Microsoft Windows
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for Windows skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Windows over the 6 months to 20 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
20 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 19 14 18
Rank change year-on-year -5 +4 0
Contract jobs citing Windows 3,474 5,631 7,713
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 8.17% 9.83% 8.73%
As % of the Operating Systems category 61.09% 60.87% 58.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,409 3,955 5,326
10th Percentile £163 £163 £150
25th Percentile £213 £231 £210
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £450 £425
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +5.88% +6.25%
75th Percentile £575 £600 £575
90th Percentile £675 £675 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £400 £388 £325
% change year-on-year +3.23% +19.23% -7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 287 450
10th Percentile £11.82 £13.29 £13.00
25th Percentile £14.00 £16.25 £15.00
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.50 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +12.50% +23.23%
75th Percentile £25.00 £50.42 £44.92
90th Percentile £65.00 £65.40 £62.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £20.00 £18.70
% change year-on-year -12.50% +6.95% +17.39%

All Operating Systems
UK

Windows is in the Operating Systems category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for operating system skills 5,687 9,251 13,104
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 13.37% 16.16% 14.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,850 6,458 8,915
10th Percentile £185 £190 £175
25th Percentile £300 £338 £340
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £503 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.33% +0.57% +11.11%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £613
90th Percentile £700 £719 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £425
% change year-on-year -5.26% +11.76% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 393 404 594
10th Percentile £12.75 £14.08 £13.25
25th Percentile £15.50 £17.74 £15.89
Median hourly rate £22.15 £39.05 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -43.28% +73.56% +28.57%
75th Percentile £60.75 £64.13 £52.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.50 £30.00 £20.00
% change year-on-year -25.00% +50.00% +21.21%

Windows
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Windows as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Windows in the UK

Windows
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Windows.

Daily rate trend for Windows in the UK

Windows
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Windows over the 6 months to 20 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Windows.

Hourly rate trend for Windows in the UK

Windows
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Windows over the 6 months to 20 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Windows in the UK

Windows
Top 17 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Windows within the UK over the 6 months to 20 May 2024. 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
England -3 3,112 £400 -11.11% 2,075
UK excluding London -2 2,110 £400 +3.23% 1,708
London -6 1,154 £400 -20.00% 528
Work from Home -9 844 £450 -5.26% 694
South East +1 681 £450 +20.00% 469
North of England -2 420 £325 -13.33% 381
South West -1 332 £500 +9.59% 250
Midlands +1 321 £338 -10.00% 294
North West -5 230 £325 -23.53% 180
West Midlands -1 183 £363 -17.61% 169
Scotland -9 170 £370 -1.33% 95
Yorkshire -1 167 £325 -3.70% 172
East of England -10 152 £305 +1.67% 226
East Midlands +5 136 £273 -16.15% 125
Wales -9 28 £288 -33.33% 34
North East +4 24 £450 +89.47% 33
Northern Ireland -11 11 £450 +164.71% 15

