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 17 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,064 2,623 3,517
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.82% 8.06% 8.33%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.34% 59.80% 60.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,950 1,741 2,351
10th Percentile £170 £178 £165
25th Percentile £225 £230 £240
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £421 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -0.94% -5.56%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £675 £656
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £400 £449
% change year-on-year +5.00% -10.91% +17.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 271 200 292
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.31 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.55 £17.31 £14.72
Median hourly rate £25.26 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.86% -5.65% -17.73%
75th Percentile £55.00 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.13
% change year-on-year +36.46% +4.08% -17.59%

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 5,078 4,386 5,800
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.64% 13.49% 13.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,231 2,829 3,790
10th Percentile £191 £200 £190
25th Percentile £319 £313 £319
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.54% -2.63% -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £468
% change year-on-year - -3.76% +3.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 344 244 422
10th Percentile £15.77 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £16.25
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.34
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -5.51% -42.73%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.44 £21.90 £31.13
% change year-on-year +20.73% -29.64% +4.97%

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 17 July 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 17 July 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 17 July 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 -6 2,680 £423 +1.87% 859
UK excluding London -13 2,023 £420 +5.00% 777
London -20 867 £416 -7.67% 190
Work from Home -10 642 £475 - 276
South East -9 557 £475 -4.23% 277
North of England -8 477 £355 +1.31% 190
Midlands -17 276 £335 +13.56% 100
South West -11 271 £488 +6.85% 93
North West -8 250 £350 -2.23% 107
East of England 0 213 £318 +27.00% 97
Yorkshire -9 204 £365 -8.75% 51
West Midlands -29 171 £450 +44.00% 54
Scotland -6 166 £413 -7.04% 29
East Midlands +9 100 £270 +35.00% 46
Wales +9 59 £408 +48.18% 21
North East -35 27 £270 -1.82% 39
Northern Ireland -3 17 £139 -28.97% 4
Channel Islands +3 2 £518 - 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
1 238 (7.77%) Microsoft Exchange
2 227 (7.41%) SharePoint
3 67 (2.19%) IIS
4 61 (1.99%) Confluence
5 19 (0.62%) nginx
5 19 (0.62%) Tomcat
6 17 (0.55%) Apache
7 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.36%) Skype for Business
9 10 (0.33%) HCL Notes
10 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
11 7 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 6 (0.20%) Appian
12 6 (0.20%) Documentum
13 5 (0.16%) Camunda
13 5 (0.16%) SAS
14 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
15 3 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2010
15 3 (0.098%) WebSphere
Applications
1 193 (6.30%) Microsoft Office
2 72 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 20 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.098%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.098%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.098%) PTC Creo
8 2 (0.065%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.065%) Houdini
8 2 (0.065%) NUKE
9 1 (0.033%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 49 (1.60%) Remedy ITSM
2 18 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.33%) Finacle
3 10 (0.33%) Teamcenter
4 6 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
4 6 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
5 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 3 (0.098%) assyst
7 2 (0.065%) Dynamics CRM
7 2 (0.065%) Dynamics GP
8 1 (0.033%) Dynamics NAV
8 1 (0.033%) Infor LN
8 1 (0.033%) Oracle ERP
8 1 (0.033%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.033%) SAP EWM
8 1 (0.033%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 923 (30.12%) Azure
2 885 (28.88%) Microsoft 365
3 421 (13.74%) Entra ID
4 322 (10.51%) AWS
5 127 (4.14%) OneDrive
6 98 (3.20%) Azure DevOps
7 95 (3.10%) GCP
8 77 (2.51%) SaaS
9 66 (2.15%) GitHub
