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 26 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
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 852 553 695
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 12.87% 16.00% 13.38%
As % of the Vendors category 29.80% 30.05% 28.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 372 455
10th Percentile £202 £200 £200
25th Percentile £358 £256 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year - -1.04% +4.35%
75th Percentile £584 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £623 £675
England median daily rate £493 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +3.68% -4.52% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 41 52
10th Percentile £13.64 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £18.50 £14.20 £12.47
Median hourly rate £32.50 £16.36 £25.29
Median % change year-on-year +98.66% -35.31% +36.70%
75th Percentile £84.38 £32.05 £55.96
90th Percentile £110.75 £83.00 £61.55
England median hourly rate £24.00 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year +6.05% +39.43% -24.51%

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 2,859 1,840 2,459
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 43.19% 53.23% 47.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,824 1,214 1,477
10th Percentile £283 £209 £263
25th Percentile £425 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% +5.00%
75th Percentile £605 £600 £625
90th Percentile £693 £650 £700
England median daily rate £510 £509 £525
% change year-on-year +0.25% -3.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 208 115 151
10th Percentile £16.75 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £30.05 £15.00 £20.75
Median hourly rate £57.87 £19.91 £55.80
Median % change year-on-year +190.65% -64.32% +24.00%
75th Percentile £85.00 £42.36 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £78.10 £70.00
England median hourly rate £35.71 £25.15 £27.50
% change year-on-year +41.99% -8.55% -30.47%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 0 455 £500 +11.11% 254
Berkshire +1 247 £500 +4.99% 121
Hampshire -6 177 £513 -4.83% 112
Surrey +5 117 £438 +66.67% 108
Buckinghamshire -4 114 £510 +10.27% 72
Oxfordshire -1 94 £433 +73.00% 64
West Sussex -4 53 £430 +95.45% 37
Kent -3 28 £280 -10.40% 67
East Sussex +3 9 £298 -53.33% 29
Home Counties +1 3 - -
Middlesex - 2 - - 21
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 89 (10.45%) SharePoint
2 72 (8.45%) Microsoft Exchange
3 15 (1.76%) Confluence
4 2 (0.23%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.12%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.12%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.12%) IIS
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
1 109 (12.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 91 (10.68%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (5.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 42 (4.93%) Microsoft Project
5 14 (1.64%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.23%) 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 17 (2.00%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (1.17%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.59%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.59%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.47%) Primavera
4 4 (0.47%) SAP Business One
5 3 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
6 2 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.12%) iTrent
7 1 (0.12%) NetSuite
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Cash Management
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Payables
7 1 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
7 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 344 (40.38%) Azure
2 217 (25.47%) Microsoft 365
3 170 (19.95%) Entra ID
4 90 (10.56%) Power Platform
5 84 (9.86%) AWS
6 49 (5.75%) Dynamics 365
7 48 (5.63%) Azure DevOps
8 34 (3.99%) OneDrive
9 31 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
9 31 (3.64%) SaaS
10 27 (3.17%) Power Automate
11 26 (3.05%) GCP
11 26 (3.05%) IaaS
12 24 (2.82%) Azure Logic Apps
13 22 (2.58%) Microsoft Purview
14 16 (1.88%) PowerApps
