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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,159 2,641 3,236
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.89% 8.07% 8.33%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.77% 60.08% 59.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,019 1,739 2,157
10th Percentile £165 £170 £175
25th Percentile £225 £220 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £410 £430
Median % change year-on-year +3.66% -4.65% -2.27%
75th Percentile £556 £560 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £379 £425
% change year-on-year +6.14% -10.88% +13.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 283 222 226
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.06 £17.76 £15.82
Median hourly rate £24.00 £21.28 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.78% -3.27% -2.22%
75th Percentile £54.13 £27.31 £53.75
90th Percentile £73.49 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £21.00
% change year-on-year +36.46% -10.14% -1.45%

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 5,198 4,396 5,435
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.69% 13.43% 13.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,291 2,795 3,559
10th Percentile £190 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £306 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £586
90th Percentile £668 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £447 £450
% change year-on-year +0.67% -0.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 270 323
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.43
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.85
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.08 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.77% -16.42% -29.41%
75th Percentile £64.06 £57.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.69 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £24.33 £39.25
% change year-on-year +6.21% -38.01% +27.02%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 2,748 £415 +1.84% 994
UK excluding London -14 2,041 £402 +6.14% 889
London -12 922 £425 +0.59% 227
Work from Home -11 614 £465 +3.33% 326
South East -8 569 £475 -3.26% 300
North of England -4 506 £325 - 192
North West +3 298 £328 -6.43% 90
South West -14 281 £475 +35.71% 120
Midlands -18 262 £393 -1.88% 137
East of England -5 191 £335 +5.43% 130
Yorkshire -16 180 £313 - 74
Scotland -4 166 £375 -16.67% 29
West Midlands -28 166 £425 -4.49% 92
East Midlands +5 92 £273 +36.25% 45
Wales +4 64 £446 +62.27% 14
North East -31 32 £260 -0.95% 38
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
1 257 (8.14%) SharePoint
2 243 (7.69%) Microsoft Exchange
3 68 (2.15%) IIS
4 58 (1.84%) Confluence
5 18 (0.57%) nginx
5 18 (0.57%) Skype for Business
6 16 (0.51%) Apache
7 15 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
8 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
9 7 (0.22%) NetWeaver
9 7 (0.22%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.19%) Documentum
11 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.16%) Appian
11 5 (0.16%) Camunda
11 5 (0.16%) SAS
12 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.095%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.095%) WebSphere
Applications
1 210 (6.65%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (2.31%) 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 (0.095%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.095%) Houdini
6 3 (0.095%) NUKE
7 2 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 2 (0.063%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.032%) CINEMA 4D
8 1 (0.032%) InDesign
8 1 (0.032%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 57 (1.80%) Remedy ITSM
2 11 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.32%) 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 (0.095%) assyst
9 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
9 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
10 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
10 1 (0.032%) Infor LN
10 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
10 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP ERP
10 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
10 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
10 1 (0.032%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 993 (31.43%) Microsoft 365
2 982 (31.09%) Azure
3 489 (15.48%) Entra ID
4 334 (10.57%) AWS
5 142 (4.50%) OneDrive
6 115 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
7 100 (3.17%) GCP
8 78 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
9 74 (2.34%) SaaS
10 73 (2.31%) Power Platform
11 71 (2.25%) GitHub
12 62 (1.96%) IaaS
