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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,064 2,625 3,473
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.81% 8.05% 8.41%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.20% 59.79% 60.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,956 1,737 2,337
10th Percentile £165 £178 £165
25th Percentile £225 £225 £246
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £421 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -0.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £649 £663 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £400 £449
% change year-on-year +3.75% -10.91% +19.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 203 279
10th Percentile £15.99 £15.33 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.33 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -17.73%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £68.40 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.27
% change year-on-year +36.46% +3.28% -16.95%

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 5,090 4,390 5,725
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.65% 13.45% 13.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,236 2,825 3,772
10th Percentile £191 £200 £190
25th Percentile £316 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.54% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £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 341 246 399
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -41.18%
75th Percentile £63.75 £52.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £21.28 £31.25
% change year-on-year +25.28% -31.90% +4.17%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 2,683 £420 +1.20% 976
UK excluding London -13 2,022 £415 +3.75% 844
London -17 868 £415 -5.14% 242
Work from Home -11 635 £475 +1.17% 331
South East -8 574 £475 -5.00% 285
North of England -9 480 £347 -0.86% 197
Midlands -15 279 £375 +25.00% 110
South West -13 264 £488 +14.71% 115
North West -6 253 £350 -2.23% 106
Yorkshire -12 204 £360 +2.86% 60
East of England -2 200 £336 +34.50% 104
West Midlands -26 176 £450 +23.29% 60
Scotland -8 164 £400 -8.57% 31
East Midlands +11 98 £263 +31.25% 50
Wales +7 59 £390 +41.82% 21
North East -34 27 £270 -1.82% 37
Northern Ireland -1 17 £139 -28.97% 9
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
1 241 (7.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 237 (7.73%) SharePoint
3 67 (2.19%) IIS
4 60 (1.96%) Confluence
5 19 (0.62%) nginx
5 19 (0.62%) Tomcat
6 18 (0.59%) Apache
7 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.36%) HCL Notes
9 10 (0.33%) Skype for Business
9 10 (0.33%) WebLogic
10 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
11 6 (0.20%) Appian
11 6 (0.20%) Documentum
12 5 (0.16%) Camunda
12 5 (0.16%) SAS
13 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
14 3 (0.098%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.098%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 197 (6.43%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.098%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.098%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.065%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.065%) Houdini
8 2 (0.065%) NUKE
8 2 (0.065%) PTC Creo
9 1 (0.033%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 51 (1.66%) Remedy ITSM
2 16 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.33%) Finacle
4 8 (0.26%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
5 6 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.098%) assyst
8 2 (0.065%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.065%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.065%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.033%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.033%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.033%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.033%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.033%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.033%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.033%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.033%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.033%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 937 (30.58%) Azure
2 901 (29.41%) Microsoft 365
3 435 (14.20%) Entra ID
4 324 (10.57%) AWS
5 135 (4.41%) OneDrive
6 102 (3.33%) GCP
7 99 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
8 76 (2.48%) SaaS
9 68 (2.22%) Azure Monitor
10 67 (2.19%) GitHub
11 66 (2.15%) Power Platform
12 65 (2.12%) IaaS
13 57 (1.86%) PaaS
