Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 21 October 2018

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for knowledge and experience of Microsoft products and/or services. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Microsoft over the 6 months to 21 October 2018 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

The figures below represent the IT contractor job market in general and are not representative of contractor rates within the Microsoft Corporation.

Microsoft
UK
6 months to
21 Oct 2018		 Same period 2017 Same period 2016
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 12,141 10,998 12,613
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 11.86% 11.07% 11.88%
As % of the Vendors category 28.22% 25.77% 26.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,519 6,892 8,049
UK median daily rate £410 £400 £375
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +2.50% +6.67% +3.45%
10th Percentile £163 £158 £185
90th Percentile £600 £575 £550
UK excluding London median daily rate £375 £360 £350
% change year-on-year +4.17% +2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 865 738 861
UK median hourly rate £15.50 £15.50 £16.50
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year - -6.06% +6.45%
10th Percentile £10.75 £10.00 £9.25
90th Percentile £34.05 £42.51 £40.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.30 £15.00 £16.00
% change year-on-year +2.00% -6.25% +6.67%

Microsoft is in the Vendor Products and Services category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services.

All Vendors
UK
Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 43,030 42,675 47,932
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.05% 42.95% 45.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,634 26,370 29,298
UK median daily rate £450 £430 £415
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +4.65% +3.61% +3.75%
10th Percentile £250 £242 £240
90th Percentile £625 £620 £588
UK excluding London median daily rate £420 £400 £388
% change year-on-year +5.00% +3.23% +3.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,646 1,386 1,711
UK median hourly rate £17.43 £17.50 £17.10
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -0.43% +2.34% -2.29%
10th Percentile £10.78 £10.50 £10.00
90th Percentile £45.75 £45.22 £45.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.50 £16.84 £16.50
% change year-on-year -1.99% +2.03% -2.94%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Microsoft as a percentage of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for daily rates quoted in contract jobs citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Daily Rate Histogram

The daily rate distribution of IT jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 21 October 2018.

Contractor daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

This chart provides the 3-month moving average for contractor hourly rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Hourly Rate Histogram

The hourly rate distribution of IT jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 21 October 2018.

Contractor hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Top 18 Contract 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 21 October 2018. 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
Job
Vacancies
England -1 10,964 £413 +3.13% 4,828
UK excluding London -1 7,253 £375 +4.17% 3,750
London 0 4,557 £450 +1.12% 1,346
South East 0 2,232 £400 +6.67% 846
North of England -3 1,469 £375 +7.14% 1,063
Midlands 0 1,109 £375 +7.14% 758
North West +4 842 £375 - 533
South West +1 777 £375 +7.14% 432
East of England 0 767 £375 +3.45% 391
West Midlands -1 720 £400 +6.67% 463
Scotland +4 622 £375 +7.14% 139
Yorkshire -3 502 £354 +1.14% 408
East Midlands -1 379 £340 +0.74% 294
Wales -2 226 £400 +23.08% 96
North East -6 129 £350 +2.94% 122
Northern Ireland +25 46 £350 +18.85% 27
Channel Islands +4 9 £475 +150.00% 6
Isle of Man - 3 £475 - 2

For the 6 months to 21 October 2018, IT contractor jobs citing Microsoft also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for Microsoft.

