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 26 June 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
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,941 4,157 5,645
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.68% 13.74% 12.99%
As % of the Vendors category 28.54% 28.95% 30.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,924 2,672 3,671
10th Percentile £213 £213 £190
25th Percentile £375 £340 £348
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £580 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £427 £450
% change year-on-year +5.39% -5.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 307 493
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.69
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.00 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -3.41% +36.99% -32.89%
75th Percentile £35.53 £31.00 £25.30
90th Percentile £65.25 £63.31 £59.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.75 £18.87 £15.98
% change year-on-year +9.96% +18.12% -20.13%

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 20,820 14,360 18,559
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.92% 47.48% 42.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,035 8,825 11,531
10th Percentile £313 £280 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £519
Median % change year-on-year - -3.57% -1.24%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,072 669 1,157
10th Percentile £15.58 £14.84 £12.26
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £14.71
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £24.18
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +4.01% -42.40%
75th Percentile £61.63 £53.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.23 £22.75 £23.22
% change year-on-year +41.63% -1.99% -38.09%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 0 5,182 £500 +5.26% 2,969
UK excluding London -1 3,143 £450 +5.39% 2,646
London -1 2,281 £510 -0.49% 857
Work from Home 0 1,519 £500 - 1,264
North of England -5 798 £456 +7.18% 626
South East -2 747 £475 +1.50% 843
Midlands -3 531 £450 +16.13% 422
North West -3 416 £449 +5.65% 337
South West -1 389 £480 +12.94% 314
West Midlands -6 377 £450 +13.07% 211
Yorkshire -3 360 £475 +5.56% 212
East of England 0 295 £350 -30.00% 294
Scotland +2 270 £465 +6.84% 116
East Midlands +1 147 £425 +13.33% 211
Wales +2 107 £370 +23.33% 84
Northern Ireland +1 29 £350 +7.69% 37
North East -34 26 £450 +30.43% 92
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14%

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
1 643 (10.82%) SharePoint
2 388 (6.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 127 (2.14%) Confluence
4 36 (0.61%) Apache Spark
5 31 (0.52%) Apache
6 28 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.30%) CMS
7 18 (0.30%) IIS
8 15 (0.25%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 12 (0.20%) SAS
11 7 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
12 6 (0.10%) Camunda
12 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
12 6 (0.10%) Mendix
13 5 (0.084%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.084%) SharePoint 2013
14 4 (0.067%) Appian
14 4 (0.067%) nginx
14 4 (0.067%) Tomcat
Applications
1 554 (9.33%) Microsoft Office
2 542 (9.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 237 (3.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 124 (2.09%) Microsoft Project
5 101 (1.70%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.084%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.050%) Acrobat
11 3 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.050%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.050%) Trello
12 2 (0.034%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.034%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.034%) InDesign
12 2 (0.034%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.034%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 201 (3.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.28%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.32%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.22%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 9 (0.15%) Primavera
10 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
10 9 (0.15%) SAP MM
11 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.13%) Veritas eDiscovery
12 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
13 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
13 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,489 (41.90%) Azure
2 1,488 (25.05%) Microsoft 365
3 1,009 (16.98%) Power Platform
4 818 (13.77%) Entra ID
5 528 (8.89%) AWS
6 467 (7.86%) Azure DevOps
7 456 (7.68%) Dynamics 365
8 340 (5.72%) Power Automate
9 322 (5.42%) Microsoft Purview
