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 1 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
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,381 4,761 4,941
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.44% 14.40% 13.06%
As % of the Vendors category 32.24% 30.24% 29.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,640 3,103 3,035
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £372 £337 £345
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £487
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -2.46% -2.60%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.74% -2.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 611 380 270
10th Percentile £13.33 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.59 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.32 £18.35
Median % change year-on-year -17.10% +21.62% -18.56%
75th Percentile £31.01 £31.40 £45.89
90th Percentile £66.66 £64.55 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.86 £21.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -14.98% +29.39% -26.23%

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 22,891 15,745 16,843
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.69% 47.63% 44.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,889 9,692 9,932
10th Percentile £310 £275 £286
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £618 £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 1,344 813 625
10th Percentile £13.98 £14.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £16.38 £17.75 £15.63
Median hourly rate £25.52 £25.15 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.47% -20.16% -27.38%
75th Percentile £57.50 £42.50 £64.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.50 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +15.02% -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 1 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 1 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 1 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 6,400 £490 +3.16% 9,324
UK excluding London +1 3,965 £450 +2.74% 6,584
London +1 2,760 £520 +4.00% 3,707
Work from Home +4 1,855 £500 - 3,859
South East 0 1,053 £475 +5.56% 1,741
North of England -5 977 £466 +6.64% 1,562
Midlands 0 690 £430 +3.93% 1,066
North West -1 573 £473 +7.88% 824
West Midlands -1 471 £425 -3.41% 615
South West -1 454 £475 +5.56% 677
Scotland +5 379 £450 - 504
Yorkshire -5 356 £462 +3.24% 546
East of England 0 299 £345 -34.29% 680
East Midlands +2 213 £438 +17.92% 451
Wales +1 110 £394 +31.25% 241
North East -22 53 £425 +25.07% 209
Northern Ireland 0 38 £342 -2.29% 212
Channel Islands -3 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
1 900 (12.19%) SharePoint
2 408 (5.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 153 (2.07%) Confluence
4 38 (0.51%) Apache
5 37 (0.50%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 26 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.35%) CMS
8 23 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
10 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
13 6 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
13 6 (0.081%) Mendix
13 6 (0.081%) OpenStack
13 6 (0.081%) SAS
13 6 (0.081%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.068%) Apache Superset
14 5 (0.068%) Camunda
Applications
1 813 (11.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 777 (10.53%) Microsoft Office
3 327 (4.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 198 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 115 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 55 (0.75%) 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 (0.14%) Revit
12 5 (0.068%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.054%) Trello
14 3 (0.041%) 1Password
14 3 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.041%) Final Cut Pro
15 2 (0.027%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 271 (3.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 91 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 36 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 18 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 17 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 15 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
9 13 (0.18%) Primavera
10 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) Magento
12 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
12 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
13 8 (0.11%) iTrent
13 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
14 7 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
14 7 (0.095%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.095%) SAP PSCD
15 6 (0.081%) SAP MM
15 6 (0.081%) SAP PP
Cloud Services
1 3,013 (40.82%) Azure
2 1,897 (25.70%) Microsoft 365
3 1,291 (17.49%) Power Platform
4 1,182 (16.01%) Entra ID
5 666 (9.02%) AWS
6 625 (8.47%) Azure DevOps
7 607 (8.22%) Dynamics 365
8 461 (6.25%) Microsoft Copilot
9 443 (6.00%) Power Automate
10 394 (5.34%) PowerApps
11 320 (4.34%) Microsoft Purview
12 298 (4.04%) GitHub
13 285 (3.86%) GCP
14 274 (3.71%) OneDrive
15 243 (3.29%) SaaS
16 204 (2.76%) Serverless
17 182 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
18 178 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
19 163 (2.21%) Azure Sentinel
19 163 (2.21%) Copilot Studio
Communications & Networking
1 413 (5.60%) DNS
2 345 (4.67%) Firewall
3 307 (4.16%) VPN
