Microsoft Contracts

Microsoft
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for knowledge and experience of Microsoft products and/or services. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Microsoft over the 6 months to 28 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within the Microsoft Corporation.

6 months to
28 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 7 9
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,552 7,701 11,057
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.96% 13.69% 12.53%
As % of the Vendors category 30.51% 31.62% 31.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,640 5,556 7,789
10th Percentile £190 £200 £185
25th Percentile £338 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.50% - +11.11%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £425
% change year-on-year - +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 471 220 443
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £11.25
25th Percentile £13.00 £16.13 £13.50
Median hourly rate £15.17 £22.52 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.62% +21.70% +8.82%
75th Percentile £24.88 £53.08 £36.25
90th Percentile £55.00 £66.00 £52.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.00 £19.00 £16.50
% change year-on-year -21.05% +15.15% -2.94%

All Vendors
UK

Microsoft is in the Vendor Products and Services category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 18,197 24,353 35,500
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.49% 43.28% 40.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,359 16,278 23,675
10th Percentile £263 £271 £300
25th Percentile £405 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - +10.53%
75th Percentile £625 £644 £638
90th Percentile £738 £740 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +9.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,133 650 887
10th Percentile £12.13 £15.00 £12.25
25th Percentile £14.48 £18.75 £15.25
Median hourly rate £22.00 £42.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.24% +97.67% +2.38%
75th Percentile £57.33 £65.00 £47.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £63.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £37.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year -42.77% +97.37% +4.00%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 28 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 28 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
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 Microsoft within the UK over the 6 months to 28 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 0 4,808 £488 -2.50% 5,039
UK excluding London 0 2,872 £450 - 3,876
London +3 2,170 £500 -9.09% 1,344
Work from Home +1 1,705 £500 -4.76% 2,206
South East -1 814 £465 +3.33% 826
North of England +3 648 £450 -5.26% 1,077
South West +1 505 £500 -4.76% 479
North West +2 393 £450 -5.26% 585
Midlands -4 350 £400 -5.88% 775
Scotland +4 287 £350 -12.50% 246
West Midlands -3 235 £410 -7.61% 486
East of England 0 223 £428 +3.64% 405
Yorkshire +2 216 £425 -10.53% 366
East Midlands -4 108 £400 +6.67% 290
Wales 0 72 £513 -2.38% 118
North East +10 41 £378 +45.38% 135
Northern Ireland +6 34 £575 +223.94% 67

