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 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
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 816 553 777
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 12.52% 16.36% 13.92%
As % of the Vendors category 29.28% 30.49% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 532 364 504
10th Percentile £203 £200 £200
25th Percentile £360 £263 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £473 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.53% -0.53% +2.15%
75th Percentile £580 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £623 £674
England median daily rate £496 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +4.40% -2.61% -2.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 41 68
10th Percentile £13.15 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £18.13 £14.20 £12.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £16.36 £26.22
Median % change year-on-year +98.66% -37.59% +37.97%
75th Percentile £77.50 £32.05 £58.74
90th Percentile £110.75 £83.00 £61.22
England median hourly rate £22.81 £22.63 £16.06
% change year-on-year +0.77% +40.91% -23.52%

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 2,787 1,814 2,615
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 42.77% 53.65% 46.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,804 1,179 1,552
10th Percentile £283 £220 £254
25th Percentile £425 £375 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £613
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 199 117 175
10th Percentile £16.40 £14.20 £12.25
25th Percentile £26.81 £15.25 £18.25
Median hourly rate £55.00 £20.75 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +165.06% -58.50% +11.11%
75th Percentile £85.00 £46.30 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £76.65 £70.00
England median hourly rate £35.50 £25.15 £25.25
% change year-on-year +41.15% -0.40% -29.86%

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 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 16 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 16 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 0 434 £500 +11.11% 276
Berkshire 0 243 £500 +4.71% 124
Hampshire -7 166 £525 - 108
Surrey +6 116 £450 +80.00% 85
Buckinghamshire -4 104 £500 +11.11% 88
Oxfordshire -2 87 £403 +61.00% 67
West Sussex -3 54 £430 +86.96% 37
Kent -2 26 £275 -18.22% 58
East Sussex +2 9 £298 -53.33% 25
Home Counties +1 4 - -
Middlesex - 1 - - 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 (9.93%) SharePoint
2 74 (9.07%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.23%) Confluence
4 2 (0.25%) 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 (12.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (10.78%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (5.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 37 (4.53%) Microsoft Project
5 14 (1.72%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.25%) 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 (1.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (1.23%) 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%) Remedy ITSM
6 2 (0.25%) Primavera
7 1 (0.12%) iTrent
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 330 (40.44%) Azure
2 202 (24.75%) Microsoft 365
3 163 (19.98%) Entra ID
4 90 (11.03%) Power Platform
5 82 (10.05%) AWS
6 45 (5.51%) Azure DevOps
7 43 (5.27%) Dynamics 365
8 35 (4.29%) OneDrive
9 30 (3.68%) SaaS
10 26 (3.19%) Power Automate
11 25 (3.06%) GCP
12 23 (2.82%) Azure Logic Apps
13 22 (2.70%) Microsoft Purview
14 19 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
14 19 (2.33%) IaaS
15 16 (1.96%) PowerApps
16 13 (1.59%) Azure Functions
16 13 (1.59%) GitHub
16 13 (1.59%) Serverless
17 11 (1.35%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 82 (10.05%) DNS
2 53 (6.50%) DHCP
3 42 (5.15%) Wi-Fi
4 41 (5.02%) Firewall
5 32 (3.92%) LAN
5 32 (3.92%) TCP/IP
5 32 (3.92%) VPN
6 25 (3.06%) WAN
7 16 (1.96%) SD-WAN
8 15 (1.84%) MPLS
9 13 (1.59%) VLAN
