Microsoft Windows
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring Windows skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 36 16 17
Rank change year-on-year -20 +1 -3
Permanent jobs citing Windows 4,197 4,712 8,856
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 4.25% 9.59% 8.77%
As % of the Operating Systems category 68.76% 68.13% 66.32%
Number of salaries quoted 3,316 3,518 7,081
10th Percentile £27,000 £26,250 £25,500
25th Percentile £30,000 £31,044 £29,290
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £40,000 £39,500 £40,000
Median % change year-on-year +1.27% -1.25% -8.57%
75th Percentile £55,000 £53,750 £56,250
90th Percentile £72,750 £72,825 £70,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £37,500 £37,500 £37,500
% change year-on-year - - -6.25%

All Operating Systems
UK

Windows falls under the Operating Systems category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring operating system skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 6,104 6,916 13,353
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 6.18% 14.08% 13.23%
Number of salaries quoted 4,617 4,613 10,210
10th Percentile £27,750 £27,000 £26,043
25th Percentile £31,250 £31,750 £31,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £45,000 £42,500 £46,000
Median % change year-on-year +5.88% -7.61% -12.38%
75th Percentile £67,500 £65,000 £62,500
90th Percentile £85,000 £81,250 £80,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £42,500 £40,000 £42,500
% change year-on-year +6.25% -5.88% -5.56%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Windows relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised.

Windows job vacancy trend in the UK

Windows
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Windows.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Windows

Windows
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing Windows over the 6 months to 16 July 2026.

Salary histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Top 19 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Windows within the UK over the 6 months to 16 July 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -20 3,874 £40,000 +2.56% 914
UK excluding London -19 3,215 £37,500 - 853
Work from Home -24 940 £42,500 - 311
London -12 888 £55,000 +4.76% 185
South East -16 851 £39,000 +1.76% 295
North of England -22 740 £35,500 +2.90% 201
Midlands -21 540 £37,000 +0.20% 110
South West -14 461 £37,500 +7.14% 108
North West -10 393 £35,000 - 111
East of England +4 365 £35,000 -18.60% 103
West Midlands -26 301 £40,000 +8.33% 57
Yorkshire -21 289 £35,000 +7.69% 59
East Midlands -16 238 £32,500 -1.52% 53
Scotland +35 116 £30,000 -33.33% 35
Wales -16 116 £40,000 -21.95% 21
North East -43 58 £42,500 +13.33% 38
Northern Ireland -46 19 £35,500 -32.38% 19
Isle of Man +5 6 £45,000 +30.43% 2
Channel Islands +1 1 £100,000 +81.82% 2

