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

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 17 11 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 +6
Contract jobs citing Windows 214 197 234
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.00% 10.52% 12.23%
As % of the Operating Systems category 64.46% 67.47% 77.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 163 115 168
10th Percentile £161 £173 £163
25th Percentile £206 £190 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £350 £350
Median % change year-on-year +21.43% - -6.67%
75th Percentile £540 £538 £480
90th Percentile £618 £612 £625
England median daily rate £390 £415 £411
% change year-on-year -6.02% +0.91% -3.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 5 14
10th Percentile - £12.95 £16.68
25th Percentile £17.14 £15.22 £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 £22.89 £26.94
90th Percentile £25.80 £23.66 £28.75
England median hourly rate £21.46 £24.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year -12.41% +8.89% +4.65%

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 332 292 301
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 15.52% 15.60% 15.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 177 207
10th Percentile £175 £188 £163
25th Percentile £290 £250 £200
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £449 £375
Median % change year-on-year +5.79% +19.73% -24.24%
75th Percentile £550 £570 £500
90th Percentile £618 £673 £613
England median daily rate £450 £475 £480
% change year-on-year -5.26% -1.04% -5.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 6 16
10th Percentile - £13.33 £16.77
25th Percentile £17.14 £16.49 £17.72
Median hourly rate £19.84 £21.59 £19.25
Median % change year-on-year -8.09% +12.16% +17.16%
75th Percentile £22.99 £23.86 £28.19
90th Percentile £38.50 £28.97 £28.75
England median hourly rate £23.25 £60.00 £34.75
% change year-on-year -61.25% +72.66% +39.00%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -10 61 £425 +70.00% 20
Warwickshire -2 45 £500 -12.28% 10
Shropshire -11 38 £450 +36.36% 13
Worcestershire +3 25 £575 +346.60% 16
Staffordshire +9 13 £205 -29.31% 17
Coventry -20 7 £275 +50.68% 9
Wolverhampton +4 5 £267 - 3
Herefordshire -10 4 £413 -36.54% 4
Solihull -1 2 £445 +43.09% 5
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 (13.55%) Confluence
2 16 (7.48%) WebLogic
3 14 (6.54%) Apache
4 10 (4.67%) nginx
5 8 (3.74%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (2.80%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.93%) FileNet
7 2 (0.93%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.47%) IIS
8 1 (0.47%) JBoss
Applications
1 22 (10.28%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (4.67%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 5 (2.34%) Microsoft Excel
4 1 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.47%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.93%) SAP FI
2 1 (0.47%) SAP GRC
2 1 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 64 (29.91%) Azure
2 58 (27.10%) AWS
3 46 (21.50%) Microsoft 365
4 26 (12.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 26 (12.15%) Amazon EC2
4 26 (12.15%) Amazon S3
4 26 (12.15%) AWS KMS
4 26 (12.15%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 22 (10.28%) Amazon ELB
6 14 (6.54%) Azure Monitor
7 12 (5.61%) Amazon Glacier
8 11 (5.14%) Route 53
9 10 (4.67%) Amazon ECS
10 9 (4.21%) Entra ID
11 8 (3.74%) GitHub
11 8 (3.74%) PaaS
12 5 (2.34%) IaaS
13 4 (1.87%) AWS CloudTrail
