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 9 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
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,092 4,649 5,006
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.02% 14.20% 13.14%
As % of the Vendors category 31.08% 30.11% 29.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,559 2,985 3,150
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £373 £343 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 518 375 280
10th Percentile £13.36 £14.08 £14.16
25th Percentile £15.00 £16.48 £15.08
Median hourly rate £19.29 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.58% +31.26% -24.44%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.40 £45.00
90th Percentile £69.60 £64.50 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £20.80 £16.23
% change year-on-year -11.04% +28.13% -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 22,818 15,440 16,812
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.89% 47.16% 44.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,031 9,437 10,155
10th Percentile £313 £275 £289
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 £627
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,217 780 691
10th Percentile £14.07 £14.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £16.83 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £28.00 £25.15 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.33% -18.87% -27.49%
75th Percentile £63.75 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.70 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.72 £21.28 £30.00
% change year-on-year +25.56% -29.07% -25.00%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 6,136 £488 +2.63% 7,077
UK excluding London -1 3,776 £450 +2.97% 5,164
London 0 2,683 £513 +2.50% 2,991
Work from Home +4 1,833 £500 - 3,980
South East 0 993 £475 +5.56% 1,379
North of England -6 947 £450 +4.05% 1,223
Midlands 0 647 £430 +7.50% 832
North West -2 566 £450 +2.97% 643
South West 0 452 £470 +17.50% 590
West Midlands -3 435 £443 +5.36% 488
Scotland +5 369 £450 - 357
Yorkshire -6 344 £467 +7.11% 397
East of England -1 257 £348 -33.81% 512
East Midlands +4 203 £425 +18.72% 343
Wales +2 107 £413 +37.50% 141
North East -37 41 £400 +17.65% 204
Northern Ireland -1 37 £350 - 212
Channel Islands -2 4 £525 -27.59% 2

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
1 839 (11.83%) SharePoint
2 401 (5.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 146 (2.06%) Confluence
4 38 (0.54%) Apache
4 38 (0.54%) Apache Spark
5 31 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
6 27 (0.38%) CMS
7 24 (0.34%) IIS
8 22 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
10 15 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
12 10 (0.14%) SAS
13 7 (0.099%) Apache Superset
14 6 (0.085%) Camunda
14 6 (0.085%) Mendix
14 6 (0.085%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.085%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.071%) OpenStack
Applications
1 735 (10.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 720 (10.15%) Microsoft Office
3 311 (4.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 195 (2.75%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.61%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.16%) AutoCAD
10 9 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 8 (0.11%) Navisworks
11 8 (0.11%) Revit
12 5 (0.071%) Trello
13 4 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
13 4 (0.056%) Photoshop
14 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
14 3 (0.042%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 251 (3.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 78 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 26 (0.37%) Dynamics NAV
5 23 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.28%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.17%) Primavera
10 11 (0.16%) Magento
11 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 9 (0.13%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.11%) iTrent
12 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
12 8 (0.11%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.099%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.099%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.085%) Oracle ERP
14 6 (0.085%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 2,954 (41.65%) Azure
2 1,806 (25.47%) Microsoft 365
3 1,256 (17.71%) Power Platform
4 1,098 (15.48%) Entra ID
5 661 (9.32%) AWS
6 622 (8.77%) Azure DevOps
7 605 (8.53%) Dynamics 365
8 418 (5.89%) Power Automate
9 408 (5.75%) Microsoft Copilot
10 375 (5.29%) PowerApps
11 310 (4.37%) Microsoft Purview
12 305 (4.30%) GitHub
13 267 (3.76%) OneDrive
14 256 (3.61%) GCP
15 248 (3.50%) SaaS
16 193 (2.72%) Serverless
17 191 (2.69%) Azure Data Factory
18 173 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