1 4,296 (35.38%) Windows
2 3,031 (24.96%) Active Directory
3 2,834 (23.34%) Microsoft Azure
4 2,605 (21.46%) SQL
5 2,432 (20.03%) Agile Software Development
6 2,423 (19.96%) SQL Server
7 2,353 (19.38%) Microsoft Office
8 2,318 (19.09%) Finance
9 2,128 (17.53%) .NET
10 2,006 (16.52%) Office 365
11 1,952 (16.08%) C#
12 1,551 (12.77%) Windows Server
13 1,466 (12.07%) VMware
14 1,422 (11.71%) ITIL
15 1,357 (11.18%) Migration
16 1,346 (11.09%) Windows 10
17 1,339 (11.03%) Microsoft Excel
18 1,330 (10.95%) PowerShell
19 1,175 (9.68%) Windows 7
20 1,150 (9.47%) Problem-Solving
21 1,125 (9.27%) SCCM
22 1,060 (8.73%) Security Cleared
23 1,044 (8.60%) SharePoint
24 1,031 (8.49%) Analytical Skills
25 1,015 (8.36%) JavaScript
26 1,014 (8.35%) Business Intelligence
27 965 (7.95%) VMware Infrastructure
28 927 (7.64%) Project Management
29 907 (7.47%) MS Exchange
30 889 (7.32%) ASP.NET

