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 August 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 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 5
Rank change year-on-year +2 -5 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 335 287 347
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 13.94% 15.29% 16.88%
As % of the Vendors category 33.33% 32.32% 38.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 245 189 269
10th Percentile £283 £281 £313
25th Percentile £446 £383 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -7.41% -1.82%
75th Percentile £656 £627 £650
90th Percentile £750 £721 £738
Central London median daily rate £550 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +10.00% -5.66% -1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 4
10th Percentile - £22.95 £19.30
25th Percentile £19.50 £24.38 £24.25
Median hourly rate £21.00 £28.50 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.32% +5.56% -48.57%
75th Percentile £22.50 £108.88 £43.38
90th Percentile - £156.05 £72.85
Central London median hourly rate £28.00 £28.50 £27.00
% change year-on-year -1.75% +5.56% -48.57%

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 1,005 888 904
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 41.82% 47.31% 43.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 679 571 645
10th Percentile £356 £325 £350
25th Percentile £450 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -1.35%
75th Percentile £659 £675 £665
90th Percentile £750 £751 £764
Central London median daily rate £538 £550 £538
% change year-on-year -2.27% +2.23% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 14 11
10th Percentile - £22.53 £16.00
25th Percentile £18.75 £26.91 £19.50
Median hourly rate £19.50 £38.58 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.45% +42.87% -25.52%
75th Percentile £25.12 £63.75 £115.00
90th Percentile £42.13 £89.67 £137.50
Central London median hourly rate £22.50 £32.83 £34.25
% change year-on-year -31.45% -4.16% +37.00%

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 August 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
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 40 (11.94%) SharePoint
2 21 (6.27%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.49%) Apache
4 5 (1.49%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.49%) Confluence
5 2 (0.60%) IIS
6 1 (0.30%) Exchange Server 2013
6 1 (0.30%) nginx
Applications
1 26 (7.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (3.58%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (2.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 3 (0.90%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.30%) Adobe Illustrator
5 1 (0.30%) Adobe Premiere
5 1 (0.30%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.30%) Final Cut Pro
5 1 (0.30%) Photoshop
Business Applications
1 14 (4.18%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (2.69%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
4 2 (0.60%) Dynamics NAV
4 2 (0.60%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.60%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.30%) Exchequer
5 1 (0.30%) iTrent
5 1 (0.30%) Oracle Retail
5 1 (0.30%) SAP CRM
5 1 (0.30%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.30%) SAP FI-AR
5 1 (0.30%) SAP MM
5 1 (0.30%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 1 (0.30%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 136 (40.60%) Azure
2 67 (20.00%) Microsoft 365
3 65 (19.40%) Power Platform
4 45 (13.43%) Entra ID
5 34 (10.15%) Azure DevOps
6 27 (8.06%) AWS
6 27 (8.06%) Dynamics 365
7 23 (6.87%) Power Automate
8 22 (6.57%) Microsoft Copilot
9 19 (5.67%) GCP
9 19 (5.67%) PowerApps
9 19 (5.67%) SaaS
10 16 (4.78%) GitHub
11 15 (4.48%) Azure Data Factory
11 15 (4.48%) Microsoft Purview
12 14 (4.18%) OneDrive
13 12 (3.58%) Serverless
14 10 (2.99%) Azure AI
14 10 (2.99%) Azure Logic Apps
14 10 (2.99%) Copilot Studio
Communications & Networking
1 26 (7.76%) DNS
2 19 (5.67%) DHCP
3 17 (5.07%) Firewall
