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 7 May 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
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,604 3,898 5,661
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.75% 13.31% 13.04%
As % of the Vendors category 28.21% 28.08% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,766 2,583 3,715
10th Percentile £213 £210 £189
25th Percentile £375 £348 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £580 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £451
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.66% -2.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 245 466
10th Percentile £13.62 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.44 £13.00
Median hourly rate £20.09 £19.83 £15.42
Median % change year-on-year +1.31% +28.60% -30.42%
75th Percentile £28.75 £29.07 £25.00
90th Percentile £63.88 £60.10 £55.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £18.51 £15.00
% change year-on-year +7.56% +23.40% -21.05%

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 19,867 13,883 18,418
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.65% 47.40% 42.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,619 8,690 11,442
10th Percentile £313 £285 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £516
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -0.21% -1.70%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 997 570 1,101
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.02
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £14.48
Median hourly rate £31.25 £26.45 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.15% +17.56% -48.57%
75th Percentile £60.00 £57.13 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.92 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £24.18 £21.50
% change year-on-year +13.73% +12.47% -45.64%

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 7 May 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 7 May 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 7 May 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 4,914 £493 +3.79% 3,266
UK excluding London 0 2,910 £450 +5.88% 2,846
London -2 2,164 £513 +2.35% 956
Work from Home 0 1,414 £500 - 1,330
North of England -2 776 £450 +9.09% 663
South East -1 664 £476 -1.70% 878
Midlands -5 509 £450 +12.50% 434
North West -1 421 £416 -2.24% 343
West Midlands -5 354 £450 +12.50% 253
South West -1 332 £450 -2.96% 290
Yorkshire 0 331 £465 +16.25% 228
East of England 0 327 £400 -11.11% 334
Scotland +5 206 £450 +11.25% 162
East Midlands -1 149 £400 -4.19% 181
Wales +2 92 £319 +11.84% 110
North East -23 29 £450 +30.43% 100
Northern Ireland +1 23 £450 +38.46% 42
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
1 600 (10.71%) SharePoint
2 383 (6.83%) Microsoft Exchange
3 105 (1.87%) Confluence
4 36 (0.64%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache
6 22 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.34%) CMS
7 19 (0.34%) HCL Notes
8 15 (0.27%) SAS
9 12 (0.21%) IIS
9 12 (0.21%) Mendix
9 12 (0.21%) Skype for Business
10 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
10 6 (0.11%) Camunda
11 5 (0.089%) Jupyter
11 5 (0.089%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.071%) Drupal
12 4 (0.071%) Exchange Server 2010
12 4 (0.071%) Exchange Server 2013
12 4 (0.071%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 564 (10.06%) Microsoft Office
2 512 (9.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 230 (4.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 126 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
5 95 (1.70%) MS Visio
6 71 (1.27%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.14%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.089%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.089%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.071%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
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 (3.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 62 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
4 20 (0.36%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 12 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
8 11 (0.20%) Maximo
8 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
9 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
10 9 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.12%) Oracle Receivables
11 7 (0.12%) Shopify
12 5 (0.089%) assyst
12 5 (0.089%) Primavera
12 5 (0.089%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,358 (42.08%) Azure
2 1,444 (25.77%) Microsoft 365
3 945 (16.86%) Power Platform
4 719 (12.83%) Entra ID