10 306 (5.15%) PowerApps
11 298 (5.02%) Microsoft Copilot
12 250 (4.21%) GitHub
13 232 (3.91%) OneDrive
14 220 (3.70%) SaaS
15 193 (3.25%) GCP
16 170 (2.86%) Azure Data Factory
17 162 (2.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 156 (2.63%) Serverless
19 141 (2.37%) Azure Logic Apps
20 140 (2.36%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 318 (5.35%) DNS
2 282 (4.75%) Firewall
3 220 (3.70%) VPN
4 194 (3.27%) DHCP
5 155 (2.61%) WAN
6 144 (2.42%) TCP/IP
7 138 (2.32%) Wi-Fi
8 130 (2.19%) LAN
9 129 (2.17%) Network Security
10 56 (0.94%) VLAN
11 49 (0.82%) SD-WAN
12 48 (0.81%) Kerberos
13 45 (0.76%) SAN
14 36 (0.61%) Wireless
15 35 (0.59%) Unified Communications
16 34 (0.57%) SSL
17 32 (0.54%) VoIP
18 30 (0.50%) Internet
18 30 (0.50%) MPLS
19 26 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 641 (10.79%) Power BI
2 305 (5.13%) SQL Server
3 177 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
4 139 (2.34%) Data Lake
5 128 (2.15%) PostgreSQL
6 125 (2.10%) Metadata
7 124 (2.09%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.23%) Relational Database
9 68 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 56 (0.94%) Power Query
11 53 (0.89%) MySQL
12 49 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.76%) NoSQL
14 43 (0.72%) Star Schema
15 41 (0.69%) Tableau
16 37 (0.62%) Delta Lake
17 36 (0.61%) Oracle Database
18 31 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 26 (0.44%) Big Data
20 24 (0.40%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 306 (5.15%) JIRA
2 178 (3.00%) Git
3 78 (1.31%) Jenkins
4 58 (0.98%) GitLab
5 39 (0.66%) Visual Studio
6 26 (0.44%) MSI
7 20 (0.34%) Artifactory
7 20 (0.34%) Selenium
8 17 (0.29%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.29%) ERwin
9 16 (0.27%) MLflow
10 14 (0.24%) Maven
10 14 (0.24%) Postman
11 13 (0.22%) Bitbucket
11 13 (0.22%) JMeter
11 13 (0.22%) JUnit
11 13 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
12 12 (0.20%) Team Foundation Server
13 10 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
13 10 (0.17%) WebDriver
General
1 1,943 (32.70%) Social Skills
2 1,193 (20.08%) Finance
3 653 (10.99%) Analytical Skills
4 539 (9.07%) Public Sector
5 312 (5.25%) Banking
6 253 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
7 236 (3.97%) Legal
8 159 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
9 116 (1.95%) Manufacturing
10 108 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 102 (1.72%) Retail
12 96 (1.62%) Law
13 88 (1.48%) Telecoms
14 84 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
15 79 (1.33%) Marketing
15 79 (1.33%) Military
16 70 (1.18%) Local Government
17 67 (1.13%) Investment Banking
18 64 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
19 46 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 737 (12.41%) Architect
2 632 (10.64%) Analyst
3 546 (9.19%) Developer
4 492 (8.28%) Senior
5 397 (6.68%) Lead
6 365 (6.14%) IT Support
7 348 (5.86%) Consultant
8 283 (4.76%) Support Engineer
9 234 (3.94%) Data Engineer
10 227 (3.82%) Solutions Architect
11 206 (3.47%) Project Manager
12 205 (3.45%) IT Engineer
13 202 (3.40%) Azure Engineer
14 183 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 177 (2.98%) Business Analyst
16 172 (2.90%) Administrator
17 157 (2.64%) IT Support Engineer
18 121 (2.04%) Security Engineer
19 116 (1.95%) Cloud Engineer
20 102 (1.72%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (4.44%) .NET
2 202 (3.40%) REST
3 138 (2.32%) Microsoft Graph
4 118 (1.99%) OAuth
5 108 (1.82%) PySpark
6 106 (1.78%) JSON
7 102 (1.72%) SAML
8 89 (1.50%) OpenID
9 83 (1.40%) React
10 82 (1.38%) LDAP
11 81 (1.36%) Web Services
12 64 (1.08%) XML
13 62 (1.04%) Node.js
14 59 (0.99%) OAuth2
15 58 (0.98%) Middleware
15 58 (0.98%) RESTful
15 58 (0.98%) SailPoint
16 56 (0.94%) HTML
17 54 (0.91%) .NET Framework
17 54 (0.91%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 331 (5.57%) Onboarding
2 270 (4.54%) Cloud Native
3 173 (2.91%) Product Ownership
4 143 (2.41%) Management Information System
5 122 (2.05%) Data Centre
6 120 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
7 110 (1.85%) Enterprise Software
8 106 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
9 100 (1.68%) Security Posture
10 98 (1.65%) PKI
11 94 (1.58%) AI Agents
12 89 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
13 85 (1.43%) Data Structures
14 76 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
15 74 (1.25%) Virtual Team
16 73 (1.23%) Replication
17 68 (1.14%) Low-Code
18 58 (0.98%) Distributed Systems
19 52 (0.88%) Public Cloud
20 50 (0.84%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,254 (21.11%) Windows
2 315 (5.30%) Windows 10
3 310 (5.22%) Windows Server
4 262 (4.41%) Linux
5 122 (2.05%) Mac OS
6 110 (1.85%) Android
