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 2 September 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
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,906 4,614 5,052
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.89% 14.19% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 30.83% 30.07% 29.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,458 2,962 3,209
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £373 £340 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -2.67% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 485 372 311
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.00 £12.38
25th Percentile £15.24 £16.05 £14.84
Median hourly rate £19.41 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -13.02% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.00 £36.64
90th Percentile £70.14 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.20% +24.80% -17.82%

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 22,398 15,343 16,998
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.80% 47.17% 44.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,812 9,392 10,401
10th Percentile £313 £275 £286
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,170 782 739
10th Percentile £14.29 £14.69 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.20 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.00 £25.15 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.31% -13.28% -31.76%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £62.53
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £21.26 £27.75
% change year-on-year +29.35% -23.39% -29.92%

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 2 September 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 2 September 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 2 September 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 -2 5,978 £489 +2.95% 7,172
UK excluding London 0 3,667 £450 +2.86% 5,300
London 0 2,622 £513 +2.50% 2,991
Work from Home +4 1,800 £500 - 3,096
South East +2 959 £475 +2.70% 1,364
North of England -5 925 £450 +3.45% 1,239
Midlands -1 636 £439 +9.69% 848
North West -2 555 £450 +2.97% 649
South West +1 440 £470 +15.69% 648
West Midlands -3 427 £445 +5.95% 489
Scotland +8 355 £449 +0.22% 390
Yorkshire -6 337 £461 +3.02% 403
East of England -1 247 £350 -33.33% 530
East Midlands +2 200 £425 +18.72% 358
Wales -1 105 £413 +37.50% 153
North East -34 37 £400 +17.65% 209
Northern Ireland -3 32 £350 - 212
Channel Islands -1 4 £525 -27.59% 3

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
1 808 (11.70%) SharePoint
2 394 (5.71%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.14%) Confluence
4 40 (0.58%) Apache
5 39 (0.56%) Apache Spark
6 30 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.35%) CMS
8 22 (0.32%) IIS
8 22 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.26%) HCL Notes
10 15 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.16%) SAS
11 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) Apache Superset
13 7 (0.10%) Mendix
14 6 (0.087%) Camunda
14 6 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.087%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 696 (10.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 688 (9.96%) Microsoft Office
3 299 (4.33%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 190 (2.75%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.61%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.16%) AutoCAD
10 9 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 8 (0.12%) Navisworks
11 8 (0.12%) Revit
12 4 (0.058%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.058%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.058%) Trello
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.043%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.043%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.029%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 250 (3.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 26 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 23 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.19%) Primavera
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.16%) Magento
11 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 9 (0.13%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 8 (0.12%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.10%) iTrent
13 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,892 (41.88%) Azure
2 1,771 (25.64%) Microsoft 365
3 1,218 (17.64%) Power Platform
4 1,065 (15.42%) Entra ID
5 651 (9.43%) AWS
6 612 (8.86%) Azure DevOps
7 601 (8.70%) Dynamics 365
8 412 (5.97%) Power Automate
9 391 (5.66%) Microsoft Copilot
10 371 (5.37%) PowerApps
11 300 (4.34%) Microsoft Purview
12 297 (4.30%) GitHub