14 44 (1.44%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.21%) OpenShift
16 32 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (0.88%) Azure AKS
19 26 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
19 26 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 448 (14.62%) DNS
2 334 (10.90%) Firewall
3 305 (9.95%) DHCP
4 246 (8.03%) VPN
5 213 (6.95%) TCP/IP
6 175 (5.71%) LAN
7 163 (5.32%) WAN
8 153 (4.99%) Wi-Fi
9 100 (3.26%) SAN
10 75 (2.45%) Network Security
11 65 (2.12%) VLAN
12 50 (1.63%) SSL
13 48 (1.57%) BGP
14 47 (1.53%) NAS
15 43 (1.40%) Internet
16 39 (1.27%) Wireless
17 37 (1.21%) OSPF
18 36 (1.17%) VoIP
19 31 (1.01%) SD-WAN
19 31 (1.01%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 286 (9.33%) SQL Server
2 62 (2.02%) Oracle Database
3 45 (1.47%) Power BI
4 34 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
5 33 (1.08%) Relational Database
6 27 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 25 (0.82%) MySQL
8 22 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
9 21 (0.69%) Db2
10 17 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
11 16 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
12 15 (0.49%) RDBMS
13 11 (0.36%) NoSQL
14 10 (0.33%) GIS
14 10 (0.33%) MongoDB
14 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
15 9 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
15 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
15 9 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 9 (0.29%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 184 (6.01%) JIRA
2 69 (2.25%) Git
3 58 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.57%) MSI
5 40 (1.31%) GitLab
6 38 (1.24%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.42%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.29%) Chocolatey
10 8 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.23%) Artifactory
11 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.20%) Xcode
13 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.16%) Maven
13 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,107 (36.13%) Social Skills
2 361 (11.78%) Analytical Skills
3 336 (10.97%) Finance
4 205 (6.69%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.16%) Banking
6 108 (3.52%) Documentation Skills
7 99 (3.23%) Legal
8 85 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
9 63 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.83%) Retail
11 48 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 46 (1.50%) Military
13 38 (1.24%) Telecoms
14 36 (1.17%) Front Office
15 33 (1.08%) Investment Banking
15 33 (1.08%) Law
16 26 (0.85%) Spanish Language
17 24 (0.78%) Financial Institution
18 22 (0.72%) French Language
19 21 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 430 (14.03%) Support Engineer
2 399 (13.02%) IT Support
3 294 (9.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 288 (9.40%) Analyst
4 288 (9.40%) IT Engineer
5 243 (7.93%) IT Support Engineer
6 220 (7.18%) Senior
7 133 (4.34%) Architect
8 124 (4.05%) Desktop Support
9 122 (3.98%) 2nd Line Support
10 116 (3.79%) Developer
11 108 (3.52%) Lead
12 107 (3.49%) Cloud Engineer
13 105 (3.43%) Support Analyst
14 104 (3.39%) Desktop Engineer
15 96 (3.13%) Consultant
16 90 (2.94%) Windows Engineer
17 89 (2.90%) IT Analyst
18 81 (2.64%) Service Analyst
19 80 (2.61%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (3.95%) .NET
2 110 (3.59%) REST
3 64 (2.09%) .NET Framework
4 39 (1.27%) Middleware
5 34 (1.11%) LDAP
5 34 (1.11%) WinForms
6 31 (1.01%) 802.1X
7 29 (0.95%) JSON
7 29 (0.95%) Web Services
8 28 (0.91%) Microsoft Graph
9 27 (0.88%) Kafka
9 27 (0.88%) Software Packaging
9 27 (0.88%) WPF
10 26 (0.85%) XML
11 24 (0.78%) HTML
12 23 (0.75%) CSS
13 21 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
13 21 (0.69%) RESTful
14 18 (0.59%) SAML
15 17 (0.55%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 307 (10.02%) Onboarding
2 161 (5.25%) Data Centre
3 156 (5.09%) PKI
4 83 (2.71%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.68%) Clustering
5 82 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
6 75 (2.45%) Cloud Native
7 72 (2.35%) Driving Licence
8 69 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
9 61 (1.99%) Replication
10 57 (1.86%) Hybrid Cloud
10 57 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
11 56 (1.83%) Security Posture
12 52 (1.70%) Video Conferencing
13 45 (1.47%) Virtual Team
14 41 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 38 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
16 35 (1.14%) Operational Technology
17 34 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
18 32 (1.04%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 759 (24.77%) Linux
