Microsoft Contract Job Trends in the South East

Microsoft
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East 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 9 July 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
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 791 542 795
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 12.21% 16.16% 13.99%
As % of the Vendors category 28.71% 30.18% 29.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 514 362 514
10th Percentile £202 £200 £200
25th Percentile £356 £265 £355
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £473 £468
Median % change year-on-year +0.53% +0.91% -0.90%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £623 £670
England median daily rate £493 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.68% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 36 75
10th Percentile £13.13 £13.75 £11.71
25th Percentile £17.05 £14.20 £12.00
Median hourly rate £31.88 £15.63 £24.43
Median % change year-on-year +104.00% -36.04% +25.28%
75th Percentile £57.88 £28.81 £59.50
90th Percentile £110.75 £32.54 £61.60
England median hourly rate £22.63 £22.50 £16.06
% change year-on-year +0.59% +40.10% -27.00%

All Vendors
South East

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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 2,755 1,796 2,680
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 42.54% 53.56% 47.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,783 1,175 1,582
10th Percentile £283 £220 £246
25th Percentile £419 £375 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £505 £510
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -0.98% +2.00%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £608
90th Percentile £693 £656 £699
England median daily rate £510 £513 £515
% change year-on-year -0.49% -0.49% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 196 113 188
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.20 £12.00
25th Percentile £24.81 £15.25 £18.00
Median hourly rate £52.50 £19.91 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year +163.69% -61.34% +14.44%
75th Percentile £85.00 £38.42 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £69.22 £70.00
England median hourly rate £35.50 £25.15 £25.00
% change year-on-year +41.15% +0.60% -30.56%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in the South East

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in the South East over the 6 months to 9 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the South East

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in the South East over the 6 months to 9 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the South East

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the South East region over the 6 months to 9 July 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
Thames Valley 0 423 £500 +11.11% 274
Berkshire -1 240 £500 +1.52% 131
Hampshire -9 156 £531 +1.19% 113
Surrey +4 112 £450 +85.57% 102
Buckinghamshire -4 104 £510 +23.64% 79
Oxfordshire -2 79 £400 +60.00% 72
West Sussex -3 55 £430 +79.17% 41
Kent -3 25 £275 -12.00% 61
East Sussex 0 8 £375 -39.39% 30
Home Counties +2 4 - - 1
Middlesex - 1 - - 21
Microsoft
England