13 262 (3.79%) OneDrive
14 245 (3.55%) GCP
15 241 (3.49%) SaaS
16 187 (2.71%) Azure Data Factory
17 185 (2.68%) Serverless
18 168 (2.43%) Azure Monitor
19 167 (2.42%) Azure Logic Apps
20 157 (2.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 386 (5.59%) DNS
2 343 (4.97%) Firewall
3 284 (4.11%) VPN
4 257 (3.72%) DHCP
5 190 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 170 (2.46%) WAN
7 158 (2.29%) Network Security
8 151 (2.19%) LAN
9 145 (2.10%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.07%) VLAN
11 59 (0.85%) Wireless
12 48 (0.70%) SAN
13 39 (0.56%) SSL
14 38 (0.55%) MPLS
15 37 (0.54%) Skype
16 32 (0.46%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 30 (0.43%) BGP
17 30 (0.43%) Internet
18 28 (0.41%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 770 (11.15%) Power BI
2 402 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 179 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
4 149 (2.16%) Metadata
5 144 (2.09%) Data Lake
6 129 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
7 125 (1.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 75 (1.09%) Relational Database
9 72 (1.04%) Power Query
10 70 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 67 (0.97%) MySQL
12 53 (0.77%) NoSQL
13 48 (0.70%) Oracle Database
14 44 (0.64%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.58%) Delta Lake
15 40 (0.58%) Star Schema
16 38 (0.55%) Tableau
17 28 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (0.41%) MongoDB
18 22 (0.32%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 329 (4.76%) JIRA
2 221 (3.20%) Git
3 94 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.04%) GitLab
5 50 (0.72%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.64%) MSI
7 37 (0.54%) Selenium
8 18 (0.26%) Claude Code
8 18 (0.26%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) MLflow
10 16 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 12 (0.17%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.16%) Bitbucket
13 11 (0.16%) ERwin
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
13 11 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
14 10 (0.14%) Artifactory
General
1 2,472 (35.79%) Social Skills
2 1,406 (20.36%) Finance
3 895 (12.96%) Analytical Skills
4 633 (9.17%) Public Sector
5 381 (5.52%) Organisational Skills
6 329 (4.76%) Banking
7 221 (3.20%) Legal
8 197 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 162 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 160 (2.32%) Manufacturing
11 142 (2.06%) Retail
12 123 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 107 (1.55%) Marketing
14 103 (1.49%) Law
15 94 (1.36%) Local Government
16 89 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
17 84 (1.22%) Military
18 73 (1.06%) Aerospace
19 62 (0.90%) Investment Banking
19 62 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 813 (11.77%) Architect
2 711 (10.30%) Analyst
3 608 (8.80%) Senior
4 605 (8.76%) Developer
5 480 (6.95%) Lead
6 448 (6.49%) Consultant
7 435 (6.30%) IT Support
8 420 (6.08%) Support Engineer
9 289 (4.18%) IT Engineer
10 263 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
11 249 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 245 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
12 245 (3.55%) Data Engineer
13 242 (3.50%) Administrator
14 236 (3.42%) IT Support Engineer
15 222 (3.21%) Project Manager
16 182 (2.64%) Business Analyst
17 174 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
18 130 (1.88%) DevOps Engineer
19 127 (1.84%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 513 (7.43%) Terraform
2 341 (4.94%) .NET
3 262 (3.79%) REST
4 129 (1.87%) JSON
5 128 (1.85%) OAuth
6 113 (1.64%) PySpark
7 104 (1.51%) XML
8 103 (1.49%) SAML
9 101 (1.46%) Microsoft Graph
10 96 (1.39%) OpenID
11 87 (1.26%) React
12 86 (1.25%) .NET Framework
13 84 (1.22%) ARM Templates
14 78 (1.13%) LDAP
15 75 (1.09%) Web Services
16 74 (1.07%) RESTful
17 72 (1.04%) HTML
18 70 (1.01%) OAuth2
19 67 (0.97%) SailPoint
20 66 (0.96%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 534 (7.73%) Onboarding
2 314 (4.55%) Cloud Native
3 244 (3.53%) Management Information System
4 201 (2.91%) Enterprise Software
5 195 (2.82%) Product Ownership
6 152 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 146 (2.11%) PKI
8 141 (2.04%) AI Agents
9 140 (2.03%) Data Centre
10 130 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
11 123 (1.78%) Security Posture
12 91 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 90 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 86 (1.25%) Self-Motivation
15 84 (1.22%) Low-Code
16 80 (1.16%) CMDB
17 76 (1.10%) Driving Licence
18 74 (1.07%) Virtual Team
19 70 (1.01%) Replication
20 66 (0.96%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 1,487 (21.53%) Windows
