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 16 October 2025, 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
16 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 5 7 4
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 +2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 582 602 928
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 16.07% 14.05% 16.87%
As % of the Vendors category 30.60% 28.56% 32.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 409 403 611
10th Percentile £181 £200 £166
25th Percentile £219 £334 £228
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £452
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% +2.44% +0.33%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £582
90th Percentile £623 £664 £650
England median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 22 40
10th Percentile £12.50 £18.81 £13.53
25th Percentile £14.72 £31.31 £15.44
Median hourly rate £18.42 £56.75 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -67.55% +224.26% +6.06%
75th Percentile £30.08 £59.85 £41.25
90th Percentile £78.38 £62.36 £56.95
England median hourly rate £22.50 £20.00 £23.00
% change year-on-year +12.50% -13.04% +22.99%

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 1,902 2,108 2,896
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 52.53% 49.18% 52.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,279 1,303 1,882
10th Percentile £205 £250 £205
25th Percentile £360 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £508
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +1.38% +1.60%
75th Percentile £588 £627 £606
90th Percentile £650 £700 £687
England median daily rate £508 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.33% - -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 121 75 132
10th Percentile £14.00 £16.25 £15.28
25th Percentile £15.56 £26.25 £19.44
Median hourly rate £20.00 £57.25 £51.96
Median % change year-on-year -65.07% +10.18% +136.18%
75th Percentile £34.83 £66.51 £66.25
90th Percentile £73.75 £70.00 £76.53
England median hourly rate £25.08 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.36% -21.35% +85.42%

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 16 October 2025.

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 16 October 2025.

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 16 October 2025. 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 0 279 £450 -5.26% 383
Berkshire +1 175 £480 -7.69% 225
Hampshire +3 137 £525 -4.55% 167
Buckinghamshire +1 62 £475 +11.76% 102
Surrey +2 61 £208 -36.15% 138
Oxfordshire +2 42 £225 -37.93% 70
West Sussex +1 38 £210 -49.09% 79
Kent 0 35 £288 +46.50% 106
East Sussex +11 18 £550 +33.33% 56
Sussex 0 5 - - 35
Home Counties - 1 £550 -
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 70 (12.03%) Microsoft Exchange
2 51 (8.76%) SharePoint
3 17 (2.92%) Skype for Business
4 11 (1.89%) Exchange Server 2010
4 11 (1.89%) Exchange Server 2013
4 11 (1.89%) SharePoint Server
5 10 (1.72%) Exchange Server 2003
5 10 (1.72%) Exchange Server 2007
5 10 (1.72%) Office Communications Server
6 7 (1.20%) Mattermost
7 4 (0.69%) Apache
8 2 (0.34%) CMS
8 2 (0.34%) Confluence
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Spark
9 1 (0.17%) BizTalk Server
9 1 (0.17%) Headless CMS
9 1 (0.17%) IIS
9 1 (0.17%) nginx
Applications
1 91 (15.64%) Microsoft Office
2 53 (9.11%) Microsoft Excel
3 19 (3.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (2.75%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (0.86%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (1.55%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (1.20%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.69%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.52%) Dynamics AX
5 2 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.34%) SAP CO
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI
5 2 (0.34%) SAP FI/CO
5 2 (0.34%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 1 (0.17%) iTrent
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.17%) Primavera
6 1 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.17%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.17%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.17%) SAP WM
6 1 (0.17%) SystmOne
6 1 (0.17%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 142 (24.40%) Azure
1 142 (24.40%) Microsoft 365
2 60 (10.31%) Entra ID
3 43 (7.39%) AWS
4 40 (6.87%) Power Platform
5 36 (6.19%) Dynamics 365
6 22 (3.78%) SaaS
7 16 (2.75%) GCP
8 15 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