13 48 (1.52%) PaaS
14 44 (1.39%) Azure Sentinel
15 39 (1.23%) OpenShift
16 29 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.89%) GitHub Actions
18 27 (0.85%) Google Workspace
19 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
20 24 (0.76%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 471 (14.91%) DNS
2 351 (11.11%) Firewall
3 335 (10.60%) DHCP
4 277 (8.77%) VPN
5 227 (7.19%) TCP/IP
6 158 (5.00%) WAN
7 156 (4.94%) LAN
8 143 (4.53%) Wi-Fi
9 96 (3.04%) SAN
10 88 (2.79%) Network Security
11 86 (2.72%) VLAN
12 48 (1.52%) NAS
13 47 (1.49%) Wireless
14 45 (1.42%) SSL
15 44 (1.39%) Internet
16 39 (1.23%) VSAN
17 34 (1.08%) Skype
18 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
19 31 (0.98%) BGP
20 28 (0.89%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 299 (9.47%) SQL Server
2 58 (1.84%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.71%) Power BI
4 35 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
4 35 (1.11%) Relational Database
4 35 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 24 (0.76%) MySQL
6 22 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
7 17 (0.54%) RDBMS
8 16 (0.51%) Data Warehouse
8 16 (0.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 15 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 12 (0.38%) Elasticsearch
11 11 (0.35%) Geospatial Data
11 11 (0.35%) Oracle Reports
12 10 (0.32%) Db2
13 8 (0.25%) MongoDB
13 8 (0.25%) MS Access
14 7 (0.22%) NoSQL
14 7 (0.22%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 167 (5.29%) JIRA
2 77 (2.44%) Git
3 56 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.52%) MSI
5 41 (1.30%) GitLab
6 29 (0.92%) Visual Studio
7 18 (0.57%) Bitbucket
8 10 (0.32%) Eclipse
9 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 9 (0.28%) Selenium
10 8 (0.25%) Artifactory
10 8 (0.25%) Sonatype Nexus
11 7 (0.22%) Browser DevTools
11 7 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (0.19%) Chocolatey
12 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
13 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
13 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
13 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,151 (36.44%) Social Skills
2 394 (12.47%) Analytical Skills
3 370 (11.71%) Finance
4 176 (5.57%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.00%) Banking
6 111 (3.51%) Documentation Skills
7 90 (2.85%) Legal
8 77 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
9 73 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.77%) Manufacturing
10 56 (1.77%) Retail
11 49 (1.55%) Telecoms
12 41 (1.30%) Front Office
13 35 (1.11%) Law
14 33 (1.04%) Investment Banking
15 32 (1.01%) Military
16 28 (0.89%) Spanish Language
17 25 (0.79%) French Language
18 24 (0.76%) Financial Institution
19 22 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 501 (15.86%) Support Engineer
2 427 (13.52%) IT Support
3 333 (10.54%) IT Engineer
4 324 (10.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 278 (8.80%) IT Support Engineer
6 266 (8.42%) Analyst
7 241 (7.63%) Senior
8 142 (4.50%) Desktop Support
9 128 (4.05%) 2nd Line Support
10 122 (3.86%) Architect
11 116 (3.67%) Lead
12 115 (3.64%) Desktop Engineer
13 114 (3.61%) Cloud Engineer
14 107 (3.39%) Developer
15 106 (3.36%) Windows Engineer
16 103 (3.26%) Consultant
17 102 (3.23%) Support Analyst
18 87 (2.75%) 1st Line Support
19 84 (2.66%) Service Analyst
20 82 (2.60%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (8.42%) Terraform
2 134 (4.24%) .NET
3 116 (3.67%) REST
4 68 (2.15%) .NET Framework
5 44 (1.39%) Middleware
6 36 (1.14%) JSON
7 35 (1.11%) LDAP
8 32 (1.01%) WinForms
9 29 (0.92%) WPF
9 29 (0.92%) XML
10 27 (0.85%) HTML
10 27 (0.85%) Kafka
10 27 (0.85%) Software Packaging
11 22 (0.70%) ARM Templates
12 21 (0.66%) CSS
12 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
12 21 (0.66%) RESTful
13 20 (0.63%) SAML
14 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
14 19 (0.60%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 364 (11.52%) Onboarding
2 180 (5.70%) Data Centre
3 162 (5.13%) PKI
4 93 (2.94%) Management Information System
5 87 (2.75%) Clustering
6 83 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
7 82 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
8 79 (2.50%) Driving Licence
9 75 (2.37%) Cloud Native
10 71 (2.25%) Video Conferencing
11 67 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
12 65 (2.06%) Replication
13 49 (1.55%) Security Posture
14 48 (1.52%) Legacy Systems
15 43 (1.36%) Virtual Team
16 41 (1.30%) Enterprise Storage
17 39 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
17 39 (1.23%) Operational Technology
18 37 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
