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 6 October 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
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,416 4,732 4,874
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.57% 14.42% 12.94%
As % of the Vendors category 32.64% 30.27% 29.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,643 3,087 2,994
10th Percentile £213 £206 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £349
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £483
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -1.61% -3.45%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £674 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £440 £440
% change year-on-year +2.39% -0.11% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 634 376 265
10th Percentile £13.33 £13.75 £14.32
25th Percentile £14.50 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.25 £22.32 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +11.58% -11.23%
75th Percentile £29.88 £31.40 £46.18
90th Percentile £67.25 £63.58 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.86 £21.00 £17.00
% change year-on-year -14.98% +23.53% -22.73%

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 22,723 15,631 16,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.58% 47.63% 44.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,722 9,617 9,871
10th Percentile £310 £277 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £619 £613 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,380 806 615
10th Percentile £13.93 £14.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.35 £17.81 £16.00
Median hourly rate £25.04 £25.15 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.45% -20.17% -26.74%
75th Percentile £57.50 £40.19 £64.30
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.19 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +13.57% -29.00% -29.41%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6,433 £490 +3.16% 9,699
UK excluding London 0 3,990 £450 +2.39% 7,024
London 0 2,764 £525 +5.00% 3,619
Work from Home +3 1,873 £500 - 4,245
South East +1 1,068 £475 +5.56% 1,886
North of England -5 987 £465 +6.90% 1,658
Midlands -1 687 £430 +4.88% 1,135
North West -1 580 £474 +8.34% 839
West Midlands -1 469 £425 -2.58% 632
South West -1 450 £475 +5.56% 712
Scotland +5 375 £450 - 531
Yorkshire -4 355 £460 +5.14% 577
East of England 0 312 £325 -38.10% 733
East Midlands +1 213 £438 +16.67% 502
Wales 0 111 £413 +35.80% 260
North East -18 57 £425 +23.26% 256
Northern Ireland -2 35 £312 -10.86% 209
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 3

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
1 899 (12.12%) SharePoint
2 407 (5.49%) Microsoft Exchange
3 157 (2.12%) Confluence
4 38 (0.51%) Apache
5 35 (0.47%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 26 (0.35%) CMS
8 25 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 23 (0.31%) Skype for Business
10 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
12 12 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.081%) Mendix
14 6 (0.081%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.081%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.067%) SAS
16 4 (0.054%) ArcGIS
16 4 (0.054%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 833 (11.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 790 (10.65%) Microsoft Office
3 330 (4.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 203 (2.74%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 58 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.34%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.13%) Revit
12 6 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.081%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.040%) 1Password
13 3 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.040%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.040%) Trello
14 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.027%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 267 (3.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 92 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
3 37 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 17 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Primavera
9 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 10 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
12 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.094%) iTrent
13 7 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
13 7 (0.094%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.094%) SAP PP
13 7 (0.094%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,026 (40.80%) Azure
2 1,886 (25.43%) Microsoft 365
3 1,291 (17.41%) Power Platform
4 1,196 (16.13%) Entra ID
5 675 (9.10%) AWS
6 636 (8.58%) Azure DevOps
