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 29 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
29 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 7 9
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,573 7,692 10,981
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.99% 13.70% 12.54%
As % of the Vendors category 30.60% 31.64% 31.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,645 5,547 7,739
10th Percentile £189 £200 £185
25th Percentile £338 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - +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 474 223 439
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £11.18
25th Percentile £13.05 £16.13 £13.50
Median hourly rate £15.58 £22.53 £18.55
Median % change year-on-year -30.87% +21.46% +9.12%
75th Percentile £25.00 £53.55 £37.00
90th Percentile £55.91 £66.00 £52.64
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 18,215 24,312 35,251
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.45% 43.30% 40.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,347 16,240 23,513
10th Percentile £263 £270 £300
25th Percentile £405 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - +10.53%
75th Percentile £625 £645 £638
90th Percentile £738 £739 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +9.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,139 652 877
10th Percentile £12.13 £15.00 £12.25
25th Percentile £14.48 £18.89 £15.25
Median hourly rate £22.15 £42.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -47.88% +97.67% +2.38%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £47.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £37.50 £19.17
% change year-on-year -42.77% +95.64% +4.91%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 4,829 £488 -2.45% 4,887
UK excluding London 0 2,892 £450 - 3,759
London +3 2,173 £500 -9.09% 1,304
Work from Home 0 1,711 £500 -4.76% 2,145
South East 0 818 £465 +2.20% 801
North of England +3 654 £450 -5.26% 1,050
South West +1 512 £500 -4.76% 461
North West +1 397 £450 -5.26% 577
Midlands -4 352 £400 -5.88% 745
Scotland +3 286 £350 -12.50% 230
West Midlands -3 232 £410 -7.34% 468
East of England -1 225 £426 +0.29% 406
Yorkshire +2 218 £425 -10.53% 349
East Midlands -3 113 £400 +6.67% 278
Wales 0 73 £513 -2.38% 114
North East +9 41 £378 +45.38% 133
Northern Ireland +5 35 £575 +223.94% 64

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
1 599 (10.75%) SharePoint
2 393 (7.05%) Microsoft Exchange
3 105 (1.88%) Confluence
4 71 (1.27%) CMS
5 38 (0.68%) IIS
6 37 (0.66%) 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 9 (0.16%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
16 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
16 7 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
16 7 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 943 (16.92%) Microsoft Office
2 683 (12.26%) Microsoft Excel
3 324 (5.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 146 (2.62%) Microsoft Project
5 119 (2.14%) MS Visio
6 105 (1.88%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.34%) 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 (3.01%) 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 16 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
6 15 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.23%) Magento
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.23%) Primavera
8 12 (0.22%) Endur
9 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
12 8 (0.14%) DELMIA
12 8 (0.14%) Dynamics NAV
12 8 (0.14%) NetSuite
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,879 (33.72%) Azure
2 1,227 (22.02%) Microsoft 365
3 698 (12.52%) Power Platform
4 445 (7.98%) Dynamics 365
5 417 (7.48%) Entra ID
6 413 (7.41%) Azure DevOps
7 362 (6.50%) AWS
8 267 (4.79%) PowerApps
9 249 (4.47%) Power Automate
10 160 (2.87%) PaaS
11 149 (2.67%) SaaS
12 136 (2.44%) OneDrive
13 120 (2.15%) IaaS
14 112 (2.01%) GCP
15 98 (1.76%) Azure Monitor
16 97 (1.74%) Serverless
17 94 (1.69%) GitHub
18 91 (1.63%) Azure Data Factory
19 87 (1.56%) Azure Sentinel
20 84 (1.51%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 330 (5.92%) Firewall
2 273 (4.90%) DNS
3 187 (3.36%) DHCP
4 177 (3.18%) VPN
5 135 (2.42%) LAN
6 115 (2.06%) WAN
7 109 (1.96%) SAN
8 106 (1.90%) TCP/IP
9 91 (1.63%) Wireless
10 81 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
11 66 (1.18%) Network Security
12 61 (1.09%) VoIP
13 44 (0.79%) VLAN
