Microsoft Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Microsoft
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the City of 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 1 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
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 10 5
Rank change year-on-year +3 -5 +7
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 300 258 354
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 13.03% 14.69% 16.11%
As % of the Vendors category 30.90% 32.99% 37.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 163 274
10th Percentile £320 £263 £312
25th Percentile £413 £369 £441
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -9.09% -
75th Percentile £650 £625 £670
90th Percentile £760 £710 £771
Central London median daily rate £525 £500 £545
% change year-on-year +5.00% -8.26% +1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 4
10th Percentile £22.67 £36.05 -
25th Percentile £25.43 £57.13 £12.75
Median hourly rate £31.38 £98.50 £15.25
Median % change year-on-year -68.14% +545.90% -70.95%
75th Percentile £37.24 £146.13 £20.25
90th Percentile £39.95 £170.95 £24.30
Central London median hourly rate £23.87 £27.76 £15.25
% change year-on-year -14.02% +82.03% -70.95%

All Vendors
City of 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 the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 971 782 940
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 42.18% 44.53% 42.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 627 488 690
10th Percentile £357 £313 £324
25th Percentile £430 £450 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% - -1.79%
75th Percentile £675 £675 £680
90th Percentile £775 £754 £776
Central London median daily rate £530 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -3.64% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 8 6
10th Percentile - £25.77 £12.75
25th Percentile £18.75 £30.10 £13.56
Median hourly rate £19.50 £38.58 £19.75
Median % change year-on-year -49.45% +95.32% -5.95%
75th Percentile £25.77 £72.81 £23.75
90th Percentile £41.65 £126.25 £25.38
Central London median hourly rate £22.27 £31.00 £18.93
% change year-on-year -28.18% +63.76% -11.95%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in the City of London

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in the City of London over the 6 months to 1 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the City of London

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in the City of London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in the City of London over the 6 months to 1 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the City of London

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of 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 28 (9.33%) SharePoint
2 12 (4.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (2.67%) Confluence
4 5 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.67%) Apache
5 2 (0.67%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.33%) SAS
Applications
1 29 (9.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 21 (7.00%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (5.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (5.33%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.67%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.33%) Adobe After Effects
5 1 (0.33%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.33%) Photoshop
5 1 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.33%) Trello
Business Applications
1 10 (3.33%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (3.00%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.67%) Exchequer
3 2 (0.67%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.67%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.33%) BASE24
4 1 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
4 1 (0.33%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.33%) SAP FI-AR
4 1 (0.33%) SAP MM
