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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 -5
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,158 2,651 3,234
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.88% 8.09% 8.33%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.57% 60.26% 59.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,021 1,746 2,150
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 £559 £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 279 222 225
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.50 £11.07
25th Percentile £17.06 £17.79 £15.63
Median hourly rate £24.00 £21.64 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.91% -1.64% -2.22%
75th Percentile £53.75 £28.00 £53.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £19.27 £21.00
% change year-on-year +33.63% -8.24% -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 5,214 4,399 5,424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.71% 13.43% 13.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,300 2,796 3,545
10th Percentile £192 £190 £200
25th Percentile £313 £308 £326
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 £668 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £449 £450
% change year-on-year +0.33% -0.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 355 270 321
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.56 £12.42
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £25.77 £25.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.47% -8.55% -33.59%
75th Percentile £63.75 £57.09 £65.00
90th Percentile £72.86 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.84 £24.83 £38.50
% change year-on-year +4.07% -35.51% +31.40%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 2,749 £415 +1.84% 1,992
UK excluding London -14 2,031 £402 +6.14% 1,348
London -14 934 £425 - 815
Work from Home -14 612 £469 +4.17% 660
South East -8 562 £475 -3.26% 422
North of England -5 502 £325 - 295
North West +3 299 £340 -3.00% 161
South West -14 279 £475 +35.71% 175
Midlands -16 263 £384 -4.13% 182
East of England -5 193 £330 -1.49% 217
Yorkshire -16 176 £282 -13.23% 94
West Midlands -26 166 £419 -2.50% 118
Scotland -5 165 £375 -16.67% 52
East Midlands +3 93 £273 +36.25% 64
Wales +4 64 £446 +62.27% 21
North East -35 31 £250 -4.76% 52
Northern Ireland -4 16 £139 -30.75% 18
Channel Islands +1 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 (8.20%) SharePoint
2 243 (7.69%) Microsoft Exchange
3 68 (2.15%) IIS
4 57 (1.80%) Confluence
5 19 (0.60%) Skype for Business
6 18 (0.57%) nginx
7 16 (0.51%) Apache
8 14 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
9 13 (0.41%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.41%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.19%) Documentum
10 6 (0.19%) NetWeaver
11 5 (0.16%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.16%) Appian
11 5 (0.16%) Camunda
11 5 (0.16%) SAS
11 5 (0.16%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.095%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.095%) WebSphere
Applications
1 213 (6.74%) 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 56 (1.77%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.32%) Finacle
2 10 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.22%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
4 6 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.16%) Teamcenter
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.095%) assyst
8 2 (0.063%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.063%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.032%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.032%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.032%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP ERP
9 1 (0.032%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.032%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.032%) SAP FS
9 1 (0.032%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 992 (31.41%) Microsoft 365
2 984 (31.16%) Azure
3 492 (15.58%) Entra ID
4 333 (10.54%) AWS
5 143 (4.53%) OneDrive
6 117 (3.70%) Azure DevOps
7 99 (3.13%) GCP
8 78 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
9 76 (2.41%) SaaS
10 72 (2.28%) Power Platform
11 71 (2.25%) GitHub
12 61 (1.93%) IaaS
13 47 (1.49%) PaaS
14 46 (1.46%) Azure Sentinel
15 39 (1.23%) OpenShift