Windows
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 772 (18.39%) Microsoft Exchange
2 607 (14.46%) SharePoint
3 99 (2.36%) IIS
4 55 (1.31%) Confluence
5 27 (0.64%) Exchange Server 2013
6 24 (0.57%) Exchange Server 2007
6 24 (0.57%) Exchange Server 2010
7 23 (0.55%) Apache
8 13 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 12 (0.29%) nginx
10 10 (0.24%) CMS
11 8 (0.19%) WordPress
12 5 (0.12%) ColdFusion
13 4 (0.095%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 4 (0.095%) JBoss
13 4 (0.095%) SAS
14 2 (0.048%) Site Server
15 1 (0.024%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
15 1 (0.024%) NetWeaver
15 1 (0.024%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 470 (11.20%) Microsoft Office
2 115 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 35 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.24%) MS Visio
6 8 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.14%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.12%) DaVinci Resolve
8 5 (0.12%) SOLIDWORKS
9 4 (0.095%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 3 (0.071%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.048%) Sketch
12 1 (0.024%) Acrobat
12 1 (0.024%) Houdini
12 1 (0.024%) NUKE
12 1 (0.024%) Revit
Business Applications
1 15 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
2 10 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
3 6 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
3 6 (0.14%) Elite 3E
3 6 (0.14%) Fidessa
4 5 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
4 5 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
4 5 (0.12%) NetSuite
5 4 (0.095%) Exchequer
5 4 (0.095%) Line 50
5 4 (0.095%) Oracle EBS
5 4 (0.095%) Primavera
5 4 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
6 3 (0.071%) Alphatax
6 3 (0.071%) SAP Business One
6 3 (0.071%) SAP S/4HANA
7 2 (0.048%) Carpe Diem
7 2 (0.048%) Infor CloudSuite
7 2 (0.048%) Magento
7 2 (0.048%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 2,378 (56.66%) Microsoft 365
2 1,651 (39.34%) Azure
3 852 (20.30%) Entra ID
4 453 (10.79%) AWS
5 237 (5.65%) OneDrive
6 154 (3.67%) SaaS
7 111 (2.64%) Google Workspace
8 105 (2.50%) Power Platform
9 102 (2.43%) IaaS
10 94 (2.24%) PaaS
11 80 (1.91%) GCP
12 78 (1.86%) Azure DevOps
13 62 (1.48%) Microsoft Copilot
14 56 (1.33%) GitHub
15 55 (1.31%) Azure Sentinel
16 49 (1.17%) Mimecast
17 48 (1.14%) Power Automate
18 40 (0.95%) Nutanix
19 38 (0.91%) PowerApps
20 35 (0.83%) Cloudflare
Communications & Networking
1 951 (22.66%) DNS
2 904 (21.54%) Firewall
3 752 (17.92%) DHCP
4 547 (13.03%) VPN
5 445 (10.60%) TCP/IP
6 363 (8.65%) WAN
7 339 (8.08%) LAN
8 304 (7.24%) Wi-Fi
9 303 (7.22%) VLAN
10 187 (4.46%) VoIP
11 180 (4.29%) Wireless
12 118 (2.81%) Network Security
13 114 (2.72%) SAN
14 55 (1.31%) Internet
15 54 (1.29%) Remote Desktop
16 48 (1.14%) Broadband
17 38 (0.91%) NAS
18 37 (0.88%) SD-WAN
19 33 (0.79%) SSL
20 30 (0.71%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (7.39%) SQL Server
2 123 (2.93%) Amazon RDS
3 52 (1.24%) Power BI
4 42 (1.00%) PostgreSQL
5 41 (0.98%) MongoDB
6 40 (0.95%) Azure SQL Database
7 31 (0.74%) Relational Database
8 30 (0.71%) MySQL
9 28 (0.67%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 19 (0.45%) NoSQL
10 19 (0.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 16 (0.38%) Db2
12 13 (0.31%) Oracle Database
13 9 (0.21%) InfluxDB
14 8 (0.19%) Crystal Reports
15 6 (0.14%) Data Warehouse
16 5 (0.12%) Geospatial Data
17 4 (0.095%) Amazon Athena
17 4 (0.095%) Big Data
17 4 (0.095%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 151 (3.60%) JIRA
2 113 (2.69%) Git
3 66 (1.57%) GitLab
4 54 (1.29%) Jenkins
5 25 (0.60%) Bitbucket
6 17 (0.41%) Visual Studio
7 16 (0.38%) Chocolatey
