Windows Contract Job Trends

Microsoft Windows
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Windows skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 21 19 14
Rank change year-on-year -2 -5 +3
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,614 3,166 4,912
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 8.05% 8.30% 9.78%
As % of the Operating Systems category 59.64% 58.61% 63.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,737 2,083 3,324
10th Percentile £164 £177 £165
25th Percentile £213 £249 £220
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £425 £440
Median % change year-on-year -5.88% -3.41% +3.53%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £588
90th Percentile £645 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £365 £425 £395
% change year-on-year -14.12% +7.59% +14.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 225 183 272
10th Percentile £15.40 £14.30 £13.36
25th Percentile £18.13 £17.57 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.00 £24.18 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.88% +2.89% +12.49%
75th Percentile £37.50 £57.56 £59.03
90th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.10 £24.18 £22.00
% change year-on-year -8.62% +9.91% +13.46%

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 4,383 5,402 7,788
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.50% 14.16% 15.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,798 3,476 5,281
10th Percentile £190 £200 £186
25th Percentile £300 £331 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £580 £625
90th Percentile £675 £684 £710
UK excluding London median daily rate £440 £450 £450
% change year-on-year -2.22% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 270 274 375
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.53 £15.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.07 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £49.25 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.93% +3.68% +98.66%
75th Percentile £58.75 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £67.00 £70.00 £77.11
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £52.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year -52.10% +14.43% +108.55%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Windows as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Windows 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 15 September 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 15 September 2025.

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 15 September 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 2,283 £400 -5.88% 1,590
UK excluding London 0 1,695 £365 -14.12% 1,517
London -7 770 £425 +6.25% 318
Work from Home -9 532 £447 -5.89% 620
South East +2 459 £425 -3.41% 475
North of England -6 317 £325 -31.58% 324
South West +1 285 £375 -21.05% 187
Midlands -6 259 £375 -1.32% 256
West Midlands -3 200 £400 +5.26% 114
East of England -1 192 £350 -27.50% 176
North West -8 166 £342 -31.65% 165
Scotland -6 158 £450 +32.84% 80
Yorkshire -8 129 £255 -41.21% 114
East Midlands -15 58 £213 -43.93% 136
Wales -4 28 £275 +30.95% 28
North East +4 23 £275 -38.89% 52
Northern Ireland -8 22 £200 - 21
Channel Islands - 1 - -

Windows
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 228 (8.72%) Microsoft Exchange
2 163 (6.24%) SharePoint
3 76 (2.91%) Confluence
4 49 (1.87%) Apache
5 45 (1.72%) IIS
6 25 (0.96%) WebSphere
7 24 (0.92%) IBM Domino
7 24 (0.92%) JBoss
8 22 (0.84%) Skype for Business
9 19 (0.73%) Exchange Server 2013
10 18 (0.69%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.57%) Exchange Server 2010
11 15 (0.57%) nginx