10 65 (2.12%) Power Platform
11 64 (2.09%) IaaS
12 58 (1.89%) Azure Monitor
13 56 (1.83%) PaaS
14 39 (1.27%) OpenShift
15 38 (1.24%) Azure Sentinel
16 29 (0.95%) AWS CloudFormation
17 28 (0.91%) Google Workspace
18 27 (0.88%) GitHub Actions
19 25 (0.82%) Amazon EC2
19 25 (0.82%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 439 (14.33%) DNS
2 323 (10.54%) Firewall
3 298 (9.73%) DHCP
4 230 (7.51%) VPN
5 203 (6.63%) TCP/IP
6 177 (5.78%) LAN
7 164 (5.35%) WAN
8 151 (4.93%) Wi-Fi
9 101 (3.30%) SAN
10 71 (2.32%) Network Security
11 63 (2.06%) VLAN
12 49 (1.60%) SSL
13 48 (1.57%) NAS
14 47 (1.53%) BGP
15 43 (1.40%) Internet
16 38 (1.24%) Wireless
17 36 (1.17%) OSPF
17 36 (1.17%) VoIP
18 32 (1.04%) SNMP
19 30 (0.98%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (9.04%) SQL Server
2 61 (1.99%) Oracle Database
3 43 (1.40%) Power BI
4 34 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
4 34 (1.11%) Relational Database
5 26 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 25 (0.82%) MySQL
7 21 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
7 21 (0.69%) Db2
8 17 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
9 16 (0.52%) Data Warehouse
10 14 (0.46%) RDBMS
11 12 (0.39%) NoSQL
12 11 (0.36%) MongoDB
13 10 (0.33%) GIS
13 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
14 9 (0.29%) Geospatial Data
14 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
14 9 (0.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 8 (0.26%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 182 (5.94%) JIRA
2 67 (2.19%) Git
3 57 (1.86%) Jenkins
4 50 (1.63%) MSI
5 40 (1.31%) Visual Studio
6 39 (1.27%) GitLab
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 12 (0.39%) Bitbucket
9 9 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
10 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
12 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
12 6 (0.20%) Artifactory
12 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
12 6 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
12 6 (0.20%) Xcode
13 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
13 5 (0.16%) Maven
13 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
13 5 (0.16%) Selenium
General
1 1,094 (35.70%) Social Skills
2 352 (11.49%) Analytical Skills
3 325 (10.61%) Finance
4 210 (6.85%) Public Sector
5 158 (5.16%) Banking
6 107 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
7 100 (3.26%) Legal
8 85 (2.77%) Organisational Skills
9 65 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 51 (1.66%) Retail
11 48 (1.57%) Manufacturing
12 44 (1.44%) Military
13 36 (1.17%) Front Office
13 36 (1.17%) Investment Banking
14 34 (1.11%) Telecoms
15 32 (1.04%) Law
16 26 (0.85%) Spanish Language
17 22 (0.72%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.72%) French Language
18 21 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 426 (13.90%) Support Engineer
2 399 (13.02%) IT Support
3 289 (9.43%) Analyst
4 288 (9.40%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 285 (9.30%) IT Engineer
6 240 (7.83%) IT Support Engineer
7 209 (6.82%) Senior
8 137 (4.47%) Architect
9 124 (4.05%) Desktop Support
10 118 (3.85%) 2nd Line Support
11 117 (3.82%) Developer
12 110 (3.59%) Lead
13 107 (3.49%) Desktop Engineer
14 105 (3.43%) Support Analyst
15 103 (3.36%) Cloud Engineer
16 99 (3.23%) Consultant
17 92 (3.00%) Windows Engineer
18 91 (2.97%) IT Analyst
19 85 (2.77%) Service Analyst
20 82 (2.68%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (3.95%) .NET
2 112 (3.66%) REST
3 67 (2.19%) .NET Framework
4 42 (1.37%) LDAP
5 38 (1.24%) Middleware
6 34 (1.11%) WinForms
7 31 (1.01%) 802.1X
8 29 (0.95%) Microsoft Graph
8 29 (0.95%) Web Services
9 28 (0.91%) WPF
10 27 (0.88%) JSON
10 27 (0.88%) Kafka
10 27 (0.88%) Software Packaging
11 26 (0.85%) SAML
12 24 (0.78%) HTML
13 23 (0.75%) CSS
14 22 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
15 21 (0.69%) RESTful
15 21 (0.69%) XML
16 18 (0.59%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 300 (9.79%) Onboarding
2 167 (5.45%) Data Centre
3 155 (5.06%) PKI
4 84 (2.74%) Clustering
4 84 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
5 77 (2.51%) Management Information System
6 72 (2.35%) Cloud Native
7 71 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
8 69 (2.25%) Replication
9 67 (2.19%) Driving Licence
10 58 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
11 54 (1.76%) Security Posture
12 51 (1.66%) Hybrid Cloud
13 48 (1.57%) Video Conferencing
14 45 (1.47%) Virtual Team
15 39 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
17 35 (1.14%) Operational Technology
18 32 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
