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 15 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
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,525 3,894 5,586
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.05% 13.29% 12.83%
As % of the Vendors category 28.18% 28.10% 30.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,722 2,610 3,695
10th Percentile £206 £210 £189
25th Percentile £371 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £579 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £465
% change year-on-year - -3.23% +0.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 215 443
10th Percentile £13.46 £14.20 £11.06
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.73 £12.85
Median hourly rate £20.09 £22.00 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.68% +46.67% -33.92%
75th Percentile £28.06 £30.63 £23.36
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.05 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £19.90 £15.00
% change year-on-year +0.05% +32.67% -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 19,604 13,856 18,556
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.75% 47.30% 42.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,559 8,734 11,576
10th Percentile £313 £293 £262
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £517
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -0.87% -1.52%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £627
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.56% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 979 530 1,062
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £14.36
Median hourly rate £28.88 £28.21 £22.21
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% +26.98% -47.74%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.00 £55.97
90th Percentile £78.75 £77.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £24.83 £21.37
% change year-on-year +2.22% +16.19% -45.97%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 4,851 £492 +3.58% 2,764
UK excluding London 0 2,883 £450 - 2,551
London -2 2,117 £510 +2.00% 736
Work from Home -3 1,360 £500 - 1,035
North of England 0 791 £447 +5.18% 605
South East -3 644 £480 -4.00% 780
Midlands -5 495 £450 +5.88% 364
North West -2 442 £420 -6.67% 329
West Midlands -6 346 £463 +10.45% 203
East of England 0 338 £400 -5.88% 315
South West -1 332 £475 - 286
Yorkshire +4 321 £450 +12.50% 191
Scotland +2 194 £438 +6.97% 156
East Midlands -1 144 £380 -10.59% 160
Wales +3 94 £309 +17.19% 96
North East -18 34 £450 +28.57% 97
Northern Ireland +3 21 £450 +38.46% 27
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
1 605 (10.95%) SharePoint
2 409 (7.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 109 (1.97%) Confluence
4 29 (0.52%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
6 22 (0.40%) CMS
7 20 (0.36%) Apache
8 18 (0.33%) Skype for Business
9 17 (0.31%) HCL Notes
10 16 (0.29%) SAS
11 10 (0.18%) Mendix
12 9 (0.16%) IIS
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.090%) Camunda
14 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
15 4 (0.072%) Drupal
15 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
16 3 (0.054%) Smallworld
Applications
1 587 (10.62%) Microsoft Office
2 524 (9.48%) Microsoft Excel
3 232 (4.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 128 (2.32%) Microsoft Project
5 97 (1.76%) MS Visio
6 75 (1.36%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 10 (0.18%) Trello
9 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
9 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.072%) InDesign
12 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
13 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
13 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 198 (3.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 52 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 16 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 14 (0.25%) Maximo
6 13 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
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 2,272 (41.12%) Azure
2 1,433 (25.94%) Microsoft 365
3 935 (16.92%) Power Platform
4 703 (12.72%) Entra ID
5 457 (8.27%) Dynamics 365
6 451 (8.16%) AWS
7 446 (8.07%) Azure DevOps
8 343 (6.21%) Power Automate
9 308 (5.57%) PowerApps
10 279 (5.05%) Microsoft Purview
11 262 (4.74%) GitHub
12 215 (3.89%) Microsoft Copilot
13 204 (3.69%) OneDrive
14 198 (3.58%) Azure Data Factory
15 184 (3.33%) SaaS
16 174 (3.15%) Serverless
17 165 (2.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 160 (2.90%) GCP