Windows
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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
1 413 (11.89%) Microsoft Exchange
2 230 (6.62%) SharePoint
3 101 (2.91%) Confluence
4 80 (2.30%) IIS
5 36 (1.04%) Skype for Business
6 35 (1.01%) SharePoint Server
7 34 (0.98%) Exchange Server 2010
8 31 (0.89%) Apache
8 31 (0.89%) Exchange Server 2013
9 23 (0.66%) Exchange Server 2007
10 22 (0.63%) Tomcat
11 20 (0.58%) JBoss
12 19 (0.55%) CMS
13 16 (0.46%) nginx
14 15 (0.43%) Exchange Server 2003
15 11 (0.32%) BizTalk Server
16 9 (0.26%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
17 6 (0.17%) Oracle Self-Service HR
18 4 (0.12%) IBM Notes
18 4 (0.12%) SAS
Applications
1 425 (12.23%) Microsoft Office
2 105 (3.02%) Microsoft Excel
3 36 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (0.32%) MS Visio
5 7 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.14%) Trello
8 4 (0.12%) Acrobat
9 3 (0.086%) Adobe Premiere
10 2 (0.058%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 2 (0.058%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.029%) Chatbot
11 1 (0.029%) InfoPath
11 1 (0.029%) Simulink
Business Applications
1 12 (0.35%) Elite 3E
2 10 (0.29%) Temenos T24
3 9 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
4 7 (0.20%) Shopify
4 7 (0.20%) Teamcenter
5 5 (0.14%) Dynamics GP
6 4 (0.12%) LabWindows
6 4 (0.12%) OPENHousing
6 4 (0.12%) SystmOne
7 3 (0.086%) Eikon
7 3 (0.086%) Loan IQ
7 3 (0.086%) NetSuite
8 2 (0.058%) Advent Geneva
8 2 (0.058%) BusinessWorks
8 2 (0.058%) Front Arena
8 2 (0.058%) ION MarketView
8 2 (0.058%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.058%) Oracle General Ledger
8 2 (0.058%) Oracle Payables
8 2 (0.058%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 931 (26.80%) Microsoft 365
2 830 (23.89%) Azure
3 286 (8.23%) AWS
4 233 (6.71%) Entra ID
5 91 (2.62%) OneDrive
6 80 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
7 67 (1.93%) PaaS
8 63 (1.81%) IaaS
9 52 (1.50%) Power Platform
10 51 (1.47%) SaaS
11 44 (1.27%) Azure Monitor
12 43 (1.24%) GitHub
13 37 (1.07%) Azure Stack
14 36 (1.04%) Azure Storage
15 35 (1.01%) GCP
16 33 (0.95%) OpenShift
16 33 (0.95%) WhatsApp
17 31 (0.89%) Cloud Computing
18 28 (0.81%) Amazon EC2
19 24 (0.69%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 428 (12.32%) Firewall
2 364 (10.48%) DNS
3 259 (7.46%) VPN
4 235 (6.76%) DHCP
5 175 (5.04%) LAN
6 156 (4.49%) SAN
6 156 (4.49%) WAN
7 134 (3.86%) TCP/IP
8 97 (2.79%) Wireless
9 75 (2.16%) Wi-Fi
10 71 (2.04%) Network Security
11 63 (1.81%) Internet
12 53 (1.53%) VLAN
13 49 (1.41%) NAS
14 47 (1.35%) Skype
15 41 (1.18%) Remote Desktop
16 40 (1.15%) BGP
17 32 (0.92%) VoIP
18 31 (0.89%) FTP
19 28 (0.81%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 277 (7.97%) SQL Server
2 59 (1.70%) Relational Database
3 48 (1.38%) MySQL
4 37 (1.07%) Elasticsearch
5 36 (1.04%) RDBMS
6 32 (0.92%) Power BI
7 31 (0.89%) PostgreSQL
8 30 (0.86%) Oracle Database
9 27 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
10 24 (0.69%) MongoDB
11 20 (0.58%) Hadoop
12 19 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
13 17 (0.49%) Big Data
14 14 (0.40%) DB2
15 11 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
16 8 (0.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 7 (0.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
17 7 (0.20%) Tableau
18 6 (0.17%) BigQuery
19 5 (0.14%) NonStop SQL
Development Applications
1 166 (4.78%) JIRA
2 120 (3.45%) Git
3 99 (2.85%) Jenkins
4 47 (1.35%) Visual Studio
5 38 (1.09%) Bitbucket
6 37 (1.07%) TeamCity
7 34 (0.98%) Artifactory
8 32 (0.92%) GitLab
9 28 (0.81%) Robot Framework
10 27 (0.78%) MSI