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 80 (10.11%) SharePoint
2 74 (9.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.26%) Confluence
4 1 (0.13%) Apache
4 1 (0.13%) Apache Spark
4 1 (0.13%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.13%) BizTalk Server
4 1 (0.13%) IIS
4 1 (0.13%) MS Project Server
4 1 (0.13%) nginx
4 1 (0.13%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.13%) SharePoint 2010
4 1 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
4 1 (0.13%) Smallworld
4 1 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 92 (11.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 84 (10.62%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (4.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (4.30%) Microsoft Project
5 13 (1.64%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.25%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.13%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.13%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.13%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.13%) InDesign
7 1 (0.13%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.13%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.13%) Trello
Business Applications
1 14 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (1.26%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.63%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.63%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.51%) SAP Business One
5 3 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.13%) iTrent
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.13%) Primavera
6 1 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.13%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 320 (40.46%) Azure
2 197 (24.91%) Microsoft 365
3 151 (19.09%) Entra ID
4 90 (11.38%) Power Platform
5 80 (10.11%) AWS
6 46 (5.82%) Azure DevOps
7 43 (5.44%) Dynamics 365
8 35 (4.42%) OneDrive
9 28 (3.54%) Power Automate
10 27 (3.41%) SaaS
11 23 (2.91%) GCP
12 22 (2.78%) Azure Logic Apps
13 20 (2.53%) Microsoft Purview
14 19 (2.40%) Azure Monitor
15 17 (2.15%) PowerApps
16 15 (1.90%) IaaS
17 14 (1.77%) GitHub
17 14 (1.77%) Serverless
18 13 (1.64%) Azure Functions
19 12 (1.52%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 81 (10.24%) DNS
2 52 (6.57%) DHCP
3 41 (5.18%) Firewall
3 41 (5.18%) Wi-Fi
4 32 (4.05%) VPN
5 31 (3.92%) LAN
6 30 (3.79%) TCP/IP
7 24 (3.03%) WAN
8 16 (2.02%) SD-WAN
9 14 (1.77%) MPLS
10 12 (1.52%) Network Security
10 12 (1.52%) VLAN
11 11 (1.39%) Kerberos
11 11 (1.39%) Unified Communications
12 10 (1.26%) BGP
13 9 (1.14%) DNSSEC
13 9 (1.14%) IPsec
14 7 (0.88%) BIG-IP
14 7 (0.88%) OSPF
14 7 (0.88%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (8.72%) Power BI
2 31 (3.92%) SQL Server
3 12 (1.52%) MySQL
3 12 (1.52%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
4 8 (1.01%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (0.76%) Metadata
5 6 (0.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 6 (0.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 5 (0.63%) Oracle Database
6 5 (0.63%) Relational Database
7 3 (0.38%) Data Mining
7 3 (0.38%) MS Access
7 3 (0.38%) Star Schema
8 2 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
8 2 (0.25%) BusinessObjects
8 2 (0.25%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.25%) Geospatial Data
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 26 (3.29%) JIRA
2 14 (1.77%) Git
3 4 (0.51%) JUnit
3 4 (0.51%) MSI
3 4 (0.51%) Sonatype Nexus
4 3 (0.38%) Android Studio
4 3 (0.38%) Browser DevTools
4 3 (0.38%) Eclipse
4 3 (0.38%) Gradle
4 3 (0.38%) Maven
4 3 (0.38%) Robot Framework
4 3 (0.38%) Xcode
5 2 (0.25%) GitLab
5 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 1 (0.13%) Artifactory
6 1 (0.13%) ERwin
6 1 (0.13%) MLflow
6 1 (0.13%) NUnit
6 1 (0.13%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 248 (31.35%) Social Skills
2 81 (10.24%) Public Sector
3 78 (9.86%) Analytical Skills
4 75 (9.48%) Finance
5 48 (6.07%) Organisational Skills
6 28 (3.54%) Legal
7 27 (3.41%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (3.16%) Aerospace
9 21 (2.65%) Telecoms
10 15 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 15 (1.90%) Marketing
10 15 (1.90%) Military
11 8 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
12 7 (0.88%) Local Government
12 7 (0.88%) Retail
13 6 (0.76%) Billing
13 6 (0.76%) French Language
13 6 (0.76%) Manufacturing
14 5 (0.63%) Arabic Language
14 5 (0.63%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 87 (11.00%) Architect
2 81 (10.24%) IT Support
3 79 (9.99%) Analyst
4 59 (7.46%) Senior
5 49 (6.19%) Consultant
6 48 (6.07%) Lead
6 48 (6.07%) Support Engineer
7 47 (5.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 46 (5.82%) IT Engineer
9 37 (4.68%) IT Support Engineer
10 35 (4.42%) Developer
11 29 (3.67%) IT Analyst
12 28 (3.54%) Azure Engineer
13 27 (3.41%) Solutions Architect
14 26 (3.29%) Administrator
14 26 (3.29%) Project Manager
14 26 (3.29%) Support Analyst
15 25 (3.16%) Cloud Engineer
16 21 (2.65%) IT Support Analyst
16 21 (2.65%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (3.67%) LDAP
2 28 (3.54%) .NET
3 27 (3.41%) OAuth
4 26 (3.29%) SAML
5 25 (3.16%) OpenID
6 19 (2.40%) REST
7 18 (2.28%) Microsoft Graph
7 18 (2.28%) Web Services
8 17 (2.15%) OAuth2
9 14 (1.77%) SailPoint
10 10 (1.26%) JSON
11 8 (1.01%) React