19 146 (2.64%) PaaS
20 143 (2.59%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 304 (5.50%) Firewall
2 297 (5.38%) DNS
3 209 (3.78%) VPN
4 171 (3.10%) DHCP
5 147 (2.66%) Wi-Fi
6 135 (2.44%) WAN
7 122 (2.21%) Network Security
8 117 (2.12%) LAN
9 112 (2.03%) TCP/IP
10 60 (1.09%) VLAN
11 54 (0.98%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.81%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.71%) Skype
14 37 (0.67%) Wireless
15 35 (0.63%) SAN
15 35 (0.63%) SSL
15 35 (0.63%) Unified Communications
16 29 (0.52%) HTTP
17 24 (0.43%) MPLS
18 23 (0.42%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 588 (10.64%) Power BI
2 279 (5.05%) SQL Server
3 180 (3.26%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (2.77%) Data Lake
5 121 (2.19%) Azure SQL Database
6 113 (2.05%) Metadata
7 102 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.30%) Relational Database
9 71 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 53 (0.96%) Oracle Database
10 53 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 50 (0.90%) Tableau
12 48 (0.87%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.85%) MySQL
14 42 (0.76%) Power Query
15 39 (0.71%) Delta Lake
15 39 (0.71%) Star Schema
16 28 (0.51%) Spark SQL
17 27 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
18 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 251 (4.54%) JIRA
2 173 (3.13%) Git
3 66 (1.19%) GitLab
4 63 (1.14%) Jenkins
5 26 (0.47%) Visual Studio
6 24 (0.43%) Artifactory
7 21 (0.38%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.33%) MSI
8 18 (0.33%) Postman
9 17 (0.31%) Selenium
10 16 (0.29%) MLflow
11 15 (0.27%) JMeter
12 13 (0.24%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.24%) JUnit
12 13 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
13 11 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 11 (0.20%) ERwin
14 10 (0.18%) Maven
14 10 (0.18%) SpecFlow
15 9 (0.16%) Android Studio
General
1 1,951 (35.31%) Social Skills
2 1,104 (19.98%) Finance
3 640 (11.58%) Analytical Skills
4 528 (9.56%) Public Sector
5 291 (5.27%) Banking
6 253 (4.58%) Organisational Skills
7 251 (4.54%) Legal
8 156 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
9 116 (2.10%) Manufacturing
10 105 (1.90%) Presentation Skills
11 97 (1.76%) Marketing
12 94 (1.70%) Law
13 89 (1.61%) Telecoms
14 85 (1.54%) Retail
15 82 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 64 (1.16%) Military
17 62 (1.12%) Local Government
18 61 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
19 54 (0.98%) Investment Banking
20 40 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 683 (12.36%) Architect
2 608 (11.00%) Analyst
3 528 (9.56%) Developer
4 438 (7.93%) Senior
5 373 (6.75%) IT Support
6 319 (5.77%) Lead
7 280 (5.07%) Consultant
8 268 (4.85%) Support Engineer
9 208 (3.76%) Data Engineer
10 202 (3.66%) Azure Engineer
11 196 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
12 195 (3.53%) IT Engineer
13 179 (3.24%) Project Manager
14 176 (3.19%) Administrator
15 173 (3.13%) Business Analyst
16 162 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 148 (2.68%) IT Support Engineer
18 110 (1.99%) DevOps Engineer
18 110 (1.99%) Security Engineer
19 101 (1.83%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 257 (4.65%) .NET
2 176 (3.19%) REST
3 130 (2.35%) Microsoft Graph
4 117 (2.12%) OAuth
5 100 (1.81%) SAML
6 97 (1.76%) PySpark
7 89 (1.61%) React
8 80 (1.45%) OpenID
9 71 (1.29%) JSON
10 66 (1.19%) LDAP
11 64 (1.16%) Middleware
12 63 (1.14%) Web Services
13 59 (1.07%) HTML
14 57 (1.03%) ARM Templates
14 57 (1.03%) OAuth2
15 56 (1.01%) AngularJS
15 56 (1.01%) RESTful
16 51 (0.92%) .NET Framework
16 51 (0.92%) Kafka
16 51 (0.92%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 277 (5.01%) Onboarding
2 219 (3.96%) Cloud Native
3 189 (3.42%) Product Ownership
4 125 (2.26%) Management Information System
5 108 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
6 99 (1.79%) Data Centre
7 87 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
7 87 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
8 84 (1.52%) Security Posture
9 82 (1.48%) PKI
10 81 (1.47%) Legacy Systems
11 74 (1.34%) AI Agents
11 74 (1.34%) Replication
12 69 (1.25%) Low-Code
13 66 (1.19%) Data Structures
14 62 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
15 58 (1.05%) Driving Licence
16 55 (1.00%) Virtual Team
17 52 (0.94%) NHS
18 45 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,224 (22.15%) Windows
2 334 (6.05%) Windows 10
3 284 (5.14%) Windows Server
4 277 (5.01%) Linux
5 98 (1.77%) Android
6 93 (1.68%) Apple iOS
