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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,050 2,620 3,476
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.79% 8.04% 8.41%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.21% 59.71% 60.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,943 1,732 2,338
10th Percentile £168 £178 £165
25th Percentile £225 £225 £246
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £421 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -0.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £647 £673 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £400 £449
% change year-on-year +6.25% -10.91% +19.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 203 281
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.33 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.58 £17.33 £15.22
Median hourly rate £25.51 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.16% -5.65% -17.73%
75th Percentile £54.25 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £68.60 £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 5,066 4,388 5,728
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.61% 13.47% 13.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,216 2,821 3,773
10th Percentile £191 £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 340 248 401
10th Percentile £15.73 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -6.12% -42.35%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.02 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.58 £21.90 £31.00
% change year-on-year +21.37% -29.35% +3.33%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -6 2,671 £423 +1.87% 972
UK excluding London -13 2,013 £425 +6.25% 840
London -19 865 £415 -6.74% 238
Work from Home -11 633 £475 - 311
South East -9 571 £475 -3.46% 297
North of England -9 476 £350 - 204
Midlands -14 275 £382 +27.33% 107
South West -11 264 £488 +14.71% 104
North West -8 250 £350 -2.23% 111
Yorkshire -11 204 £365 -8.75% 59
East of England -3 203 £335 +34.00% 102
West Midlands -24 174 £450 +38.46% 57
Scotland -8 164 £413 -5.71% 31
East Midlands +10 96 £270 +35.00% 50
Wales +6 58 £408 +48.18% 19
North East -40 26 £273 -0.91% 40
Northern Ireland -3 17 £139 -28.97% 9
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
1 238 (7.80%) Microsoft Exchange
2 233 (7.64%) SharePoint
3 67 (2.20%) IIS
4 60 (1.97%) Confluence
5 19 (0.62%) nginx
5 19 (0.62%) Tomcat
6 18 (0.59%) Apache
7 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 10 (0.33%) HCL Notes
8 10 (0.33%) Skype for Business
9 9 (0.30%) NetWeaver
9 9 (0.30%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.20%) Appian
10 6 (0.20%) Documentum
11 5 (0.16%) Camunda
11 5 (0.16%) SAS
12 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2010
13 3 (0.098%) FactoryTalk
Applications
1 192 (6.30%) Microsoft Office
2 71 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.098%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.098%) Chatbot
8 2 (0.066%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.066%) Houdini
8 2 (0.066%) NUKE
8 2 (0.066%) PTC Creo
9 1 (0.033%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 50 (1.64%) 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%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.098%) assyst
8 2 (0.066%) Dynamics CRM
8 2 (0.066%) Dynamics GP
9 1 (0.033%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.033%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.033%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.033%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.033%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.033%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.033%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 932 (30.56%) Azure
2 891 (29.21%) Microsoft 365
3 432 (14.16%) Entra ID
4 325 (10.66%) AWS
5 132 (4.33%) OneDrive
6 101 (3.31%) GCP
7 97 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
8 75 (2.46%) SaaS
9 67 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
10 65 (2.13%) GitHub
10 65 (2.13%) Power Platform
11 64 (2.10%) IaaS
12 56 (1.84%) PaaS
13 44 (1.44%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.21%) OpenShift
15 32 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (0.89%) Azure AKS
16 27 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
17 26 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
17 26 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 446 (14.62%) DNS
2 332 (10.89%) Firewall
