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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,160 2,601 3,232
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.90% 7.93% 8.32%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.61% 59.92% 59.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,021 1,714 2,177
10th Percentile £170 £169 £175
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -8.33% +4.65%
75th Percentile £556 £563 £575
90th Percentile £650 £653 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £395 £450
% change year-on-year +4.43% -12.22% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 214 231
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.19 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £15.44
Median hourly rate £25.75 £19.68 £21.80
Median % change year-on-year +30.84% -9.72% -3.11%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £53.38
90th Percentile £73.49 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.64
% change year-on-year +36.46% -8.59% -3.13%

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 5,214 4,341 5,435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.73% 13.23% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,307 2,767 3,591
10th Percentile £193 £190 £200
25th Percentile £318 £308 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.26% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £668 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 263 331
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.42
25th Percentile £17.50 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.50 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +6.12% -10.91% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.70 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.33 £23.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +18.83% -40.26% +40.00%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 2,754 £425 +4.29% 1,559
UK excluding London -13 2,043 £413 +4.43% 1,069
London -12 922 £425 - 644
Work from Home -9 631 £475 +5.56% 488
South East -7 573 £475 -3.06% 357
North of England -6 503 £328 +0.77% 233
North West +3 293 £344 -1.71% 124
South West -13 287 £488 +39.29% 143
Midlands -22 259 £385 -3.75% 134
East of England -5 192 £340 +1.49% 151
Yorkshire -17 183 £324 +7.92% 80
West Midlands -29 164 £425 - 89
Scotland -5 163 £375 -19.35% 52
East Midlands +6 91 £270 +35.00% 45
Wales +4 64 £425 +54.55% 21
North East -30 31 £250 -4.76% 41
Northern Ireland -1 16 £139 -30.75% 13
Channel Islands +1 2 £518 -

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
1 254 (8.04%) SharePoint
2 247 (7.82%) Microsoft Exchange
3 69 (2.18%) IIS
4 59 (1.87%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 17 (0.54%) nginx
7 16 (0.51%) Apache
8 15 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
8 15 (0.47%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.44%) HCL Notes
10 9 (0.28%) NetWeaver
11 8 (0.25%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.19%) Documentum
13 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
13 5 (0.16%) Appian
13 5 (0.16%) Camunda
13 5 (0.16%) SAS
14 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
15 3 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2010
15 3 (0.095%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 208 (6.58%) Microsoft Office
2 70 (2.22%) 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 (0.095%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.095%) Houdini
6 3 (0.095%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.032%) InDesign
8 1 (0.032%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 57 (1.80%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.32%) Finacle
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
7 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 3 (0.095%) assyst
9 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
10 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
10 1 (0.032%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.032%) Oracle BRM
10 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 987 (31.23%) Azure
2 965 (30.54%) Microsoft 365
3 485 (15.35%) Entra ID
4 341 (10.79%) AWS
5 139 (4.40%) OneDrive
6 116 (3.67%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (3.32%) GCP
8 77 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
9 75 (2.37%) Power Platform
9 75 (2.37%) SaaS
10 73 (2.31%) GitHub
11 66 (2.09%) IaaS
12 51 (1.61%) PaaS
13 44 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
14 39 (1.23%) OpenShift
15 32 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
