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 2 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,201 2,630 3,224
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.97% 8.09% 8.35%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.95% 59.73% 59.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,063 1,732 2,139
10th Percentile £170 £170 £175
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £413 £425
Median % change year-on-year +3.03% -2.94% -3.41%
75th Percentile £556 £552 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £408 £375 £425
% change year-on-year +8.67% -11.76% +11.84%
Number of hourly rates quoted 292 221 212
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £12.00
25th Percentile £16.97 £17.98 £16.00
Median hourly rate £24.88 £22.50 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.56% +2.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £55.00 £28.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £20.38 £21.59
% change year-on-year +26.38% -5.63% -1.86%

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 5,252 4,403 5,434
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.80% 13.54% 14.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,334 2,798 3,543
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £330
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £584
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 269 306
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.55 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £35.58
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -29.32% -16.28%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.69 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.33 £25.15 £47.50
% change year-on-year +4.69% -47.05% +28.21%

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 2 September 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 2 September 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 2 September 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 2,781 £416 +2.09% 2,047
UK excluding London -14 2,069 £408 +8.67% 1,380
London -13 931 £425 - 868
Work from Home -13 614 £469 +4.17% 690
South East -8 570 £475 -1.35% 415
North of England -5 506 £325 - 302
North West +3 308 £340 -3.00% 157
South West -14 278 £480 +33.33% 178
Midlands -16 272 £400 - 194
East of England -2 207 £275 -19.71% 202
West Midlands -24 173 £425 -4.49% 126
Yorkshire -20 169 £279 -10.88% 100
Scotland -5 168 £350 -22.22% 66
East Midlands +4 95 £275 +37.50% 68
Wales +5 65 £446 +62.27% 24
North East -32 33 £270 -1.82% 58
Northern Ireland -2 16 £139 -30.75% 39
Channel Islands 0 3 £518 - 1

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
1 259 (8.09%) SharePoint
2 242 (7.56%) Microsoft Exchange
3 68 (2.12%) IIS
4 57 (1.78%) Confluence
5 18 (0.56%) Apache
5 18 (0.56%) nginx
5 18 (0.56%) Skype for Business
6 14 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
7 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
7 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
8 6 (0.19%) Documentum
9 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.16%) Appian
9 5 (0.16%) Camunda
9 5 (0.16%) NetWeaver
9 5 (0.16%) SAS
9 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
10 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
11 3 (0.094%) CloudStack
11 3 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 215 (6.72%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.16%) Acrobat
5 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.094%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.094%) Houdini
6 3 (0.094%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.094%) NUKE
7 2 (0.062%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 56 (1.75%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.31%) Finacle
3 9 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
7 3 (0.094%) assyst
7 3 (0.094%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.062%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.062%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.031%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.031%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,008 (31.49%) Microsoft 365
2 991 (30.96%) Azure
3 506 (15.81%) Entra ID
4 337 (10.53%) AWS
5 147 (4.59%) OneDrive
6 121 (3.78%) Azure DevOps
7 105 (3.28%) GCP
8 81 (2.53%) Azure Monitor
9 76 (2.37%) Power Platform
9 76 (2.37%) SaaS
10 66 (2.06%) GitHub
11 60 (1.87%) IaaS
12 46 (1.44%) Azure Sentinel
13 44 (1.37%) PaaS