Microsoft
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
1 596 (10.73%) SharePoint
2 391 (7.04%) Microsoft Exchange
3 107 (1.93%) Confluence
4 71 (1.28%) CMS
5 40 (0.72%) IIS
6 37 (0.67%) Apache Spark
7 36 (0.65%) SharePoint Server
8 30 (0.54%) Skype for Business
9 23 (0.41%) Apache
10 16 (0.29%) Drupal
11 15 (0.27%) WordPress
12 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
13 10 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
14 8 (0.14%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
14 8 (0.14%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 944 (17.00%) Microsoft Office
2 682 (12.28%) Microsoft Excel
3 327 (5.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 147 (2.65%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (2.13%) MS Visio
6 105 (1.89%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.32%) Acrobat
8 16 (0.29%) Chatbot
9 15 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.20%) Photoshop
11 9 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
11 9 (0.16%) CATIA
12 7 (0.13%) Adobe Premiere
12 7 (0.13%) InDesign
13 6 (0.11%) Trello
14 3 (0.054%) InfoPath
15 2 (0.036%) AutoCAD
15 2 (0.036%) FileZilla
15 2 (0.036%) SPSS
16 1 (0.018%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 168 (3.03%) Dynamics CRM
2 46 (0.83%) Dynamics AX
3 24 (0.43%) Dynamics GP
4 18 (0.32%) Shopify
4 18 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 15 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
5 15 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 13 (0.23%) Magento
6 13 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
6 13 (0.23%) Primavera
7 12 (0.22%) Endur
8 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
11 8 (0.14%) DELMIA
11 8 (0.14%) Dynamics NAV
11 8 (0.14%) NetSuite
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,873 (33.74%) Azure
2 1,221 (21.99%) Microsoft 365
3 700 (12.61%) Power Platform
4 443 (7.98%) Dynamics 365
5 414 (7.46%) Entra ID
6 412 (7.42%) Azure DevOps
7 361 (6.50%) AWS
8 267 (4.81%) PowerApps
9 249 (4.48%) Power Automate
10 160 (2.88%) PaaS
11 150 (2.70%) SaaS
12 135 (2.43%) OneDrive
13 121 (2.18%) IaaS
14 111 (2.00%) GCP
15 97 (1.75%) Azure Monitor
16 96 (1.73%) Serverless
17 94 (1.69%) GitHub
18 91 (1.64%) Azure Data Factory
19 87 (1.57%) Azure Sentinel
20 84 (1.51%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 326 (5.87%) Firewall
2 273 (4.92%) DNS
3 186 (3.35%) DHCP
4 175 (3.15%) VPN
5 134 (2.41%) LAN
6 111 (2.00%) WAN
7 109 (1.96%) TCP/IP
8 108 (1.95%) SAN
9 91 (1.64%) Wireless
10 82 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.17%) Network Security
12 61 (1.10%) VoIP
13 46 (0.83%) VLAN
14 41 (0.74%) Skype
15 39 (0.70%) Remote Desktop
16 37 (0.67%) BGP
16 37 (0.67%) Internet
16 37 (0.67%) Intranet
17 36 (0.65%) NAS
18 26 (0.47%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 541 (9.74%) SQL Server
2 456 (8.21%) Power BI
3 149 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (2.23%) Data Lake
5 92 (1.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 81 (1.46%) Azure SQL Database
6 81 (1.46%) Relational Database
6 81 (1.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 73 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
8 68 (1.22%) NoSQL
9 66 (1.19%) MySQL
10 52 (0.94%) Big Data
11 48 (0.86%) Tableau
12 34 (0.61%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 32 (0.58%) Oracle Reports
14 30 (0.54%) Metadata
15 28 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
16 27 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
17 25 (0.45%) RDBMS
18 23 (0.41%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 261 (4.70%) JIRA
2 157 (2.83%) Git
3 78 (1.40%) Visual Studio
4 71 (1.28%) Jenkins
5 57 (1.03%) GitLab
6 47 (0.85%) Postman
7 37 (0.67%) Selenium
8 36 (0.65%) SpecFlow
9 30 (0.54%) MSI
10 25 (0.45%) TeamCity
11 22 (0.40%) Maven
12 21 (0.38%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 20 (0.36%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.32%) Team Foundation Server
14 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.27%) SonarQube
16 13 (0.23%) Bitbucket
16 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
16 13 (0.23%) Subversion
17 12 (0.22%) Eclipse
General
1 1,960 (35.30%) Social Skills
2 1,019 (18.35%) Finance
3 681 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
4 562 (10.12%) Public Sector
5 255 (4.59%) Banking
6 203 (3.66%) Marketing
7 187 (3.37%) Organisational Skills
8 185 (3.33%) Telecoms
9 177 (3.19%) Legal
9 177 (3.19%) Presentation Skills
10 149 (2.68%) Retail
11 145 (2.61%) Manufacturing
12 70 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
13 61 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
14 60 (1.08%) Local Government
15 59 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 58 (1.04%) Back Office
17 57 (1.03%) Electronics
18 49 (0.88%) Financial Institution
18 49 (0.88%) Law
Job Titles
1 738 (13.29%) Analyst
2 615 (11.08%) Developer
3 568 (10.23%) Architect
4 464 (8.36%) Senior
5 381 (6.86%) Consultant
6 278 (5.01%) Lead
7 267 (4.81%) Support Engineer
8 213 (3.84%) Project Manager
9 203 (3.66%) IT Support
10 195 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 193 (3.48%) Administrator
12 183 (3.30%) Solutions Architect
13 142 (2.56%) Azure Engineer
13 142 (2.56%) Service Analyst
14 135 (2.43%) IT Engineer
15 129 (2.32%) Senior Developer
16 123 (2.22%) Support Analyst
17 120 (2.16%) 2nd Line Support
17 120 (2.16%) Desktop Support
18 114 (2.05%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 362 (6.52%) .NET
2 174 (3.13%) XML
3 125 (2.25%) .NET Framework
4 119 (2.14%) HTML
5 114 (2.05%) CSS
6 108 (1.95%) .NET Core
7 102 (1.84%) React
8 101 (1.82%) Web Services
9 83 (1.49%) REST
10 81 (1.46%) JSON