Microsoft
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same job type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 1,044 (8.60%) SharePoint
2 907 (7.47%) MS Exchange
3 478 (3.94%) Skype for Business
4 429 (3.53%) IIS
5 322 (2.65%) Exchange Server 2010
6 167 (1.38%) Exchange Server 2013
7 166 (1.37%) Apache
8 163 (1.34%) Confluence
9 138 (1.14%) SharePoint 2013
10 137 (1.13%) CMS
11 114 (0.94%) Tomcat
12 98 (0.81%) WebSphere
13 94 (0.77%) BizTalk Server
14 86 (0.71%) Elasticsearch
15 79 (0.65%) Exchange Server 2007
16 73 (0.60%) SharePoint 2010
17 70 (0.58%) SharePoint Server
18 66 (0.54%) Apache Spark
19 63 (0.52%) NServiceBus
20 60 (0.49%) nginx
Applications
1 2,353 (19.38%) Microsoft Office
2 1,339 (11.03%) Microsoft Excel
3 631 (5.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 436 (3.59%) Microsoft Project
5 393 (3.24%) MS Visio
6 90 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
7 34 (0.28%) InfoPath
8 22 (0.18%) Photoshop
9 11 (0.091%) AutoCAD
10 10 (0.082%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 9 (0.074%) Acrobat
12 8 (0.066%) Adobe Captivate
12 8 (0.066%) Adobe Illustrator
13 7 (0.058%) Chatbot
14 6 (0.049%) CINEMA 4D
15 5 (0.041%) Adobe After Effects
15 5 (0.041%) CATIA
15 5 (0.041%) Windchill
16 4 (0.033%) Adobe Premiere
16 4 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 608 (5.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 220 (1.81%) Dynamics AX
3 111 (0.91%) Dynamics NAV
4 34 (0.28%) NetSuite
5 27 (0.22%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 25 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 22 (0.18%) Oracle Financials
8 21 (0.17%) Primavera
9 18 (0.15%) Eikon
10 14 (0.12%) Markit EDM
10 14 (0.12%) SAP ERP
11 12 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
12 11 (0.091%) Oracle General Ledger
13 10 (0.082%) Elite 3E
13 10 (0.082%) Infor M3
13 10 (0.082%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 9 (0.074%) Remedy ITSM
14 9 (0.074%) Salesforce.com CRM
14 9 (0.074%) Visualfiles
15 8 (0.066%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 2,834 (23.34%) Microsoft Azure
2 2,006 (16.52%) Office 365
3 831 (6.84%) Amazon AWS
4 486 (4.00%) Dynamics 365
5 399 (3.29%) PaaS
6 396 (3.26%) IaaS
7 393 (3.24%) SaaS
8 385 (3.17%) Azure Active Directory
9 193 (1.59%) Cloud Computing
10 183 (1.51%) OneDrive
11 122 (1.00%) Google Cloud Platform
12 117 (0.96%) GitHub
13 112 (0.92%) Azure Data Factory
14 91 (0.75%) Serverless
15 73 (0.60%) Yammer
16 58 (0.48%) AWS CloudFormation
17 53 (0.44%) G Suite
18 52 (0.43%) Azure Functions
19 45 (0.37%) Amazon EC2
20 43 (0.35%) Mimecast
Communications & Networking
1 787 (6.48%) DNS
2 694 (5.72%) Firewall
3 530 (4.37%) DHCP
4 445 (3.67%) Skype
5 436 (3.59%) TCP/IP
6 419 (3.45%) LAN
7 393 (3.24%) WAN
8 380 (3.13%) VPN
9 324 (2.67%) SAN
10 291 (2.40%) Internet
11 173 (1.42%) Wireless
12 168 (1.38%) VoIP
13 140 (1.15%) Network Security
14 139 (1.14%) HTTP
15 127 (1.05%) SSL
16 125 (1.03%) Remote Desktop
17 119 (0.98%) NAS
18 96 (0.79%) Unified Communications
19 92 (0.76%) VLAN
20 84 (0.69%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2,423 (19.96%) SQL Server
2 852 (7.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 670 (5.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 555 (4.57%) Data Warehouse
5 506 (4.17%) Power BI
6 392 (3.23%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 306 (2.52%) Relational Database
8 273 (2.25%) SQL Server 2008
9 211 (1.74%) Big Data
10 204 (1.68%) SQL Server 2012
11 189 (1.56%) Azure SQL Database
12 172 (1.42%) MySQL
13 170 (1.40%) NoSQL
14 169 (1.39%) Data Lake
15 163 (1.34%) Hadoop
16 150 (1.24%) Oracle Database
17 144 (1.19%) SQL Server 2016
18 135 (1.11%) MongoDB
19 123 (1.01%) SQL Server 2014
