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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 21 19 17
Rank change year-on-year -2 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing Windows 2,828 2,792 4,070
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 7.61% 8.30% 9.30%
As % of the Operating Systems category 59.35% 59.09% 62.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,931 1,787 2,733
10th Percentile £163 £180 £158
25th Percentile £204 £226 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.88%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £575
90th Percentile £638 £638 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £325 £363 £375
% change year-on-year -10.34% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 268 117 231
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £18.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.02% +15.14% +5.00%
75th Percentile £43.00 £50.00 £49.81
90th Percentile £67.84 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £23.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year -4.35% +15.00% +8.11%

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 4,765 4,725 6,524
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 12.82% 14.04% 14.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,106 2,954 4,446
10th Percentile £175 £200 £181
25th Percentile £268 £313 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
75th Percentile £560 £588 £600
90th Percentile £665 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £413 £425 £430
% change year-on-year -2.94% -1.16% -4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 176 320
10th Percentile £15.38 £16.13 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.94 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £37.75 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.38% +16.15% +34.02%
75th Percentile £62.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £26.09
% change year-on-year -22.62% +24.57% +18.59%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Top 17 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 December 2025. 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 -2 2,503 £390 -2.50% 1,754
UK excluding London -2 1,908 £325 -10.34% 1,485
London -16 738 £450 +11.80% 445
Work from Home -13 560 £425 -5.56% 633
South East 0 519 £381 -5.43% 457
North of England -4 428 £250 -28.57% 336
South West +4 315 £425 +6.18% 206
Midlands -2 311 £390 +20.00% 214
North West -1 245 £290 -17.14% 172
West Midlands -3 212 £449 +38.00% 118
East of England +4 193 £229 -26.80% 181
Yorkshire -13 154 £275 -21.48% 135
Scotland -14 109 £450 +2.86% 74
East Midlands 0 99 £215 -39.09% 93
Wales -2 44 £180 -24.21% 44
North East +2 32 £188 -41.41% 37
Northern Ireland -13 13 £203 +30.65% 15

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
1 242 (8.56%) Microsoft Exchange
2 183 (6.47%) SharePoint
3 76 (2.69%) Confluence
4 49 (1.73%) Apache
5 48 (1.70%) IIS
6 27 (0.95%) WebLogic
7 20 (0.71%) WebSphere
8 19 (0.67%) Skype for Business
9 16 (0.57%) JBoss
9 16 (0.57%) nginx
10 12 (0.42%) Exchange Server 2010
10 12 (0.42%) SharePoint Server
11 11 (0.39%) SAS
11 11 (0.39%) WebSphere Application Server
12 10 (0.35%) iPlanet
13 9 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2013
13 9 (0.32%) Tomcat
13 9 (0.32%) TPMS
13 9 (0.32%) Tuxedo
14 7 (0.25%) Office Communications Server
Applications
1 279 (9.87%) Microsoft Office
2 86 (3.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 28 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (0.35%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 10 (0.35%) MS Visio