10 12 (1.47%) Network Security
11 11 (1.35%) BGP
11 11 (1.35%) Kerberos
11 11 (1.35%) Unified Communications
12 9 (1.10%) DNSSEC
12 9 (1.10%) IPsec
13 7 (0.86%) BIG-IP
13 7 (0.86%) OSPF
13 7 (0.86%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (8.46%) Power BI
2 32 (3.92%) SQL Server
3 13 (1.59%) MySQL
4 12 (1.47%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (1.10%) Data Warehouse
6 7 (0.86%) Azure SQL Database
6 7 (0.86%) Oracle Database
7 6 (0.74%) Metadata
7 6 (0.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 6 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 5 (0.61%) Relational Database
9 3 (0.37%) Data Mining
9 3 (0.37%) MS Access
9 3 (0.37%) Star Schema
10 2 (0.25%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (0.25%) BusinessObjects
10 2 (0.25%) Data Lake
10 2 (0.25%) Geospatial Data
10 2 (0.25%) Oracle Reports
10 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 25 (3.06%) JIRA
2 12 (1.47%) 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%) JUnit
5 3 (0.37%) Robot Framework
5 3 (0.37%) Xcode
6 2 (0.25%) Gradle
6 2 (0.25%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.25%) Maven
6 2 (0.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.12%) GitLab
7 1 (0.12%) MLflow
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 (32.23%) Social Skills
2 96 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
3 81 (9.93%) Public Sector
4 80 (9.80%) Finance
5 50 (6.13%) Organisational Skills
6 29 (3.55%) Documentation Skills
6 29 (3.55%) Legal
7 26 (3.19%) Aerospace
8 21 (2.57%) Telecoms
9 16 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 15 (1.84%) Marketing
10 15 (1.84%) Military
11 9 (1.10%) Manufacturing
12 8 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
13 7 (0.86%) Billing
13 7 (0.86%) French Language
13 7 (0.86%) Retail
14 6 (0.74%) Aviation
14 6 (0.74%) Local Government
15 5 (0.61%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 86 (10.54%) Architect
1 86 (10.54%) IT Support
2 82 (10.05%) Analyst
3 59 (7.23%) Senior
4 52 (6.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 51 (6.25%) Consultant
6 50 (6.13%) Support Engineer
7 49 (6.00%) IT Engineer
8 48 (5.88%) Lead
9 40 (4.90%) IT Support Engineer
10 35 (4.29%) Developer
11 31 (3.80%) Azure Engineer
12 30 (3.68%) Cloud Engineer
12 30 (3.68%) IT Analyst
13 27 (3.31%) Project Manager
13 27 (3.31%) Solutions Architect
13 27 (3.31%) Support Analyst
14 26 (3.19%) Administrator
15 23 (2.82%) IT Support Analyst
16 21 (2.57%) Microsoft Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (3.92%) LDAP
2 31 (3.80%) OAuth
3 29 (3.55%) OpenID
3 29 (3.55%) SAML
4 28 (3.43%) .NET
5 21 (2.57%) OAuth2
6 19 (2.33%) REST
6 19 (2.33%) Web Services
7 18 (2.21%) Microsoft Graph
8 16 (1.96%) SailPoint
9 11 (1.35%) JSON
10 9 (1.10%) XML
11 8 (0.98%) React
11 8 (0.98%) SOAP
12 7 (0.86%) AngularJS
12 7 (0.86%) CSS
12 7 (0.86%) Middleware
12 7 (0.86%) YAML
13 6 (0.74%) .NET Framework
13 6 (0.74%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 63 (7.72%) Onboarding
2 32 (3.92%) Data Centre
3 30 (3.68%) Cloud Native
3 30 (3.68%) PKI
4 28 (3.43%) Hybrid Cloud
5 25 (3.06%) Product Ownership
6 22 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
7 19 (2.33%) Public Cloud
8 17 (2.08%) Operational Technology
9 16 (1.96%) Replication
10 14 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
10 14 (1.72%) Security Posture
11 13 (1.59%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 12 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
13 11 (1.35%) Management Information System
14 10 (1.23%) Data Structures
15 9 (1.10%) Cyber Defence
15 9 (1.10%) Private Cloud
16 8 (0.98%) Driving Licence
16 8 (0.98%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 228 (27.94%) Windows
2 68 (8.33%) Windows Server
3 59 (7.23%) Linux
4 30 (3.68%) Windows 10
5 24 (2.94%) Mac OS
6 22 (2.70%) Apple iOS
7 15 (1.84%) Unix
8 14 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (1.47%) Android
10 8 (0.98%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.74%) Windows 7