16 29 (0.92%) AWS CloudFormation
17 27 (0.85%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.82%) Azure AKS
18 26 (0.82%) Google Workspace
19 24 (0.76%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 472 (14.95%) DNS
2 353 (11.18%) Firewall
3 336 (10.64%) DHCP
4 275 (8.71%) VPN
5 227 (7.19%) TCP/IP
6 157 (4.97%) WAN
7 153 (4.84%) LAN
8 140 (4.43%) Wi-Fi
9 97 (3.07%) SAN
10 92 (2.91%) Network Security
11 87 (2.75%) VLAN
12 48 (1.52%) NAS
12 48 (1.52%) Wireless
13 45 (1.42%) Internet
13 45 (1.42%) SSL
14 38 (1.20%) VSAN
15 35 (1.11%) Skype
16 32 (1.01%) SD-WAN
17 31 (0.98%) BGP
18 28 (0.89%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (9.40%) SQL Server
2 59 (1.87%) Oracle Database
3 53 (1.68%) Power BI
4 35 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
4 35 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 34 (1.08%) Relational Database
6 22 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
6 22 (0.70%) MySQL
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
12 10 (0.32%) Db2
12 10 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
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
1 163 (5.16%) JIRA
2 74 (2.34%) Git
3 56 (1.77%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.52%) MSI
5 41 (1.30%) GitLab
6 26 (0.82%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.54%) Bitbucket
8 9 (0.28%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 8 (0.25%) Artifactory
9 8 (0.25%) Eclipse
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 6 (0.19%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Chocolatey
12 5 (0.16%) Claude Code
12 5 (0.16%) InstallShield
12 5 (0.16%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,151 (36.45%) Social Skills
2 393 (12.44%) Analytical Skills
3 377 (11.94%) Finance
4 175 (5.54%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.00%) Banking
6 113 (3.58%) Documentation Skills
7 88 (2.79%) Legal
8 76 (2.41%) Organisational Skills
9 74 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 58 (1.84%) Manufacturing
11 55 (1.74%) Retail
12 51 (1.61%) Telecoms
13 41 (1.30%) Front Office
14 37 (1.17%) Law
15 34 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 30 (0.95%) Military
17 28 (0.89%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.79%) French Language
19 24 (0.76%) Financial Institution
20 22 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 502 (15.90%) Support Engineer
2 425 (13.46%) IT Support
3 333 (10.54%) IT Engineer
4 328 (10.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 277 (8.77%) IT Support Engineer
6 266 (8.42%) Analyst
7 240 (7.60%) Senior
8 142 (4.50%) Desktop Support
9 128 (4.05%) 2nd Line Support
10 120 (3.80%) Architect
11 117 (3.70%) Desktop Engineer
11 117 (3.70%) Lead
12 115 (3.64%) Cloud Engineer
13 108 (3.42%) Windows Engineer
14 104 (3.29%) Developer
14 104 (3.29%) Support Analyst
15 102 (3.23%) Consultant
16 86 (2.72%) 1st Line Support
17 84 (2.66%) Service Analyst
18 82 (2.60%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (8.36%) Terraform
2 132 (4.18%) .NET
3 114 (3.61%) REST
4 68 (2.15%) .NET Framework
5 43 (1.36%) Middleware
6 36 (1.14%) JSON
7 34 (1.08%) LDAP
8 30 (0.95%) WinForms
9 29 (0.92%) WPF
9 29 (0.92%) XML
10 28 (0.89%) Software Packaging
11 27 (0.85%) HTML
11 27 (0.85%) Kafka
12 22 (0.70%) ARM Templates
13 21 (0.66%) CSS
13 21 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
14 19 (0.60%) ASP.NET
14 19 (0.60%) Microsoft Graph
14 19 (0.60%) RESTful
14 19 (0.60%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 366 (11.59%) Onboarding
2 182 (5.76%) Data Centre
3 159 (5.03%) PKI
4 95 (3.01%) Management Information System
5 84 (2.66%) Clustering
6 82 (2.60%) Hybrid Cloud
7 80 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
8 77 (2.44%) Driving Licence
9 75 (2.37%) Cloud Native
10 72 (2.28%) Video Conferencing
11 69 (2.18%) Replication
12 66 (2.09%) Self-Motivation
13 48 (1.52%) Security Posture
14 46 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
15 42 (1.33%) Enterprise Storage
15 42 (1.33%) Virtual Team
16 40 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
17 39 (1.23%) Operational Technology
18 36 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
18 36 (1.14%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 851 (26.95%) Windows Server
2 779 (24.67%) Linux
3 553 (17.51%) Windows 10
4 194 (6.14%) Mac OS
5 140 (4.43%) Unix
6 134 (4.24%) Android
