Microsoft Contract Job Trends in Oxfordshire

Microsoft
South East > Oxfordshire

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Oxfordshire 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 24 March 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
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 3 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 49 22 30
As % of all contract jobs in Oxfordshire 20.94% 22.00% 13.39%
As % of the Vendors category 54.44% 39.29% 34.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 36 10 17
10th Percentile £190 £246 -
25th Percentile £230 £250 £128
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £275 £313 £450
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% -30.56% +12.50%
75th Percentile £511 £500 £556
90th Percentile £569 £515 £575
South East median daily rate £480 £500 £463
% change year-on-year -4.00% +8.11% -2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 5 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - £13.08 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.00 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +42.86% -
75th Percentile - £26.50 £18.75
90th Percentile - £27.65 -
South East median hourly rate £17.50 £16.36 £22.54
% change year-on-year +6.97% -27.42% +18.63%

All Vendors
Oxfordshire

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 Oxfordshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 90 56 87
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Oxfordshire 38.46% 56.00% 38.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 58 26 59
10th Percentile £197 £250 £128
25th Percentile £236 £278 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +11.11% +1.41%
75th Percentile £505 £547 £538
90th Percentile £615 £653 £590
South East median daily rate £509 £525 £500
% change year-on-year -3.00% +5.00% -0.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 10 8
10th Percentile £15.53 £13.08 £16.21
25th Percentile £16.89 £23.50 £16.25
Median hourly rate £22.00 £26.53 £18.36
Median % change year-on-year -17.08% +44.48% -26.55%
75th Percentile £27.42 £46.30 £26.03
90th Percentile £27.54 £48.42 £27.37
South East median hourly rate £36.71 £25.30 £45.11
% change year-on-year +45.10% -43.91% +0.23%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in Oxfordshire

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in Oxfordshire

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in Oxfordshire

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Oxfordshire citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in Oxfordshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in Oxfordshire over the 6 months to 24 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in Oxfordshire

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in Oxfordshire

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Oxfordshire citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in Oxfordshire

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the Oxfordshire region over the 6 months to 24 March 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
Bicester - 8 £517 - 2
Oxford -3 6 £500 +60.00% 19
Carterton - 6 £171 - 1
Kidlington -5 5 £238 -5.00% 5
Banbury - 4 £190 - 4
Abingdon - 2 £451 - 6
Microsoft
South East

