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

 6 months to
19 Dec 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 19 14 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 -4 +2
Contract jobs citing Windows 212 158 204
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 9.41% 9.50% 11.12%
As % of the Operating Systems category 62.72% 66.11% 75.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 156 97 153
10th Percentile £161 £174 £163
25th Percentile £203 £190 £206
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £325 £375
Median % change year-on-year +38.00% -13.33% -
75th Percentile £543 £475 £521
90th Percentile £618 £590 £635
England median daily rate £388 £400 £400
% change year-on-year -3.13% - -5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 6 11
10th Percentile - £13.33 £16.54
25th Percentile £17.14 £16.42 £17.36
Median hourly rate £19.84 £20.80 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -4.58% +17.35% +7.85%
75th Percentile £22.99 £22.89 £21.50
90th Percentile £39.25 £23.53 £23.75
England median hourly rate £22.00 £24.18 £22.00
% change year-on-year -9.02% +9.91% +8.64%

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 338 239 271
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 15.01% 14.37% 14.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 149 195
10th Percentile £178 £184 £164
25th Percentile £291 £213 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year +11.76% +6.25% -19.19%
75th Percentile £552 £550 £518
90th Percentile £618 £665 £625
England median daily rate £450 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -5.26% - -7.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 7 12
10th Percentile - £13.71 £16.59
25th Percentile £17.14 £17.61 £17.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £21.59 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -0.60% +21.84% +7.85%
75th Percentile £29.25 £23.53 £23.75
90th Percentile £69.99 £28.01 £27.58
England median hourly rate £25.15 £57.25 £32.50
% change year-on-year -56.07% +76.15% +30.00%

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 19 December 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 19 December 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 19 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
Birmingham -6 57 £425 +70.00% 26
Shropshire -9 46 £483 +46.36% 19
Warwickshire -3 42 £520 -8.58% 6
Worcestershire -4 25 £588 +327.27% 18
Staffordshire +9 15 £203 -38.64% 23
Coventry -23 5 £275 +48.65% 13
Wolverhampton +6 4 £227 - 10
Herefordshire - 4 £413 -
Solihull -3 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 24 (11.32%) Confluence
1 24 (11.32%) WebLogic
2 15 (7.08%) Apache
3 10 (4.72%) nginx
4 8 (3.77%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (3.77%) Tuxedo
5 6 (2.83%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.94%) FileNet
6 2 (0.94%) OpenStack
7 1 (0.47%) IIS
7 1 (0.47%) JBoss
Applications
1 21 (9.91%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (4.72%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 5 (2.36%) 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 (28.77%) Azure
2 51 (24.06%) AWS
3 48 (22.64%) Microsoft 365
4 22 (10.38%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 22 (10.38%) Amazon EC2
4 22 (10.38%) Amazon S3
4 22 (10.38%) AWS KMS
4 22 (10.38%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 18 (8.49%) Amazon ELB
6 14 (6.60%) Azure Monitor
7 11 (5.19%) Route 53
8 10 (4.72%) Amazon ECS
9 8 (3.77%) Amazon Glacier
9 8 (3.77%) Entra ID
10 7 (3.30%) GitHub
10 7 (3.30%) PaaS
11 4 (1.89%) AWS CloudTrail
11 4 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
11 4 (1.89%) Azure DevOps
