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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -7 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,273 2,679 3,131
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.97% 8.08% 8.23%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.01% 59.48% 58.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,079 1,778 1,989
10th Percentile £173 £163 £180
25th Percentile £225 £208 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -1.16%
75th Percentile £565 £538 £564
90th Percentile £668 £627 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £350 £400
% change year-on-year +17.86% -12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 247 166
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.12 £15.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.89 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £22.58 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +14.06% -6.64% +7.47%
75th Percentile £60.92 £30.13 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £22.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +17.14% -9.02% +9.91%

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 5,365 4,504 5,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.78% 13.59% 14.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,386 2,866 3,332
10th Percentile £193 £185 £200
25th Percentile £313 £283 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £661 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 299 254
10th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £16.08
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.87 £21.85
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -52.10% +20.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £55.30 £69.45
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.29 £25.15 £56.20
% change year-on-year +28.39% -55.25% +39.36%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 -8 2,857 £425 +6.25% 2,723
UK excluding London -13 2,114 £413 +17.86% 2,146
London -5 954 £416 -2.12% 930
Work from Home -12 615 £470 +7.43% 1,309
South East -7 564 £478 +30.82% 497
North of England -6 504 £344 +12.79% 405
Midlands -16 297 £400 - 327
North West +4 296 £350 +6.87% 211
South West -17 267 £545 +45.33% 254
East of England 0 245 £230 -34.29% 259
West Midlands -20 204 £402 +0.50% 180
Yorkshire -16 168 £282 +31.16% 147
Scotland -6 160 £299 -33.67% 235
East Midlands -1 92 £288 +27.78% 145
Wales +7 71 £468 +61.21% 108
North East -27 45 £283 +13.00% 57
Northern Ireland 0 17 £139 -30.75% 96
Channel Islands -3 2 £535 - 4

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
1 266 (8.13%) SharePoint
2 244 (7.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 74 (2.26%) IIS
4 63 (1.92%) Confluence
5 22 (0.67%) Apache
6 20 (0.61%) nginx
7 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
8 15 (0.46%) Tomcat
9 14 (0.43%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
11 6 (0.18%) Documentum
12 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
12 5 (0.15%) Appian
12 5 (0.15%) Camunda
12 5 (0.15%) CICS
12 5 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
12 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
13 4 (0.12%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
14 3 (0.092%) OpenStack
Applications
1 230 (7.03%) Microsoft Office
2 71 (2.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 12 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.15%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.092%) Houdini
6 3 (0.092%) NUKE
7 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.061%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.061%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 49 (1.50%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 7 (0.21%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.21%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 5 (0.15%) Dynamics CRM
4 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
5 3 (0.092%) Oracle EBS
5 3 (0.092%) ResourceLink
5 3 (0.092%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.061%) assyst
6 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
7 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.031%) Monis
7 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
7 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
7 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
7 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
7 1 (0.031%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 1,031 (31.50%) Microsoft 365
2 1,000 (30.55%) Azure
3 547 (16.71%) Entra ID
4 345 (10.54%) AWS
5 147 (4.49%) OneDrive
6 125 (3.82%) GCP
7 119 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