11 15 (0.57%) SharePoint Server
12 13 (0.50%) Exchange Server 2003
12 13 (0.50%) Exchange Server 2007
12 13 (0.50%) Office Communications Server
13 12 (0.46%) WebSphere Application Server
14 9 (0.34%) CMS
14 9 (0.34%) iPlanet
Applications
1 219 (8.38%) Microsoft Office
2 84 (3.21%) Microsoft Excel
3 22 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 13 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 10 (0.38%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 7 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.15%) InfoPath
7 4 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
8 3 (0.11%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.077%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 2 (0.077%) Adobe Illustrator
9 2 (0.077%) Adobe Premiere
9 2 (0.077%) Windchill
10 1 (0.038%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.038%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.038%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 17 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
2 7 (0.27%) Maximo
3 4 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.11%) ION MarketView
4 3 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
4 3 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.077%) Alphatax
5 2 (0.077%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.077%) Dynamics GP
5 2 (0.077%) NEC Housing
5 2 (0.077%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.077%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.077%) Teamcenter
6 1 (0.038%) Fidessa
6 1 (0.038%) OpenText MBPM
6 1 (0.038%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.038%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.038%) Pegasus Opera
6 1 (0.038%) Primavera
6 1 (0.038%) SAP SCM
Cloud Services
1 646 (24.71%) Microsoft 365
2 604 (23.11%) Azure
3 263 (10.06%) AWS
4 235 (8.99%) Entra ID
5 72 (2.75%) SaaS
6 68 (2.60%) IaaS
6 68 (2.60%) OneDrive
7 65 (2.49%) GCP
7 65 (2.49%) GitHub
8 60 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
9 50 (1.91%) PaaS
10 45 (1.72%) Google Workspace
11 44 (1.68%) Azure Sentinel
12 41 (1.57%) Amazon S3
13 39 (1.49%) Amazon EC2
13 39 (1.49%) OpenShift
14 37 (1.42%) Power Platform
15 36 (1.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
16 32 (1.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 28 (1.07%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 343 (13.12%) DNS
2 286 (10.94%) Firewall
3 211 (8.07%) DHCP
4 176 (6.73%) VPN
5 165 (6.31%) TCP/IP
6 98 (3.75%) SAN
7 96 (3.67%) LAN
8 84 (3.21%) WAN
9 69 (2.64%) Network Security
10 55 (2.10%) Wi-Fi
11 53 (2.03%) VLAN
12 47 (1.80%) Wireless
13 45 (1.72%) SSH
14 43 (1.64%) HTTP
15 41 (1.57%) SMTP
16 38 (1.45%) VoIP
17 37 (1.42%) Cisco IOS
18 30 (1.15%) FTP
19 29 (1.11%) SSL
20 28 (1.07%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (4.90%) SQL Server
2 71 (2.72%) Oracle Database
3 52 (1.99%) Relational Database
4 50 (1.91%) Amazon RDS
5 35 (1.34%) MySQL
6 24 (0.92%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (0.73%) Elasticsearch
8 16 (0.61%) Big Data
8 16 (0.61%) Power BI
9 15 (0.57%) RDBMS
10 13 (0.50%) NoSQL
10 13 (0.50%) Oracle Reports
11 12 (0.46%) DB2
11 12 (0.46%) GIS
12 11 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
13 10 (0.38%) MongoDB
14 9 (0.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 7 (0.27%) Apache Cassandra
16 6 (0.23%) Azure SQL Database
16 6 (0.23%) Data Lake
Development Applications
1 156 (5.97%) JIRA
2 124 (4.74%) Git
3 105 (4.02%) Jenkins
4 39 (1.49%) Bitbucket
5 38 (1.45%) Visual Studio
6 36 (1.38%) GitLab
7 31 (1.19%) MSI
8 30 (1.15%) Eclipse
9 25 (0.96%) Vagrant
10 22 (0.84%) Sonatype Nexus
11 20 (0.77%) AdminStudio