6 93 (1.68%) Mac OS
7 44 (0.80%) Windows 7
8 43 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.71%) Unix
9 39 (0.71%) Windows Server 2016
10 27 (0.49%) VMS
11 23 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
12 19 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.33%) Windows Server 2003
14 11 (0.20%) CentOS
15 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
16 7 (0.13%) AIX
17 4 (0.072%) Solaris
17 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 976 (17.67%) Problem-Solving
2 879 (15.91%) Agile
3 862 (15.60%) DevOps
4 776 (14.05%) Migration
5 739 (13.38%) CI/CD
6 665 (12.04%) Business Intelligence
7 618 (11.19%) Analytics
8 530 (9.59%) AI
9 529 (9.57%) Stakeholder Management
10 501 (9.07%) Continuous Improvement
11 462 (8.36%) Customer Service
12 461 (8.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 417 (7.55%) ITIL
14 403 (7.29%) Data Modelling
15 361 (6.53%) Cybersecurity
16 342 (6.19%) Roadmaps
17 326 (5.90%) Infrastructure as Code
18 313 (5.67%) Project Management
19 305 (5.52%) Decision-Making
20 298 (5.39%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 738 (13.36%) SQL
2 651 (11.78%) PowerShell
3 620 (11.22%) Python
4 292 (5.29%) C#
5 218 (3.95%) JavaScript
6 170 (3.08%) Java
7 126 (2.28%) Bicep
8 102 (1.85%) Kusto Query Language
9 96 (1.74%) Bash
10 83 (1.50%) T-SQL
11 82 (1.48%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 37 (0.67%) PL/SQL
14 30 (0.54%) VBA
15 27 (0.49%) C++
16 23 (0.42%) VB
17 20 (0.36%) Perl
18 18 (0.33%) R
18 18 (0.33%) Shell Script
19 15 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,066 (19.29%) Security Cleared
2 812 (14.70%) SC Cleared
3 558 (10.10%) Degree
4 285 (5.16%) Microsoft Certification
5 211 (3.82%) DV Cleared
6 187 (3.38%) Azure Certification
7 127 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
8 96 (1.74%) CISSP
9 95 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
10 70 (1.27%) PMI Certification
11 69 (1.25%) Cisco Certification
12 62 (1.12%) PMP
13 56 (1.01%) Master's Degree
14 51 (0.92%) CISM
15 41 (0.74%) AWS Certification
16 38 (0.69%) MCSE
17 33 (0.60%) CCNP
18 32 (0.58%) DBS Check
18 32 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
19 30 (0.54%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 259 (4.69%) Data Quality
2 232 (4.20%) GDPR
3 173 (3.13%) QA
4 151 (2.73%) SLA
5 132 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 114 (2.06%) PMO
7 105 (1.90%) NIST
8 67 (1.21%) Accessibility
9 57 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 45 (0.81%) NCSC
11 39 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 29 (0.52%) GRC
13 27 (0.49%) PCI DSS
14 19 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 19 (0.34%) MiFID
15 15 (0.27%) NIST 800
16 13 (0.24%) FINRA
16 13 (0.24%) WCAG
17 11 (0.20%) GxP
18 10 (0.18%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,090 (19.73%) Active Directory
2 223 (4.04%) Docker
3 179 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.67%) Hyper-V
5 66 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
6 57 (1.03%) Virtual Desktop
7 44 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (0.58%) vSphere
9 26 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 19 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.31%) Firmware
12 12 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
14 5 (0.090%) IAG
14 5 (0.090%) Snort
15 4 (0.072%) KVM
15 4 (0.072%) NFS
15 4 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.054%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 431 (7.80%) Microsoft Intune
2 356 (6.44%) Terraform
3 261 (4.72%) Kubernetes
4 204 (3.69%) SCCM
5 133 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
6 119 (2.15%) Ansible
7 96 (1.74%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.80%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (0.74%) Grafana
10 34 (0.62%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 21 (0.38%) Puppet
13 21 (0.38%) SCOM
14 16 (0.29%) WSUS
15 15 (0.27%) AirWatch
16 13 (0.24%) CASB
17 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
18 10 (0.18%) QRadar
18 10 (0.18%) WMI
Vendors
1 259 (4.69%) ServiceNow
2 258 (4.67%) VMware
3 218 (3.95%) Databricks
4 209 (3.78%) SAP
5 206 (3.73%) Oracle
6 175 (3.17%) Cisco
7 159 (2.88%) Google
8 129 (2.33%) Citrix
9 95 (1.72%) OpenAI
10 94 (1.70%) Splunk
11 92 (1.67%) Salesforce
12 76 (1.38%) Foundry
13 65 (1.18%) Apple
14 56 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
15 48 (0.87%) Red Hat
16 47 (0.85%) HP
16 47 (0.85%) Palo Alto
17 44 (0.80%) Adobe
18 40 (0.72%) Informatica
19 39 (0.71%) Okta