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

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,178 2,642 3,222
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.91% 8.05% 8.30%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.79% 59.84% 59.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,032 1,745 2,160
10th Percentile £165 £170 £175
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £446
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -8.07% +2.53%
75th Percentile £556 £560 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £410 £388 £449
% change year-on-year +5.81% -13.70% +19.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 286 222 228
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.22 £17.76 £15.59
Median hourly rate £24.88 £21.02 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.37% -4.48% -2.22%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.23 £53.75
90th Percentile £72.72 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £20.29
% change year-on-year +36.46% -6.98% -4.77%

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 5,228 4,415 5,423
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.46% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,313 2,816 3,567
10th Percentile £193 £191 £200
25th Percentile £316 £308 £331
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £663 £675 £686
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £470
% change year-on-year - -4.26% +4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 362 271 325
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.40
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.92 £25.00 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% -9.09% -31.25%
75th Percentile £65.00 £56.68 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.64 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £24.00 £38.25
% change year-on-year +11.08% -37.25% +39.09%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 -7 2,764 £420 +3.07% 1,015
UK excluding London -14 2,056 £410 +5.81% 868
London -13 925 £425 +2.37% 267
Work from Home -11 626 £475 +5.56% 316
South East -8 569 £475 -3.46% 309
North of England -4 508 £325 - 189
North West +3 297 £340 -3.00% 93
South West -15 285 £488 +39.29% 111
Midlands -22 260 £385 -3.75% 121
East of England -3 199 £335 - 123
Yorkshire -15 183 £324 +3.60% 70
Scotland -6 168 £375 -19.35% 27
West Midlands -29 165 £425 -0.93% 77
East Midlands +2 91 £273 +36.25% 44
Wales +3 65 £425 +54.55% 17
North East -34 32 £260 -0.95% 36
Northern Ireland -5 16 £139 -30.75% 6
Channel Islands +1 2 £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
1 256 (8.06%) SharePoint
2 244 (7.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 70 (2.20%) IIS
4 59 (1.86%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.50%) Apache
6 16 (0.50%) nginx
7 15 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
8 14 (0.44%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
10 9 (0.28%) NetWeaver
11 7 (0.22%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.19%) Documentum
13 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
13 5 (0.16%) Appian
13 5 (0.16%) Camunda
13 5 (0.16%) SAS
14 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
15 3 (0.094%) Exchange Server 2010
15 3 (0.094%) OpenStack
Applications
1 211 (6.64%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.30%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (0.60%) 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%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.063%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.031%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.031%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 58 (1.83%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.31%) Finacle
4 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
6 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
7 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
8 3 (0.094%) assyst
9 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
10 1 (0.031%) Dynamics NAV
10 1 (0.031%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.031%) Oracle BRM
10 1 (0.031%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.031%) SAP BRIM
10 1 (0.031%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.031%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.031%) SAP FI-CA
10 1 (0.031%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 985 (30.99%) Azure
1 985 (30.99%) Microsoft 365
2 486 (15.29%) Entra ID
3 338 (10.64%) AWS
4 141 (4.44%) OneDrive
5 117 (3.68%) Azure DevOps
6 102 (3.21%) GCP
7 78 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
8 75 (2.36%) Power Platform
8 75 (2.36%) SaaS
9 73 (2.30%) GitHub
10 65 (2.05%) IaaS
11 50 (1.57%) PaaS
12 44 (1.38%) Azure Sentinel