13 4 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
13 4 (1.87%) Azure DevOps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (22.43%) DNS
2 34 (15.89%) Firewall
3 29 (13.55%) SSH
4 22 (10.28%) DHCP
4 22 (10.28%) FTP
4 22 (10.28%) HTTP
4 22 (10.28%) SMTP
5 16 (7.48%) VPN
6 14 (6.54%) TCP/IP
7 10 (4.67%) IMAP
7 10 (4.67%) OpenLDAP
8 6 (2.80%) Network Security
9 5 (2.34%) Kerberos
9 5 (2.34%) Structured Cabling
10 4 (1.87%) Wi-Fi
11 3 (1.40%) Intrusion Detection
11 3 (1.40%) VoIP
12 2 (0.93%) LAN
12 2 (0.93%) WAN
12 2 (0.93%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (10.75%) Amazon RDS
2 11 (5.14%) PostgreSQL
3 10 (4.67%) Amazon Aurora
4 6 (2.80%) SQL Server
5 3 (1.40%) Relational Database
6 2 (0.93%) Data Warehouse
6 2 (0.93%) DB2
6 2 (0.93%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.47%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (0.47%) Power BI
7 1 (0.47%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.47%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 39 (18.22%) JIRA
2 27 (12.62%) Git
3 25 (11.68%) Jenkins
4 22 (10.28%) Vagrant
5 7 (3.27%) GitLab
6 5 (2.34%) Bitbucket
6 5 (2.34%) PVCS
7 4 (1.87%) Toad
8 3 (1.40%) InstallShield
8 3 (1.40%) MSI
9 2 (0.93%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.47%) AdminStudio
10 1 (0.47%) Bitbucket Server
10 1 (0.47%) CA Release Automation
10 1 (0.47%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.47%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.47%) TeamCity
General
1 99 (46.26%) Social Skills
2 36 (16.82%) Analytical Skills
3 35 (16.36%) Public Sector
4 20 (9.35%) Documentation Skills
5 17 (7.94%) Presentation Skills
6 11 (5.14%) Legal
7 9 (4.21%) Finance
8 7 (3.27%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.87%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.93%) Aeronautics
10 2 (0.93%) Law
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 (16.36%) Support Engineer
2 27 (12.62%) Analyst
2 27 (12.62%) Platform Engineer
3 23 (10.75%) DevOps Engineer
4 21 (9.81%) AWS Engineer
5 19 (8.88%) Cloud Platform Engineer
6 16 (7.48%) Desktop Engineer
7 15 (7.01%) AWS DevOps
7 15 (7.01%) AWS DevOps Engineer
8 12 (5.61%) Desktop Support
8 12 (5.61%) Desktop Support Engineer
9 11 (5.14%) Deployment Engineer
9 11 (5.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 11 (5.14%) IT Support
10 10 (4.67%) Administrator
10 10 (4.67%) Architect
10 10 (4.67%) AWS Platform Engineer
10 10 (4.67%) Windows Engineer
11 9 (4.21%) Consultant
11 9 (4.21%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (7.94%) LDAP
2 9 (4.21%) XML
3 5 (2.34%) OAuth
3 5 (2.34%) SAML
4 3 (1.40%) Elastic Stack
5 2 (0.93%) Kafka
5 2 (0.93%) Middleware
5 2 (0.93%) RabbitMQ
5 2 (0.93%) YAML
6 1 (0.47%) .NET
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 (11.21%) Replication
2 8 (3.74%) Onboarding
3 6 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
3 6 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
4 5 (2.34%) Team-Oriented Environment
5 4 (1.87%) Client/Server
5 4 (1.87%) Data Centre
5 4 (1.87%) PKI
6 3 (1.40%) Driving Licence
6 3 (1.40%) Product Ownership
6 3 (1.40%) Security Posture
6 3 (1.40%) Video Conferencing
7 2 (0.93%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (0.93%) Legacy Applications
7 2 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (0.93%) NHS
7 2 (0.93%) SCADA
7 2 (0.93%) Security Operations Centre
8 1 (0.47%) Mainframe
Operating Systems
1 80 (37.38%) Linux
2 40 (18.69%) Windows Server
3 37 (17.29%) Windows 10
4 24 (11.21%) VMS