4 1 (0.33%) SAP Oil and Gas
4 1 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.33%) Veritas eDiscovery
4 1 (0.33%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 117 (39.00%) Azure
2 67 (22.33%) Microsoft 365
3 60 (20.00%) Power Platform
4 26 (8.67%) Entra ID
5 24 (8.00%) AWS
5 24 (8.00%) Dynamics 365
6 22 (7.33%) Power Automate
7 19 (6.33%) Azure DevOps
8 18 (6.00%) PowerApps
9 16 (5.33%) Microsoft Copilot
10 15 (5.00%) GitHub
11 13 (4.33%) Microsoft Purview
12 12 (4.00%) GCP
12 12 (4.00%) SaaS
13 10 (3.33%) Azure AI
13 10 (3.33%) Azure Data Factory
13 10 (3.33%) Snowflake
14 8 (2.67%) Azure Machine Learning
14 8 (2.67%) Copilot Studio
14 8 (2.67%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 12 (4.00%) DNS
2 10 (3.33%) Firewall
3 8 (2.67%) VPN
4 6 (2.00%) Network Security
5 5 (1.67%) DHCP
6 2 (0.67%) Intranet
6 2 (0.67%) LAN
6 2 (0.67%) Unified Communications
6 2 (0.67%) WAN
6 2 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
7 1 (0.33%) Extranet
7 1 (0.33%) IPsec
7 1 (0.33%) IPv4
7 1 (0.33%) IPv6
7 1 (0.33%) iSCSI
7 1 (0.33%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.33%) SAN
7 1 (0.33%) SSL
7 1 (0.33%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 35 (11.67%) Power BI
2 14 (4.67%) Metadata
3 13 (4.33%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (3.67%) SQL Server
5 9 (3.00%) Tableau
6 7 (2.33%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.33%) PostgreSQL
7 6 (2.00%) Relational Database
8 5 (1.67%) Snowflake Schema
9 4 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (1.00%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
10 3 (1.00%) MySQL
10 3 (1.00%) NoSQL
11 2 (0.67%) Delta Lake
11 2 (0.67%) Metadata Repository
11 2 (0.67%) Oracle Database
11 2 (0.67%) Power Query
11 2 (0.67%) RDBMS
11 2 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (3.67%) JIRA
2 6 (2.00%) Git
3 3 (1.00%) GitLab
3 3 (1.00%) Jenkins
4 2 (0.67%) ERwin
4 2 (0.67%) 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%) Postman
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 95 (31.67%) Social Skills
2 85 (28.33%) Finance
3 53 (17.67%) Analytical Skills
4 22 (7.33%) Public Sector
5 20 (6.67%) Banking
6 9 (3.00%) Legal
7 8 (2.67%) Investment Banking
7 8 (2.67%) Organisational Skills
8 7 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.33%) Presentation Skills
9 6 (2.00%) Front Office
9 6 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (2.00%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.67%) Military
11 4 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.33%) Law
12 3 (1.00%) Back Office
12 3 (1.00%) Manufacturing
12 3 (1.00%) Marketing
12 3 (1.00%) Retail
Job Titles
1 43 (14.33%) Architect
2 42 (14.00%) Analyst
3 39 (13.00%) Senior
4 27 (9.00%) Developer
5 26 (8.67%) Consultant
6 23 (7.67%) Business Analyst
7 16 (5.33%) Data Engineer
8 15 (5.00%) Support Engineer
9 12 (4.00%) Azure Engineer
10 11 (3.67%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 11 (3.67%) Lead
10 11 (3.67%) Project Manager
11 10 (3.33%) IT Engineer
11 10 (3.33%) IT Support
12 9 (3.00%) Microsoft Engineer
13 8 (2.67%) Azure Architect
13 8 (2.67%) Cloud Engineer
13 8 (2.67%) Data Architect
13 8 (2.67%) IT Support Engineer
14 7 (2.33%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (2.00%) Middleware
1 6 (2.00%) REST
2 5 (1.67%) .NET
2 5 (1.67%) JSON
2 5 (1.67%) Kafka
2 5 (1.67%) PySpark
3 4 (1.33%) Microsoft Graph
3 4 (1.33%) OAuth
3 4 (1.33%) SAML
4 3 (1.00%) CSS
4 3 (1.00%) HTML
4 3 (1.00%) NumPy
4 3 (1.00%) OpenID
4 3 (1.00%) Pandas
4 3 (1.00%) Playwright
4 3 (1.00%) RESTful
4 3 (1.00%) scikit-learn
4 3 (1.00%) YAML
5 2 (0.67%) LangChain
5 2 (0.67%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 17 (5.67%) Cloud Native
2 13 (4.33%) Onboarding
3 10 (3.33%) AI Agents
4 9 (3.00%) Product Ownership
5 7 (2.33%) Security Posture
6 6 (2.00%) Management Information System
7 5 (1.67%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.67%) Hybrid Cloud
7 5 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.67%) PMI
