Microsoft Contract Job Trends

Microsoft
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies 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 April 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 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,543 3,895 5,631
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.07% 13.30% 12.85%
As % of the Vendors category 28.21% 28.13% 30.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,736 2,611 3,722
10th Percentile £206 £210 £189
25th Percentile £373 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £579 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £440 £465
% change year-on-year +2.33% -5.42% +0.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 216 448
10th Percentile £13.43 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.62 £12.86
Median hourly rate £20.09 £21.73 £15.30
Median % change year-on-year -7.55% +42.07% -32.62%
75th Percentile £28.75 £30.63 £23.97
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.00 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £19.83 £15.00
% change year-on-year +0.40% +32.20% -25.00%

All Vendors
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 19,650 13,844 18,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.79% 47.26% 42.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,588 8,722 11,646
10th Percentile £313 £295 £261
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £518
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -1.05% -1.35%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 979 530 1,070
10th Percentile £15.17 £15.00 £12.02
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £14.36
Median hourly rate £29.00 £28.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +24.42% -47.06%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.00 £56.43
90th Percentile £78.75 £77.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.59 £24.66 £21.46
% change year-on-year +3.78% +14.91% -45.74%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Microsoft relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Microsoft job vacancy trend in the UK

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 16 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 16 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the UK over the 6 months to 16 April 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
England +1 4,869 £492 +3.58% 2,963
UK excluding London 0 2,892 £450 +2.33% 2,614
London -2 2,128 £510 +2.00% 835
Work from Home -3 1,359 £500 - 1,131
North of England 0 791 £450 +5.88% 628
South East -2 643 £480 -4.00% 805
Midlands -4 502 £450 +9.76% 373
North West -1 435 £420 -6.04% 346
West Midlands -4 352 £463 +15.39% 206
East of England 0 339 £400 -8.57% 324
South West 0 335 £470 - 288
Yorkshire +3 328 £454 +13.50% 196
Scotland +2 195 £438 +6.97% 148
East Midlands -1 145 £388 -8.82% 166
Wales +3 93 £310 +17.66% 97
North East -17 34 £450 +28.57% 98
Northern Ireland +3 21 £450 +38.46% 30
Channel Islands -2 1 - -

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 606 (10.93%) SharePoint
2 410 (7.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 108 (1.95%) Confluence
4 30 (0.54%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (0.40%) Apache
6 22 (0.40%) CMS
7 18 (0.32%) Skype for Business
8 17 (0.31%) HCL Notes
9 16 (0.29%) SAS
10 11 (0.20%) IIS
11 10 (0.18%) Mendix
12 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.090%) Camunda
13 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
14 4 (0.072%) Drupal
14 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
14 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
14 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
15 3 (0.054%) Smallworld
Applications
1 584 (10.54%) Microsoft Office
2 520 (9.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 232 (4.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 128 (2.31%) Microsoft Project
5 98 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 75 (1.35%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
14 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 200 (3.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 54 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 16 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
6 14 (0.25%) Maximo
7 13 (0.23%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
8 11 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 8 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 8 (0.14%) Shopify
11 6 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
11 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
11 6 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.11%) SystmOne
12 5 (0.090%) Dynamics AX
12 5 (0.090%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 2,281 (41.15%) Azure
2 1,436 (25.91%) Microsoft 365