11 4 (1.89%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 44 (20.75%) DNS
2 30 (14.15%) Firewall
3 25 (11.79%) SSH
4 23 (10.85%) DHCP
5 18 (8.49%) FTP
5 18 (8.49%) HTTP
5 18 (8.49%) SMTP
6 16 (7.55%) VPN
7 15 (7.08%) TCP/IP
8 10 (4.72%) IMAP
8 10 (4.72%) OpenLDAP
9 6 (2.83%) Network Security
10 5 (2.36%) Kerberos
10 5 (2.36%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (1.42%) Intrusion Detection
11 3 (1.42%) LAN
11 3 (1.42%) VoIP
11 3 (1.42%) WAN
11 3 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
12 2 (0.94%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (8.96%) Amazon RDS
2 10 (4.72%) Amazon Aurora
2 10 (4.72%) PostgreSQL
3 4 (1.89%) SQL Server
4 2 (0.94%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
5 1 (0.47%) RDBMS
5 1 (0.47%) Relational Database
5 1 (0.47%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 34 (16.04%) JIRA
2 22 (10.38%) Git
3 21 (9.91%) Jenkins
4 18 (8.49%) Vagrant
5 11 (5.19%) MSI
6 7 (3.30%) GitLab
7 5 (2.36%) Bitbucket
7 5 (2.36%) PVCS
8 4 (1.89%) Toad
9 3 (1.42%) InstallShield
10 2 (0.94%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.47%) AdminStudio
11 1 (0.47%) Artifactory
11 1 (0.47%) Bitbucket Server
11 1 (0.47%) CA Release Automation
11 1 (0.47%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.47%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.47%) TeamCity
General
1 100 (47.17%) Social Skills
2 31 (14.62%) Analytical Skills
2 31 (14.62%) Public Sector
3 18 (8.49%) Documentation Skills
4 17 (8.02%) Presentation Skills
5 11 (5.19%) Legal
6 7 (3.30%) Manufacturing
7 6 (2.83%) Finance
8 4 (1.89%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.94%) Aeronautics
10 2 (0.94%) Law
11 1 (0.47%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.47%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.47%) Police
Job Titles
1 32 (15.09%) Support Engineer
2 26 (12.26%) Platform Engineer
3 24 (11.32%) Analyst
4 21 (9.91%) DevOps Engineer
5 20 (9.43%) AWS Engineer
6 19 (8.96%) Cloud Platform Engineer
7 15 (7.08%) AWS DevOps
7 15 (7.08%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 13 (6.13%) Architect
9 12 (5.66%) Deployment Engineer
9 12 (5.66%) Desktop Engineer
10 11 (5.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 11 (5.19%) IT Engineer
10 11 (5.19%) IT Support
11 10 (4.72%) Administrator
11 10 (4.72%) AWS Platform Engineer
11 10 (4.72%) Desktop Support
11 10 (4.72%) Desktop Support Engineer
12 9 (4.25%) 2nd Line Support
12 9 (4.25%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (8.02%) LDAP
2 9 (4.25%) XML
3 5 (2.36%) OAuth
3 5 (2.36%) SAML
4 3 (1.42%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.94%) CSS
5 2 (0.94%) Kafka
5 2 (0.94%) Middleware
5 2 (0.94%) Node.js
5 2 (0.94%) RabbitMQ
5 2 (0.94%) React
6 1 (0.47%) Apache NiFi
6 1 (0.47%) REST
6 1 (0.47%) SAP Basis
6 1 (0.47%) SAP Fiori
6 1 (0.47%) Software Packaging
6 1 (0.47%) Spring Boot
6 1 (0.47%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (9.43%) Replication
2 8 (3.77%) Onboarding
3 6 (2.83%) Data Protection Act
3 6 (2.83%) Self-Motivation
3 6 (2.83%) Team-Oriented Environment
4 4 (1.89%) Client/Server
4 4 (1.89%) Data Centre
4 4 (1.89%) PKI
5 3 (1.42%) Driving Licence
5 3 (1.42%) Security Posture
5 3 (1.42%) Video Conferencing
6 2 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
6 2 (0.94%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (0.94%) Legacy Applications
6 2 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (0.94%) NHS
6 2 (0.94%) Product Ownership
6 2 (0.94%) Security Operations Centre
7 1 (0.47%) Mainframe
7 1 (0.47%) PMI
Operating Systems
1 78 (36.79%) Linux
2 39 (18.40%) Windows 10
2 39 (18.40%) Windows Server
3 31 (14.62%) Unix
4 20 (9.43%) VMS
5 18 (8.49%) Amazon Linux
