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 3 August 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
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,422 4,565 5,057
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.08% 13.79% 12.96%
As % of the Vendors category 29.24% 29.23% 29.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,197 2,918 3,317
10th Percentile £215 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £585 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 387 371 363
10th Percentile £13.68 £14.00 £11.73
25th Percentile £16.50 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.77% +37.49% -31.96%
75th Percentile £37.88 £30.63 £36.00
90th Percentile £73.95 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year +3.68% +24.80% -14.58%

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 21,964 15,619 17,055
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.33% 47.17% 43.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,616 9,561 10,707
10th Percentile £313 £280 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £602 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £705 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,110 790 856
10th Percentile £15.80 £14.63 £13.58
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £34.86 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.61% -10.18% -33.85%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.32 £27.00
% change year-on-year +52.30% -17.35% -23.94%

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 3 August 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 3 August 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 3 August 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 5,603 £490 +3.16% 4,672
UK excluding London -1 3,405 £450 +3.45% 3,807
London -2 2,472 £510 +2.00% 1,530
Work from Home +3 1,674 £500 - 1,996
South East -1 870 £475 - 1,161
North of England -4 850 £455 +4.00% 911
Midlands -1 588 £447 +19.27% 628
North West -2 490 £450 +2.27% 479
South West 0 429 £470 +8.05% 426
West Midlands -4 415 £450 +18.03% 330
Yorkshire -6 336 £475 +5.56% 311
Scotland +8 313 £450 - 181
East of England -1 255 £375 -25.00% 378
East Midlands +2 165 £401 +13.92% 297
Wales 0 101 £413 +39.83% 120
Northern Ireland -3 31 £350 -3.11% 87
North East -40 29 £450 +38.46% 142
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 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
1 743 (11.57%) SharePoint
2 392 (6.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 138 (2.15%) Confluence
4 39 (0.61%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.56%) Apache
6 29 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 18 (0.28%) CMS
9 17 (0.26%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.16%) SAS
13 8 (0.12%) nginx
14 6 (0.093%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.093%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.078%) Camunda
15 5 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.078%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.078%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 600 (9.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 583 (9.08%) Microsoft Office
3 250 (3.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (2.52%) Microsoft Project
5 106 (1.65%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.093%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.078%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.062%) Navisworks
11 4 (0.062%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.062%) ProjectWise
11 4 (0.062%) Revit
12 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.047%) Trello
13 2 (0.031%) InfoPath
13 2 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 233 (3.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
6 14 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
6 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.20%) Aladdin
8 11 (0.17%) Primavera
9 9 (0.14%) Magento
9 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
10 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
11 7 (0.11%) iTrent
11 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 6 (0.093%) Dynamics GP
12 6 (0.093%) SAP CRM
12 6 (0.093%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,705 (42.12%) Azure
2 1,618 (25.19%) Microsoft 365
3 1,118 (17.41%) Power Platform
4 952 (14.82%) Entra ID
5 570 (8.88%) AWS
6 541 (8.42%) Dynamics 365
7 539 (8.39%) Azure DevOps
8 395 (6.15%) Power Automate
9 359 (5.59%) PowerApps
10 348 (5.42%) Microsoft Copilot
11 289 (4.50%) Microsoft Purview
12 265 (4.13%) GitHub
13 240 (3.74%) OneDrive
14 228 (3.55%) SaaS
15 212 (3.30%) GCP
