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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,063 2,621 3,442
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.80% 8.02% 8.43%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.27% 59.55% 60.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,946 1,741 2,321
10th Percentile £170 £176 £165
25th Percentile £225 £225 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £416 £425
Median % change year-on-year +2.16% -2.12% -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £567 £575
90th Percentile £650 £663 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £400 £449
% change year-on-year +3.75% -10.81% +19.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 271 204 274
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.33 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.33 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.00 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.49% -5.65% -17.73%
75th Percentile £54.50 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £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 5,082 4,401 5,693
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.47% 13.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,223 2,842 3,754
10th Percentile £193 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £324
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.08% -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 342 247 393
10th Percentile £15.76 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.94 £18.10 £16.32
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.88% -43.11%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.20 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.47 £21.59 £31.13
% change year-on-year +22.60% -30.63% -0.40%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -7 2,681 £420 +1.82% 1,071
UK excluding London -13 2,018 £415 +3.75% 940
London -17 871 £415 -5.09% 257
Work from Home -8 636 £475 +0.53% 357
South East -8 571 £475 -5.00% 320
North of England -9 477 £344 -1.71% 202
Midlands -19 276 £375 +25.00% 122
South West -13 266 £488 +23.42% 130
North West -6 252 £347 -3.07% 104
East of England -2 203 £338 +35.00% 124
Yorkshire -11 202 £360 +4.73% 69
West Midlands -28 173 £450 +23.29% 72
Scotland -6 164 £413 -5.71% 40
East Midlands +13 98 £266 +33.13% 50
Wales +6 58 £408 +48.18% 25
North East -35 27 £270 -1.82% 34
Northern Ireland +1 18 £139 -28.97% 10
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
1 243 (7.93%) Microsoft Exchange
2 235 (7.67%) SharePoint
3 67 (2.19%) IIS
4 62 (2.02%) Confluence
5 17 (0.56%) Apache
5 17 (0.56%) nginx
5 17 (0.56%) Tomcat
6 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
7 11 (0.36%) HCL Notes
7 11 (0.36%) Skype for Business
8 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
8 9 (0.29%) WebLogic
9 6 (0.20%) Appian
9 6 (0.20%) Documentum
10 5 (0.16%) Camunda
10 5 (0.16%) SAS
11 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
12 3 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2010
12 3 (0.098%) FactoryTalk
Applications
1 199 (6.50%) Microsoft Office
2 74 (2.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.13%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
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 53 (1.73%) 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%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.098%) assyst
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
1 934 (30.49%) Azure
2 905 (29.55%) Microsoft 365
3 435 (14.20%) Entra ID
4 325 (10.61%) AWS
5 131 (4.28%) OneDrive
6 102 (3.33%) GCP
7 99 (3.23%) Azure DevOps
8 79 (2.58%) SaaS
9 68 (2.22%) Azure Monitor
9 68 (2.22%) GitHub
10 67 (2.19%) Power Platform
11 64 (2.09%) IaaS
12 56 (1.83%) PaaS
13 44 (1.44%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.21%) OpenShift
15 32 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.88%) Azure AKS
18 26 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
18 26 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 445 (14.53%) DNS
2 336 (10.97%) Firewall
3 304 (9.92%) DHCP
4 244 (7.97%) VPN
5 210 (6.86%) TCP/IP
6 176 (5.75%) LAN
7 162 (5.29%) WAN
8 152 (4.96%) Wi-Fi
9 98 (3.20%) SAN
10 75 (2.45%) Network Security
11 66 (2.15%) VLAN
12 51 (1.67%) SSL
