Microsoft Contract Job Trends in Central London

Microsoft
London > Central London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Central London 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 12 May 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
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 10 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -5 +5
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 305 289 393
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 12.49% 14.60% 16.21%
As % of the Vendors category 30.20% 32.51% 37.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 219 183 306
10th Percentile £312 £263 £261
25th Percentile £425 £369 £426
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -6.98% +1.18%
75th Percentile £638 £625 £662
90th Percentile £755 £711 £756
London median daily rate £515 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +2.95% +0.05% -7.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 4 4
10th Percentile £22.67 £23.34 -
25th Percentile £25.43 £25.34 £12.75
Median hourly rate £31.38 £27.76 £15.25
Median % change year-on-year +13.05% +82.03% -70.95%
75th Percentile £37.24 £68.68 £20.25
90th Percentile £39.95 £139.97 £24.30
London median hourly rate £27.00 £23.80 £18.80
% change year-on-year +13.45% +26.63% -29.74%

All Vendors
Central London

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 Central London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 1,010 889 1,040
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 41.38% 44.90% 42.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 649 566 767
10th Percentile £362 £306 £296
25th Percentile £440 £431 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.82% - -
75th Percentile £675 £675 £675
90th Percentile £775 £750 £775
London median daily rate £525 £550 £548
% change year-on-year -4.55% +0.46% -2.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 11 6
10th Percentile - £26.45 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.75 £28.23 £13.56
Median hourly rate £22.27 £31.00 £19.75
Median % change year-on-year -28.18% +56.96% -5.95%
75th Percentile £34.13 £53.75 £23.75
90th Percentile £41.86 £100.00 £25.38
London median hourly rate £35.50 £29.07 £22.50
% change year-on-year +22.12% +29.20% -25.62%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in Central London

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in Central London

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in Central London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in Central London over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in Central London

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in Central London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in Central London over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in Central London

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in Central London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the Central London region over the 6 months to 12 May 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
City of London +4 290 £525 +5.00% 212
West End of London +2 7 £500 +11.11% 6
Kensington and Chelsea 0 4 £588 - 2
City of Westminster -4 4 £560 -11.11% 7
Southwark -3 1 £188 -21.33% 1
Lambeth - 1 £350 - 3
Microsoft
London

