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 25 February 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
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 659 488 870
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 13.56% 15.60% 15.87%
As % of the Vendors category 28.30% 30.96% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 469 329 607
10th Percentile £203 £209 £177
25th Percentile £275 £363 £215
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £484 £460
Median % change year-on-year -1.86% +5.22% -3.16%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £663
England median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 17 62
10th Percentile £12.46 £14.23 £12.00
25th Percentile £13.13 £18.20 £14.00
Median hourly rate £17.50 £22.50 £23.82
Median % change year-on-year -22.22% -5.55% +19.11%
75th Percentile £23.75 £28.42 £56.08
90th Percentile £67.00 £57.62 £61.60
England median hourly rate £19.91 £24.18 £17.50
% change year-on-year -17.66% +38.17% -14.63%

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 2,329 1,576 2,717
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 47.91% 50.38% 49.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,657 1,020 1,699
10th Percentile £263 £243 £205
25th Percentile £413 £406 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% +4.50% -0.65%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £600
90th Percentile £682 £675 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £523
% change year-on-year -3.81% +0.48% -2.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 56 156
10th Percentile £12.50 £18.35 £13.05
25th Percentile £16.28 £24.01 £18.44
Median hourly rate £25.72 £28.38 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.37% -40.25% +5.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.81 £62.66
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.13 £76.53
England median hourly rate £24.00 £31.35 £26.00
% change year-on-year -23.43% +20.56% -20.61%

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 25 February 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 25 February 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 25 February 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 +1 338 £475 -3.85% 253
Berkshire 0 222 £490 -2.00% 103
Hampshire -5 146 £544 +8.21% 129
Surrey +11 78 £425 +41.67% 69
Buckinghamshire -4 77 £475 +10.47% 86
Oxfordshire -1 39 £275 +10.00% 67
West Sussex -5 35 £364 -16.13% 49
Kent 0 29 £425 -25.24% 56
East Sussex +5 19 £600 +11.63% 29
Sussex +2 11 £463 -7.50% 8
Home Counties +1 3 - -
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 67 (10.17%) SharePoint
2 52 (7.89%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.52%) Confluence
4 5 (0.76%) Skype for Business
5 4 (0.61%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.46%) MS Project Server
7 2 (0.30%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.30%) GeoServer
7 2 (0.30%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.15%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.15%) BizTalk Server
8 1 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 115 (17.45%) Microsoft Office
2 76 (11.53%) Microsoft Excel
3 28 (4.25%) Microsoft Project
4 26 (3.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (1.21%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.30%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.15%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.15%) InDesign
7 1 (0.15%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.46%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.15%) iTrent
4 1 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.15%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.15%) Sage 50
4 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.15%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 208 (31.56%) Azure
2 166 (25.19%) Microsoft 365
3 99 (15.02%) Entra ID
4 67 (10.17%) AWS
4 67 (10.17%) Power Platform
5 37 (5.61%) OneDrive
6 33 (5.01%) Dynamics 365
7 29 (4.40%) SaaS
8 28 (4.25%) Azure DevOps
8 28 (4.25%) Microsoft Purview
9 26 (3.95%) Power Automate
10 24 (3.64%) PowerApps
11 20 (3.03%) GitHub
12 16 (2.43%) Google Workspace
13 15 (2.28%) Serverless
14 14 (2.12%) Azure Functions
14 14 (2.12%) Microsoft Copilot
14 14 (2.12%) Sauce Labs
15 13 (1.97%) GCP
