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 24 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 21 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,283 2,662 3,145
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.98% 8.07% 8.25%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.08% 59.69% 58.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,080 1,766 2,023
10th Percentile £170 £163 £178
25th Percentile £224 £213 £245
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £400 £425
Median % change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -2.30%
75th Percentile £560 £540 £575
90th Percentile £668 £638 £638
UK excluding London median daily rate £402 £350 £409
% change year-on-year +14.86% -14.35% +2.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 340 247 169
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.43 £15.21
25th Percentile £17.25 £18.12 £18.13
Median hourly rate £25.75 £22.58 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +14.06% -6.64% -0.29%
75th Percentile £65.00 £30.13 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.77 £21.73 £24.18
% change year-on-year +18.59% -10.13% +9.91%

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 5,375 4,460 5,380
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.79% 13.53% 14.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,381 2,838 3,393
10th Percentile £190 £188 £200
25th Percentile £313 £300 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.44% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £675 £670 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £430 £450
% change year-on-year +4.77% -4.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 407 298 257
10th Percentile £14.31 £15.50 £16.15
25th Percentile £17.38 £18.87 £21.80
Median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £53.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -52.55% +15.52%
75th Percentile £65.61 £55.64 £69.69
90th Percentile £75.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £57.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -55.88% +30.28%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 2,863 £416 +4.00% 2,580
UK excluding London -13 2,123 £402 +14.86% 1,743
London -7 963 £416 -2.12% 981
Work from Home -16 618 £468 +5.65% 914
South East -8 562 £479 +27.80% 458
North of England -5 505 £325 +8.33% 350
North West +8 302 £344 +5.04% 197
Midlands -14 299 £400 +6.67% 306
South West -16 265 £533 +52.14% 206
East of England -1 247 £238 -32.14% 236
West Midlands -23 202 £402 +0.50% 193
Scotland -4 170 £250 -44.44% 119
Yorkshire -16 166 £245 +22.04% 119
East Midlands 0 96 £275 +22.22% 112
Wales +11 70 £446 +62.27% 41
North East -29 42 £283 +13.00% 40
Northern Ireland -1 16 £139 -30.75% 60
Channel Islands -3 3 £518 -

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
1 266 (8.10%) SharePoint
2 247 (7.52%) Microsoft Exchange
3 70 (2.13%) IIS
4 58 (1.77%) Confluence
5 20 (0.61%) nginx
6 19 (0.58%) Skype for Business
7 17 (0.52%) Apache
8 13 (0.40%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
9 11 (0.34%) Tomcat
10 6 (0.18%) Documentum
11 5 (0.15%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.15%) Appian
11 5 (0.15%) Camunda
11 5 (0.15%) WebLogic
12 4 (0.12%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.091%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.091%) Exchange Server 2010
13 3 (0.091%) Exchange Server 2013
13 3 (0.091%) OpenStack
Applications
1 231 (7.04%) Microsoft Office
2 71 (2.16%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 9 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (0.15%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.12%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.091%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.091%) Houdini
7 3 (0.091%) NUKE
8 2 (0.061%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 1 (0.030%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.030%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 53 (1.61%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (0.30%) Finacle
3 7 (0.21%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.21%) Oracle BPM
3 7 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 6 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.15%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.091%) assyst
6 3 (0.091%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.091%) ResourceLink
7 2 (0.061%) Dynamics GP
7 2 (0.061%) SAP FI
8 1 (0.030%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.030%) Monis
8 1 (0.030%) Oracle BRM
8 1 (0.030%) SAP ERP
8 1 (0.030%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.030%) SAP FI-CA
8 1 (0.030%) SAP FS
8 1 (0.030%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 1,035 (31.53%) Microsoft 365
