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 31 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
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,405 4,535 5,126
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.06% 13.83% 12.90%
As % of the Vendors category 29.19% 29.29% 29.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,195 2,902 3,354
10th Percentile £218 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £585 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 388 369 378
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.95 £11.77
25th Percentile £16.50 £16.00 £14.31
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +38.63% -27.96%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £33.75
90th Percentile £73.90 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.50 £16.23
% change year-on-year +2.43% +26.32% -14.58%

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 21,941 15,481 17,273
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.32% 47.20% 43.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,626 9,492 10,831
10th Percentile £313 £280 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £709 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £476 £500
% change year-on-year +4.99% -4.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,111 777 890
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.60 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £34.94 £25.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.93% -8.55% -33.97%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.00 £61.40
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.32 £25.30
% change year-on-year +52.32% -11.80% -26.67%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 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
England -1 5,581 £490 +3.16% 3,873
UK excluding London -1 3,400 £450 +3.45% 3,271
London -2 2,459 £510 +2.00% 1,194
Work from Home +3 1,668 £500 - 1,522
South East -1 865 £475 +1.06% 1,022
North of England -4 853 £465 +6.41% 795
Midlands -2 586 £450 +20.00% 538
North West -1 490 £450 +2.51% 402
South West 0 424 £473 +8.31% 359
West Midlands -4 414 £450 +16.13% 292
Yorkshire -5 339 £475 +5.56% 272
Scotland +7 314 £450 - 136
East of England -1 255 £375 -25.00% 360
East Midlands +2 164 £407 +15.55% 246
Wales 0 103 £413 +49.48% 102
Northern Ireland -2 32 £350 -3.11% 54
North East -44 29 £450 +32.35% 140
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 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
1 741 (11.57%) SharePoint
2 393 (6.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 139 (2.17%) Confluence
4 39 (0.61%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.58%) Apache
6 28 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 18 (0.28%) CMS
9 16 (0.25%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.16%) SAS
13 8 (0.12%) nginx
14 6 (0.094%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.094%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.078%) Camunda
15 5 (0.078%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.078%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.078%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 597 (9.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 587 (9.16%) Microsoft Office
3 249 (3.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 164 (2.56%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.67%) MS Visio
6 39 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.094%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.062%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.062%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.031%) Navisworks
12 2 (0.031%) ProjectWise
12 2 (0.031%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.031%) Revit
Business Applications
1 230 (3.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 28 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
6 14 (0.22%) Aladdin
6 14 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
6 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.19%) Primavera
8 9 (0.14%) Magento
8 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
9 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
9 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
10 7 (0.11%) iTrent
10 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.11%) SAP MM
10 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
11 6 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
11 6 (0.094%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,690 (42.00%) Azure
2 1,605 (25.06%) Microsoft 365
3 1,106 (17.27%) Power Platform
4 945 (14.75%) Entra ID
5 574 (8.96%) AWS
6 535 (8.35%) Azure DevOps
6 535 (8.35%) Dynamics 365
7 390 (6.09%) Power Automate
8 356 (5.56%) PowerApps
