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 15 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,065 2,629 3,575
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.83% 8.10% 8.36%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.51% 59.87% 60.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,955 1,742 2,382
10th Percentile £168 £180 £165
25th Percentile £225 £234 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £425
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £663
UK excluding London median daily rate £423 £400 £436
% change year-on-year +5.81% -8.31% +12.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 195 302
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.33 £12.03
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.29 £14.72
Median hourly rate £25.13 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.17% -5.65% -15.54%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £68.60 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.13
% change year-on-year +36.46% +4.08% -16.64%

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 5,065 4,391 5,867
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.53% 13.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,231 2,833 3,828
10th Percentile £190 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year - -2.11% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £577 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 239 437
10th Percentile £15.53 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.31 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.86
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -7.46% -41.52%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.00 £21.59 £31.13
% change year-on-year +20.43% -30.63% +6.23%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 2,674 £425 +0.95% 1,142
UK excluding London -13 2,020 £423 +5.81% 1,127
London -19 870 £420 -6.72% 219
Work from Home -12 650 £475 - 593
South East -9 554 £475 -4.23% 362
North of England -8 473 £358 +2.14% 255
Midlands -16 277 £335 +11.67% 146
South West -9 269 £488 +5.41% 124
North West -6 248 £350 -2.23% 134
East of England -1 212 £300 +17.82% 132
Yorkshire -14 202 £365 -9.88% 87
West Midlands -26 173 £450 +50.00% 68
Scotland -5 171 £425 -5.56% 75
East Midlands +13 99 £270 +35.00% 78
Wales +10 60 £408 +48.18% 33
North East -37 27 £270 -1.82% 41
Northern Ireland -4 17 £139 -30.75% 38
Channel Islands +2 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
1 238 (7.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 226 (7.37%) SharePoint
3 67 (2.19%) IIS
4 57 (1.86%) Confluence
5 19 (0.62%) Tomcat
6 18 (0.59%) nginx
7 16 (0.52%) Apache
8 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
9 12 (0.39%) Skype for Business
10 10 (0.33%) HCL Notes
11 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
12 7 (0.23%) Appian
12 7 (0.23%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.20%) Documentum
14 5 (0.16%) Camunda
14 5 (0.16%) SAS
15 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
16 3 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2010
16 3 (0.098%) WebSphere
Applications
1 194 (6.33%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.098%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.098%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.098%) PTC Creo
8 1 (0.033%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.033%) Houdini
8 1 (0.033%) InDesign
8 1 (0.033%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 45 (1.47%) Remedy ITSM
2 18 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.33%) Finacle
3 10 (0.33%) Teamcenter
4 6 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
4 6 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
5 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.098%) assyst
7 1 (0.033%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.033%) Dynamics GP
7 1 (0.033%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.033%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.033%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.033%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.033%) SAP EWM
7 1 (0.033%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 922 (30.08%) Azure
2 882 (28.78%) Microsoft 365
3 418 (13.64%) Entra ID
4 320 (10.44%) AWS
5 128 (4.18%) OneDrive
6 97 (3.16%) Azure DevOps
7 95 (3.10%) GCP
8 75 (2.45%) SaaS
9 65 (2.12%) GitHub
10 64 (2.09%) Power Platform
11 63 (2.06%) IaaS
12 58 (1.89%) Azure Monitor
13 55 (1.79%) PaaS
14 39 (1.27%) OpenShift
15 38 (1.24%) Azure Sentinel
