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 16 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
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,175 4,714 5,001
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.22% 14.31% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 31.59% 30.28% 29.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,591 3,049 3,122
10th Percentile £213 £206 £200
25th Percentile £371 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £685 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 557 381 282
10th Percentile £13.36 £14.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.82 £16.50 £15.29
Median hourly rate £19.00 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.86% +31.26% -24.44%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.40 £44.39
90th Percentile £68.90 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £20.90 £16.23
% change year-on-year -11.47% +28.76% -18.85%

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 22,712 15,566 16,911
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.85% 47.26% 44.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,926 9,545 10,148
10th Percentile £313 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,251 789 677
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.69 £14.26
25th Percentile £16.72 £17.44 £15.62
Median hourly rate £27.00 £25.15 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.36% -16.17% -31.56%
75th Percentile £63.00 £43.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £21.19 £30.00
% change year-on-year +23.36% -29.37% -27.71%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 -1 6,212 £488 +2.63% 9,473
UK excluding London 0 3,854 £450 +3.45% 6,571
London 0 2,687 £515 +3.00% 4,028
Work from Home +4 1,829 £500 - 3,939
South East 0 1,001 £475 +5.56% 1,674
North of England -5 964 £460 +6.36% 1,622
Midlands 0 663 £425 +4.94% 1,076
North West -2 567 £450 +2.97% 855
South West -1 459 £470 +10.59% 672
West Midlands -2 453 £430 +1.18% 627
Scotland +6 376 £450 - 526
Yorkshire -7 353 £475 +8.88% 549
East of England 0 276 £345 -34.29% 628
East Midlands +2 204 £425 +15.80% 448
Wales +2 109 £413 +37.50% 191
North East -27 48 £426 +25.15% 242
Northern Ireland -1 37 £350 - 268
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 6

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
1 868 (12.10%) SharePoint
2 405 (5.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.06%) Confluence
4 38 (0.53%) Apache
5 37 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
6 28 (0.39%) CMS
7 24 (0.33%) IIS
8 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
9 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
10 15 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.14%) nginx
12 9 (0.13%) SAS
13 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
14 6 (0.084%) Mendix
14 6 (0.084%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.084%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.070%) Camunda
15 5 (0.070%) OpenStack
Applications
1 752 (10.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 739 (10.30%) Microsoft Office
3 309 (4.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 192 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 112 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 29 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 10 (0.14%) Navisworks
10 10 (0.14%) ProjectWise
11 9 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.070%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.070%) Trello
13 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
14 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.028%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 261 (3.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 83 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.18%) Primavera
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.14%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
12 8 (0.11%) iTrent
12 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.098%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.098%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.098%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.084%) Maximo
14 6 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,965 (41.32%) Azure
2 1,825 (25.44%) Microsoft 365
3 1,271 (17.71%) Power Platform
4 1,111 (15.48%) Entra ID
5 663 (9.24%) AWS
6 607 (8.46%) Dynamics 365
7 604 (8.42%) Azure DevOps
8 437 (6.09%) Power Automate
9 429 (5.98%) Microsoft Copilot
10 385 (5.37%) PowerApps
11 309 (4.31%) Microsoft Purview
12 293 (4.08%) GitHub
13 271 (3.78%) OneDrive
14 257 (3.58%) GCP
15 247 (3.44%) SaaS
16 196 (2.73%) Serverless
17 183 (2.55%) Azure Data Factory
18 176 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
