Windows Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Microsoft Windows
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Windows skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
13 Jan 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 14 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 -1 -3
Contract jobs citing Windows 205 156 176
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 8.97% 10.00% 10.03%
As % of the Operating Systems category 60.83% 66.67% 71.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 152 96 126
10th Percentile £160 £168 £160
25th Percentile £200 £190 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £325 £381
Median % change year-on-year +42.31% -14.75% +1.67%
75th Percentile £552 £541 £513
90th Percentile £619 £611 £638
England median daily rate £390 £400 £400
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 11 11
10th Percentile - £15.22 £16.54
25th Percentile £17.14 £16.68 £17.36
Median hourly rate £19.84 £18.13 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +9.45% +2.31% +7.39%
75th Percentile £22.99 £21.44 £21.50
90th Percentile £39.25 £22.89 £23.75
England median hourly rate £21.73 £22.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year -3.42% +7.14% +2.44%

All Operating Systems
West Midlands

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 in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 337 234 245
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 14.74% 15.00% 13.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 145 172
10th Percentile £165 £186 £161
25th Percentile £276 £213 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £434 £400
Median % change year-on-year +9.45% +8.50% -19.19%
75th Percentile £556 £575 £518
90th Percentile £618 £670 £638
England median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -6.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 12 12
10th Percentile - £15.22 £16.59
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.40 £17.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £18.57 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year +15.59% +4.77% +7.39%
75th Percentile £29.25 £22.89 £23.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £24.05 £27.58
England median hourly rate £25.00 £52.50 £30.00
% change year-on-year -52.38% +75.00% +20.00%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Windows relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Windows job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Windows
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Windows.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Windows

Windows
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Windows in the West Midlands

Windows
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Windows.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Windows

Windows
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the West Midlands

Windows
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Windows within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 13 January 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
Birmingham -3 61 £425 +70.00% 13
Warwickshire -4 41 £519 -9.07% 5
Shropshire -12 39 £490 +48.48% 6
Worcestershire -8 25 £588 +360.78% 9
Staffordshire +8 14 £203 -38.64% 13
Coventry -20 5 £275 +37.50% 3
Wolverhampton +6 4 £227 - 4
Herefordshire - 3 £625 - 1
Solihull 0 1 - - 1
West Bromwich - 1 £170 -
Windows
England