13 48 (1.57%) BGP
13 48 (1.57%) NAS
14 43 (1.40%) Internet
15 40 (1.31%) Wireless
16 37 (1.21%) OSPF
17 34 (1.11%) VoIP
18 31 (1.01%) SNMP
19 30 (0.98%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 290 (9.47%) SQL Server
2 62 (2.02%) Oracle Database
3 47 (1.53%) Power BI
4 34 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
5 32 (1.04%) Relational Database
6 29 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 24 (0.78%) MySQL
8 22 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
9 21 (0.69%) Db2
10 17 (0.56%) Data Warehouse
11 15 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (0.49%) RDBMS
12 11 (0.36%) NoSQL
12 11 (0.36%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 10 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
13 10 (0.33%) MongoDB
13 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
14 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
14 9 (0.29%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 9 (0.29%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 185 (6.04%) JIRA
2 70 (2.29%) Git
3 58 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.57%) MSI
5 40 (1.31%) GitLab
6 38 (1.24%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.56%) Eclipse
8 13 (0.42%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.23%) Artifactory
10 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.20%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.20%) Xcode
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Maven
12 5 (0.16%) Selenium
General
1 1,105 (36.08%) Social Skills
2 362 (11.82%) Analytical Skills
3 340 (11.10%) Finance
4 203 (6.63%) Public Sector
5 160 (5.22%) Banking
6 106 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 100 (3.26%) Legal
8 84 (2.74%) Organisational Skills
9 63 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.83%) Retail
11 48 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 47 (1.53%) Military
13 37 (1.21%) Front Office
13 37 (1.21%) Telecoms
14 34 (1.11%) Investment Banking
14 34 (1.11%) Law
15 27 (0.88%) Spanish Language
16 25 (0.82%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.72%) French Language
18 20 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 431 (14.07%) Support Engineer
2 395 (12.90%) IT Support
3 292 (9.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 287 (9.37%) Analyst
5 285 (9.30%) IT Engineer
6 240 (7.84%) IT Support Engineer
7 221 (7.22%) Senior
8 130 (4.24%) Architect
9 123 (4.02%) Desktop Support
10 121 (3.95%) 2nd Line Support
11 116 (3.79%) Developer
12 108 (3.53%) Lead
13 107 (3.49%) Cloud Engineer
14 105 (3.43%) Support Analyst
15 104 (3.40%) Desktop Engineer
16 96 (3.13%) Consultant
17 90 (2.94%) IT Analyst
17 90 (2.94%) Windows Engineer
18 83 (2.71%) Service Analyst
19 80 (2.61%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (3.92%) .NET
2 112 (3.66%) REST
3 65 (2.12%) .NET Framework
4 39 (1.27%) Middleware
5 34 (1.11%) WinForms
6 33 (1.08%) LDAP
7 31 (1.01%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.98%) JSON
9 29 (0.95%) Web Services
10 28 (0.91%) Microsoft Graph
10 28 (0.91%) WPF
11 27 (0.88%) Kafka
12 26 (0.85%) Software Packaging
12 26 (0.85%) XML
13 25 (0.82%) HTML
14 24 (0.78%) CSS
15 22 (0.72%) RESTful
16 21 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
17 18 (0.59%) SAML
18 17 (0.56%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 311 (10.15%) Onboarding
2 162 (5.29%) Data Centre
3 159 (5.19%) PKI
4 83 (2.71%) Clustering
5 81 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
6 80 (2.61%) Management Information System
7 76 (2.48%) Cloud Native
8 73 (2.38%) Driving Licence
9 68 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
10 61 (1.99%) Replication
11 58 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
12 56 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
12 56 (1.83%) Security Posture
13 54 (1.76%) Video Conferencing
14 45 (1.47%) Virtual Team
15 42 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
16 38 (1.24%) Smartphone
17 35 (1.14%) Operational Technology
18 34 (1.11%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 758 (24.75%) Linux
2 748 (24.42%) Windows Server
3 505 (16.49%) Windows 10
4 196 (6.40%) Mac OS
5 161 (5.26%) Unix
6 138 (4.51%) Android
7 136 (4.44%) Apple iOS