19 167 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
20 159 (2.22%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 398 (5.55%) DNS
2 340 (4.74%) Firewall
3 291 (4.06%) VPN
4 264 (3.68%) DHCP
5 208 (2.90%) TCP/IP
6 163 (2.27%) Network Security
7 161 (2.24%) WAN
8 144 (2.01%) LAN
9 141 (1.97%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.05%) VLAN
11 65 (0.91%) Wireless
12 48 (0.67%) SAN
13 41 (0.57%) SSL
14 39 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.52%) MPLS
16 32 (0.45%) Unified Communications
17 30 (0.42%) BGP
17 30 (0.42%) Internet
17 30 (0.42%) Kerberos
18 27 (0.38%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 779 (10.86%) Power BI
2 413 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 173 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
4 156 (2.17%) Metadata
5 146 (2.03%) Data Lake
6 134 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
7 113 (1.57%) Azure SQL Database
8 86 (1.20%) Power Query
9 76 (1.06%) Relational Database
10 71 (0.99%) MySQL
11 66 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.66%) NoSQL
13 46 (0.64%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 41 (0.57%) Star Schema
16 38 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 35 (0.49%) Tableau
18 31 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
19 30 (0.42%) MongoDB
20 21 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 342 (4.77%) JIRA
2 236 (3.29%) Git
3 95 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 71 (0.99%) GitLab
5 59 (0.82%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.61%) MSI
7 36 (0.50%) Selenium
8 23 (0.32%) Claude Code
9 22 (0.31%) Postman
10 17 (0.24%) Cypress.io
11 16 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
12 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
13 13 (0.18%) Cucumber
14 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 12 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
15 11 (0.15%) MLflow
15 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
16 10 (0.14%) Artifactory
16 10 (0.14%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,655 (37.00%) Social Skills
2 1,420 (19.79%) Finance
3 925 (12.89%) Analytical Skills
4 637 (8.88%) Public Sector
5 425 (5.92%) Organisational Skills
6 317 (4.42%) Banking
7 229 (3.19%) Legal
8 203 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
9 185 (2.58%) Manufacturing
10 175 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 154 (2.15%) Retail
12 125 (1.74%) Telecoms
13 109 (1.52%) Marketing
14 99 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
15 96 (1.34%) Law
16 92 (1.28%) Military
17 89 (1.24%) Aerospace
18 88 (1.23%) Local Government
19 68 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
20 59 (0.82%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 833 (11.61%) Architect
2 723 (10.08%) Analyst
3 631 (8.79%) Developer
4 623 (8.68%) Senior
5 484 (6.75%) Lead
6 464 (6.47%) Consultant
7 448 (6.24%) IT Support
8 431 (6.01%) Support Engineer
9 295 (4.11%) Administrator
10 293 (4.08%) IT Engineer
11 276 (3.85%) Solutions Architect
12 251 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 247 (3.44%) Azure Engineer
14 241 (3.36%) Data Engineer
14 241 (3.36%) IT Support Engineer
15 231 (3.22%) Project Manager
16 186 (2.59%) Business Analyst
17 180 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
18 139 (1.94%) DevOps Engineer
19 133 (1.85%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 531 (7.40%) Terraform
2 343 (4.78%) .NET
3 271 (3.78%) REST
4 139 (1.94%) JSON
5 135 (1.88%) OAuth
6 111 (1.55%) PySpark
6 111 (1.55%) XML
7 107 (1.49%) SAML
8 104 (1.45%) OpenID
9 101 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
10 93 (1.30%) ARM Templates
11 90 (1.25%) React
12 87 (1.21%) Web Services
13 85 (1.18%) .NET Framework
14 79 (1.10%) LDAP
15 76 (1.06%) OAuth2
16 74 (1.03%) SailPoint
17 73 (1.02%) RESTful
18 70 (0.98%) HTML
19 64 (0.89%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 568 (7.92%) Onboarding
2 307 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 279 (3.89%) Management Information System
4 217 (3.02%) Enterprise Software
5 211 (2.94%) Product Ownership
6 158 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 154 (2.15%) PKI
8 152 (2.12%) AI Agents
9 146 (2.03%) Data Centre
10 134 (1.87%) Security Posture
11 132 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
12 94 (1.31%) Data Structures
13 93 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 91 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
15 87 (1.21%) CMDB
16 83 (1.16%) Driving Licence
17 81 (1.13%) Virtual Team
18 79 (1.10%) Low-Code
19 72 (1.00%) Replication
20 69 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,536 (21.41%) Windows
2 459 (6.40%) Windows Server
3 382 (5.32%) Windows 10
4 342 (4.77%) Linux
5 152 (2.12%) Mac OS
6 134 (1.87%) Android
