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 2 September 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
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +2 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 959 556 625
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 14.57% 15.87% 13.20%
As % of the Vendors category 33.38% 30.75% 27.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 580 385 400
10th Percentile £203 £194 £200
25th Percentile £355 £250 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £463 £463
Median % change year-on-year +2.70% - +0.13%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £625 £659
England median daily rate £489 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.95% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 129 40 35
10th Percentile £13.48 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £15.50 £14.20 £11.80
Median hourly rate £25.00 £17.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.06% -60.00% +132.88%
75th Percentile £70.25 £32.12 £58.49
90th Percentile £101.03 £83.66 £61.38
England median hourly rate £20.69 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year -8.57% +39.43% -26.23%

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 2,873 1,808 2,313
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 43.64% 51.61% 48.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,782 1,210 1,383
10th Percentile £280 £207 £255
25th Percentile £425 £363 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £638
90th Percentile £700 £650 £700
England median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 243 106 129
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £14.50
25th Percentile £18.45 £14.88 £26.25
Median hourly rate £47.54 £18.87 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +151.93% -67.10% +13.09%
75th Percentile £73.95 £37.88 £61.60
90th Percentile £88.00 £77.38 £70.00
England median hourly rate £31.96 £25.15 £30.00
% change year-on-year +27.09% -16.17% -27.71%

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 2 September 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 2 September 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 2 September 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 0 481 £500 +11.11% 401
Berkshire +1 257 £500 +4.17% 178
Hampshire -1 219 £500 -6.28% 211
Surrey +3 135 £450 +80.00% 196
Buckinghamshire -1 126 £543 +38.22% 139
Oxfordshire +1 98 £450 +80.00% 89
West Sussex -4 60 £380 +80.95% 53
Kent -1 37 £488 +85.71% 100
East Sussex -4 8 £220 -60.00% 51
Middlesex - 5 - - 26
Sussex - 4 - - 19
Home Counties +1 2 - -
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 97 (10.11%) SharePoint
2 50 (5.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 14 (1.46%) Confluence
4 3 (0.31%) Apache
4 3 (0.31%) ArcGIS
4 3 (0.31%) IIS
5 2 (0.21%) Apache Airflow
5 2 (0.21%) Apache Superset
5 2 (0.21%) OpenStack
6 1 (0.10%) nginx
6 1 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.10%) SharePoint 2010
6 1 (0.10%) SharePoint 2013
6 1 (0.10%) Smallworld
6 1 (0.10%) Tomcat
Applications
1 127 (13.24%) Microsoft Excel
1 127 (13.24%) Microsoft Office
2 62 (6.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 49 (5.11%) Microsoft Project
4 12 (1.25%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.10%) Adobe Captivate
7 1 (0.10%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.10%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.10%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.10%) Trello
Business Applications
1 20 (2.09%) SAP S/4HANA
2 13 (1.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.52%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.42%) NEC Housing
4 4 (0.42%) Primavera
4 4 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 4 (0.42%) SAP Business One
5 3 (0.31%) Maximo
6 2 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.10%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.10%) iTrent
7 1 (0.10%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Cash Management
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.10%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.10%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 386 (40.25%) Azure
2 226 (23.57%) Microsoft 365
3 159 (16.58%) Entra ID
4 111 (11.57%) Power Platform
5 95 (9.91%) AWS
6 57 (5.94%) Azure DevOps
7 53 (5.53%) Dynamics 365