7 133 (4.21%) Apple iOS
8 126 (3.99%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (2.37%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.74%) Windows 7
11 51 (1.61%) Ubuntu
12 50 (1.58%) Windows Server 2016
13 40 (1.27%) Windows Server 2012
14 36 (1.14%) AIX
15 33 (1.04%) CentOS
16 24 (0.76%) VMS
17 18 (0.57%) Solaris
17 18 (0.57%) Windows Server 2008
18 12 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
19 11 (0.35%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 749 (23.72%) Problem-Solving
2 580 (18.37%) ITIL
3 528 (16.72%) Customer Service
4 420 (13.30%) ITSM
5 416 (13.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 400 (12.67%) Migration
7 323 (10.23%) Continuous Improvement
8 305 (9.66%) DevOps
9 295 (9.34%) Service Management
10 253 (8.01%) CI/CD
11 249 (7.88%) Infrastructure as Code
12 247 (7.82%) Agile
13 226 (7.16%) Change Management
14 210 (6.65%) Stakeholder Management
15 202 (6.40%) Disaster Recovery
16 197 (6.24%) High Availability
17 193 (6.11%) Service Delivery
18 190 (6.02%) Cybersecurity
19 188 (5.95%) Root Cause Analysis
20 178 (5.64%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 760 (24.07%) PowerShell
2 332 (10.51%) Python
3 310 (9.82%) SQL
4 182 (5.76%) Bash
5 146 (4.62%) C#
6 73 (2.31%) Java
7 61 (1.93%) T-SQL
8 55 (1.74%) JavaScript
9 53 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 48 (1.52%) Bicep
11 32 (1.01%) 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%) Kusto Query Language
20 10 (0.32%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 953 (30.18%) Security Cleared
2 594 (18.81%) SC Cleared
3 338 (10.70%) DV Cleared
4 289 (9.15%) Degree
5 122 (3.86%) Microsoft Certification
6 96 (3.04%) Cisco Certification
7 85 (2.69%) Azure Certification
8 71 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
9 63 (1.99%) BPSS Clearance
10 62 (1.96%) CISSP
11 56 (1.77%) AWS Certification
12 54 (1.71%) A+ Certification
13 47 (1.49%) CCNA
14 44 (1.39%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 39 (1.23%) DBS Check
16 38 (1.20%) CCNP
17 35 (1.11%) MCSE
18 32 (1.01%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
19 28 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
20 27 (0.85%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 161 (5.10%) SLA
2 113 (3.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 96 (3.04%) QA
4 81 (2.56%) NIST
5 35 (1.11%) GDPR
6 32 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
7 29 (0.92%) NCSC
8 22 (0.70%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.51%) 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%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
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
System Software
1 1,292 (40.91%) Active Directory
2 465 (14.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 208 (6.59%) Hyper-V
4 144 (4.56%) VMware ESXi
5 129 (4.08%) vSphere
6 109 (3.45%) Docker
7 97 (3.07%) Virtual Machines
8 96 (3.04%) Virtual Desktop
9 81 (2.56%) VMware NSX
10 40 (1.27%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.14%) Firmware
12 22 (0.70%) vCloud
13 18 (0.57%) Microsoft App-V
14 14 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
15 11 (0.35%) KVM
16 10 (0.32%) XenApp
17 9 (0.28%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 9 (0.28%) NFS
17 9 (0.28%) XenDesktop
18 7 (0.22%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 440 (13.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 330 (10.45%) SCCM
3 232 (7.35%) Ansible
4 164 (5.19%) Kubernetes
5 120 (3.80%) vCenter Server
6 85 (2.69%) SCOM
7 50 (1.58%) Jamf Pro
8 48 (1.52%) WSUS
9 37 (1.17%) Progress Chef
10 34 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
11 28 (0.89%) NetBackup
11 28 (0.89%) Prometheus
11 28 (0.89%) Puppet
12 27 (0.85%) Nagios
13 26 (0.82%) FortiGate
13 26 (0.82%) WMI
14 25 (0.79%) Grafana
14 25 (0.79%) Packer
15 22 (0.70%) VxRail
15 22 (0.70%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 1,465 (46.39%) Microsoft
2 609 (19.28%) VMware
3 370 (11.72%) ServiceNow
4 221 (7.00%) Cisco
5 198 (6.27%) Oracle
6 179 (5.67%) Citrix
7 115 (3.64%) Splunk
8 107 (3.39%) Apple
9 97 (3.07%) CyberArk
10 77 (2.44%) BeyondTrust
10 77 (2.44%) Google
10 77 (2.44%) SolarWinds
11 73 (2.31%) Red Hat
12 69 (2.18%) HP
13 60 (1.90%) Remedy
14 55 (1.74%) Dell
15 50 (1.58%) Palo Alto
16 49 (1.55%) NetApp
17 48 (1.52%) BMC
18 46 (1.46%) Meraki