4 12 (3.58%) TCP/IP
4 12 (3.58%) VPN
5 5 (1.49%) LAN
5 5 (1.49%) Unified Communications
5 5 (1.49%) WAN
6 4 (1.19%) Network Security
7 3 (0.90%) Internet
7 3 (0.90%) SMTP
7 3 (0.90%) Structured Cabling
7 3 (0.90%) VLAN
8 2 (0.60%) Intranet
8 2 (0.60%) Multicast
8 2 (0.60%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.60%) Wi-Fi
8 2 (0.60%) Wireshark
9 1 (0.30%) IP Telephony
9 1 (0.30%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (12.84%) Power BI
2 20 (5.97%) Data Warehouse
3 16 (4.78%) SQL Server
4 8 (2.39%) Azure SQL Database
5 6 (1.79%) Data Lake
5 6 (1.79%) Metadata
5 6 (1.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 6 (1.79%) Star Schema
6 5 (1.49%) Semantic Layer
6 5 (1.49%) Tableau
7 4 (1.19%) Amazon RDS
7 4 (1.19%) Amazon Redshift
7 4 (1.19%) Big Data
7 4 (1.19%) NoSQL
7 4 (1.19%) Power Query
7 4 (1.19%) Snowflake Schema
8 3 (0.90%) Elasticsearch
8 3 (0.90%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (0.90%) Relational Database
9 2 (0.60%) SAP BW
Development Applications
1 14 (4.18%) JIRA
2 9 (2.69%) Git
3 6 (1.79%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.19%) GitLab
4 4 (1.19%) Visual Studio
5 3 (0.90%) Artifactory
5 3 (0.90%) Bitbucket
5 3 (0.90%) JUnit
6 2 (0.60%) Fiddler
6 2 (0.60%) MSI
6 2 (0.60%) Selenium
6 2 (0.60%) TeamCity
7 1 (0.30%) Appium
7 1 (0.30%) Atlassian Bamboo
7 1 (0.30%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.30%) Cypress.io
7 1 (0.30%) ERwin
7 1 (0.30%) Jasmine
7 1 (0.30%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.30%) WebDriver
General
1 105 (31.34%) Finance
2 100 (29.85%) Social Skills
3 49 (14.63%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (9.55%) Banking
5 17 (5.07%) Public Sector
6 10 (2.99%) General Ledger
7 9 (2.69%) Retail
7 9 (2.69%) Telecoms
8 7 (2.09%) Front Office
8 7 (2.09%) Investment Banking
9 6 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.79%) Influencing Skills
9 6 (1.79%) Legal
10 5 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.49%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.49%) Law
10 5 (1.49%) Marketing
11 4 (1.19%) Back Office
12 3 (0.90%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.90%) Military
Job Titles
1 54 (16.12%) Architect
2 41 (12.24%) Analyst
3 35 (10.45%) Developer
4 31 (9.25%) Consultant
5 28 (8.36%) Senior
6 25 (7.46%) Support Engineer
7 19 (5.67%) Data Architect
8 17 (5.07%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (4.48%) Lead
10 14 (4.18%) Data Engineer
11 12 (3.58%) IT Support
12 11 (3.28%) Business Analyst
12 11 (3.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 11 (3.28%) Project Manager
13 10 (2.99%) Dynamics 365 Developer
13 10 (2.99%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
14 9 (2.69%) IT Engineer
15 8 (2.39%) Cloud Engineer
15 8 (2.39%) IT Support Engineer
15 8 (2.39%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (3.88%) REST
2 12 (3.58%) .NET
2 12 (3.58%) PySpark
3 11 (3.28%) Middleware
4 7 (2.09%) JSON
4 7 (2.09%) SAML
5 6 (1.79%) .NET Framework
5 6 (1.79%) OAuth
5 6 (1.79%) XML
6 5 (1.49%) HTML
6 5 (1.49%) OpenID
6 5 (1.49%) SOAP
6 5 (1.49%) Spring
7 4 (1.19%) CSS
7 4 (1.19%) XSLT
8 3 (0.90%) ASP.NET
8 3 (0.90%) Microsoft Graph
8 3 (0.90%) OAuth2
8 3 (0.90%) Playwright
8 3 (0.90%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 22 (6.57%) Onboarding
2 12 (3.58%) AI Agents
3 10 (2.99%) Cloud Native
3 10 (2.99%) Video Conferencing
4 9 (2.69%) PKI
4 9 (2.69%) Product Ownership
5 8 (2.39%) Data Structures
5 8 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
5 8 (2.39%) Enterprise Software
5 8 (2.39%) Management Information System
6 6 (1.79%) Clustering
6 6 (1.79%) Low-Code
6 6 (1.79%) Security Posture
6 6 (1.79%) Virtual Team
7 4 (1.19%) Data Centre
7 4 (1.19%) Equities
7 4 (1.19%) PMI
8 3 (0.90%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 3 (0.90%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 54 (16.12%) Windows
2 14 (4.18%) Windows Server
3 12 (3.58%) Mac OS
4 10 (2.99%) Linux
5 8 (2.39%) Windows 10
