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 28 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -5 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,884 2,397 3,502
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.91% 8.37% 8.19%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.55% 60.30% 60.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,861 1,648 2,420
10th Percentile £163 £180 £163
25th Percentile £213 £240 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year - +6.25% -11.11%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £400 £413
% change year-on-year +0.63% -3.03% +6.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 141 277
10th Percentile £15.64 £14.20 £11.92
25th Percentile £17.98 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £25.51 £18.82 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.52% +4.56% -20.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £25.15 £25.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £53.75 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.82 £17.69
% change year-on-year +36.82% +6.39% -11.55%

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 4,763 3,975 5,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.75% 13.87% 13.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,040 2,618 3,897
10th Percentile £186 £200 £185
25th Percentile £313 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £469 £474
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% -1.11% -5.20%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £588
90th Percentile £650 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 348 175 402
10th Percentile £15.35 £15.16 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.44 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.11 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.59% -2.22% -47.06%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.38 £60.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.13 £19.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +75.03% -13.33% -28.00%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 2,497 £415 -2.35% 888
UK excluding London -11 1,941 £403 +0.63% 790
London -25 765 £425 -5.56% 220
Work from Home -16 585 £475 +2.26% 296
South East -5 525 £475 - 266
North of England -9 462 £360 +2.86% 164
Midlands -17 274 £319 +15.91% 104
North West +1 259 £330 -5.71% 99
South West -11 232 £466 -0.64% 118
East of England -1 219 £350 -7.59% 89
Yorkshire -22 187 £370 -7.50% 50
Scotland 0 175 £425 -5.56% 32
West Midlands -24 160 £450 +57.89% 58
East Midlands +11 109 £213 - 46
Wales +1 52 £345 +10.40% 31
North East -32 20 £290 -3.33% 17
Northern Ireland -3 15 £139 -30.75% 8
Channel Islands -2 2 £500 +68.07%

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
1 231 (8.01%) Microsoft Exchange
2 179 (6.21%) SharePoint
3 62 (2.15%) IIS
4 51 (1.77%) Confluence
5 23 (0.80%) Apache
6 19 (0.66%) WebLogic
7 17 (0.59%) Tomcat
8 16 (0.55%) nginx
9 14 (0.49%) Skype for Business
10 12 (0.42%) Tuxedo
11 9 (0.31%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
12 8 (0.28%) HCL Notes
12 8 (0.28%) SAS
13 6 (0.21%) TPMS
14 5 (0.17%) Appian
14 5 (0.17%) WebSphere
15 4 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 3 (0.10%) Camunda
17 2 (0.069%) Apache Pulsar
Applications
1 190 (6.59%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
3 24 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.31%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.17%) PTC Creo
6 5 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.14%) Acrobat
8 2 (0.069%) Chatbot
9 1 (0.035%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 44 (1.53%) Remedy ITSM
2 19 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.42%) Teamcenter
4 4 (0.14%) assyst
4 4 (0.14%) Finacle
5 3 (0.10%) OpenText MBPM
5 3 (0.10%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.10%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 2 (0.069%) Dynamics CRM
6 2 (0.069%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.069%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.069%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 1 (0.035%) Dynamics GP
7 1 (0.035%) Infor LN
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle FAH
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.035%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 845 (29.30%) Azure
2 809 (28.05%) Microsoft 365
3 350 (12.14%) Entra ID
4 258 (8.95%) AWS
5 96 (3.33%) OneDrive
6 84 (2.91%) GCP
7 75 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