8 38 (3.96%) SaaS
9 36 (3.75%) Azure Monitor
10 34 (3.55%) GCP
11 30 (3.13%) Power Automate
12 28 (2.92%) Azure Logic Apps
12 28 (2.92%) IaaS
13 22 (2.29%) Microsoft Purview
13 22 (2.29%) OneDrive
14 21 (2.19%) Azure Sentinel
15 19 (1.98%) PowerApps
16 18 (1.88%) Microsoft Copilot
17 16 (1.67%) OpenShift
18 14 (1.46%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 79 (8.24%) DNS
2 60 (6.26%) Firewall
3 54 (5.63%) DHCP
4 47 (4.90%) VPN
5 45 (4.69%) TCP/IP
6 31 (3.23%) LAN
7 30 (3.13%) Wi-Fi
8 27 (2.82%) WAN
9 16 (1.67%) Network Security
9 16 (1.67%) VLAN
10 13 (1.36%) MPLS
11 12 (1.25%) SD-WAN
12 9 (0.94%) DNSSEC
13 8 (0.83%) BGP
13 8 (0.83%) Internet
13 8 (0.83%) Unified Communications
14 7 (0.73%) Intranet
14 7 (0.73%) Wireless
15 6 (0.63%) OSPF
15 6 (0.63%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 82 (8.55%) Power BI
2 34 (3.55%) SQL Server
3 12 (1.25%) Azure SQL Database
4 11 (1.15%) MySQL
5 10 (1.04%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (1.04%) Oracle Database
6 9 (0.94%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (0.83%) Metadata
7 8 (0.83%) Relational Database
8 6 (0.63%) NoSQL
9 5 (0.52%) Data Mining
10 4 (0.42%) Data Lake
11 3 (0.31%) GIS
11 3 (0.31%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 3 (0.31%) Tableau
12 2 (0.21%) BusinessObjects
12 2 (0.21%) MS Access
12 2 (0.21%) Oracle Reports
12 2 (0.21%) Parquet
12 2 (0.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 31 (3.23%) JIRA
2 12 (1.25%) Git
3 10 (1.04%) MSI
4 8 (0.83%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.73%) GitLab
6 3 (0.31%) Android Studio
6 3 (0.31%) Browser DevTools
6 3 (0.31%) Eclipse
6 3 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.31%) Xcode
7 2 (0.21%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.10%) ERwin
8 1 (0.10%) JUnit
8 1 (0.10%) NUnit
8 1 (0.10%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.10%) Visual Studio
General
1 345 (35.97%) Social Skills
2 152 (15.85%) Analytical Skills
3 107 (11.16%) Finance
4 84 (8.76%) Organisational Skills
5 82 (8.55%) Public Sector
6 47 (4.90%) Aerospace
7 35 (3.65%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (3.34%) Legal
9 24 (2.50%) Telecoms
10 19 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 19 (1.98%) Manufacturing
10 19 (1.98%) Marketing
11 16 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
12 14 (1.46%) Military
13 12 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
14 9 (0.94%) French Language
14 9 (0.94%) Retail
15 8 (0.83%) Aviation
16 7 (0.73%) Billing
16 7 (0.73%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 117 (12.20%) Architect
2 95 (9.91%) Analyst
3 90 (9.38%) IT Support
4 80 (8.34%) Senior
5 68 (7.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 54 (5.63%) Lead
7 52 (5.42%) Consultant
8 51 (5.32%) Support Engineer
9 48 (5.01%) Cloud Engineer
9 48 (5.01%) IT Engineer
10 47 (4.90%) Developer
11 42 (4.38%) Azure Engineer
12 37 (3.86%) Administrator
13 34 (3.55%) IT Support Engineer
14 32 (3.34%) IT Analyst
15 30 (3.13%) Solutions Architect
16 29 (3.02%) Project Manager
17 25 (2.61%) Microsoft Engineer
17 25 (2.61%) Support Analyst
17 25 (2.61%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (8.13%) Terraform
2 38 (3.96%) .NET
3 36 (3.75%) OAuth
4 34 (3.55%) SAML
5 33 (3.44%) OpenID
6 24 (2.50%) LDAP
6 24 (2.50%) REST
7 23 (2.40%) OAuth2
7 23 (2.40%) Web Services
8 19 (1.98%) SailPoint
9 18 (1.88%) ARM Templates
9 18 (1.88%) Microsoft Graph
10 13 (1.36%) JSON
11 12 (1.25%) Middleware
12 11 (1.15%) React
13 10 (1.04%) .NET Framework
14 9 (0.94%) XML
15 8 (0.83%) Entity Framework
15 8 (0.83%) RESTful
15 8 (0.83%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 99 (10.32%) Onboarding
2 53 (5.53%) Hybrid Cloud
3 33 (3.44%) Cloud Native
4 31 (3.23%) Data Centre
4 31 (3.23%) PKI
5 28 (2.92%) Management Information System
6 22 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
6 22 (2.29%) Security Posture
7 21 (2.19%) Public Cloud
8 19 (1.98%) Product Ownership
9 16 (1.67%) Operational Technology
10 14 (1.46%) Driving Licence
10 14 (1.46%) Legacy Systems
11 13 (1.36%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 13 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
12 12 (1.25%) Data Structures
13 11 (1.15%) Private Cloud
14 10 (1.04%) Analytical Mindset
14 10 (1.04%) Cyber Defence
15 9 (0.94%) Cloud Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 254 (26.49%) Windows
