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 6 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 22 19 16
Rank change year-on-year -3 -3 -1
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,845 2,965 4,303
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 7.80% 8.24% 9.51%
As % of the Operating Systems category 59.26% 58.32% 63.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,916 1,849 2,873
10th Percentile £163 £180 £160
25th Percentile £204 £238 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £389 £425 £410
Median % change year-on-year -8.53% +3.66% -3.53%
75th Percentile £538 £560 £575
90th Percentile £625 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £325 £382 £379
% change year-on-year -14.81% +0.66% +2.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 288 132 254
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.22 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.92 £19.27 £17.72
Median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.02% +9.91% +7.32%
75th Percentile £38.94 £57.62 £54.55
90th Percentile £65.60 £67.50 £67.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.75 £24.18 £21.00
% change year-on-year -10.05% +15.14% +12.00%

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 4,801 5,084 6,818
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.17% 14.13% 15.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,108 3,116 4,640
10th Percentile £180 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £325 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £478
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -0.52% -6.83%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £608
90th Percentile £661 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £440 £440
% change year-on-year -9.04% -0.06% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 361 206 345
10th Percentile £15.50 £16.13 £14.66
25th Percentile £18.87 £22.50 £17.75
Median hourly rate £25.00 £50.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -50.00% +66.67% +20.00%
75th Percentile £52.58 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.84 £70.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £52.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year -52.38% +94.44% +20.00%

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 6 December 2025.

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 6 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Top 17 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 6 December 2025. 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 -3 2,528 £375 -7.41% 1,482
UK excluding London -1 1,897 £325 -14.81% 1,424
London -13 777 £425 - 252
Work from Home -11 570 £425 -5.56% 467
South East +2 519 £350 -16.17% 499
North of England -4 407 £238 -40.44% 325
South West +5 328 £425 - 164
Midlands -4 304 £383 +9.29% 210
North West -3 233 £305 -23.75% 171
West Midlands -5 213 £430 +32.15% 130
East of England +1 201 £225 -30.77% 176
Yorkshire -14 147 £230 -34.33% 129
Scotland -11 110 £425 -1.45% 50
East Midlands +1 91 £205 -45.33% 77
Wales -2 44 £180 -18.18% 34
North East +5 30 £188 -41.41% 33
Northern Ireland -15 15 £203 +21.26% 11

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
1 250 (8.79%) Microsoft Exchange
2 182 (6.40%) SharePoint
3 81 (2.85%) Confluence
4 53 (1.86%) Apache
5 45 (1.58%) IIS
6 26 (0.91%) WebLogic
7 25 (0.88%) WebSphere
8 22 (0.77%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.70%) JBoss
10 15 (0.53%) Exchange Server 2010
10 15 (0.53%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.49%) nginx
12 13 (0.46%) Exchange Server 2013
