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 30 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 21 17
Rank change year-on-year -2 -4 -2
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,896 2,629 3,932
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 7.49% 8.36% 8.86%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.36% 58.68% 62.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,006 1,696 2,656
10th Percentile £161 £181 £158
25th Percentile £204 £225 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £407 £400
Median % change year-on-year -1.78% +1.81% -5.88%
75th Percentile £540 £561 £575
90th Percentile £638 £650 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £330 £375 £370
% change year-on-year -12.00% +1.35% -1.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 103 253
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £16.64 £18.13 £15.88
Median hourly rate £21.80 £23.80 £20.71
Median % change year-on-year -8.40% +14.95% +1.00%
75th Percentile £42.35 £41.25 £40.00
90th Percentile £67.50 £65.00 £62.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £23.00 £19.31
% change year-on-year -6.70% +19.12% +0.88%

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 4,798 4,480 6,308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.41% 14.24% 14.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,181 2,787 4,272
10th Percentile £175 £200 £181
25th Percentile £263 £319 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £440 £475 £472
Median % change year-on-year -7.37% +0.74% -8.45%
75th Percentile £565 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £694 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £403 £425 £425
% change year-on-year -5.29% - -5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 160 368
10th Percentile £14.60 £16.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.98 £21.00 £17.16
Median hourly rate £24.00 £33.25 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -27.82% +31.68% -1.06%
75th Percentile £60.00 £65.00 £62.61
90th Percentile £70.00 £68.88 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.58 £30.78 £25.06
% change year-on-year -26.66% +22.84% +5.17%

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 30 January 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 30 January 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 30 January 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 0 2,567 £388 -3.13% 1,117
UK excluding London -2 1,968 £330 -12.00% 1,076
London -12 749 £450 +5.88% 230
Work from Home -7 589 £425 -8.11% 341
South East 0 511 £400 -5.44% 374
North of England -4 462 £263 -25.00% 217
South West +1 316 £425 +6.25% 136
Midlands -6 308 £275 -15.38% 141
North West -4 255 £268 -23.36% 100
East of England +7 214 £275 -6.78% 143
West Midlands -12 188 £400 +23.08% 82
Yorkshire -14 177 £313 -13.06% 97
Scotland -7 125 £450 +2.86% 68
East Midlands +2 119 £215 -39.09% 59
Wales 0 42 £190 -20.00% 22
North East -3 33 £188 -42.31% 27
Northern Ireland -16 8 £175 +9.38% 3
Channel Islands +2 1 - - 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
1 245 (8.46%) Microsoft Exchange
2 179 (6.18%) SharePoint
3 73 (2.52%) Confluence
4 47 (1.62%) IIS
5 43 (1.48%) Apache
6 23 (0.79%) WebLogic
7 20 (0.69%) Skype for Business
8 19 (0.66%) WebSphere
9 17 (0.59%) nginx
10 13 (0.45%) JBoss
10 13 (0.45%) TPMS
11 11 (0.38%) SAS
11 11 (0.38%) WebSphere Application Server
12 10 (0.35%) iPlanet
12 10 (0.35%) Tomcat
13 9 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
13 9 (0.31%) Tuxedo
