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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,092 2,624 3,294
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.81% 7.97% 8.40%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.34% 59.64% 60.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,965 1,732 2,226
10th Percentile £165 £173 £175
25th Percentile £225 £225 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £415 £448
Median % change year-on-year +2.41% -7.42% +1.59%
75th Percentile £556 £564 £575
90th Percentile £650 £660 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £400 £450
% change year-on-year +3.13% -11.11% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 280 210 235
10th Percentile £15.81 £15.33 £11.36
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.44 £15.64
Median hourly rate £25.51 £19.32 £21.59
Median % change year-on-year +32.05% -10.54% -8.13%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £52.45
90th Percentile £72.20 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.00
% change year-on-year +36.46% -5.65% -6.56%

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 5,124 4,400 5,467
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.37% 13.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,238 2,827 3,629
10th Percentile £192 £200 £200
25th Percentile £317 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.62% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £656 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £450 £473
% change year-on-year +1.11% -4.91% +5.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 353 257 337
10th Percentile £14.70 £15.50 £12.47
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.13 £17.69
Median hourly rate £26.00 £24.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -12.73% -35.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.40 £67.40 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.27 £22.53 £39.25
% change year-on-year +21.04% -42.60% +33.96%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 2,711 £425 +3.22% 1,290
UK excluding London -13 2,013 £413 +3.13% 1,024
London -14 899 £425 - 385
Work from Home -11 635 £475 +3.26% 471
South East -7 583 £475 -3.06% 329
North of England -7 469 £325 -3.70% 235
South West -10 279 £488 +8.33% 134
Midlands -24 263 £400 +3.23% 142
North West -4 256 £328 -8.52% 141
East of England -2 201 £335 +41.05% 134
Yorkshire -15 189 £355 +9.23% 64
West Midlands -27 172 £450 +12.50% 85
Scotland -5 162 £400 -13.98% 39
East Midlands +9 87 £270 +35.00% 57
Wales +3 54 £425 +54.55% 32
North East -36 28 £260 -5.45% 36
Northern Ireland -2 17 £139 -30.75% 13
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
1 240 (7.76%) Microsoft Exchange
2 239 (7.73%) SharePoint
3 68 (2.20%) IIS
4 60 (1.94%) Confluence
5 18 (0.58%) nginx
6 17 (0.55%) Apache
7 16 (0.52%) Tomcat
8 14 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.42%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.36%) Skype for Business
11 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
11 9 (0.29%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.19%) Appian
12 6 (0.19%) Documentum
13 5 (0.16%) Camunda
13 5 (0.16%) SAS
14 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 4 (0.13%) Apache Solr
14 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
15 3 (0.097%) CloudStack
Applications
1 200 (6.47%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 6 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.13%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.097%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.097%) Houdini
7 3 (0.097%) NUKE
8 2 (0.065%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.032%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 58 (1.88%) Remedy ITSM
2 14 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.32%) Finacle
4 7 (0.23%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.23%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.16%) Dynamics CRM
7 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 3 (0.097%) assyst
9 2 (0.065%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.065%) 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 EWM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
10 1 (0.032%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 958 (30.98%) Azure
2 936 (30.27%) Microsoft 365
3 455 (14.72%) Entra ID
4 330 (10.67%) AWS
5 133 (4.30%) OneDrive
6 107 (3.46%) Azure DevOps
7 104 (3.36%) GCP
8 74 (2.39%) SaaS
9 72 (2.33%) GitHub
9 72 (2.33%) Power Platform
10 67 (2.17%) Azure Monitor
11 63 (2.04%) IaaS
12 53 (1.71%) PaaS
13 43 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