8 15 (0.36%) Metasploit
9 12 (0.29%) Burp Suite
10 10 (0.24%) Octopus Deploy
10 10 (0.24%) Selenium
11 9 (0.21%) TeamCity
11 9 (0.21%) Visual Studio Code
12 7 (0.17%) Robot Framework
12 7 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 7 (0.17%) TestRail
13 6 (0.14%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 6 (0.14%) Cypress.io
13 6 (0.14%) MSI
13 6 (0.14%) Postman
General
1 1,756 (41.84%) Social Skills
2 418 (9.96%) Analytical Skills
3 403 (9.60%) Finance
4 199 (4.74%) Organisational Skills
5 171 (4.07%) Law
6 157 (3.74%) Legal
7 143 (3.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 132 (3.15%) Public Sector
8 132 (3.15%) Retail
9 129 (3.07%) Manufacturing
10 112 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
11 82 (1.95%) Telecoms
12 78 (1.86%) Banking
13 48 (1.14%) Advertising
14 46 (1.10%) Local Government
15 37 (0.88%) Aerospace
16 30 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
17 29 (0.69%) Back Office
18 28 (0.67%) Games
19 26 (0.62%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,281 (30.52%) IT Support
2 890 (21.21%) Support Engineer
3 817 (19.47%) IT Engineer
4 677 (16.13%) IT Support Engineer
5 636 (15.15%) Analyst
6 428 (10.20%) Senior
7 411 (9.79%) Support Analyst
8 349 (8.32%) Support Technician
9 337 (8.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 308 (7.34%) IT Technician
11 301 (7.17%) 2nd Line Support
12 278 (6.62%) IT Analyst
13 252 (6.00%) IT Support Technician
14 240 (5.72%) IT Support Analyst
15 201 (4.79%) Systems Engineer
16 186 (4.43%) 2nd Line Engineer
17 180 (4.29%) 1st Line Support
18 171 (4.07%) Lead
19 159 (3.79%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
20 113 (2.69%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (2.31%) .NET
2 68 (1.62%) HTML
3 53 (1.26%) CSS
4 40 (0.95%) JSON
5 36 (0.86%) Web Services
5 36 (0.86%) XML
6 31 (0.74%) Node.js
7 30 (0.71%) .NET Framework
8 26 (0.62%) XMPP
9 25 (0.60%) LDAP
10 23 (0.55%) Regular Expression
10 23 (0.55%) REST
11 22 (0.52%) ARM Templates
12 20 (0.48%) Elastic Stack
12 20 (0.48%) Middleware
13 19 (0.45%) MFC
14 17 (0.41%) ASP.NET
15 16 (0.38%) SAML
16 15 (0.36%) .NET Core
17 14 (0.33%) React
Miscellaneous
1 451 (10.75%) Driving Licence
2 341 (8.12%) Onboarding
3 185 (4.41%) Data Centre
4 180 (4.29%) Self-Motivation
5 135 (3.22%) Management Information System
6 132 (3.15%) Social Media
7 131 (3.12%) Hybrid Cloud
8 118 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
9 93 (2.22%) Security Posture
10 79 (1.88%) Video Conferencing
11 72 (1.72%) PKI
12 66 (1.57%) Public Cloud
13 64 (1.52%) Cyber Threat
14 61 (1.45%) Cloud Native
15 53 (1.26%) Replication
16 39 (0.93%) Clustering
17 38 (0.91%) Digital Media
18 37 (0.88%) iPhone
19 36 (0.86%) Analytical Mindset
20 35 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 1,615 (38.48%) Windows Server
2 895 (21.32%) Linux
3 610 (14.53%) Windows 10
4 329 (7.84%) Mac OS
5 242 (5.77%) Windows Server 2016
6 204 (4.86%) Android
7 182 (4.34%) Apple iOS
8 143 (3.41%) Windows Server 2019
9 76 (1.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 72 (1.72%) Unix
11 63 (1.50%) Windows Server 2012
12 49 (1.17%) Ubuntu
13 39 (0.93%) Windows 7
14 37 (0.88%) VMS
15 34 (0.81%) CentOS
16 23 (0.55%) Windows Server 2008
17 19 (0.45%) Windows 8
18 13 (0.31%) Mac OS X
19 9 (0.21%) Kali Linux
19 9 (0.21%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,278 (30.45%) Problem-Solving
2 1,008 (24.02%) Customer Service
3 708 (16.87%) ITIL
4 632 (15.06%) Continuous Improvement
5 599 (14.27%) Cybersecurity
6 482 (11.48%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 376 (8.96%) ITSM
8 374 (8.91%) Disaster Recovery
9 370 (8.82%) Mentoring
10 354 (8.43%) Service Delivery
11 285 (6.79%) Migration