13 39 (1.23%) OpenShift
14 32 (1.01%) AWS CloudFormation
15 28 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
16 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
17 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
18 25 (0.79%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 474 (14.92%) DNS
2 354 (11.14%) Firewall
3 336 (10.57%) DHCP
4 276 (8.68%) VPN
5 229 (7.21%) TCP/IP
6 159 (5.00%) WAN
7 158 (4.97%) LAN
8 145 (4.56%) Wi-Fi
9 99 (3.12%) SAN
10 88 (2.77%) VLAN
11 87 (2.74%) Network Security
12 48 (1.51%) NAS
13 47 (1.48%) Wireless
14 45 (1.42%) SSL
15 44 (1.38%) Internet
16 39 (1.23%) VSAN
17 35 (1.10%) Skype
18 32 (1.01%) BGP
18 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
19 28 (0.88%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (9.69%) SQL Server
2 60 (1.89%) Oracle Database
3 56 (1.76%) Power BI
4 36 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 35 (1.10%) Relational Database
6 33 (1.04%) PostgreSQL
7 24 (0.76%) MySQL
8 20 (0.63%) Amazon RDS
9 17 (0.53%) 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 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
13 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
13 11 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
14 10 (0.31%) Db2
15 9 (0.28%) SAP HANA
16 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
16 8 (0.25%) Oracle BI EE
16 8 (0.25%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 171 (5.38%) JIRA
2 77 (2.42%) Git
3 60 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.48%) MSI
5 43 (1.35%) GitLab
6 36 (1.13%) Visual Studio
7 19 (0.60%) Bitbucket
8 17 (0.53%) Eclipse
9 10 (0.31%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 9 (0.28%) Selenium
11 8 (0.25%) Artifactory
11 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
12 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
12 7 (0.22%) Chocolatey
12 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
13 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
14 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
14 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
14 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
14 5 (0.16%) Robot Framework
General
1 1,155 (36.34%) Social Skills
2 397 (12.49%) Analytical Skills
3 376 (11.83%) Finance
4 179 (5.63%) Public Sector
5 164 (5.16%) Banking
6 110 (3.46%) Documentation Skills
7 92 (2.89%) Legal
8 77 (2.42%) Organisational Skills
9 71 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 57 (1.79%) Manufacturing
11 56 (1.76%) Retail
12 49 (1.54%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.29%) Front Office
14 37 (1.16%) Law
14 37 (1.16%) Military
15 34 (1.07%) Investment Banking
16 28 (0.88%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.79%) Financial Institution
17 25 (0.79%) French Language
18 22 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 497 (15.64%) Support Engineer
2 423 (13.31%) IT Support
3 329 (10.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 329 (10.35%) IT Engineer
4 275 (8.65%) IT Support Engineer
5 264 (8.31%) Analyst
6 244 (7.68%) Senior
7 141 (4.44%) Desktop Support
8 128 (4.03%) Architect
9 127 (4.00%) 2nd Line Support
10 115 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
11 114 (3.59%) Desktop Engineer
11 114 (3.59%) Lead
12 110 (3.46%) Developer
13 106 (3.34%) Windows Engineer
14 103 (3.24%) Consultant
15 101 (3.18%) Support Analyst
16 87 (2.74%) 1st Line Support
17 83 (2.61%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.58%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (8.53%) Terraform
2 136 (4.28%) .NET
3 117 (3.68%) REST
4 70 (2.20%) .NET Framework
5 44 (1.38%) Middleware
6 36 (1.13%) JSON
7 34 (1.07%) LDAP
8 33 (1.04%) WinForms
9 30 (0.94%) WPF
10 29 (0.91%) XML
11 27 (0.85%) HTML
11 27 (0.85%) Kafka
11 27 (0.85%) Software Packaging
12 25 (0.79%) Web Services
13 22 (0.69%) ARM Templates
14 21 (0.66%) CSS
14 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 21 (0.66%) RESTful
15 20 (0.63%) SAML
16 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 366 (11.52%) Onboarding
2 182 (5.73%) Data Centre
3 166 (5.22%) PKI
4 92 (2.89%) Management Information System
5 88 (2.77%) Clustering
6 84 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
7 82 (2.58%) Hybrid Cloud
8 80 (2.52%) Driving Licence
9 78 (2.45%) Cloud Native
10 69 (2.17%) Video Conferencing
11 68 (2.14%) Self-Motivation
12 66 (2.08%) Replication
13 50 (1.57%) Security Posture
14 48 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.32%) Virtual Team
16 41 (1.29%) Enterprise Storage
17 39 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
17 39 (1.23%) Operational Technology
18 38 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
19 37 (1.16%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 844 (26.56%) Windows Server
