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 17 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
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 820 557 752
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 12.57% 16.39% 13.65%
As % of the Vendors category 29.39% 30.45% 29.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 533 366 491
10th Percentile £203 £200 £200
25th Percentile £360 £263 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +2.83%
75th Percentile £577 £575 £592
90th Percentile £675 £623 £675
England median daily rate £497 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.59% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 42 60
10th Percentile £13.13 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £18.00 £14.20 £12.47
Median hourly rate £32.50 £16.36 £29.75
Median % change year-on-year +98.66% -45.01% +56.58%
75th Percentile £77.50 £32.05 £58.74
90th Percentile £110.75 £82.08 £61.11
England median hourly rate £22.79 £22.63 £16.06
% change year-on-year +0.68% +40.91% -24.32%

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 2,790 1,829 2,578
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 42.77% 53.81% 46.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,798 1,192 1,534
10th Percentile £283 £215 £255
25th Percentile £425 £376 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £614
90th Percentile £694 £650 £700
England median daily rate £510 £513 £515
% change year-on-year -0.49% -0.49% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 199 118 163
10th Percentile £16.40 £14.20 £13.20
25th Percentile £26.81 £15.25 £20.06
Median hourly rate £55.00 £20.33 £55.08
Median % change year-on-year +170.54% -63.09% +22.39%
75th Percentile £85.00 £44.33 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.93 £70.00
England median hourly rate £35.50 £25.15 £26.00
% change year-on-year +41.15% -3.27% -28.77%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 0 435 £500 +11.11% 291
Berkshire 0 242 £500 +1.52% 131
Hampshire -7 167 £525 -0.47% 117
Surrey +6 119 £450 +80.00% 96
Buckinghamshire -4 104 £500 +16.28% 97
Oxfordshire -1 89 £400 +60.00% 67
West Sussex -3 53 £460 +109.09% 44
Kent -2 26 £275 -18.22% 75
East Sussex +2 8 £220 -65.49% 39
Home Counties +1 4 - -
Middlesex - 2 - - 20
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 81 (9.88%) SharePoint
2 74 (9.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.22%) Confluence
4 2 (0.24%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.12%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.12%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.12%) BizTalk Server
5 1 (0.12%) IIS
5 1 (0.12%) MS Project Server
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
5 1 (0.12%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
5 1 (0.12%) Smallworld
5 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 101 (12.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (10.73%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (5.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (4.63%) Microsoft Project
5 14 (1.71%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.24%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.12%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.12%) InDesign
7 1 (0.12%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.12%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 15 (1.83%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.61%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.61%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.49%) SAP Business One
5 3 (0.37%) Primavera
5 3 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.12%) iTrent
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 332 (40.49%) Azure
2 202 (24.63%) Microsoft 365
3 163 (19.88%) Entra ID
4 91 (11.10%) Power Platform
5 83 (10.12%) AWS
6 44 (5.37%) Azure DevOps
6 44 (5.37%) Dynamics 365
7 35 (4.27%) OneDrive
8 31 (3.78%) SaaS
9 27 (3.29%) Power Automate
10 26 (3.17%) GCP
11 23 (2.80%) Azure Logic Apps
12 22 (2.68%) Microsoft Purview
13 19 (2.32%) Azure Monitor
13 19 (2.32%) IaaS
14 17 (2.07%) PowerApps
15 13 (1.59%) Azure Functions
15 13 (1.59%) Serverless
16 12 (1.46%) GitHub
17 11 (1.34%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 81 (9.88%) DNS
2 52 (6.34%) DHCP
