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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 18
Rank change year-on-year -6 -4 -4
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,074 2,613 3,418
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 5.80% 7.99% 8.43%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.27% 59.45% 60.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,953 1,732 2,300
10th Percentile £170 £176 £167
25th Percentile £225 £225 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £415 £430
Median % change year-on-year +2.37% -3.45% -4.44%
75th Percentile £556 £570 £575
90th Percentile £650 £663 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £415 £398 £450
% change year-on-year +4.40% -11.67% +20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 275 204 272
10th Percentile £15.86 £15.33 £12.00
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.33 £15.21
Median hourly rate £25.26 £18.87 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.86% -5.65% -16.67%
75th Percentile £54.50 £25.15 £40.00
90th Percentile £69.20 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £18.87 £18.27
% change year-on-year +36.46% +3.28% -16.95%

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 5,100 4,395 5,664
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.63% 13.43% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,239 2,834 3,736
10th Percentile £193 £200 £193
25th Percentile £319 £313 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.19% -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 345 248 391
10th Percentile £15.77 £15.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £17.92 £18.10 £16.32
Median hourly rate £26.00 £23.00 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -4.88% -43.11%
75th Percentile £63.75 £54.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.14 £67.30 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £21.59 £31.25
% change year-on-year +22.74% -30.91% +4.17%

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 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 25 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 25 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 -7 2,692 £421 +2.00% 954
UK excluding London -13 2,024 £415 +4.40% 818
London -18 876 £418 -4.51% 247
Work from Home -9 639 £475 +1.82% 311
South East -8 575 £475 -4.23% 286
North of England -9 478 £344 -1.71% 188
Midlands -19 274 £379 +26.17% 105
South West -12 266 £488 +23.42% 104
North West -8 252 £347 -3.07% 93
East of England -2 206 £335 +34.00% 109
Yorkshire -12 203 £358 +4.00% 67
West Midlands -26 173 £450 +20.00% 61
Scotland -6 164 £413 -5.71% 26
East Midlands +11 96 £270 +35.00% 44
Wales +5 58 £408 +48.18% 21
North East -41 27 £270 -1.82% 34
Northern Ireland -1 18 £139 -28.97% 10
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
1 242 (7.87%) Microsoft Exchange
2 237 (7.71%) SharePoint
3 68 (2.21%) IIS
4 63 (2.05%) Confluence
5 18 (0.59%) Apache
5 18 (0.59%) nginx
6 17 (0.55%) Tomcat
7 14 (0.46%) Oracle Workflow
8 11 (0.36%) HCL Notes
8 11 (0.36%) Skype for Business
9 9 (0.29%) NetWeaver
9 9 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.20%) Appian
10 6 (0.20%) Documentum
11 5 (0.16%) Camunda
11 5 (0.16%) SAS
12 4 (0.13%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 4 (0.13%) FactoryTalk
13 3 (0.098%) CloudStack
13 3 (0.098%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 200 (6.51%) Microsoft Office
