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 26 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 22 19 17
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,823 2,789 4,083
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 7.59% 8.26% 9.33%
As % of the Operating Systems category 59.34% 58.86% 62.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,928 1,786 2,739
10th Percentile £163 £180 £158
25th Percentile £204 £227 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.88%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £575
90th Percentile £638 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £330 £363 £375
% change year-on-year -8.97% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 116 233
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.13 £17.22
Median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £21.31
Median % change year-on-year -9.02% +13.47% +6.55%
75th Percentile £43.75 £53.19 £49.73
90th Percentile £67.84 £66.88 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £20.35
% change year-on-year -9.02% +18.81% +10.01%

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 4,757 4,738 6,541
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.79% 14.04% 14.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,103 2,962 4,452
10th Percentile £175 £200 £180
25th Percentile £268 £314 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £600
90th Percentile £662 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £430
% change year-on-year -2.94% -1.16% -4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 175 322
10th Percentile £15.38 £16.10 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.00 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £41.00 £32.25
Median % change year-on-year -38.66% +27.13% +29.00%
75th Percentile £62.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.60 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.75 £26.09
% change year-on-year -29.65% +37.03% +18.59%

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 26 December 2025.

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 26 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Top 17 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 26 December 2025. 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 -1 2,497 £390 -2.50% 1,566
UK excluding London -2 1,909 £330 -8.97% 1,487
London -18 734 £450 +9.09% 267
Work from Home -13 555 £425 -5.56% 565
South East 0 518 £375 -6.98% 457
North of England -4 427 £250 -28.57% 340
South West +4 317 £425 +6.25% 202
Midlands -3 310 £390 +20.00% 218
North West -1 244 £305 -12.86% 177
West Midlands -5 212 £449 +38.00% 120
East of England +4 193 £228 -30.00% 186
Yorkshire -13 154 £275 -21.48% 142
Scotland -11 110 £450 +2.86% 68
East Midlands +2 98 £215 -39.61% 91
Wales -1 44 £180 -24.21% 45
North East 0 32 £188 -41.41% 29
Northern Ireland -10 14 £203 +30.65% 15

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
1 239 (8.47%) Microsoft Exchange
2 182 (6.45%) SharePoint
3 76 (2.69%) Confluence
4 49 (1.74%) Apache
5 48 (1.70%) IIS
6 27 (0.96%) WebLogic
7 21 (0.74%) WebSphere
8 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
9 17 (0.60%) JBoss
10 16 (0.57%) nginx
11 12 (0.43%) Exchange Server 2010
11 12 (0.43%) SharePoint Server
12 11 (0.39%) SAS
12 11 (0.39%) WebSphere Application Server
13 10 (0.35%) iPlanet
14 9 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
14 9 (0.32%) Tomcat
14 9 (0.32%) TPMS
14 9 (0.32%) Tuxedo
15 7 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2007
Applications
1 277 (9.81%) Microsoft Office
2 84 (2.98%) Microsoft Excel
3 26 (0.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.35%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 10 (0.35%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) Acrobat
6 3 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.071%) Adobe Premiere
7 2 (0.071%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.071%) Windchill
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.035%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.035%) InDesign
8 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.035%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 22 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (0.28%) assyst
3 5 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.14%) Oracle 11i
5 2 (0.071%) Eikon
5 2 (0.071%) Fidessa
5 2 (0.071%) Maximo
5 2 (0.071%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.071%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.071%) SystmOne
5 2 (0.071%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.035%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.035%) Dynamics CRM
6 1 (0.035%) Eze OMS