3 303 (9.93%) DHCP
4 239 (7.84%) VPN
5 212 (6.95%) TCP/IP
6 174 (5.70%) LAN
7 162 (5.31%) WAN
8 150 (4.92%) Wi-Fi
9 100 (3.28%) SAN
10 74 (2.43%) Network Security
11 65 (2.13%) VLAN
12 49 (1.61%) SSL
13 47 (1.54%) BGP
13 47 (1.54%) NAS
14 43 (1.41%) Internet
15 39 (1.28%) Wireless
16 36 (1.18%) OSPF
17 35 (1.15%) VoIP
18 31 (1.02%) SNMP
19 30 (0.98%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 281 (9.21%) SQL Server
2 61 (2.00%) Oracle Database
3 43 (1.41%) Power BI
4 33 (1.08%) PostgreSQL
4 33 (1.08%) Relational Database
5 26 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 24 (0.79%) MySQL
7 22 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
8 21 (0.69%) Db2
9 17 (0.56%) Elasticsearch
10 16 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
11 14 (0.46%) RDBMS
12 11 (0.36%) NoSQL
13 10 (0.33%) GIS
13 10 (0.33%) MongoDB
13 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
14 9 (0.30%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.30%) SAP HANA
14 9 (0.30%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 9 (0.30%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 184 (6.03%) JIRA
2 67 (2.20%) Git
3 56 (1.84%) Jenkins
4 49 (1.61%) MSI
5 38 (1.25%) GitLab
5 38 (1.25%) Visual Studio
6 17 (0.56%) Eclipse
7 12 (0.39%) Bitbucket
8 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
9 7 (0.23%) Artifactory
9 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
9 7 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
10 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
10 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
10 6 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
10 6 (0.20%) Xcode
11 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
11 5 (0.16%) Maven
11 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
11 5 (0.16%) Selenium
General
1 1,092 (35.80%) Social Skills
2 351 (11.51%) Analytical Skills
3 333 (10.92%) Finance
4 209 (6.85%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.18%) Banking
6 107 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
7 100 (3.28%) Legal
8 85 (2.79%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 51 (1.67%) Retail
11 46 (1.51%) Manufacturing
11 46 (1.51%) Military
12 36 (1.18%) Telecoms
13 35 (1.15%) Front Office
13 35 (1.15%) Investment Banking
14 33 (1.08%) Law
15 26 (0.85%) Spanish Language
16 23 (0.75%) Financial Institution
17 21 (0.69%) French Language
17 21 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 428 (14.03%) Support Engineer
2 398 (13.05%) IT Support
3 291 (9.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 288 (9.44%) IT Engineer
5 286 (9.38%) Analyst
6 243 (7.97%) IT Support Engineer
7 216 (7.08%) Senior
8 132 (4.33%) Architect
9 125 (4.10%) Desktop Support
10 122 (4.00%) 2nd Line Support
11 116 (3.80%) Developer
12 107 (3.51%) Cloud Engineer
13 106 (3.48%) Lead
13 106 (3.48%) Support Analyst
14 105 (3.44%) Desktop Engineer
15 97 (3.18%) Consultant
16 90 (2.95%) Windows Engineer
17 88 (2.89%) IT Analyst
18 80 (2.62%) Service Analyst
19 79 (2.59%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 120 (3.93%) .NET
2 110 (3.61%) REST
3 65 (2.13%) .NET Framework
4 38 (1.25%) Middleware
5 35 (1.15%) LDAP
6 34 (1.11%) WinForms
7 31 (1.02%) 802.1X
8 29 (0.95%) Web Services
9 28 (0.92%) JSON
9 28 (0.92%) Microsoft Graph
10 27 (0.89%) Kafka
10 27 (0.89%) Software Packaging
10 27 (0.89%) WPF
11 25 (0.82%) XML
12 23 (0.75%) HTML
13 22 (0.72%) CSS
14 21 (0.69%) Elastic Stack
14 21 (0.69%) RESTful
15 20 (0.66%) SAML
16 17 (0.56%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 306 (10.03%) Onboarding
2 163 (5.34%) Data Centre
3 156 (5.11%) PKI
4 83 (2.72%) Management Information System
5 82 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
6 80 (2.62%) Clustering
7 75 (2.46%) Cloud Native
8 69 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
9 67 (2.20%) Driving Licence
10 59 (1.93%) Replication
11 58 (1.90%) Hybrid Cloud
12 57 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
12 57 (1.87%) Security Posture
13 52 (1.70%) Video Conferencing
14 45 (1.48%) Virtual Team
15 39 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
16 37 (1.21%) Linux Command Line
17 34 (1.11%) Operational Technology
18 33 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
19 32 (1.05%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 756 (24.79%) Linux
2 746 (24.46%) Windows Server
3 499 (16.36%) Windows 10
4 196 (6.43%) Mac OS
5 157 (5.15%) Unix
6 139 (4.56%) Android
7 137 (4.49%) Apple iOS