16 30 (0.98%) AWS CloudFormation
17 29 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (0.88%) Google Workspace
19 25 (0.82%) Azure AKS
19 25 (0.82%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 442 (14.42%) DNS
2 319 (10.41%) Firewall
3 299 (9.76%) DHCP
4 232 (7.57%) VPN
5 201 (6.56%) TCP/IP
6 176 (5.74%) LAN
7 167 (5.45%) WAN
8 152 (4.96%) Wi-Fi
9 98 (3.20%) SAN
10 71 (2.32%) Network Security
11 62 (2.02%) VLAN
12 48 (1.57%) BGP
13 47 (1.53%) SSL
14 46 (1.50%) NAS
15 44 (1.44%) Internet
16 37 (1.21%) OSPF
16 37 (1.21%) Wireless
17 36 (1.17%) VoIP
18 33 (1.08%) SD-WAN
19 32 (1.04%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 275 (8.97%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.99%) Oracle Database
3 43 (1.40%) Power BI
4 36 (1.17%) Relational Database
5 34 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
6 27 (0.88%) MySQL
7 24 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 21 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
9 20 (0.65%) Db2
10 17 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (0.49%) Data Warehouse
11 15 (0.49%) RDBMS
12 12 (0.39%) NoSQL
13 11 (0.36%) MongoDB
14 10 (0.33%) GIS
14 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
15 9 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
15 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
16 8 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
16 8 (0.26%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 178 (5.81%) JIRA
2 66 (2.15%) Git
3 58 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.63%) MSI
5 41 (1.34%) GitLab
6 40 (1.31%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 10 (0.33%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.29%) Chocolatey
9 9 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
10 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
11 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.20%) Xcode
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Maven
12 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (0.16%) Selenium
General
1 1,095 (35.73%) Social Skills
2 347 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
3 325 (10.60%) Finance
4 208 (6.79%) Public Sector
5 159 (5.19%) Banking
6 106 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 104 (3.39%) Legal
8 85 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 52 (1.70%) Retail
11 48 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 43 (1.40%) Military
13 37 (1.21%) Front Office
13 37 (1.21%) Investment Banking
14 33 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 32 (1.04%) Law
16 26 (0.85%) Spanish Language
17 22 (0.72%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.72%) French Language
17 22 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 428 (13.96%) Support Engineer
2 404 (13.18%) IT Support
3 293 (9.56%) Analyst
4 288 (9.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 286 (9.33%) IT Engineer
6 242 (7.90%) IT Support Engineer
7 206 (6.72%) Senior
8 142 (4.63%) Architect
9 123 (4.01%) Desktop Support
10 118 (3.85%) 2nd Line Support
10 118 (3.85%) Developer
11 112 (3.65%) Lead
12 107 (3.49%) Desktop Engineer
13 105 (3.43%) Support Analyst
14 103 (3.36%) Cloud Engineer
15 97 (3.16%) Consultant
16 93 (3.03%) IT Analyst
16 93 (3.03%) Windows Engineer
17 83 (2.71%) Service Analyst
18 80 (2.61%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 122 (3.98%) .NET
2 110 (3.59%) REST
3 67 (2.19%) .NET Framework
4 44 (1.44%) LDAP
5 37 (1.21%) Middleware
6 34 (1.11%) WinForms
7 31 (1.01%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.98%) SAML
9 29 (0.95%) Web Services
10 28 (0.91%) Microsoft Graph
10 28 (0.91%) Software Packaging
10 28 (0.91%) WPF
11 27 (0.88%) Kafka
12 25 (0.82%) JSON
13 24 (0.78%) HTML
14 23 (0.75%) CSS
14 23 (0.75%) Elastic Stack
15 21 (0.69%) RESTful
16 20 (0.65%) OAuth
16 20 (0.65%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 301 (9.82%) Onboarding
2 165 (5.38%) Data Centre
3 151 (4.93%) PKI
4 84 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
5 82 (2.68%) Clustering
6 76 (2.48%) Management Information System
7 72 (2.35%) Cloud Native
8 71 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
9 70 (2.28%) Replication
10 67 (2.19%) Driving Licence
11 58 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
12 54 (1.76%) Security Posture
13 50 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
14 47 (1.53%) Video Conferencing
15 46 (1.50%) Virtual Team
16 38 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
17 34 (1.11%) Operational Technology
18 32 (1.04%) Smartphone