16 167 (2.60%) Azure Data Factory
17 166 (2.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 151 (2.35%) Serverless
19 147 (2.29%) PaaS
20 144 (2.24%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 344 (5.36%) DNS
2 325 (5.06%) Firewall
3 255 (3.97%) VPN
4 209 (3.25%) DHCP
5 178 (2.77%) TCP/IP
6 149 (2.32%) WAN
7 143 (2.23%) Network Security
8 140 (2.18%) Wi-Fi
9 139 (2.16%) LAN
10 70 (1.09%) VLAN
11 51 (0.79%) Wireless
12 44 (0.69%) SAN
13 41 (0.64%) MPLS
14 37 (0.58%) SSL
14 37 (0.58%) Unified Communications
15 30 (0.47%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.45%) Internet
16 29 (0.45%) VoIP
17 27 (0.42%) BGP
18 26 (0.40%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 706 (10.99%) Power BI
2 370 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 191 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
5 128 (1.99%) Data Lake
6 125 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
7 124 (1.93%) Metadata
8 74 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 72 (1.12%) Relational Database
10 64 (1.00%) Power Query
11 63 (0.98%) MySQL
12 48 (0.75%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.73%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 43 (0.67%) Oracle Database
15 41 (0.64%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.58%) Tableau
17 33 (0.51%) Delta Lake
18 30 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 24 (0.37%) Big Data
19 24 (0.37%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 313 (4.87%) JIRA
2 191 (2.97%) Git
3 88 (1.37%) Jenkins
4 63 (0.98%) GitLab
5 54 (0.84%) Visual Studio
6 33 (0.51%) MSI
7 28 (0.44%) Selenium
8 17 (0.26%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.26%) Postman
9 16 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
9 16 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 13 (0.20%) Artifactory
10 13 (0.20%) MLflow
11 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
11 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
11 12 (0.19%) ERwin
11 12 (0.19%) JUnit
11 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
12 11 (0.17%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.17%) Maven
General
1 2,172 (33.82%) Social Skills
2 1,299 (20.23%) Finance
3 796 (12.39%) Analytical Skills
4 613 (9.55%) Public Sector
5 316 (4.92%) Banking
6 286 (4.45%) Organisational Skills
7 218 (3.39%) Legal
8 170 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
9 148 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 131 (2.04%) Manufacturing
11 126 (1.96%) Retail
12 109 (1.70%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.59%) Law
13 102 (1.59%) Marketing
14 86 (1.34%) Local Government
15 84 (1.31%) Military
16 71 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
17 69 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
18 62 (0.97%) Investment Banking
19 51 (0.79%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 740 (11.52%) Architect
2 669 (10.42%) Analyst
3 618 (9.62%) Developer
4 571 (8.89%) Senior
5 456 (7.10%) Lead
6 401 (6.24%) IT Support
7 394 (6.14%) Consultant
8 356 (5.54%) Support Engineer
9 251 (3.91%) IT Engineer
10 246 (3.83%) Data Engineer
11 242 (3.77%) Solutions Architect
12 226 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
13 225 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 212 (3.30%) Project Manager
15 200 (3.11%) IT Support Engineer
16 191 (2.97%) Administrator
17 180 (2.80%) Business Analyst
18 156 (2.43%) Cloud Engineer
19 127 (1.98%) Security Engineer
20 110 (1.71%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (4.70%) .NET
2 243 (3.78%) REST
3 124 (1.93%) JSON
4 120 (1.87%) Microsoft Graph
5 112 (1.74%) OAuth
6 107 (1.67%) PySpark
7 92 (1.43%) OpenID
7 92 (1.43%) SAML
7 92 (1.43%) XML
8 87 (1.35%) .NET Framework
9 85 (1.32%) Web Services
10 79 (1.23%) React
11 72 (1.12%) RESTful
12 68 (1.06%) HTML
13 66 (1.03%) ARM Templates
13 66 (1.03%) SOAP
14 63 (0.98%) LDAP
14 63 (0.98%) OAuth2
15 61 (0.95%) Middleware
15 61 (0.95%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 433 (6.74%) Onboarding
2 301 (4.69%) Cloud Native
3 186 (2.90%) Management Information System
4 181 (2.82%) Product Ownership
5 159 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
6 136 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
7 130 (2.02%) Hybrid Cloud
8 125 (1.95%) PKI
9 123 (1.92%) AI Agents
10 122 (1.90%) Data Centre
11 120 (1.87%) Security Posture
12 95 (1.48%) Data Structures
13 88 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
14 80 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
15 78 (1.21%) Virtual Team
16 73 (1.14%) Low-Code
17 68 (1.06%) Driving Licence
18 66 (1.03%) Distributed Systems