11 24 (0.69%) Subversion
12 23 (0.66%) Sonatype Nexus
13 22 (0.63%) Eclipse
14 20 (0.58%) Selenium
15 15 (0.43%) Maven
16 11 (0.32%) Rational DOORS
17 10 (0.29%) SonarQube
18 9 (0.26%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
19 8 (0.23%) GoogleTest
20 7 (0.20%) Gradle
General
1 998 (28.73%) Social Skills
2 474 (13.64%) Finance
3 314 (9.04%) Public Sector
4 310 (8.92%) Analytical Skills
5 160 (4.61%) Banking
6 132 (3.80%) Organisational Skills
7 103 (2.96%) Telecoms
8 79 (2.27%) Manufacturing
9 74 (2.13%) Marketing
10 71 (2.04%) Presentation Skills
11 64 (1.84%) Legal
12 54 (1.55%) Front Office
13 50 (1.44%) Electronics
14 48 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
15 47 (1.35%) Investment Banking
16 38 (1.09%) Military
16 38 (1.09%) Retail
17 30 (0.86%) Financial Institution
18 25 (0.72%) Law
19 24 (0.69%) French Language
Job Titles
1 467 (13.44%) Support Engineer
2 434 (12.49%) Analyst
3 302 (8.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 260 (7.48%) IT Support
5 231 (6.65%) Senior
6 224 (6.45%) Architect
7 223 (6.42%) Desktop Support
8 195 (5.61%) IT Engineer
9 185 (5.33%) Desktop Engineer
10 172 (4.95%) Windows Engineer
11 162 (4.66%) Administrator
12 151 (4.35%) Service Analyst
13 140 (4.03%) Service Desk Analyst
14 139 (4.00%) 2nd Line Support
14 139 (4.00%) Desktop Support Engineer
15 125 (3.60%) Support Analyst
16 107 (3.08%) IT Support Engineer
17 97 (2.79%) Lead
17 97 (2.79%) Systems Administrator
18 96 (2.76%) 2nd Line Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 126 (3.63%) .NET
2 62 (1.78%) Node.js
3 55 (1.58%) Middleware
4 45 (1.30%) REST
5 44 (1.27%) LDAP
6 37 (1.07%) Web Services
7 36 (1.04%) Elastic Stack
8 35 (1.01%) .NET Framework
8 35 (1.01%) HTML
8 35 (1.01%) XML
9 25 (0.72%) ASP.NET
10 24 (0.69%) JSON
10 24 (0.69%) WPF
11 23 (0.66%) ARM Templates
11 23 (0.66%) CSS
11 23 (0.66%) WinForms
12 22 (0.63%) Apache NiFi
12 22 (0.63%) SOAP
13 21 (0.60%) SAML
14 20 (0.58%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 176 (5.07%) PKI
2 157 (4.52%) Data Centre
3 111 (3.20%) Management Information System
4 98 (2.82%) Replication
5 89 (2.56%) Video Conferencing
6 77 (2.22%) Driving Licence
7 76 (2.19%) Public Cloud
8 75 (2.16%) Clustering
9 72 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
10 57 (1.64%) Onboarding
11 55 (1.58%) iPhone
12 50 (1.44%) Client/Server
12 50 (1.44%) NHS
13 42 (1.21%) Private Cloud
14 37 (1.07%) Smartphone
15 35 (1.01%) iPad
16 32 (0.92%) Product Ownership
17 30 (0.86%) Security Operations Centre
18 29 (0.83%) Cloud Native
18 29 (0.83%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 965 (27.78%) Windows Server
2 855 (24.61%) Windows 10
3 808 (23.26%) Linux
4 241 (6.94%) Unix
5 226 (6.51%) Windows Server 2012
6 215 (6.19%) Windows 7
7 211 (6.07%) Windows Server 2016
8 191 (5.50%) Windows Server 2019
9 187 (5.38%) Apple iOS
10 154 (4.43%) Android
11 128 (3.68%) Mac OS
12 110 (3.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 68 (1.96%) Windows Server 2008
14 37 (1.07%) Mac OS X
14 37 (1.07%) VMS
15 35 (1.01%) Ubuntu
16 33 (0.95%) Windows Server 2003
17 27 (0.78%) Solaris
18 24 (0.69%) Windows XP
19 22 (0.63%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 544 (15.66%) Customer Service
2 522 (15.03%) Problem-Solving
3 519 (14.94%) ITIL
4 399 (11.49%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 341 (9.82%) Agile
6 337 (9.70%) DevOps
7 329 (9.47%) Migration
8 211 (6.07%) CI/CD
9 187 (5.38%) Cybersecurity
10 158 (4.55%) Service Management
11 154 (4.43%) Disaster Recovery
12 150 (4.32%) Change Management
13 148 (4.26%) Mobile Device Management
14 130 (3.74%) Service Delivery