2 751 (24.51%) Windows Server
3 499 (16.29%) Windows 10
4 196 (6.40%) Mac OS
5 161 (5.25%) Unix
6 139 (4.54%) Android
7 137 (4.47%) Apple iOS
8 125 (4.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 79 (2.58%) Windows Server 2019
10 54 (1.76%) Windows Server 2016
11 40 (1.31%) Ubuntu
12 39 (1.27%) AIX
13 36 (1.17%) Windows 7
13 36 (1.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 25 (0.82%) Solaris
15 22 (0.72%) VMS
16 21 (0.69%) CentOS
17 18 (0.59%) Windows Server 2008
18 10 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 696 (22.72%) Problem-Solving
2 515 (16.81%) ITIL
3 469 (15.31%) Customer Service
4 379 (12.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 373 (12.17%) Migration
6 338 (11.03%) ITSM
7 293 (9.56%) DevOps
8 274 (8.94%) Continuous Improvement
9 268 (8.75%) CI/CD
10 267 (8.71%) Agile
11 236 (7.70%) Service Management
12 212 (6.92%) Infrastructure as Code
13 202 (6.59%) High Availability
14 200 (6.53%) Change Management
15 186 (6.07%) Stakeholder Management
16 176 (5.74%) Cybersecurity
17 175 (5.71%) Service Delivery
18 164 (5.35%) Disaster Recovery
18 164 (5.35%) Validation
19 155 (5.06%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 663 (21.64%) PowerShell
2 322 (10.51%) Python
3 311 (10.15%) SQL
4 162 (5.29%) Bash
5 148 (4.83%) C#
6 81 (2.64%) Java
7 68 (2.22%) JavaScript
8 62 (2.02%) PL/SQL
8 62 (2.02%) T-SQL
9 49 (1.60%) C++
10 39 (1.27%) Bicep
11 25 (0.82%) Search Processing Language
12 24 (0.78%) Shell Script
13 23 (0.75%) Perl
14 21 (0.69%) VB
14 21 (0.69%) VBA
15 20 (0.65%) VBScript
16 16 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
16 16 (0.52%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.49%) C
Qualifications
1 911 (29.73%) Security Cleared
2 570 (18.60%) SC Cleared
3 309 (10.08%) Degree
4 301 (9.82%) DV Cleared
5 121 (3.95%) Microsoft Certification
6 102 (3.33%) Cisco Certification
7 79 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
8 67 (2.19%) Azure Certification
8 67 (2.19%) CISSP
9 60 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
10 53 (1.73%) AWS Certification
11 45 (1.47%) CCNA
12 43 (1.40%) MCSE
13 37 (1.21%) A+ Certification
14 34 (1.11%) CCNP
15 29 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 27 (0.88%) CompTIA Security+
16 27 (0.88%) DBS Check
17 26 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
18 25 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 139 (4.54%) SLA
2 117 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 87 (2.84%) QA
4 86 (2.81%) NIST
5 40 (1.31%) GDPR
6 28 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
7 26 (0.85%) PCI DSS
8 25 (0.82%) NCSC
9 16 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.49%) PMO
11 14 (0.46%) Data Quality
11 14 (0.46%) GxP
12 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
13 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.33%) GRC
14 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.29%) GMP
15 9 (0.29%) NIST 800
15 9 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,198 (39.10%) Active Directory
2 411 (13.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 167 (5.45%) Hyper-V
4 132 (4.31%) VMware ESXi
5 110 (3.59%) vSphere
6 104 (3.39%) Virtual Machines
7 103 (3.36%) Docker
8 78 (2.55%) Virtual Desktop
9 66 (2.15%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.21%) Firmware
11 32 (1.04%) BitLocker
12 25 (0.82%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.59%) KVM
14 15 (0.49%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
15 9 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
18 6 (0.20%) UAG
Systems Management
1 426 (13.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 278 (9.07%) SCCM
3 239 (7.80%) Terraform
4 210 (6.85%) Ansible
5 162 (5.29%) Kubernetes
6 108 (3.52%) vCenter Server
7 63 (2.06%) SCOM
8 56 (1.83%) Jamf Pro
9 40 (1.31%) Progress Chef
10 39 (1.27%) FortiGate
10 39 (1.27%) WSUS
11 35 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
12 30 (0.98%) Puppet
13 29 (0.95%) Grafana
14 28 (0.91%) Prometheus
15 25 (0.82%) Nagios
16 23 (0.75%) Packer
17 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
18 20 (0.65%) Nessus
18 20 (0.65%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,329 (43.37%) Microsoft
2 541 (17.66%) VMware
3 309 (10.08%) ServiceNow
4 214 (6.98%) Cisco
5 202 (6.59%) Oracle
6 198 (6.46%) Citrix
7 134 (4.37%) Splunk
8 93 (3.04%) Apple
9 89 (2.90%) SolarWinds
10 81 (2.64%) CyberArk
11 79 (2.58%) Red Hat
12 76 (2.48%) HP
13 71 (2.32%) Google
14 69 (2.25%) BeyondTrust
15 65 (2.12%) Dell
16 62 (2.02%) Remedy
17 58 (1.89%) F5
18 54 (1.76%) IBM
19 52 (1.70%) Juniper
20 44 (1.44%) Palo Alto