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 7 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
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 904 550 641
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 13.50% 15.75% 12.95%
As % of the Vendors category 30.88% 29.84% 26.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 565 370 423
10th Percentile £203 £200 £200
25th Percentile £360 £256 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +2.15%
75th Percentile £588 £583 £597
90th Percentile £675 £625 £669
England median daily rate £490 £475 £499
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.81% -0.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 101 44 45
10th Percentile £13.41 £13.65 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.50 £14.20 £11.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £16.68 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +94.84% -60.75% +136.11%
75th Percentile £77.50 £32.05 £58.49
90th Percentile £108.00 £80.23 £61.60
England median hourly rate £22.00 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year -2.78% +39.43% -27.87%

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 2,927 1,843 2,383
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 43.70% 52.76% 48.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,833 1,219 1,441
10th Percentile £282 £210 £255
25th Percentile £425 £375 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £610 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £650 £700
England median daily rate £510 £510 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 233 117 140
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.20 £14.50
25th Percentile £28.00 £14.75 £22.71
Median hourly rate £55.00 £19.00 £57.35
Median % change year-on-year +189.47% -66.87% +24.00%
75th Percentile £82.50 £36.25 £61.38
90th Percentile £88.00 £72.25 £70.00
England median hourly rate £35.00 £25.15 £29.39
% change year-on-year +39.17% -14.41% -25.80%

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 7 August 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 7 August 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 7 August 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 +1 475 £500 +11.11% 352
Berkshire +2 254 £500 +5.26% 159
Hampshire -3 201 £513 -5.96% 181
Surrey +6 123 £444 +77.50% 140
Buckinghamshire -5 120 £510 +10.27% 110
Oxfordshire 0 101 £450 +80.00% 90
West Sussex -6 55 £380 +72.73% 57
Kent -1 29 £350 +33.33% 90
East Sussex +4 10 £298 -53.33% 46
Middlesex - 3 - - 22
Home Counties 0 1 - -
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 95 (10.51%) SharePoint
2 67 (7.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 16 (1.77%) Confluence
4 2 (0.22%) Apache
4 2 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (0.22%) ArcGIS
4 2 (0.22%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.11%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.11%) IIS
5 1 (0.11%) nginx
5 1 (0.11%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.11%) SharePoint 2013
5 1 (0.11%) Smallworld
5 1 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 113 (12.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 102 (11.28%) Microsoft Office
3 52 (5.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 42 (4.65%) Microsoft Project
5 14 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.11%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
7 1 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.11%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.11%) InDesign
7 1 (0.11%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.11%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.11%) Trello
Business Applications
1 17 (1.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 9 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.55%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.55%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.44%) Primavera
4 4 (0.44%) SAP Business One
5 3 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.11%) iTrent
7 1 (0.11%) Maximo
7 1 (0.11%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle Cash Management
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.11%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 366 (40.49%) Azure
2 232 (25.66%) Microsoft 365
3 175 (19.36%) Entra ID
4 99 (10.95%) Power Platform
5 89 (9.85%) AWS
6 52 (5.75%) Dynamics 365
7 50 (5.53%) Azure DevOps
8 35 (3.87%) SaaS
9 34 (3.76%) Azure Monitor
10 32 (3.54%) GCP
11 30 (3.32%) OneDrive