9 344 (5.37%) Microsoft Copilot
10 292 (4.56%) Microsoft Purview
11 267 (4.17%) GitHub
12 242 (3.78%) OneDrive
13 232 (3.62%) SaaS
14 212 (3.31%) GCP
15 165 (2.58%) Azure Data Factory
15 165 (2.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 152 (2.37%) Serverless
17 151 (2.36%) PaaS
18 143 (2.23%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 343 (5.36%) DNS
2 324 (5.06%) Firewall
3 255 (3.98%) VPN
4 209 (3.26%) DHCP
5 177 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 147 (2.30%) WAN
7 144 (2.25%) Network Security
8 140 (2.19%) Wi-Fi
9 137 (2.14%) LAN
10 71 (1.11%) VLAN
11 50 (0.78%) Wireless
12 44 (0.69%) SAN
13 41 (0.64%) MPLS
14 38 (0.59%) SSL
15 37 (0.58%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.47%) Internet
16 30 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 29 (0.45%) VoIP
18 27 (0.42%) BGP
19 26 (0.41%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 699 (10.91%) Power BI
2 369 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 190 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
4 131 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
5 130 (2.03%) Data Lake
6 125 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
7 123 (1.92%) Metadata
8 73 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 72 (1.12%) Relational Database
10 63 (0.98%) MySQL
10 63 (0.98%) Power Query
11 49 (0.77%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.73%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.69%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.66%) Star Schema
15 37 (0.58%) Tableau
16 33 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 30 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 24 (0.37%) Big Data
18 24 (0.37%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 315 (4.92%) JIRA
2 193 (3.01%) Git
3 89 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 63 (0.98%) GitLab
5 54 (0.84%) Visual Studio
6 32 (0.50%) MSI
7 27 (0.42%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
9 16 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
10 15 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 13 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 13 (0.20%) MLflow
12 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.19%) ERwin
12 12 (0.19%) JUnit
12 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.17%) Cypress.io
13 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 10 (0.16%) Cucumber
General
1 2,161 (33.74%) Social Skills
2 1,300 (20.30%) Finance
3 787 (12.29%) Analytical Skills
4 612 (9.56%) Public Sector
5 314 (4.90%) Banking
6 287 (4.48%) Organisational Skills
7 218 (3.40%) Legal
8 171 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
9 143 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 129 (2.01%) Manufacturing
11 125 (1.95%) Retail
12 110 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.59%) Law
13 102 (1.59%) Marketing
14 85 (1.33%) Local Government
14 85 (1.33%) Military
15 70 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
16 69 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
17 63 (0.98%) Investment Banking
18 48 (0.75%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 735 (11.48%) Architect
2 667 (10.41%) Analyst
3 618 (9.65%) Developer
4 568 (8.87%) Senior
5 457 (7.14%) Lead
6 399 (6.23%) IT Support
7 390 (6.09%) Consultant
8 353 (5.51%) Support Engineer
9 250 (3.90%) IT Engineer
10 245 (3.83%) Data Engineer
11 236 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
12 224 (3.50%) Azure Engineer
13 222 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 214 (3.34%) Project Manager
15 198 (3.09%) IT Support Engineer
16 189 (2.95%) Administrator
17 180 (2.81%) Business Analyst
18 154 (2.40%) Cloud Engineer
19 124 (1.94%) Security Engineer
20 109 (1.70%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (4.73%) .NET
2 244 (3.81%) REST
3 124 (1.94%) JSON
4 123 (1.92%) Microsoft Graph
5 115 (1.80%) OAuth
6 107 (1.67%) PySpark
7 95 (1.48%) OpenID
8 94 (1.47%) SAML
9 93 (1.45%) XML
10 87 (1.36%) .NET Framework
10 87 (1.36%) Web Services
11 80 (1.25%) React
12 73 (1.14%) RESTful
13 67 (1.05%) HTML
14 66 (1.03%) SOAP
15 65 (1.01%) ARM Templates
15 65 (1.01%) OAuth2
16 63 (0.98%) LDAP
17 61 (0.95%) Middleware
17 61 (0.95%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 426 (6.65%) Onboarding
2 301 (4.70%) Cloud Native
3 182 (2.84%) Management Information System
3 182 (2.84%) Product Ownership
4 157 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
5 135 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
6 127 (1.98%) Hybrid Cloud
7 125 (1.95%) PKI
8 124 (1.94%) AI Agents
9 121 (1.89%) Data Centre
10 116 (1.81%) Security Posture
11 94 (1.47%) Data Structures
12 87 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