5 463 (8.26%) Dynamics 365
6 457 (8.15%) AWS
7 436 (7.78%) Azure DevOps
8 326 (5.82%) Power Automate
9 291 (5.19%) Microsoft Purview
10 289 (5.16%) PowerApps
11 264 (4.71%) GitHub
12 236 (4.21%) Microsoft Copilot
13 208 (3.71%) OneDrive
14 201 (3.59%) Azure Data Factory
15 193 (3.44%) SaaS
16 179 (3.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 166 (2.96%) GCP
18 164 (2.93%) Serverless
19 151 (2.69%) PaaS
20 139 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 289 (5.16%) DNS
2 286 (5.10%) Firewall
3 202 (3.60%) VPN
4 168 (3.00%) DHCP
5 134 (2.39%) WAN
6 133 (2.37%) Wi-Fi
7 114 (2.03%) LAN
8 113 (2.02%) Network Security
9 103 (1.84%) TCP/IP
10 57 (1.02%) Kerberos
11 53 (0.95%) VLAN
12 45 (0.80%) SD-WAN
13 36 (0.64%) SAN
13 36 (0.64%) SSL
13 36 (0.64%) Wireless
14 30 (0.54%) HTTP
15 29 (0.52%) Skype
16 26 (0.46%) MPLS
16 26 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 24 (0.43%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 578 (10.31%) Power BI
2 265 (4.73%) SQL Server
3 178 (3.18%) Data Warehouse
4 159 (2.84%) Data Lake
5 124 (2.21%) Azure SQL Database
6 114 (2.03%) Metadata
7 103 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.28%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 46 (0.82%) Oracle Database
10 46 (0.82%) Power Query
11 45 (0.80%) NoSQL
12 44 (0.79%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 44 (0.79%) Tableau
13 41 (0.73%) Delta Lake
13 41 (0.73%) MySQL
14 40 (0.71%) Star Schema
15 29 (0.52%) Spark SQL
16 27 (0.48%) Snowflake Schema
17 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 256 (4.57%) JIRA
2 175 (3.12%) Git
3 67 (1.20%) Jenkins
4 64 (1.14%) GitLab
5 26 (0.46%) Artifactory
6 24 (0.43%) Visual Studio
7 21 (0.37%) Eclipse
7 21 (0.37%) MSI
8 17 (0.30%) Selenium
9 16 (0.29%) JMeter
9 16 (0.29%) Postman
10 15 (0.27%) MLflow
11 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
12 12 (0.21%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.21%) ERwin
12 12 (0.21%) Maven
13 11 (0.20%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.20%) InstallShield
14 10 (0.18%) Gatling
14 10 (0.18%) JUnit
General
1 1,890 (33.73%) Social Skills
2 1,113 (19.86%) Finance
3 650 (11.60%) Analytical Skills
4 527 (9.40%) Public Sector
5 289 (5.16%) Banking
6 258 (4.60%) Organisational Skills
7 249 (4.44%) Legal
8 143 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
9 109 (1.95%) Manufacturing
10 99 (1.77%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (1.71%) Law
12 89 (1.59%) Telecoms
13 88 (1.57%) Marketing
14 83 (1.48%) Retail
15 79 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 74 (1.32%) Military
17 66 (1.18%) Local Government
18 54 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
19 52 (0.93%) Investment Banking
20 43 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 695 (12.40%) Architect
2 603 (10.76%) Analyst
3 518 (9.24%) Developer
4 474 (8.46%) Senior
5 361 (6.44%) IT Support
6 335 (5.98%) Lead
7 291 (5.19%) Consultant
8 255 (4.55%) Support Engineer
9 228 (4.07%) Data Engineer
10 208 (3.71%) Azure Engineer
11 192 (3.43%) Project Manager
12 190 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
13 180 (3.21%) Business Analyst
14 178 (3.18%) IT Engineer
15 169 (3.02%) Administrator
16 168 (3.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 131 (2.34%) IT Support Engineer
18 112 (2.00%) Security Engineer
19 108 (1.93%) DevOps Engineer
20 102 (1.82%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 244 (4.35%) .NET
2 165 (2.94%) REST
3 126 (2.25%) Microsoft Graph
4 110 (1.96%) OAuth
5 102 (1.82%) PySpark
6 98 (1.75%) SAML
7 85 (1.52%) JSON
8 80 (1.43%) OpenID
9 79 (1.41%) React
10 73 (1.30%) LDAP
11 67 (1.20%) Web Services
12 64 (1.14%) Middleware
13 55 (0.98%) AngularJS
13 55 (0.98%) HTML
14 54 (0.96%) ARM Templates
14 54 (0.96%) OAuth2
15 51 (0.91%) Kafka
16 50 (0.89%) Node.js
17 48 (0.86%) CSS
18 47 (0.84%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 292 (5.21%) Onboarding
2 227 (4.05%) Cloud Native
3 186 (3.32%) Product Ownership
4 125 (2.23%) Management Information System
5 105 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
6 100 (1.78%) Data Centre
7 92 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
8 87 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
9 84 (1.50%) AI Agents
10 83 (1.48%) PKI
10 83 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
11 80 (1.43%) Security Posture
12 76 (1.36%) Replication
13 74 (1.32%) Low-Code
14 70 (1.25%) Data Structures
15 68 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
16 59 (1.05%) Virtual Team
17 53 (0.95%) Driving Licence
18 48 (0.86%) Operational Technology
19 45 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,206 (21.52%) Windows