12 244 (5.81%) Agile
13 240 (5.72%) Service Management
14 236 (5.62%) Project Delivery
15 234 (5.58%) CI/CD
16 230 (5.48%) DevOps
17 218 (5.19%) Root Cause Analysis
18 203 (4.84%) Infrastructure as Code
19 197 (4.69%) Customer Experience
20 190 (4.53%) SIEM
Programming Languages
1 650 (15.49%) PowerShell
2 353 (8.41%) SQL
3 309 (7.36%) Python
4 150 (3.57%) C#
5 133 (3.17%) Bash
6 92 (2.19%) C++
7 78 (1.86%) JavaScript
8 62 (1.48%) Java
9 46 (1.10%) Bicep
10 35 (0.83%) C
11 28 (0.67%) PHP
12 25 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
13 24 (0.57%) VBA
14 21 (0.50%) VB.NET
15 17 (0.41%) Ruby
16 15 (0.36%) T-SQL
16 15 (0.36%) VBScript
17 12 (0.29%) Go
17 12 (0.29%) Shell Script
18 11 (0.26%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 549 (13.08%) Security Cleared
2 491 (11.70%) Degree
3 347 (8.27%) SC Cleared
4 259 (6.17%) DBS Check
5 248 (5.91%) Microsoft Certification
6 157 (3.74%) DV Cleared
7 145 (3.45%) Azure Certification
8 142 (3.38%) Cisco Certification
9 102 (2.43%) CCNA
10 99 (2.36%) A+ Certification
11 58 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
12 49 (1.17%) CCNP
12 49 (1.17%) CompTIA Security+
13 47 (1.12%) Network+ Certification
14 45 (1.07%) AWS Certification
15 38 (0.91%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 35 (0.83%) CISSP
16 35 (0.83%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 33 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
18 32 (0.76%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 344 (8.20%) SLA
2 264 (6.29%) Cyber Essentials
3 167 (3.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 121 (2.88%) PCI DSS
5 98 (2.34%) GDPR
6 76 (1.81%) QA
7 65 (1.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 65 (1.55%) NIST
8 27 (0.64%) Accessibility
9 19 (0.45%) ISO 9001
10 8 (0.19%) NCSC
10 8 (0.19%) SOC 2
11 7 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 6 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
12 6 (0.14%) COBIT
12 6 (0.14%) ISO 22301
12 6 (0.14%) WCAG
13 5 (0.12%) DICOM
13 5 (0.12%) HL7
14 4 (0.095%) GRC
System Software
1 1,969 (46.91%) Active Directory
2 604 (14.39%) VMware Infrastructure
3 533 (12.70%) Hyper-V
4 157 (3.74%) vSphere
5 108 (2.57%) Docker
6 97 (2.31%) Virtual Desktop
7 91 (2.17%) Terminal Server
8 68 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
8 68 (1.62%) VMware ESXi
9 40 (0.95%) BitLocker
10 32 (0.76%) VMware NSX
11 25 (0.60%) Firmware
12 19 (0.45%) Virtual Servers
13 14 (0.33%) KVM
13 14 (0.33%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 11 (0.26%) Squid
15 9 (0.21%) DFS Replication
15 9 (0.21%) Terminal Services
16 7 (0.17%) VMware Workstation
17 6 (0.14%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 673 (16.04%) Microsoft Intune
2 233 (5.55%) SCCM
3 216 (5.15%) Terraform
4 152 (3.62%) Ansible
4 152 (3.62%) Kubernetes
5 67 (1.60%) Jamf Pro
6 51 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
7 50 (1.19%) vCenter Server
8 49 (1.17%) FortiGate
9 47 (1.12%) Grafana
10 43 (1.02%) Autotask
11 42 (1.00%) WSUS
12 35 (0.83%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 33 (0.79%) Proxmox
14 31 (0.74%) Nessus
15 28 (0.67%) ZABBIX
16 26 (0.62%) Argo
17 24 (0.57%) Prometheus
18 22 (0.52%) Failover Clustering
19 21 (0.50%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,730 (65.05%) Microsoft
2 887 (21.13%) VMware
3 313 (7.46%) Cisco
4 221 (5.27%) Veeam
5 193 (4.60%) ServiceNow
6 179 (4.26%) Splunk
7 157 (3.74%) Apple
8 154 (3.67%) SolarWinds
9 148 (3.53%) Google
10 118 (2.81%) Meraki
11 109 (2.60%) Citrix
12 101 (2.41%) Nimble Storage
13 96 (2.29%) Dell
14 95 (2.26%) HP
15 89 (2.12%) Brocade
16 88 (2.10%) Tanium
17 76 (1.81%) Oracle
18 75 (1.79%) Red Hat
19 73 (1.74%) Sophos
20 69 (1.64%) Fortinet