14 41 (0.74%) Skype
15 38 (0.68%) Intranet
16 37 (0.66%) BGP
16 37 (0.66%) Internet
16 37 (0.66%) Remote Desktop
17 35 (0.63%) NAS
18 26 (0.47%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 541 (9.71%) SQL Server
2 455 (8.16%) Power BI
3 149 (2.67%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (2.23%) Data Lake
5 93 (1.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 81 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
6 81 (1.45%) Relational Database
7 80 (1.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 73 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
9 69 (1.24%) NoSQL
10 65 (1.17%) MySQL
11 52 (0.93%) Big Data
12 46 (0.83%) Tableau
13 34 (0.61%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 31 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
15 30 (0.54%) Metadata
16 28 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
17 27 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
18 25 (0.45%) RDBMS
19 23 (0.41%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 259 (4.65%) JIRA
2 156 (2.80%) Git
3 78 (1.40%) Visual Studio
4 70 (1.26%) Jenkins
5 56 (1.00%) GitLab
6 49 (0.88%) Postman
7 37 (0.66%) Selenium
8 36 (0.65%) SpecFlow
9 30 (0.54%) MSI
10 25 (0.45%) TeamCity
11 22 (0.39%) Maven
12 20 (0.36%) Cypress.io
12 20 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 18 (0.32%) Team Foundation Server
13 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.27%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.25%) Bitbucket
16 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
16 13 (0.23%) Subversion
17 12 (0.22%) Eclipse
General
1 1,966 (35.28%) Social Skills
2 1,017 (18.25%) Finance
3 687 (12.33%) Analytical Skills
4 560 (10.05%) Public Sector
5 257 (4.61%) Banking
6 201 (3.61%) Marketing
7 187 (3.36%) Telecoms
8 185 (3.32%) Organisational Skills
9 179 (3.21%) Legal
10 178 (3.19%) Presentation Skills
11 150 (2.69%) Retail
12 146 (2.62%) Manufacturing
13 70 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
14 62 (1.11%) Local Government
15 59 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
16 58 (1.04%) Back Office
16 58 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 57 (1.02%) Electronics
18 49 (0.88%) Financial Institution
18 49 (0.88%) Law
Job Titles
1 745 (13.37%) Analyst
2 618 (11.09%) Developer
3 571 (10.25%) Architect
4 466 (8.36%) Senior
5 385 (6.91%) Consultant
6 278 (4.99%) Lead
7 268 (4.81%) Support Engineer
8 211 (3.79%) Project Manager
9 205 (3.68%) IT Support
10 195 (3.50%) Administrator
10 195 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 183 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
12 142 (2.55%) Azure Engineer
13 141 (2.53%) Service Analyst
14 134 (2.40%) IT Engineer
15 130 (2.33%) Senior Developer
16 126 (2.26%) Support Analyst
17 121 (2.17%) Desktop Support
18 120 (2.15%) 2nd Line Support
19 113 (2.03%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 361 (6.48%) .NET
2 174 (3.12%) XML
3 125 (2.24%) .NET Framework
4 119 (2.14%) HTML
5 114 (2.05%) CSS
6 108 (1.94%) .NET Core
7 102 (1.83%) React
8 101 (1.81%) Web Services
9 84 (1.51%) REST
10 81 (1.45%) JSON
11 71 (1.27%) AngularJS
12 61 (1.09%) ASP.NET
13 55 (0.99%) ARM Templates
14 54 (0.97%) Kafka
15 46 (0.83%) Middleware
16 40 (0.72%) RESTful
17 39 (0.70%) Elastic Stack
17 39 (0.70%) Spring
18 38 (0.68%) Node.js
18 38 (0.68%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 274 (4.92%) Management Information System
2 158 (2.84%) Product Ownership
3 149 (2.67%) PKI
4 128 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
5 120 (2.15%) Data Centre
6 101 (1.81%) Cyber Threat
7 97 (1.74%) Data Structures
8 81 (1.45%) Onboarding
9 79 (1.42%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 77 (1.38%) Cyber Defence
11 75 (1.35%) Security Posture
12 67 (1.20%) NHS
13 62 (1.11%) Driving Licence
14 58 (1.04%) Cloud Native
14 58 (1.04%) Public Cloud
15 57 (1.02%) Video Conferencing
16 47 (0.84%) Data Protection Act
17 46 (0.83%) Clustering
18 43 (0.77%) iPhone
18 43 (0.77%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,462 (26.23%) Windows
2 499 (8.95%) Windows 10
3 469 (8.42%) Windows Server
4 365 (6.55%) Linux
5 132 (2.37%) Windows Server 2012
5 132 (2.37%) Windows Server 2016
6 126 (2.26%) Windows Server 2019
7 123 (2.21%) Windows 7
8 91 (1.63%) Apple iOS
9 74 (1.33%) Android
10 65 (1.17%) Mac OS
11 63 (1.13%) Unix
12 40 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 30 (0.54%) Ubuntu