8 76 (2.32%) Azure Monitor
9 75 (2.29%) SaaS
10 74 (2.26%) GitHub
11 67 (2.05%) Power Platform
12 65 (1.99%) IaaS
13 48 (1.47%) PaaS
14 43 (1.31%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.13%) OpenShift
16 33 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (0.95%) GitHub Actions
18 29 (0.89%) Google Workspace
19 23 (0.70%) Amazon S3
20 22 (0.67%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 483 (14.76%) DNS
2 340 (10.39%) DHCP
3 332 (10.14%) Firewall
4 278 (8.49%) VPN
5 252 (7.70%) TCP/IP
6 132 (4.03%) LAN
6 132 (4.03%) WAN
7 129 (3.94%) Wi-Fi
8 105 (3.21%) Network Security
9 90 (2.75%) SAN
10 83 (2.54%) VLAN
11 60 (1.83%) Wireless
12 55 (1.68%) SSL
13 43 (1.31%) Internet
14 40 (1.22%) NAS
15 39 (1.19%) BGP
16 34 (1.04%) Skype
16 34 (1.04%) VoIP
17 32 (0.98%) HTTP
18 27 (0.82%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (9.07%) SQL Server
2 62 (1.89%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.62%) Power BI
4 44 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (1.22%) Relational Database
5 40 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 29 (0.89%) Amazon RDS
7 24 (0.73%) MySQL
8 20 (0.61%) RDBMS
9 17 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
9 17 (0.52%) Db2
10 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 14 (0.43%) Oracle Reports
11 14 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
13 9 (0.27%) Azure SQL Database
14 8 (0.24%) Elasticsearch
14 8 (0.24%) MS Access
14 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
15 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 163 (4.98%) JIRA
2 86 (2.63%) Git
3 65 (1.99%) Jenkins
4 52 (1.59%) MSI
5 51 (1.56%) GitLab
6 37 (1.13%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.49%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Artifactory
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 10 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Robot Framework
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SonarQube
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 6 (0.18%) Toad
14 6 (0.18%) Zephyr
General
1 1,199 (36.63%) Social Skills
2 393 (12.01%) Analytical Skills
3 387 (11.82%) Finance
4 166 (5.07%) Public Sector
5 152 (4.64%) Banking
6 121 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
7 83 (2.54%) Legal
8 80 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 72 (2.20%) Organisational Skills
10 61 (1.86%) Manufacturing
11 57 (1.74%) Telecoms
12 52 (1.59%) Retail
13 42 (1.28%) Front Office
14 40 (1.22%) Law
14 40 (1.22%) Military
15 33 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.86%) Police
17 25 (0.76%) Aerospace
17 25 (0.76%) Financial Institution
17 25 (0.76%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 527 (16.10%) Support Engineer
2 442 (13.50%) IT Support
3 337 (10.30%) IT Engineer
4 333 (10.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 287 (8.77%) IT Support Engineer
6 276 (8.43%) Analyst
7 261 (7.97%) Senior
8 148 (4.52%) Desktop Support
9 129 (3.94%) Desktop Engineer
10 128 (3.91%) Architect
11 125 (3.82%) 2nd Line Support
11 125 (3.82%) Cloud Engineer
12 122 (3.73%) Lead
13 120 (3.67%) Windows Engineer
14 110 (3.36%) Developer
15 95 (2.90%) Support Analyst
16 94 (2.87%) Consultant
17 84 (2.57%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.51%) Administrator
18 82 (2.51%) Desktop Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (8.43%) Terraform
2 149 (4.55%) .NET
3 121 (3.70%) REST
4 65 (1.99%) .NET Framework
5 58 (1.77%) Middleware
6 48 (1.47%) LDAP
7 47 (1.44%) JSON
8 40 (1.22%) WPF
9 34 (1.04%) XML
10 31 (0.95%) WinForms
11 30 (0.92%) Web Services
12 27 (0.82%) Kafka
12 27 (0.82%) Software Packaging
13 25 (0.76%) HTML
14 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
14 23 (0.70%) ARM Templates
15 21 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
16 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
16 20 (0.61%) RESTful
17 18 (0.55%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 394 (12.04%) Onboarding
2 203 (6.20%) Data Centre
3 164 (5.01%) PKI
4 108 (3.30%) Management Information System
5 97 (2.96%) Enterprise Software
6 90 (2.75%) Driving Licence
7 85 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
8 81 (2.47%) Video Conferencing
9 80 (2.44%) Cloud Native
10 75 (2.29%) Clustering
11 69 (2.11%) Replication
12 64 (1.96%) Security Posture
13 53 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
14 43 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
14 43 (1.31%) Operational Technology
15 41 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
16 39 (1.19%) Virtual Team
17 38 (1.16%) Enterprise Storage
17 38 (1.16%) Smartphone