20 95 (0.78%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 596 (4.91%) Visual Studio
2 538 (4.43%) Git (software)
3 514 (4.23%) Team Foundation Server
4 494 (4.07%) JIRA
5 357 (2.94%) Visual Studio Team System
6 317 (2.61%) Jenkins
7 252 (2.08%) Selenium
8 190 (1.56%) TeamCity
9 136 (1.12%) Octopus Deploy
10 120 (0.99%) NUnit
11 118 (0.97%) Subversion
12 96 (0.79%) MSI
13 76 (0.63%) SpecFlow
14 75 (0.62%) Cucumber
15 74 (0.61%) Bitbucket
16 71 (0.58%) Eclipse
17 69 (0.57%) Maven
18 68 (0.56%) GitLab
19 66 (0.54%) HP UFT
20 64 (0.53%) SoapUI
General
1 2,318 (19.09%) Finance
2 696 (5.73%) Banking
3 374 (3.08%) Retail
4 320 (2.64%) Telecoms
5 289 (2.38%) Marketing
6 219 (1.80%) Legal
7 214 (1.76%) Manufacturing
8 172 (1.42%) Law
9 157 (1.29%) Advertising
10 121 (1.00%) Back Office
10 121 (1.00%) Front Office
11 115 (0.95%) Investment Banking
12 106 (0.87%) Financial Institution
13 104 (0.86%) Publishing
14 101 (0.83%) Electronics
15 72 (0.59%) Pharmaceutical
16 69 (0.57%) Military
17 62 (0.51%) Automotive
18 46 (0.38%) Billing
19 40 (0.33%) French Language
Job Titles
1 2,380 (19.60%) Developer
2 2,079 (17.12%) Analyst
3 1,004 (8.27%) Architect
4 730 (6.01%) .NET Developer
5 711 (5.86%) Consultant
6 607 (5.00%) C# Developer
7 573 (4.72%) Support Engineer
8 529 (4.36%) Project Manager
9 498 (4.10%) Desktop Support
10 460 (3.79%) Service Analyst
11 455 (3.75%) Support Analyst
12 431 (3.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 414 (3.41%) Service Desk Analyst
14 370 (3.05%) 2nd Line Support
15 360 (2.97%) C# .NET Developer
16 344 (2.83%) Business Analyst
16 344 (2.83%) IT Support
17 322 (2.65%) SQL Developer
18 314 (2.59%) Administrator
19 313 (2.58%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2,128 (17.53%) .NET
2 889 (7.32%) ASP.NET
3 670 (5.52%) HTML
4 567 (4.67%) CSS
4 567 (4.67%) Web Services
5 484 (3.99%) .NET Framework
6 472 (3.89%) ASP.NET Web API
7 455 (3.75%) ASP.NET MVC
8 454 (3.74%) AngularJS
9 398 (3.28%) XML
10 330 (2.72%) WCF
11 320 (2.64%) jQuery
12 310 (2.55%) REST
13 290 (2.39%) JSON
14 260 (2.14%) HTML5
15 207 (1.70%) Entity Framework
16 190 (1.56%) React
17 187 (1.54%) Node.js
18 184 (1.52%) SOAP
19 162 (1.33%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 1,031 (8.49%) Analytical Skills
2 453 (3.73%) Data Centre
3 430 (3.54%) Management Information System
4 410 (3.38%) Self-Motivation
5 315 (2.59%) Computer Science
6 239 (1.97%) Greenfield Project
7 233 (1.92%) User Experience
8 212 (1.75%) Clustering
9 180 (1.48%) PKI
10 175 (1.44%) Public Cloud
11 172 (1.42%) Mobile App
12 169 (1.39%) NHS
13 164 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
14 152 (1.25%) Blackberry
15 130 (1.07%) Video Conferencing
16 117 (0.96%) Replication
17 113 (0.93%) iPhone
18 104 (0.86%) Virtual Team
19 102 (0.84%) Fat Client
19 102 (0.84%) Thin Client
Operating Systems
1 4,296 (35.38%) Windows
2 1,551 (12.77%) Windows Server
3 1,346 (11.09%) Windows 10
4 1,175 (9.68%) Windows 7
5 870 (7.17%) Linux
6 696 (5.73%) Windows Server 2012
7 632 (5.21%) Windows Server 2008
8 306 (2.52%) Unix
9 271 (2.23%) Apple iOS
10 266 (2.19%) Windows Server 2003
11 259 (2.13%) Android
12 227 (1.87%) Windows XP
13 215 (1.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 211 (1.74%) Windows 8
15 126 (1.04%) Mac OS
16 124 (1.02%) Mac OS X
17 66 (0.54%) CentOS
18 64 (0.53%) AIX
19 55 (0.45%) Solaris
20 45 (0.37%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,432 (20.03%) Agile Software Development
2 1,422 (11.71%) ITIL
3 1,357 (11.18%) Migration
4 1,150 (9.47%) Problem-Solving
5 1,014 (8.35%) Business Intelligence
6 927 (7.64%) Project Management
7 813 (6.70%) DevOps
8 788 (6.49%) CRM
9 776 (6.39%) MVC
10 739 (6.09%) Scrum
11 630 (5.19%) Analytics
12 602 (4.96%) Stakeholder Management
13 547 (4.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 534 (4.40%) Test Automation