6 11 (5.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (5.19%) Ubuntu
7 9 (4.25%) AIX
7 9 (4.25%) Solaris
8 8 (3.77%) Android
8 8 (3.77%) Apple iOS
9 7 (3.30%) Mac OS
10 3 (1.42%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.47%) SUSE
11 1 (0.47%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (17.92%) Change Management
2 36 (16.98%) Cloud Security
3 32 (15.09%) Problem-Solving
4 31 (14.62%) DevOps
5 29 (13.68%) ITIL
6 27 (12.74%) Platform Engineering
6 27 (12.74%) Service Management
7 26 (12.26%) Continuous Improvement
8 24 (11.32%) Incident Response
9 23 (10.85%) Configuration Management
10 22 (10.38%) Migration
11 21 (9.91%) Customer Service
12 20 (9.43%) CI/CD
12 20 (9.43%) Patch Management
12 20 (9.43%) SIEM
13 19 (8.96%) Agile
14 18 (8.49%) Analytics
15 16 (7.55%) Full-Stack Development
15 16 (7.55%) Incident Management
15 16 (7.55%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 59 (27.83%) PowerShell
2 43 (20.28%) SQL
3 41 (19.34%) Python
4 18 (8.49%) Groovy
5 15 (7.08%) Java
6 9 (4.25%) Perl
7 6 (2.83%) VBScript
8 5 (2.36%) Bash
9 2 (0.94%) C++
9 2 (0.94%) Go
9 2 (0.94%) JavaScript
9 2 (0.94%) TypeScript
9 2 (0.94%) VB
10 1 (0.47%) Bicep
10 1 (0.47%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 89 (41.98%) Security Cleared
2 77 (36.32%) SC Cleared
3 18 (8.49%) Degree
4 17 (8.02%) AWS Certification
4 17 (8.02%) Microsoft Certification
5 16 (7.55%) Azure Certification
6 9 (4.25%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 6 (2.83%) MCP
8 5 (2.36%) MCDST
9 4 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (1.42%) MCSE
11 2 (0.94%) A+ Certification
11 2 (0.94%) CCNA
11 2 (0.94%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.94%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.94%) ISEB
11 2 (0.94%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.94%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.77%) SLA
2 7 (3.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 7 (3.30%) NIST
3 4 (1.89%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.42%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.94%) QA
System Software
1 87 (41.04%) Active Directory
2 25 (11.79%) Docker
3 18 (8.49%) DFS Replication
4 11 (5.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (4.72%) Dovecot
5 10 (4.72%) Postfix
5 10 (4.72%) Squid
6 7 (3.30%) Terminal Services
7 6 (2.83%) Hyper-V
8 5 (2.36%) Firmware
9 3 (1.42%) vSphere
10 2 (0.94%) Microsoft App-V
10 2 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
11 1 (0.47%) Snort
11 1 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
11 1 (0.47%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 30 (14.15%) Terraform
2 28 (13.21%) SCCM
3 20 (9.43%) Grafana
4 18 (8.49%) Prometheus
5 13 (6.13%) Ansible
6 11 (5.19%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (5.19%) Nessus
7 10 (4.72%) Proxmox
8 8 (3.77%) Kubernetes
9 3 (1.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 2 (0.94%) Argo
10 2 (0.94%) SCOM
10 2 (0.94%) vCenter Server
11 1 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
11 1 (0.47%) Kibana
11 1 (0.47%) NetBackup
11 1 (0.47%) PowerCLI
11 1 (0.47%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.47%) SolarWinds Orion
11 1 (0.47%) WSUS
Vendors
1 65 (30.66%) Microsoft
2 26 (12.26%) ServiceNow
3 22 (10.38%) Oracle
4 21 (9.91%) Splunk
5 18 (8.49%) AppDynamics
5 18 (8.49%) Cisco
5 18 (8.49%) VMware
6 17 (8.02%) Dynatrace
7 16 (7.55%) CyberArk
8 15 (7.08%) BeyondTrust
9 10 (4.72%) Jaspersoft
10 6 (2.83%) Fujitsu
11 5 (2.36%) Atlassian
11 5 (2.36%) Broadcom
11 5 (2.36%) iManage
11 5 (2.36%) Mitel
11 5 (2.36%) SAP
12 4 (1.89%) Dell
13 3 (1.42%) Adobe
13 3 (1.42%) Citrix
124 Windows jobs in the West Midlands