12 18 (0.69%) InstallShield
12 18 (0.69%) TeamCity
13 15 (0.57%) Bitbucket Server
13 15 (0.57%) CA Release Automation
13 15 (0.57%) IntelliJ
14 14 (0.54%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.54%) Visual Studio Code
15 13 (0.50%) PyCharm
15 13 (0.50%) Selenium
General
1 970 (37.11%) Social Skills
2 419 (16.03%) Finance
3 263 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
4 249 (9.53%) Public Sector
5 162 (6.20%) Banking
6 101 (3.86%) Documentation Skills
7 88 (3.37%) Legal
8 75 (2.87%) Organisational Skills
9 74 (2.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 58 (2.22%) Manufacturing
11 49 (1.87%) Telecoms
12 47 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
13 46 (1.76%) Military
14 37 (1.42%) Retail
15 36 (1.38%) Marketing
16 33 (1.26%) Front Office
17 32 (1.22%) Investment Banking
18 31 (1.19%) Games
19 27 (1.03%) Law
20 25 (0.96%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 361 (13.81%) Support Engineer
2 294 (11.25%) Analyst
3 211 (8.07%) IT Support
4 168 (6.43%) Windows Engineer
5 163 (6.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 161 (6.16%) Architect
7 157 (6.01%) Desktop Engineer
8 143 (5.47%) IT Engineer
9 142 (5.43%) Desktop Support
10 134 (5.13%) Deployment Engineer
11 121 (4.63%) Senior
12 115 (4.40%) Support Analyst
13 102 (3.90%) Desktop Support Engineer
13 102 (3.90%) Developer
14 87 (3.33%) 2nd Line Support
15 83 (3.18%) Administrator
16 81 (3.10%) IT Support Engineer
17 79 (3.02%) Platform Engineer
18 77 (2.95%) Security Engineer
19 74 (2.83%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (3.10%) .NET
2 59 (2.26%) Middleware
3 39 (1.49%) .NET Framework
3 39 (1.49%) LDAP
3 39 (1.49%) Node.js
4 38 (1.45%) WPF
5 37 (1.42%) Web Services
6 31 (1.19%) XML
7 28 (1.07%) React
7 28 (1.07%) SOAP
8 23 (0.88%) AngularJS
8 23 (0.88%) REST
9 22 (0.84%) Kafka
10 21 (0.80%) CSS
10 21 (0.80%) Software Packaging
11 16 (0.61%) ASP.NET
11 16 (0.61%) HTML
12 13 (0.50%) ASP.NET Web API
12 13 (0.50%) SAML
13 12 (0.46%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 96 (3.67%) Data Centre
2 91 (3.48%) Onboarding
3 85 (3.25%) PKI
4 71 (2.72%) Replication
5 57 (2.18%) Management Information System
6 55 (2.10%) Driving Licence
7 53 (2.03%) Self-Motivation
8 51 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
9 41 (1.57%) iPhone
10 40 (1.53%) iPad
11 33 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
11 33 (1.26%) Security Posture
12 30 (1.15%) Public Cloud
13 28 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
14 24 (0.92%) Clustering
14 24 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
14 24 (0.92%) Legacy Systems
15 23 (0.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 23 (0.88%) Video Conferencing
16 21 (0.80%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 646 (24.71%) Linux
2 511 (19.55%) Windows 10
3 490 (18.75%) Windows Server
4 165 (6.31%) Unix
5 148 (5.66%) Mac OS
6 110 (4.21%) Android
7 95 (3.63%) Apple iOS
8 90 (3.44%) Windows Server 2016
9 89 (3.40%) Windows Server 2019
10 81 (3.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 71 (2.72%) Windows 7
12 53 (2.03%) Windows Server 2012
13 41 (1.57%) Windows Server 2003
14 38 (1.45%) Ubuntu
15 37 (1.42%) VMS
16 28 (1.07%) Solaris
17 26 (0.99%) Amazon Linux
18 24 (0.92%) CentOS
19 18 (0.69%) AIX
20 16 (0.61%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 509 (19.47%) Problem-Solving
2 389 (14.88%) ITIL
3 298 (11.40%) Migration
4 277 (10.60%) Agile
5 254 (9.72%) Customer Service
6 247 (9.45%) DevOps
7 208 (7.96%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 183 (7.00%) Service Management
9 181 (6.92%) Cybersecurity
10 169 (6.47%) CI/CD
11 161 (6.16%) ITSM