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Central London 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 31 (10.16%) SharePoint
2 14 (4.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (2.62%) Confluence
4 5 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.33%) Apache
5 1 (0.33%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.33%) SAS
Applications
1 29 (9.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (8.20%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (5.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (4.92%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.33%) Adobe After Effects
6 1 (0.33%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.33%) Photoshop
6 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.33%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (2.95%) Aladdin
1 9 (2.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.66%) Exchequer
2 2 (0.66%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.33%) BASE24
3 1 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.33%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.33%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.33%) SAP FI-AR
3 1 (0.33%) SAP MM
3 1 (0.33%) SAP Oil and Gas
3 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.33%) Veritas eDiscovery
3 1 (0.33%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 121 (39.67%) Azure
2 67 (21.97%) Microsoft 365
3 63 (20.66%) Power Platform
4 27 (8.85%) Dynamics 365
4 27 (8.85%) Entra ID
5 24 (7.87%) Power Automate
6 22 (7.21%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (6.89%) AWS
7 21 (6.89%) PowerApps
8 15 (4.92%) Microsoft Copilot
8 15 (4.92%) Microsoft Purview
9 14 (4.59%) GitHub
10 12 (3.93%) GCP
10 12 (3.93%) SaaS
11 10 (3.28%) Azure Data Factory
11 10 (3.28%) Snowflake
12 9 (2.95%) Azure AI
13 7 (2.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 7 (2.30%) Copilot Studio
13 7 (2.30%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.93%) Firewall
2 11 (3.61%) DNS
3 7 (2.30%) Network Security
3 7 (2.30%) VPN
4 4 (1.31%) DHCP
5 2 (0.66%) Intranet
5 2 (0.66%) LAN
5 2 (0.66%) Unified Communications
5 2 (0.66%) WAN
5 2 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.33%) IPsec
6 1 (0.33%) IPv4
6 1 (0.33%) IPv6
6 1 (0.33%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.33%) Multicast
6 1 (0.33%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.33%) SAN
6 1 (0.33%) SSL
6 1 (0.33%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (11.80%) Power BI
2 15 (4.92%) SQL Server
3 13 (4.26%) Data Warehouse
3 13 (4.26%) Metadata
4 8 (2.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (2.62%) Tableau
5 6 (1.97%) Data Lake
5 6 (1.97%) PostgreSQL
5 6 (1.97%) Relational Database
6 5 (1.64%) Azure SQL Database
6 5 (1.64%) Snowflake Schema
7 3 (0.98%) MySQL
7 3 (0.98%) Semantic Layer
8 2 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
8 2 (0.66%) Metadata Repository
8 2 (0.66%) Oracle Database
8 2 (0.66%) Power Query
8 2 (0.66%) RDBMS
8 2 (0.66%) SQLPlus
8 2 (0.66%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 12 (3.93%) JIRA
2 6 (1.97%) Git
3 3 (0.98%) GitLab
3 3 (0.98%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.66%) ERwin
4 2 (0.66%) Postman
4 2 (0.66%) Toad
5 1 (0.33%) Artifactory
5 1 (0.33%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.33%) Cucumber
5 1 (0.33%) Oracle Forms
5 1 (0.33%) PowerBuilder
5 1 (0.33%) Selenium
5 1 (0.33%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.33%) SpecFlow
5 1 (0.33%) Terragrunt
5 1 (0.33%) TestRail
5 1 (0.33%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.33%) Zephyr
General
1 97 (31.80%) Social Skills
2 84 (27.54%) Finance
3 48 (15.74%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (7.54%) Public Sector
5 21 (6.89%) Banking
6 11 (3.61%) Legal
7 9 (2.95%) Investment Banking
8 7 (2.30%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (1.97%) Front Office
9 6 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.97%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (1.97%) Retail
9 6 (1.97%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.64%) Military
11 4 (1.31%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.31%) Marketing
12 3 (0.98%) Back Office
12 3 (0.98%) Law
12 3 (0.98%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 44 (14.43%) Architect
2 42 (13.77%) Analyst
3 41 (13.44%) Senior
4 28 (9.18%) Developer
5 25 (8.20%) Consultant
6 22 (7.21%) Business Analyst
7 15 (4.92%) Data Engineer
8 13 (4.26%) Support Engineer
9 12 (3.93%) Azure Engineer
10 11 (3.61%) Data Architect
10 11 (3.61%) Project Manager
11 9 (2.95%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 9 (2.95%) Cloud Engineer
11 9 (2.95%) IT Support
11 9 (2.95%) Lead
11 9 (2.95%) Microsoft Engineer
12 8 (2.62%) IT Engineer
12 8 (2.62%) Technical Architect
13 7 (2.30%) Platform Engineer