6 1 (0.035%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.035%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.035%) Primavera
6 1 (0.035%) RMDS
6 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.035%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 750 (26.57%) Microsoft 365
2 670 (23.73%) Azure
3 274 (9.71%) AWS
4 245 (8.68%) Entra ID
5 84 (2.98%) OneDrive
6 80 (2.83%) GCP
7 75 (2.66%) SaaS
8 67 (2.37%) Azure DevOps
8 67 (2.37%) GitHub
9 54 (1.91%) IaaS
10 45 (1.59%) Google Workspace
11 38 (1.35%) PaaS
12 37 (1.31%) Power Platform
13 36 (1.28%) Azure Monitor
14 31 (1.10%) Amazon S3
14 31 (1.10%) Azure Sentinel
15 29 (1.03%) Amazon EC2
15 29 (1.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 25 (0.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 24 (0.85%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 367 (13.00%) DNS
2 319 (11.30%) Firewall
3 215 (7.62%) DHCP
4 205 (7.26%) TCP/IP
5 175 (6.20%) VPN
6 104 (3.68%) Wi-Fi
7 98 (3.47%) LAN
8 94 (3.33%) WAN
9 93 (3.29%) Network Security
10 71 (2.52%) Wireless
11 63 (2.23%) VLAN
12 61 (2.16%) SSH
13 51 (1.81%) HTTP
14 48 (1.70%) SAN
15 36 (1.28%) Cisco IOS
15 36 (1.28%) Skype
16 35 (1.24%) SSL
17 34 (1.20%) VoIP
18 30 (1.06%) FTP
18 30 (1.06%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 127 (4.50%) SQL Server
2 82 (2.90%) Oracle Database
3 64 (2.27%) Relational Database
4 48 (1.70%) MySQL
5 34 (1.20%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
8 14 (0.50%) Power BI
9 12 (0.43%) Amazon Aurora
9 12 (0.43%) BigQuery
10 11 (0.39%) Elasticsearch
11 10 (0.35%) NoSQL
12 9 (0.32%) GIS
12 9 (0.32%) MongoDB
12 9 (0.32%) RDBMS
13 7 (0.25%) Data Lake
13 7 (0.25%) Data Warehouse
13 7 (0.25%) DB2
13 7 (0.25%) SAP HANA
14 6 (0.21%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 159 (5.63%) JIRA
2 102 (3.61%) Jenkins
3 99 (3.51%) Git
4 60 (2.13%) GitLab
5 39 (1.38%) Eclipse
6 35 (1.24%) Visual Studio
7 33 (1.17%) MSI
8 27 (0.96%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.81%) Android Studio
10 22 (0.78%) Browser DevTools
11 21 (0.74%) Xcode
12 18 (0.64%) Artifactory
12 18 (0.64%) Sonatype Nexus
13 17 (0.60%) Vagrant
14 15 (0.53%) InstallShield
15 14 (0.50%) Bitbucket Server
15 14 (0.50%) CA Release Automation
16 12 (0.43%) Burp Suite
16 12 (0.43%) Metasploit
17 11 (0.39%) AdminStudio
General
1 1,079 (38.22%) Social Skills
2 338 (11.97%) Finance
3 255 (9.03%) Public Sector
4 251 (8.89%) Analytical Skills
5 125 (4.43%) Banking
6 116 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
7 86 (3.05%) Legal
8 69 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.27%) Manufacturing
10 54 (1.91%) Military
11 48 (1.70%) Telecoms
12 46 (1.63%) Presentation Skills
13 44 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 42 (1.49%) Retail
15 33 (1.17%) Aerospace
16 32 (1.13%) Marketing
17 26 (0.92%) Front Office
18 25 (0.89%) Law
19 24 (0.85%) Electronics
20 19 (0.67%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 428 (15.16%) Support Engineer
2 351 (12.43%) Analyst
3 331 (11.73%) IT Support
4 192 (6.80%) IT Engineer
5 171 (6.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 156 (5.53%) Windows Engineer
7 154 (5.46%) Desktop Support
8 149 (5.28%) Architect
8 149 (5.28%) Support Analyst
9 148 (5.24%) Senior
10 142 (5.03%) IT Support Engineer
11 136 (4.82%) Desktop Engineer
12 125 (4.43%) Deployment Engineer
13 116 (4.11%) 2nd Line Support
13 116 (4.11%) Technical Support
14 106 (3.75%) Desktop Support Engineer
15 104 (3.68%) Developer
16 93 (3.29%) Platform Engineer
17 84 (2.98%) DevOps Engineer
18 83 (2.94%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (2.62%) .NET
2 58 (2.05%) LDAP
3 55 (1.95%) REST
4 46 (1.63%) Middleware
5 41 (1.45%) .NET Framework
6 39 (1.38%) OAuth
6 39 (1.38%) SAML
7 38 (1.35%) React
8 36 (1.28%) AngularJS
9 33 (1.17%) WPF
10 32 (1.13%) OpenID
11 31 (1.10%) Web Services
12 28 (0.99%) CSS
13 27 (0.96%) XML
14 26 (0.92%) Kafka
14 26 (0.92%) Node.js
15 23 (0.81%) Ajax
15 23 (0.81%) SOAP
16 22 (0.78%) GraphQL
17 19 (0.67%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 135 (4.78%) Onboarding
2 95 (3.37%) Data Centre
2 95 (3.37%) PKI
3 84 (2.98%) Driving Licence
4 65 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
5 64 (2.27%) Replication
6 58 (2.05%) Management Information System
6 58 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
7 53 (1.88%) Smartphone
8 47 (1.66%) Security Posture
9 35 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
10 33 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
10 33 (1.17%) Mobile App
11 32 (1.13%) Public Cloud
12 31 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
12 31 (1.10%) NHS
13 30 (1.06%) Clustering
13 30 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
13 30 (1.06%) Video Conferencing
