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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 13 10 9
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing Windows 200 198 240
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the West Midlands 11.05% 10.40% 11.36%
As % of the Operating Systems category 73.53% 68.51% 73.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 158 121 169
10th Percentile £150 £158 £163
25th Percentile £200 £206 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £355 £375
Median % change year-on-year +12.68% -5.33% +6.01%
75th Percentile £535 £570 £518
90th Percentile £588 £675 £688
England median daily rate £400 £425 £430
% change year-on-year -5.88% -1.16% +2.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 8 11
10th Percentile £17.10 £14.63 £13.16
25th Percentile £20.06 £17.88 £17.38
Median hourly rate £25.00 £19.00 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.58% -5.00% +23.72%
75th Percentile £30.00 £23.10 £28.38
90th Percentile £33.00 £39.13 £28.75
England median hourly rate £21.29 £23.80 £25.00
% change year-on-year -10.55% -4.80% +13.64%

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 272 289 326
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 15.03% 15.18% 15.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 202 184 212
10th Percentile £160 £188 £166
25th Percentile £220 £271 £226
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £448 £400
Median % change year-on-year +0.45% +12.00% -15.79%
75th Percentile £540 £583 £540
90th Percentile £616 £705 £670
England median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 8 13
10th Percentile £17.10 £14.63 £13.93
25th Percentile £20.06 £17.88 £17.75
Median hourly rate £25.00 £19.00 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.58% -5.00% +23.72%
75th Percentile £30.00 £23.10 £28.75
90th Percentile £33.00 £39.13 -
England median hourly rate £25.15 £57.38 £47.67
% change year-on-year -56.17% +20.37% +98.60%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Job postings citing Windows as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Job vacancy trend for Windows 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 14 September 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 14 September 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 14 September 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 -1 63 £263 -13.08% 21
Warwickshire +3 53 £450 -21.05% 14
Shropshire -2 29 £515 +71.95% 12
Coventry -3 15 £232 -64.38% 8
Worcestershire +1 12 £575 +248.48% 18
Staffordshire +9 8 £220 +10.00% 21
Solihull -1 8 £375 -16.11% 1
Wolverhampton +3 4 £275 - 6
Herefordshire -5 2 £413 -41.07% 2
Windows
England

Windows
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the West Midlands by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 28 (14.00%) Confluence
2 13 (6.50%) Apache
2 13 (6.50%) WebLogic
3 10 (5.00%) nginx
3 10 (5.00%) SharePoint
4 8 (4.00%) Microsoft Exchange
5 2 (1.00%) FileNet
6 1 (0.50%) JBoss
Applications
1 16 (8.00%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (5.00%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.50%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (0.50%) SAP GRC
1 1 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 66 (33.00%) Azure
2 52 (26.00%) AWS
3 46 (23.00%) Microsoft 365
4 27 (13.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 26 (13.00%) Amazon EC2
5 26 (13.00%) Amazon S3
5 26 (13.00%) AWS KMS
5 26 (13.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 22 (11.00%) Amazon ELB
7 21 (10.50%) Entra ID
8 13 (6.50%) Azure Monitor
9 12 (6.00%) Amazon Glacier
10 11 (5.50%) Route 53
11 10 (5.00%) Amazon ECS
12 7 (3.50%) PaaS
13 6 (3.00%) GitHub
14 5 (2.50%) IaaS
15 4 (2.00%) AWS CloudTrail
15 4 (2.00%) OneDrive