8 4 (1.33%) Equities
8 4 (1.33%) Fixed Income
8 4 (1.33%) Virtual Team
9 3 (1.00%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (1.00%) Clustering
9 3 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
9 3 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 3 (1.00%) Low-Code
9 3 (1.00%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 30 (10.00%) Windows
2 9 (3.00%) Windows 10
3 5 (1.67%) Mac OS
4 4 (1.33%) Linux
4 4 (1.33%) Unix
4 4 (1.33%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.33%) Android
5 1 (0.33%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.33%) VMS
5 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 48 (16.00%) AI
2 47 (15.67%) Stakeholder Management
3 42 (14.00%) Agile
3 42 (14.00%) Migration
4 41 (13.67%) Analytics
4 41 (13.67%) Business Intelligence
5 39 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
6 36 (12.00%) CI/CD
6 36 (12.00%) DevOps
7 35 (11.67%) Data Governance
8 33 (11.00%) Data Modelling
9 31 (10.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 26 (8.67%) Roadmaps
11 24 (8.00%) Decision-Making
12 22 (7.33%) Continuous Improvement
13 21 (7.00%) Data Engineering
13 21 (7.00%) ETL
13 21 (7.00%) Machine Learning
14 20 (6.67%) Business Strategy
15 18 (6.00%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 51 (17.00%) SQL
2 35 (11.67%) Python
3 23 (7.67%) PowerShell
4 11 (3.67%) C#
4 11 (3.67%) Java
5 5 (1.67%) Kusto Query Language
6 4 (1.33%) Bash
7 3 (1.00%) Bicep
7 3 (1.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 3 (1.00%) PL/SQL
7 3 (1.00%) Shell Script
7 3 (1.00%) T-SQL
8 2 (0.67%) C
8 2 (0.67%) Perl
8 2 (0.67%) PHP
8 2 (0.67%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.33%) COBOL
9 1 (0.33%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.33%) ProC
9 1 (0.33%) VB
Qualifications
1 46 (15.33%) Security Cleared
2 30 (10.00%) SC Cleared
3 20 (6.67%) Degree
4 9 (3.00%) DV Cleared
4 9 (3.00%) Microsoft Certification
5 7 (2.33%) Azure Certification
5 7 (2.33%) PMI Certification
6 5 (1.67%) CISM
6 5 (1.67%) CISSP
7 4 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.00%) TOGAF Certification
9 2 (0.67%) CompTIA CySA+
9 2 (0.67%) CompTIA Security+
9 2 (0.67%) GIAC
9 2 (0.67%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 2 (0.67%) Network+ Certification
9 2 (0.67%) PMP
9 2 (0.67%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (7.33%) Data Quality
2 20 (6.67%) GDPR
3 13 (4.33%) QA
4 12 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 10 (3.33%) Cyber Essentials
6 8 (2.67%) PMO
7 5 (1.67%) NIST
8 4 (1.33%) Accessibility
8 4 (1.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (1.33%) SLA
9 3 (1.00%) IFRS
9 3 (1.00%) MiFID
10 2 (0.67%) GRC
10 2 (0.67%) ISO 20022
10 2 (0.67%) ISO 8583
10 2 (0.67%) NCSC
10 2 (0.67%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.33%) Basel III
11 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.33%) Solvency II
System Software
1 32 (10.67%) Active Directory
2 12 (4.00%) Docker
3 5 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
5 1 (0.33%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 22 (7.33%) Microsoft Intune
2 14 (4.67%) Terraform
3 11 (3.67%) Kubernetes
4 8 (2.67%) SCCM
5 4 (1.33%) Ansible
6 3 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
7 2 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 2 (0.67%) Grafana
7 2 (0.67%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.33%) AirWatch
8 1 (0.33%) Autotask
8 1 (0.33%) Kibana
8 1 (0.33%) Opsgenie
8 1 (0.33%) Puppet
8 1 (0.33%) Salt
8 1 (0.33%) WSUS
Vendors
1 24 (8.00%) Databricks
2 13 (4.33%) Salesforce
3 11 (3.67%) Oracle
3 11 (3.67%) ServiceNow
4 10 (3.33%) SAP
5 9 (3.00%) Google
6 8 (2.67%) Foundry
7 7 (2.33%) Informatica
8 6 (2.00%) OpenAI
9 5 (1.67%) Charles River
9 5 (1.67%) Workday
10 4 (1.33%) Citrix
10 4 (1.33%) iManage
11 3 (1.00%) Anaplan
11 3 (1.00%) Apple
11 3 (1.00%) Cisco
11 3 (1.00%) Splunk
11 3 (1.00%) Trend Micro
12 2 (0.67%) Fortinet
12 2 (0.67%) Guidewire