14 27 (0.96%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 733 (25.97%) Linux
2 592 (20.97%) Windows 10
3 550 (19.48%) Windows Server
4 201 (7.12%) Unix
5 159 (5.63%) Mac OS
6 148 (5.24%) Android
7 103 (3.65%) Apple iOS
8 82 (2.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 66 (2.34%) Windows Server 2016
10 56 (1.98%) Windows Server 2019
11 51 (1.81%) Windows 7
12 44 (1.56%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.20%) VMS
13 34 (1.20%) Windows Server 2003
14 28 (0.99%) AIX
15 25 (0.89%) Ubuntu
16 18 (0.64%) Solaris
17 17 (0.60%) Amazon Linux
18 14 (0.50%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.43%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 504 (17.85%) Problem-Solving
2 424 (15.02%) ITIL
3 400 (14.17%) Customer Service
4 292 (10.34%) Agile
5 286 (10.13%) Migration
6 253 (8.96%) DevOps
7 250 (8.86%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 222 (7.86%) CI/CD
9 218 (7.72%) Service Management
10 216 (7.65%) Cybersecurity
11 194 (6.87%) ITSM
12 187 (6.62%) Continuous Improvement
13 166 (5.88%) Change Management
14 139 (4.92%) User Experience
15 135 (4.78%) Incident Response
16 130 (4.61%) SIEM
17 124 (4.39%) Stakeholder Management
18 122 (4.32%) Computer Science
19 119 (4.22%) Disaster Recovery
20 113 (4.00%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 547 (19.38%) PowerShell
2 372 (13.18%) Python
3 292 (10.34%) SQL
4 157 (5.56%) Java
5 133 (4.71%) C#
6 125 (4.43%) Bash
7 86 (3.05%) JavaScript
8 81 (2.87%) Perl
9 68 (2.41%) C++
10 48 (1.70%) PL/SQL
11 41 (1.45%) Shell Script
12 32 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
13 30 (1.06%) VBScript
14 29 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 28 (0.99%) Groovy
15 28 (0.99%) VB
16 25 (0.89%) VBA
17 21 (0.74%) C
18 16 (0.57%) TypeScript
19 15 (0.53%) Go
Qualifications
1 846 (29.97%) Security Cleared
2 566 (20.05%) SC Cleared
3 295 (10.45%) Degree
4 236 (8.36%) DV Cleared
5 177 (6.27%) Microsoft Certification
6 88 (3.12%) Computer Science Degree
7 69 (2.44%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.91%) A+ Certification
9 53 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 52 (1.84%) MCSE
11 43 (1.52%) ITIL Certification
12 42 (1.49%) CISSP
13 38 (1.35%) AWS Certification
14 36 (1.28%) CompTIA Security+
15 34 (1.20%) BPSS Clearance
16 32 (1.13%) CCNA
16 32 (1.13%) CCNP
17 30 (1.06%) DBS Check
18 26 (0.92%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 26 (0.92%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (3.22%) SLA
2 82 (2.90%) GDPR
3 70 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 62 (2.20%) QA
5 53 (1.88%) NIST
6 25 (0.89%) PCI DSS
7 17 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
8 11 (0.39%) HIPAA
8 11 (0.39%) NCSC
9 9 (0.32%) GLBA
9 9 (0.32%) PMO
10 8 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.21%) COBIT
11 6 (0.21%) MiFID
12 5 (0.18%) Accessibility
12 5 (0.18%) SOC 2
13 4 (0.14%) Disclosure Scotland
13 4 (0.14%) NIST 800
14 3 (0.11%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 3 (0.11%) Data Quality
System Software
1 1,013 (35.88%) Active Directory
2 246 (8.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 123 (4.36%) Docker
4 91 (3.22%) Hyper-V
5 60 (2.13%) Virtual Desktop
6 53 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
7 49 (1.74%) vSphere
8 44 (1.56%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (1.17%) VMware NSX
10 22 (0.78%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.71%) DFS Replication
11 20 (0.71%) Firmware
12 17 (0.60%) Terminal Services
13 15 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
13 15 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
14 13 (0.46%) XenApp
15 12 (0.43%) NFS
16 10 (0.35%) Dovecot
16 10 (0.35%) Postfix
16 10 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 397 (14.06%) SCCM
2 297 (10.52%) Microsoft Intune
3 190 (6.73%) Terraform
4 160 (5.67%) Ansible
5 108 (3.83%) Kubernetes
6 66 (2.34%) vCenter Server
7 63 (2.23%) Single Sign-On
8 54 (1.91%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 42 (1.49%) Grafana
10 39 (1.38%) Jamf Pro
11 30 (1.06%) WSUS
12 29 (1.03%) Nessus
13 28 (0.99%) SCOM
14 27 (0.96%) Prometheus
15 26 (0.92%) Progress Chef
16 21 (0.74%) Microsoft Clustering
17 17 (0.60%) NetBackup
18 16 (0.57%) Proxmox
19 15 (0.53%) Puppet
19 15 (0.53%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,208 (42.79%) Microsoft
2 350 (12.40%) VMware
3 255 (9.03%) ServiceNow
4 232 (8.22%) Oracle
5 180 (6.38%) Citrix
6 179 (6.34%) Cisco
7 154 (5.46%) Splunk
8 83 (2.94%) Apple
9 79 (2.80%) HP
10 68 (2.41%) Red Hat
11 63 (2.23%) Dell
12 58 (2.05%) IBM
13 55 (1.95%) Veeam
14 51 (1.81%) Google
14 51 (1.81%) SolarWinds
15 49 (1.74%) SAP
16 43 (1.52%) CyberArk
17 42 (1.49%) NetApp
18 41 (1.45%) AppDynamics
19 40 (1.42%) CrowdStrike