7 127 (1.77%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 49 (0.68%) Unix
10 42 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.53%) Ubuntu
13 36 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
14 31 (0.43%) VMS
15 22 (0.31%) CentOS
16 21 (0.29%) Solaris
16 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.17%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.098%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,347 (18.77%) Problem-Solving
2 1,321 (18.41%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,101 (15.34%) DevOps
4 1,092 (15.22%) Agile
5 981 (13.67%) Migration
6 942 (13.13%) CI/CD
7 903 (12.59%) Continuous Improvement
8 848 (11.82%) AI
9 821 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 783 (10.91%) Business Intelligence
11 744 (10.37%) Analytics
12 701 (9.77%) ITIL
13 674 (9.39%) Customer Service
14 573 (7.99%) Cybersecurity
15 567 (7.90%) Infrastructure as Code
16 544 (7.58%) Roadmaps
17 518 (7.22%) Data Modelling
18 495 (6.90%) Project Delivery
19 482 (6.72%) Decision-Making
20 463 (6.45%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 856 (11.93%) SQL
2 800 (11.15%) PowerShell
3 730 (10.17%) Python
4 349 (4.86%) C#
5 265 (3.69%) JavaScript
6 209 (2.91%) Bicep
7 173 (2.41%) Java
8 170 (2.37%) Bash
9 111 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 108 (1.51%) T-SQL
11 106 (1.48%) TypeScript
12 74 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.43%) VBA
14 29 (0.40%) VB
15 27 (0.38%) C++
16 25 (0.35%) VBScript
17 23 (0.32%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.32%) X++
18 18 (0.25%) R
19 16 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,551 (21.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,154 (16.08%) SC Cleared
3 637 (8.88%) Degree
4 377 (5.25%) Microsoft Certification
5 302 (4.21%) DV Cleared
6 275 (3.83%) Azure Certification
7 187 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (2.01%) CISSP
9 132 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
10 115 (1.60%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.34%) PMP
12 90 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 77 (1.07%) CISM
14 73 (1.02%) AWS Certification
15 60 (0.84%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 58 (0.81%) A+ Certification
18 56 (0.78%) CCNP
19 47 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 47 (0.66%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (6.05%) Data Quality
2 240 (3.34%) QA
3 236 (3.29%) GDPR
4 204 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 202 (2.82%) SLA
6 201 (2.80%) PMO
7 178 (2.48%) NIST
8 120 (1.67%) Accessibility
9 94 (1.31%) Cyber Essentials
10 89 (1.24%) NCSC
11 60 (0.84%) GRC
12 49 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 45 (0.63%) WCAG
14 38 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 30 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 22 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.22%) NIST 800
19 16 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,338 (18.65%) Active Directory
2 268 (3.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 253 (3.53%) Docker
4 143 (1.99%) Hyper-V
5 129 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
6 105 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
7 70 (0.98%) vSphere
8 63 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 18 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.24%) VMware NSX
12 15 (0.21%) Firmware
13 9 (0.13%) IAG
13 9 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
15 7 (0.098%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.098%) zsh
16 6 (0.084%) XenApp
17 5 (0.070%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 5 (0.070%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 578 (8.06%) Microsoft Intune
2 338 (4.71%) Kubernetes
3 296 (4.13%) SCCM
4 169 (2.36%) Ansible
5 140 (1.95%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
7 60 (0.84%) Grafana
8 55 (0.77%) SCOM
9 50 (0.70%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.52%) Prometheus
11 36 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.39%) QRadar
12 28 (0.39%) WSUS
13 23 (0.32%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.26%) Puppet
16 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
17 16 (0.22%) Argo
18 15 (0.21%) WMI
19 14 (0.20%) Avamar
Vendors
1 545 (7.60%) ServiceNow
2 348 (4.85%) VMware
3 346 (4.82%) Oracle
4 290 (4.04%) SAP
5 251 (3.50%) Google
6 247 (3.44%) Databricks
7 238 (3.32%) Cisco
8 128 (1.78%) Salesforce
9 127 (1.77%) Splunk
10 111 (1.55%) Apple
11 101 (1.41%) CyberArk
12 91 (1.27%) Citrix
13 88 (1.23%) Okta
14 87 (1.21%) OpenAI
15 85 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
16 80 (1.11%) Foundry
17 75 (1.05%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.92%) Red Hat
19 57 (0.79%) Zscaler
20 54 (0.75%) Adobe