7 604 (8.14%) Dynamics 365
8 463 (6.24%) Microsoft Copilot
9 442 (5.96%) Power Automate
10 393 (5.30%) PowerApps
11 317 (4.27%) Microsoft Purview
12 314 (4.23%) GitHub
13 289 (3.90%) GCP
14 271 (3.65%) OneDrive
15 240 (3.24%) SaaS
16 206 (2.78%) Serverless
17 190 (2.56%) Azure Monitor
18 179 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
19 166 (2.24%) Copilot Studio
20 162 (2.18%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 410 (5.53%) DNS
2 345 (4.65%) Firewall
3 306 (4.13%) VPN
4 271 (3.65%) DHCP
5 203 (2.74%) TCP/IP
6 173 (2.33%) Network Security
7 159 (2.14%) WAN
8 146 (1.97%) LAN
9 137 (1.85%) Wi-Fi
10 72 (0.97%) VLAN
11 71 (0.96%) Wireless
12 51 (0.69%) SAN
13 43 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.50%) Kerberos
15 37 (0.50%) MPLS
16 34 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 33 (0.44%) Internet
18 32 (0.43%) BGP
18 32 (0.43%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 776 (10.46%) Power BI
2 416 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 170 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
4 163 (2.20%) Metadata
5 148 (2.00%) Data Lake
6 131 (1.77%) PostgreSQL
7 120 (1.62%) Azure SQL Database
8 87 (1.17%) Power Query
9 84 (1.13%) Relational Database
10 75 (1.01%) MySQL
11 68 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 53 (0.71%) NoSQL
13 50 (0.67%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.57%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.54%) Star Schema
16 36 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
16 36 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 35 (0.47%) MongoDB
18 31 (0.42%) BigQuery
19 30 (0.40%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 346 (4.67%) JIRA
2 257 (3.47%) Git
3 90 (1.21%) Jenkins
4 70 (0.94%) GitLab
5 58 (0.78%) Visual Studio
6 50 (0.67%) MSI
7 36 (0.49%) Selenium
8 26 (0.35%) Claude Code
8 26 (0.35%) Postman
9 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
10 17 (0.23%) Cucumber
10 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
12 13 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 12 (0.16%) Subversion
14 10 (0.13%) ERwin
14 10 (0.13%) MLflow
15 9 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,769 (37.34%) Social Skills
2 1,454 (19.61%) Finance
3 960 (12.94%) Analytical Skills
4 667 (8.99%) Public Sector
5 474 (6.39%) Organisational Skills
6 316 (4.26%) Banking
7 235 (3.17%) Legal
8 228 (3.07%) Manufacturing
9 212 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
10 186 (2.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 164 (2.21%) Retail
12 124 (1.67%) Telecoms
13 117 (1.58%) Marketing
14 102 (1.38%) Aerospace
15 100 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
16 93 (1.25%) Military
17 91 (1.23%) Local Government
18 78 (1.05%) Law
19 76 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
20 57 (0.77%) Billing
Job Titles
1 835 (11.26%) Architect
2 719 (9.70%) Analyst
3 649 (8.75%) Developer
4 642 (8.66%) Senior
5 486 (6.55%) Lead
6 477 (6.43%) Consultant
7 444 (5.99%) IT Support
8 439 (5.92%) Support Engineer
9 358 (4.83%) Administrator
10 296 (3.99%) IT Engineer
11 288 (3.88%) Solutions Architect
12 263 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
13 257 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 246 (3.32%) IT Support Engineer
15 243 (3.28%) Data Engineer
16 227 (3.06%) Project Manager
17 196 (2.64%) Business Analyst
18 189 (2.55%) Cloud Engineer
19 147 (1.98%) Security Engineer
20 140 (1.89%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 550 (7.42%) Terraform
2 343 (4.63%) .NET
3 310 (4.18%) REST
4 148 (2.00%) JSON
5 147 (1.98%) OAuth
6 118 (1.59%) XML
7 111 (1.50%) SAML
8 109 (1.47%) OpenID
9 106 (1.43%) PySpark
10 105 (1.42%) Microsoft Graph
11 101 (1.36%) ARM Templates
12 94 (1.27%) React
13 92 (1.24%) Web Services
14 90 (1.21%) .NET Framework
15 84 (1.13%) LDAP
16 82 (1.11%) RESTful
17 80 (1.08%) HTML
17 80 (1.08%) OAuth2
18 79 (1.07%) SailPoint
19 69 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 604 (8.14%) Onboarding
2 324 (4.37%) Cloud Native
3 323 (4.36%) Management Information System
4 247 (3.33%) Enterprise Software
5 201 (2.71%) Product Ownership
6 175 (2.36%) AI Agents
7 166 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
8 165 (2.22%) PKI
9 159 (2.14%) Data Centre
10 146 (1.97%) Security Posture
11 145 (1.96%) Legacy Systems
12 102 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.32%) CMDB
14 96 (1.29%) Driving Licence
15 95 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
16 90 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
17 85 (1.15%) Low-Code
18 80 (1.08%) Replication
19 78 (1.05%) NHS
19 78 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,572 (21.20%) Windows
2 487 (6.57%) Windows Server
3 395 (5.33%) Windows 10
4 353 (4.76%) Linux
5 157 (2.12%) Mac OS