14 25 (0.45%) Mac OS X
15 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2008
16 21 (0.38%) VMS
16 21 (0.38%) Windows XP
17 17 (0.31%) Windows NT
18 13 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 994 (17.84%) Problem-Solving
2 985 (17.67%) Agile
3 743 (13.33%) DevOps
4 613 (11.00%) Customer Service
5 565 (10.14%) ITIL
6 545 (9.78%) Migration
7 529 (9.49%) Business Intelligence
8 519 (9.31%) Project Management
9 362 (6.50%) Analytics
10 360 (6.46%) Cybersecurity
11 353 (6.33%) CI/CD
12 331 (5.94%) Stakeholder Management
13 293 (5.26%) Change Management
14 281 (5.04%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 269 (4.83%) CRM
15 269 (4.83%) Project Delivery
16 256 (4.59%) Scrum
17 255 (4.58%) Service Delivery
18 252 (4.52%) Data Modelling
19 251 (4.50%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 660 (11.84%) SQL
2 613 (11.00%) PowerShell
3 427 (7.66%) C#
4 301 (5.40%) Python
5 187 (3.36%) JavaScript
6 156 (2.80%) Java
7 108 (1.94%) Bicep
8 78 (1.40%) T-SQL
9 73 (1.31%) TypeScript
10 49 (0.88%) Bash
11 39 (0.70%) VB
12 38 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.65%) C++
14 33 (0.59%) C
15 31 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 31 (0.56%) VBScript
16 29 (0.52%) PHP
17 28 (0.50%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.48%) PL/SQL
19 16 (0.29%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,145 (20.55%) Security Cleared
2 747 (13.40%) Degree
3 685 (12.29%) SC Cleared
4 467 (8.38%) DV Cleared
5 317 (5.69%) Microsoft Certification
6 166 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
7 139 (2.49%) Azure Certification
8 88 (1.58%) CISSP
9 80 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
9 80 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
10 74 (1.33%) Master's Degree
11 72 (1.29%) MCSE
12 65 (1.17%) CCNA
13 61 (1.09%) PMI Certification
13 61 (1.09%) PMP
14 55 (0.99%) APMP
15 52 (0.93%) MCSA
16 50 (0.90%) CCNP
16 50 (0.90%) ITIL Certification
17 49 (0.88%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 235 (4.22%) SLA
2 213 (3.82%) QA
3 136 (2.44%) PMO
4 120 (2.15%) NIST
5 96 (1.72%) GDPR
6 86 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 71 (1.27%) Accessibility
8 69 (1.24%) NIST 800
9 64 (1.15%) Data Quality
10 48 (0.86%) Disclosure Scotland
11 35 (0.63%) PCI DSS
12 34 (0.61%) Government Security Classifications
13 30 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
14 21 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.38%) WCAG
15 17 (0.31%) HIPAA
16 16 (0.29%) NCSC
17 13 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
18 12 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 10 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,178 (21.14%) Active Directory
2 279 (5.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 131 (2.35%) Hyper-V
4 104 (1.87%) Docker
5 91 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
6 71 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
6 71 (1.27%) vSphere
7 65 (1.17%) VMware ESXi
8 50 (0.90%) Firmware
9 38 (0.68%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
11 20 (0.36%) XenApp
12 18 (0.32%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.31%) Virtual Servers
13 17 (0.31%) XenDesktop
14 13 (0.23%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 10 (0.18%) Terminal Services
16 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 8 (0.14%) VMware Server
18 6 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 377 (6.76%) SCCM
2 319 (5.72%) Microsoft Intune
3 180 (3.23%) Kubernetes
4 169 (3.03%) Terraform
5 106 (1.90%) WSUS
6 92 (1.65%) SCOM
7 81 (1.45%) Ansible
8 76 (1.36%) Single Sign-On
9 52 (0.93%) Jamf Pro
9 52 (0.93%) vCenter Server
10 49 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 35 (0.63%) Grafana
12 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
13 26 (0.47%) Puppet
14 24 (0.43%) Kibana
14 24 (0.43%) Nessus
15 19 (0.34%) EMC NetWorker
15 19 (0.34%) OPNET
16 18 (0.32%) logstash
16 18 (0.32%) Sysprep
Vendors
1 412 (7.39%) VMware
2 308 (5.53%) Oracle
3 251 (4.50%) SAP
4 208 (3.73%) ServiceNow
5 204 (3.66%) Cisco
6 168 (3.01%) Google
7 156 (2.80%) Citrix
8 128 (2.30%) Salesforce
9 121 (2.17%) Apple
10 95 (1.70%) Dell
11 94 (1.69%) HP
12 88 (1.58%) Adobe
13 82 (1.47%) Databricks
14 77 (1.38%) Splunk
15 76 (1.36%) Atlassian
16 65 (1.17%) Veeam
17 53 (0.95%) CyberArk
18 52 (0.93%) Palo Alto
19 50 (0.90%) Qualys
20 49 (0.88%) Red Hat