13 81 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
14 80 (1.25%) Virtual Team
15 73 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 68 (1.06%) Driving Licence
17 66 (1.03%) Distributed Systems
18 59 (0.92%) Replication
19 58 (0.91%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,349 (21.06%) Windows
2 364 (5.68%) Windows Server
3 330 (5.15%) Windows 10
4 301 (4.70%) Linux
5 130 (2.03%) Mac OS
6 120 (1.87%) Android
7 108 (1.69%) Apple iOS
8 57 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.69%) Unix
10 37 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
11 35 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
12 33 (0.52%) Windows 7
13 31 (0.48%) VMS
14 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.20%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,123 (17.53%) Problem-Solving
2 1,019 (15.91%) DevOps
3 979 (15.28%) Agile
4 899 (14.04%) Migration
5 894 (13.96%) Stakeholder Management
6 839 (13.10%) CI/CD
7 734 (11.46%) AI
8 714 (11.15%) Business Intelligence
8 714 (11.15%) Continuous Improvement
9 713 (11.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 677 (10.57%) Analytics
11 606 (9.46%) ITIL
12 519 (8.10%) Customer Service
13 475 (7.42%) Data Modelling
14 459 (7.17%) Roadmaps
15 454 (7.09%) Cybersecurity
16 449 (7.01%) Infrastructure as Code
17 422 (6.59%) Decision-Making
18 411 (6.42%) Validation
19 409 (6.39%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 810 (12.65%) SQL
2 676 (10.55%) PowerShell
3 657 (10.26%) Python
4 318 (4.96%) C#
5 240 (3.75%) JavaScript
6 194 (3.03%) Java
7 178 (2.78%) Bicep
8 128 (2.00%) Bash
9 117 (1.83%) T-SQL
10 94 (1.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.36%) TypeScript
12 71 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
13 40 (0.62%) VBA
14 30 (0.47%) C++
15 27 (0.42%) PL/SQL
16 26 (0.41%) VB
17 20 (0.31%) X++
18 17 (0.27%) VBScript
19 16 (0.25%) R
19 16 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,315 (20.53%) Security Cleared
2 994 (15.52%) SC Cleared
3 622 (9.71%) Degree
4 332 (5.18%) Microsoft Certification
5 248 (3.87%) DV Cleared
6 226 (3.53%) Azure Certification
7 150 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
8 122 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
8 122 (1.90%) CISSP
9 120 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
10 90 (1.41%) PMP
11 83 (1.30%) PMI Certification
12 68 (1.06%) AWS Certification
12 68 (1.06%) CISM
13 53 (0.83%) CCNP
14 49 (0.77%) DBS Check
14 49 (0.77%) Master's Degree
15 46 (0.72%) CCNA
16 45 (0.70%) A+ Certification
17 40 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (5.31%) Data Quality
2 220 (3.43%) QA
3 217 (3.39%) GDPR
4 193 (3.01%) SLA
5 174 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 152 (2.37%) PMO
7 149 (2.33%) NIST
8 104 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 79 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
10 77 (1.20%) NCSC
11 42 (0.66%) GRC
12 35 (0.55%) WCAG
13 33 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 19 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.23%) SOC 2
18 14 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
18 14 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,224 (19.11%) Active Directory
2 234 (3.65%) Docker
3 216 (3.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.78%) Hyper-V
5 99 (1.55%) Virtual Desktop
6 91 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.89%) vSphere
8 56 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.31%) Firmware
11 20 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.12%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 5 (0.078%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.062%) RACF
15 4 (0.062%) zsh
16 3 (0.047%) OpenAM
Systems Management
1 521 (8.13%) Microsoft Intune
2 449 (7.01%) Terraform
3 294 (4.59%) Kubernetes
4 232 (3.62%) SCCM
5 155 (2.42%) Ansible
6 116 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 49 (0.77%) Grafana
10 36 (0.56%) SCOM
11 35 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.52%) Prometheus
13 23 (0.36%) Puppet
14 22 (0.34%) QRadar
15 19 (0.30%) WSUS
16 18 (0.28%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.27%) Progress Chef
18 15 (0.23%) Argo
19 13 (0.20%) Avamar
20 12 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 456 (7.12%) ServiceNow
2 304 (4.75%) VMware
3 301 (4.70%) Oracle
4 261 (4.07%) SAP
5 222 (3.47%) Databricks
6 210 (3.28%) Cisco
7 209 (3.26%) Google
8 118 (1.84%) Salesforce
9 107 (1.67%) Citrix
10 99 (1.55%) Splunk
11 92 (1.44%) Apple
12 79 (1.23%) Foundry
13 78 (1.22%) CyberArk
14 76 (1.19%) OpenAI
15 71 (1.11%) Okta
16 68 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
17 60 (0.94%) Red Hat
18 58 (0.91%) BeyondTrust
19 54 (0.84%) Zscaler
20 48 (0.75%) Meraki