8 126 (4.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 79 (2.59%) Windows Server 2019
10 56 (1.84%) Windows Server 2016
11 40 (1.31%) Ubuntu
12 38 (1.25%) AIX
13 37 (1.21%) Windows 7
14 36 (1.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 25 (0.82%) Solaris
16 22 (0.72%) VMS
17 20 (0.66%) CentOS
18 18 (0.59%) Windows Server 2008
19 11 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
20 9 (0.30%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 687 (22.52%) Problem-Solving
2 514 (16.85%) ITIL
3 458 (15.02%) Customer Service
4 375 (12.30%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 370 (12.13%) Migration
6 337 (11.05%) ITSM
7 293 (9.61%) DevOps
8 270 (8.85%) Agile
8 270 (8.85%) Continuous Improvement
9 268 (8.79%) CI/CD
10 235 (7.70%) Service Management
11 213 (6.98%) Infrastructure as Code
12 201 (6.59%) Change Management
12 201 (6.59%) High Availability
13 182 (5.97%) Stakeholder Management
14 176 (5.77%) Cybersecurity
15 173 (5.67%) Service Delivery
16 164 (5.38%) Disaster Recovery
17 160 (5.25%) Validation
18 155 (5.08%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 660 (21.64%) PowerShell
2 321 (10.52%) Python
3 307 (10.07%) SQL
4 161 (5.28%) Bash
5 145 (4.75%) C#
6 78 (2.56%) Java
7 66 (2.16%) JavaScript
8 62 (2.03%) PL/SQL
9 60 (1.97%) T-SQL
10 48 (1.57%) C++
11 39 (1.28%) Bicep
12 25 (0.82%) Search Processing Language
13 24 (0.79%) Shell Script
14 23 (0.75%) Perl
15 21 (0.69%) VB
15 21 (0.69%) VBA
15 21 (0.69%) VBScript
16 17 (0.56%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
18 14 (0.46%) C
Qualifications
1 906 (29.70%) Security Cleared
2 564 (18.49%) SC Cleared
3 307 (10.07%) Degree
4 301 (9.87%) DV Cleared
5 121 (3.97%) Microsoft Certification
6 100 (3.28%) Cisco Certification
7 79 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
8 67 (2.20%) CISSP
9 66 (2.16%) Azure Certification
10 59 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
11 55 (1.80%) AWS Certification
12 45 (1.48%) CCNA
13 43 (1.41%) MCSE
14 37 (1.21%) A+ Certification
15 33 (1.08%) CCNP
16 29 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 27 (0.89%) DBS Check
17 27 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
18 26 (0.85%) CompTIA Security+
19 24 (0.79%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 136 (4.46%) SLA
2 116 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 86 (2.82%) NIST
3 86 (2.82%) QA
4 39 (1.28%) GDPR
5 27 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
6 26 (0.85%) PCI DSS
7 25 (0.82%) NCSC
8 17 (0.56%) Disclosure Scotland
8 17 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (0.46%) Data Quality
9 14 (0.46%) PMO
10 13 (0.43%) GxP
11 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
12 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.33%) GRC
13 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.30%) GMP
14 9 (0.30%) NIST 800
14 9 (0.30%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,195 (39.18%) Active Directory
2 410 (13.44%) VMware Infrastructure
3 165 (5.41%) Hyper-V
4 131 (4.30%) VMware ESXi
5 110 (3.61%) vSphere
6 103 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
7 102 (3.34%) Docker
8 77 (2.52%) Virtual Desktop
9 68 (2.23%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.21%) Firmware
11 32 (1.05%) BitLocker
12 26 (0.85%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.59%) KVM
14 15 (0.49%) vCloud
15 9 (0.30%) NFS
15 9 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
18 6 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 423 (13.87%) Microsoft Intune
2 277 (9.08%) SCCM
3 238 (7.80%) Terraform
4 207 (6.79%) Ansible
5 160 (5.25%) Kubernetes
6 108 (3.54%) vCenter Server
7 62 (2.03%) SCOM
8 56 (1.84%) Jamf Pro
9 40 (1.31%) Progress Chef
10 39 (1.28%) FortiGate
10 39 (1.28%) WSUS
11 36 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
12 31 (1.02%) Grafana
13 29 (0.95%) Puppet
14 27 (0.89%) Prometheus
15 25 (0.82%) Nagios
16 23 (0.75%) Packer
17 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
18 21 (0.69%) Nessus
19 20 (0.66%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,320 (43.28%) Microsoft
2 539 (17.67%) VMware
3 306 (10.03%) ServiceNow
4 215 (7.05%) Cisco
5 199 (6.52%) Citrix
5 199 (6.52%) Oracle
6 133 (4.36%) Splunk
7 93 (3.05%) Apple
8 88 (2.89%) SolarWinds
9 82 (2.69%) CyberArk
10 79 (2.59%) Red Hat
11 76 (2.49%) HP
12 71 (2.33%) Google
13 67 (2.20%) BeyondTrust
14 65 (2.13%) Dell
15 61 (2.00%) Remedy
16 57 (1.87%) F5
17 54 (1.77%) IBM
18 52 (1.70%) Juniper
19 43 (1.41%) Palo Alto