7 109 (1.83%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 41 (0.69%) Windows 7
9 38 (0.64%) Unix
10 36 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
11 31 (0.52%) VMS
12 30 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.27%) Ubuntu
15 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
16 11 (0.19%) CentOS
16 11 (0.19%) SUSE
17 9 (0.15%) Solaris
18 6 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,017 (17.12%) Problem-Solving
2 949 (15.97%) DevOps
3 892 (15.01%) Agile
4 845 (14.22%) Migration
5 781 (13.15%) CI/CD
6 696 (11.72%) Stakeholder Management
7 658 (11.08%) Business Intelligence
8 652 (10.97%) AI
9 637 (10.72%) Analytics
10 577 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
11 573 (9.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 508 (8.55%) ITIL
13 442 (7.44%) Data Modelling
14 437 (7.36%) Customer Service
15 427 (7.19%) Roadmaps
16 404 (6.80%) Cybersecurity
17 388 (6.53%) Decision-Making
18 378 (6.36%) Infrastructure as Code
19 354 (5.96%) Validation
20 353 (5.94%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 765 (12.88%) SQL
2 656 (11.04%) PowerShell
3 619 (10.42%) Python
4 276 (4.65%) C#
5 214 (3.60%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.06%) Java
7 146 (2.46%) Bicep
8 104 (1.75%) T-SQL
9 84 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 84 (1.41%) TypeScript
10 77 (1.30%) Bash
11 76 (1.28%) Kusto Query Language
12 36 (0.61%) VBA
13 30 (0.50%) C++
14 28 (0.47%) PL/SQL
14 28 (0.47%) VB
15 18 (0.30%) VBScript
16 17 (0.29%) Scala
17 16 (0.27%) Shell Script
18 13 (0.22%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,135 (19.10%) Security Cleared
2 880 (14.81%) SC Cleared
3 574 (9.66%) Degree
4 282 (4.75%) Microsoft Certification
5 197 (3.32%) DV Cleared
6 192 (3.23%) Azure Certification
7 119 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 112 (1.89%) CISSP
9 110 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
10 96 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
11 60 (1.01%) CISM
12 58 (0.98%) PMP
13 54 (0.91%) AWS Certification
14 53 (0.89%) Master's Degree
14 53 (0.89%) PMI Certification
15 44 (0.74%) MCSE
16 43 (0.72%) CCNP
17 41 (0.69%) DBS Check
18 38 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
19 37 (0.62%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 312 (5.25%) Data Quality
2 231 (3.89%) GDPR
3 194 (3.27%) QA
4 165 (2.78%) SLA
5 156 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 132 (2.22%) NIST
7 114 (1.92%) PMO
8 82 (1.38%) Accessibility
8 82 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials
9 64 (1.08%) NCSC
10 38 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 36 (0.61%) GRC
12 31 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 31 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 23 (0.39%) WCAG
14 18 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 17 (0.29%) SOC 2
16 15 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
17 14 (0.24%) MiFID
18 12 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,124 (18.92%) Active Directory
2 222 (3.74%) Docker
3 196 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.80%) Hyper-V
5 90 (1.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 79 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (1.03%) VMware ESXi
8 55 (0.93%) vSphere
9 33 (0.56%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.32%) Firmware
13 7 (0.12%) IAG
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
14 5 (0.084%) RACF
14 5 (0.084%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.067%) Snort
15 4 (0.067%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.067%) XenDesktop
16 3 (0.050%) KVM
Systems Management
1 472 (7.94%) Microsoft Intune
2 379 (6.38%) Terraform
3 258 (4.34%) Kubernetes
4 206 (3.47%) SCCM
5 132 (2.22%) Ansible
6 131 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
7 75 (1.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 55 (0.93%) Jamf Pro
9 48 (0.81%) vCenter Server
10 36 (0.61%) Grafana
11 30 (0.50%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.50%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.40%) SCOM
13 19 (0.32%) Puppet
13 19 (0.32%) WSUS
14 16 (0.27%) QRadar
15 15 (0.25%) AirWatch
16 12 (0.20%) vMotion
17 11 (0.19%) HAProxy
18 10 (0.17%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 352 (5.92%) ServiceNow
2 271 (4.56%) VMware
3 251 (4.22%) Oracle
4 249 (4.19%) SAP
5 214 (3.60%) Databricks
6 204 (3.43%) Cisco
7 177 (2.98%) Google
8 119 (2.00%) Salesforce
9 101 (1.70%) Citrix
10 93 (1.57%) Splunk
11 79 (1.33%) Apple
12 76 (1.28%) OpenAI
13 72 (1.21%) Foundry
14 69 (1.16%) Okta
15 66 (1.11%) CrowdStrike
16 62 (1.04%) CyberArk
17 50 (0.84%) HP
18 48 (0.81%) Red Hat
19 45 (0.76%) Palo Alto
20 44 (0.74%) Zscaler