6 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.60%) Android
7 2 (0.60%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.60%) Unix
7 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.30%) OpenVMS
8 1 (0.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.30%) SUSE
8 1 (0.30%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
8 1 (0.30%) VMS
8 1 (0.30%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
8 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 66 (19.70%) DevOps
2 59 (17.61%) Analytics
3 57 (17.01%) Problem-Solving
4 55 (16.42%) Stakeholder Management
5 54 (16.12%) CI/CD
6 52 (15.52%) Migration
7 51 (15.22%) Business Intelligence
8 50 (14.93%) Agile
9 48 (14.33%) AI
10 42 (12.54%) Data Modelling
11 40 (11.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 33 (9.85%) Data Governance
13 29 (8.66%) Roadmaps
14 28 (8.36%) Continuous Improvement
15 25 (7.46%) CRM
15 25 (7.46%) Data Engineering
15 25 (7.46%) Decision-Making
16 24 (7.16%) Asset Management
16 24 (7.16%) Validation
17 22 (6.57%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 55 (16.42%) SQL
2 37 (11.04%) Python
3 28 (8.36%) PowerShell
4 15 (4.48%) Java
5 12 (3.58%) C#
6 7 (2.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 7 (2.09%) JavaScript
7 6 (1.79%) Bash
7 6 (1.79%) Bicep
7 6 (1.79%) T-SQL
8 5 (1.49%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.60%) C++
10 2 (0.60%) PL/SQL
11 1 (0.30%) COBOL
11 1 (0.30%) Google Apps Script
11 1 (0.30%) R
11 1 (0.30%) RPG
11 1 (0.30%) X++
Qualifications
1 56 (16.72%) Security Cleared
2 39 (11.64%) SC Cleared
3 25 (7.46%) Degree
4 12 (3.58%) DV Cleared
5 11 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
6 7 (2.09%) CISSP
7 6 (1.79%) Azure Certification
7 6 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (1.79%) PMI Certification
8 5 (1.49%) CISM
9 4 (1.19%) Cisco Certification
9 4 (1.19%) DBS Check
10 3 (0.90%) CCNP
10 3 (0.90%) CompTIA Security+
11 2 (0.60%) CCNA
11 2 (0.60%) CompTIA CySA+
11 2 (0.60%) GIAC
11 2 (0.60%) PMP
11 2 (0.60%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (7.46%) Data Quality
2 19 (5.67%) QA
3 17 (5.07%) GDPR
4 10 (2.99%) NIST
5 9 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (2.09%) SLA
7 6 (1.79%) Cyber Essentials
8 5 (1.49%) Accessibility
8 5 (1.49%) GRC
8 5 (1.49%) PMO
9 4 (1.19%) NCSC
10 3 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.60%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 2 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.30%) COBIT
12 1 (0.30%) Def Stans
12 1 (0.30%) GAAP
12 1 (0.30%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.30%) MiFID
12 1 (0.30%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 55 (16.42%) Active Directory
2 13 (3.88%) Docker
3 6 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.49%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (1.19%) Hyper-V
6 3 (0.90%) BitLocker
6 3 (0.90%) Microsoft App-V
6 3 (0.90%) Terminal Services
6 3 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.60%) IAG
7 2 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 31 (9.25%) Microsoft Intune
2 18 (5.37%) Terraform
3 14 (4.18%) Kubernetes
4 10 (2.99%) SCCM
5 9 (2.69%) Ansible
5 9 (2.69%) Single Sign-On
6 4 (1.19%) Jamf Pro
6 4 (1.19%) Puppet
7 3 (0.90%) Grafana
7 3 (0.90%) Nagios
7 3 (0.90%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.90%) vCenter Server
7 3 (0.90%) vMotion
8 2 (0.60%) WSUS
9 1 (0.30%) Autotask
9 1 (0.30%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.30%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.30%) PingFederate
9 1 (0.30%) Salt
9 1 (0.30%) SELinux
Vendors
1 25 (7.46%) ServiceNow
2 21 (6.27%) Databricks
3 18 (5.37%) Google
4 16 (4.78%) SAP
5 15 (4.48%) Oracle
6 11 (3.28%) Salesforce
7 10 (2.99%) Citrix
8 9 (2.69%) Cisco
9 8 (2.39%) VMware
10 7 (2.09%) Apple
10 7 (2.09%) OpenAI
10 7 (2.09%) Workday
11 6 (1.79%) Bloomberg
11 6 (1.79%) Foundry
12 5 (1.49%) HP
12 5 (1.49%) Informatica
13 4 (1.19%) iManage
13 4 (1.19%) Okta
13 4 (1.19%) Splunk
14 3 (0.90%) Dynatrace