6 135 (1.82%) Android
7 131 (1.77%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.65%) Unix
10 41 (0.55%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
12 33 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
13 32 (0.43%) VMS
14 22 (0.30%) CentOS
15 21 (0.28%) Solaris
15 21 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
16 12 (0.16%) SUSE
17 8 (0.11%) AIX
18 7 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,441 (19.43%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,397 (18.84%) Problem-Solving
3 1,129 (15.22%) DevOps
4 1,104 (14.89%) Agile
5 1,010 (13.62%) Migration
6 970 (13.08%) CI/CD
7 942 (12.70%) Continuous Improvement
8 895 (12.07%) AI
9 836 (11.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 792 (10.68%) Business Intelligence
11 757 (10.21%) Analytics
12 731 (9.86%) ITIL
13 695 (9.37%) Customer Service
14 613 (8.27%) Cybersecurity
15 592 (7.98%) Infrastructure as Code
16 581 (7.83%) Roadmaps
17 520 (7.01%) Project Delivery
18 517 (6.97%) Data Modelling
19 514 (6.93%) Decision-Making
20 489 (6.59%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 887 (11.96%) SQL
2 850 (11.46%) PowerShell
3 759 (10.23%) Python
4 361 (4.87%) C#
5 284 (3.83%) JavaScript
6 221 (2.98%) Bicep
7 187 (2.52%) Bash
8 158 (2.13%) Java
9 122 (1.65%) TypeScript
10 112 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 111 (1.50%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.43%) VB
14 30 (0.40%) VBA
15 27 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.34%) VBScript
17 23 (0.31%) X++
18 20 (0.27%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.26%) R
20 16 (0.22%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,599 (21.56%) Security Cleared
2 1,184 (15.97%) SC Cleared
3 613 (8.27%) Degree
4 377 (5.08%) Microsoft Certification
5 317 (4.27%) DV Cleared
6 278 (3.75%) Azure Certification
7 198 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.94%) CISSP
9 126 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
10 107 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
11 98 (1.32%) PMP
12 94 (1.27%) PMI Certification
13 79 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 78 (1.05%) CISM
15 67 (0.90%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.80%) A+ Certification
17 58 (0.78%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 54 (0.73%) CCNP
19 47 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 44 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 462 (6.23%) Data Quality
2 252 (3.40%) QA
3 239 (3.22%) GDPR
4 221 (2.98%) SLA
5 214 (2.89%) PMO
6 211 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 186 (2.51%) NIST
8 131 (1.77%) Accessibility
9 89 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
10 88 (1.19%) NCSC
11 65 (0.88%) GRC
12 48 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.62%) WCAG
14 43 (0.58%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 25 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
17 22 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
19 17 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 1,378 (18.58%) Active Directory
2 282 (3.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 251 (3.38%) Docker
4 150 (2.02%) Hyper-V
5 138 (1.86%) Virtual Desktop
6 120 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
7 79 (1.07%) vSphere
8 64 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.24%) Firmware
12 17 (0.23%) VMware NSX
13 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 7 (0.094%) IAG
15 7 (0.094%) zsh
16 6 (0.081%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.081%) NFS
16 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.081%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 596 (8.04%) Microsoft Intune
2 337 (4.54%) Kubernetes
3 298 (4.02%) SCCM
4 170 (2.29%) Ansible
5 148 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
6 67 (0.90%) Grafana
7 58 (0.78%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.73%) SCOM
9 49 (0.66%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 33 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 31 (0.42%) QRadar
13 27 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.36%) WSUS
14 22 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
15 21 (0.28%) Argo
15 21 (0.28%) Puppet
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 551 (7.43%) ServiceNow
2 362 (4.88%) VMware
3 344 (4.64%) Oracle
4 307 (4.14%) SAP
5 289 (3.90%) Google
6 257 (3.47%) Databricks
7 246 (3.32%) Cisco
8 134 (1.81%) Salesforce
9 132 (1.78%) Splunk
10 117 (1.58%) Apple
11 110 (1.48%) CyberArk
12 99 (1.33%) Citrix
13 98 (1.32%) OpenAI
14 96 (1.29%) Okta
15 90 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
16 80 (1.08%) Foundry
17 75 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.89%) Red Hat
19 63 (0.85%) IBM
20 59 (0.80%) Zscaler