5 5 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.11%) Acrobat
6 3 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.071%) Adobe Premiere
7 2 (0.071%) Photoshop
7 2 (0.071%) Windchill
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe After Effects
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.035%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.035%) Camtasia
8 1 (0.035%) InDesign
8 1 (0.035%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.035%) OmniGraffle
Business Applications
1 22 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
2 8 (0.28%) assyst
3 5 (0.18%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.14%) Oracle 11i
5 2 (0.071%) Eikon
5 2 (0.071%) Fidessa
5 2 (0.071%) Maximo
5 2 (0.071%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.071%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.071%) SystmOne
5 2 (0.071%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.071%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 1 (0.035%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.035%) Eze OMS
6 1 (0.035%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.035%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.035%) Oracle General Ledger
6 1 (0.035%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.035%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.035%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 754 (26.66%) Microsoft 365
2 676 (23.90%) Azure
3 277 (9.79%) AWS
4 247 (8.73%) Entra ID
5 85 (3.01%) OneDrive
6 79 (2.79%) GCP
7 75 (2.65%) SaaS
8 68 (2.40%) Azure DevOps
9 67 (2.37%) GitHub
10 53 (1.87%) IaaS
11 46 (1.63%) Google Workspace
12 38 (1.34%) Power Platform
13 37 (1.31%) PaaS
14 36 (1.27%) Azure Monitor
15 31 (1.10%) Amazon S3
15 31 (1.10%) Azure Sentinel
16 29 (1.03%) Amazon EC2
16 29 (1.03%) Virtual Private Cloud
17 25 (0.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 24 (0.85%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 368 (13.01%) DNS
2 322 (11.39%) Firewall
3 216 (7.64%) DHCP
4 205 (7.25%) TCP/IP
5 175 (6.19%) VPN
6 104 (3.68%) Wi-Fi
7 98 (3.47%) LAN
8 94 (3.32%) WAN
9 93 (3.29%) Network Security
10 73 (2.58%) Wireless
11 63 (2.23%) VLAN
12 61 (2.16%) SSH
13 51 (1.80%) HTTP
14 47 (1.66%) SAN
15 36 (1.27%) Cisco IOS
15 36 (1.27%) Skype
16 35 (1.24%) SSL
17 33 (1.17%) VoIP
18 30 (1.06%) FTP
18 30 (1.06%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (4.56%) SQL Server
2 82 (2.90%) Oracle Database
3 63 (2.23%) Relational Database
4 48 (1.70%) MySQL
5 34 (1.20%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
7 15 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
7 15 (0.53%) Power BI
8 12 (0.42%) Amazon Aurora
8 12 (0.42%) BigQuery
9 10 (0.35%) Elasticsearch
9 10 (0.35%) NoSQL
10 9 (0.32%) GIS
10 9 (0.32%) MongoDB
11 8 (0.28%) Data Warehouse
11 8 (0.28%) RDBMS
12 7 (0.25%) Data Lake
12 7 (0.25%) DB2
12 7 (0.25%) SAP HANA
13 6 (0.21%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 159 (5.62%) JIRA
2 100 (3.54%) Jenkins
3 97 (3.43%) Git
4 60 (2.12%) GitLab
5 39 (1.38%) Eclipse
6 35 (1.24%) Visual Studio
7 33 (1.17%) MSI
8 27 (0.95%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.81%) Android Studio
10 22 (0.78%) Browser DevTools
11 21 (0.74%) Xcode
12 18 (0.64%) Artifactory
13 17 (0.60%) Sonatype Nexus
13 17 (0.60%) Vagrant
14 15 (0.53%) Burp Suite
14 15 (0.53%) InstallShield
14 15 (0.53%) Metasploit
15 13 (0.46%) Bitbucket Server
15 13 (0.46%) CA Release Automation
