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

 6 months to
18 Nov 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 17 10 7
Rank change year-on-year -7 -3 +7
Contract jobs citing Windows 213 197 238
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.11% 10.53% 12.17%
As % of the Operating Systems category 64.74% 66.11% 77.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 117 170
10th Percentile £163 £174 £163
25th Percentile £208 £206 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £427 £385 £350
Median % change year-on-year +10.91% +10.00% -1.06%
75th Percentile £540 £570 £490
90th Percentile £609 £627 £625
England median daily rate £393 £406 £415
% change year-on-year -3.39% -2.11% -2.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 5 14
10th Percentile - £14.98 £16.68
25th Percentile £17.14 £20.30 £17.72
Median hourly rate £18.23 £21.59 £18.11
Median % change year-on-year -15.59% +19.22% +10.23%
75th Percentile £21.46 £24.18 £26.94
90th Percentile £25.80 £54.67 £28.75
England median hourly rate £21.46 £24.35 £22.50
% change year-on-year -11.87% +8.22% +3.97%

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 329 298 307
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 15.61% 15.94% 15.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 184 210
10th Percentile £185 £188 £162
25th Percentile £290 £257 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £375
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% +23.33% -24.24%
75th Percentile £550 £582 £500
90th Percentile £604 £675 £608
England median daily rate £450 £475 £487
% change year-on-year -5.26% -2.46% -4.51%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 6 16
10th Percentile - £15.87 £16.77
25th Percentile £17.14 £20.30 £17.72
Median hourly rate £19.84 £22.89 £19.25
Median % change year-on-year -13.29% +18.88% +17.16%
75th Percentile £22.99 £31.36 £28.19
90th Percentile £38.50 £54.38 £28.75
England median hourly rate £23.00 £58.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -60.34% +44.99% +60.00%

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 18 November 2025.

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 18 November 2025.