18 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
19 25 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 474 (15.00%) DNS
2 351 (11.11%) Firewall
3 338 (10.70%) DHCP
4 274 (8.67%) VPN
5 227 (7.18%) TCP/IP
6 156 (4.94%) LAN
6 156 (4.94%) WAN
7 142 (4.49%) Wi-Fi
8 99 (3.13%) SAN
9 85 (2.69%) Network Security
9 85 (2.69%) VLAN
10 48 (1.52%) NAS
11 47 (1.49%) SSL
12 45 (1.42%) Wireless
13 44 (1.39%) Internet
14 39 (1.23%) VSAN
15 35 (1.11%) Skype
16 34 (1.08%) BGP
17 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
18 27 (0.85%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (9.68%) SQL Server
2 59 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 56 (1.77%) Power BI
4 36 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 35 (1.11%) Relational Database
6 33 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
7 25 (0.79%) MySQL
8 21 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (0.54%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 13 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.32%) Db2
14 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
15 9 (0.28%) SAP HANA
16 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
16 8 (0.25%) MS Access
16 8 (0.25%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 172 (5.44%) JIRA
2 77 (2.44%) Git
3 59 (1.87%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.52%) MSI
5 42 (1.33%) GitLab
6 36 (1.14%) Visual Studio
7 19 (0.60%) Bitbucket
8 17 (0.54%) Eclipse
9 10 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 8 (0.25%) Artifactory
10 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.22%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.22%) Selenium
11 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
13 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
13 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
13 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,147 (36.30%) Social Skills
2 399 (12.63%) Analytical Skills
3 375 (11.87%) Finance
4 182 (5.76%) Public Sector
5 162 (5.13%) Banking
6 107 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 91 (2.88%) Legal
8 75 (2.37%) Organisational Skills
9 68 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 57 (1.80%) Manufacturing
10 57 (1.80%) Retail
11 48 (1.52%) Telecoms
12 40 (1.27%) Front Office
13 38 (1.20%) Military
14 37 (1.17%) Law
15 33 (1.04%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.89%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.79%) Financial Institution
18 24 (0.76%) French Language
19 21 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 487 (15.41%) Support Engineer
2 421 (13.32%) IT Support
3 326 (10.32%) IT Engineer
4 324 (10.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 272 (8.61%) IT Support Engineer
6 269 (8.51%) Analyst
7 242 (7.66%) Senior
8 140 (4.43%) Desktop Support
9 132 (4.18%) Architect
10 128 (4.05%) 2nd Line Support
11 117 (3.70%) Cloud Engineer
12 114 (3.61%) Desktop Engineer
12 114 (3.61%) Lead
13 109 (3.45%) Developer
14 106 (3.35%) Windows Engineer
15 104 (3.29%) Support Analyst
16 102 (3.23%) Consultant
17 86 (2.72%) 1st Line Support
18 82 (2.59%) IT Analyst
19 81 (2.56%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (4.18%) .NET
2 117 (3.70%) REST
3 67 (2.12%) .NET Framework
4 43 (1.36%) Middleware
5 36 (1.14%) JSON
6 32 (1.01%) WinForms
7 31 (0.98%) LDAP
8 29 (0.92%) WPF
8 29 (0.92%) XML
9 27 (0.85%) HTML
9 27 (0.85%) Kafka
10 26 (0.82%) Software Packaging
10 26 (0.82%) Web Services
11 22 (0.70%) CSS
12 21 (0.66%) ARM Templates
12 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
12 21 (0.66%) RESTful
13 20 (0.63%) SAML
14 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
14 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 358 (11.33%) Onboarding
2 181 (5.73%) Data Centre
3 161 (5.09%) PKI
4 91 (2.88%) Management Information System
5 88 (2.78%) Clustering
6 84 (2.66%) Enterprise Software
7 82 (2.59%) Cloud Native
7 82 (2.59%) Hybrid Cloud
8 78 (2.47%) Driving Licence
9 68 (2.15%) Video Conferencing
10 65 (2.06%) Replication
10 65 (2.06%) Self-Motivation
11 51 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
11 51 (1.61%) Security Posture
12 43 (1.36%) Virtual Team
13 40 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
13 40 (1.27%) Operational Technology
14 39 (1.23%) Enterprise Storage
15 38 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
16 36 (1.14%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 839 (26.55%) Windows Server
2 790 (25.00%) Linux
3 544 (17.22%) Windows 10
4 192 (6.08%) Mac OS
5 149 (4.72%) Unix
6 139 (4.40%) Android