15 4 (2.00%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 42 (21.00%) DNS
2 32 (16.00%) Firewall
3 25 (12.50%) SSH
4 22 (11.00%) FTP
4 22 (11.00%) HTTP
4 22 (11.00%) SMTP
5 19 (9.50%) DHCP
6 10 (5.00%) IMAP
6 10 (5.00%) OpenLDAP
7 9 (4.50%) TCP/IP
8 8 (4.00%) VPN
9 5 (2.50%) Structured Cabling
10 4 (2.00%) Unified Communications
10 4 (2.00%) Wireless
11 3 (1.50%) LAN
11 3 (1.50%) Telepresence
11 3 (1.50%) WAN
11 3 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (1.00%) VoIP
12 2 (1.00%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (11.50%) Amazon RDS
2 11 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (5.00%) Amazon Aurora
4 6 (3.00%) SQL Server
5 3 (1.50%) Relational Database
6 2 (1.00%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (1.00%) DB2
6 2 (1.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 1 (0.50%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.50%) Power BI
7 1 (0.50%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.50%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 29 (14.50%) JIRA
2 26 (13.00%) Git
3 23 (11.50%) Jenkins
4 22 (11.00%) Vagrant
5 5 (2.50%) Bitbucket
5 5 (2.50%) PVCS
6 4 (2.00%) GitLab
7 1 (0.50%) Bitbucket Server
7 1 (0.50%) CA Release Automation
7 1 (0.50%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.50%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.50%) TeamCity
General
1 103 (51.50%) Social Skills
2 33 (16.50%) Public Sector
3 32 (16.00%) Analytical Skills
4 13 (6.50%) Documentation Skills
4 13 (6.50%) Presentation Skills
5 10 (5.00%) Finance
6 7 (3.50%) Legal
6 7 (3.50%) Organisational Skills
7 4 (2.00%) Automotive
7 4 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.00%) Law
8 2 (1.00%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.50%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.50%) Police
9 1 (0.50%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 31 (15.50%) Support Engineer
2 25 (12.50%) Platform Engineer
3 22 (11.00%) Analyst
3 22 (11.00%) DevOps Engineer
4 20 (10.00%) AWS Engineer
5 19 (9.50%) Cloud Platform Engineer
6 16 (8.00%) Desktop Engineer
7 15 (7.50%) AWS DevOps
7 15 (7.50%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 14 (7.00%) Deployment Engineer
9 13 (6.50%) Desktop Support
9 13 (6.50%) Desktop Support Engineer
10 12 (6.00%) Windows Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 11 (5.50%) IT Engineer
12 10 (5.00%) AWS Platform Engineer
12 10 (5.00%) IT Support
13 9 (4.50%) Architect
14 8 (4.00%) 1st Line Support
14 8 (4.00%) Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (6.50%) LDAP
2 5 (2.50%) XML
3 3 (1.50%) Apache Axis
4 2 (1.00%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (1.00%) Software Packaging
5 1 (0.50%) .NET
5 1 (0.50%) Middleware
5 1 (0.50%) OAuth
5 1 (0.50%) SAML
5 1 (0.50%) SAP Basis
5 1 (0.50%) SAP Fiori
5 1 (0.50%) Spring Boot
5 1 (0.50%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 27 (13.50%) Replication
2 9 (4.50%) Driving Licence
3 7 (3.50%) Onboarding
4 5 (2.50%) Data Centre
5 3 (1.50%) Client/Server
5 3 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (1.50%) PKI
5 3 (1.50%) Product Ownership
5 3 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
5 3 (1.50%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 2 (1.00%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (1.00%) SCADA
6 2 (1.00%) Video Conferencing
7 1 (0.50%) Cyberattack
7 1 (0.50%) Fibre Optics
7 1 (0.50%) HP Storage
7 1 (0.50%) IoT
7 1 (0.50%) Linux Command Line
7 1 (0.50%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.50%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 67 (33.50%) Linux
2 39 (19.50%) Windows 10
3 30 (15.00%) Windows Server
4 23 (11.50%) Amazon Linux
4 23 (11.50%) VMS
5 22 (11.00%) Unix
6 12 (6.00%) Android
6 12 (6.00%) Ubuntu
7 7 (3.50%) Apple iOS