2 74 (2.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 21 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.23%) Microsoft Project
6 4 (0.13%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.098%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.098%) Houdini
7 3 (0.098%) NUKE
8 2 (0.065%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 2 (0.065%) PTC Creo
9 1 (0.033%) CINEMA 4D
9 1 (0.033%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 54 (1.76%) Remedy ITSM
2 16 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
3 10 (0.33%) Finacle
4 8 (0.26%) Teamcenter
5 6 (0.20%) OpenText MBPM
5 6 (0.20%) Oracle BPM
6 4 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
6 4 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
7 3 (0.098%) assyst
8 2 (0.065%) Dynamics GP
8 2 (0.065%) SAP FI
9 1 (0.033%) Dynamics NAV
9 1 (0.033%) Infor LN
9 1 (0.033%) Oracle BRM
9 1 (0.033%) Oracle ERP
9 1 (0.033%) Payment Gateway
9 1 (0.033%) SAP BRIM
9 1 (0.033%) SAP EWM
9 1 (0.033%) SAP FI-CA
9 1 (0.033%) SAP FS
Cloud Services
1 937 (30.48%) Azure
2 909 (29.57%) Microsoft 365
3 437 (14.22%) Entra ID
4 326 (10.61%) AWS
5 132 (4.29%) OneDrive
6 103 (3.35%) GCP
7 100 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
8 80 (2.60%) SaaS
9 69 (2.24%) GitHub
10 68 (2.21%) Azure Monitor
10 68 (2.21%) Power Platform
11 64 (2.08%) IaaS
12 56 (1.82%) PaaS
13 44 (1.43%) Azure Sentinel
14 37 (1.20%) OpenShift
15 32 (1.04%) AWS CloudFormation
16 28 (0.91%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (0.88%) Azure AKS
18 26 (0.85%) Amazon EC2
18 26 (0.85%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 446 (14.51%) DNS
2 338 (11.00%) Firewall
3 305 (9.92%) DHCP
4 246 (8.00%) VPN
5 211 (6.86%) TCP/IP
6 176 (5.73%) LAN
7 162 (5.27%) WAN
8 151 (4.91%) Wi-Fi
9 98 (3.19%) SAN
10 75 (2.44%) Network Security
11 67 (2.18%) VLAN
12 51 (1.66%) SSL
13 48 (1.56%) BGP
13 48 (1.56%) NAS
14 43 (1.40%) Internet
15 39 (1.27%) Wireless
16 37 (1.20%) OSPF
17 34 (1.11%) VoIP
18 31 (1.01%) SNMP
19 30 (0.98%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (9.56%) SQL Server
2 62 (2.02%) Oracle Database
3 48 (1.56%) Power BI
4 34 (1.11%) PostgreSQL
5 32 (1.04%) Relational Database
6 30 (0.98%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 24 (0.78%) MySQL
8 22 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
9 21 (0.68%) Db2
10 17 (0.55%) Data Warehouse
11 15 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (0.49%) RDBMS
12 12 (0.39%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 11 (0.36%) NoSQL
14 10 (0.33%) Geospatial Data
14 10 (0.33%) MongoDB
14 10 (0.33%) Oracle Reports
14 10 (0.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 9 (0.29%) SAP HANA
15 9 (0.29%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 186 (6.05%) JIRA
2 72 (2.34%) Git
3 58 (1.89%) Jenkins
4 48 (1.56%) MSI
5 40 (1.30%) GitLab
6 38 (1.24%) Visual Studio
7 17 (0.55%) Eclipse
8 14 (0.46%) Bitbucket
9 8 (0.26%) Artifactory
9 8 (0.26%) Chocolatey
9 8 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (0.23%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 7 (0.23%) Browser DevTools
10 7 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (0.20%) Android Studio
11 6 (0.20%) InstallShield
11 6 (0.20%) Xcode
12 5 (0.16%) AdminStudio
12 5 (0.16%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (0.16%) Selenium
General
1 1,113 (36.21%) Social Skills
2 366 (11.91%) Analytical Skills
3 344 (11.19%) Finance
4 203 (6.60%) Public Sector
