Microsoft Contract Job Trends in Cambridge

Microsoft
Cambridgeshire > Cambridge

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Cambridge requiring knowledge or experience of Microsoft products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Microsoft over the 6 months leading up to 5 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two 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
5 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 19 6
Rank change year-on-year +14 -13 +9
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 35 7 25
As % of all contract jobs in Cambridge 18.82% 4.49% 13.59%
As % of the Vendors category 38.89% 11.29% 50.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 5 5
10th Percentile £259 £241 £130
25th Percentile £363 £400 £155
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £454 £250
Median % change year-on-year +7.38% +81.60% -
75th Percentile £588 £488 £488
90th Percentile £625 £495 -
Cambridgeshire median daily rate £488 £450 £213
% change year-on-year +8.33% +111.76% -34.62%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £42.25 - -
Median hourly rate £43.50 - -
75th Percentile £44.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
Cambridgeshire median hourly rate £16.00 £16.23 £14.16
% change year-on-year -1.42% +14.62% +4.27%

All Vendors
Cambridge

Microsoft falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services in Cambridge.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 90 62 50
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cambridge 48.39% 39.74% 27.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 28 22
10th Percentile £363 £311 £124
25th Percentile £438 £406 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £445 £475
Median % change year-on-year +23.60% -6.32% +5.56%
75th Percentile £624 £588 £519
90th Percentile £675 £616 £560
Cambridgeshire median daily rate £488 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +8.33% -5.26% +5.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £23.16 - -
Median hourly rate £23.83 - -
75th Percentile £29.55 - -
90th Percentile £38.67 - -
Cambridgeshire median hourly rate £23.83 £16.23 £14.16
% change year-on-year +46.80% +14.62% -8.65%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in Cambridge

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Microsoft relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Cambridge.

Microsoft job vacancy trend in Cambridge

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in Cambridge

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cambridge citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Cambridge citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in Cambridge

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in Cambridge over the 6 months to 5 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in Cambridge

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in Cambridge

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cambridge citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Cambridge citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Cambridge 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 1 (2.86%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (8.57%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (5.71%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (2.86%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (2.86%) Windchill
Cloud Services
1 26 (74.29%) Azure
2 12 (34.29%) Azure AKS
2 12 (34.29%) PaaS
3 10 (28.57%) GitHub
3 10 (28.57%) GitHub Copilot
4 9 (25.71%) Azure Functions
4 9 (25.71%) Serverless
5 6 (17.14%) Azure DevOps
6 4 (11.43%) AWS
6 4 (11.43%) GCP
7 3 (8.57%) Azure Sentinel
8 2 (5.71%) Dynamics 365
8 2 (5.71%) Power Platform
9 1 (2.86%) Azure API Management
9 1 (2.86%) Entra ID
9 1 (2.86%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 4 (11.43%) Firewall
2 1 (2.86%) DHCP
2 1 (2.86%) DNS
2 1 (2.86%) Network Security
2 1 (2.86%) SAN
2 1 (2.86%) TCP/IP
2 1 (2.86%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (5.71%) Power BI
2 1 (2.86%) Amazon Aurora
2 1 (2.86%) Amazon RDS
2 1 (2.86%) MS Access
2 1 (2.86%) MySQL
2 1 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
2 1 (2.86%) SAP HANA
2 1 (2.86%) SQL Server
2 1 (2.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 1 (2.86%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 2 (5.71%) Hudson
1 2 (5.71%) JMeter
1 2 (5.71%) Postman
1 2 (5.71%) Selenium
2 1 (2.86%) JIRA
General
1 3 (8.57%) Finance
2 2 (5.71%) General Ledger
2 2 (5.71%) Presentation Skills
2 2 (5.71%) Social Skills
3 1 (2.86%) Billing
3 1 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
3 1 (2.86%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 7 (20.00%) Senior
2 6 (17.14%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
2 6 (17.14%) Developer
3 3 (8.57%) .NET Developer
3 3 (8.57%) Automation Engineer
3 3 (8.57%) Security Engineer
3 3 (8.57%) Senior Developer
4 2 (5.71%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
4 2 (5.71%) Azure Engineer
4 2 (5.71%) Consultant
4 2 (5.71%) Data Scientist
4 2 (5.71%) IFS Consultant
4 2 (5.71%) Lead
4 2 (5.71%) QA Leader
4 2 (5.71%) Senior Software Developer
4 2 (5.71%) Software Developer
4 2 (5.71%) Test Leader
5 1 (2.86%) Cloud Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Principal Engineer
5 1 (2.86%) Project Support Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (51.43%) .NET
2 13 (37.14%) RESTful
3 11 (31.43%) PyTorch
3 11 (31.43%) TensorFlow
4 10 (28.57%) Semantic Kernel
5 2 (5.71%) Pandas
5 2 (5.71%) scikit-learn
6 1 (2.86%) CSS
6 1 (2.86%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 20 (57.14%) Cloud Native
2 11 (31.43%) Algorithms
3 3 (8.57%) Cyber Threat
3 3 (8.57%) Onboarding
4 1 (2.86%) NHS
4 1 (2.86%) Private Cloud
4 1 (2.86%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 3 (8.57%) Windows
2 2 (5.71%) Windows Server
3 1 (2.86%) CentOS
3 1 (2.86%) Linux
3 1 (2.86%) Ubuntu
3 1 (2.86%) Windows Server 2003
3 1 (2.86%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (60.00%) AI
2 19 (54.29%) Agile
3 18 (51.43%) Machine Learning
3 18 (51.43%) Problem-Solving
4 16 (45.71%) LLM
4 16 (45.71%) Prompt Engineering
4 16 (45.71%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
5 15 (42.86%) Test Automation
6 14 (40.00%) Data Privacy
7 12 (34.29%) API Management
7 12 (34.29%) Software Engineering
8 10 (28.57%) Deep Learning
8 10 (28.57%) Scrum
9 9 (25.71%) API Design
9 9 (25.71%) Data Pipeline
10 8 (22.86%) Data Science
10 8 (22.86%) DevOps
10 8 (22.86%) Validation
11 7 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
12 5 (14.29%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 19 (54.29%) Python
2 6 (17.14%) PowerShell
3 2 (5.71%) SQL
4 1 (2.86%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 11 (31.43%) MCP
2 6 (17.14%) Degree
3 5 (14.29%) Security Cleared
4 3 (8.57%) SC Cleared
5 1 (2.86%) DV Cleared
5 1 (2.86%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (42.86%) EU AI Act
2 14 (40.00%) NIST
3 4 (11.43%) QA
4 1 (2.86%) SLA
System Software
1 2 (5.71%) Docker
2 1 (2.86%) Active Directory
2 1 (2.86%) Hyper-V
2 1 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 5 (14.29%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 1 (2.86%) SCCM
2 1 (2.86%) Terraform
Vendors
1 10 (28.57%) Foundry
2 3 (8.57%) Google
2 3 (8.57%) IFS
2 3 (8.57%) Palo Alto
2 3 (8.57%) Splunk
3 1 (2.86%) Aruba
3 1 (2.86%) Cisco
3 1 (2.86%) Oracle
3 1 (2.86%) SAP
3 1 (2.86%) VMware