8 15 (2.58%) OneDrive
8 15 (2.58%) Sauce Labs
9 13 (2.23%) PowerApps
10 11 (1.89%) IaaS
11 10 (1.72%) Azure Sentinel
11 10 (1.72%) Microsoft Copilot
11 10 (1.72%) Microsoft Purview
12 9 (1.55%) Google Workspace
13 7 (1.20%) OpenShift
13 7 (1.20%) PaaS
14 5 (0.86%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 53 (9.11%) DNS
2 52 (8.93%) Firewall
3 40 (6.87%) DHCP
4 33 (5.67%) VPN
5 26 (4.47%) TCP/IP
6 22 (3.78%) Wireless
7 20 (3.44%) SAN
8 18 (3.09%) Fibre Channel
9 17 (2.92%) Cisco IOS
9 17 (2.92%) WebEx
10 16 (2.75%) iSCSI
11 13 (2.23%) VLAN
11 13 (2.23%) Wi-Fi
12 10 (1.72%) DDNS
13 7 (1.20%) Skype
13 7 (1.20%) VSAN
14 6 (1.03%) 4G
14 6 (1.03%) Network Security
14 6 (1.03%) Remote Desktop
15 5 (0.86%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (7.73%) SQL Server
2 25 (4.30%) Power BI
3 23 (3.95%) Relational Database
4 19 (3.26%) MySQL
5 18 (3.09%) Oracle Database
6 6 (1.03%) Azure SQL Database
6 6 (1.03%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (0.86%) Crystal Reports
7 5 (0.86%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 4 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
8 4 (0.69%) GIS
8 4 (0.69%) Metadata
8 4 (0.69%) MongoDB
8 4 (0.69%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (0.52%) Big Data
9 3 (0.52%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
9 3 (0.52%) NoSQL
10 2 (0.34%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.34%) Elasticsearch
10 2 (0.34%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 17 (2.92%) Browser DevTools
1 17 (2.92%) JIRA
2 15 (2.58%) Android Studio
2 15 (2.58%) Eclipse
2 15 (2.58%) Xcode
3 13 (2.23%) MSI
4 5 (0.86%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.69%) Git
5 4 (0.69%) Robot Framework
5 4 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.52%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.34%) Fiddler
8 1 (0.17%) Postman
8 1 (0.17%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.17%) Toad
8 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 212 (36.43%) Social Skills
2 95 (16.32%) Finance
3 69 (11.86%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (6.01%) Organisational Skills
5 30 (5.15%) Public Sector
6 19 (3.26%) Legal
7 16 (2.75%) Games
8 15 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
8 15 (2.58%) Manufacturing
9 13 (2.23%) Telecoms
10 8 (1.37%) Automotive
11 6 (1.03%) Law
11 6 (1.03%) Marketing
12 5 (0.86%) Aerospace
12 5 (0.86%) Billing
12 5 (0.86%) Local Government
13 4 (0.69%) Electronics
13 4 (0.69%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (0.69%) Retail
14 3 (0.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 103 (17.70%) Analyst
2 92 (15.81%) Support Engineer
3 56 (9.62%) Architect
4 49 (8.42%) IT Support
5 32 (5.50%) Senior
6 31 (5.33%) Consultant
6 31 (5.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 29 (4.98%) Support Analyst
8 24 (4.12%) Technical Support
9 23 (3.95%) 2nd Line Support
10 22 (3.78%) Applications Support
10 22 (3.78%) IT Engineer
11 21 (3.61%) Developer
11 21 (3.61%) Infrastructure Support
11 21 (3.61%) Platform Engineer
11 21 (3.61%) Service Analyst
11 21 (3.61%) Technical Engineer
11 21 (3.61%) Technical Support Engineer
12 20 (3.44%) Desktop Support
12 20 (3.44%) Infrastructure Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (4.47%) React
2 17 (2.92%) CSS
3 16 (2.75%) Ajax
3 16 (2.75%) AngularJS
3 16 (2.75%) GraphQL
4 12 (2.06%) .NET
5 7 (1.20%) Middleware
5 7 (1.20%) OAuth
5 7 (1.20%) SailPoint
6 5 (0.86%) SOAP
7 4 (0.69%) JSON
7 4 (0.69%) SAML
7 4 (0.69%) WebdriverIO
8 3 (0.52%) .NET Core
8 3 (0.52%) LDAP
9 2 (0.34%) EDI
9 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Graph
9 2 (0.34%) OpenID
9 2 (0.34%) REST
9 2 (0.34%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 23 (3.95%) Onboarding
2 19 (3.26%) PKI
3 18 (3.09%) Analytical Mindset
4 17 (2.92%) Management Information System
4 17 (2.92%) Mobile App
5 16 (2.75%) Replication
6 12 (2.06%) Security Operations Centre
7 11 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
7 11 (1.89%) Operational Technology
7 11 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
8 10 (1.72%) Security Posture
8 10 (1.72%) Video Conferencing
9 9 (1.55%) Cyber Threat
9 9 (1.55%) Data Centre
9 9 (1.55%) Fat Client
9 9 (1.55%) Thin Client
10 8 (1.37%) Driving Licence
11 7 (1.20%) Cyber Defence
11 7 (1.20%) Private Cloud
12 6 (1.03%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 244 (41.92%) Windows
2 78 (13.40%) Linux
3 62 (10.65%) Windows 10
4 55 (9.45%) Windows Server
5 33 (5.67%) Android
6 31 (5.33%) Mac OS
7 24 (4.12%) Unix