11 8 (1.01%) SOAP
11 8 (1.01%) XML
12 7 (0.88%) AngularJS
12 7 (0.88%) ARM Templates
12 7 (0.88%) CSS
12 7 (0.88%) Middleware
12 7 (0.88%) YAML
13 6 (0.76%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 60 (7.59%) Onboarding
2 31 (3.92%) Data Centre
2 31 (3.92%) PKI
3 29 (3.67%) Cloud Native
4 25 (3.16%) Hybrid Cloud
5 23 (2.91%) Product Ownership
6 22 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
7 17 (2.15%) Operational Technology
7 17 (2.15%) Public Cloud
8 15 (1.90%) Replication
9 13 (1.64%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 12 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
10 12 (1.52%) Security Posture
11 10 (1.26%) Data Structures
11 10 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (1.14%) Cyber Defence
12 9 (1.14%) Management Information System
13 8 (1.01%) Driving Licence
13 8 (1.01%) Private Cloud
13 8 (1.01%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 218 (27.56%) Windows
2 65 (8.22%) Windows Server
3 54 (6.83%) Linux
4 29 (3.67%) Windows 10
5 25 (3.16%) Mac OS
6 22 (2.78%) Apple iOS
7 15 (1.90%) Unix
8 12 (1.52%) Android
9 10 (1.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 7 (0.88%) Windows 7
10 7 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.76%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.38%) CentOS
13 3 (0.38%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.13%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.13%) VMS
14 1 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (18.08%) Problem-Solving
2 102 (12.90%) ITIL
3 96 (12.14%) Customer Service
4 94 (11.88%) Agile
5 92 (11.63%) DevOps
6 86 (10.87%) Stakeholder Management
7 80 (10.11%) CI/CD
8 77 (9.73%) Migration
9 75 (9.48%) Cybersecurity
10 72 (9.10%) Business Intelligence
11 70 (8.85%) ITSM
12 65 (8.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 63 (7.96%) Decision-Making
14 61 (7.71%) Analytics
14 61 (7.71%) Continuous Improvement
14 61 (7.71%) Project Delivery
15 58 (7.33%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 55 (6.95%) Project Management
17 52 (6.57%) AI
17 52 (6.57%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 123 (15.55%) PowerShell
2 73 (9.23%) Python
3 69 (8.72%) SQL
4 28 (3.54%) T-SQL
5 24 (3.03%) Bash
6 18 (2.28%) C#
7 16 (2.02%) Java
8 15 (1.90%) JavaScript
9 13 (1.64%) Bicep
10 12 (1.52%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (1.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 7 (0.88%) X++
13 4 (0.51%) ABAP
14 3 (0.38%) Perl
14 3 (0.38%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.25%) Korn
16 1 (0.13%) Google Apps Script
16 1 (0.13%) Groovy
16 1 (0.13%) Shell Script
16 1 (0.13%) VBA
Qualifications
1 282 (35.65%) Security Cleared
2 205 (25.92%) SC Cleared
3 102 (12.90%) Degree
4 84 (10.62%) DV Cleared
5 40 (5.06%) Microsoft Certification
6 31 (3.92%) Azure Certification
7 17 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
8 13 (1.64%) AWS Certification
9 12 (1.52%) DBS Check
10 11 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
11 10 (1.26%) BPSS Clearance
11 10 (1.26%) CISSP
11 10 (1.26%) PMI Certification
11 10 (1.26%) PMP
12 9 (1.14%) CCNP
12 9 (1.14%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 8 (1.01%) CISM
13 8 (1.01%) GIAC
13 8 (1.01%) MCSA
13 8 (1.01%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (4.42%) NIST
2 30 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (3.54%) GDPR
3 28 (3.54%) NCSC
4 25 (3.16%) SLA
5 19 (2.40%) Cyber Essentials
5 19 (2.40%) QA
6 18 (2.28%) Data Quality
6 18 (2.28%) PMO
7 6 (0.76%) ISO 31000
8 5 (0.63%) NIST 800
9 4 (0.51%) Accessibility
9 4 (0.51%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.38%) GRC
10 3 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.13%) ISO 19650
12 1 (0.13%) JSP 440
System Software
1 217 (27.43%) Active Directory
2 72 (9.10%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (3.79%) Hyper-V
4 18 (2.28%) vSphere
5 16 (2.02%) Virtual Machines
6 15 (1.90%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (1.77%) VMware NSX
8 13 (1.64%) Virtual Desktop
9 9 (1.14%) Docker
10 5 (0.63%) Firmware
11 3 (0.38%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.25%) UAG
13 1 (0.13%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.13%) Dovecot
13 1 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.13%) Postfix
13 1 (0.13%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 71 (8.98%) Microsoft Intune
2 49 (6.19%) Terraform
3 29 (3.67%) SCCM
4 25 (3.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 19 (2.40%) SCOM
6 17 (2.15%) Ansible
7 16 (2.02%) Kubernetes
7 16 (2.02%) vCenter Server
8 14 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
9 13 (1.64%) Jamf Pro
10 10 (1.26%) Avamar
11 4 (0.51%) Clonezilla
11 4 (0.51%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.51%) Puppet
11 4 (0.51%) QRadar
12 3 (0.38%) Progress Chef
12 3 (0.38%) SCSM
12 3 (0.38%) WMI
13 2 (0.25%) vMotion
13 2 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 90 (11.38%) VMware
2 44 (5.56%) ServiceNow
3 42 (5.31%) Cisco
4 36 (4.55%) SAP
5 23 (2.91%) Google
6 21 (2.65%) Meraki
7 16 (2.02%) Dell
8 15 (1.90%) Oracle
8 15 (1.90%) SolarWinds
9 14 (1.77%) Citrix
10 13 (1.64%) Avaya
10 13 (1.64%) Databricks
11 12 (1.52%) F5
11 12 (1.52%) Mitel
12 11 (1.39%) Fortinet
12 11 (1.39%) Thales
13 10 (1.26%) Palo Alto
14 9 (1.14%) Infoblox
14 9 (1.14%) Juniper
14 9 (1.14%) Splunk