19 161 (2.27%) Azure Logic Apps
19 161 (2.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 394 (5.56%) DNS
2 344 (4.85%) Firewall
3 288 (4.06%) VPN
4 260 (3.67%) DHCP
5 192 (2.71%) TCP/IP
6 170 (2.40%) WAN
7 161 (2.27%) Network Security
8 151 (2.13%) LAN
9 145 (2.04%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (1.03%) VLAN
11 63 (0.89%) Wireless
12 47 (0.66%) SAN
13 39 (0.55%) SSL
14 38 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.52%) MPLS
16 33 (0.47%) Unified Communications
17 31 (0.44%) SD-WAN
18 30 (0.42%) Internet
18 30 (0.42%) Kerberos
19 29 (0.41%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 790 (11.14%) Power BI
2 412 (5.81%) SQL Server
3 178 (2.51%) Data Warehouse
4 154 (2.17%) Metadata
5 148 (2.09%) Data Lake
6 132 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
7 126 (1.78%) Azure SQL Database
8 81 (1.14%) Power Query
9 77 (1.09%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.97%) MySQL
11 68 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 55 (0.78%) NoSQL
13 48 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 45 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 42 (0.59%) Star Schema
16 40 (0.56%) Delta Lake
16 40 (0.56%) Tableau
17 30 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
18 29 (0.41%) MongoDB
19 22 (0.31%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 334 (4.71%) JIRA
2 232 (3.27%) Git
3 94 (1.33%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.02%) GitLab
5 50 (0.71%) Visual Studio
6 45 (0.63%) MSI
7 37 (0.52%) Selenium
8 20 (0.28%) Claude Code
8 20 (0.28%) Postman
9 16 (0.23%) Cypress.io
9 16 (0.23%) MLflow
9 16 (0.23%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
11 12 (0.17%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.16%) Bitbucket
12 11 (0.16%) ERwin
12 11 (0.16%) Maven
12 11 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
12 11 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 10 (0.14%) Artifactory
General
1 2,579 (36.36%) Social Skills
2 1,430 (20.16%) Finance
3 922 (13.00%) Analytical Skills
4 637 (8.98%) Public Sector
5 408 (5.75%) Organisational Skills
6 335 (4.72%) Banking
7 229 (3.23%) Legal
8 200 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
9 172 (2.43%) Manufacturing
10 170 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 150 (2.12%) Retail
12 124 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 107 (1.51%) Marketing
14 105 (1.48%) Law
15 98 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
16 93 (1.31%) Local Government
17 83 (1.17%) Military
18 78 (1.10%) Aerospace
19 64 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
20 62 (0.87%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 840 (11.84%) Architect
2 723 (10.19%) Analyst
3 622 (8.77%) Senior
4 618 (8.71%) Developer
5 491 (6.92%) Lead
6 461 (6.50%) Consultant
7 448 (6.32%) IT Support
8 434 (6.12%) Support Engineer
9 299 (4.22%) IT Engineer
10 275 (3.88%) Solutions Architect
11 267 (3.76%) Administrator
12 256 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 251 (3.54%) Azure Engineer
14 250 (3.53%) Data Engineer
15 246 (3.47%) IT Support Engineer
16 233 (3.29%) Project Manager
17 185 (2.61%) Business Analyst
18 175 (2.47%) Cloud Engineer
19 135 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
20 128 (1.80%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 526 (7.42%) Terraform
2 348 (4.91%) .NET
3 270 (3.81%) REST
4 131 (1.85%) JSON
5 130 (1.83%) OAuth
6 114 (1.61%) PySpark
7 109 (1.54%) XML
8 105 (1.48%) SAML
9 102 (1.44%) Microsoft Graph
10 99 (1.40%) OpenID
11 88 (1.24%) React
12 86 (1.21%) .NET Framework
12 86 (1.21%) ARM Templates
13 79 (1.11%) LDAP
14 78 (1.10%) Web Services
15 73 (1.03%) HTML
15 73 (1.03%) OAuth2
15 73 (1.03%) RESTful
16 70 (0.99%) SailPoint
17 67 (0.94%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 553 (7.80%) Onboarding
2 318 (4.48%) Cloud Native
3 258 (3.64%) Management Information System
4 206 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
5 200 (2.82%) Product Ownership
6 157 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
7 149 (2.10%) PKI
8 147 (2.07%) Data Centre
9 146 (2.06%) AI Agents
10 130 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
11 127 (1.79%) Security Posture
12 95 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
13 94 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 90 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
15 83 (1.17%) CMDB
16 79 (1.11%) Low-Code
17 78 (1.10%) Driving Licence
18 75 (1.06%) Virtual Team
19 71 (1.00%) Replication
20 67 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 1,517 (21.39%) Windows
2 455 (6.42%) Windows Server
3 374 (5.27%) Windows 10
4 333 (4.70%) Linux
5 145 (2.04%) Mac OS
6 127 (1.79%) Android
7 119 (1.68%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.63%) Unix
10 41 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.52%) Ubuntu
13 36 (0.51%) Windows Server 2016