15 13 (1.97%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 62 (9.41%) DNS
2 48 (7.28%) DHCP
3 35 (5.31%) Firewall
4 30 (4.55%) Wi-Fi
5 22 (3.34%) TCP/IP
6 20 (3.03%) VPN
7 17 (2.58%) Wireless
8 15 (2.28%) Unified Communications
8 15 (2.28%) VLAN
9 13 (1.97%) Kerberos
10 9 (1.37%) 4G
10 9 (1.37%) Network Security
11 8 (1.21%) WebEx
12 7 (1.06%) LAN
12 7 (1.06%) SAN
12 7 (1.06%) VSAN
13 6 (0.91%) SSL
14 5 (0.76%) SD-WAN
14 5 (0.76%) VoIP
14 5 (0.76%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (7.59%) Power BI
2 41 (6.22%) SQL Server
3 23 (3.49%) Relational Database
4 19 (2.88%) MySQL
5 17 (2.58%) Azure SQL Database
6 13 (1.97%) Oracle Database
7 11 (1.67%) PostgreSQL
8 10 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
8 10 (1.52%) Metadata
9 7 (1.06%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
9 7 (1.06%) Data Lake
9 7 (1.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 7 (1.06%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 6 (0.91%) RDBMS
11 5 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
12 4 (0.61%) MongoDB
12 4 (0.61%) Oracle Reports
13 3 (0.46%) GIS
13 3 (0.46%) NoSQL
13 3 (0.46%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 17 (2.58%) Android Studio
2 15 (2.28%) JIRA
3 14 (2.12%) Browser DevTools
3 14 (2.12%) Eclipse
3 14 (2.12%) Git
3 14 (2.12%) Xcode
4 9 (1.37%) Jenkins
5 5 (0.76%) JUnit
6 4 (0.61%) Gradle
7 3 (0.46%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.46%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.46%) Maven
7 3 (0.46%) MSI
7 3 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
7 3 (0.46%) Subversion
8 2 (0.30%) JMeter
8 2 (0.30%) Oracle APEX
8 2 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.15%) Fiddler
9 1 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 235 (35.66%) Social Skills
2 90 (13.66%) Finance
3 74 (11.23%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (9.56%) Organisational Skills
5 57 (8.65%) Public Sector
6 16 (2.43%) Manufacturing
7 13 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (1.67%) Legal
8 11 (1.67%) Military
8 11 (1.67%) Retail
9 9 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 8 (1.21%) Telecoms
11 7 (1.06%) Marketing
12 6 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.76%) Billing
14 4 (0.61%) Banking
14 4 (0.61%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.46%) Aviation
15 3 (0.46%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 101 (15.33%) Architect
2 77 (11.68%) Support Engineer
3 67 (10.17%) Analyst
4 65 (9.86%) IT Support
5 48 (7.28%) Senior
6 46 (6.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 38 (5.77%) IT Engineer
8 33 (5.01%) IT Support Engineer
9 31 (4.70%) Developer
10 24 (3.64%) Consultant
10 24 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
11 21 (3.19%) Infrastructure Support
11 21 (3.19%) Lead
12 20 (3.03%) Administrator
12 20 (3.03%) Infrastructure Architect
12 20 (3.03%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
13 19 (2.88%) Support Officer
14 17 (2.58%) Support Analyst
15 16 (2.43%) Technical Support
16 15 (2.28%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (3.34%) .NET
2 18 (2.73%) React
3 17 (2.58%) CSS
4 16 (2.43%) GraphQL
5 14 (2.12%) Ajax
5 14 (2.12%) AngularJS
5 14 (2.12%) LDAP
6 12 (1.82%) REST
7 11 (1.67%) ARM Templates
8 8 (1.21%) OAuth
9 7 (1.06%) ADO
9 7 (1.06%) OpenID
9 7 (1.06%) SAML
10 6 (0.91%) Spring
11 5 (0.76%) PySpark
12 4 (0.61%) .NET Core
12 4 (0.61%) .NET Framework
12 4 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.61%) SailPoint
12 4 (0.61%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 37 (5.61%) Onboarding
2 36 (5.46%) PKI
3 29 (4.40%) Analytical Mindset
4 19 (2.88%) Product Ownership
4 19 (2.88%) Replication
5 18 (2.73%) Enterprise Software
5 18 (2.73%) Mobile App
6 14 (2.12%) Driving Licence
6 14 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
6 14 (2.12%) Self-Motivation
7 13 (1.97%) Cloud Native
7 13 (1.97%) Management Information System
7 13 (1.97%) Operational Technology
8 12 (1.82%) Fat Client
8 12 (1.82%) Thin Client
8 12 (1.82%) Video Conferencing
9 8 (1.21%) Data Centre
9 8 (1.21%) Security Operations Centre
10 7 (1.06%) Cyber Defence
10 7 (1.06%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 202 (30.65%) Windows
2 85 (12.90%) Linux
3 38 (5.77%) Windows 10
3 38 (5.77%) Windows Server