2 999 (30.43%) Azure
3 530 (16.14%) Entra ID
4 342 (10.42%) AWS
5 148 (4.51%) OneDrive
6 120 (3.66%) Azure DevOps
7 116 (3.53%) GCP
8 79 (2.41%) SaaS
9 76 (2.31%) Azure Monitor
10 74 (2.25%) GitHub
11 69 (2.10%) Power Platform
12 62 (1.89%) IaaS
13 46 (1.40%) PaaS
14 42 (1.28%) Azure Sentinel
15 37 (1.13%) OpenShift
16 31 (0.94%) AWS CloudFormation
17 30 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
18 26 (0.79%) Google Workspace
19 23 (0.70%) Amazon EC2
20 22 (0.67%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 488 (14.86%) DNS
2 346 (10.54%) DHCP
3 338 (10.30%) Firewall
4 281 (8.56%) VPN
5 250 (7.61%) TCP/IP
6 139 (4.23%) WAN
7 137 (4.17%) LAN
8 131 (3.99%) Wi-Fi
9 104 (3.17%) Network Security
10 94 (2.86%) SAN
11 89 (2.71%) VLAN
12 60 (1.83%) Wireless
13 54 (1.64%) SSL
14 45 (1.37%) Internet
15 43 (1.31%) NAS
16 36 (1.10%) BGP
17 35 (1.07%) Skype
18 33 (1.01%) HTTP
19 32 (0.97%) VSAN
20 31 (0.94%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 292 (8.89%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.86%) Oracle Database
3 54 (1.64%) Power BI
4 41 (1.25%) PostgreSQL
5 39 (1.19%) Relational Database
5 39 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 26 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
7 23 (0.70%) MySQL
8 19 (0.58%) RDBMS
9 15 (0.46%) Data Warehouse
9 15 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
9 15 (0.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 14 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 12 (0.37%) Db2
12 11 (0.34%) Geospatial Data
13 10 (0.30%) Elasticsearch
14 8 (0.24%) MS Access
14 8 (0.24%) NoSQL
15 7 (0.21%) MongoDB
15 7 (0.21%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 156 (4.75%) JIRA
2 83 (2.53%) Git
3 62 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 51 (1.55%) GitLab
5 50 (1.52%) MSI
6 38 (1.16%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.52%) Bitbucket
8 15 (0.46%) Eclipse
9 14 (0.43%) Artifactory
10 11 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 11 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
11 9 (0.27%) Team Foundation Server
12 8 (0.24%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (0.21%) Rational DOORS
14 6 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
14 6 (0.18%) Selenium
14 6 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 5 (0.15%) Chocolatey
15 5 (0.15%) Claude Code
15 5 (0.15%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,215 (37.01%) Social Skills
2 406 (12.37%) Analytical Skills
3 384 (11.70%) Finance
4 162 (4.93%) Public Sector
5 158 (4.81%) Banking
6 123 (3.75%) Documentation Skills
7 86 (2.62%) Legal
8 79 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 75 (2.28%) Organisational Skills
10 60 (1.83%) Manufacturing
11 57 (1.74%) Telecoms
12 53 (1.61%) Retail
13 43 (1.31%) Front Office
14 42 (1.28%) Law
15 40 (1.22%) Military
16 34 (1.04%) Investment Banking
17 26 (0.79%) Police
17 26 (0.79%) Spanish Language
18 25 (0.76%) French Language
18 25 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 525 (15.99%) Support Engineer
2 449 (13.68%) IT Support
3 341 (10.39%) IT Engineer
4 340 (10.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 287 (8.74%) IT Support Engineer
6 277 (8.44%) Analyst
7 257 (7.83%) Senior
8 149 (4.54%) Desktop Support
9 129 (3.93%) Architect
10 128 (3.90%) Desktop Engineer
11 126 (3.84%) 2nd Line Support
12 122 (3.72%) Lead
13 120 (3.66%) Windows Engineer
14 119 (3.62%) Cloud Engineer
15 109 (3.32%) Developer
16 102 (3.11%) Support Analyst
17 95 (2.89%) Consultant
18 85 (2.59%) Service Analyst
19 83 (2.53%) 1st Line Support
20 81 (2.47%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (8.22%) Terraform
2 147 (4.48%) .NET
3 122 (3.72%) REST
4 65 (1.98%) .NET Framework
5 55 (1.68%) Middleware
6 45 (1.37%) JSON
7 43 (1.31%) LDAP
8 40 (1.22%) WPF
9 35 (1.07%) WinForms
10 32 (0.97%) XML
11 29 (0.88%) Software Packaging
12 26 (0.79%) HTML
12 26 (0.79%) Web Services
13 24 (0.73%) Kafka
14 23 (0.70%) .NET Core
14 23 (0.70%) ARM Templates
15 21 (0.64%) Elastic Stack
16 20 (0.61%) RESTful
17 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Graph
18 18 (0.55%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 391 (11.91%) Onboarding
2 200 (6.09%) Data Centre
3 164 (5.00%) PKI
4 108 (3.29%) Management Information System
5 90 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
6 89 (2.71%) Driving Licence
7 88 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
8 79 (2.41%) Clustering
9 78 (2.38%) Video Conferencing
10 76 (2.31%) Cloud Native
11 71 (2.16%) Replication
12 59 (1.80%) Security Posture
13 56 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
14 44 (1.34%) Operational Technology
15 43 (1.31%) Linux Command Line