18 37 (1.17%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 839 (26.56%) Windows Server
2 778 (24.63%) Linux
3 552 (17.47%) Windows 10
4 195 (6.17%) Mac OS
5 142 (4.50%) Unix
6 135 (4.27%) Android
7 134 (4.24%) Apple iOS
8 124 (3.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 74 (2.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.74%) Windows 7
11 50 (1.58%) Ubuntu
11 50 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
12 41 (1.30%) Windows Server 2012
13 36 (1.14%) AIX
14 31 (0.98%) CentOS
15 24 (0.76%) VMS
16 18 (0.57%) Solaris
16 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
17 11 (0.35%) Debian
17 11 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 755 (23.90%) Problem-Solving
2 575 (18.20%) ITIL
3 528 (16.71%) Customer Service
4 418 (13.23%) ITSM
5 411 (13.01%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 396 (12.54%) Migration
7 320 (10.13%) Continuous Improvement
8 305 (9.65%) DevOps
9 292 (9.24%) Service Management
10 258 (8.17%) CI/CD
11 252 (7.98%) Agile
12 249 (7.88%) Infrastructure as Code
13 221 (7.00%) Change Management
14 204 (6.46%) Stakeholder Management
15 198 (6.27%) Disaster Recovery
16 197 (6.24%) High Availability
17 192 (6.08%) Service Delivery
18 189 (5.98%) Cybersecurity
19 183 (5.79%) Root Cause Analysis
20 178 (5.63%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 757 (23.96%) PowerShell
2 332 (10.51%) Python
3 316 (10.00%) SQL
4 182 (5.76%) Bash
5 150 (4.75%) C#
6 75 (2.37%) Java
7 60 (1.90%) T-SQL
8 59 (1.87%) JavaScript
9 53 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.52%) Bicep
11 38 (1.20%) C++
12 30 (0.95%) VBScript
13 28 (0.89%) VB
14 25 (0.79%) Search Processing Language
15 21 (0.66%) Perl
16 19 (0.60%) Shell Script
17 18 (0.57%) VBA
18 16 (0.51%) TypeScript
19 12 (0.38%) C
20 11 (0.35%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 962 (30.45%) Security Cleared
2 603 (19.09%) SC Cleared
3 336 (10.64%) DV Cleared
4 294 (9.31%) Degree
5 122 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 97 (3.07%) Cisco Certification
7 84 (2.66%) Azure Certification
8 75 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
9 60 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
9 60 (1.90%) CISSP
10 55 (1.74%) A+ Certification
10 55 (1.74%) AWS Certification
11 46 (1.46%) CCNA
12 44 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 39 (1.23%) DBS Check
14 37 (1.17%) CCNP
15 35 (1.11%) MCSE
16 32 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 27 (0.85%) ITIL Certification
18 25 (0.79%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 163 (5.16%) SLA
2 111 (3.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 97 (3.07%) QA
4 82 (2.60%) NIST
5 36 (1.14%) GDPR
6 30 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
6 30 (0.95%) NCSC
7 22 (0.70%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.51%) Data Quality
9 15 (0.47%) Disclosure Scotland
9 15 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 14 (0.44%) Accessibility
10 14 (0.44%) GxP
11 13 (0.41%) PMO
12 11 (0.35%) GRC
12 11 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.35%) WCAG
13 10 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 9 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 9 (0.28%) GMP
System Software
1 1,293 (40.93%) Active Directory
2 463 (14.66%) VMware Infrastructure
3 206 (6.52%) Hyper-V
4 142 (4.50%) VMware ESXi
5 128 (4.05%) vSphere
6 108 (3.42%) Docker
7 97 (3.07%) Virtual Desktop
7 97 (3.07%) Virtual Machines
8 82 (2.60%) VMware NSX
9 40 (1.27%) BitLocker
10 39 (1.23%) Firmware
11 22 (0.70%) vCloud
12 17 (0.54%) 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%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 7 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 442 (13.99%) Microsoft Intune
2 327 (10.35%) SCCM
3 233 (7.38%) Ansible
4 164 (5.19%) Kubernetes
5 118 (3.74%) vCenter Server
6 83 (2.63%) SCOM
7 50 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
8 48 (1.52%) WSUS
9 37 (1.17%) Progress Chef
10 36 (1.14%) Single Sign-On
11 28 (0.89%) FortiGate
11 28 (0.89%) Puppet
12 27 (0.85%) NetBackup
12 27 (0.85%) Prometheus
12 27 (0.85%) WMI
13 26 (0.82%) Nagios
14 25 (0.79%) Grafana
14 25 (0.79%) Packer
15 23 (0.73%) VxRail
16 22 (0.70%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,466 (46.41%) Microsoft
2 606 (19.18%) VMware
3 370 (11.71%) ServiceNow
4 217 (6.87%) Cisco
5 201 (6.36%) Oracle
6 181 (5.73%) Citrix
7 118 (3.74%) Splunk
8 108 (3.42%) Apple
9 96 (3.04%) CyberArk
10 79 (2.50%) Google
11 78 (2.47%) SolarWinds
12 76 (2.41%) BeyondTrust
13 72 (2.28%) Red Hat
14 69 (2.18%) HP
15 61 (1.93%) Remedy
16 55 (1.74%) Dell
17 51 (1.61%) Palo Alto
18 49 (1.55%) BMC
19 47 (1.49%) NetApp
20 46 (1.46%) Meraki