2 93 (9.70%) Windows Server
3 78 (8.13%) Linux
4 44 (4.59%) Windows 10
5 26 (2.71%) Apple iOS
6 21 (2.19%) Mac OS
7 15 (1.56%) Unix
8 14 (1.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (1.25%) Android
10 9 (0.94%) CentOS
10 9 (0.94%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.73%) Windows 7
12 6 (0.63%) Windows Server 2019
13 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
14 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 213 (22.21%) Problem-Solving
2 153 (15.95%) Stakeholder Management
3 139 (14.49%) Agile
4 125 (13.03%) Continuous Improvement
5 124 (12.93%) ITIL
6 118 (12.30%) DevOps
7 104 (10.84%) CI/CD
8 103 (10.74%) Customer Service
8 103 (10.74%) Cybersecurity
9 99 (10.32%) ITSM
10 97 (10.11%) Analytics
11 96 (10.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 89 (9.28%) Business Intelligence
13 88 (9.18%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 80 (8.34%) Migration
15 77 (8.03%) Decision-Making
16 72 (7.51%) Infrastructure as Code
16 72 (7.51%) Project Delivery
17 68 (7.09%) Technical Leadership
18 66 (6.88%) AI
Programming Languages
1 149 (15.54%) PowerShell
2 90 (9.38%) Python
3 86 (8.97%) SQL
4 37 (3.86%) Bash
5 30 (3.13%) Bicep
6 23 (2.40%) JavaScript
7 22 (2.29%) T-SQL
8 20 (2.09%) C#
9 16 (1.67%) Java
10 15 (1.56%) Kusto Query Language
11 8 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (0.83%) TypeScript
11 8 (0.83%) X++
12 4 (0.42%) ABAP
13 3 (0.31%) Perl
14 2 (0.21%) VBA
15 1 (0.10%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 359 (37.43%) Security Cleared
2 231 (24.09%) SC Cleared
3 137 (14.29%) Degree
4 133 (13.87%) DV Cleared
5 55 (5.74%) Microsoft Certification
6 44 (4.59%) Azure Certification
7 20 (2.09%) AWS Certification
8 18 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
8 18 (1.88%) DBS Check
9 17 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
10 15 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
10 15 (1.56%) PMI Certification
10 15 (1.56%) PMP
11 13 (1.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 10 (1.04%) CISSP
12 10 (1.04%) MCSA
13 9 (0.94%) MCSE
13 9 (0.94%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 8 (0.83%) CCNP
14 8 (0.83%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 44 (4.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 43 (4.48%) NIST
3 41 (4.28%) Data Quality
4 39 (4.07%) PMO
5 33 (3.44%) GDPR
5 33 (3.44%) NCSC
6 27 (2.82%) SLA
7 21 (2.19%) QA
8 20 (2.09%) Cyber Essentials
9 10 (1.04%) GRC
10 7 (0.73%) ISO 31000
10 7 (0.73%) JSP 440
11 5 (0.52%) PCI DSS
12 4 (0.42%) ISO 19650
12 4 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 3 (0.31%) Accessibility
13 3 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.31%) GMP
13 3 (0.31%) ISO 9001
13 3 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 212 (22.11%) Active Directory
2 71 (7.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (3.13%) Hyper-V
4 23 (2.40%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (1.88%) Docker
6 17 (1.77%) vSphere
7 16 (1.67%) Virtual Desktop
8 13 (1.36%) VMware ESXi
9 10 (1.04%) VMware NSX
10 6 (0.63%) Firmware
11 3 (0.31%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 2 (0.21%) UAG
12 2 (0.21%) Virtual Servers
13 1 (0.10%) Dovecot
13 1 (0.10%) ISA Server
13 1 (0.10%) Postfix
13 1 (0.10%) vCloud
13 1 (0.10%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 63 (6.57%) Microsoft Intune
2 44 (4.59%) Kubernetes
3 35 (3.65%) Ansible
3 35 (3.65%) SCCM
4 26 (2.71%) SCOM
5 23 (2.40%) vCenter Server
6 14 (1.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 13 (1.36%) Avamar
8 12 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
9 11 (1.15%) WMI
10 10 (1.04%) Jamf Pro
11 8 (0.83%) Grafana
12 6 (0.63%) FortiGate
12 6 (0.63%) QRadar
13 5 (0.52%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.52%) Puppet
14 4 (0.42%) Clonezilla
14 4 (0.42%) Prometheus
15 3 (0.31%) Dell DRAC
15 3 (0.31%) Istio
Vendors
1 89 (9.28%) VMware
2 60 (6.26%) ServiceNow
3 54 (5.63%) SAP
4 37 (3.86%) Cisco
5 36 (3.75%) Google
6 27 (2.82%) Oracle
7 19 (1.98%) Databricks
7 19 (1.98%) Dell
8 16 (1.67%) Meraki
9 14 (1.46%) SolarWinds
10 13 (1.36%) Splunk
10 13 (1.36%) Thales
11 11 (1.15%) CrowdStrike
11 11 (1.15%) F5
12 9 (0.94%) Avaya
12 9 (0.94%) Infoblox
12 9 (0.94%) Palo Alto
12 9 (0.94%) Veeam
13 8 (0.83%) Juniper
13 8 (0.83%) Salesforce