16 11 (0.39%) AdminStudio
General
1 1,088 (38.47%) Social Skills
2 335 (11.85%) Finance
3 255 (9.02%) Public Sector
4 252 (8.91%) Analytical Skills
5 124 (4.38%) Banking
6 116 (4.10%) Documentation Skills
7 88 (3.11%) Legal
8 69 (2.44%) Organisational Skills
9 64 (2.26%) Manufacturing
10 54 (1.91%) Military
11 48 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
11 48 (1.70%) Telecoms
12 44 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 43 (1.52%) Retail
14 32 (1.13%) Aerospace
14 32 (1.13%) Marketing
15 25 (0.88%) Front Office
15 25 (0.88%) Law
16 24 (0.85%) Electronics
17 19 (0.67%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 428 (15.13%) Support Engineer
2 353 (12.48%) Analyst
3 333 (11.78%) IT Support
4 192 (6.79%) IT Engineer
5 171 (6.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 156 (5.52%) Windows Engineer
7 152 (5.37%) Desktop Support
8 151 (5.34%) Support Analyst
9 147 (5.20%) Senior
10 146 (5.16%) Architect
11 142 (5.02%) IT Support Engineer
12 137 (4.84%) Desktop Engineer
13 125 (4.42%) Deployment Engineer
14 117 (4.14%) 2nd Line Support
14 117 (4.14%) Technical Support
15 106 (3.75%) Desktop Support Engineer
16 104 (3.68%) Developer
17 92 (3.25%) Platform Engineer
18 83 (2.93%) DevOps Engineer
19 81 (2.86%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 74 (2.62%) .NET
2 59 (2.09%) LDAP
3 55 (1.94%) REST
4 45 (1.59%) Middleware
5 41 (1.45%) .NET Framework
6 40 (1.41%) SAML
7 39 (1.38%) OAuth
8 38 (1.34%) React
9 36 (1.27%) AngularJS
10 33 (1.17%) OpenID
10 33 (1.17%) WPF
11 31 (1.10%) Web Services
12 28 (0.99%) CSS
12 28 (0.99%) XML
13 26 (0.92%) Kafka
13 26 (0.92%) Node.js
14 23 (0.81%) Ajax
14 23 (0.81%) SOAP
15 22 (0.78%) GraphQL
16 19 (0.67%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 138 (4.88%) Onboarding
2 95 (3.36%) Data Centre
2 95 (3.36%) PKI
3 84 (2.97%) Driving Licence
4 65 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
5 64 (2.26%) Replication
6 59 (2.09%) Management Information System
7 58 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
8 53 (1.87%) Smartphone
9 49 (1.73%) Security Posture
10 36 (1.27%) Analytical Mindset
11 34 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
12 33 (1.17%) Mobile App
13 32 (1.13%) Public Cloud
14 31 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
14 31 (1.10%) Legacy Systems
14 31 (1.10%) NHS
15 30 (1.06%) Clustering
15 30 (1.06%) Video Conferencing
16 27 (0.95%) Security Operations Centre
Operating Systems
1 732 (25.88%) Linux
2 594 (21.00%) Windows 10
3 551 (19.48%) Windows Server
4 197 (6.97%) Unix
5 158 (5.59%) Mac OS
6 149 (5.27%) Android
7 104 (3.68%) Apple iOS
8 81 (2.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 67 (2.37%) Windows Server 2016
10 56 (1.98%) Windows Server 2019
11 51 (1.80%) Windows 7
12 45 (1.59%) Windows Server 2012
13 34 (1.20%) VMS
13 34 (1.20%) Windows Server 2003
14 28 (0.99%) AIX
15 25 (0.88%) Ubuntu
16 18 (0.64%) Solaris
17 17 (0.60%) Amazon Linux
18 14 (0.50%) Windows Server 2008
19 12 (0.42%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 507 (17.93%) Problem-Solving
2 424 (14.99%) ITIL
3 405 (14.32%) Customer Service
4 290 (10.25%) Agile
5 289 (10.22%) Migration
6 253 (8.95%) DevOps
7 250 (8.84%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 220 (7.78%) CI/CD
9 218 (7.71%) Service Management
10 217 (7.67%) Cybersecurity
11 194 (6.86%) ITSM
12 188 (6.65%) Continuous Improvement
13 167 (5.91%) Change Management
14 139 (4.92%) User Experience
15 135 (4.77%) Incident Response
16 130 (4.60%) SIEM