15 523 (4.31%) TDD
16 491 (4.04%) Change Management
17 481 (3.96%) Continuous Integration
18 469 (3.86%) PRINCE2
19 465 (3.83%) Service Management
20 438 (3.61%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 2,605 (21.46%) SQL
2 1,952 (16.08%) C#
3 1,330 (10.95%) PowerShell
4 1,015 (8.36%) JavaScript
5 591 (4.87%) T-SQL
6 489 (4.03%) Java
7 391 (3.22%) Python
8 184 (1.52%) VB
9 170 (1.40%) C
10 152 (1.25%) VBA
11 151 (1.24%) VBScript
12 130 (1.07%) C++
13 125 (1.03%) Bash Shell
14 102 (0.84%) TypeScript
15 99 (0.82%) PL/SQL
15 99 (0.82%) VB.NET
16 97 (0.80%) Perl
16 97 (0.80%) Shell Script
17 89 (0.73%) Ruby
18 73 (0.60%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,060 (8.73%) Security Cleared
2 850 (7.00%) Degree
3 757 (6.24%) Microsoft Certification
4 755 (6.22%) SC Cleared
5 387 (3.19%) MCSE
6 240 (1.98%) DV Cleared
7 221 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
8 199 (1.64%) MCSA
9 167 (1.38%) MCP
10 159 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 156 (1.28%) CCNA
12 111 (0.91%) ISTQB
12 111 (0.91%) ITIL Certification
13 106 (0.87%) CISSP
14 104 (0.86%) ISEB
14 104 (0.86%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 87 (0.72%) BPSS Clearance
16 86 (0.71%) MCITP
17 82 (0.68%) PMI Certification
18 79 (0.65%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 400 (3.29%) SLA
2 361 (2.97%) QA
3 245 (2.02%) PMO
4 190 (1.56%) GDPR
5 146 (1.20%) Data Quality
6 97 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 51 (0.42%) PCI DSS
8 35 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
9 34 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 28 (0.23%) ISO 9001
11 21 (0.17%) WCAG
12 20 (0.16%) HL7
12 20 (0.16%) JSP 440
13 17 (0.14%) HMG Security Policy Framework
14 16 (0.13%) FINRA
14 16 (0.13%) MiFID
15 15 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
15 15 (0.12%) COBIT
16 13 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
16 13 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 19770
System Software
1 3,031 (24.96%) Active Directory
2 965 (7.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 492 (4.05%) Hyper-V
4 299 (2.46%) XenApp
5 295 (2.43%) VMware ESXi
6 279 (2.30%) Docker
7 276 (2.27%) vSphere
8 273 (2.25%) Microsoft App-V
9 200 (1.65%) XenDesktop
10 135 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
11 130 (1.07%) Virtual Desktop
12 85 (0.70%) BitLocker
13 62 (0.51%) XenServer
14 53 (0.44%) VMware Workstation
15 45 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
16 40 (0.33%) Xen
17 35 (0.29%) DFS Replication
17 35 (0.29%) Terminal Services
18 33 (0.27%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 33 (0.27%) NFS
Systems Management
1 1,125 (9.27%) SCCM
2 281 (2.31%) Microsoft Intune
3 240 (1.98%) Puppet
4 237 (1.95%) SCOM
5 224 (1.84%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
6 210 (1.73%) Ansible
7 182 (1.50%) Kubernetes
8 161 (1.33%) Opscode Chef
9 157 (1.29%) WSUS
10 146 (1.20%) Terraform
11 131 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
12 120 (0.99%) McAfee ePO
13 116 (0.96%) Microsoft Clustering
14 87 (0.72%) AirWatch
14 87 (0.72%) vCenter Server
15 71 (0.58%) Forefront Identity Manager
16 58 (0.48%) HP ALM
17 57 (0.47%) Backup Exec
18 55 (0.45%) NetBackup
19 41 (0.34%) XenMobile
Vendors
1 1,466 (12.07%) VMware
2 851 (7.01%) Citrix
3 804 (6.62%) Oracle
4 710 (5.85%) Cisco
5 470 (3.87%) HP
6 445 (3.67%) SAP
7 374 (3.08%) Apple
8 258 (2.13%) McAfee
9 252 (2.08%) Google
10 225 (1.85%) Red Hat
11 223 (1.84%) ServiceNow
12 219 (1.80%) IBM
13 207 (1.70%) Ivanti
14 202 (1.66%) NetApp
15 164 (1.35%) Tableau
16 152 (1.25%) Dell
17 128 (1.05%) Symantec
18 113 (0.93%) Remedy
18 113 (0.93%) Salesforce.com
19 108 (0.89%) Adobe
5,149 Microsoft job vacancies Nationwide