14 7 (0.24%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2013
16 4 (0.14%) OpenStack
Applications
1 262 (9.05%) Microsoft Office
2 82 (2.83%) Microsoft Excel
3 30 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.38%) MS Visio
5 8 (0.28%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 6 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.17%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.14%) PTC Creo
8 4 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
9 2 (0.069%) Adobe Premiere
9 2 (0.069%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.069%) Windchill
10 1 (0.035%) Adobe After Effects
10 1 (0.035%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
10 1 (0.035%) Camtasia
10 1 (0.035%) InDesign
10 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
10 1 (0.035%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 24 (0.83%) Remedy ITSM
2 9 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.24%) assyst
3 7 (0.24%) Teamcenter
4 4 (0.14%) Oracle 11i
5 3 (0.10%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 2 (0.069%) Oracle General Ledger
6 2 (0.069%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.069%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.069%) SAP FI
6 2 (0.069%) SAP MDG
6 2 (0.069%) SystmOne
7 1 (0.035%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.035%) Eikon
7 1 (0.035%) Fidessa
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.035%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.035%) Primavera
7 1 (0.035%) RMDS
7 1 (0.035%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 783 (27.04%) Microsoft 365
2 714 (24.65%) Azure
3 272 (9.39%) Entra ID
4 263 (9.08%) AWS
5 97 (3.35%) OneDrive
6 74 (2.56%) SaaS
7 73 (2.52%) GCP
8 58 (2.00%) Azure DevOps
9 56 (1.93%) GitHub
10 53 (1.83%) Google Workspace
11 45 (1.55%) IaaS
12 35 (1.21%) Power Platform
13 31 (1.07%) PaaS
14 28 (0.97%) OpenShift
15 26 (0.90%) Azure Monitor
15 26 (0.90%) Azure Sentinel
16 24 (0.83%) Nutanix
17 20 (0.69%) Amazon S3
17 20 (0.69%) Virtual Private Cloud
18 19 (0.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 370 (12.78%) DNS
2 304 (10.50%) Firewall
3 234 (8.08%) DHCP
4 195 (6.73%) TCP/IP
5 176 (6.08%) VPN
6 126 (4.35%) WAN
7 121 (4.18%) Wi-Fi
8 115 (3.97%) LAN
9 86 (2.97%) Network Security
10 66 (2.28%) VLAN
11 64 (2.21%) Wireless
12 57 (1.97%) SSH
13 50 (1.73%) HTTP
14 45 (1.55%) SAN
15 41 (1.42%) Kerberos
15 41 (1.42%) Skype
16 34 (1.17%) SSL
17 33 (1.14%) SD-WAN
18 32 (1.10%) Cisco IOS
18 32 (1.10%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 131 (4.52%) SQL Server
2 75 (2.59%) Oracle Database
3 59 (2.04%) Relational Database
4 47 (1.62%) MySQL
5 34 (1.17%) PostgreSQL
6 16 (0.55%) Amazon RDS
7 13 (0.45%) BigQuery
7 13 (0.45%) GIS
7 13 (0.45%) NoSQL
7 13 (0.45%) Power BI
8 12 (0.41%) Elasticsearch
9 11 (0.38%) Oracle Reports
10 10 (0.35%) Amazon Aurora
10 10 (0.35%) MongoDB
11 9 (0.31%) Data Warehouse
12 7 (0.24%) DB2
13 6 (0.21%) Data Lake
13 6 (0.21%) SAP HANA
13 6 (0.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 5 (0.17%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 164 (5.66%) JIRA
2 87 (3.00%) Jenkins
3 80 (2.76%) Git
4 58 (2.00%) GitLab
5 37 (1.28%) MSI
6 31 (1.07%) Visual Studio
7 29 (1.00%) Eclipse
8 19 (0.66%) Burp Suite
8 19 (0.66%) Metasploit
9 18 (0.62%) Android Studio
10 17 (0.59%) Browser DevTools
11 16 (0.55%) Xcode
12 15 (0.52%) Artifactory
12 15 (0.52%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.52%) InstallShield
12 15 (0.52%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.41%) Vagrant