14 32 (0.45%) VMS
15 22 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.30%) CentOS
17 16 (0.23%) Solaris
18 12 (0.17%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.099%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,313 (18.51%) Problem-Solving
2 1,264 (17.82%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,109 (15.64%) DevOps
4 1,082 (15.26%) Agile
5 998 (14.07%) Migration
6 931 (13.13%) CI/CD
7 878 (12.38%) Continuous Improvement
8 828 (11.68%) AI
9 808 (11.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 792 (11.17%) Business Intelligence
11 731 (10.31%) Analytics
12 698 (9.84%) ITIL
13 654 (9.22%) Customer Service
14 554 (7.81%) Infrastructure as Code
15 549 (7.74%) Cybersecurity
16 519 (7.32%) Data Modelling
16 519 (7.32%) Roadmaps
17 489 (6.90%) Project Delivery
18 472 (6.66%) Decision-Making
19 458 (6.46%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 877 (12.37%) SQL
2 779 (10.98%) PowerShell
3 731 (10.31%) Python
4 338 (4.77%) C#
5 253 (3.57%) JavaScript
6 206 (2.90%) Bicep
7 179 (2.52%) Java
8 167 (2.35%) Bash
9 112 (1.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 111 (1.57%) T-SQL
11 101 (1.42%) TypeScript
12 69 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.44%) VBA
14 29 (0.41%) VB
15 27 (0.38%) VBScript
16 22 (0.31%) X++
17 20 (0.28%) C++
17 20 (0.28%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.27%) R
19 16 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,526 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 1,141 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 639 (9.01%) Degree
4 366 (5.16%) Microsoft Certification
5 292 (4.12%) DV Cleared
6 260 (3.67%) Azure Certification
7 178 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
8 136 (1.92%) CISSP
9 130 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
10 122 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
11 98 (1.38%) PMP
12 92 (1.30%) PMI Certification
13 76 (1.07%) CISM
14 72 (1.02%) AWS Certification
15 62 (0.87%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.83%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 58 (0.82%) A+ Certification
18 56 (0.79%) CCNP
19 48 (0.68%) CCNA
20 46 (0.65%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (6.02%) Data Quality
2 246 (3.47%) QA
3 236 (3.33%) GDPR
4 208 (2.93%) SLA
5 203 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 194 (2.74%) PMO
7 177 (2.50%) NIST
8 117 (1.65%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.24%) Cyber Essentials
9 88 (1.24%) NCSC
10 56 (0.79%) GRC
11 45 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 41 (0.58%) WCAG
13 37 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 30 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 22 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
16 21 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 18 (0.25%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.23%) P3O
19 15 (0.21%) GMP
System Software
1 1,343 (18.94%) Active Directory
2 264 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 256 (3.61%) Docker
4 147 (2.07%) Hyper-V
5 127 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
6 102 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (0.90%) vSphere
8 59 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.49%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.25%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.23%) Firmware
13 9 (0.13%) IAG
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
14 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.099%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.099%) zsh
16 5 (0.071%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.071%) XenApp
17 4 (0.056%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 563 (7.94%) Microsoft Intune
2 338 (4.77%) Kubernetes
3 286 (4.03%) SCCM
4 168 (2.37%) Ansible
5 133 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.85%) Grafana
7 58 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.76%) SCOM
9 47 (0.66%) vCenter Server
10 40 (0.56%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.39%) WSUS
13 27 (0.38%) QRadar
14 22 (0.31%) FortiGate
14 22 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 20 (0.28%) Puppet
16 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
17 16 (0.23%) Argo
18 15 (0.21%) WMI
19 13 (0.18%) Avamar
Vendors
1 535 (7.54%) ServiceNow
2 343 (4.84%) VMware
3 339 (4.78%) Oracle
4 282 (3.98%) SAP
5 250 (3.53%) Google
6 249 (3.51%) Databricks
7 238 (3.36%) Cisco
8 130 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 123 (1.73%) Splunk
10 111 (1.57%) Apple
11 97 (1.37%) CyberArk
12 90 (1.27%) Citrix
13 84 (1.18%) Okta
14 80 (1.13%) OpenAI
15 79 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
16 77 (1.09%) Foundry
17 74 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
18 68 (0.96%) Red Hat
19 55 (0.78%) Adobe
20 53 (0.75%) Zscaler