8 123 (4.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (2.45%) Windows Server 2019
10 52 (1.70%) Windows Server 2016
11 40 (1.31%) Ubuntu
11 40 (1.31%) Windows 7
12 39 (1.27%) AIX
13 34 (1.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 23 (0.75%) Solaris
15 22 (0.72%) CentOS
16 21 (0.69%) VMS
17 16 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
18 10 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
19 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 695 (22.69%) Problem-Solving
2 511 (16.68%) ITIL
3 471 (15.38%) Customer Service
4 379 (12.37%) Migration
5 378 (12.34%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 341 (11.13%) ITSM
7 290 (9.47%) DevOps
8 278 (9.08%) Continuous Improvement
9 270 (8.81%) CI/CD
10 269 (8.78%) Agile
11 240 (7.84%) Service Management
12 214 (6.99%) Infrastructure as Code
13 200 (6.53%) High Availability
14 199 (6.50%) Change Management
15 189 (6.17%) Stakeholder Management
16 178 (5.81%) Service Delivery
17 177 (5.78%) Cybersecurity
18 169 (5.52%) Validation
19 163 (5.32%) Disaster Recovery
20 156 (5.09%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 667 (21.78%) PowerShell
2 321 (10.48%) Python
3 310 (10.12%) SQL
4 163 (5.32%) Bash
5 148 (4.83%) C#
6 77 (2.51%) Java
7 69 (2.25%) JavaScript
8 62 (2.02%) T-SQL
9 60 (1.96%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.53%) C++
11 40 (1.31%) Bicep
12 25 (0.82%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 22 (0.72%) Perl
14 22 (0.72%) VB
15 21 (0.69%) VBA
15 21 (0.69%) VBScript
16 17 (0.56%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
18 15 (0.49%) C
Qualifications
1 915 (29.87%) Security Cleared
2 575 (18.77%) SC Cleared
3 305 (9.96%) Degree
4 303 (9.89%) DV Cleared
5 118 (3.85%) Microsoft Certification
6 102 (3.33%) Cisco Certification
7 74 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.22%) CISSP
9 66 (2.15%) Azure Certification
10 60 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (1.76%) AWS Certification
12 44 (1.44%) CCNA
13 42 (1.37%) MCSE
14 36 (1.18%) A+ Certification
15 35 (1.14%) CCNP
16 28 (0.91%) DBS Check
17 27 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
17 27 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 25 (0.82%) CISM
18 25 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 142 (4.64%) SLA
2 118 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 87 (2.84%) NIST
4 86 (2.81%) QA
5 41 (1.34%) GDPR
6 28 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
7 26 (0.85%) PCI DSS
8 25 (0.82%) NCSC
9 16 (0.52%) Data Quality
9 16 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.49%) PMO
11 13 (0.42%) GxP
12 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
13 11 (0.36%) GRC
13 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 9 (0.29%) GMP
15 9 (0.29%) WCAG
16 8 (0.26%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,201 (39.21%) Active Directory
2 409 (13.35%) VMware Infrastructure
3 168 (5.48%) Hyper-V
4 129 (4.21%) VMware ESXi
5 109 (3.56%) vSphere
6 102 (3.33%) Docker
7 101 (3.30%) Virtual Machines
8 80 (2.61%) Virtual Desktop
9 67 (2.19%) VMware NSX
10 41 (1.34%) Firmware
11 33 (1.08%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.78%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.59%) KVM
14 15 (0.49%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
16 8 (0.26%) 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
1 421 (13.74%) Microsoft Intune
2 280 (9.14%) SCCM
3 244 (7.97%) Terraform
4 212 (6.92%) Ansible
5 165 (5.39%) Kubernetes
6 107 (3.49%) vCenter Server
7 63 (2.06%) SCOM
8 54 (1.76%) 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 28 (0.91%) Grafana
13 28 (0.91%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.82%) Nagios
15 23 (0.75%) Packer
16 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
17 20 (0.65%) Netcool
17 20 (0.65%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,330 (43.42%) Microsoft
2 539 (17.60%) VMware
3 315 (10.28%) ServiceNow
4 212 (6.92%) Cisco
5 200 (6.53%) Oracle
6 196 (6.40%) Citrix
7 134 (4.37%) Splunk
8 93 (3.04%) Apple
9 89 (2.91%) SolarWinds
10 83 (2.71%) CyberArk
11 78 (2.55%) Red Hat
12 76 (2.48%) HP
13 74 (2.42%) Google
14 69 (2.25%) BeyondTrust
15 65 (2.12%) Dell
16 64 (2.09%) Remedy
17 57 (1.86%) F5
18 52 (1.70%) IBM
18 52 (1.70%) Juniper
19 44 (1.44%) Palo Alto