14 11 (0.38%) AdminStudio
14 11 (0.38%) Bitbucket Server
14 11 (0.38%) CA Release Automation
General
1 1,075 (37.12%) Social Skills
2 313 (10.81%) Finance
3 255 (8.81%) Analytical Skills
4 252 (8.70%) Public Sector
5 127 (4.39%) Banking
6 119 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
7 102 (3.52%) Legal
8 78 (2.69%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.21%) Manufacturing
10 53 (1.83%) Military
11 46 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
12 43 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 38 (1.31%) Retail
13 38 (1.31%) Telecoms
14 27 (0.93%) Marketing
15 24 (0.83%) Aerospace
15 24 (0.83%) Front Office
16 23 (0.79%) Law
17 21 (0.73%) Investment Banking
18 18 (0.62%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 408 (14.09%) Support Engineer
2 364 (12.57%) Analyst
3 358 (12.36%) IT Support
4 191 (6.60%) IT Engineer
5 185 (6.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 166 (5.73%) Architect
7 153 (5.28%) Support Analyst
8 150 (5.18%) IT Support Engineer
9 148 (5.11%) Desktop Support
9 148 (5.11%) Windows Engineer
10 145 (5.01%) Senior
11 126 (4.35%) Desktop Engineer
12 124 (4.28%) Technical Support
13 120 (4.14%) 2nd Line Support
14 114 (3.94%) Deployment Engineer
15 107 (3.69%) Developer
16 99 (3.42%) Desktop Support Engineer
17 95 (3.28%) Lead
18 85 (2.94%) IT Analyst
19 79 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (2.80%) .NET
2 67 (2.31%) LDAP
3 61 (2.11%) REST
4 55 (1.90%) SAML
5 54 (1.86%) OAuth
6 45 (1.55%) .NET Framework
7 43 (1.48%) Middleware
8 37 (1.28%) OpenID
9 35 (1.21%) React
10 33 (1.14%) WPF
11 31 (1.07%) AngularJS
12 26 (0.90%) Web Services
13 25 (0.86%) CSS
13 25 (0.86%) Kafka
14 23 (0.79%) Node.js
15 21 (0.73%) RESTful
15 21 (0.73%) SOAP
16 20 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
17 19 (0.66%) OAuth2
17 19 (0.66%) WinForms
Miscellaneous
1 164 (5.66%) Onboarding
2 104 (3.59%) Data Centre
3 96 (3.31%) Driving Licence
3 96 (3.31%) PKI
4 77 (2.66%) Enterprise Software
5 69 (2.38%) Replication
6 61 (2.11%) Self-Motivation
7 57 (1.97%) Management Information System
7 57 (1.97%) Smartphone
8 43 (1.48%) Security Posture
9 40 (1.38%) Hybrid Cloud
10 35 (1.21%) Legacy Systems
11 33 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
11 33 (1.14%) NHS
12 32 (1.10%) Clustering
12 32 (1.10%) Security Operations Centre
13 31 (1.07%) Product Ownership
13 31 (1.07%) Virtual Team
14 29 (1.00%) Mobile App
14 29 (1.00%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 730 (25.21%) Linux
2 616 (21.27%) Windows 10
3 582 (20.10%) Windows Server
4 180 (6.22%) Unix
5 154 (5.32%) Mac OS
6 144 (4.97%) Android
7 113 (3.90%) Apple iOS
8 78 (2.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 69 (2.38%) Windows Server 2016
10 60 (2.07%) Windows Server 2019
11 54 (1.86%) Windows 7
12 40 (1.38%) Windows Server 2012
13 31 (1.07%) Windows Server 2003
14 26 (0.90%) AIX
15 22 (0.76%) VMS
16 19 (0.66%) Solaris
17 18 (0.62%) Ubuntu
18 15 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.41%) Amazon Linux
20 8 (0.28%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 536 (18.51%) Problem-Solving
2 466 (16.09%) Customer Service
3 417 (14.40%) ITIL
4 319 (11.02%) Agile
5 282 (9.74%) Migration
6 266 (9.19%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 256 (8.84%) DevOps
8 233 (8.05%) Service Management
9 222 (7.67%) CI/CD
10 219 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
11 212 (7.32%) ITSM
12 206 (7.11%) Continuous Improvement
13 161 (5.56%) Change Management
14 140 (4.83%) Disaster Recovery