12 138 (5.28%) Change Management
13 121 (4.63%) Stakeholder Management
14 116 (4.44%) Incident Response
15 111 (4.25%) Patch Management
16 110 (4.21%) SIEM
17 99 (3.79%) Disaster Recovery
18 97 (3.71%) Cloud Security
18 97 (3.71%) High Availability
18 97 (3.71%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 468 (17.90%) PowerShell
2 306 (11.71%) Python
3 268 (10.25%) SQL
4 145 (5.55%) C#
5 141 (5.39%) Java
6 91 (3.48%) Bash
7 79 (3.02%) JavaScript
8 76 (2.91%) C++
9 61 (2.33%) Perl
10 51 (1.95%) VB
11 50 (1.91%) Shell Script
12 47 (1.80%) PL/SQL
13 39 (1.49%) VBA
14 32 (1.22%) C
14 32 (1.22%) Groovy
15 30 (1.15%) Kusto Query Language
15 30 (1.15%) VBScript
16 23 (0.88%) TypeScript
17 20 (0.77%) VB.NET
18 19 (0.73%) PHP
Qualifications
1 676 (25.86%) Security Cleared
2 464 (17.75%) SC Cleared
3 222 (8.49%) Degree
4 193 (7.38%) DV Cleared
5 189 (7.23%) Microsoft Certification
6 58 (2.22%) Azure Certification
7 54 (2.07%) CISSP
8 52 (1.99%) A+ Certification
9 49 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
10 44 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
10 44 (1.68%) MCSE
11 39 (1.49%) DBS Check
12 35 (1.34%) AWS Certification
13 28 (1.07%) CCNA
14 26 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
14 26 (0.99%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 25 (0.96%) CompTIA Security+
16 23 (0.88%) MCSA
17 22 (0.84%) GCIH
18 20 (0.77%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 88 (3.37%) QA
2 86 (3.29%) SLA
3 51 (1.95%) GDPR
4 49 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 40 (1.53%) NIST
6 18 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
7 14 (0.54%) HIPAA
8 13 (0.50%) Accessibility
9 12 (0.46%) NCSC
9 12 (0.46%) PCI DSS
10 9 (0.34%) PMO
11 8 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 8 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
12 6 (0.23%) Data Quality
12 6 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 4 (0.15%) COBIT
13 4 (0.15%) SOC 2
14 3 (0.11%) ECSS
14 3 (0.11%) GxP
14 3 (0.11%) SEPA
System Software
1 897 (34.32%) Active Directory
2 246 (9.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 108 (4.13%) Docker
4 97 (3.71%) Hyper-V
5 72 (2.75%) VMware ESXi
5 72 (2.75%) vSphere
6 60 (2.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 53 (2.03%) Virtual Machines
8 34 (1.30%) Virtual Servers
9 33 (1.26%) Microsoft App-V
10 27 (1.03%) DFS Replication
11 26 (0.99%) VMware NSX
12 25 (0.96%) BitLocker
13 24 (0.92%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 22 (0.84%) NFS
14 22 (0.84%) Terminal Services
15 20 (0.77%) Firmware
16 16 (0.61%) XenApp
17 13 (0.50%) Brightmail
17 13 (0.50%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 387 (14.80%) SCCM
2 268 (10.25%) Microsoft Intune
3 148 (5.66%) Terraform
4 145 (5.55%) Ansible
5 103 (3.94%) Kubernetes
6 60 (2.30%) vCenter Server
7 52 (1.99%) WSUS
8 40 (1.53%) Grafana
9 39 (1.49%) Jamf Pro
10 38 (1.45%) Puppet
11 33 (1.26%) Progress Chef
12 31 (1.19%) Nessus
13 30 (1.15%) Prometheus
14 29 (1.11%) Microsoft Clustering
15 22 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
16 20 (0.77%) SCOM
17 17 (0.65%) Active Directory Federation Services
18 15 (0.57%) NetBackup
19 14 (0.54%) vMotion
20 13 (0.50%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 1,162 (44.45%) Microsoft
2 350 (13.39%) VMware
3 202 (7.73%) Oracle
4 200 (7.65%) ServiceNow
5 177 (6.77%) Citrix
6 164 (6.27%) Cisco
7 148 (5.66%) Splunk
8 93 (3.56%) Apple
9 79 (3.02%) HP
10 74 (2.83%) Google
11 69 (2.64%) IBM
12 68 (2.60%) NetApp
13 63 (2.41%) Dell
14 54 (2.07%) Red Hat
15 48 (1.84%) Veeam
16 41 (1.57%) AppDynamics
17 38 (1.45%) Remedy
17 38 (1.45%) SAP
18 36 (1.38%) CyberArk
18 36 (1.38%) SolarWinds