18 36 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 925 (28.26%) Windows Server
2 794 (24.26%) Linux
3 572 (17.48%) Windows 10
4 206 (6.29%) Mac OS
5 151 (4.61%) Apple iOS
6 145 (4.43%) Android
6 145 (4.43%) Unix
7 144 (4.40%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 72 (2.20%) Windows Server 2019
9 54 (1.65%) Windows 7
10 48 (1.47%) Ubuntu
11 44 (1.34%) Windows Server 2012
12 43 (1.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 40 (1.22%) CentOS
14 30 (0.92%) AIX
15 20 (0.61%) Solaris
16 19 (0.58%) VMS
17 16 (0.49%) Rocky
17 16 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
18 11 (0.34%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 779 (23.80%) Problem-Solving
2 620 (18.94%) ITIL
3 567 (17.32%) Customer Service
4 448 (13.69%) ITSM
5 428 (13.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 420 (12.83%) Migration
7 370 (11.30%) Continuous Improvement
8 333 (10.17%) Service Management
9 321 (9.81%) DevOps
10 300 (9.17%) CI/CD
11 289 (8.83%) Infrastructure as Code
12 269 (8.22%) Stakeholder Management
13 264 (8.07%) Agile
14 240 (7.33%) Root Cause Analysis
15 236 (7.21%) Change Management
16 228 (6.97%) Disaster Recovery
17 220 (6.72%) Cybersecurity
17 220 (6.72%) Validation
18 191 (5.84%) Service Delivery
19 184 (5.62%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 794 (24.26%) PowerShell
2 348 (10.63%) Python
3 318 (9.72%) SQL
4 204 (6.23%) Bash
5 171 (5.22%) C#
6 79 (2.41%) Java
7 78 (2.38%) T-SQL
8 61 (1.86%) JavaScript
9 54 (1.65%) PL/SQL
10 52 (1.59%) Bicep
11 38 (1.16%) C++
12 29 (0.89%) VB
12 29 (0.89%) VBScript
13 21 (0.64%) Perl
14 19 (0.58%) VBA
15 18 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 15 (0.46%) TypeScript
17 13 (0.40%) Go
18 12 (0.37%) Groovy
19 11 (0.34%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 997 (30.46%) Security Cleared
2 599 (18.30%) SC Cleared
3 386 (11.79%) DV Cleared
4 297 (9.07%) Degree
5 124 (3.79%) Microsoft Certification
6 91 (2.78%) Azure Certification
7 88 (2.69%) Cisco Certification
8 73 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
9 68 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
10 63 (1.92%) CISSP
11 56 (1.71%) A+ Certification
12 55 (1.68%) AWS Certification
13 51 (1.56%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 47 (1.44%) DBS Check
15 45 (1.37%) CCNA
16 41 (1.25%) CCNP
17 37 (1.13%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (1.04%) MCSE
19 33 (1.01%) CISM
20 31 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (5.32%) SLA
2 110 (3.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 91 (2.78%) QA
4 86 (2.63%) NIST
5 39 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
6 31 (0.95%) GDPR
7 30 (0.92%) NCSC
8 26 (0.79%) PCI DSS
9 17 (0.52%) GRC
10 16 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 16 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 16 (0.49%) GxP
11 13 (0.40%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
13 11 (0.34%) ISO 31000
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,368 (41.80%) Active Directory
2 496 (15.15%) VMware Infrastructure
3 228 (6.97%) Hyper-V
4 155 (4.74%) VMware ESXi
5 141 (4.31%) vSphere
6 123 (3.76%) Docker
7 109 (3.33%) Virtual Machines
8 108 (3.30%) Virtual Desktop
9 76 (2.32%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.19%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.10%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) vCloud
13 20 (0.61%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.52%) Microsoft App-V
15 15 (0.46%) NFS
16 14 (0.43%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 12 (0.37%) KVM
17 12 (0.37%) XenApp
18 10 (0.31%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 464 (14.18%) Microsoft Intune
2 366 (11.18%) SCCM
3 232 (7.09%) Ansible
4 169 (5.16%) Kubernetes
5 120 (3.67%) vCenter Server
6 104 (3.18%) SCOM
7 53 (1.62%) Jamf Pro
8 42 (1.28%) WSUS
9 39 (1.19%) Grafana
10 36 (1.10%) Prometheus
11 34 (1.04%) Progress Chef
12 32 (0.98%) NetBackup
13 31 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
14 30 (0.92%) WMI
15 28 (0.86%) Puppet
16 25 (0.76%) VxRail
17 21 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
17 21 (0.64%) Nagios
17 21 (0.64%) Packer
18 20 (0.61%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,570 (47.97%) Microsoft
2 646 (19.74%) VMware
3 380 (11.61%) ServiceNow
4 240 (7.33%) Cisco
5 203 (6.20%) Oracle
6 178 (5.44%) Citrix
7 114 (3.48%) Apple
8 106 (3.24%) Splunk
9 104 (3.18%) CyberArk
10 93 (2.84%) Google
11 83 (2.54%) Red Hat
12 77 (2.35%) BeyondTrust
13 75 (2.29%) SolarWinds
14 59 (1.80%) Dell
15 57 (1.74%) Palo Alto
16 53 (1.62%) Remedy
17 51 (1.56%) NetApp
18 45 (1.37%) HP
19 43 (1.31%) Meraki
20 42 (1.28%) CrowdStrike