17 124 (4.38%) Computer Science
17 124 (4.38%) Stakeholder Management
18 122 (4.31%) Disaster Recovery
19 113 (4.00%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 550 (19.45%) PowerShell
2 372 (13.15%) Python
3 290 (10.25%) SQL
4 156 (5.52%) Java
5 133 (4.70%) C#
6 125 (4.42%) Bash
7 86 (3.04%) JavaScript
8 80 (2.83%) Perl
9 67 (2.37%) C++
10 49 (1.73%) PL/SQL
11 42 (1.49%) Shell Script
12 32 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
13 30 (1.06%) VBScript
14 29 (1.03%) T-SQL
15 28 (0.99%) Groovy
15 28 (0.99%) VB
16 25 (0.88%) VBA
17 20 (0.71%) C
18 16 (0.57%) TypeScript
19 15 (0.53%) Go
Qualifications
1 847 (29.95%) Security Cleared
2 568 (20.08%) SC Cleared
3 299 (10.57%) Degree
4 235 (8.31%) DV Cleared
5 177 (6.26%) Microsoft Certification
6 89 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 70 (2.48%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.91%) A+ Certification
9 53 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
9 53 (1.87%) MCSE
10 43 (1.52%) ITIL Certification
11 42 (1.49%) CISSP
12 38 (1.34%) AWS Certification
13 36 (1.27%) CompTIA Security+
14 34 (1.20%) BPSS Clearance
15 32 (1.13%) CCNA
15 32 (1.13%) CCNP
16 29 (1.03%) DBS Check
17 27 (0.95%) MCSA
18 26 (0.92%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (3.22%) SLA
2 85 (3.01%) GDPR
3 74 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 64 (2.26%) QA
5 53 (1.87%) NIST
6 28 (0.99%) PCI DSS
7 17 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
8 11 (0.39%) HIPAA
8 11 (0.39%) NCSC
8 11 (0.39%) PMO
9 9 (0.32%) GLBA
9 9 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 6 (0.21%) COBIT
10 6 (0.21%) MiFID
10 6 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 5 (0.18%) Accessibility
12 4 (0.14%) Disclosure Scotland
12 4 (0.14%) NIST 800
13 3 (0.11%) Data Quality
13 3 (0.11%) SEPA
System Software
1 1,018 (36.00%) Active Directory
2 248 (8.77%) VMware Infrastructure
3 122 (4.31%) Docker
4 93 (3.29%) Hyper-V
5 60 (2.12%) Virtual Desktop
6 53 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
7 49 (1.73%) vSphere
8 45 (1.59%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (1.17%) VMware NSX
10 22 (0.78%) BitLocker
11 20 (0.71%) DFS Replication
12 19 (0.67%) Firmware
13 17 (0.60%) Terminal Services
14 15 (0.53%) Microsoft App-V
14 15 (0.53%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.42%) XenApp
16 11 (0.39%) NFS
17 10 (0.35%) Dovecot
17 10 (0.35%) Postfix
17 10 (0.35%) Squid
Systems Management
1 398 (14.07%) SCCM
2 299 (10.57%) Microsoft Intune
3 190 (6.72%) Terraform
4 160 (5.66%) Ansible
5 107 (3.78%) Kubernetes
6 66 (2.33%) vCenter Server
7 64 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
8 55 (1.94%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 42 (1.49%) Grafana
10 39 (1.38%) Jamf Pro
11 29 (1.03%) Nessus
11 29 (1.03%) WSUS
12 28 (0.99%) SCOM
13 27 (0.95%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.88%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.74%) Microsoft Clustering
16 17 (0.60%) NetBackup
17 16 (0.57%) Proxmox
18 15 (0.53%) Nmap
18 15 (0.53%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,211 (42.82%) Microsoft
2 350 (12.38%) VMware
3 258 (9.12%) ServiceNow
4 233 (8.24%) Oracle
5 179 (6.33%) Cisco
6 177 (6.26%) Citrix
7 153 (5.41%) Splunk
8 84 (2.97%) Apple
9 77 (2.72%) HP
10 67 (2.37%) Red Hat
11 63 (2.23%) Dell
12 57 (2.02%) IBM
13 56 (1.98%) Veeam
14 52 (1.84%) Google
15 51 (1.80%) SolarWinds
16 50 (1.77%) SAP
17 43 (1.52%) CyberArk
18 42 (1.49%) NetApp
19 40 (1.41%) AppDynamics
19 40 (1.41%) CrowdStrike