3 932 (16.81%) Power Platform
4 704 (12.70%) Entra ID
5 458 (8.26%) AWS
5 458 (8.26%) Dynamics 365
6 445 (8.03%) Azure DevOps
7 338 (6.10%) Power Automate
8 302 (5.45%) PowerApps
9 282 (5.09%) Microsoft Purview
10 267 (4.82%) GitHub
11 217 (3.91%) Microsoft Copilot
12 206 (3.72%) OneDrive
13 200 (3.61%) Azure Data Factory
14 189 (3.41%) SaaS
15 175 (3.16%) Serverless
16 166 (2.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 161 (2.90%) GCP
18 148 (2.67%) GitHub Actions
19 146 (2.63%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 306 (5.52%) Firewall
2 302 (5.45%) DNS
3 210 (3.79%) VPN
4 174 (3.14%) DHCP
5 148 (2.67%) Wi-Fi
6 137 (2.47%) WAN
7 123 (2.22%) Network Security
8 118 (2.13%) LAN
9 112 (2.02%) TCP/IP
10 60 (1.08%) VLAN
11 54 (0.97%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.81%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.70%) Skype
13 39 (0.70%) Wireless
14 36 (0.65%) SSL
14 36 (0.65%) Unified Communications
15 34 (0.61%) SAN
16 30 (0.54%) HTTP
17 24 (0.43%) IPsec
17 24 (0.43%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 585 (10.55%) Power BI
2 281 (5.07%) SQL Server
3 181 (3.27%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (2.76%) Data Lake
5 120 (2.16%) Azure SQL Database
6 112 (2.02%) Metadata
7 107 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
8 73 (1.32%) Relational Database
9 71 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 52 (0.94%) Oracle Database
10 52 (0.94%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 51 (0.92%) Tableau
12 48 (0.87%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.85%) MySQL
14 43 (0.78%) Power Query
15 40 (0.72%) Delta Lake
15 40 (0.72%) Star Schema
16 28 (0.51%) Snowflake Schema
16 28 (0.51%) Spark SQL
17 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 253 (4.56%) JIRA
2 175 (3.16%) Git
3 68 (1.23%) Jenkins
4 66 (1.19%) GitLab
5 26 (0.47%) Artifactory
5 26 (0.47%) Visual Studio
6 21 (0.38%) Eclipse
7 18 (0.32%) Postman
8 17 (0.31%) MSI
8 17 (0.31%) Selenium
9 16 (0.29%) MLflow
10 15 (0.27%) JMeter
11 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.23%) JUnit
11 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
12 12 (0.22%) Maven
13 11 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 11 (0.20%) ERwin
14 10 (0.18%) SpecFlow
15 9 (0.16%) Android Studio
General
1 1,947 (35.13%) Social Skills
2 1,109 (20.01%) Finance
3 642 (11.58%) Analytical Skills
4 526 (9.49%) Public Sector
5 291 (5.25%) Banking
6 252 (4.55%) Organisational Skills
7 251 (4.53%) Legal
8 158 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 116 (2.09%) Manufacturing
10 105 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
11 97 (1.75%) Marketing
12 94 (1.70%) Law
13 89 (1.61%) Telecoms
14 85 (1.53%) Retail
15 82 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 65 (1.17%) Military
17 62 (1.12%) Local Government
18 60 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
19 53 (0.96%) Investment Banking
20 39 (0.70%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 686 (12.38%) Architect
2 605 (10.91%) Analyst
3 528 (9.53%) Developer
4 442 (7.97%) Senior
5 371 (6.69%) IT Support
6 325 (5.86%) Lead
7 280 (5.05%) Consultant
8 266 (4.80%) Support Engineer
9 208 (3.75%) Data Engineer
10 202 (3.64%) Azure Engineer
11 197 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
12 193 (3.48%) IT Engineer
13 180 (3.25%) Project Manager
14 179 (3.23%) Administrator
15 176 (3.18%) Business Analyst
16 163 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 146 (2.63%) IT Support Engineer
18 112 (2.02%) Security Engineer
19 110 (1.98%) DevOps Engineer
20 100 (1.80%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 261 (4.71%) .NET
2 177 (3.19%) REST
3 131 (2.36%) Microsoft Graph
4 119 (2.15%) OAuth
5 103 (1.86%) SAML
6 98 (1.77%) PySpark
7 90 (1.62%) React
8 81 (1.46%) OpenID
9 74 (1.34%) JSON
10 67 (1.21%) LDAP
11 64 (1.15%) Middleware
11 64 (1.15%) Web Services
12 59 (1.06%) HTML
13 58 (1.05%) OAuth2
14 57 (1.03%) ARM Templates
15 56 (1.01%) AngularJS
16 55 (0.99%) RESTful
17 52 (0.94%) Node.js
18 51 (0.92%) .NET Framework
18 51 (0.92%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.02%) Onboarding
2 220 (3.97%) Cloud Native
3 192 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 125 (2.26%) Management Information System
5 108 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
6 100 (1.80%) Data Centre
7 88 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
7 88 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
8 84 (1.52%) Security Posture
9 83 (1.50%) Legacy Systems
9 83 (1.50%) PKI
10 75 (1.35%) AI Agents
11 73 (1.32%) Replication
12 69 (1.24%) Low-Code
13 67 (1.21%) Data Structures
14 62 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
15 58 (1.05%) Driving Licence
16 56 (1.01%) Virtual Team
17 52 (0.94%) NHS
