340 -3.00% 155
South West -15 279 £488 +35.42% 177
Midlands -17 275 £385 -3.75% 196
East of England -3 206 £275 -19.71% 205
West Midlands -24 176 £419 -5.90% 130
Scotland -4 168 £350 -22.22% 68
Yorkshire -15 167 £279 -3.13% 96
East Midlands -1 95 £275 +37.50% 66
Wales +5 65 £446 +62.27% 23
North East -27 35 £270 -1.82% 57
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 54
Channel Islands 0 3 £518 - 1

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
1 260 (8.14%) SharePoint
2 244 (7.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.16%) IIS
4 57 (1.78%) Confluence
5 18 (0.56%) Apache
5 18 (0.56%) nginx
5 18 (0.56%) Skype for Business
6 14 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
7 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.19%) Documentum
9 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.16%) Appian
9 5 (0.16%) Camunda
9 5 (0.16%) NetWeaver
9 5 (0.16%) SAS
9 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
11 3 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2010
11 3 (0.094%) OpenStack
Applications
1 216 (6.76%) Microsoft Office
2 74 (2.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.094%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.094%) Houdini
6 3 (0.094%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.094%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.75%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 9 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.094%) assyst
7 3 (0.094%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.031%) ResourceLink
9 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 1,017 (31.83%) Microsoft 365
2 988 (30.92%) Azure
3 504 (15.77%) Entra ID
4 336 (10.52%) AWS
5 147 (4.60%) OneDrive
6 120 (3.76%) Azure DevOps
7 104 (3.26%) GCP
8 80 (2.50%) Azure Monitor
9 77 (2.41%) SaaS
10 76 (2.38%) Power Platform
11 65 (2.03%) GitHub
12 60 (1.88%) IaaS
13 45 (1.41%) PaaS
14 44 (1.38%) Azure Sentinel
15 41 (1.28%) OpenShift
16 30 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.88%) Google Workspace
18 24 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
19 23 (0.72%) GitHub Actions
20 22 (0.69%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 478 (14.96%) DNS
2 348 (10.89%) Firewall
3 341 (10.67%) DHCP
4 271 (8.48%) VPN
5 230 (7.20%) TCP/IP
6 155 (4.85%) WAN
7 153 (4.79%) LAN
8 138 (4.32%) Wi-Fi
9 94 (2.94%) Network Security
9 94 (2.94%) SAN
10 88 (2.75%) VLAN
11 53 (1.66%) Wireless
12 50 (1.56%) SSL
13 46 (1.44%) Internet
13 46 (1.44%) NAS
14 38 (1.19%) VSAN
15 35 (1.10%) Skype
16 31 (0.97%) BGP
17 30 (0.94%) SD-WAN
18 29 (0.91%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (9.30%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.91%) Oracle Database
3 57 (1.78%) Power BI
4 40 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 39 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
6 37 (1.16%) Relational Database
7 25 (0.78%) MySQL
8 22 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
9 18 (0.56%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 13 (0.41%) Oracle Reports
13 11 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.31%) Db2
15 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
15 8 (0.25%) MS Access
16 7 (0.22%) NoSQL
16 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 164 (5.13%) JIRA
2 72 (2.25%) Git
3 58 (1.82%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.47%) MSI
5 45 (1.41%) GitLab
6 24 (0.75%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
9 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.22%) Selenium
10 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 5 (0.16%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
12 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
12 5 (0.16%) Robot Framework
General
1 1,169 (36.59%) Social Skills
2 403 (12.61%) Analytical Skills
3 369 (11.55%) Finance
4 169 (5.29%) Public Sector
5 153 (4.79%) Banking
6 115 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
7 92 (2.88%) Legal
8 76 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 75 (2.35%) Organisational Skills
10 58 (1.82%) Manufacturing
11 53 (1.66%) Telecoms
12 51 (1.60%) Retail
13 41 (1.28%) Front Office
14 39 (1.22%) Law
15 34 (1.06%) Investment Banking
16 30 (0.94%) Military
17 28 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.78%) French Language
19 24 (0.75%) Financial Institution
20 23 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 514 (16.09%) Support Engineer
2 437 (13.68%) IT Support
3 343 (10.74%) IT Engineer
4 330 (10.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 286 (8.95%) IT Support Engineer
6 266 (8.33%) Analyst
7 252 (7.89%) Senior
8 142 (4.44%) Desktop Support
9 126 (3.94%) 2nd Line Support
9 126 (3.94%) Architect
10 122 (3.82%) Lead
11 119 (3.72%) Desktop Engineer
12 117 (3.66%) Windows Engineer
13 113 (3.54%) Cloud Engineer
14 102 (3.19%) Developer
14 102 (3.19%) Support Analyst
15 100 (3.13%) Consultant
16 88 (2.75%) 1st Line Support
17 85 (2.66%) Service Analyst
18 83 (2.60%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (8.26%) Terraform
2 135 (4.23%) .NET
3 117 (3.66%) REST
4 66 (2.07%) .NET Framework
5 45 (1.41%) Middleware
6 36 (1.13%) JSON
7 33 (1.03%) LDAP
8 31 (0.97%) XML
9 29 (0.91%) WinForms
9 29 (0.91%) WPF
10 28 (0.88%) Kafka
10 28 (0.88%) Software Packaging
11 27 (0.85%) HTML
12 24 (0.75%) ARM Templates
13 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (0.63%) CSS
15 19 (0.59%) .NET Core
15 19 (0.59%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.59%) Microsoft Graph
16 18 (0.56%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 376 (11.77%) Onboarding