18 32 (1.04%) Smartphone
Operating Systems
1 749 (24.45%) Linux
2 747 (24.38%) Windows Server
3 508 (16.58%) Windows 10
4 195 (6.36%) Mac OS
5 159 (5.19%) Unix
6 137 (4.47%) Android
6 137 (4.47%) Apple iOS
7 123 (4.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 78 (2.55%) Windows Server 2019
9 57 (1.86%) Windows Server 2016
10 42 (1.37%) Windows 7
11 39 (1.27%) Windows Server 2012
12 38 (1.24%) AIX
12 38 (1.24%) Ubuntu
13 25 (0.82%) Solaris
14 22 (0.72%) VMS
15 19 (0.62%) CentOS
16 18 (0.59%) Windows Server 2008
17 12 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
18 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 687 (22.42%) Problem-Solving
2 505 (16.48%) ITIL
3 455 (14.85%) Customer Service
4 370 (12.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 369 (12.04%) Migration
6 331 (10.80%) ITSM
7 289 (9.43%) DevOps
8 271 (8.84%) Agile
9 265 (8.65%) Continuous Improvement
10 260 (8.49%) CI/CD
11 231 (7.54%) Service Management
12 211 (6.89%) High Availability
13 205 (6.69%) Infrastructure as Code
14 196 (6.40%) Change Management
15 179 (5.84%) Stakeholder Management
16 175 (5.71%) Service Delivery
17 172 (5.61%) Disaster Recovery
18 170 (5.55%) Cybersecurity
19 154 (5.03%) SIEM
19 154 (5.03%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 660 (21.54%) PowerShell
2 318 (10.38%) Python
3 306 (9.99%) SQL
4 149 (4.86%) C#
5 147 (4.80%) Bash
6 72 (2.35%) Java
7 68 (2.22%) JavaScript
8 63 (2.06%) PL/SQL
9 61 (1.99%) T-SQL
10 48 (1.57%) C++
11 27 (0.88%) Bicep
12 25 (0.82%) Search Processing Language
13 24 (0.78%) Perl
14 23 (0.75%) Shell Script
15 22 (0.72%) VB
15 22 (0.72%) VBScript
16 21 (0.69%) VBA
17 18 (0.59%) Kusto Query Language
18 17 (0.55%) TypeScript
19 14 (0.46%) C
Qualifications
1 908 (29.63%) Security Cleared
2 577 (18.83%) SC Cleared
3 306 (9.99%) Degree
4 292 (9.53%) DV Cleared
5 122 (3.98%) Microsoft Certification
6 99 (3.23%) Cisco Certification
7 76 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
8 64 (2.09%) CISSP
9 63 (2.06%) Azure Certification
10 60 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
11 51 (1.66%) AWS Certification
12 47 (1.53%) MCSE
13 44 (1.44%) CCNA
14 33 (1.08%) A+ Certification
14 33 (1.08%) CCNP
15 32 (1.04%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 27 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
17 26 (0.85%) CompTIA Security+
17 26 (0.85%) DBS Check
17 26 (0.85%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (4.31%) SLA
2 116 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 90 (2.94%) QA
4 87 (2.84%) NIST
5 48 (1.57%) GDPR
6 27 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
6 27 (0.88%) PCI DSS
7 25 (0.82%) NCSC
8 23 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 17 (0.55%) Disclosure Scotland
10 14 (0.46%) Data Quality
10 14 (0.46%) GxP
10 14 (0.46%) PMO
11 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
12 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.33%) GMP
13 10 (0.33%) GRC
13 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.29%) NIST 800
14 9 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 1,187 (38.74%) Active Directory
2 411 (13.41%) VMware Infrastructure
3 164 (5.35%) Hyper-V
4 132 (4.31%) VMware ESXi
5 113 (3.69%) vSphere
6 107 (3.49%) Virtual Machines
7 101 (3.30%) Docker
8 76 (2.48%) Virtual Desktop
9 71 (2.32%) VMware NSX
10 39 (1.27%) Firmware
11 34 (1.11%) BitLocker
12 27 (0.88%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.59%) KVM
14 15 (0.49%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
15 9 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) Virtual Servers
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 416 (13.58%) Microsoft Intune
2 273 (8.91%) SCCM
3 223 (7.28%) Terraform
4 207 (6.76%) Ansible
5 159 (5.19%) Kubernetes
6 108 (3.52%) vCenter Server
7 60 (1.96%) SCOM
8 56 (1.83%) Jamf Pro
9 43 (1.40%) Single Sign-On
10 39 (1.27%) FortiGate
10 39 (1.27%) WSUS
11 38 (1.24%) Progress Chef
12 33 (1.08%) Grafana
13 29 (0.95%) Prometheus
13 29 (0.95%) Puppet
14 26 (0.85%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 25 (0.82%) Nagios
16 23 (0.75%) Packer
17 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
18 21 (0.69%) Nessus
Vendors
1 1,323 (43.18%) Microsoft
2 534 (17.43%) VMware
3 305 (9.95%) ServiceNow
4 215 (7.02%) Cisco
5 201 (6.56%) Citrix
6 197 (6.43%) Oracle
7 135 (4.41%) Splunk
8 91 (2.97%) Apple
9 87 (2.84%) SolarWinds
10 80 (2.61%) CyberArk
11 76 (2.48%) HP
12 74 (2.42%) Red Hat
13 69 (2.25%) Google
14 65 (2.12%) BeyondTrust
15 64 (2.09%) Dell
16 60 (1.96%) Remedy
17 57 (1.86%) F5
18 54 (1.76%) IBM
19 51 (1.66%) Juniper
20 43 (1.40%) Palo Alto