11 6 (0.74%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.37%) CentOS
13 3 (0.37%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.12%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.12%) VMS
14 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (19.00%) Problem-Solving
2 106 (12.99%) ITIL
3 100 (12.25%) Agile
4 99 (12.13%) Customer Service
5 92 (11.27%) Stakeholder Management
6 90 (11.03%) DevOps
7 82 (10.05%) Migration
8 80 (9.80%) CI/CD
9 78 (9.56%) ITSM
10 74 (9.07%) Cybersecurity
11 73 (8.95%) Continuous Improvement
12 72 (8.82%) Business Intelligence
12 72 (8.82%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 67 (8.21%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 66 (8.09%) Decision-Making
15 65 (7.97%) Project Delivery
16 62 (7.60%) Analytics
17 58 (7.11%) Project Management
18 56 (6.86%) Roadmaps
19 54 (6.62%) AI
Programming Languages
1 133 (16.30%) PowerShell
2 75 (9.19%) Python
3 70 (8.58%) SQL
4 28 (3.43%) T-SQL
5 26 (3.19%) Bash
6 18 (2.21%) C#
7 15 (1.84%) Java
8 14 (1.72%) Bicep
8 14 (1.72%) JavaScript
9 11 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
10 9 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 7 (0.86%) X++
12 4 (0.49%) ABAP
13 3 (0.37%) Perl
13 3 (0.37%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.25%) Korn
15 1 (0.12%) Google Apps Script
15 1 (0.12%) Groovy
15 1 (0.12%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.12%) VBA
Qualifications
1 294 (36.03%) Security Cleared
2 211 (25.86%) SC Cleared
3 113 (13.85%) Degree
4 88 (10.78%) DV Cleared
5 46 (5.64%) Microsoft Certification
6 35 (4.29%) Azure Certification
7 18 (2.21%) Cisco Certification
8 16 (1.96%) AWS Certification
9 13 (1.59%) PMI Certification
9 13 (1.59%) PMP
10 12 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
10 12 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
10 12 (1.47%) DBS Check
11 9 (1.10%) CCNP
11 9 (1.10%) MCSA
11 9 (1.10%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 8 (0.98%) CISSP
12 8 (0.98%) MCSE
12 8 (0.98%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
13 7 (0.86%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (4.53%) NIST
2 32 (3.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 28 (3.43%) GDPR
3 28 (3.43%) NCSC
4 26 (3.19%) SLA
5 24 (2.94%) Data Quality
5 24 (2.94%) PMO
6 20 (2.45%) QA
7 18 (2.21%) Cyber Essentials
8 6 (0.74%) ISO 31000
9 5 (0.61%) NIST 800
10 4 (0.49%) Accessibility
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 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 1 (0.12%) ISO 19650
13 1 (0.12%) JSP 440
System Software
1 225 (27.57%) Active Directory
2 75 (9.19%) VMware Infrastructure
3 30 (3.68%) Hyper-V
4 19 (2.33%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.21%) vSphere
6 15 (1.84%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (1.72%) VMware NSX
8 13 (1.59%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.98%) Docker
10 5 (0.61%) Firmware
11 3 (0.37%) OpenAM
12 2 (0.25%) UAG
13 1 (0.12%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 1 (0.12%) Dovecot
13 1 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 1 (0.12%) Postfix
13 1 (0.12%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 72 (8.82%) Microsoft Intune
2 51 (6.25%) Terraform
3 32 (3.92%) SCCM
4 25 (3.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 20 (2.45%) Ansible
5 20 (2.45%) SCOM
6 18 (2.21%) Kubernetes
6 18 (2.21%) vCenter Server
7 14 (1.72%) Single Sign-On
8 12 (1.47%) Jamf Pro
9 11 (1.35%) 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 (0.25%) vMotion
13 2 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 93 (11.40%) VMware
2 51 (6.25%) ServiceNow
3 43 (5.27%) Cisco
4 38 (4.66%) SAP
5 26 (3.19%) Google
6 22 (2.70%) Meraki
7 18 (2.21%) Dell
7 18 (2.21%) Oracle
8 15 (1.84%) SolarWinds
9 14 (1.72%) Avaya
9 14 (1.72%) Citrix
10 13 (1.59%) F5
10 13 (1.59%) Mitel
11 12 (1.47%) Databricks
12 11 (1.35%) Fortinet
12 11 (1.35%) Thales
13 10 (1.23%) Juniper
13 10 (1.23%) Palo Alto
13 10 (1.23%) Splunk
14 9 (1.10%) Veeam