5 23 (10.75%) Unix
6 22 (10.28%) Amazon Linux
7 11 (5.14%) Ubuntu
8 9 (4.21%) AIX
8 9 (4.21%) Solaris
9 8 (3.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 7 (3.27%) Android
10 7 (3.27%) Apple iOS
10 7 (3.27%) Mac OS
11 3 (1.40%) Mac OS X
12 1 (0.47%) SUSE
12 1 (0.47%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (19.63%) Change Management
2 41 (19.16%) Cloud Security
3 36 (16.82%) Problem-Solving
4 34 (15.89%) DevOps
5 31 (14.49%) ITIL
6 30 (14.02%) Platform Engineering
7 29 (13.55%) Service Management
8 27 (12.62%) Configuration Management
8 27 (12.62%) Continuous Improvement
9 25 (11.68%) Incident Response
10 24 (11.21%) Migration
10 24 (11.21%) Patch Management
11 21 (9.81%) Agile
11 21 (9.81%) Analytics
11 21 (9.81%) Customer Service
12 20 (9.35%) CI/CD
13 17 (7.94%) Incident Management
13 17 (7.94%) SIEM
14 16 (7.48%) Business Intelligence
15 15 (7.01%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 64 (29.91%) PowerShell
2 42 (19.63%) Python
3 38 (17.76%) SQL
4 22 (10.28%) Groovy
5 19 (8.88%) Java
6 13 (6.07%) Perl
7 6 (2.80%) Bash
7 6 (2.80%) VBScript
8 2 (0.93%) Bicep
8 2 (0.93%) Go
8 2 (0.93%) JavaScript
8 2 (0.93%) VB
9 1 (0.47%) Ladder Logic
9 1 (0.47%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 86 (40.19%) Security Cleared
2 76 (35.51%) SC Cleared
3 20 (9.35%) Degree
4 18 (8.41%) AWS Certification
4 18 (8.41%) Microsoft Certification
5 17 (7.94%) Azure Certification
6 9 (4.21%) DV Cleared
7 7 (3.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 6 (2.80%) MCP
9 5 (2.34%) MCDST
10 4 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (1.40%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (1.40%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 3 (1.40%) MCSE
12 2 (0.93%) A+ Certification
12 2 (0.93%) CCNA
12 2 (0.93%) Cisco Certification
12 2 (0.93%) ISEB
12 2 (0.93%) ISTQB
12 2 (0.93%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (3.74%) SLA
2 7 (3.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 7 (3.27%) NIST
3 4 (1.87%) SOC 2
4 3 (1.40%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.93%) QA
6 1 (0.47%) IEC 61131
6 1 (0.47%) PMO
System Software
1 91 (42.52%) Active Directory
2 31 (14.49%) Docker
3 22 (10.28%) DFS Replication
4 12 (5.61%) VMware Infrastructure
5 10 (4.67%) Dovecot
5 10 (4.67%) Postfix
5 10 (4.67%) Squid
6 7 (3.27%) Terminal Services
7 6 (2.80%) Firmware
7 6 (2.80%) Hyper-V
8 3 (1.40%) vSphere
9 2 (0.93%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.93%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.47%) Snort
10 1 (0.47%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 35 (16.36%) Terraform
2 33 (15.42%) SCCM
3 24 (11.21%) Grafana
4 22 (10.28%) Prometheus
5 16 (7.48%) Microsoft Intune
6 13 (6.07%) Ansible
7 11 (5.14%) Nessus
8 10 (4.67%) Proxmox
9 9 (4.21%) Kubernetes
10 3 (1.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 2 (0.93%) Argo
11 2 (0.93%) Jamf Pro
11 2 (0.93%) SCOM
11 2 (0.93%) vCenter Server
12 1 (0.47%) Kibana
12 1 (0.47%) NetBackup
12 1 (0.47%) PowerCLI
12 1 (0.47%) Progress Chef
12 1 (0.47%) SolarWinds Orion
12 1 (0.47%) WSUS
Vendors
1 68 (31.78%) Microsoft
2 31 (14.49%) ServiceNow
3 24 (11.21%) Oracle
4 19 (8.88%) Cisco
4 19 (8.88%) VMware
5 18 (8.41%) AppDynamics
5 18 (8.41%) Splunk
6 17 (7.94%) Dynatrace
7 16 (7.48%) CyberArk
8 15 (7.01%) BeyondTrust
9 10 (4.67%) Jaspersoft
10 5 (2.34%) Apple
10 5 (2.34%) Atlassian
10 5 (2.34%) Broadcom
10 5 (2.34%) Citrix
10 5 (2.34%) iManage
10 5 (2.34%) Mitel
10 5 (2.34%) SAP
11 4 (1.87%) Dell
11 4 (1.87%) IBM