13 11 (0.39%) WebSphere Application Server
14 10 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2003
14 10 (0.35%) Exchange Server 2007
14 10 (0.35%) iPlanet
14 10 (0.35%) Office Communications Server
14 10 (0.35%) SAS
15 9 (0.32%) Tomcat
Applications
1 281 (9.88%) Microsoft Office
2 93 (3.27%) Microsoft Excel
3 29 (1.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.35%) Mozilla Thunderbird
5 9 (0.32%) MS Visio
6 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.070%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.070%) Adobe Premiere
7 2 (0.070%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.070%) Windchill
8 1 (0.035%) Acrobat
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.035%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.035%) InDesign
8 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.035%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 19 (0.67%) Remedy ITSM
2 7 (0.25%) assyst
3 5 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.14%) Maximo
4 4 (0.14%) Oracle 11i
5 3 (0.11%) ION MarketView
6 2 (0.070%) Dynamics GP
6 2 (0.070%) Eikon
6 2 (0.070%) Fidessa
6 2 (0.070%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.070%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.070%) SystmOne
6 2 (0.070%) Teamcenter
7 1 (0.035%) Aladdin
7 1 (0.035%) OpenText MBPM
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.035%) Pegasus Opera
7 1 (0.035%) Primavera
7 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
7 1 (0.035%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 730 (25.66%) Microsoft 365
2 640 (22.50%) Azure
3 271 (9.53%) AWS
4 232 (8.15%) Entra ID
5 85 (2.99%) OneDrive
6 80 (2.81%) SaaS
7 70 (2.46%) Azure DevOps
8 69 (2.43%) GitHub
9 65 (2.28%) GCP
10 60 (2.11%) IaaS
11 43 (1.51%) Google Workspace
12 42 (1.48%) PaaS
13 41 (1.44%) Power Platform
14 35 (1.23%) Amazon S3
15 33 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
15 33 (1.16%) Azure Monitor
16 32 (1.12%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 30 (1.05%) Azure Sentinel
18 28 (0.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 24 (0.84%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 346 (12.16%) DNS
2 332 (11.67%) Firewall
3 215 (7.56%) DHCP
4 197 (6.92%) TCP/IP
5 167 (5.87%) VPN
6 101 (3.55%) Wi-Fi
7 91 (3.20%) LAN
8 87 (3.06%) Network Security
9 86 (3.02%) WAN
10 65 (2.28%) Wireless
11 64 (2.25%) VLAN
12 62 (2.18%) SAN
12 62 (2.18%) SSH
13 54 (1.90%) HTTP
14 50 (1.76%) Cisco IOS
15 36 (1.27%) SSL
16 33 (1.16%) Skype
17 31 (1.09%) VoIP
18 30 (1.05%) FTP
18 30 (1.05%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 131 (4.60%) SQL Server
2 89 (3.13%) Oracle Database
3 65 (2.28%) Relational Database
4 48 (1.69%) MySQL
5 31 (1.09%) PostgreSQL
6 29 (1.02%) Amazon RDS
7 16 (0.56%) Power BI
8 14 (0.49%) Oracle Reports
9 12 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
10 11 (0.39%) GIS
10 11 (0.39%) NoSQL
11 10 (0.35%) BigQuery
12 9 (0.32%) DB2
12 9 (0.32%) RDBMS
13 8 (0.28%) SAP HANA
14 7 (0.25%) Azure SQL Database
14 7 (0.25%) Data Lake
14 7 (0.25%) Elasticsearch
14 7 (0.25%) MongoDB
15 6 (0.21%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 165 (5.80%) JIRA
2 108 (3.80%) Git
3 105 (3.69%) Jenkins
4 51 (1.79%) GitLab
5 41 (1.44%) Eclipse
6 40 (1.41%) Visual Studio
7 34 (1.20%) MSI
8 31 (1.09%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.81%) Vagrant
10 21 (0.74%) Android Studio
11 20 (0.70%) Browser DevTools
12 19 (0.67%) Xcode
13 18 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
14 15 (0.53%) InstallShield
15 14 (0.49%) Artifactory