3 43 (5.24%) Wi-Fi
4 41 (5.00%) Firewall
5 32 (3.90%) LAN
5 32 (3.90%) TCP/IP
5 32 (3.90%) VPN
6 25 (3.05%) WAN
7 15 (1.83%) MPLS
7 15 (1.83%) SD-WAN
8 13 (1.59%) VLAN
9 12 (1.46%) Kerberos
9 12 (1.46%) Network Security
10 11 (1.34%) BGP
10 11 (1.34%) Unified Communications
11 9 (1.10%) DNSSEC
12 8 (0.98%) IPsec
13 7 (0.85%) OSPF
13 7 (0.85%) Wireless
14 6 (0.73%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (8.41%) Power BI
2 32 (3.90%) SQL Server
3 13 (1.59%) MySQL
4 12 (1.46%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
6 7 (0.85%) Oracle Database
6 7 (0.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 7 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 6 (0.73%) Metadata
8 5 (0.61%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.37%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.37%) MS Access
9 3 (0.37%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 3 (0.37%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.24%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.24%) BusinessObjects
10 2 (0.24%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.24%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 25 (3.05%) JIRA
2 11 (1.34%) Git
3 5 (0.61%) MSI
4 4 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.37%) Android Studio
5 3 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
5 3 (0.37%) Eclipse
5 3 (0.37%) Robot Framework
5 3 (0.37%) Xcode
6 2 (0.24%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.24%) JUnit
6 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.12%) ERwin
7 1 (0.12%) GitLab
7 1 (0.12%) Gradle
7 1 (0.12%) Maven
7 1 (0.12%) NUnit
7 1 (0.12%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 263 (32.07%) Social Skills
2 98 (11.95%) Analytical Skills
3 84 (10.24%) Public Sector
4 79 (9.63%) Finance
5 50 (6.10%) Organisational Skills
6 30 (3.66%) Documentation Skills
7 28 (3.41%) Legal
8 26 (3.17%) Aerospace
9 22 (2.68%) Telecoms
10 16 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 16 (1.95%) Marketing
11 15 (1.83%) Military
12 9 (1.10%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
14 7 (0.85%) Billing
14 7 (0.85%) French Language
14 7 (0.85%) Retail
15 6 (0.73%) Aviation
15 6 (0.73%) Local Government
16 5 (0.61%) Arabic Language
Job Titles
1 86 (10.49%) IT Support
2 84 (10.24%) Architect
3 82 (10.00%) Analyst
4 60 (7.32%) Senior
5 52 (6.34%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 51 (6.22%) Consultant
7 50 (6.10%) Support Engineer
8 49 (5.98%) IT Engineer
9 47 (5.73%) Lead
10 40 (4.88%) IT Support Engineer
11 36 (4.39%) Developer
12 31 (3.78%) Azure Engineer
13 30 (3.66%) Cloud Engineer
13 30 (3.66%) IT Analyst
14 27 (3.29%) Project Manager
14 27 (3.29%) Support Analyst
15 26 (3.17%) Administrator
15 26 (3.17%) Solutions Architect
16 23 (2.80%) IT Support Analyst
17 21 (2.56%) Microsoft Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (4.02%) LDAP
2 32 (3.90%) OAuth
3 30 (3.66%) OpenID
3 30 (3.66%) SAML
4 28 (3.41%) .NET
5 22 (2.68%) OAuth2
6 20 (2.44%) Web Services
7 19 (2.32%) REST
8 18 (2.20%) Microsoft Graph
8 18 (2.20%) SailPoint
9 11 (1.34%) JSON
10 9 (1.10%) XML
11 8 (0.98%) React
11 8 (0.98%) SOAP
12 7 (0.85%) AngularJS
12 7 (0.85%) CSS
12 7 (0.85%) Middleware
12 7 (0.85%) PySpark
12 7 (0.85%) YAML
13 6 (0.73%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 65 (7.93%) Onboarding
2 32 (3.90%) Data Centre
3 31 (3.78%) Cloud Native
4 30 (3.66%) PKI
5 28 (3.41%) Hybrid Cloud
6 27 (3.29%) Product Ownership
7 22 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
8 19 (2.32%) Public Cloud
9 17 (2.07%) Operational Technology
10 16 (1.95%) Replication
11 15 (1.83%) Security Posture
12 14 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
13 13 (1.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 12 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
15 11 (1.34%) Management Information System
16 10 (1.22%) Cyber Defence
16 10 (1.22%) Data Structures
17 9 (1.10%) Analytical Mindset
17 9 (1.10%) Private Cloud
18 8 (0.98%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 227 (27.68%) Windows
2 69 (8.41%) Windows Server
3 60 (7.32%) Linux
4 32 (3.90%) Windows 10
5 24 (2.93%) Mac OS
6 22 (2.68%) Apple iOS
7 15 (1.83%) Unix
8 14 (1.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (1.46%) Android