8 22 (3.78%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (1.72%) Windows Server 2003
10 9 (1.55%) Windows 7
10 9 (1.55%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (1.20%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 6 (1.03%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.69%) Apple iOS
13 4 (0.69%) CentOS
14 2 (0.34%) Debian
14 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.17%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (20.27%) Problem-Solving
2 95 (16.32%) ITIL
3 64 (11.00%) Customer Service
4 63 (10.82%) Agile
4 63 (10.82%) Migration
5 48 (8.25%) Cybersecurity
6 43 (7.39%) DevOps
7 41 (7.04%) Continuous Improvement
8 40 (6.87%) Stakeholder Management
9 39 (6.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 36 (6.19%) ERP
11 35 (6.01%) Business Intelligence
12 33 (5.67%) Change Management
13 30 (5.15%) Project Management
14 28 (4.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 27 (4.64%) ITSM
15 27 (4.64%) SIEM
16 26 (4.47%) High Availability
16 26 (4.47%) Risk Management
16 26 (4.47%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 97 (16.67%) PowerShell
2 84 (14.43%) SQL
3 54 (9.28%) Python
4 30 (5.15%) Java
5 24 (4.12%) C#
5 24 (4.12%) JavaScript
6 19 (3.26%) Perl
7 13 (2.23%) VB
8 8 (1.37%) Bash
9 6 (1.03%) Bicep
9 6 (1.03%) X++
10 4 (0.69%) PHP
10 4 (0.69%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.52%) R
12 2 (0.34%) Apex Code
12 2 (0.34%) Go
12 2 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.17%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.17%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 153 (26.29%) Security Cleared
2 83 (14.26%) SC Cleared
3 58 (9.97%) DV Cleared
3 58 (9.97%) Microsoft Certification
4 47 (8.08%) Degree
5 19 (3.26%) Azure Certification
6 18 (3.09%) MCSE
7 15 (2.58%) CISSP
7 15 (2.58%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 12 (2.06%) A+ Certification
9 11 (1.89%) Network+ Certification
9 11 (1.89%) Server+ Certification
10 10 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
10 10 (1.72%) GCFA
10 10 (1.72%) GCIH
10 10 (1.72%) ITIL Certification
10 10 (1.72%) VCP5
10 10 (1.72%) VCP6
11 8 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 8 (1.37%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (6.36%) GDPR
2 26 (4.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 19 (3.26%) NIST
4 15 (2.58%) SLA
5 12 (2.06%) Data Quality
6 10 (1.72%) PMO
7 9 (1.55%) QA
8 5 (0.86%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.69%) Accessibility
9 4 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials
10 3 (0.52%) ECSS
10 3 (0.52%) ISO 9001
10 3 (0.52%) RMADS
11 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
11 2 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 2 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 19770
11 2 (0.34%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.34%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.17%) NCSC
12 1 (0.17%) PSD2
System Software
1 180 (30.93%) Active Directory
2 62 (10.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 26 (4.47%) VMware ESXi
4 25 (4.30%) vSphere
5 23 (3.95%) Hyper-V
6 16 (2.75%) NFS
7 10 (1.72%) Brightmail
7 10 (1.72%) ISA Server
8 9 (1.55%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (1.20%) Terminal Services
10 4 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
11 3 (0.52%) DFS Replication
11 3 (0.52%) Docker
11 3 (0.52%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.34%) BitLocker
12 2 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.17%) XenApp
13 1 (0.17%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 65 (11.17%) SCCM
2 58 (9.97%) Microsoft Intune
3 17 (2.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 16 (2.75%) Terraform
5 15 (2.58%) Ansible
5 15 (2.58%) Kubernetes
6 11 (1.89%) Microsoft Clustering
7 10 (1.72%) Single Sign-On
8 9 (1.55%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.55%) WMI
9 8 (1.37%) SCOM
10 7 (1.20%) HP SiteScope
11 4 (0.69%) Computer Emergency Response Teams
12 2 (0.34%) EnCase
12 2 (0.34%) FTK
12 2 (0.34%) Grafana
12 2 (0.34%) Prometheus
12 2 (0.34%) QRadar
12 2 (0.34%) SCVMM
12 2 (0.34%) vMotion
Vendors
1 78 (13.40%) VMware
2 70 (12.03%) Splunk
3 67 (11.51%) ServiceNow
4 48 (8.25%) Oracle
5 44 (7.56%) Cisco
6 38 (6.53%) Citrix
7 25 (4.30%) SAP
8 18 (3.09%) Veeam
9 17 (2.92%) Meraki
9 17 (2.92%) NetApp
10 14 (2.41%) CrowdStrike
10 14 (2.41%) Sage
11 12 (2.06%) CyberArk
11 12 (2.06%) Salesforce
12 11 (1.89%) Remedy
13 9 (1.55%) Red Hat
14 8 (1.37%) Google
15 6 (1.03%) LogRhythm
15 6 (1.03%) Palo Alto
16 5 (0.86%) Workday