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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,180 2,664 3,223
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.92% 8.08% 8.35%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.63% 59.85% 59.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,039 1,755 2,139
10th Percentile £170 £170 £175
25th Percentile £224 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -2.94% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £553 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +7.20% -11.76% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 286 223 212
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.00
25th Percentile £16.90 £17.89 £16.00
Median hourly rate £24.00 £22.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.09% - -2.22%
75th Percentile £54.13 £28.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £19.64 £21.59
% change year-on-year +31.14% -9.06% +0.42%

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 5,245 4,451 5,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.76% 13.51% 14.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,324 2,831 3,544
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £669 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 363 271 306
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -29.32% -16.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.80 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £25.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year +3.36% -47.37% +47.29%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 2,765 £415 +1.84% 1,278
UK excluding London -14 2,051 £402 +7.20% 1,042
London -14 931 £425 - 372
Work from Home -15 612 £465 +3.33% 433
South East -6 571 £475 -2.86% 332
North of England -6 498 £325 - 233
North West +4 299 £335 -4.29% 118
South West -15 281 £475 +35.71% 126
Midlands -17 269 £385 -3.75% 153
East of England -4 197 £300 -12.41% 166
Yorkshire -17 172 £313 -3.85% 78
West Midlands -25 170 £419 -2.62% 98
Scotland -3 167 £350 -22.22% 40
East Midlands +3 95 £275 +37.50% 53
Wales +3 65 £446 +62.27% 16
North East -30 31 £250 -4.76% 47
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 13
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
1 261 (8.21%) SharePoint
2 241 (7.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 66 (2.08%) IIS
4 57 (1.79%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.57%) nginx
7 17 (0.53%) Apache
8 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
9 6 (0.19%) Documentum
9 6 (0.19%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.16%) Appian
10 5 (0.16%) Camunda
10 5 (0.16%) SAS
10 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
11 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
12 3 (0.094%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 214 (6.73%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.26%) 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 (0.094%) 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 (1.76%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
2 10 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
4 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.094%) assyst
8 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle ERP
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
9 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,000 (31.45%) Microsoft 365
2 993 (31.23%) Azure
3 499 (15.69%) Entra ID
4 337 (10.60%) AWS
5 146 (4.59%) OneDrive
6 118 (3.71%) Azure DevOps
7 100 (3.14%) GCP
8 78 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
9 76 (2.39%) SaaS
10 72 (2.26%) Power Platform
11 69 (2.17%) GitHub
12 61 (1.92%) IaaS
13 47 (1.48%) PaaS
14 46 (1.45%) Azure Sentinel
15 42 (1.32%) OpenShift
16 29 (0.91%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
18 24 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
18 24 (0.75%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 477 (15.00%) DNS
2 355 (11.16%) Firewall
3 340 (10.69%) DHCP
4 275 (8.65%) VPN
5 229 (7.20%) TCP/IP
6 155 (4.87%) WAN
7 152 (4.78%) LAN
8 139 (4.37%) Wi-Fi
9 96 (3.02%) SAN
10 91 (2.86%) Network Security
11 90 (2.83%) VLAN
12 50 (1.57%) Wireless
13 47 (1.48%) NAS
14 45 (1.42%) Internet