2 793 (24.95%) Linux
3 544 (17.12%) Windows 10
4 193 (6.07%) Mac OS
5 148 (4.66%) Unix
6 135 (4.25%) Android
6 135 (4.25%) Apple iOS
7 128 (4.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 76 (2.39%) Windows Server 2019
9 55 (1.73%) Windows 7
10 51 (1.60%) Windows Server 2016
11 47 (1.48%) Ubuntu
12 41 (1.29%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.13%) AIX
14 31 (0.98%) CentOS
15 23 (0.72%) VMS
16 18 (0.57%) Solaris
16 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
18 10 (0.31%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 755 (23.76%) Problem-Solving
2 573 (18.03%) ITIL
3 520 (16.36%) Customer Service
4 418 (13.15%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 416 (13.09%) ITSM
6 402 (12.65%) Migration
7 318 (10.01%) Continuous Improvement
8 312 (9.82%) DevOps
9 291 (9.16%) Service Management
10 271 (8.53%) CI/CD
11 266 (8.37%) Agile
12 251 (7.90%) Infrastructure as Code
13 223 (7.02%) Change Management
14 206 (6.48%) Stakeholder Management
15 204 (6.42%) Disaster Recovery
16 199 (6.26%) High Availability
17 195 (6.14%) Service Delivery
18 189 (5.95%) Cybersecurity
19 183 (5.76%) Validation
20 181 (5.70%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 767 (24.13%) PowerShell
2 341 (10.73%) Python
3 320 (10.07%) SQL
4 187 (5.88%) Bash
5 162 (5.10%) C#
6 76 (2.39%) Java
7 66 (2.08%) JavaScript
8 62 (1.95%) T-SQL
9 55 (1.73%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.51%) Bicep
11 45 (1.42%) C++
12 30 (0.94%) VBScript
13 29 (0.91%) VB
14 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (0.66%) Perl
15 21 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 19 (0.60%) VBA
17 16 (0.50%) TypeScript
18 12 (0.38%) C
19 11 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 971 (30.55%) Security Cleared
2 612 (19.26%) SC Cleared
3 336 (10.57%) DV Cleared
4 295 (9.28%) Degree
5 122 (3.84%) Microsoft Certification
6 100 (3.15%) Cisco Certification
7 84 (2.64%) Azure Certification
8 77 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
9 62 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
10 61 (1.92%) CISSP
11 55 (1.73%) AWS Certification
12 53 (1.67%) A+ Certification
13 47 (1.48%) CCNA
14 42 (1.32%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 38 (1.20%) CCNP
15 38 (1.20%) DBS Check
16 35 (1.10%) MCSE
17 33 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 26 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
19 25 (0.79%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (5.10%) SLA
2 110 (3.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 99 (3.12%) QA
4 82 (2.58%) NIST
5 38 (1.20%) GDPR
6 30 (0.94%) NCSC
7 28 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
8 22 (0.69%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.50%) Data Quality
10 15 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
10 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.44%) Accessibility
11 14 (0.44%) GxP
12 13 (0.41%) PMO
13 11 (0.35%) GRC
13 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.35%) WCAG
14 9 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 9 (0.28%) GMP
15 8 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,293 (40.69%) Active Directory
2 466 (14.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 207 (6.51%) Hyper-V
4 140 (4.41%) VMware ESXi
5 129 (4.06%) vSphere
6 109 (3.43%) Docker
7 96 (3.02%) Virtual Desktop
7 96 (3.02%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.58%) VMware NSX
9 42 (1.32%) Firmware
10 40 (1.26%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.63%) vCloud
12 17 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.35%) KVM
15 9 (0.28%) NFS
15 9 (0.28%) XenApp
15 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
16 8 (0.25%) VMware Workstation
17 7 (0.22%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 442 (13.91%) Microsoft Intune
2 324 (10.20%) SCCM
3 239 (7.52%) Ansible
4 168 (5.29%) Kubernetes
5 116 (3.65%) vCenter Server
6 81 (2.55%) SCOM
7 49 (1.54%) Jamf Pro
8 48 (1.51%) WSUS
9 42 (1.32%) Progress Chef
10 37 (1.16%) Single Sign-On
11 32 (1.01%) Puppet
12 29 (0.91%) FortiGate
13 27 (0.85%) NetBackup
14 26 (0.82%) Nagios
14 26 (0.82%) WMI
15 25 (0.79%) Packer
15 25 (0.79%) Prometheus
16 24 (0.76%) Grafana
17 23 (0.72%) VxRail
18 22 (0.69%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,471 (46.29%) Microsoft
2 613 (19.29%) VMware
3 372 (11.71%) ServiceNow
4 221 (6.95%) Cisco
5 205 (6.45%) Oracle
6 186 (5.85%) Citrix
7 119 (3.74%) Splunk
8 105 (3.30%) Apple
9 97 (3.05%) CyberArk
10 81 (2.55%) Google
11 79 (2.49%) SolarWinds
12 76 (2.39%) BeyondTrust
13 73 (2.30%) Red Hat
14 70 (2.20%) HP
15 62 (1.95%) Remedy
16 58 (1.83%) Dell
17 51 (1.60%) Palo Alto
18 50 (1.57%) BMC
19 47 (1.48%) NetApp
20 46 (1.45%) Meraki