10 7 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.73%) Windows 7
12 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.49%) CentOS
13 4 (0.49%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
14 1 (0.12%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.12%) VMS
14 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (18.90%) Problem-Solving
2 107 (13.05%) ITIL
3 102 (12.44%) Agile
4 99 (12.07%) Customer Service
5 92 (11.22%) Stakeholder Management
6 88 (10.73%) DevOps
7 82 (10.00%) Migration
8 81 (9.88%) ITSM
9 80 (9.76%) CI/CD
10 75 (9.15%) Continuous Improvement
10 75 (9.15%) Cybersecurity
11 73 (8.90%) Business Intelligence
12 71 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 68 (8.29%) Decision-Making
14 67 (8.17%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 65 (7.93%) Project Delivery
16 63 (7.68%) Analytics
17 60 (7.32%) Project Management
18 55 (6.71%) Roadmaps
19 54 (6.59%) AI
Programming Languages
1 136 (16.59%) PowerShell
2 77 (9.39%) Python
3 73 (8.90%) SQL
4 28 (3.41%) T-SQL
5 26 (3.17%) Bash
6 18 (2.20%) C#
7 14 (1.71%) Bicep
7 14 (1.71%) Java
7 14 (1.71%) JavaScript
8 12 (1.46%) Kusto Query Language
9 9 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 7 (0.85%) X++
11 4 (0.49%) ABAP
12 3 (0.37%) Perl
12 3 (0.37%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.24%) Korn
13 2 (0.24%) VBA
14 1 (0.12%) Google Apps Script
14 1 (0.12%) Groovy
14 1 (0.12%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 296 (36.10%) Security Cleared
2 212 (25.85%) SC Cleared
3 115 (14.02%) Degree
4 89 (10.85%) DV Cleared
5 47 (5.73%) Microsoft Certification
6 35 (4.27%) Azure Certification
7 18 (2.20%) Cisco Certification
8 16 (1.95%) AWS Certification
9 13 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
9 13 (1.59%) PMI Certification
9 13 (1.59%) PMP
10 12 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
10 12 (1.46%) DBS Check
11 9 (1.10%) CCNP
11 9 (1.10%) MCSA
11 9 (1.10%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 9 (1.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 8 (0.98%) CISSP
12 8 (0.98%) MCSE
13 7 (0.85%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (4.51%) NIST
2 33 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (3.41%) GDPR
4 27 (3.29%) NCSC
5 26 (3.17%) Data Quality
5 26 (3.17%) SLA
6 24 (2.93%) PMO
7 20 (2.44%) QA
8 18 (2.20%) Cyber Essentials
9 6 (0.73%) ISO 31000
10 4 (0.49%) Accessibility
10 4 (0.49%) NIST 800
11 3 (0.37%) GRC
11 3 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 3 (0.37%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.12%) GxP
13 1 (0.12%) ISO 9001
13 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
System Software
1 226 (27.56%) Active Directory
2 73 (8.90%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (3.66%) Hyper-V
4 19 (2.32%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.20%) vSphere
6 14 (1.71%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (1.59%) Virtual Desktop
7 13 (1.59%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.98%) Docker
9 5 (0.61%) Firmware
10 3 (0.37%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.24%) UAG
12 1 (0.12%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.12%) Dovecot
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.12%) Postfix
12 1 (0.12%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 70 (8.54%) Microsoft Intune
2 51 (6.22%) Terraform
3 30 (3.66%) SCCM
4 25 (3.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 20 (2.44%) Ansible
5 20 (2.44%) SCOM
6 18 (2.20%) Kubernetes
6 18 (2.20%) vCenter Server
7 14 (1.71%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (1.46%) Jamf Pro
9 11 (1.34%) Avamar
10 5 (0.61%) Progress Chef
10 5 (0.61%) Puppet
10 5 (0.61%) QRadar
11 4 (0.49%) Clonezilla
11 4 (0.49%) FortiGate
11 4 (0.49%) WMI
12 3 (0.37%) SCSM
13 2 (0.24%) vMotion
13 2 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 91 (11.10%) VMware
2 52 (6.34%) ServiceNow
3 43 (5.24%) Cisco
4 38 (4.63%) SAP
5 26 (3.17%) Google
6 22 (2.68%) Meraki
7 18 (2.20%) Dell
7 18 (2.20%) Oracle
8 15 (1.83%) SolarWinds
9 14 (1.71%) Avaya
10 13 (1.59%) Citrix
10 13 (1.59%) Databricks
10 13 (1.59%) Mitel
11 12 (1.46%) F5
12 11 (1.34%) Fortinet
12 11 (1.34%) Thales
13 10 (1.22%) Juniper
13 10 (1.22%) Palo Alto
14 9 (1.10%) Splunk
14 9 (1.10%) Veeam