15 15 (1.76%) Azure Sentinel
16 13 (1.53%) Azure Functions
16 13 (1.53%) PaaS
16 13 (1.53%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 81 (9.51%) DNS
2 51 (5.99%) DHCP
3 49 (5.75%) Firewall
4 42 (4.93%) Wi-Fi
5 39 (4.58%) VPN
6 38 (4.46%) TCP/IP
7 31 (3.64%) LAN
8 25 (2.93%) WAN
9 16 (1.88%) Network Security
10 15 (1.76%) MPLS
11 14 (1.64%) SD-WAN
11 14 (1.64%) VLAN
12 11 (1.29%) BGP
12 11 (1.29%) Unified Communications
13 9 (1.06%) DNSSEC
14 8 (0.94%) Wireless
15 7 (0.82%) Internet
15 7 (0.82%) IPsec
15 7 (0.82%) OSPF
16 6 (0.70%) FTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (7.86%) Power BI
2 34 (3.99%) SQL Server
3 13 (1.53%) MySQL
4 12 (1.41%) PostgreSQL
5 11 (1.29%) Azure SQL Database
6 10 (1.17%) Data Warehouse
7 8 (0.94%) Oracle Database
8 7 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 6 (0.70%) Metadata
9 6 (0.70%) NoSQL
10 5 (0.59%) Relational Database
10 5 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.35%) Data Lake
11 3 (0.35%) Data Mining
11 3 (0.35%) MS Access
11 3 (0.35%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 2 (0.23%) Amazon RDS
12 2 (0.23%) BusinessObjects
12 2 (0.23%) Oracle Reports
12 2 (0.23%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 27 (3.17%) JIRA
2 13 (1.53%) Git
3 5 (0.59%) MSI
4 4 (0.47%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.35%) Android Studio
5 3 (0.35%) Browser DevTools
5 3 (0.35%) Eclipse
5 3 (0.35%) Robot Framework
5 3 (0.35%) Xcode
6 2 (0.23%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.12%) ERwin
7 1 (0.12%) GitLab
7 1 (0.12%) JUnit
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
1 278 (32.63%) Social Skills
2 107 (12.56%) Analytical Skills
3 87 (10.21%) Finance
4 85 (9.98%) Public Sector
5 56 (6.57%) Organisational Skills
6 32 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (3.40%) Aerospace
7 29 (3.40%) Legal
8 23 (2.70%) Telecoms
9 18 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (2.00%) Marketing
10 17 (2.00%) Military
11 11 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
12 10 (1.17%) Manufacturing
13 9 (1.06%) Retail
14 8 (0.94%) Aviation
14 8 (0.94%) Billing
14 8 (0.94%) French Language
15 7 (0.82%) Local Government
16 5 (0.59%) Arabic Language
Job Titles
1 88 (10.33%) IT Support
2 87 (10.21%) Analyst
2 87 (10.21%) Architect
3 67 (7.86%) Senior
4 61 (7.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 52 (6.10%) IT Engineer
5 52 (6.10%) Support Engineer
6 50 (5.87%) Consultant
7 49 (5.75%) Lead
8 41 (4.81%) IT Support Engineer
9 40 (4.69%) Developer
10 37 (4.34%) Cloud Engineer
11 36 (4.23%) Azure Engineer
12 31 (3.64%) IT Analyst
13 28 (3.29%) Project Manager
14 27 (3.17%) Support Analyst
15 26 (3.05%) Administrator
15 26 (3.05%) Solutions Architect
16 23 (2.70%) IT Support Analyst
16 23 (2.70%) Microsoft Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (4.34%) OAuth
2 35 (4.11%) OpenID
2 35 (4.11%) SAML
3 33 (3.87%) .NET
4 25 (2.93%) LDAP
5 23 (2.70%) REST
6 22 (2.58%) OAuth2
7 20 (2.35%) Web Services
8 19 (2.23%) Microsoft Graph
9 18 (2.11%) SailPoint
10 15 (1.76%) ARM Templates
11 12 (1.41%) JSON
12 11 (1.29%) .NET Framework
13 10 (1.17%) Entity Framework
13 10 (1.17%) React
14 9 (1.06%) .NET Core
15 8 (0.94%) Middleware
15 8 (0.94%) XML
16 7 (0.82%) CSS
16 7 (0.82%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 77 (9.04%) Onboarding
2 36 (4.23%) Hybrid Cloud
3 32 (3.76%) Data Centre
4 31 (3.64%) Cloud Native
4 31 (3.64%) PKI
5 25 (2.93%) Product Ownership
6 22 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
7 20 (2.35%) Public Cloud
8 18 (2.11%) Security Posture
9 17 (2.00%) Enterprise Software
9 17 (2.00%) Operational Technology
10 14 (1.64%) Management Information System
11 13 (1.53%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 11 (1.29%) Data Structures
13 10 (1.17%) Analytical Mindset
13 10 (1.17%) Cyber Defence
13 10 (1.17%) Driving Licence
13 10 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (1.06%) Private Cloud
15 8 (0.94%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 241 (28.29%) Windows
2 79 (9.27%) Windows Server
3 68 (7.98%) Linux
4 36 (4.23%) Windows 10
5 24 (2.82%) Mac OS
6 22 (2.58%) Apple iOS