4 19 (2.88%) Android
5 17 (2.58%) Unix
6 15 (2.28%) Mac OS
7 10 (1.52%) Windows 7
8 8 (1.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 7 (1.06%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.91%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
12 4 (0.61%) Ubuntu
13 2 (0.30%) Apple iOS
13 2 (0.30%) CentOS
14 1 (0.15%) Debian
14 1 (0.15%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.15%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (15.63%) Problem-Solving
2 82 (12.44%) Agile
3 79 (11.99%) Customer Service
4 73 (11.08%) Cybersecurity
5 72 (10.93%) ITIL
6 62 (9.41%) Migration
7 61 (9.26%) DevOps
8 59 (8.95%) Business Intelligence
9 58 (8.80%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 56 (8.50%) Project Management
11 54 (8.19%) Stakeholder Management
12 48 (7.28%) Project Delivery
13 47 (7.13%) CI/CD
14 46 (6.98%) Continuous Improvement
15 44 (6.68%) Time Management
16 39 (5.92%) Analytics
17 35 (5.31%) Roadmaps
18 33 (5.01%) SIEM
18 33 (5.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 32 (4.86%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 95 (14.42%) PowerShell
2 75 (11.38%) Python
3 63 (9.56%) SQL
4 24 (3.64%) Java
4 24 (3.64%) JavaScript
5 18 (2.73%) Bash
6 17 (2.58%) C#
7 15 (2.28%) Perl
8 6 (0.91%) Bicep
8 6 (0.91%) T-SQL
9 4 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
9 4 (0.61%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.61%) X++
10 3 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (0.46%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.30%) Korn
11 2 (0.30%) PHP
12 1 (0.15%) VB
Qualifications
1 227 (34.45%) Security Cleared
2 148 (22.46%) SC Cleared
3 65 (9.86%) DV Cleared
4 63 (9.56%) Degree
5 42 (6.37%) Microsoft Certification
6 25 (3.79%) Azure Certification
7 20 (3.03%) CISSP
8 13 (1.97%) PMI Certification
9 11 (1.67%) Network+ Certification
9 11 (1.67%) Server+ Certification
10 10 (1.52%) DBS Check
10 10 (1.52%) GIAC
10 10 (1.52%) PMP
11 9 (1.37%) CISM
11 9 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
12 7 (1.06%) AWS Certification
12 7 (1.06%) Cisco Certification
12 7 (1.06%) ITIL Certification
12 7 (1.06%) Master's Degree
12 7 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.10%) NIST
1 27 (4.10%) PMO
2 24 (3.64%) GDPR
3 20 (3.03%) SLA
4 17 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 14 (2.12%) Data Quality
6 13 (1.97%) QA
7 11 (1.67%) Cyber Essentials
8 8 (1.21%) NCSC
9 5 (0.76%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.61%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.46%) P3O
11 3 (0.46%) RMADS
12 2 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 19770
12 2 (0.30%) PCI DSS
13 1 (0.15%) COSHH
13 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 1 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.15%) HIPAA
System Software
1 190 (28.83%) Active Directory
2 59 (8.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 29 (4.40%) Hyper-V
4 13 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (1.67%) vSphere
6 10 (1.52%) Docker
7 9 (1.37%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (1.06%) VMware NSX
9 5 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
10 3 (0.46%) DFS Replication
11 2 (0.30%) NFS
12 1 (0.15%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.15%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 59 (8.95%) Microsoft Intune
2 45 (6.83%) SCCM
3 23 (3.49%) Terraform
4 21 (3.19%) Single Sign-On
5 18 (2.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 15 (2.28%) Ansible
7 13 (1.97%) WMI
8 10 (1.52%) Jamf Pro
8 10 (1.52%) Kubernetes
9 5 (0.76%) SCOM
9 5 (0.76%) vCenter Server
10 4 (0.61%) Cisco CUCM
10 4 (0.61%) HP SiteScope
11 3 (0.46%) Grafana
11 3 (0.46%) Nessus
11 3 (0.46%) PaperCut
11 3 (0.46%) Puppet
11 3 (0.46%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 2 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
12 2 (0.30%) WSUS
Vendors
1 77 (11.68%) VMware
2 50 (7.59%) ServiceNow
3 34 (5.16%) Oracle
4 29 (4.40%) Splunk
5 25 (3.79%) Cisco
6 24 (3.64%) SAP
7 17 (2.58%) Citrix
7 17 (2.58%) Databricks
8 10 (1.52%) Tenable
9 9 (1.37%) CrowdStrike
9 9 (1.37%) Thales
10 8 (1.21%) Red Hat
11 7 (1.06%) CyberArk
11 7 (1.06%) Fortinet
11 7 (1.06%) Palo Alto
12 6 (0.91%) Dell
12 6 (0.91%) Meraki
12 6 (0.91%) Virgin Media
13 5 (0.76%) Informatica
13 5 (0.76%) Salesforce