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Oxfordshire 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 5 (10.20%) Microsoft Exchange
1 5 (10.20%) SharePoint
2 1 (2.04%) Apache Spark
Applications
1 7 (14.29%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (2.04%) MS Visio
2 1 (2.04%) Trello
Cloud Services
1 28 (57.14%) Microsoft 365
2 14 (28.57%) Azure
3 13 (26.53%) Entra ID
4 9 (18.37%) OneDrive
5 3 (6.12%) Microsoft Purview
6 2 (4.08%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (4.08%) GitHub
6 2 (4.08%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (4.08%) Power Platform
7 1 (2.04%) AWS
7 1 (2.04%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (2.04%) Azure Functions
7 1 (2.04%) Azure Key Vault
7 1 (2.04%) Azure Logic Apps
7 1 (2.04%) Azure Sentinel
7 1 (2.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 1 (2.04%) GCP
7 1 (2.04%) Google Workspace
7 1 (2.04%) Lucidchart
7 1 (2.04%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 8 (16.33%) Wi-Fi
2 6 (12.24%) VPN
3 5 (10.20%) LAN
4 1 (2.04%) DHCP
4 1 (2.04%) DNS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (4.08%) Power BI
2 1 (2.04%) Data Lake
2 1 (2.04%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (2.04%) Delta Lake
2 1 (2.04%) Metadata
2 1 (2.04%) Semantic Layer
2 1 (2.04%) Spark SQL
2 1 (2.04%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 1 (2.04%) Git
1 1 (2.04%) JIRA
1 1 (2.04%) Visual Studio
General
1 21 (42.86%) Social Skills
2 4 (8.16%) Retail
3 3 (6.12%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (6.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 2 (4.08%) Aviation
4 2 (4.08%) Military
5 1 (2.04%) Finance
5 1 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
5 1 (2.04%) Legal
5 1 (2.04%) Marketing
5 1 (2.04%) Police
5 1 (2.04%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 21 (42.86%) Support Engineer
2 19 (38.78%) IT Engineer
3 18 (36.73%) IT Support
3 18 (36.73%) IT Support Engineer
4 5 (10.20%) Senior
5 4 (8.16%) Analyst
6 3 (6.12%) 1st Line Engineer
6 3 (6.12%) 1st Line Support
6 3 (6.12%) 1st Line Support Engineer
6 3 (6.12%) Architect
6 3 (6.12%) Data Analyst
6 3 (6.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 3 (6.12%) Project Manager
7 2 (4.08%) 2nd Line Support
7 2 (4.08%) Data Entry Administrator
7 2 (4.08%) IAM Specialist
7 2 (4.08%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
7 2 (4.08%) Senior IT Engineer
7 2 (4.08%) Senior IT Support
7 2 (4.08%) User Experience Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (6.12%) OAuth
1 3 (6.12%) OAuth2
1 3 (6.12%) OpenID
1 3 (6.12%) SAML
2 2 (4.08%) SailPoint
3 1 (2.04%) Kafka
3 1 (2.04%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 5 (10.20%) Onboarding
1 5 (10.20%) Self-Motivation
2 4 (8.16%) Driving Licence
3 2 (4.08%) Cloud Security Posture
3 2 (4.08%) Security Posture
4 1 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (2.04%) CMDB
4 1 (2.04%) Data Fabric
4 1 (2.04%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (2.04%) IoT
4 1 (2.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 20 (40.82%) Windows
2 4 (8.16%) Windows 10
3 3 (6.12%) Windows Server
4 2 (4.08%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (42.86%) Customer Service
2 8 (16.33%) Cybersecurity
3 7 (14.29%) User Experience
4 5 (10.20%) Asset Management
4 5 (10.20%) Break/Fix
4 5 (10.20%) Inventory Management
4 5 (10.20%) Process Improvement
5 4 (8.16%) Data Management
5 4 (8.16%) Problem-Solving
5 4 (8.16%) RBAC
6 3 (6.12%) Business Intelligence
6 3 (6.12%) CI/CD
6 3 (6.12%) Cloud Security
6 3 (6.12%) Disaster Recovery
6 3 (6.12%) Identity Access Management
6 3 (6.12%) Infrastructure as Code
6 3 (6.12%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 3 (6.12%) Project Management
6 3 (6.12%) SIEM
6 3 (6.12%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 6 (12.24%) PowerShell
2 2 (4.08%) SQL
3 1 (2.04%) Bicep
3 1 (2.04%) C#
3 1 (2.04%) Python
Qualifications
1 16 (32.65%) Security Cleared
2 14 (28.57%) SC Cleared
3 6 (12.24%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (2.04%) Azure Certification
4 1 (2.04%) Degree
4 1 (2.04%) HND
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (4.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 2 (4.08%) NIST
2 1 (2.04%) Data Quality
2 1 (2.04%) GDPR
System Software
1 21 (42.86%) Active Directory
2 1 (2.04%) Docker
2 1 (2.04%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 9 (18.37%) Microsoft Intune
2 5 (10.20%) Jamf Pro
3 3 (6.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 3 (6.12%) Terraform
4 1 (2.04%) Ansible
4 1 (2.04%) Kubernetes
4 1 (2.04%) SCCM
4 1 (2.04%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 2 (4.08%) Databricks
2 1 (2.04%) Ariba
2 1 (2.04%) BeyondTrust
2 1 (2.04%) CyberArk
2 1 (2.04%) Google
2 1 (2.04%) Planon
2 1 (2.04%) SAP
2 1 (2.04%) Splunk
2 1 (2.04%) Xero