14 45 (1.42%) SSL
15 38 (1.19%) VSAN
16 35 (1.10%) Skype
17 30 (0.94%) BGP
17 30 (0.94%) SD-WAN
18 28 (0.88%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 295 (9.28%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.89%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.67%) Power BI
4 37 (1.16%) PostgreSQL
5 36 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 34 (1.07%) Relational Database
7 22 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 21 (0.66%) MySQL
9 17 (0.53%) Data Warehouse
9 17 (0.53%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 12 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.31%) Db2
14 10 (0.31%) Oracle Reports
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
1 162 (5.09%) JIRA
2 74 (2.33%) Git
3 57 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.48%) MSI
5 44 (1.38%) GitLab
6 26 (0.82%) 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%) Selenium
9 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
12 5 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,156 (36.35%) Social Skills
2 397 (12.48%) Analytical Skills
3 372 (11.70%) Finance
4 170 (5.35%) Public Sector
5 155 (4.87%) Banking
6 114 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
7 88 (2.77%) Legal
8 77 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
9 75 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 60 (1.89%) Manufacturing
11 54 (1.70%) Retail
12 51 (1.60%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.29%) Front Office
14 38 (1.19%) Law
15 33 (1.04%) Investment Banking
16 30 (0.94%) Military
17 28 (0.88%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.79%) French Language
19 24 (0.75%) Financial Institution
20 23 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 509 (16.01%) Support Engineer
2 434 (13.65%) IT Support
3 340 (10.69%) IT Engineer
4 333 (10.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 283 (8.90%) IT Support Engineer
6 266 (8.36%) Analyst
7 248 (7.80%) Senior
8 142 (4.47%) Desktop Support
9 128 (4.03%) 2nd Line Support
10 122 (3.84%) Architect
11 119 (3.74%) Lead
12 117 (3.68%) Desktop Engineer
13 116 (3.65%) Cloud Engineer
14 110 (3.46%) Windows Engineer
15 105 (3.30%) Support Analyst
16 103 (3.24%) Consultant
17 101 (3.18%) Developer
18 87 (2.74%) 1st Line Support
19 83 (2.61%) Service Analyst
20 82 (2.58%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (8.43%) Terraform
2 132 (4.15%) .NET
3 117 (3.68%) REST
4 66 (2.08%) .NET Framework
5 43 (1.35%) Middleware
6 36 (1.13%) JSON
7 34 (1.07%) LDAP
8 30 (0.94%) WinForms
9 29 (0.91%) XML
10 28 (0.88%) Kafka
10 28 (0.88%) Software Packaging
10 28 (0.88%) WPF
11 27 (0.85%) HTML
12 23 (0.72%) ARM Templates
13 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 20 (0.63%) CSS
15 19 (0.60%) .NET Core
15 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
15 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
16 18 (0.57%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 367 (11.54%) Onboarding
2 183 (5.75%) Data Centre
3 161 (5.06%) PKI
4 97 (3.05%) Management Information System
5 86 (2.70%) Clustering
5 86 (2.70%) Hybrid Cloud
6 80 (2.52%) Cloud Native
6 80 (2.52%) Driving Licence
7 77 (2.42%) Enterprise Software
8 72 (2.26%) Video Conferencing
9 68 (2.14%) Replication
10 63 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
11 48 (1.51%) Security Posture
12 46 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
13 42 (1.32%) Enterprise Storage
13 42 (1.32%) Virtual Team
14 40 (1.26%) Operational Technology
15 39 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.19%) CMDB
16 38 (1.19%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 869 (27.33%) Windows Server
2 779 (24.50%) Linux
3 551 (17.33%) Windows 10
4 194 (6.10%) Mac OS
5 142 (4.47%) Unix
6 134 (4.21%) Android
6 134 (4.21%) Apple iOS
7 130 (4.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 76 (2.39%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.73%) Windows 7
10 51 (1.60%) Ubuntu
11 50 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
12 41 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.13%) AIX
14 33 (1.04%) CentOS
15 24 (0.75%) VMS
16 18 (0.57%) Solaris
16 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