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 18 November 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
Birmingham -6 63 £413 +65.00% 31
Warwickshire -4 46 £500 -14.05% 17
Shropshire -10 37 £450 +36.36% 8
Worcestershire +2 21 £575 +346.60% 19
Staffordshire +7 13 £205 -29.31% 15
Coventry -16 8 £350 +117.05% 7
Wolverhampton +5 5 £267 - 6
Herefordshire -8 4 £413 -36.54% 5
Solihull 0 2 £445 +43.09% 4
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 29 (13.62%) Confluence
2 16 (7.51%) WebLogic
3 14 (6.57%) Apache
4 10 (4.69%) nginx
5 7 (3.29%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (2.82%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.94%) FileNet
8 1 (0.47%) IIS
8 1 (0.47%) JBoss
8 1 (0.47%) OpenStack
Applications
1 22 (10.33%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (4.69%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 5 (2.35%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.47%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.94%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.47%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 61 (28.64%) Azure
2 58 (27.23%) AWS
3 47 (22.07%) Microsoft 365
4 27 (12.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 26 (12.21%) Amazon EC2
5 26 (12.21%) Amazon S3
5 26 (12.21%) AWS KMS
5 26 (12.21%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 22 (10.33%) Amazon ELB
7 14 (6.57%) Azure Monitor
8 12 (5.63%) Amazon Glacier
9 11 (5.16%) Route 53
10 10 (4.69%) Amazon ECS
11 8 (3.76%) Entra ID
11 8 (3.76%) PaaS
12 7 (3.29%) GitHub
13 5 (2.35%) IaaS
14 4 (1.88%) AWS CloudTrail
14 4 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
14 4 (1.88%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 51 (23.94%) DNS
2 36 (16.90%) Firewall
3 29 (13.62%) SSH
4 25 (11.74%) DHCP
5 22 (10.33%) FTP
5 22 (10.33%) HTTP
5 22 (10.33%) SMTP
6 17 (7.98%) VPN
7 15 (7.04%) TCP/IP
8 10 (4.69%) IMAP
8 10 (4.69%) OpenLDAP
9 6 (2.82%) Network Security
10 5 (2.35%) Kerberos
10 5 (2.35%) Structured Cabling
11 4 (1.88%) Wi-Fi
12 3 (1.41%) Intrusion Detection
12 3 (1.41%) VoIP
12 3 (1.41%) Wireless
13 2 (0.94%) LAN
13 2 (0.94%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (10.80%) Amazon RDS
2 11 (5.16%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.69%) Amazon Aurora
4 6 (2.82%) SQL Server
5 3 (1.41%) Relational Database
6 2 (0.94%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.94%) DB2
7 1 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.47%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.47%) Power BI
7 1 (0.47%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.47%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 39 (18.31%) JIRA
2 26 (12.21%) Git
3 24 (11.27%) Jenkins
4 22 (10.33%) Vagrant
5 5 (2.35%) Bitbucket
5 5 (2.35%) PVCS
6 4 (1.88%) GitLab
6 4 (1.88%) Toad
7 2 (0.94%) InstallShield
7 2 (0.94%) MSI
8 1 (0.47%) AdminStudio
8 1 (0.47%) Bitbucket Server
8 1 (0.47%) CA Release Automation
8 1 (0.47%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.47%) REST Assured
8 1 (0.47%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.47%) TeamCity
General
1 100 (46.95%) Social Skills
2 37 (17.37%) Analytical Skills
2 37 (17.37%) Public Sector
3 19 (8.92%) Documentation Skills
4 17 (7.98%) Presentation Skills
5 11 (5.16%) Legal
6 10 (4.69%) Finance
7 8 (3.76%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (1.41%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.94%) Law
11 1 (0.47%) Aeronautics
11 1 (0.47%) Automotive
11 1 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.47%) Police
Job Titles
1 35 (16.43%) Support Engineer
2 27 (12.68%) Analyst
3 25 (11.74%) Platform Engineer
4 23 (10.80%) DevOps Engineer
5 20 (9.39%) AWS Engineer
6 19 (8.92%) Cloud Platform Engineer
7 16 (7.51%) Desktop Engineer
8 15 (7.04%) AWS DevOps
8 15 (7.04%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 13 (6.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 12 (5.63%) Desktop Support
10 12 (5.63%) Desktop Support Engineer
11 11 (5.16%) Deployment Engineer
11 11 (5.16%) IT Support
11 11 (5.16%) Windows Engineer
12 10 (4.69%) Administrator
12 10 (4.69%) AWS Platform Engineer
13 9 (4.23%) Architect
13 9 (4.23%) Consultant
13 9 (4.23%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (7.98%) LDAP
2 9 (4.23%) XML
3 5 (2.35%) OAuth
3 5 (2.35%) SAML
4 3 (1.41%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.94%) Middleware
5 2 (0.94%) YAML
6 1 (0.47%) .NET
6 1 (0.47%) Kafka
6 1 (0.47%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (0.47%) SAP Basis
6 1 (0.47%) SAP Fiori
6 1 (0.47%) Software Packaging