7 75 (2.60%) SaaS
8 66 (2.29%) IaaS
9 60 (2.08%) GitHub
10 57 (1.98%) Power Platform
11 55 (1.91%) PaaS
12 40 (1.39%) Azure Monitor
13 39 (1.35%) OpenShift
14 37 (1.28%) Azure Sentinel
15 34 (1.18%) Google Workspace
16 29 (1.01%) GitHub Actions
17 19 (0.66%) AWS CloudFormation
17 19 (0.66%) Nutanix
18 18 (0.62%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 396 (13.73%) DNS
2 307 (10.64%) Firewall
3 269 (9.33%) DHCP
4 212 (7.35%) VPN
5 178 (6.17%) WAN
6 177 (6.14%) LAN
7 174 (6.03%) TCP/IP
8 142 (4.92%) Wi-Fi
9 83 (2.88%) SAN
10 76 (2.64%) Network Security
11 59 (2.05%) VLAN
12 47 (1.63%) SD-WAN
13 40 (1.39%) BGP
13 40 (1.39%) Wireless
14 39 (1.35%) NAS
15 38 (1.32%) Internet
15 38 (1.32%) VoIP
16 37 (1.28%) SSL
17 36 (1.25%) Skype
17 36 (1.25%) SNMP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 224 (7.77%) SQL Server
2 50 (1.73%) Oracle Database
3 34 (1.18%) Power BI
3 34 (1.18%) Relational Database
4 32 (1.11%) MySQL
5 24 (0.83%) PostgreSQL
6 18 (0.62%) Elasticsearch
7 16 (0.55%) DB2
8 15 (0.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 14 (0.49%) MongoDB
10 13 (0.45%) Data Warehouse
11 12 (0.42%) NoSQL
12 9 (0.31%) GIS
12 9 (0.31%) SAP HANA
13 8 (0.28%) Oracle BI EE
13 8 (0.28%) Oracle Reports
13 8 (0.28%) Sybase ASE
14 7 (0.24%) Amazon RDS
14 7 (0.24%) Azure SQL Database
14 7 (0.24%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 181 (6.28%) JIRA
2 53 (1.84%) Jenkins
3 46 (1.60%) GitLab
4 45 (1.56%) Git
5 43 (1.49%) MSI
6 37 (1.28%) Visual Studio
7 20 (0.69%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.49%) Burp Suite
9 13 (0.45%) Metasploit
10 10 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.31%) Android Studio
11 9 (0.31%) Artifactory
11 9 (0.31%) Browser DevTools
11 9 (0.31%) Chocolatey
11 9 (0.31%) Xcode
12 7 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 7 (0.24%) Selenium
13 6 (0.21%) InstallShield
13 6 (0.21%) Robot Framework
14 5 (0.17%) AdminStudio
General
1 965 (33.46%) Social Skills
2 283 (9.81%) Analytical Skills
3 281 (9.74%) Finance
4 202 (7.00%) Public Sector
5 145 (5.03%) Banking
6 119 (4.13%) Legal
7 95 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
8 80 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
9 56 (1.94%) Military
10 47 (1.63%) Retail
11 46 (1.60%) Manufacturing
12 44 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 39 (1.35%) Law
14 32 (1.11%) Investment Banking
15 30 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
16 27 (0.94%) Telecoms
17 26 (0.90%) Front Office
18 21 (0.73%) Local Government
19 19 (0.66%) French Language
20 18 (0.62%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 361 (12.52%) IT Support
2 346 (12.00%) Support Engineer
3 315 (10.92%) Analyst
4 256 (8.88%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 225 (7.80%) IT Engineer
6 184 (6.38%) IT Support Engineer
7 177 (6.14%) Senior
8 156 (5.41%) Architect
9 123 (4.26%) Desktop Support
10 120 (4.16%) Support Analyst
11 105 (3.64%) Desktop Engineer
11 105 (3.64%) Lead
12 97 (3.36%) 2nd Line Support
13 95 (3.29%) IT Analyst
14 88 (3.05%) Developer
14 88 (3.05%) Technical Support
14 88 (3.05%) Windows Engineer
15 79 (2.74%) Consultant
16 76 (2.64%) 1st Line Support
17 74 (2.57%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (3.09%) .NET
2 87 (3.02%) REST
3 50 (1.73%) .NET Framework
4 44 (1.53%) LDAP
5 38 (1.32%) SAML
6 34 (1.18%) Microsoft Graph
7 32 (1.11%) Kafka
8 31 (1.07%) Middleware
9 28 (0.97%) 802.1X
9 28 (0.97%) WinForms
10 26 (0.90%) OAuth
11 23 (0.80%) Web Services
12 22 (0.76%) WPF
13 20 (0.69%) Software Packaging
14 19 (0.66%) CSS
14 19 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 19 (0.66%) Node.js
14 19 (0.66%) React
15 17 (0.59%) AngularJS
15 17 (0.59%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 251 (8.70%) Onboarding
2 148 (5.13%) Data Centre
3 117 (4.06%) PKI
4 86 (2.98%) Enterprise Software
5 82 (2.84%) Clustering
6 66 (2.29%) Driving Licence
7 63 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
8 59 (2.05%) Replication
9 57 (1.98%) Management Information System
10 51 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
11 50 (1.73%) Virtual Team
12 49 (1.70%) Security Posture
13 48 (1.66%) Legacy Systems
14 46 (1.60%) Smartphone
15 43 (1.49%) Cloud Native
16 36 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
17 34 (1.18%) Enterprise Storage
17 34 (1.18%) Operational Technology
17 34 (1.18%) Security Operations Centre
18 32 (1.11%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 728 (25.24%) Linux
2 677 (23.47%) Windows Server