13 7 (2.30%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (1.97%) JSON
2 5 (1.64%) Kafka
2 5 (1.64%) Middleware
2 5 (1.64%) PySpark
2 5 (1.64%) REST
3 4 (1.31%) .NET
3 4 (1.31%) CSS
3 4 (1.31%) HTML
3 4 (1.31%) RESTful
4 3 (0.98%) Microsoft Graph
4 3 (0.98%) Playwright
4 3 (0.98%) XML
5 2 (0.66%) GraphQL
5 2 (0.66%) J2EE
5 2 (0.66%) NumPy
5 2 (0.66%) Pandas
5 2 (0.66%) React
5 2 (0.66%) SAML
5 2 (0.66%) scikit-learn
5 2 (0.66%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 14 (4.59%) Cloud Native
1 14 (4.59%) Onboarding
2 9 (2.95%) AI Agents
3 8 (2.62%) Product Ownership
3 8 (2.62%) Security Posture
4 7 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
5 6 (1.97%) Management Information System
6 5 (1.64%) Data Structures
6 5 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (1.64%) Equities
6 5 (1.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 5 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (1.31%) Fixed Income
7 4 (1.31%) PMI
7 4 (1.31%) Virtual Team
8 3 (0.98%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (0.98%) BYOD
8 3 (0.98%) Clustering
8 3 (0.98%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 31 (10.16%) Windows
2 7 (2.30%) Windows 10
3 6 (1.97%) Mac OS
4 4 (1.31%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.66%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.66%) Linux
5 2 (0.66%) Unix
6 1 (0.33%) Android
6 1 (0.33%) VMS
6 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (15.08%) Stakeholder Management
2 45 (14.75%) AI
2 45 (14.75%) Analytics
3 44 (14.43%) Problem-Solving
4 42 (13.77%) Business Intelligence
4 42 (13.77%) Migration
5 40 (13.11%) Agile
5 40 (13.11%) CI/CD
6 38 (12.46%) DevOps
7 35 (11.48%) Data Modelling
8 33 (10.82%) Data Governance
9 28 (9.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 26 (8.52%) Roadmaps
11 25 (8.20%) Decision-Making
12 22 (7.21%) Data Engineering
13 21 (6.89%) Continuous Improvement
13 21 (6.89%) ETL
14 19 (6.23%) Business Strategy
14 19 (6.23%) Validation
15 18 (5.90%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 51 (16.72%) SQL
2 33 (10.82%) Python
3 25 (8.20%) PowerShell
4 10 (3.28%) Java
5 9 (2.95%) C#
6 5 (1.64%) Kusto Query Language
7 4 (1.31%) Bash
7 4 (1.31%) Bicep
8 3 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 3 (0.98%) JavaScript
8 3 (0.98%) PL/SQL
8 3 (0.98%) T-SQL
9 2 (0.66%) C
9 2 (0.66%) Perl
9 2 (0.66%) PHP
9 2 (0.66%) Shell Script
9 2 (0.66%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.33%) COBOL
10 1 (0.33%) Google Apps Script
10 1 (0.33%) ProC
Qualifications
1 42 (13.77%) Security Cleared
2 27 (8.85%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.56%) Degree
4 11 (3.61%) Microsoft Certification
5 8 (2.62%) DV Cleared
6 7 (2.30%) Azure Certification
7 6 (1.97%) PMI Certification
8 5 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
8 5 (1.64%) CISM
8 5 (1.64%) CISSP
9 4 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.98%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 3 (0.98%) PMP
10 3 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
11 2 (0.66%) CompTIA CySA+
11 2 (0.66%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.66%) GIAC
11 2 (0.66%) Network+ Certification
11 2 (0.66%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.33%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (7.87%) Data Quality
2 19 (6.23%) GDPR
3 12 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 11 (3.61%) QA
5 9 (2.95%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (2.62%) PMO
7 6 (1.97%) NIST
8 5 (1.64%) Accessibility
9 4 (1.31%) SLA
10 3 (0.98%) GRC
10 3 (0.98%) IFRS
10 3 (0.98%) MiFID
10 3 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.66%) ISO 20022
11 2 (0.66%) NCSC
12 1 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.33%) IFRS 17
12 1 (0.33%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.33%) P3O
12 1 (0.33%) UCITS
System Software
1 31 (10.16%) Active Directory
2 12 (3.93%) Docker
3 7 (2.30%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.33%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 23 (7.54%) Microsoft Intune
2 11 (3.61%) Kubernetes
2 11 (3.61%) Terraform
3 8 (2.62%) SCCM
4 3 (0.98%) Ansible
4 3 (0.98%) Jamf Pro
5 2 (0.66%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 2 (0.66%) Grafana
5 2 (0.66%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.33%) AirWatch
6 1 (0.33%) Autotask
6 1 (0.33%) Kibana
6 1 (0.33%) Opsgenie
6 1 (0.33%) Puppet
6 1 (0.33%) Salt
6 1 (0.33%) WSUS
Vendors
1 24 (7.87%) Databricks
2 13 (4.26%) Salesforce
3 11 (3.61%) Oracle
4 10 (3.28%) Google
4 10 (3.28%) SAP
4 10 (3.28%) ServiceNow
5 7 (2.30%) Foundry
5 7 (2.30%) Informatica
6 6 (1.97%) OpenAI
7 5 (1.64%) Charles River
7 5 (1.64%) Citrix
7 5 (1.64%) Palo Alto
7 5 (1.64%) Workday
8 4 (1.31%) iManage
9 3 (0.98%) Anaplan
9 3 (0.98%) Apple
9 3 (0.98%) Cisco
9 3 (0.98%) Splunk
9 3 (0.98%) Trend Micro
10 2 (0.66%) Guidewire