5 160 (5.20%) Banking
6 106 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
7 101 (3.29%) Legal
8 84 (2.73%) Organisational Skills
9 63 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.82%) Retail
11 49 (1.59%) Manufacturing
12 47 (1.53%) Military
13 37 (1.20%) Front Office
13 37 (1.20%) Telecoms
14 34 (1.11%) Investment Banking
14 34 (1.11%) Law
15 27 (0.88%) Spanish Language
16 25 (0.81%) Financial Institution
17 22 (0.72%) French Language
18 20 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 435 (14.15%) Support Engineer
2 398 (12.95%) IT Support
3 294 (9.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 291 (9.47%) IT Engineer
5 286 (9.30%) Analyst
6 244 (7.94%) IT Support Engineer
7 222 (7.22%) Senior
8 130 (4.23%) Architect
9 124 (4.03%) 2nd Line Support
9 124 (4.03%) Desktop Support
10 117 (3.81%) Developer
11 108 (3.51%) Cloud Engineer
11 108 (3.51%) Lead
12 105 (3.42%) Support Analyst
13 104 (3.38%) Desktop Engineer
14 96 (3.12%) Consultant
15 90 (2.93%) IT Analyst
15 90 (2.93%) Windows Engineer
16 83 (2.70%) Service Analyst
17 81 (2.64%) 1st Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 121 (3.94%) .NET
2 114 (3.71%) REST
3 66 (2.15%) .NET Framework
4 39 (1.27%) Middleware
5 34 (1.11%) WinForms
6 33 (1.07%) LDAP
7 31 (1.01%) 802.1X
8 30 (0.98%) JSON
9 29 (0.94%) Web Services
10 28 (0.91%) Microsoft Graph
10 28 (0.91%) WPF
11 27 (0.88%) Kafka
12 26 (0.85%) HTML
12 26 (0.85%) Software Packaging
12 26 (0.85%) XML
13 24 (0.78%) CSS
14 22 (0.72%) RESTful
15 21 (0.68%) Elastic Stack
16 18 (0.59%) SAML
17 17 (0.55%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 316 (10.28%) Onboarding
2 164 (5.34%) Data Centre
3 159 (5.17%) PKI
4 85 (2.77%) Clustering
5 82 (2.67%) Enterprise Software
6 80 (2.60%) Management Information System
7 77 (2.50%) Cloud Native
8 75 (2.44%) Driving Licence
9 68 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
10 61 (1.98%) Replication
11 58 (1.89%) Hybrid Cloud
12 56 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
12 56 (1.82%) Security Posture
13 54 (1.76%) Video Conferencing
14 45 (1.46%) Virtual Team
15 42 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
16 38 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
16 38 (1.24%) Smartphone
17 36 (1.17%) Operational Technology
18 35 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 762 (24.79%) Linux
2 751 (24.43%) Windows Server
3 507 (16.49%) Windows 10
4 197 (6.41%) Mac OS
5 161 (5.24%) Unix
6 139 (4.52%) Android
7 138 (4.49%) Apple iOS
8 124 (4.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 75 (2.44%) Windows Server 2019
10 52 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
11 40 (1.30%) Ubuntu
12 39 (1.27%) AIX
13 38 (1.24%) Windows 7
14 34 (1.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 23 (0.75%) Solaris
16 22 (0.72%) CentOS
17 21 (0.68%) VMS
18 16 (0.52%) Windows Server 2008
19 10 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
20 9 (0.29%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 698 (22.71%) Problem-Solving
2 513 (16.69%) ITIL
3 473 (15.39%) Customer Service
4 383 (12.46%) Migration
5 380 (12.36%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 344 (11.19%) ITSM
7 291 (9.47%) DevOps
8 280 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
9 270 (8.78%) CI/CD
10 267 (8.69%) Agile
11 242 (7.87%) Service Management
12 216 (7.03%) Infrastructure as Code
13 202 (6.57%) High Availability
14 201 (6.54%) Change Management