17 12 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
18 11 (0.35%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 755 (23.74%) Problem-Solving
2 584 (18.36%) ITIL
3 537 (16.89%) Customer Service
4 428 (13.46%) ITSM
5 423 (13.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 400 (12.58%) Migration
7 325 (10.22%) Continuous Improvement
8 308 (9.69%) DevOps
9 301 (9.47%) Service Management
10 257 (8.08%) Infrastructure as Code
11 256 (8.05%) CI/CD
12 248 (7.80%) Agile
13 226 (7.11%) Change Management
14 217 (6.82%) Stakeholder Management
15 206 (6.48%) Disaster Recovery
16 195 (6.13%) Service Delivery
17 193 (6.07%) High Availability
18 192 (6.04%) Root Cause Analysis
19 189 (5.94%) Cybersecurity
20 179 (5.63%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 771 (24.25%) PowerShell
2 334 (10.50%) Python
3 312 (9.81%) SQL
4 184 (5.79%) Bash
5 142 (4.47%) C#
6 70 (2.20%) Java
7 60 (1.89%) T-SQL
8 53 (1.67%) JavaScript
9 51 (1.60%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.51%) Bicep
11 30 (0.94%) C++
11 30 (0.94%) VBScript
12 28 (0.88%) VB
13 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
14 22 (0.69%) Perl
15 19 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.57%) VBA
17 16 (0.50%) TypeScript
18 11 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
19 10 (0.31%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 968 (30.44%) Security Cleared
2 602 (18.93%) SC Cleared
3 349 (10.97%) DV Cleared
4 293 (9.21%) Degree
5 124 (3.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 93 (2.92%) Cisco Certification
7 87 (2.74%) Azure Certification
8 74 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
9 64 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
10 62 (1.95%) CISSP
11 56 (1.76%) AWS Certification
12 54 (1.70%) A+ Certification
13 47 (1.48%) CCNA
13 47 (1.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 41 (1.29%) DBS Check
15 38 (1.19%) CCNP
16 35 (1.10%) MCSE
17 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 28 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
19 27 (0.85%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 164 (5.16%) SLA
2 114 (3.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.96%) QA
4 81 (2.55%) NIST
5 35 (1.10%) GDPR
6 33 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
7 30 (0.94%) NCSC
8 23 (0.72%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.50%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.44%) Accessibility
11 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.44%) GxP
12 13 (0.41%) PMO
13 11 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 10 (0.31%) GRC
15 9 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 9 (0.28%) GMP
System Software
1 1,303 (40.97%) Active Directory
2 473 (14.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 215 (6.76%) Hyper-V
4 150 (4.72%) VMware ESXi
5 131 (4.12%) vSphere
6 110 (3.46%) Docker
7 96 (3.02%) Virtual Desktop
7 96 (3.02%) Virtual Machines
8 83 (2.61%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.26%) BitLocker
10 37 (1.16%) Firmware
11 24 (0.75%) vCloud
12 17 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.35%) KVM
15 10 (0.31%) NFS
15 10 (0.31%) XenApp
16 9 (0.28%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
17 6 (0.19%) Squid
Systems Management
1 442 (13.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 338 (10.63%) SCCM
3 236 (7.42%) Ansible
4 166 (5.22%) Kubernetes
5 123 (3.87%) vCenter Server
6 94 (2.96%) SCOM
7 50 (1.57%) Jamf Pro
8 48 (1.51%) WSUS
9 37 (1.16%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
11 31 (0.97%) Prometheus
12 28 (0.88%) Grafana
12 28 (0.88%) Puppet
13 27 (0.85%) Nagios
13 27 (0.85%) WMI
14 26 (0.82%) NetBackup
15 25 (0.79%) FortiGate
16 24 (0.75%) Packer
17 22 (0.69%) VxRail
17 22 (0.69%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,477 (46.45%) Microsoft
2 621 (19.53%) VMware
3 374 (11.76%) ServiceNow
4 222 (6.98%) Cisco
5 197 (6.19%) Oracle
6 175 (5.50%) Citrix
7 115 (3.62%) Splunk
8 108 (3.40%) Apple
9 96 (3.02%) CyberArk
10 79 (2.48%) Google
10 79 (2.48%) SolarWinds
11 77 (2.42%) BeyondTrust
12 76 (2.39%) Red Hat
13 68 (2.14%) HP
14 60 (1.89%) Remedy
15 56 (1.76%) Dell
16 49 (1.54%) NetApp
17 48 (1.51%) BMC
17 48 (1.51%) Palo Alto
18 45 (1.42%) Meraki