14 35 (1.13%) OpenShift
15 30 (0.97%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (0.87%) GitHub Actions
17 25 (0.81%) Amazon EC2
18 24 (0.78%) Google Workspace
19 23 (0.74%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 466 (15.07%) DNS
2 356 (11.51%) Firewall
3 318 (10.28%) DHCP
4 253 (8.18%) VPN
5 217 (7.02%) TCP/IP
6 164 (5.30%) LAN
7 154 (4.98%) WAN
8 139 (4.50%) Wi-Fi
9 96 (3.10%) SAN
10 79 (2.55%) Network Security
11 73 (2.36%) VLAN
12 51 (1.65%) SSL
13 48 (1.55%) BGP
14 46 (1.49%) NAS
15 43 (1.39%) Internet
16 42 (1.36%) Wireless
17 36 (1.16%) OSPF
18 35 (1.13%) VSAN
19 32 (1.03%) VoIP
20 29 (0.94%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (9.80%) SQL Server
2 62 (2.01%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.71%) Power BI
4 35 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 33 (1.07%) PostgreSQL
5 33 (1.07%) Relational Database
6 27 (0.87%) MySQL
7 21 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
8 16 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (0.52%) Db2
8 16 (0.52%) RDBMS
9 15 (0.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 14 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
10 14 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 11 (0.36%) Geospatial Data
11 11 (0.36%) MongoDB
11 11 (0.36%) NoSQL
12 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
13 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
14 8 (0.26%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 176 (5.69%) JIRA
2 76 (2.46%) Git
3 56 (1.81%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.62%) MSI
5 41 (1.33%) GitLab
6 37 (1.20%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.55%) Bitbucket
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 10 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
10 8 (0.26%) Artifactory
10 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.19%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.19%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.19%) Xcode
13 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
13 5 (0.16%) Selenium
General
1 1,130 (36.55%) Social Skills
2 384 (12.42%) Analytical Skills
3 357 (11.55%) Finance
4 193 (6.24%) Public Sector
5 160 (5.17%) Banking
6 107 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 98 (3.17%) Legal
8 81 (2.62%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.81%) Retail
11 51 (1.65%) Manufacturing
12 46 (1.49%) Military
13 40 (1.29%) Front Office
14 39 (1.26%) Telecoms
15 36 (1.16%) Law
16 34 (1.10%) Investment Banking
17 28 (0.91%) Spanish Language
18 26 (0.84%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.74%) French Language
20 21 (0.68%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 458 (14.81%) Support Engineer
2 408 (13.20%) IT Support
3 309 (9.99%) IT Engineer
4 306 (9.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 277 (8.96%) Analyst
6 259 (8.38%) IT Support Engineer
7 233 (7.54%) Senior
8 131 (4.24%) Desktop Support
9 126 (4.08%) 2nd Line Support
9 126 (4.08%) Architect
10 115 (3.72%) Developer
11 113 (3.65%) Lead
12 112 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
13 108 (3.49%) Desktop Engineer
14 103 (3.33%) Support Analyst
15 94 (3.04%) Consultant
16 93 (3.01%) Windows Engineer
17 87 (2.81%) IT Analyst
18 85 (2.75%) 1st Line Support
19 83 (2.68%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (4.14%) .NET
2 116 (3.75%) REST
3 68 (2.20%) .NET Framework
4 39 (1.26%) Middleware
5 34 (1.10%) WinForms
6 32 (1.03%) LDAP
7 31 (1.00%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.97%) WPF
9 29 (0.94%) HTML
9 29 (0.94%) JSON
10 28 (0.91%) XML
11 27 (0.87%) Web Services
12 26 (0.84%) CSS
13 25 (0.81%) Kafka
14 24 (0.78%) Software Packaging
15 22 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
16 21 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
16 21 (0.68%) RESTful
17 19 (0.61%) SAML
18 18 (0.58%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 337 (10.90%) Onboarding
2 169 (5.47%) Data Centre
3 164 (5.30%) PKI
4 93 (3.01%) Clustering
5 83 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
5 83 (2.68%) Management Information System
6 79 (2.55%) Cloud Native
7 73 (2.36%) Driving Licence
8 69 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
9 66 (2.13%) Self-Motivation
10 63 (2.04%) Replication
11 59 (1.91%) Video Conferencing
12 56 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
12 56 (1.81%) Security Posture
13 45 (1.46%) Virtual Team
14 40 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
15 38 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
15 38 (1.23%) Operational Technology
16 37 (1.20%) Smartphone
17 36 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 789 (25.52%) Windows Server