3 505 (17.51%) Windows 10
4 182 (6.31%) Mac OS
5 161 (5.58%) Unix
6 137 (4.75%) Apple iOS
7 136 (4.72%) Android
8 100 (3.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 79 (2.74%) Windows Server 2019
10 71 (2.46%) Windows Server 2016
11 51 (1.77%) Windows 7
12 36 (1.25%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.18%) AIX
14 26 (0.90%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.73%) VMS
16 20 (0.69%) Solaris
17 19 (0.66%) Windows Server 2003
18 16 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.42%) CentOS
20 8 (0.28%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 608 (21.08%) Problem-Solving
2 434 (15.05%) Customer Service
3 429 (14.88%) ITIL
4 331 (11.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 325 (11.27%) Migration
6 281 (9.74%) Agile
7 266 (9.22%) ITSM
8 263 (9.12%) DevOps
9 244 (8.46%) CI/CD
10 191 (6.62%) Continuous Improvement
10 191 (6.62%) Disaster Recovery
11 190 (6.59%) Change Management
12 185 (6.41%) High Availability
13 182 (6.31%) Service Management
14 171 (5.93%) Cybersecurity
15 154 (5.34%) SIEM
16 143 (4.96%) Infrastructure as Code
17 141 (4.89%) Stakeholder Management
18 132 (4.58%) Computer Science
19 131 (4.54%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 621 (21.53%) PowerShell
2 298 (10.33%) Python
3 275 (9.54%) SQL
4 121 (4.20%) C#
5 111 (3.85%) Bash
6 74 (2.57%) Java
7 70 (2.43%) JavaScript
8 57 (1.98%) PL/SQL
9 49 (1.70%) C++
10 47 (1.63%) T-SQL
11 33 (1.14%) Perl
12 26 (0.90%) Kusto Query Language
13 25 (0.87%) VB
14 24 (0.83%) Shell Script
15 23 (0.80%) Search Processing Language
16 19 (0.66%) VBScript
17 16 (0.55%) Bicep
18 15 (0.52%) VBA
19 13 (0.45%) C
20 12 (0.42%) Go
Qualifications
1 847 (29.37%) Security Cleared
2 549 (19.04%) SC Cleared
3 303 (10.51%) Degree
4 270 (9.36%) DV Cleared
5 105 (3.64%) Microsoft Certification
6 94 (3.26%) Cisco Certification
7 92 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 61 (2.12%) CISSP
9 49 (1.70%) Azure Certification
10 46 (1.60%) MCSE
11 45 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
12 39 (1.35%) CCNA
13 38 (1.32%) CompTIA Security+
14 35 (1.21%) AWS Certification
15 32 (1.11%) CCNP
16 31 (1.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 28 (0.97%) ITIL Certification
18 27 (0.94%) MCSA
19 26 (0.90%) A+ Certification
20 25 (0.87%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 118 (4.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 106 (3.68%) SLA
3 86 (2.98%) QA
4 83 (2.88%) NIST
5 79 (2.74%) GDPR
6 38 (1.32%) PCI DSS
7 30 (1.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 27 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
9 15 (0.52%) NCSC
10 14 (0.49%) PMO
11 12 (0.42%) Data Quality
11 12 (0.42%) Disclosure Scotland
11 12 (0.42%) NIST 800
12 11 (0.38%) MiFID
12 11 (0.38%) SOC 2
13 10 (0.35%) FINRA
14 9 (0.31%) HIPAA
15 7 (0.24%) DICOM
15 7 (0.24%) GRC
16 6 (0.21%) GLBA
System Software
1 1,075 (37.27%) Active Directory
2 360 (12.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 162 (5.62%) Hyper-V
4 99 (3.43%) VMware ESXi
4 99 (3.43%) vSphere
5 89 (3.09%) Virtual Machines
6 85 (2.95%) Docker
7 58 (2.01%) Virtual Desktop
8 50 (1.73%) VMware NSX
9 38 (1.32%) Firmware
10 34 (1.18%) BitLocker
11 26 (0.90%) Microsoft App-V
12 21 (0.73%) KVM
13 11 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
13 11 (0.38%) XenDesktop
14 10 (0.35%) XenApp
15 8 (0.28%) vCloud
15 8 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
16 6 (0.21%) etcd
16 6 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 369 (12.79%) Microsoft Intune
2 263 (9.12%) SCCM
3 195 (6.76%) Ansible
4 167 (5.79%) Terraform
5 134 (4.65%) Kubernetes
6 79 (2.74%) vCenter Server
7 54 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
8 45 (1.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 42 (1.46%) Jamf Pro
10 40 (1.39%) FortiGate
11 39 (1.35%) WSUS
12 38 (1.32%) Grafana
13 35 (1.21%) SCOM
14 32 (1.11%) Prometheus
15 27 (0.94%) Nagios
16 24 (0.83%) Progress Chef
17 21 (0.73%) Nessus
18 20 (0.69%) Puppet
18 20 (0.69%) Tivoli
18 20 (0.69%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,221 (42.34%) Microsoft
2 468 (16.23%) VMware
3 250 (8.67%) ServiceNow
4 221 (7.66%) Cisco
5 193 (6.69%) Citrix
6 176 (6.10%) Oracle
7 155 (5.37%) Splunk
8 83 (2.88%) HP
9 75 (2.60%) Dell
10 73 (2.53%) SolarWinds
11 64 (2.22%) Red Hat
12 60 (2.08%) F5
13 59 (2.05%) Apple
14 57 (1.98%) Remedy
15 54 (1.87%) Palo Alto
16 53 (1.84%) Google
17 51 (1.77%) IBM
18 50 (1.73%) CyberArk
19 46 (1.60%) Juniper
20 42 (1.46%) BeyondTrust