19 60 (0.93%) Replication
20 58 (0.90%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,353 (21.07%) Windows
2 366 (5.70%) Windows Server
3 330 (5.14%) Windows 10
4 302 (4.70%) Linux
5 130 (2.02%) Mac OS
6 121 (1.88%) Android
7 110 (1.71%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.67%) Unix
10 37 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
12 33 (0.51%) Windows 7
13 31 (0.48%) VMS
14 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.20%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,128 (17.56%) Problem-Solving
2 1,017 (15.84%) DevOps
3 976 (15.20%) Agile
4 912 (14.20%) Stakeholder Management
5 909 (14.15%) Migration
6 837 (13.03%) CI/CD
7 740 (11.52%) AI
8 727 (11.32%) Continuous Improvement
9 720 (11.21%) Business Intelligence
9 720 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 678 (10.56%) Analytics
11 606 (9.44%) ITIL
12 523 (8.14%) Customer Service
13 476 (7.41%) Data Modelling
14 465 (7.24%) Cybersecurity
15 462 (7.19%) Roadmaps
16 450 (7.01%) Infrastructure as Code
17 422 (6.57%) Decision-Making
18 410 (6.38%) Project Delivery
18 410 (6.38%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 813 (12.66%) SQL
2 678 (10.56%) PowerShell
3 653 (10.17%) Python
4 318 (4.95%) C#
5 240 (3.74%) JavaScript
6 189 (2.94%) Java
7 180 (2.80%) Bicep
8 129 (2.01%) Bash
9 117 (1.82%) T-SQL
10 97 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 85 (1.32%) TypeScript
12 68 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
13 39 (0.61%) VBA
14 30 (0.47%) C++
15 27 (0.42%) PL/SQL
16 26 (0.40%) VB
17 20 (0.31%) X++
18 17 (0.26%) VBScript
19 16 (0.25%) R
19 16 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,324 (20.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,002 (15.60%) SC Cleared
3 626 (9.75%) Degree
4 337 (5.25%) Microsoft Certification
5 251 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 229 (3.57%) Azure Certification
7 150 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
8 125 (1.95%) CISSP
9 123 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
10 121 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
11 89 (1.39%) PMP
12 82 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 70 (1.09%) CISM
14 69 (1.07%) AWS Certification
15 54 (0.84%) CCNP
16 50 (0.78%) Master's Degree
17 48 (0.75%) DBS Check
18 47 (0.73%) CCNA
19 46 (0.72%) A+ Certification
20 40 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 344 (5.36%) Data Quality
2 223 (3.47%) QA
3 217 (3.38%) GDPR
4 191 (2.97%) SLA
5 180 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 154 (2.40%) NIST
7 152 (2.37%) PMO
8 107 (1.67%) Accessibility
9 84 (1.31%) Cyber Essentials
10 77 (1.20%) NCSC
11 43 (0.67%) GRC
12 37 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 36 (0.56%) WCAG
14 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
17 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.23%) SOC 2
18 14 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,229 (19.14%) Active Directory
2 233 (3.63%) Docker
3 216 (3.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.79%) Hyper-V
5 97 (1.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 91 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.89%) vSphere
8 56 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.37%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.31%) Firmware
11 20 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.12%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 5 (0.078%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.062%) zsh
16 3 (0.047%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 3 (0.047%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 523 (8.14%) Microsoft Intune
2 450 (7.01%) Terraform
3 292 (4.55%) Kubernetes
4 228 (3.55%) SCCM
5 154 (2.40%) Ansible
6 113 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 50 (0.78%) Grafana
10 37 (0.58%) SCOM
11 35 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 34 (0.53%) Prometheus
13 23 (0.36%) Puppet
14 22 (0.34%) QRadar
15 19 (0.30%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.30%) WSUS
16 17 (0.26%) Progress Chef
17 15 (0.23%) Argo
18 13 (0.20%) Avamar
19 12 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 463 (7.21%) ServiceNow
2 304 (4.73%) VMware
3 300 (4.67%) Oracle
4 258 (4.02%) SAP
5 222 (3.46%) Databricks
6 210 (3.27%) Cisco
7 209 (3.25%) Google
8 118 (1.84%) Salesforce
9 106 (1.65%) Citrix
10 99 (1.54%) Splunk
11 92 (1.43%) Apple
12 79 (1.23%) Foundry
13 78 (1.21%) CyberArk
14 75 (1.17%) OpenAI
15 71 (1.11%) Okta
16 69 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
17 61 (0.95%) Red Hat
18 58 (0.90%) BeyondTrust
19 54 (0.84%) Zscaler
20 49 (0.76%) Meraki