15 14 (0.49%) Bitbucket Server
15 14 (0.49%) CA Release Automation
16 13 (0.46%) IntelliJ
17 12 (0.42%) Visual Studio Code
18 11 (0.39%) PyCharm
General
1 1,070 (37.61%) Social Skills
2 364 (12.79%) Finance
3 270 (9.49%) Public Sector
4 254 (8.93%) Analytical Skills
5 139 (4.89%) Banking
6 120 (4.22%) Documentation Skills
7 82 (2.88%) Legal
8 67 (2.36%) Manufacturing
9 65 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
10 55 (1.93%) Telecoms
11 53 (1.86%) Military
12 51 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 48 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
14 44 (1.55%) Retail
15 40 (1.41%) Marketing
16 29 (1.02%) Aerospace
17 28 (0.98%) Electronics
18 25 (0.88%) Games
19 24 (0.84%) Front Office
20 23 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 444 (15.61%) Support Engineer
2 347 (12.20%) Analyst
3 322 (11.32%) IT Support
4 199 (6.99%) IT Engineer
5 161 (5.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 158 (5.55%) Windows Engineer
7 148 (5.20%) Support Analyst
8 147 (5.17%) Desktop Support
9 144 (5.06%) Desktop Engineer
10 141 (4.96%) IT Support Engineer
11 135 (4.75%) Architect
11 135 (4.75%) Deployment Engineer
12 134 (4.71%) Senior
13 113 (3.97%) 2nd Line Support
13 113 (3.97%) Developer
14 111 (3.90%) Technical Support
15 106 (3.73%) Desktop Support Engineer
16 102 (3.59%) Platform Engineer
17 91 (3.20%) Administrator
18 81 (2.85%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 76 (2.67%) .NET
2 54 (1.90%) LDAP
3 47 (1.65%) Middleware
4 43 (1.51%) .NET Framework
4 43 (1.51%) REST
5 38 (1.34%) OAuth
5 38 (1.34%) Web Services
6 36 (1.27%) AngularJS
6 36 (1.27%) SAML
7 35 (1.23%) Node.js
7 35 (1.23%) WPF
8 33 (1.16%) React
9 30 (1.05%) OpenID
9 30 (1.05%) XML
10 26 (0.91%) CSS
10 26 (0.91%) SOAP
11 24 (0.84%) Kafka
12 21 (0.74%) Ajax
13 20 (0.70%) GraphQL
14 19 (0.67%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 114 (4.01%) Onboarding
2 96 (3.37%) Data Centre
3 95 (3.34%) PKI
4 78 (2.74%) Driving Licence
5 67 (2.36%) Replication
6 63 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
7 62 (2.18%) Self-Motivation
8 60 (2.11%) Management Information System
9 42 (1.48%) Security Posture
9 42 (1.48%) Smartphone
10 36 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
11 34 (1.20%) iPhone
12 33 (1.16%) NHS
13 32 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
13 32 (1.12%) Video Conferencing
14 31 (1.09%) Hybrid Cloud
14 31 (1.09%) Mobile App
14 31 (1.09%) Public Cloud
15 29 (1.02%) Legacy Systems
16 28 (0.98%) iPad
Operating Systems
1 722 (25.38%) Linux
2 584 (20.53%) Windows 10
3 545 (19.16%) Windows Server
4 196 (6.89%) Unix
5 155 (5.45%) Android
5 155 (5.45%) Mac OS
6 99 (3.48%) Apple iOS
7 82 (2.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 66 (2.32%) Windows Server 2016
9 63 (2.21%) Windows 7
10 58 (2.04%) Windows Server 2019
11 45 (1.58%) Windows Server 2012
12 39 (1.37%) VMS
13 35 (1.23%) Ubuntu
13 35 (1.23%) Windows Server 2003
14 28 (0.98%) AIX
15 20 (0.70%) Amazon Linux
16 18 (0.63%) CentOS
16 18 (0.63%) Solaris
17 14 (0.49%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 504 (17.72%) Problem-Solving
2 416 (14.62%) ITIL
3 385 (13.53%) Customer Service
4 294 (10.33%) Migration
5 292 (10.26%) Agile
6 246 (8.65%) DevOps
7 238 (8.37%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 218 (7.66%) Service Management
9 215 (7.56%) CI/CD
10 203 (7.14%) ITSM
11 202 (7.10%) Cybersecurity
12 185 (6.50%) Continuous Improvement
13 157 (5.52%) Change Management
14 129 (4.53%) User Experience
15 122 (4.29%) Incident Response
16 120 (4.22%) Stakeholder Management
17 113 (3.97%) Service Delivery