14 41 (1.28%) OpenShift
15 30 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.87%) Google Workspace
17 24 (0.75%) Amazon EC2
17 24 (0.75%) GitHub Actions
18 22 (0.69%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 477 (14.90%) DNS
2 351 (10.97%) Firewall
3 340 (10.62%) DHCP
4 272 (8.50%) VPN
5 231 (7.22%) TCP/IP
6 155 (4.84%) WAN
7 153 (4.78%) LAN
8 139 (4.34%) Wi-Fi
9 96 (3.00%) SAN
10 93 (2.91%) Network Security
11 89 (2.78%) VLAN
12 52 (1.62%) Wireless
13 50 (1.56%) SSL
14 46 (1.44%) Internet
14 46 (1.44%) NAS
15 38 (1.19%) VSAN
16 35 (1.09%) Skype
17 31 (0.97%) BGP
18 30 (0.94%) SD-WAN
19 28 (0.87%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (9.28%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.91%) Oracle Database
3 57 (1.78%) Power BI
4 40 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 39 (1.22%) PostgreSQL
6 37 (1.16%) Relational Database
7 25 (0.78%) MySQL
8 22 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
9 18 (0.56%) RDBMS
10 16 (0.50%) Data Warehouse
10 16 (0.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 12 (0.37%) Oracle Reports
13 11 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.31%) Db2
15 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
15 8 (0.25%) MS Access
16 7 (0.22%) NoSQL
16 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 162 (5.06%) JIRA
2 73 (2.28%) Git
3 57 (1.78%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.47%) MSI
5 44 (1.37%) GitLab
6 25 (0.78%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 8 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
9 8 (0.25%) Selenium
9 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 5 (0.16%) Chocolatey
11 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
11 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
11 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
11 5 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,163 (36.33%) Social Skills
2 403 (12.59%) Analytical Skills
3 370 (11.56%) Finance
4 171 (5.34%) Public Sector
5 154 (4.81%) Banking
6 114 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
7 90 (2.81%) Legal
8 75 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 75 (2.34%) Organisational Skills
9 60 (1.87%) Manufacturing
10 52 (1.62%) Telecoms
11 51 (1.59%) Retail
12 41 (1.28%) Front Office
13 39 (1.22%) Law
14 34 (1.06%) Investment Banking
15 30 (0.94%) Military
16 28 (0.87%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.78%) French Language
18 24 (0.75%) Financial Institution
19 23 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 513 (16.03%) Support Engineer
2 438 (13.68%) IT Support
3 343 (10.72%) IT Engineer
4 330 (10.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 286 (8.93%) IT Support Engineer
6 266 (8.31%) Analyst
7 252 (7.87%) Senior
8 141 (4.40%) Desktop Support
9 128 (4.00%) 2nd Line Support
10 125 (3.91%) Architect
11 122 (3.81%) Lead
12 117 (3.66%) Desktop Engineer
12 117 (3.66%) Windows Engineer
13 115 (3.59%) Cloud Engineer
14 103 (3.22%) Developer
14 103 (3.22%) Support Analyst
15 101 (3.16%) Consultant
16 88 (2.75%) 1st Line Support
17 84 (2.62%) Service Analyst
18 83 (2.59%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (8.31%) Terraform
2 136 (4.25%) .NET
3 118 (3.69%) REST
4 66 (2.06%) .NET Framework
5 45 (1.41%) Middleware
6 36 (1.12%) JSON
7 33 (1.03%) LDAP
8 31 (0.97%) XML
9 30 (0.94%) WinForms
10 29 (0.91%) WPF
11 28 (0.87%) Kafka
11 28 (0.87%) Software Packaging
12 27 (0.84%) HTML
13 24 (0.75%) ARM Templates
14 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
15 20 (0.62%) CSS
16 19 (0.59%) .NET Core
16 19 (0.59%) ASP.NET
16 19 (0.59%) Microsoft Graph
17 18 (0.56%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 375 (11.72%) Onboarding
2 184 (5.75%) Data Centre
3 161 (5.03%) PKI
4 100 (3.12%) Management Information System
5 86 (2.69%) Clustering
6 85 (2.66%) Hybrid Cloud
7 80 (2.50%) Cloud Native
7 80 (2.50%) Driving Licence
8 78 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
9 73 (2.28%) Replication
9 73 (2.28%) Video Conferencing
10 58 (1.81%) Self-Motivation
11 54 (1.69%) Security Posture
12 45 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
13 42 (1.31%) Virtual Team
14 41 (1.28%) Enterprise Storage
14 41 (1.28%) Operational Technology
15 39 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
15 39 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
16 38 (1.19%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 885 (27.65%) Windows Server
2 783 (24.46%) Linux
3 553 (17.28%) Windows 10