15 190 (6.18%) Stakeholder Management
16 178 (5.79%) Cybersecurity
16 178 (5.79%) Service Delivery
17 170 (5.53%) Validation
18 167 (5.43%) Disaster Recovery
19 157 (5.11%) Incident Management
Programming Languages
1 673 (21.89%) PowerShell
2 323 (10.51%) Python
3 313 (10.18%) SQL
4 165 (5.37%) Bash
5 149 (4.85%) C#
6 78 (2.54%) Java
7 69 (2.24%) JavaScript
8 62 (2.02%) T-SQL
9 61 (1.98%) PL/SQL
10 47 (1.53%) C++
11 40 (1.30%) Bicep
12 25 (0.81%) Search Processing Language
13 23 (0.75%) Shell Script
14 22 (0.72%) Perl
14 22 (0.72%) VB
15 21 (0.68%) VBA
15 21 (0.68%) VBScript
16 17 (0.55%) TypeScript
17 16 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
18 15 (0.49%) C
Qualifications
1 916 (29.80%) Security Cleared
2 578 (18.80%) SC Cleared
3 306 (9.95%) Degree
4 301 (9.79%) DV Cleared
5 117 (3.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 102 (3.32%) Cisco Certification
7 74 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 68 (2.21%) CISSP
9 66 (2.15%) Azure Certification
10 61 (1.98%) BPSS Clearance
11 54 (1.76%) AWS Certification
12 44 (1.43%) CCNA
13 42 (1.37%) MCSE
14 37 (1.20%) A+ Certification
15 35 (1.14%) CCNP
16 28 (0.91%) DBS Check
17 27 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
17 27 (0.88%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
18 25 (0.81%) CISM
18 25 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 141 (4.59%) SLA
2 118 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 87 (2.83%) NIST
3 87 (2.83%) QA
4 41 (1.33%) GDPR
5 28 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
6 26 (0.85%) PCI DSS
7 25 (0.81%) NCSC
8 16 (0.52%) Data Quality
8 16 (0.52%) Disclosure Scotland
8 16 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 15 (0.49%) PMO
10 14 (0.46%) GxP
11 12 (0.39%) Accessibility
12 11 (0.36%) GRC
12 11 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 10 (0.33%) SOC 2
14 9 (0.29%) GMP
14 9 (0.29%) WCAG
15 8 (0.26%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,203 (39.13%) Active Directory
2 411 (13.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 167 (5.43%) Hyper-V
4 130 (4.23%) VMware ESXi
5 109 (3.55%) vSphere
6 103 (3.35%) Docker
7 101 (3.29%) Virtual Machines
8 80 (2.60%) Virtual Desktop
9 67 (2.18%) VMware NSX
10 41 (1.33%) Firmware
11 33 (1.07%) BitLocker
12 24 (0.78%) Microsoft App-V
13 18 (0.59%) KVM
14 15 (0.49%) vCloud
15 9 (0.29%) NFS
16 8 (0.26%) Oracle RAC
16 8 (0.26%) VMware Workstation
16 8 (0.26%) XenDesktop
17 7 (0.23%) XenApp
18 6 (0.20%) UAG
Systems Management
1 422 (13.73%) Microsoft Intune
2 282 (9.17%) SCCM
3 248 (8.07%) Terraform
4 214 (6.96%) Ansible
5 166 (5.40%) Kubernetes
6 108 (3.51%) vCenter Server
7 63 (2.05%) SCOM
8 54 (1.76%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (1.33%) Progress Chef
10 39 (1.27%) FortiGate
10 39 (1.27%) WSUS
11 34 (1.11%) Single Sign-On
12 31 (1.01%) Puppet
13 28 (0.91%) Grafana
13 28 (0.91%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.81%) Nagios
15 24 (0.78%) Packer
16 22 (0.72%) ZABBIX
17 20 (0.65%) Nessus
17 20 (0.65%) WMI
Vendors
1 1,336 (43.46%) Microsoft
2 543 (17.66%) VMware
3 320 (10.41%) ServiceNow
4 212 (6.90%) Cisco
5 200 (6.51%) Oracle
6 196 (6.38%) Citrix
7 134 (4.36%) Splunk
8 93 (3.03%) Apple
9 89 (2.90%) SolarWinds
10 85 (2.77%) CyberArk
11 78 (2.54%) Red Hat
12 75 (2.44%) HP
13 74 (2.41%) Google
14 70 (2.28%) BeyondTrust
15 65 (2.11%) Dell
15 65 (2.11%) Remedy
16 57 (1.85%) F5
17 52 (1.69%) IBM
17 52 (1.69%) Juniper
18 44 (1.43%) BMC