18 46 (0.83%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,221 (22.03%) Windows
2 330 (5.95%) Windows 10
3 287 (5.18%) Windows Server
4 277 (5.00%) Linux
5 101 (1.82%) Android
6 96 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 92 (1.66%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 44 (0.79%) Windows 7
9 42 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
10 40 (0.72%) Unix
11 27 (0.49%) VMS
12 25 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
13 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
14 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
15 10 (0.18%) CentOS
16 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
17 8 (0.14%) AIX
18 5 (0.090%) Solaris
19 4 (0.072%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 978 (17.64%) Problem-Solving
2 881 (15.89%) Agile
3 867 (15.64%) DevOps
4 779 (14.05%) Migration
5 748 (13.49%) CI/CD
6 660 (11.91%) Business Intelligence
7 621 (11.20%) Analytics
8 533 (9.62%) AI
9 529 (9.54%) Stakeholder Management
10 506 (9.13%) Continuous Improvement
11 465 (8.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 459 (8.28%) Customer Service
13 418 (7.54%) ITIL
14 403 (7.27%) Data Modelling
15 361 (6.51%) Cybersecurity
16 348 (6.28%) Roadmaps
17 331 (5.97%) Infrastructure as Code
18 314 (5.66%) Project Management
19 305 (5.50%) Decision-Making
20 299 (5.39%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 737 (13.30%) SQL
2 647 (11.67%) PowerShell
3 629 (11.35%) Python
4 290 (5.23%) C#
5 218 (3.93%) JavaScript
6 176 (3.18%) Java
7 126 (2.27%) Bicep
8 101 (1.82%) Kusto Query Language
9 96 (1.73%) Bash
10 83 (1.50%) T-SQL
11 82 (1.48%) TypeScript
12 69 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 36 (0.65%) PL/SQL
14 30 (0.54%) VBA
15 27 (0.49%) C++
16 22 (0.40%) VB
17 19 (0.34%) Perl
18 18 (0.32%) R
18 18 (0.32%) Scala
18 18 (0.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,074 (19.38%) Security Cleared
2 820 (14.79%) SC Cleared
3 560 (10.10%) Degree
4 286 (5.16%) Microsoft Certification
5 211 (3.81%) DV Cleared
6 188 (3.39%) Azure Certification
7 130 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 97 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 97 (1.75%) CISSP
9 70 (1.26%) PMI Certification
10 68 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
11 62 (1.12%) PMP
12 58 (1.05%) Master's Degree
13 51 (0.92%) CISM
14 41 (0.74%) AWS Certification
15 37 (0.67%) MCSE
16 32 (0.58%) CCNP
16 32 (0.58%) DBS Check
17 31 (0.56%) ITIL Certification
18 30 (0.54%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 260 (4.69%) Data Quality
2 230 (4.15%) GDPR
3 175 (3.16%) QA
4 151 (2.72%) SLA
5 131 (2.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 113 (2.04%) PMO
7 105 (1.89%) NIST
8 69 (1.24%) Accessibility
9 57 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 47 (0.85%) NCSC
11 39 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.56%) GRC
13 27 (0.49%) PCI DSS
14 19 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 19 (0.34%) MiFID
15 16 (0.29%) NIST 800
16 14 (0.25%) WCAG
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
18 11 (0.20%) GxP
19 10 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,092 (19.70%) Active Directory
2 232 (4.19%) Docker
3 182 (3.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 93 (1.68%) Hyper-V
5 66 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
6 57 (1.03%) Virtual Desktop
7 45 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (0.58%) vSphere
9 26 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.31%) Firmware
12 11 (0.20%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.13%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.090%) IAG
15 5 (0.090%) Snort
16 4 (0.072%) KVM
16 4 (0.072%) NFS
16 4 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.072%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 432 (7.79%) Microsoft Intune
2 362 (6.53%) Terraform
3 267 (4.82%) Kubernetes
4 207 (3.73%) SCCM
5 132 (2.38%) Single Sign-On
6 119 (2.15%) Ansible
7 96 (1.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
9 42 (0.76%) Grafana
10 35 (0.63%) vCenter Server
11 32 (0.58%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.41%) FortiGate
13 22 (0.40%) SCOM
14 21 (0.38%) Puppet
15 17 (0.31%) WSUS
16 15 (0.27%) AirWatch
17 13 (0.23%) CASB
18 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
19 10 (0.18%) Nessus
19 10 (0.18%) WMI
Vendors
1 261 (4.71%) VMware
2 259 (4.67%) ServiceNow
3 220 (3.97%) Databricks
4 212 (3.82%) SAP
5 206 (3.72%) Oracle
6 179 (3.23%) Cisco
7 162 (2.92%) Google
8 130 (2.35%) Citrix
9 95 (1.71%) OpenAI
10 94 (1.70%) Salesforce
11 93 (1.68%) Splunk
12 76 (1.37%) Foundry
13 66 (1.19%) Apple
14 55 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
15 48 (0.87%) HP
15 48 (0.87%) Palo Alto
15 48 (0.87%) Red Hat
16 44 (0.79%) Adobe
17 40 (0.72%) Informatica
18 39 (0.70%) Okta