7 15 (1.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.76%) Unix
8 12 (1.41%) Android
9 7 (0.82%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.70%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.59%) CentOS
11 5 (0.59%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.12%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.12%) VMS
13 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (19.60%) Problem-Solving
2 113 (13.26%) ITIL
3 110 (12.91%) Agile
4 104 (12.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 103 (12.09%) Customer Service
6 94 (11.03%) DevOps
7 88 (10.33%) CI/CD
8 85 (9.98%) Cybersecurity
8 85 (9.98%) ITSM
9 84 (9.86%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 83 (9.74%) Continuous Improvement
11 80 (9.39%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 79 (9.27%) Analytics
13 75 (8.80%) Migration
14 72 (8.45%) Business Intelligence
14 72 (8.45%) Decision-Making
15 68 (7.98%) Project Delivery
16 66 (7.75%) Project Management
17 60 (7.04%) AI
18 57 (6.69%) RBAC
Programming Languages
1 139 (16.31%) PowerShell
2 79 (9.27%) Python
3 75 (8.80%) SQL
4 33 (3.87%) Bash
5 28 (3.29%) T-SQL
6 25 (2.93%) Bicep
7 22 (2.58%) C#
8 16 (1.88%) JavaScript
9 13 (1.53%) Java
10 12 (1.41%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (1.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 8 (0.94%) X++
13 4 (0.47%) ABAP
13 4 (0.47%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.35%) Perl
15 2 (0.23%) Korn
15 2 (0.23%) VBA
16 1 (0.12%) Google Apps Script
16 1 (0.12%) Groovy
16 1 (0.12%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 307 (36.03%) Security Cleared
2 207 (24.30%) SC Cleared
3 121 (14.20%) Degree
4 104 (12.21%) DV Cleared
5 49 (5.75%) Microsoft Certification
6 39 (4.58%) Azure Certification
7 19 (2.23%) Cisco Certification
8 16 (1.88%) AWS Certification
8 16 (1.88%) PMI Certification
8 16 (1.88%) PMP
9 13 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
10 12 (1.41%) Computer Science Degree
10 12 (1.41%) DBS Check
11 9 (1.06%) CCNP
11 9 (1.06%) MCSA
11 9 (1.06%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 9 (1.06%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 8 (0.94%) CISSP
12 8 (0.94%) MCSE
13 7 (0.82%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (4.58%) NIST
2 36 (4.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 30 (3.52%) GDPR
3 30 (3.52%) PMO
4 28 (3.29%) NCSC
5 27 (3.17%) Data Quality
5 27 (3.17%) SLA
6 20 (2.35%) Cyber Essentials
6 20 (2.35%) QA
7 6 (0.70%) GRC
7 6 (0.70%) ISO 31000
8 4 (0.47%) Accessibility
8 4 (0.47%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.35%) NIST 800
10 2 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.12%) GAAP
11 1 (0.12%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 229 (26.88%) Active Directory
2 76 (8.92%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (3.64%) Hyper-V
4 23 (2.70%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.11%) vSphere
6 14 (1.64%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (1.64%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (1.53%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.94%) Docker
9 5 (0.59%) Firmware
10 3 (0.35%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.23%) 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 74 (8.69%) Microsoft Intune
2 62 (7.28%) Terraform
3 37 (4.34%) SCCM
4 24 (2.82%) Ansible
5 21 (2.46%) SCOM
6 20 (2.35%) Kubernetes
7 19 (2.23%) vCenter Server
8 17 (2.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 14 (1.64%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (1.41%) Avamar
11 11 (1.29%) Jamf Pro
12 6 (0.70%) QRadar
13 5 (0.59%) FortiGate
13 5 (0.59%) Progress Chef
13 5 (0.59%) Puppet
14 4 (0.47%) Clonezilla
14 4 (0.47%) WMI
15 3 (0.35%) SCSM
16 2 (0.23%) vMotion
16 2 (0.23%) WSUS
Vendors
1 95 (11.15%) VMware
2 57 (6.69%) ServiceNow
3 44 (5.16%) SAP
4 42 (4.93%) Cisco
5 27 (3.17%) Google
6 23 (2.70%) Oracle
7 22 (2.58%) Meraki
8 19 (2.23%) Dell
9 15 (1.76%) SolarWinds
10 14 (1.64%) Avaya
11 13 (1.53%) Mitel
12 12 (1.41%) Citrix
12 12 (1.41%) Databricks
12 12 (1.41%) F5
12 12 (1.41%) Thales
13 10 (1.17%) Fortinet
13 10 (1.17%) Juniper
13 10 (1.17%) Palo Alto
14 9 (1.06%) Infoblox
14 9 (1.06%) Splunk