16 41 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
17 40 (1.22%) Smartphone
17 40 (1.22%) Virtual Team
18 37 (1.13%) CMDB
18 37 (1.13%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 909 (27.69%) Windows Server
2 806 (24.55%) Linux
3 577 (17.58%) Windows 10
4 210 (6.40%) Mac OS
5 151 (4.60%) Unix
6 148 (4.51%) Apple iOS
7 146 (4.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 144 (4.39%) Android
9 72 (2.19%) Windows Server 2019
10 55 (1.68%) Windows 7
11 52 (1.58%) Ubuntu
12 45 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
13 43 (1.31%) Windows Server 2012
14 40 (1.22%) CentOS
15 33 (1.01%) AIX
16 23 (0.70%) Solaris
16 23 (0.70%) VMS
17 19 (0.58%) Windows Server 2008
18 15 (0.46%) Rocky
19 12 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 795 (24.22%) Problem-Solving
2 619 (18.85%) ITIL
3 576 (17.54%) Customer Service
4 447 (13.62%) ITSM
5 432 (13.16%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 424 (12.92%) Migration
7 363 (11.06%) Continuous Improvement
8 327 (9.96%) Service Management
9 316 (9.63%) DevOps
10 290 (8.83%) CI/CD
11 273 (8.32%) Infrastructure as Code
12 258 (7.86%) Agile
13 256 (7.80%) Stakeholder Management
14 234 (7.13%) Root Cause Analysis
15 231 (7.04%) Change Management
16 220 (6.70%) Disaster Recovery
17 210 (6.40%) Validation
18 207 (6.31%) Cybersecurity
19 190 (5.79%) Service Delivery
20 183 (5.57%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 776 (23.64%) PowerShell
2 345 (10.51%) Python
3 318 (9.69%) SQL
4 196 (5.97%) Bash
5 169 (5.15%) C#
6 75 (2.28%) T-SQL
7 74 (2.25%) Java
8 60 (1.83%) JavaScript
9 58 (1.77%) PL/SQL
10 51 (1.55%) Bicep
11 38 (1.16%) C++
12 30 (0.91%) VB
13 29 (0.88%) VBScript
14 22 (0.67%) Perl
15 20 (0.61%) VBA
16 17 (0.52%) Shell Script
17 16 (0.49%) TypeScript
18 12 (0.37%) Go
18 12 (0.37%) Groovy
18 12 (0.37%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 1,000 (30.46%) Security Cleared
2 601 (18.31%) SC Cleared
3 385 (11.73%) DV Cleared
4 301 (9.17%) Degree
5 125 (3.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 95 (2.89%) Azure Certification
7 88 (2.68%) Cisco Certification
8 73 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
9 70 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
10 65 (1.98%) CISSP
11 58 (1.77%) A+ Certification
12 56 (1.71%) AWS Certification
13 51 (1.55%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
14 45 (1.37%) CCNA
14 45 (1.37%) DBS Check
15 38 (1.16%) CCNP
16 35 (1.07%) ITIL Certification
17 34 (1.04%) MCSE
17 34 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 33 (1.01%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 173 (5.27%) SLA
2 112 (3.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 94 (2.86%) QA
4 85 (2.59%) NIST
5 39 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
6 33 (1.01%) GDPR
7 29 (0.88%) NCSC
8 22 (0.67%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.49%) GRC
9 16 (0.49%) GxP
10 15 (0.46%) Accessibility
10 15 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 15 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 14 (0.43%) Disclosure Scotland
12 12 (0.37%) 21 CFR Part 11
12 12 (0.37%) Data Quality
12 12 (0.37%) WCAG
13 11 (0.34%) PMO
14 10 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.30%) ISO 31000
System Software
1 1,356 (41.30%) Active Directory
2 501 (15.26%) VMware Infrastructure
3 226 (6.88%) Hyper-V
4 162 (4.93%) VMware ESXi
5 144 (4.39%) vSphere
6 121 (3.69%) Docker
7 111 (3.38%) Virtual Machines
8 102 (3.11%) Virtual Desktop
9 79 (2.41%) VMware NSX
10 37 (1.13%) BitLocker
11 36 (1.10%) Firmware
12 24 (0.73%) vCloud
13 17 (0.52%) NFS
13 17 (0.52%) Virtual Servers
14 15 (0.46%) Microsoft App-V
15 13 (0.40%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 12 (0.37%) XenApp
17 11 (0.34%) KVM
18 10 (0.30%) XenDesktop
19 8 (0.24%) UAG
Systems Management
1 456 (13.89%) Microsoft Intune
2 362 (11.03%) SCCM
3 232 (7.07%) Ansible
4 166 (5.06%) Kubernetes
5 127 (3.87%) vCenter Server
6 105 (3.20%) SCOM
7 53 (1.61%) Jamf Pro
8 42 (1.28%) WSUS
9 36 (1.10%) Grafana
10 33 (1.01%) Progress Chef
10 33 (1.01%) Prometheus
11 32 (0.97%) Single Sign-On
12 31 (0.94%) NetBackup
13 29 (0.88%) WMI
14 27 (0.82%) Puppet
14 27 (0.82%) VxRail
15 23 (0.70%) Nagios
16 22 (0.67%) Packer
17 21 (0.64%) Failover Clustering
17 21 (0.64%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,554 (47.33%) Microsoft
2 653 (19.89%) VMware
3 379 (11.54%) ServiceNow
4 240 (7.31%) Cisco
5 201 (6.12%) Oracle
6 177 (5.39%) Citrix
7 111 (3.38%) Apple
8 106 (3.23%) Splunk
9 103 (3.14%) CyberArk
10 86 (2.62%) Google
11 82 (2.50%) Red Hat
12 80 (2.44%) BeyondTrust
13 77 (2.35%) SolarWinds
14 61 (1.86%) Dell
15 57 (1.74%) Remedy
16 54 (1.64%) Palo Alto
17 50 (1.52%) NetApp
18 47 (1.43%) HP
19 41 (1.25%) CrowdStrike
19 41 (1.25%) Meraki