18 112 (3.94%) Cloud Security
19 111 (3.90%) Incident Management
20 109 (3.83%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 520 (18.28%) PowerShell
2 366 (12.86%) Python
3 296 (10.40%) SQL
4 150 (5.27%) Java
5 143 (5.03%) C#
6 124 (4.36%) Bash
7 88 (3.09%) JavaScript
8 81 (2.85%) Perl
9 76 (2.67%) C++
10 48 (1.69%) PL/SQL
11 39 (1.37%) Shell Script
12 34 (1.20%) VB
13 31 (1.09%) Groovy
13 31 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (1.09%) VBScript
14 27 (0.95%) T-SQL
14 27 (0.95%) VBA
15 25 (0.88%) C
16 23 (0.81%) PHP
17 18 (0.63%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 824 (28.96%) Security Cleared
2 569 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 274 (9.63%) Degree
4 211 (7.42%) DV Cleared
5 191 (6.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 72 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 68 (2.39%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
9 52 (1.83%) A+ Certification
10 51 (1.79%) MCSE
11 40 (1.41%) ITIL Certification
12 39 (1.37%) AWS Certification
13 38 (1.34%) CISSP
14 34 (1.20%) CCNA
14 34 (1.20%) CCNP
15 31 (1.09%) DBS Check
16 29 (1.02%) BPSS Clearance
17 26 (0.91%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 24 (0.84%) MCSA
19 23 (0.81%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 89 (3.13%) SLA
2 77 (2.71%) QA
3 72 (2.53%) GDPR
4 60 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 51 (1.79%) NIST
6 24 (0.84%) PCI DSS
7 15 (0.53%) HIPAA
8 14 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.46%) PMO
10 11 (0.39%) NCSC
11 9 (0.32%) Accessibility
12 7 (0.25%) GLBA
12 7 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 6 (0.21%) COBIT
14 5 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
15 4 (0.14%) SOC 2
16 3 (0.11%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 3 (0.11%) Data Quality
16 3 (0.11%) ECSS
16 3 (0.11%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,017 (35.75%) Active Directory
2 246 (8.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 128 (4.50%) Docker
4 86 (3.02%) Hyper-V
5 62 (2.18%) Virtual Desktop
6 54 (1.90%) Virtual Machines
7 48 (1.69%) VMware ESXi
7 48 (1.69%) vSphere
8 31 (1.09%) VMware NSX
9 23 (0.81%) DFS Replication
10 22 (0.77%) BitLocker
11 21 (0.74%) Firmware
12 20 (0.70%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.63%) NFS
14 16 (0.56%) Terminal Services
15 15 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
16 14 (0.49%) XenApp
17 10 (0.35%) ISA Server
17 10 (0.35%) Postfix
17 10 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 415 (14.59%) SCCM
2 293 (10.30%) Microsoft Intune
3 184 (6.47%) Terraform
4 151 (5.31%) Ansible
5 98 (3.44%) Kubernetes
6 60 (2.11%) vCenter Server
7 57 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
8 50 (1.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 45 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
10 42 (1.48%) Grafana
11 32 (1.12%) Progress Chef
12 30 (1.05%) WSUS
13 29 (1.02%) SCOM
14 27 (0.95%) Nessus
14 27 (0.95%) Prometheus
15 20 (0.70%) Puppet
16 19 (0.67%) Microsoft Clustering
17 16 (0.56%) Proxmox
18 15 (0.53%) WMI
19 14 (0.49%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 1,232 (43.30%) Microsoft
2 352 (12.37%) VMware
3 255 (8.96%) ServiceNow
4 237 (8.33%) Oracle
5 182 (6.40%) Cisco
6 177 (6.22%) Citrix
7 145 (5.10%) Splunk
8 85 (2.99%) Apple
9 77 (2.71%) HP
10 71 (2.50%) Red Hat
11 66 (2.32%) IBM
12 57 (2.00%) Dell
13 54 (1.90%) SAP
13 54 (1.90%) Veeam
14 47 (1.65%) Google
15 45 (1.58%) SolarWinds
16 44 (1.55%) NetApp
17 43 (1.51%) AppDynamics
18 41 (1.44%) CyberArk
19 39 (1.37%) Remedy