2 317 (5.66%) Windows 10
3 273 (4.87%) Windows Server
4 269 (4.80%) Linux
5 103 (1.84%) Android
6 100 (1.78%) Apple iOS
7 96 (1.71%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.77%) Unix
8 43 (0.77%) Windows 7
8 43 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
9 39 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 30 (0.54%) VMS
11 28 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
14 10 (0.18%) CentOS
14 10 (0.18%) Ubuntu
15 6 (0.11%) AIX
16 5 (0.089%) Solaris
17 4 (0.071%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 970 (17.31%) Problem-Solving
2 884 (15.77%) Agile
3 881 (15.72%) DevOps
4 790 (14.10%) Migration
5 761 (13.58%) CI/CD
6 641 (11.44%) Business Intelligence
7 617 (11.01%) Analytics
8 553 (9.87%) AI
9 545 (9.73%) Stakeholder Management
10 506 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
11 468 (8.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 444 (7.92%) ITIL
13 437 (7.80%) Customer Service
14 412 (7.35%) Data Modelling
15 370 (6.60%) Roadmaps
16 354 (6.32%) Cybersecurity
17 343 (6.12%) Infrastructure as Code
18 340 (6.07%) Decision-Making
19 324 (5.78%) Project Delivery
20 310 (5.53%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 723 (12.90%) SQL
2 638 (11.38%) PowerShell
3 612 (10.92%) Python
4 263 (4.69%) C#
5 200 (3.57%) JavaScript
6 177 (3.16%) Java
7 127 (2.27%) Bicep
8 88 (1.57%) Bash
9 87 (1.55%) Kusto Query Language
10 83 (1.48%) T-SQL
11 75 (1.34%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 33 (0.59%) PL/SQL
14 29 (0.52%) VBA
15 28 (0.50%) C++
16 22 (0.39%) VB
17 20 (0.36%) Scala
18 18 (0.32%) R
19 16 (0.29%) Shell Script
20 14 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,081 (19.29%) Security Cleared
2 843 (15.04%) SC Cleared
3 556 (9.92%) Degree
4 276 (4.93%) Microsoft Certification
5 190 (3.39%) DV Cleared
6 185 (3.30%) Azure Certification
7 131 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
8 98 (1.75%) CISSP
9 94 (1.68%) BPSS Clearance
10 73 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
11 64 (1.14%) PMI Certification
12 60 (1.07%) PMP
13 57 (1.02%) Master's Degree
14 52 (0.93%) CISM
15 43 (0.77%) MCSE
16 39 (0.70%) AWS Certification
17 31 (0.55%) DBS Check
18 30 (0.54%) CCNP
18 30 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
18 30 (0.54%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 271 (4.84%) Data Quality
2 228 (4.07%) GDPR
3 189 (3.37%) QA
4 158 (2.82%) SLA
5 138 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 112 (2.00%) NIST
7 106 (1.89%) PMO
8 75 (1.34%) Accessibility
9 71 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
10 45 (0.80%) NCSC
11 38 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.55%) GRC
13 27 (0.48%) PCI DSS
14 21 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 20 (0.36%) MiFID
16 16 (0.29%) NIST 800
17 14 (0.25%) WCAG
18 13 (0.23%) FINRA
19 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
20 11 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,078 (19.24%) Active Directory
2 235 (4.19%) Docker
3 195 (3.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (1.77%) Hyper-V
5 76 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
6 73 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 51 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (0.68%) vSphere
9 26 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 16 (0.29%) Firmware
13 7 (0.12%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.089%) IAG
15 5 (0.089%) NFS
15 5 (0.089%) Snort
15 5 (0.089%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.071%) KVM
16 4 (0.071%) Squid
Systems Management
1 428 (7.64%) Microsoft Intune
2 365 (6.51%) Terraform
3 260 (4.64%) Kubernetes
4 203 (3.62%) SCCM
5 135 (2.41%) Ansible
6 121 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
7 76 (1.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.79%) vCenter Server
9 39 (0.70%) Grafana
10 38 (0.68%) Jamf Pro
11 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.43%) SCOM
13 21 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.36%) Puppet
15 17 (0.30%) WSUS
16 16 (0.29%) AirWatch
17 14 (0.25%) QRadar
18 12 (0.21%) ServiceCenter
19 11 (0.20%) CASB
19 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 264 (4.71%) VMware
2 260 (4.64%) ServiceNow
3 217 (3.87%) SAP
4 215 (3.84%) Databricks
5 208 (3.71%) Oracle
6 171 (3.05%) Cisco
7 151 (2.69%) Google
8 121 (2.16%) Citrix
9 101 (1.80%) Salesforce
10 88 (1.57%) OpenAI
10 88 (1.57%) Splunk
11 72 (1.28%) Foundry
12 68 (1.21%) Apple
13 55 (0.98%) CrowdStrike
14 48 (0.86%) HP
15 46 (0.82%) Adobe
16 44 (0.79%) Okta
16 44 (0.79%) Palo Alto
17 43 (0.77%) Informatica
18 41 (0.73%) CyberArk