7 137 (4.34%) Apple iOS
8 130 (4.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 77 (2.44%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.74%) Windows 7
11 50 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
12 46 (1.46%) Ubuntu
13 40 (1.27%) Windows Server 2012
14 35 (1.11%) AIX
15 31 (0.98%) CentOS
16 23 (0.73%) VMS
17 20 (0.63%) Windows Server 2008
18 19 (0.60%) Solaris
19 11 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
20 10 (0.32%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 756 (23.92%) Problem-Solving
2 569 (18.01%) ITIL
3 512 (16.20%) Customer Service
4 414 (13.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 410 (12.97%) ITSM
6 402 (12.72%) Migration
7 315 (9.97%) DevOps
8 313 (9.91%) Continuous Improvement
9 288 (9.11%) Service Management
10 274 (8.67%) CI/CD
11 270 (8.54%) Agile
12 250 (7.91%) Infrastructure as Code
13 232 (7.34%) Change Management
14 207 (6.55%) Stakeholder Management
15 201 (6.36%) High Availability
16 197 (6.23%) Disaster Recovery
17 196 (6.20%) Service Delivery
18 186 (5.89%) Cybersecurity
19 179 (5.66%) Incident Management
19 179 (5.66%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 762 (24.11%) PowerShell
2 339 (10.73%) Python
3 318 (10.06%) SQL
4 186 (5.89%) Bash
5 158 (5.00%) C#
6 80 (2.53%) Java
7 67 (2.12%) JavaScript
8 61 (1.93%) T-SQL
9 56 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.49%) Bicep
11 45 (1.42%) C++
12 30 (0.95%) VBScript
13 28 (0.89%) VB
14 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (0.66%) Perl
15 21 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 18 (0.57%) VBA
17 16 (0.51%) TypeScript
18 12 (0.38%) C
19 11 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 970 (30.70%) Security Cleared
2 617 (19.53%) SC Cleared
3 330 (10.44%) DV Cleared
4 294 (9.30%) Degree
5 122 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 99 (3.13%) Cisco Certification
7 86 (2.72%) Azure Certification
8 77 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (1.96%) CISSP
10 61 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
11 57 (1.80%) AWS Certification
12 53 (1.68%) A+ Certification
13 45 (1.42%) CCNA
14 42 (1.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 36 (1.14%) CCNP
16 35 (1.11%) DBS Check
16 35 (1.11%) MCSE
17 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 27 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
19 25 (0.79%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (5.13%) SLA
2 111 (3.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 95 (3.01%) QA
4 83 (2.63%) NIST
5 39 (1.23%) GDPR
6 31 (0.98%) NCSC
7 27 (0.85%) Cyber Essentials
8 24 (0.76%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.47%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
11 14 (0.44%) GxP
12 13 (0.41%) Accessibility
12 13 (0.41%) PMO
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 10 (0.32%) GRC
15 9 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 9 (0.28%) GMP
16 8 (0.25%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,282 (40.57%) Active Directory
2 464 (14.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 205 (6.49%) Hyper-V
4 143 (4.53%) VMware ESXi
5 127 (4.02%) vSphere
6 111 (3.51%) Docker
7 99 (3.13%) Virtual Machines
8 95 (3.01%) Virtual Desktop
9 82 (2.59%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.27%) BitLocker
10 40 (1.27%) Firmware
11 20 (0.63%) vCloud
12 18 (0.57%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.32%) KVM
15 9 (0.28%) NFS
15 9 (0.28%) XenApp
15 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
16 8 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.22%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 443 (14.02%) Microsoft Intune
2 323 (10.22%) SCCM
3 271 (8.58%) Terraform
4 239 (7.56%) Ansible
5 170 (5.38%) Kubernetes
6 115 (3.64%) vCenter Server
7 82 (2.59%) SCOM
8 49 (1.55%) Jamf Pro
9 48 (1.52%) WSUS
10 44 (1.39%) Progress Chef
11 37 (1.17%) Single Sign-On
12 32 (1.01%) Puppet
13 28 (0.89%) FortiGate
14 27 (0.85%) NetBackup
15 26 (0.82%) Nagios
15 26 (0.82%) WMI
16 25 (0.79%) Packer
16 25 (0.79%) Prometheus
17 24 (0.76%) Grafana
18 23 (0.73%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,455 (46.04%) Microsoft
2 614 (19.43%) VMware
3 367 (11.61%) ServiceNow
4 217 (6.87%) Cisco
5 204 (6.46%) Oracle
6 186 (5.89%) Citrix
7 118 (3.73%) Splunk
8 106 (3.35%) Apple
9 95 (3.01%) CyberArk
10 83 (2.63%) Google
11 80 (2.53%) SolarWinds
12 76 (2.41%) Red Hat
13 74 (2.34%) BeyondTrust
14 72 (2.28%) HP
15 61 (1.93%) Remedy
16 58 (1.84%) Dell
17 51 (1.61%) Palo Alto
18 49 (1.55%) BMC
19 46 (1.46%) Meraki
19 46 (1.46%) NetApp