2 772 (24.97%) Linux
3 521 (16.85%) Windows 10
4 190 (6.14%) Mac OS
5 161 (5.21%) Unix
6 139 (4.50%) Android
7 136 (4.40%) Apple iOS
8 123 (3.98%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 76 (2.46%) Windows Server 2019
10 47 (1.52%) Windows Server 2016
11 42 (1.36%) Windows 7
12 41 (1.33%) Ubuntu
13 38 (1.23%) AIX
14 37 (1.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 24 (0.78%) CentOS
16 22 (0.71%) Solaris
17 21 (0.68%) VMS
18 20 (0.65%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.32%) Rocky
20 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 725 (23.45%) Problem-Solving
2 536 (17.34%) ITIL
3 487 (15.75%) Customer Service
4 395 (12.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 384 (12.42%) Migration
6 369 (11.93%) ITSM
7 303 (9.80%) DevOps
8 301 (9.73%) Continuous Improvement
9 269 (8.70%) Agile
10 266 (8.60%) CI/CD
11 257 (8.31%) Service Management
12 229 (7.41%) Infrastructure as Code
13 219 (7.08%) Change Management
14 208 (6.73%) High Availability
15 194 (6.27%) Service Delivery
16 189 (6.11%) Stakeholder Management
17 185 (5.98%) Cybersecurity
18 178 (5.76%) Disaster Recovery
19 167 (5.40%) Incident Management
20 163 (5.27%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 710 (22.96%) PowerShell
2 326 (10.54%) Python
3 314 (10.16%) SQL
4 174 (5.63%) Bash
5 156 (5.05%) C#
6 76 (2.46%) Java
7 75 (2.43%) JavaScript
8 63 (2.04%) T-SQL
9 58 (1.88%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.55%) C++
11 42 (1.36%) Bicep
12 25 (0.81%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.74%) Perl
14 22 (0.71%) VB
14 22 (0.71%) VBScript
15 20 (0.65%) Shell Script
15 20 (0.65%) VBA
16 18 (0.58%) TypeScript
17 15 (0.49%) C
18 13 (0.42%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 937 (30.30%) Security Cleared
2 587 (18.98%) SC Cleared
3 315 (10.19%) DV Cleared
4 302 (9.77%) Degree
5 125 (4.04%) Microsoft Certification
6 103 (3.33%) Cisco Certification
7 75 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
8 72 (2.33%) Azure Certification
9 67 (2.17%) CISSP
10 63 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
11 53 (1.71%) AWS Certification
12 45 (1.46%) CCNA
13 44 (1.42%) A+ Certification
14 42 (1.36%) MCSE
15 36 (1.16%) CCNP
16 32 (1.03%) DBS Check
17 31 (1.00%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 31 (1.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 28 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
19 24 (0.78%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 152 (4.92%) SLA
2 120 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 91 (2.94%) QA
4 88 (2.85%) NIST
5 40 (1.29%) GDPR
6 29 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
7 28 (0.91%) NCSC
8 23 (0.74%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
9 16 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 14 (0.45%) Data Quality
10 14 (0.45%) GxP
10 14 (0.45%) PMO
11 13 (0.42%) Accessibility
12 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.36%) WCAG
13 10 (0.32%) GRC
14 9 (0.29%) GMP
14 9 (0.29%) SOC 2
15 8 (0.26%) 21 CFR Part 11
System Software
1 1,239 (40.07%) Active Directory
2 420 (13.58%) VMware Infrastructure
3 181 (5.85%) Hyper-V
4 137 (4.43%) VMware ESXi
5 116 (3.75%) vSphere
6 107 (3.46%) Docker
7 97 (3.14%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.65%) Virtual Desktop
9 77 (2.49%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.29%) Firmware
11 32 (1.03%) BitLocker
12 22 (0.71%) Microsoft App-V
13 17 (0.55%) vCloud
14 13 (0.42%) KVM
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
15 9 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
17 7 (0.23%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 424 (13.71%) Microsoft Intune
2 284 (9.18%) SCCM
3 257 (8.31%) Terraform
4 229 (7.41%) Ansible
5 170 (5.50%) Kubernetes
6 113 (3.65%) vCenter Server
7 73 (2.36%) SCOM
8 49 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (1.33%) Progress Chef
9 41 (1.33%) WSUS
10 39 (1.26%) FortiGate
11 35 (1.13%) Single Sign-On
12 32 (1.03%) Puppet
13 27 (0.87%) NetBackup
14 25 (0.81%) Nagios
14 25 (0.81%) Packer
15 24 (0.78%) Prometheus
16 23 (0.74%) Grafana
17 22 (0.71%) WMI
17 22 (0.71%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,367 (44.21%) Microsoft
2 565 (18.27%) VMware
3 339 (10.96%) ServiceNow
4 218 (7.05%) Cisco
5 205 (6.63%) Oracle
6 196 (6.34%) Citrix
7 135 (4.37%) Splunk
8 92 (2.98%) Apple
8 92 (2.98%) SolarWinds
9 91 (2.94%) CyberArk
10 74 (2.39%) BeyondTrust
10 74 (2.39%) HP
11 73 (2.36%) Google
11 73 (2.36%) Red Hat
12 68 (2.20%) Remedy
13 61 (1.97%) Dell
14 57 (1.84%) F5
15 55 (1.78%) Juniper
16 48 (1.55%) BMC
16 48 (1.55%) Palo Alto