7 7 (3.50%) Mac OS
8 5 (2.50%) AIX
8 5 (2.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 5 (2.50%) Solaris
8 5 (2.50%) Windows Server 2016
9 2 (1.00%) Mac OS X
9 2 (1.00%) Windows Server 2019
10 1 (0.50%) SUSE
10 1 (0.50%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (23.00%) ITIL
2 44 (22.00%) Problem-Solving
3 35 (17.50%) Cloud Security
4 33 (16.50%) Change Management
5 29 (14.50%) DevOps
6 28 (14.00%) Platform Engineering
7 27 (13.50%) Configuration Management
8 26 (13.00%) Patch Management
9 23 (11.50%) Customer Service
9 23 (11.50%) Service Management
10 20 (10.00%) Analytics
10 20 (10.00%) Migration
11 18 (9.00%) Continuous Improvement
12 17 (8.50%) Incident Response
13 16 (8.00%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 15 (7.50%) Business Intelligence
14 15 (7.50%) Visualisation
15 14 (7.00%) Agile
15 14 (7.00%) Incident Management
15 14 (7.00%) Performance Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 58 (29.00%) PowerShell
2 40 (20.00%) Python
3 36 (18.00%) SQL
4 22 (11.00%) Groovy
5 18 (9.00%) Java
6 13 (6.50%) Perl
7 5 (2.50%) VBScript
8 3 (1.50%) Bash
8 3 (1.50%) C#
8 3 (1.50%) Ruby
9 1 (0.50%) Bicep
9 1 (0.50%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.50%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 83 (41.50%) Security Cleared
2 76 (38.00%) SC Cleared
3 22 (11.00%) Degree
4 16 (8.00%) AWS Certification
5 15 (7.50%) Azure Certification
6 14 (7.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (4.00%) DV Cleared
8 7 (3.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 5 (2.50%) CompTIA Security+
9 5 (2.50%) MCSE
10 4 (2.00%) CCNA
10 4 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
10 4 (2.00%) CISSP
10 4 (2.00%) MCP
11 3 (1.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (1.50%) MCDST
12 2 (1.00%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
12 2 (1.00%) BPSS Clearance
12 2 (1.00%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (5.00%) SLA
2 7 (3.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.00%) NIST
3 4 (2.00%) QA
4 2 (1.00%) PMO
4 2 (1.00%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.50%) GDPR
5 1 (0.50%) IEC 61131
5 1 (0.50%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 86 (43.00%) Active Directory
2 27 (13.50%) Docker
3 22 (11.00%) DFS Replication
4 14 (7.00%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (5.00%) Dovecot
5 10 (5.00%) Postfix
5 10 (5.00%) Squid
6 7 (3.50%) Firmware
7 6 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
8 5 (2.50%) Terminal Services
9 4 (2.00%) Hyper-V
10 2 (1.00%) BitLocker
10 2 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
10 2 (1.00%) vSphere
11 1 (0.50%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.50%) Snort
11 1 (0.50%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 33 (16.50%) Terraform
2 30 (15.00%) SCCM
3 23 (11.50%) Grafana
3 23 (11.50%) Prometheus
4 19 (9.50%) Microsoft Intune
5 11 (5.50%) Nessus
6 10 (5.00%) Proxmox
7 8 (4.00%) Ansible
8 6 (3.00%) Kubernetes
9 4 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (1.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 2 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (1.00%) SCOM
12 1 (0.50%) Dell DRAC
12 1 (0.50%) Kibana
12 1 (0.50%) NetBackup
12 1 (0.50%) PowerCLI
12 1 (0.50%) Progress Chef
12 1 (0.50%) SolarWinds Orion
12 1 (0.50%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 65 (32.50%) Microsoft
2 27 (13.50%) ServiceNow
3 21 (10.50%) Cisco
3 21 (10.50%) VMware
4 17 (8.50%) AppDynamics
4 17 (8.50%) Dynatrace
4 17 (8.50%) Oracle
5 15 (7.50%) Splunk
6 11 (5.50%) BeyondTrust
6 11 (5.50%) CyberArk
6 11 (5.50%) Dell
7 10 (5.00%) HP
7 10 (5.00%) Jaspersoft
8 9 (4.50%) Broadcom
9 5 (2.50%) Apple
9 5 (2.50%) Veeam
10 4 (2.00%) Atlassian
10 4 (2.00%) Citrix
10 4 (2.00%) IBM
11 3 (1.50%) Mitel