15 124 (3.57%) ITSM
16 119 (3.43%) Analytics
17 111 (3.20%) Risk Management
18 107 (3.08%) Time Management
19 105 (3.02%) Computer Science
19 105 (3.02%) Release Management
Programming Languages
1 598 (17.21%) PowerShell
2 368 (10.59%) SQL
3 278 (8.00%) Python
4 169 (4.86%) C#
5 95 (2.73%) Java
6 94 (2.71%) C++
7 77 (2.22%) Bash
8 68 (1.96%) JavaScript
9 57 (1.64%) VBScript
10 54 (1.55%) VB
11 45 (1.30%) T-SQL
12 39 (1.12%) Shell Script
13 37 (1.07%) Perl
13 37 (1.07%) PL/SQL
14 26 (0.75%) VBA
15 22 (0.63%) Bicep
16 21 (0.60%) C
17 14 (0.40%) Go
18 11 (0.32%) F#
18 11 (0.32%) R
Qualifications
1 986 (28.38%) Security Cleared
2 496 (14.28%) SC Cleared
3 457 (13.15%) DV Cleared
4 371 (10.68%) Degree
5 167 (4.81%) Microsoft Certification
6 82 (2.36%) MCSE
7 65 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
8 61 (1.76%) CCNA
9 58 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
10 49 (1.41%) MCSA
11 45 (1.30%) Azure Certification
12 43 (1.24%) A+ Certification
13 40 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
14 36 (1.04%) MCP
15 33 (0.95%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 30 (0.86%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 29 (0.83%) CCNP
18 28 (0.81%) BPSS Clearance
19 27 (0.78%) Master's Degree
20 24 (0.69%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 199 (5.73%) SLA
2 117 (3.37%) QA
3 38 (1.09%) NIST
4 37 (1.07%) Disclosure Scotland
4 37 (1.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 35 (1.01%) Government Security Classifications
6 32 (0.92%) GDPR
7 22 (0.63%) PCI DSS
8 17 (0.49%) Accessibility
9 15 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
10 12 (0.35%) ISO 9001
11 11 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
12 10 (0.29%) ISO 9000
13 8 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 8 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.20%) RMADS
15 6 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
16 5 (0.14%) ISO 15022
16 5 (0.14%) PMO
17 4 (0.12%) NCSC
System Software
1 1,376 (39.61%) Active Directory
2 403 (11.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 168 (4.84%) Hyper-V
4 86 (2.48%) VMware ESXi
5 79 (2.27%) Docker
5 79 (2.27%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (2.01%) vSphere
7 67 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
8 62 (1.78%) Firmware
9 51 (1.47%) VMware NSX
10 38 (1.09%) XenApp
11 36 (1.04%) Virtual Servers
12 29 (0.83%) BitLocker
13 24 (0.69%) NFS
14 20 (0.58%) XenDesktop
15 18 (0.52%) VMware Workstation
16 16 (0.46%) HDFS
17 15 (0.43%) Terminal Services
18 13 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
19 12 (0.35%) KVM
Systems Management
1 553 (15.92%) SCCM
2 289 (8.32%) Microsoft Intune
3 174 (5.01%) Ansible
4 132 (3.80%) Kubernetes
5 124 (3.57%) Terraform
6 121 (3.48%) WSUS
7 110 (3.17%) SCOM
8 69 (1.99%) vCenter Server
9 63 (1.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 63 (1.81%) Jamf Pro
10 61 (1.76%) NetBackup
11 50 (1.44%) Puppet
12 33 (0.95%) Grafana
12 33 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
13 31 (0.89%) EMC NetWorker
14 26 (0.75%) Nagios
15 25 (0.72%) Progress Chef
15 25 (0.72%) Prometheus
16 22 (0.63%) Kibana
17 21 (0.60%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 1,457 (41.94%) Microsoft
2 588 (16.93%) VMware
3 254 (7.31%) Citrix
4 198 (5.70%) Cisco
5 192 (5.53%) ServiceNow
6 189 (5.44%) Oracle
7 178 (5.12%) Apple
8 141 (4.06%) HP
9 98 (2.82%) Veeam
10 96 (2.76%) Splunk
11 92 (2.65%) Dell
12 82 (2.36%) Red Hat
13 77 (2.22%) SAP
14 63 (1.81%) EMC
15 61 (1.76%) Atlassian
16 58 (1.67%) IBM
17 56 (1.61%) Google
18 46 (1.32%) NetApp
19 41 (1.18%) Palo Alto
20 35 (1.01%) Veritas