2 186 (5.82%) Data Centre
3 160 (5.01%) PKI
4 101 (3.16%) Management Information System
5 86 (2.69%) Clustering
6 85 (2.66%) Hybrid Cloud
7 78 (2.44%) Cloud Native
7 78 (2.44%) Driving Licence
7 78 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
8 73 (2.28%) Replication
8 73 (2.28%) Video Conferencing
9 58 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
10 54 (1.69%) Security Posture
11 46 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
12 42 (1.31%) Virtual Team
13 40 (1.25%) Enterprise Storage
13 40 (1.25%) Operational Technology
14 39 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
14 39 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
15 38 (1.19%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 888 (27.79%) Windows Server
2 779 (24.38%) Linux
3 553 (17.31%) Windows 10
4 199 (6.23%) Mac OS
5 147 (4.60%) Unix
6 135 (4.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 134 (4.19%) Android
7 134 (4.19%) Apple iOS
8 76 (2.38%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.72%) Windows 7
10 51 (1.60%) Ubuntu
11 46 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
12 41 (1.28%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.13%) CentOS
14 35 (1.10%) AIX
15 24 (0.75%) VMS
16 18 (0.56%) Solaris
16 18 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
17 14 (0.44%) Rocky
18 11 (0.34%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 758 (23.72%) Problem-Solving
2 597 (18.69%) ITIL
3 537 (16.81%) Customer Service
4 432 (13.52%) ITSM
5 419 (13.11%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 398 (12.46%) Migration
7 335 (10.49%) Continuous Improvement
8 311 (9.73%) Service Management
9 308 (9.64%) DevOps
10 257 (8.04%) CI/CD
10 257 (8.04%) Infrastructure as Code
11 250 (7.82%) Agile
12 224 (7.01%) Change Management
12 224 (7.01%) Stakeholder Management
13 202 (6.32%) Disaster Recovery
13 202 (6.32%) Root Cause Analysis
14 192 (6.01%) Service Delivery
15 187 (5.85%) High Availability
16 186 (5.82%) Cybersecurity
17 184 (5.76%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 769 (24.07%) PowerShell
2 329 (10.30%) Python
3 317 (9.92%) SQL
4 186 (5.82%) Bash
5 145 (4.54%) C#
6 71 (2.22%) Java
7 68 (2.13%) T-SQL
8 55 (1.72%) PL/SQL
9 54 (1.69%) JavaScript
10 49 (1.53%) Bicep
11 30 (0.94%) VBScript
12 29 (0.91%) VB
13 27 (0.85%) C++
14 23 (0.72%) Search Processing Language
15 22 (0.69%) Perl
16 19 (0.59%) Shell Script
16 19 (0.59%) VBA
17 16 (0.50%) TypeScript
18 10 (0.31%) VB.NET
19 9 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 975 (30.52%) Security Cleared
2 601 (18.81%) SC Cleared
3 356 (11.14%) DV Cleared
4 298 (9.33%) Degree
5 126 (3.94%) Microsoft Certification
6 93 (2.91%) Azure Certification
7 90 (2.82%) Cisco Certification
8 74 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
9 68 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
10 64 (2.00%) CISSP
11 56 (1.75%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.72%) AWS Certification
13 52 (1.63%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 44 (1.38%) CCNA
15 41 (1.28%) DBS Check
16 38 (1.19%) CCNP
17 36 (1.13%) MCSE
18 33 (1.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 28 (0.88%) CISM
19 28 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 168 (5.26%) SLA
2 111 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 93 (2.91%) QA
4 81 (2.54%) NIST
5 34 (1.06%) GDPR
6 33 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
7 30 (0.94%) NCSC
8 22 (0.69%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.53%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.47%) GxP
10 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
12 12 (0.38%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 11 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.34%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) GMP
14 10 (0.31%) GRC
System Software
1 1,313 (41.10%) Active Directory
2 477 (14.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 218 (6.82%) Hyper-V
4 153 (4.79%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.13%) vSphere
6 112 (3.51%) Docker
7 102 (3.19%) Virtual Machines
8 97 (3.04%) Virtual Desktop
9 81 (2.54%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.22%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.13%) Firmware
12 24 (0.75%) vCloud
13 16 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.34%) KVM
15 11 (0.34%) XenApp
16 10 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 10 (0.31%) NFS
16 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
17 6 (0.19%) Squid
Systems Management
1 442 (13.83%) Microsoft Intune
2 343 (10.74%) SCCM
3 233 (7.29%) Ansible
4 164 (5.13%) Kubernetes
5 121 (3.79%) vCenter Server
6 99 (3.10%) SCOM
7 51 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
8 49 (1.53%) WSUS
9 37 (1.16%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.03%) Prometheus
10 33 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.94%) Grafana
12 27 (0.85%) NetBackup
12 27 (0.85%) Puppet
12 27 (0.85%) WMI
13 25 (0.78%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.78%) Nagios
14 23 (0.72%) Packer
15 22 (0.69%) VxRail
16 21 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,489 (46.60%) Microsoft
2 626 (19.59%) VMware
3 382 (11.96%) ServiceNow
4 229 (7.17%) Cisco
5 203 (6.35%) Oracle
6 176 (5.51%) Citrix
7 116 (3.63%) Splunk
8 113 (3.54%) Apple
9 96 (3.00%) CyberArk
10 83 (2.60%) Google
11 79 (2.47%) Red Hat
12 78 (2.44%) SolarWinds
13 77 (2.41%) BeyondTrust
14 64 (2.00%) HP
15 60 (1.88%) Remedy
16 56 (1.75%) Dell
17 49 (1.53%) NetApp
18 47 (1.47%) BMC
18 47 (1.47%) Palo Alto
19 43 (1.35%) Meraki