12 29 (3.21%) IaaS
12 29 (3.21%) Power Automate
13 26 (2.88%) Azure Logic Apps
14 23 (2.54%) Microsoft Purview
15 18 (1.99%) PowerApps
16 17 (1.88%) Azure Sentinel
17 13 (1.44%) Azure Functions
17 13 (1.44%) Microsoft Copilot
17 13 (1.44%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 85 (9.40%) DNS
2 57 (6.31%) Firewall
3 54 (5.97%) DHCP
4 43 (4.76%) TCP/IP
4 43 (4.76%) VPN
5 38 (4.20%) Wi-Fi
6 31 (3.43%) LAN
7 26 (2.88%) WAN
8 17 (1.88%) VLAN
9 16 (1.77%) Network Security
10 15 (1.66%) MPLS
11 14 (1.55%) SD-WAN
12 11 (1.22%) BGP
13 10 (1.11%) Unified Communications
14 9 (1.00%) DNSSEC
14 9 (1.00%) Wireless
15 7 (0.77%) Internet
15 7 (0.77%) IPsec
15 7 (0.77%) OSPF
16 6 (0.66%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (8.08%) Power BI
2 33 (3.65%) SQL Server
3 13 (1.44%) MySQL
3 13 (1.44%) PostgreSQL
4 10 (1.11%) Data Warehouse
5 9 (1.00%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (1.00%) Metadata
6 8 (0.88%) Oracle Database
7 6 (0.66%) NoSQL
8 5 (0.55%) Relational Database
9 4 (0.44%) Data Mining
9 4 (0.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (0.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 3 (0.33%) MS Access
11 2 (0.22%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.22%) BusinessObjects
11 2 (0.22%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (0.22%) GIS
11 2 (0.22%) Oracle Reports
11 2 (0.22%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 28 (3.10%) JIRA
2 11 (1.22%) Git
3 7 (0.77%) MSI
4 5 (0.55%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.44%) GitLab
5 4 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.33%) Android Studio
6 3 (0.33%) Browser DevTools
6 3 (0.33%) Eclipse
6 3 (0.33%) Robot Framework
6 3 (0.33%) Xcode
7 2 (0.22%) REST Assured
7 2 (0.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.11%) ERwin
8 1 (0.11%) JUnit
8 1 (0.11%) NUnit
8 1 (0.11%) Visual Studio
General
1 305 (33.74%) Social Skills
2 128 (14.16%) Analytical Skills
3 86 (9.51%) Finance
3 86 (9.51%) Public Sector
4 62 (6.86%) Organisational Skills
5 40 (4.42%) Aerospace
6 35 (3.87%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (3.10%) Legal
8 24 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 24 (2.65%) Telecoms
9 18 (1.99%) Military
10 17 (1.88%) Marketing
11 15 (1.66%) Manufacturing
12 13 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
13 9 (1.00%) French Language
13 9 (1.00%) Retail
14 8 (0.88%) Aviation
14 8 (0.88%) Local Government
15 7 (0.77%) Billing
16 6 (0.66%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 94 (10.40%) Architect
2 93 (10.29%) IT Support
3 89 (9.85%) Analyst
4 78 (8.63%) Senior
5 68 (7.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 58 (6.42%) IT Engineer
7 56 (6.19%) Support Engineer
8 54 (5.97%) Lead
9 52 (5.75%) Consultant
10 44 (4.87%) Developer
11 43 (4.76%) Cloud Engineer
11 43 (4.76%) IT Support Engineer
12 40 (4.42%) Azure Engineer
13 33 (3.65%) Administrator
13 33 (3.65%) IT Analyst
14 28 (3.10%) Project Manager
14 28 (3.10%) Support Analyst
15 27 (2.99%) Solutions Architect
16 25 (2.77%) Microsoft Engineer
17 24 (2.65%) IT Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (4.42%) OAuth
2 38 (4.20%) SAML
3 37 (4.09%) OpenID
4 32 (3.54%) .NET
5 25 (2.77%) REST
6 24 (2.65%) LDAP
6 24 (2.65%) OAuth2
7 21 (2.32%) Web Services
8 20 (2.21%) SailPoint
9 19 (2.10%) Microsoft Graph
10 16 (1.77%) ARM Templates
11 12 (1.33%) JSON
12 11 (1.22%) .NET Framework
12 11 (1.22%) React
13 10 (1.11%) Entity Framework
14 9 (1.00%) .NET Core
14 9 (1.00%) Middleware
15 8 (0.88%) RESTful
15 8 (0.88%) SOAP
15 8 (0.88%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 85 (9.40%) Onboarding
2 48 (5.31%) Hybrid Cloud
3 32 (3.54%) Data Centre
3 32 (3.54%) PKI
4 31 (3.43%) Cloud Native
5 24 (2.65%) Product Ownership
6 21 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
7 20 (2.21%) Public Cloud
7 20 (2.21%) Security Posture
8 18 (1.99%) Management Information System
8 18 (1.99%) Operational Technology
9 17 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
10 13 (1.44%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 12 (1.33%) Driving Licence
12 11 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
12 11 (1.22%) Data Structures
13 10 (1.11%) Cyber Defence
13 10 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (1.00%) Cloud Security Posture
14 9 (1.00%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 257 (28.43%) Windows
2 97 (10.73%) Windows Server
3 75 (8.30%) Linux
4 41 (4.54%) Windows 10
5 22 (2.43%) Apple iOS
5 22 (2.43%) Mac OS
6 16 (1.77%) Unix