Windows
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 26 (12.68%) WebLogic
2 22 (10.73%) Confluence
3 17 (8.29%) Apache
4 9 (4.39%) nginx
5 8 (3.90%) Microsoft Exchange
5 8 (3.90%) Tuxedo
6 6 (2.93%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.98%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.49%) FileNet
8 1 (0.49%) IIS
8 1 (0.49%) JBoss
Applications
1 15 (7.32%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (4.39%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 6 (2.93%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.49%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.98%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 61 (29.76%) Azure
2 49 (23.90%) Microsoft 365
3 46 (22.44%) AWS
4 15 (7.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 15 (7.32%) Amazon EC2
4 15 (7.32%) Amazon ELB
4 15 (7.32%) Amazon S3
4 15 (7.32%) AWS KMS
4 15 (7.32%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 14 (6.83%) Azure Monitor
6 9 (4.39%) Amazon ECS
6 9 (4.39%) Route 53
7 8 (3.90%) GitHub
8 7 (3.41%) Entra ID
9 6 (2.93%) Amazon Glacier
10 4 (1.95%) Tricentis Tosca
11 3 (1.46%) Azure DevOps
11 3 (1.46%) Azure Sentinel
11 3 (1.46%) PaaS
11 3 (1.46%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 39 (19.02%) DNS
2 29 (14.15%) Firewall
3 22 (10.73%) SSH
4 21 (10.24%) DHCP
5 18 (8.78%) VPN
6 15 (7.32%) FTP
6 15 (7.32%) HTTP
6 15 (7.32%) SMTP
7 14 (6.83%) TCP/IP
8 9 (4.39%) IMAP
8 9 (4.39%) OpenLDAP
9 6 (2.93%) Network Security
10 5 (2.44%) Kerberos
10 5 (2.44%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (1.46%) Intrusion Detection
11 3 (1.46%) WAN
11 3 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (0.98%) LAN
12 2 (0.98%) SAN
12 2 (0.98%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (7.32%) Amazon RDS
2 10 (4.88%) PostgreSQL
3 9 (4.39%) Amazon Aurora
4 2 (0.98%) Oracle Database
4 2 (0.98%) SQL Server
5 1 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.49%) Power BI
5 1 (0.49%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.49%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 33 (16.10%) JIRA
2 18 (8.78%) Git
2 18 (8.78%) Jenkins
3 15 (7.32%) Vagrant
4 11 (5.37%) MSI
5 6 (2.93%) GitLab
6 5 (2.44%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.95%) Toad
8 3 (1.46%) InstallShield
9 2 (0.98%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.49%) AdminStudio
10 1 (0.49%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.49%) Bitbucket Server
10 1 (0.49%) CA Release Automation
10 1 (0.49%) Chocolatey
10 1 (0.49%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.49%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.49%) TeamCity
General
1 95 (46.34%) Social Skills
2 28 (13.66%) Public Sector
3 27 (13.17%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (8.78%) Documentation Skills
5 15 (7.32%) Presentation Skills
6 9 (4.39%) Legal
7 7 (3.41%) Manufacturing
8 5 (2.44%) Finance
9 3 (1.46%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.98%) Aeronautics
10 2 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.98%) Law
11 1 (0.49%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.49%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 33 (16.10%) Support Engineer
2 24 (11.71%) Platform Engineer
3 19 (9.27%) Analyst
4 18 (8.78%) DevOps Engineer
5 17 (8.29%) Architect
5 17 (8.29%) AWS Engineer
5 17 (8.29%) Cloud Platform Engineer
6 13 (6.34%) AWS DevOps
6 13 (6.34%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 13 (6.34%) IT Support
7 12 (5.85%) Desktop Engineer
8 11 (5.37%) Deployment Engineer
8 11 (5.37%) IT Engineer
9 10 (4.88%) Desktop Support
9 10 (4.88%) Desktop Support Engineer
10 9 (4.39%) 2nd Line Support
10 9 (4.39%) AWS Platform Engineer
10 9 (4.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 9 (4.39%) Windows Engineer
11 8 (3.90%) Monitoring Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (7.80%) LDAP
2 5 (2.44%) OAuth
2 5 (2.44%) SAML
3 4 (1.95%) Middleware
3 4 (1.95%) XML
4 3 (1.46%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.98%) CSS
5 2 (0.98%) Kafka
5 2 (0.98%) Node.js
5 2 (0.98%) RabbitMQ
5 2 (0.98%) React
5 2 (0.98%) YAML
6 1 (0.49%) .NET
6 1 (0.49%) Apache NiFi
6 1 (0.49%) REST
6 1 (0.49%) Software Packaging
6 1 (0.49%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 16 (7.80%) Replication
2 8 (3.90%) Onboarding