11 71 (1.28%) AngularJS
12 61 (1.10%) ASP.NET
13 54 (0.97%) ARM Templates
13 54 (0.97%) Kafka
14 46 (0.83%) Middleware
15 39 (0.70%) RESTful
16 38 (0.68%) SailPoint
17 37 (0.67%) Node.js
17 37 (0.67%) SAML
17 37 (0.67%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 272 (4.90%) Management Information System
2 157 (2.83%) Product Ownership
3 146 (2.63%) PKI
4 127 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
5 120 (2.16%) Data Centre
6 97 (1.75%) Cyber Threat
6 97 (1.75%) Data Structures
7 81 (1.46%) Onboarding
8 75 (1.35%) Cyber Kill Chain
9 74 (1.33%) Security Posture
10 73 (1.31%) Cyber Defence
11 67 (1.21%) NHS
12 63 (1.13%) Driving Licence
13 59 (1.06%) Cloud Native
14 57 (1.03%) Video Conferencing
15 55 (0.99%) Public Cloud
16 47 (0.85%) Clustering
16 47 (0.85%) Data Protection Act
17 43 (0.77%) iPhone
17 43 (0.77%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,463 (26.35%) Windows
2 503 (9.06%) Windows 10
3 468 (8.43%) Windows Server
4 365 (6.57%) Linux
5 134 (2.41%) Windows Server 2012
6 131 (2.36%) Windows Server 2016
7 127 (2.29%) Windows 7
8 125 (2.25%) Windows Server 2019
9 87 (1.57%) Apple iOS
10 74 (1.33%) Android
11 65 (1.17%) Mac OS
12 63 (1.13%) Unix
13 41 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 30 (0.54%) Ubuntu
15 25 (0.45%) Mac OS X
16 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2008
17 21 (0.38%) VMS
17 21 (0.38%) Windows XP
18 17 (0.31%) Windows NT
19 13 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 996 (17.94%) Problem-Solving
2 986 (17.76%) Agile
3 744 (13.40%) DevOps
4 615 (11.08%) Customer Service
5 566 (10.19%) ITIL
6 549 (9.89%) Migration
7 531 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
8 518 (9.33%) Project Management
9 364 (6.56%) Analytics
10 353 (6.36%) CI/CD
11 352 (6.34%) Cybersecurity
12 331 (5.96%) Stakeholder Management
13 292 (5.26%) Change Management
14 282 (5.08%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 272 (4.90%) Project Delivery
16 269 (4.85%) CRM
17 256 (4.61%) Scrum
18 254 (4.57%) Service Delivery
19 251 (4.52%) Data Modelling
20 245 (4.41%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 659 (11.87%) SQL
2 611 (11.01%) PowerShell
3 428 (7.71%) C#
4 303 (5.46%) Python
5 187 (3.37%) JavaScript
6 154 (2.77%) Java
7 108 (1.95%) Bicep
8 79 (1.42%) T-SQL
9 73 (1.31%) TypeScript
10 51 (0.92%) Bash
11 38 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
11 38 (0.68%) VB
12 36 (0.65%) C++
13 33 (0.59%) C
14 31 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 30 (0.54%) VBScript
16 29 (0.52%) PHP
17 28 (0.50%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.49%) PL/SQL
19 16 (0.29%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,136 (20.46%) Security Cleared
2 745 (13.42%) Degree
3 681 (12.27%) SC Cleared
4 464 (8.36%) DV Cleared
5 315 (5.67%) Microsoft Certification
6 164 (2.95%) Computer Science Degree
7 139 (2.50%) Azure Certification
8 86 (1.55%) CISSP
9 80 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
10 79 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
11 73 (1.31%) Master's Degree
12 71 (1.28%) MCSE
13 66 (1.19%) CCNA
14 61 (1.10%) PMI Certification
14 61 (1.10%) PMP
15 58 (1.04%) APMP
16 52 (0.94%) MCSA
17 51 (0.92%) A+ Certification
18 49 (0.88%) CCNP
18 49 (0.88%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 236 (4.25%) SLA
2 214 (3.85%) QA
3 136 (2.45%) PMO
4 114 (2.05%) NIST
5 98 (1.77%) GDPR
6 85 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 70 (1.26%) Accessibility
8 65 (1.17%) NIST 800
9 64 (1.15%) Data Quality
10 49 (0.88%) Disclosure Scotland
11 35 (0.63%) PCI DSS
12 34 (0.61%) Government Security Classifications
13 29 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials
14 22 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 21 (0.38%) WCAG
16 17 (0.31%) HIPAA
17 16 (0.29%) NCSC
18 13 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
19 12 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
20 9 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,173 (21.13%) Active Directory
2 277 (4.99%) VMware Infrastructure
3 131 (2.36%) Hyper-V
4 105 (1.89%) Docker
5 91 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (1.26%) vSphere
7 68 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 67 (1.21%) VMware ESXi
9 51 (0.92%) Firmware
10 36 (0.65%) VMware NSX
11 22 (0.40%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.36%) XenApp
13 17 (0.31%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.31%) XenDesktop
14 16 (0.29%) Virtual Servers
15 13 (0.23%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 10 (0.18%) Terminal Services
17 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 8 (0.14%) VMware Server
19 6 (0.11%) KVM
Systems Management
1 376 (6.77%) SCCM
2 319 (5.75%) Microsoft Intune
3 177 (3.19%) Kubernetes
4 168 (3.03%) Terraform
5 104 (1.87%) WSUS
6 89 (1.60%) SCOM
7 79 (1.42%) Ansible
8 77 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
9 53 (0.95%) Jamf Pro
9 53 (0.95%) vCenter Server
10 50 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 35 (0.63%) Grafana
12 33 (0.59%) Prometheus
13 27 (0.49%) Puppet
14 24 (0.43%) Nessus
15 22 (0.40%) Kibana
16 20 (0.36%) EMC NetWorker
17 18 (0.32%) NetBackup
17 18 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 18 (0.32%) Sysprep
Vendors
1 410 (7.38%) VMware
2 305 (5.49%) Oracle
3 248 (4.47%) SAP
4 211 (3.80%) ServiceNow
5 200 (3.60%) Cisco
6 165 (2.97%) Google
7 155 (2.79%) Citrix
8 124 (2.23%) Salesforce
9 119 (2.14%) Apple
10 97 (1.75%) HP
11 95 (1.71%) Dell
12 89 (1.60%) Adobe
13 82 (1.48%) Databricks
14 79 (1.42%) Splunk
15 75 (1.35%) Atlassian
16 65 (1.17%) Veeam
17 54 (0.97%) CyberArk
18 51 (0.92%) Palo Alto
18 51 (0.92%) Qualys
19 49 (0.88%) Red Hat