4 199 (6.22%) Mac OS
5 147 (4.59%) Unix
6 135 (4.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 134 (4.19%) Apple iOS
8 133 (4.15%) Android
9 76 (2.37%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.72%) Windows 7
11 51 (1.59%) Ubuntu
12 47 (1.47%) Windows Server 2016
13 41 (1.28%) Windows Server 2012
14 36 (1.12%) AIX
15 35 (1.09%) CentOS
16 24 (0.75%) VMS
17 18 (0.56%) Solaris
17 18 (0.56%) Windows Server 2008
18 14 (0.44%) Rocky
19 11 (0.34%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 757 (23.65%) Problem-Solving
2 595 (18.59%) ITIL
3 535 (16.71%) Customer Service
4 432 (13.50%) ITSM
5 420 (13.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 403 (12.59%) Migration
7 334 (10.43%) Continuous Improvement
8 311 (9.72%) Service Management
9 310 (9.68%) DevOps
10 259 (8.09%) CI/CD
11 258 (8.06%) Infrastructure as Code
12 250 (7.81%) Agile
13 224 (7.00%) Change Management
14 223 (6.97%) Stakeholder Management
15 203 (6.34%) Disaster Recovery
15 203 (6.34%) Root Cause Analysis
16 193 (6.03%) Service Delivery
17 188 (5.87%) Cybersecurity
17 188 (5.87%) High Availability
18 183 (5.72%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 777 (24.27%) PowerShell
2 334 (10.43%) Python
3 317 (9.90%) SQL
4 188 (5.87%) Bash
5 145 (4.53%) C#
6 71 (2.22%) Java
7 68 (2.12%) T-SQL
8 54 (1.69%) JavaScript
8 54 (1.69%) PL/SQL
9 49 (1.53%) Bicep
10 30 (0.94%) VBScript
11 29 (0.91%) VB
12 28 (0.87%) C++
13 24 (0.75%) Search Processing Language
14 22 (0.69%) Perl
15 19 (0.59%) Shell Script
15 19 (0.59%) VBA
16 16 (0.50%) TypeScript
17 11 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
18 10 (0.31%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 977 (30.52%) Security Cleared
2 604 (18.87%) SC Cleared
3 356 (11.12%) DV Cleared
4 297 (9.28%) Degree
5 127 (3.97%) Microsoft Certification
6 93 (2.91%) Azure Certification
6 93 (2.91%) Cisco Certification
7 74 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
9 65 (2.03%) CISSP
10 57 (1.78%) AWS Certification
11 56 (1.75%) A+ Certification
12 52 (1.62%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 46 (1.44%) CCNA
14 41 (1.28%) DBS Check
15 38 (1.19%) CCNP
16 36 (1.12%) MCSE
17 33 (1.03%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 28 (0.87%) CISM
18 28 (0.87%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 168 (5.25%) SLA
2 110 (3.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 92 (2.87%) QA
4 82 (2.56%) NIST
5 34 (1.06%) GDPR
6 33 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
7 30 (0.94%) NCSC
8 22 (0.69%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.50%) Data Quality
9 16 (0.50%) GxP
10 15 (0.47%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 11 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 11 (0.34%) GMP
13 11 (0.34%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.31%) GRC
System Software
1 1,310 (40.92%) Active Directory
2 476 (14.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 218 (6.81%) Hyper-V
4 153 (4.78%) VMware ESXi
5 132 (4.12%) vSphere
6 112 (3.50%) Docker
7 102 (3.19%) Virtual Machines
8 97 (3.03%) Virtual Desktop
9 81 (2.53%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.22%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.12%) Firmware
12 24 (0.75%) vCloud
13 16 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.34%) KVM
15 11 (0.34%) XenApp
16 10 (0.31%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 10 (0.31%) NFS
16 10 (0.31%) XenDesktop
17 6 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 441 (13.78%) Microsoft Intune
2 344 (10.75%) SCCM
3 234 (7.31%) Ansible
4 165 (5.15%) Kubernetes
5 121 (3.78%) vCenter Server
6 99 (3.09%) SCOM
7 51 (1.59%) Jamf Pro
8 49 (1.53%) WSUS
9 37 (1.16%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.03%) Prometheus
10 33 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.94%) Grafana
12 27 (0.84%) NetBackup
12 27 (0.84%) Puppet
12 27 (0.84%) WMI
13 26 (0.81%) Nagios
14 25 (0.78%) FortiGate
15 24 (0.75%) Packer
16 22 (0.69%) VxRail
17 21 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,487 (46.45%) Microsoft
2 626 (19.56%) VMware
3 381 (11.90%) ServiceNow
4 228 (7.12%) Cisco
5 202 (6.31%) Oracle
6 175 (5.47%) Citrix
7 117 (3.66%) Splunk
8 111 (3.47%) Apple
9 96 (3.00%) CyberArk
10 83 (2.59%) Google
11 79 (2.47%) Red Hat
11 79 (2.47%) SolarWinds
12 77 (2.41%) BeyondTrust
13 67 (2.09%) HP
14 60 (1.87%) Remedy
15 57 (1.78%) Dell
16 49 (1.53%) NetApp
17 48 (1.50%) BMC
17 48 (1.50%) Palo Alto
18 43 (1.34%) Meraki