7 15 (1.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (1.33%) Android
9 8 (0.88%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.66%) CentOS
10 6 (0.66%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.66%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.55%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.11%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.11%) VMS
13 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (20.91%) Problem-Solving
2 121 (13.38%) Agile
2 121 (13.38%) ITIL
3 119 (13.16%) Stakeholder Management
4 105 (11.62%) DevOps
5 102 (11.28%) Customer Service
6 101 (11.17%) Continuous Improvement
7 95 (10.51%) CI/CD
8 93 (10.29%) Cybersecurity
8 93 (10.29%) ITSM
9 89 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 88 (9.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 86 (9.51%) Analytics
12 79 (8.74%) Business Intelligence
13 77 (8.52%) Migration
14 71 (7.85%) Decision-Making
15 65 (7.19%) Project Delivery
16 62 (6.86%) RBAC
16 62 (6.86%) Roadmaps
17 60 (6.64%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 150 (16.59%) PowerShell
2 90 (9.96%) Python
3 81 (8.96%) SQL
4 37 (4.09%) Bash
5 26 (2.88%) T-SQL
6 25 (2.77%) Bicep
7 21 (2.32%) C#
7 21 (2.32%) JavaScript
8 15 (1.66%) Java
9 12 (1.33%) Kusto Query Language
10 8 (0.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (0.88%) X++
11 7 (0.77%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.44%) ABAP
13 3 (0.33%) Perl
13 3 (0.33%) VBA
14 2 (0.22%) Korn
15 1 (0.11%) Google Apps Script
15 1 (0.11%) Groovy
15 1 (0.11%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 329 (36.39%) Security Cleared
2 221 (24.45%) SC Cleared
3 128 (14.16%) Degree
4 118 (13.05%) DV Cleared
5 52 (5.75%) Microsoft Certification
6 43 (4.76%) Azure Certification
7 21 (2.32%) AWS Certification
8 20 (2.21%) Cisco Certification
9 15 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
9 15 (1.66%) PMI Certification
9 15 (1.66%) PMP
10 14 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
10 14 (1.55%) DBS Check
11 12 (1.33%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 10 (1.11%) MCSA
13 9 (1.00%) CCNP
13 9 (1.00%) CISSP
13 9 (1.00%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 8 (0.88%) MCSE
15 7 (0.77%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (4.76%) NIST
2 42 (4.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 33 (3.65%) Data Quality
3 33 (3.65%) PMO
4 32 (3.54%) GDPR
5 30 (3.32%) NCSC
6 27 (2.99%) SLA
7 23 (2.54%) Cyber Essentials
8 19 (2.10%) QA
9 7 (0.77%) GRC
10 6 (0.66%) ISO 31000
11 4 (0.44%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 3 (0.33%) Accessibility
12 3 (0.33%) ISO 19650
12 3 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.33%) NIST 800
13 2 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.22%) ISO 9001
13 2 (0.22%) JSP 440
System Software
1 233 (25.77%) Active Directory
2 80 (8.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 36 (3.98%) Hyper-V
4 25 (2.77%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (1.99%) vSphere
6 15 (1.66%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (1.55%) Docker
8 13 (1.44%) VMware NSX
9 9 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.55%) Firmware
11 3 (0.33%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.22%) UAG
13 1 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.11%) Dovecot
13 1 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.11%) Postfix
13 1 (0.11%) vCloud
13 1 (0.11%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 71 (7.85%) Microsoft Intune
2 69 (7.63%) Terraform
3 34 (3.76%) Ansible
4 32 (3.54%) Kubernetes
5 31 (3.43%) SCCM
6 26 (2.88%) SCOM
7 22 (2.43%) vCenter Server
8 14 (1.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 13 (1.44%) Avamar
9 13 (1.44%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (1.22%) Jamf Pro
11 7 (0.77%) WMI
12 6 (0.66%) FortiGate
12 6 (0.66%) Grafana
12 6 (0.66%) QRadar
13 5 (0.55%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.55%) Puppet
14 4 (0.44%) Clonezilla
15 3 (0.33%) Dell DRAC
15 3 (0.33%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 100 (11.06%) VMware
2 57 (6.31%) ServiceNow
3 47 (5.20%) SAP
4 42 (4.65%) Cisco
5 33 (3.65%) Google
6 23 (2.54%) Oracle
7 22 (2.43%) Meraki
8 21 (2.32%) Dell
9 16 (1.77%) Databricks
9 16 (1.77%) SolarWinds
10 14 (1.55%) Avaya
11 13 (1.44%) Mitel
11 13 (1.44%) Thales
12 12 (1.33%) F5
12 12 (1.33%) Splunk
13 10 (1.11%) Fortinet
13 10 (1.11%) Juniper
13 10 (1.11%) Palo Alto
14 9 (1.00%) Infoblox
14 9 (1.00%) Veeam