6 1 (0.47%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 24 (11.27%) Replication
2 8 (3.76%) Onboarding
3 6 (2.82%) Data Protection Act
3 6 (2.82%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (2.35%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 4 (1.88%) Data Centre
6 3 (1.41%) Client/Server
6 3 (1.41%) Driving Licence
6 3 (1.41%) PKI
6 3 (1.41%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.41%) Security Posture
6 3 (1.41%) Video Conferencing
7 2 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (0.94%) Legacy Applications
7 2 (0.94%) NHS
7 2 (0.94%) SCADA
7 2 (0.94%) Security Operations Centre
8 1 (0.47%) HP Storage
8 1 (0.47%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 79 (37.09%) Linux
2 38 (17.84%) Windows Server
3 37 (17.37%) Windows 10
4 24 (11.27%) VMS
5 23 (10.80%) Amazon Linux
5 23 (10.80%) Unix
6 12 (5.63%) Ubuntu
7 9 (4.23%) AIX
7 9 (4.23%) Solaris
8 7 (3.29%) Apple iOS
8 7 (3.29%) Mac OS
9 6 (2.82%) Android
9 6 (2.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (1.41%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.47%) SUSE
11 1 (0.47%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (19.72%) Change Management
2 40 (18.78%) Cloud Security
3 36 (16.90%) Problem-Solving
4 33 (15.49%) ITIL
5 32 (15.02%) DevOps
6 29 (13.62%) Platform Engineering
6 29 (13.62%) Service Management
7 27 (12.68%) Configuration Management
8 25 (11.74%) Continuous Improvement
9 24 (11.27%) Migration
9 24 (11.27%) Patch Management
10 22 (10.33%) Incident Response
11 21 (9.86%) Analytics
11 21 (9.86%) Customer Service
12 19 (8.92%) Agile
13 17 (7.98%) Incident Management
14 16 (7.51%) Business Intelligence
14 16 (7.51%) CI/CD
14 16 (7.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 16 (7.51%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 66 (30.99%) PowerShell
2 42 (19.72%) Python
3 37 (17.37%) SQL
4 22 (10.33%) Groovy
5 19 (8.92%) Java
6 13 (6.10%) Perl
7 7 (3.29%) Bash
8 5 (2.35%) VBScript
9 2 (0.94%) Bicep
10 1 (0.47%) Go
10 1 (0.47%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.47%) Ladder Logic
10 1 (0.47%) Shell Script
10 1 (0.47%) VB
Qualifications
1 84 (39.44%) Security Cleared
2 75 (35.21%) SC Cleared
3 21 (9.86%) Degree
4 17 (7.98%) AWS Certification
4 17 (7.98%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (7.04%) Azure Certification
6 9 (4.23%) DV Cleared
7 7 (3.29%) MCP
8 5 (2.35%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 5 (2.35%) MCDST
9 4 (1.88%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (1.88%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 3 (1.41%) CCNA
10 3 (1.41%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.41%) MCSE
11 2 (0.94%) A+ Certification
11 2 (0.94%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.94%) ISEB
11 2 (0.94%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.76%) SLA
2 7 (3.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 7 (3.29%) NIST
3 4 (1.88%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.41%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.94%) PMO
6 1 (0.47%) IEC 61131
6 1 (0.47%) QA
System Software
1 91 (42.72%) Active Directory
2 28 (13.15%) Docker
3 22 (10.33%) DFS Replication
4 12 (5.63%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (4.69%) Dovecot
5 10 (4.69%) Postfix
5 10 (4.69%) Squid
6 7 (3.29%) Terminal Services
7 6 (2.82%) Firmware
7 6 (2.82%) Hyper-V
8 3 (1.41%) vSphere
9 2 (0.94%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.47%) Snort
10 1 (0.47%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 34 (15.96%) SCCM
1 34 (15.96%) Terraform
2 24 (11.27%) Grafana
3 23 (10.80%) Prometheus
4 17 (7.98%) Microsoft Intune
5 11 (5.16%) Nessus
6 10 (4.69%) Ansible
6 10 (4.69%) Proxmox
7 7 (3.29%) Kubernetes
8 3 (1.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 2 (0.94%) Jamf Pro
9 2 (0.94%) SCOM
9 2 (0.94%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.47%) Dell DRAC
10 1 (0.47%) Kibana
10 1 (0.47%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.47%) PowerCLI
10 1 (0.47%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.47%) SolarWinds Orion
10 1 (0.47%) WSUS
Vendors
1 70 (32.86%) Microsoft
2 32 (15.02%) ServiceNow
3 23 (10.80%) Oracle
4 20 (9.39%) Cisco
5 19 (8.92%) VMware
6 18 (8.45%) AppDynamics
7 17 (7.98%) Dynatrace
7 17 (7.98%) Splunk
8 16 (7.51%) CyberArk
9 15 (7.04%) BeyondTrust
10 10 (4.69%) Jaspersoft
11 6 (2.82%) Apple
12 5 (2.35%) Atlassian
12 5 (2.35%) Broadcom
12 5 (2.35%) Citrix
12 5 (2.35%) iManage
12 5 (2.35%) Mitel
12 5 (2.35%) SAP
13 4 (1.88%) Dell
13 4 (1.88%) Veeam
120 Windows jobs in the West Midlands