15 132 (4.56%) Service Delivery
16 127 (4.39%) Stakeholder Management
17 125 (4.32%) Computer Science
18 123 (4.25%) SIEM
18 123 (4.25%) User Experience
19 117 (4.04%) Incident Response
Programming Languages
1 576 (19.89%) PowerShell
2 354 (12.22%) Python
3 272 (9.39%) SQL
4 147 (5.08%) Java
5 118 (4.07%) Bash
6 117 (4.04%) C#
7 78 (2.69%) JavaScript
8 71 (2.45%) Perl
9 59 (2.04%) C++
10 56 (1.93%) PL/SQL
11 37 (1.28%) Shell Script
12 35 (1.21%) T-SQL
13 33 (1.14%) VBScript
14 28 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
15 27 (0.93%) VB
16 23 (0.79%) Groovy
17 22 (0.76%) VBA
18 17 (0.59%) C
19 16 (0.55%) Go
20 12 (0.41%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 884 (30.52%) Security Cleared
2 584 (20.17%) SC Cleared
3 309 (10.67%) Degree
4 256 (8.84%) DV Cleared
5 153 (5.28%) Microsoft Certification
6 94 (3.25%) Computer Science Degree
7 63 (2.18%) Azure Certification
8 49 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
9 48 (1.66%) A+ Certification
10 45 (1.55%) ITIL Certification
10 45 (1.55%) MCSE
11 36 (1.24%) AWS Certification
12 33 (1.14%) BPSS Clearance
13 32 (1.10%) CompTIA Security+
14 31 (1.07%) CCNA
15 30 (1.04%) CCNP
15 30 (1.04%) CISSP
16 28 (0.97%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 23 (0.79%) MCSA
18 21 (0.73%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (3.38%) SLA
2 97 (3.35%) GDPR
3 71 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 67 (2.31%) QA
5 50 (1.73%) NIST
6 33 (1.14%) PCI DSS
7 25 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 17 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
9 13 (0.45%) GLBA
9 13 (0.45%) PMO
10 12 (0.41%) NCSC
11 11 (0.38%) MiFID
12 9 (0.31%) COBIT
13 8 (0.28%) FINRA
13 8 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 6 (0.21%) NIST 800
15 5 (0.17%) Accessibility
15 5 (0.17%) Disclosure Scotland
15 5 (0.17%) SOC 2
16 4 (0.14%) GxP
System Software
1 1,035 (35.74%) Active Directory
2 269 (9.29%) VMware Infrastructure
3 124 (4.28%) Docker
4 102 (3.52%) Hyper-V
5 64 (2.21%) Virtual Desktop
6 61 (2.11%) Virtual Machines
7 55 (1.90%) vSphere
8 47 (1.62%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (1.28%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.93%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.69%) Firmware
12 19 (0.66%) Microsoft App-V
13 15 (0.52%) DFS Replication
13 15 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
14 12 (0.41%) KVM
15 8 (0.28%) Dovecot
15 8 (0.28%) Postfix
15 8 (0.28%) Squid
15 8 (0.28%) Tivoli Directory Server
15 8 (0.28%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 392 (13.54%) SCCM
2 325 (11.22%) Microsoft Intune
3 175 (6.04%) Terraform
4 163 (5.63%) Ansible
5 112 (3.87%) Kubernetes
6 85 (2.94%) Single Sign-On
7 72 (2.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 68 (2.35%) vCenter Server
9 48 (1.66%) Jamf Pro
10 46 (1.59%) Grafana
11 31 (1.07%) WSUS
12 30 (1.04%) Prometheus
13 28 (0.97%) SCOM
14 22 (0.76%) Nessus
15 20 (0.69%) Progress Chef
16 18 (0.62%) Nmap
16 18 (0.62%) WMI
17 15 (0.52%) Microsoft Clustering
18 14 (0.48%) FortiGate
18 14 (0.48%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 1,226 (42.33%) Microsoft
2 369 (12.74%) VMware
3 261 (9.01%) ServiceNow
4 226 (7.80%) Oracle
5 180 (6.22%) Cisco
6 165 (5.70%) Citrix
7 134 (4.63%) Splunk
8 74 (2.56%) Apple
8 74 (2.56%) Dell
9 71 (2.45%) HP
10 56 (1.93%) Red Hat
11 55 (1.90%) Google
12 53 (1.83%) SolarWinds
13 52 (1.80%) IBM
14 51 (1.76%) Veeam
15 49 (1.69%) SAP
16 39 (1.35%) Palo Alto
17 38 (1.31%) CyberArk
18 35 (1.21%) Remedy
19 33 (1.14%) NetApp