3 7 (3.41%) Self-Motivation
4 6 (2.93%) Data Protection Act
4 6 (2.93%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 5 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (1.95%) Client/Server
7 3 (1.46%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.46%) Driving Licence
7 3 (1.46%) PKI
7 3 (1.46%) Security Posture
8 2 (0.98%) Hybrid Cloud
8 2 (0.98%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.98%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.98%) NHS
8 2 (0.98%) Product Ownership
8 2 (0.98%) Security Operations Centre
8 2 (0.98%) Video Conferencing
9 1 (0.49%) Mainframe
9 1 (0.49%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 76 (37.07%) Linux
2 41 (20.00%) Windows 10
3 39 (19.02%) Windows Server
4 32 (15.61%) Unix
5 16 (7.80%) VMS
6 15 (7.32%) Amazon Linux
7 10 (4.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 9 (4.39%) AIX
8 9 (4.39%) Solaris
8 9 (4.39%) Ubuntu
9 8 (3.90%) Android
9 8 (3.90%) Apple iOS
10 7 (3.41%) Mac OS
11 3 (1.46%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.49%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (16.10%) Change Management
2 32 (15.61%) Cloud Security
3 30 (14.63%) DevOps
3 30 (14.63%) Problem-Solving
4 28 (13.66%) ITIL
4 28 (13.66%) Service Management
5 26 (12.68%) Continuous Improvement
6 24 (11.71%) Platform Engineering
7 23 (11.22%) Customer Service
7 23 (11.22%) Incident Response
8 21 (10.24%) CI/CD
9 20 (9.76%) Configuration Management
9 20 (9.76%) Migration
9 20 (9.76%) SIEM
10 19 (9.27%) Agile
11 16 (7.80%) Full-Stack Development
11 16 (7.80%) Incident Management
11 16 (7.80%) Observability
11 16 (7.80%) Patch Management
11 16 (7.80%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 55 (26.83%) PowerShell
2 41 (20.00%) SQL
3 40 (19.51%) Python
4 15 (7.32%) Groovy
5 12 (5.85%) Java
6 7 (3.41%) Perl
7 6 (2.93%) Bash
7 6 (2.93%) VBScript
8 2 (0.98%) Bicep
8 2 (0.98%) C++
8 2 (0.98%) Go
8 2 (0.98%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.98%) TypeScript
8 2 (0.98%) VB
9 1 (0.49%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 85 (41.46%) Security Cleared
2 74 (36.10%) SC Cleared
3 16 (7.80%) Microsoft Certification
4 15 (7.32%) Degree
5 14 (6.83%) AWS Certification
5 14 (6.83%) Azure Certification
6 8 (3.90%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (2.93%) MCP
8 5 (2.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (2.44%) MCDST
9 3 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
9 3 (1.46%) MCSE
10 2 (0.98%) A+ Certification
10 2 (0.98%) CCNA
10 2 (0.98%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.98%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.98%) ISEB
10 2 (0.98%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.98%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 9 (4.39%) NIST
2 8 (3.90%) SLA
3 4 (1.95%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.46%) PCI DSS
4 3 (1.46%) QA
5 1 (0.49%) GMP
5 1 (0.49%) GxP
System Software
1 81 (39.51%) Active Directory
2 22 (10.73%) Docker
3 15 (7.32%) DFS Replication
4 10 (4.88%) VMware Infrastructure
5 9 (4.39%) Dovecot
5 9 (4.39%) Postfix
5 9 (4.39%) Squid
6 8 (3.90%) Terminal Services
7 5 (2.44%) Firmware
7 5 (2.44%) Hyper-V
8 3 (1.46%) vSphere
9 2 (0.98%) Microsoft App-V
10 1 (0.49%) Snort
10 1 (0.49%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (13.17%) SCCM
2 26 (12.68%) Terraform
3 17 (8.29%) Grafana
4 15 (7.32%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (7.32%) Prometheus
5 12 (5.85%) Ansible
6 10 (4.88%) Kubernetes
6 10 (4.88%) Nessus
7 9 (4.39%) Proxmox
8 2 (0.98%) Argo
8 2 (0.98%) SCOM
9 1 (0.49%) Dell DRAC
9 1 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
9 1 (0.49%) Kibana
9 1 (0.49%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.49%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.49%) SolarWinds Orion
9 1 (0.49%) vCenter Server
9 1 (0.49%) WSUS
Vendors
1 61 (29.76%) Microsoft
2 24 (11.71%) ServiceNow
3 23 (11.22%) Oracle
4 21 (10.24%) Splunk
5 18 (8.78%) CyberArk
6 17 (8.29%) Cisco
7 16 (7.80%) Dynatrace
7 16 (7.80%) VMware
8 15 (7.32%) AppDynamics
8 15 (7.32%) BeyondTrust
9 9 (4.39%) Jaspersoft
10 6 (2.93%) Fujitsu
11 5 (2.44%) Atlassian
11 5 (2.44%) Broadcom
11 5 (2.44%) iManage
11 5 (2.44%) Mitel
12 4 (1.95%) Dell
12 4 (1.95%) SAP
13 3 (1.46%) Citrix
13 3 (1.46%) Red Hat
61 Windows jobs in the West Midlands