2 447 (6.47%) Windows Server
3 365 (5.29%) Windows 10
4 329 (4.76%) Linux
5 144 (2.09%) Mac OS
6 121 (1.75%) Android
7 114 (1.65%) Apple iOS
8 63 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.52%) Windows Server 2016
13 32 (0.46%) VMS
14 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
15 20 (0.29%) CentOS
16 15 (0.22%) Solaris
17 12 (0.17%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,265 (18.32%) Problem-Solving
2 1,203 (17.42%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,090 (15.78%) DevOps
4 1,066 (15.44%) Agile
5 981 (14.21%) Migration
6 909 (13.16%) CI/CD
7 854 (12.37%) Continuous Improvement
8 798 (11.56%) AI
9 792 (11.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 771 (11.16%) Business Intelligence
11 712 (10.31%) Analytics
12 688 (9.96%) ITIL
13 629 (9.11%) Customer Service
14 538 (7.79%) Infrastructure as Code
15 535 (7.75%) Cybersecurity
16 508 (7.36%) Data Modelling
17 505 (7.31%) Roadmaps
18 471 (6.82%) Project Delivery
19 454 (6.57%) Decision-Making
19 454 (6.57%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 862 (12.48%) SQL
2 757 (10.96%) PowerShell
3 714 (10.34%) Python
4 332 (4.81%) C#
5 248 (3.59%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.88%) Bicep
7 180 (2.61%) Java
8 167 (2.42%) Bash
9 109 (1.58%) T-SQL
10 106 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 99 (1.43%) TypeScript
12 68 (0.98%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.45%) VBA
14 29 (0.42%) VB
15 27 (0.39%) VBScript
16 23 (0.33%) X++
17 20 (0.29%) C++
18 19 (0.28%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.28%) R
19 17 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,488 (21.55%) Security Cleared
2 1,111 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 635 (9.19%) Degree
4 360 (5.21%) Microsoft Certification
5 284 (4.11%) DV Cleared
6 253 (3.66%) Azure Certification
7 168 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
8 134 (1.94%) CISSP
9 129 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
10 123 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.39%) PMP
12 89 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 75 (1.09%) AWS Certification
14 73 (1.06%) CISM
15 59 (0.85%) DBS Check
16 58 (0.84%) A+ Certification
16 58 (0.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 56 (0.81%) CCNP
18 48 (0.70%) CCNA
19 47 (0.68%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 402 (5.82%) Data Quality
2 241 (3.49%) QA
3 227 (3.29%) GDPR
4 204 (2.95%) SLA
5 195 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 186 (2.69%) PMO
7 171 (2.48%) NIST
8 113 (1.64%) Accessibility
9 85 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
9 85 (1.23%) NCSC
10 54 (0.78%) GRC
11 42 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 39 (0.56%) WCAG
13 37 (0.54%) PCI DSS
14 32 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 21 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
15 21 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
16 16 (0.23%) GMP
17 15 (0.22%) P3O
18 14 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,314 (19.03%) Active Directory
2 258 (3.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 254 (3.68%) Docker
4 147 (2.13%) Hyper-V
5 121 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 98 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (0.90%) vSphere
8 58 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.51%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.26%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.23%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.072%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.072%) XenApp
16 4 (0.058%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 553 (8.01%) Microsoft Intune
2 335 (4.85%) Kubernetes
3 281 (4.07%) SCCM
4 170 (2.46%) Ansible
5 126 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.87%) Grafana
7 57 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 53 (0.77%) SCOM
9 47 (0.68%) vCenter Server
10 40 (0.58%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.41%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
14 22 (0.32%) Progress Chef
15 20 (0.29%) Puppet
16 18 (0.26%) Failover Clustering
17 15 (0.22%) Argo
18 14 (0.20%) WMI
19 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 526 (7.62%) ServiceNow
2 337 (4.88%) VMware
3 333 (4.82%) Oracle
4 275 (3.98%) SAP
5 243 (3.52%) Google
6 242 (3.50%) Databricks
7 231 (3.34%) Cisco
8 129 (1.87%) Salesforce
9 118 (1.71%) Splunk
10 111 (1.61%) Apple
11 91 (1.32%) CyberArk
12 87 (1.26%) Citrix
13 80 (1.16%) Okta
14 79 (1.14%) OpenAI
15 74 (1.07%) BeyondTrust
15 74 (1.07%) Foundry
16 72 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
17 68 (0.98%) Red Hat
18 54 (0.78%) Adobe
19 53 (0.77%) Zscaler