19 30 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 751 (24.50%) Linux
2 746 (24.34%) Windows Server
3 503 (16.41%) Windows 10
4 192 (6.26%) Mac OS
5 157 (5.12%) Unix
6 137 (4.47%) Apple iOS
7 136 (4.44%) Android
8 123 (4.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 80 (2.61%) Windows Server 2019
10 57 (1.86%) Windows Server 2016
11 44 (1.44%) Windows 7
12 40 (1.31%) Windows Server 2012
13 37 (1.21%) AIX
13 37 (1.21%) Ubuntu
14 24 (0.78%) Solaris
15 22 (0.72%) VMS
16 18 (0.59%) CentOS
16 18 (0.59%) Windows Server 2008
17 12 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 685 (22.35%) Problem-Solving
2 495 (16.15%) ITIL
3 455 (14.85%) Customer Service
4 369 (12.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 365 (11.91%) Migration
6 327 (10.67%) ITSM
7 291 (9.49%) DevOps
8 270 (8.81%) Agile
9 260 (8.48%) Continuous Improvement
10 258 (8.42%) CI/CD
11 225 (7.34%) Service Management
12 214 (6.98%) High Availability
13 203 (6.62%) Infrastructure as Code
14 193 (6.30%) Change Management
15 173 (5.64%) Disaster Recovery
15 173 (5.64%) Service Delivery
15 173 (5.64%) Stakeholder Management
16 170 (5.55%) Cybersecurity
17 156 (5.09%) SIEM
18 155 (5.06%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 654 (21.34%) PowerShell
2 318 (10.38%) Python
3 303 (9.89%) SQL
4 150 (4.89%) C#
5 143 (4.67%) Bash
6 74 (2.41%) Java
7 69 (2.25%) JavaScript
8 62 (2.02%) PL/SQL
9 61 (1.99%) T-SQL
10 48 (1.57%) C++
11 27 (0.88%) Bicep
12 25 (0.82%) Perl
12 25 (0.82%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.75%) VB
13 23 (0.75%) VBScript
14 22 (0.72%) Shell Script
15 21 (0.69%) VBA
16 18 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
17 17 (0.55%) TypeScript
18 14 (0.46%) C
Qualifications
1 902 (29.43%) Security Cleared
2 576 (18.79%) SC Cleared
3 310 (10.11%) Degree
4 288 (9.40%) DV Cleared
5 120 (3.92%) Microsoft Certification
6 100 (3.26%) Cisco Certification
7 80 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
8 65 (2.12%) CISSP
9 63 (2.06%) Azure Certification
10 60 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
11 51 (1.66%) AWS Certification
12 46 (1.50%) MCSE
13 45 (1.47%) CCNA
14 33 (1.08%) A+ Certification
14 33 (1.08%) CCNP
15 32 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 28 (0.91%) CompTIA Security+
17 26 (0.85%) DBS Check
17 26 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
17 26 (0.85%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 128 (4.18%) SLA
2 115 (3.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 89 (2.90%) QA
4 88 (2.87%) NIST
5 51 (1.66%) GDPR
6 27 (0.88%) PCI DSS
7 26 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
7 26 (0.85%) NCSC
7 26 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 17 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
9 14 (0.46%) Data Quality
10 13 (0.42%) PMO
11 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
11 12 (0.39%) GxP
12 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.33%) GMP
13 10 (0.33%) GRC
13 10 (0.33%) NIST 800
13 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,181 (38.53%) Active Directory
2 407 (13.28%) VMware Infrastructure
3 162 (5.29%) Hyper-V
4 130 (4.24%) VMware ESXi
5 111 (3.62%) vSphere
6 107 (3.49%) Virtual Machines
7 102 (3.33%) Docker
8 78 (2.54%) Virtual Desktop
9 68 (2.22%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.27%) Firmware
11 35 (1.14%) BitLocker
12 27 (0.88%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.59%) KVM
14 14 (0.46%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) NFS
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 414 (13.51%) Microsoft Intune
2 275 (8.97%) SCCM
3 220 (7.18%) Terraform
4 202 (6.59%) Ansible
5 158 (5.15%) Kubernetes
6 105 (3.43%) vCenter Server
7 58 (1.89%) SCOM
8 56 (1.83%) Jamf Pro
9 47 (1.53%) Single Sign-On
10 40 (1.31%) WSUS
11 39 (1.27%) FortiGate
11 39 (1.27%) Progress Chef
12 33 (1.08%) Grafana
13 30 (0.98%) Prometheus
13 30 (0.98%) Puppet
14 29 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 25 (0.82%) Nagios
16 22 (0.72%) Packer
16 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
17 21 (0.69%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,324 (43.20%) Microsoft
2 528 (17.23%) VMware
3 297 (9.69%) ServiceNow
4 217 (7.08%) Cisco
5 204 (6.66%) Citrix
6 199 (6.49%) Oracle
7 139 (4.54%) Splunk
8 90 (2.94%) Apple
9 86 (2.81%) SolarWinds
10 79 (2.58%) CyberArk
11 76 (2.48%) HP
12 74 (2.41%) Red Hat
13 67 (2.19%) Google
14 64 (2.09%) BeyondTrust
14 64 (2.09%) Dell
15 58 (1.89%) F5
16 56 (1.83%) Remedy
17 54 (1.76%) IBM
18 52 (1.70%) Juniper
19 42 (1.37%) Palo Alto