4 274 (3.71%) DHCP
5 204 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 171 (2.32%) Network Security
7 158 (2.14%) WAN
8 146 (1.98%) LAN
9 137 (1.86%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (0.99%) VLAN
11 71 (0.96%) Wireless
12 52 (0.70%) SAN
13 43 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.50%) MPLS
16 36 (0.49%) Kerberos
17 35 (0.47%) Unified Communications
18 32 (0.43%) BGP
19 31 (0.42%) Internet
20 30 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 778 (10.54%) Power BI
2 413 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 170 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
4 162 (2.19%) Metadata
5 148 (2.01%) Data Lake
6 128 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
7 113 (1.53%) Azure SQL Database
8 88 (1.19%) Power Query
9 84 (1.14%) Relational Database
10 72 (0.98%) MySQL
11 67 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 50 (0.68%) NoSQL
13 45 (0.61%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.57%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.54%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.50%) Delta Lake
17 34 (0.46%) Amazon RDS
18 31 (0.42%) MongoDB
18 31 (0.42%) Tableau
19 28 (0.38%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 340 (4.61%) JIRA
2 252 (3.41%) Git
3 91 (1.23%) Jenkins
4 72 (0.98%) GitLab
5 57 (0.77%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.69%) MSI
7 37 (0.50%) Selenium
8 26 (0.35%) Claude Code
9 25 (0.34%) Postman
10 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
11 18 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
12 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.22%) Cucumber
14 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
16 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
16 12 (0.16%) Subversion
17 10 (0.14%) ERwin
18 9 (0.12%) Bitbucket
18 9 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,763 (37.43%) Social Skills
2 1,455 (19.71%) Finance
3 960 (13.01%) Analytical Skills
4 652 (8.83%) Public Sector
5 463 (6.27%) Organisational Skills
6 317 (4.29%) Banking
7 236 (3.20%) Legal
8 216 (2.93%) Manufacturing
9 210 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
10 186 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 163 (2.21%) Retail
12 124 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 113 (1.53%) Marketing
14 102 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
15 97 (1.31%) Aerospace
16 93 (1.26%) Military
17 89 (1.21%) Local Government
18 75 (1.02%) Law
19 74 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
20 56 (0.76%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 830 (11.25%) Architect
2 722 (9.78%) Analyst
3 645 (8.74%) Developer
4 628 (8.51%) Senior
5 481 (6.52%) Lead
6 470 (6.37%) Consultant
7 445 (6.03%) IT Support
8 438 (5.93%) Support Engineer
9 345 (4.67%) Administrator
10 295 (4.00%) IT Engineer
11 285 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
12 263 (3.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 258 (3.50%) Azure Engineer
14 245 (3.32%) Data Engineer
15 244 (3.31%) IT Support Engineer
16 228 (3.09%) Project Manager
17 198 (2.68%) Business Analyst
18 190 (2.57%) Cloud Engineer
19 144 (1.95%) Security Engineer
20 140 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 546 (7.40%) Terraform
2 343 (4.65%) .NET
3 300 (4.06%) REST
4 147 (1.99%) JSON
5 144 (1.95%) OAuth
6 117 (1.59%) XML
7 113 (1.53%) SAML
8 110 (1.49%) OpenID
9 105 (1.42%) Microsoft Graph
10 104 (1.41%) PySpark
11 100 (1.35%) ARM Templates
12 92 (1.25%) React
12 92 (1.25%) Web Services
13 89 (1.21%) .NET Framework
14 83 (1.12%) LDAP
15 81 (1.10%) RESTful
16 79 (1.07%) HTML
16 79 (1.07%) OAuth2
17 78 (1.06%) SailPoint
18 69 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 603 (8.17%) Onboarding
2 318 (4.31%) Cloud Native
3 311 (4.21%) Management Information System
4 233 (3.16%) Enterprise Software
5 203 (2.75%) Product Ownership
6 166 (2.25%) AI Agents
7 165 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
8 162 (2.19%) PKI
9 159 (2.15%) Data Centre
10 144 (1.95%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
12 100 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
13 99 (1.34%) Data Structures
14 97 (1.31%) Driving Licence
15 95 (1.29%) CMDB
16 91 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
17 85 (1.15%) Low-Code
18 78 (1.06%) NHS
19 77 (1.04%) Replication
19 77 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,576 (21.35%) Windows
2 488 (6.61%) Windows Server
3 392 (5.31%) Windows 10
4 349 (4.73%) Linux
5 156 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 134 (1.82%) Android
7 130 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.65%) Unix
10 42 (0.57%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
14 32 (0.43%) VMS
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 21 (0.28%) Solaris
17 20 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
18 12 (0.16%) SUSE
19 8 (0.11%) AIX
19 8 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,418 (19.21%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,391 (18.85%) Problem-Solving
3 1,113 (15.08%) DevOps
4 1,103 (14.94%) Agile
5 1,006 (13.63%) Migration
6 964 (13.06%) CI/CD
7 924 (12.52%) Continuous Improvement
8 881 (11.94%) AI
9 835 (11.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 789 (10.69%) Business Intelligence
11 747 (10.12%) Analytics
12 727 (9.85%) ITIL
13 692 (9.38%) Customer Service
14 596 (8.07%) Cybersecurity
15 584 (7.91%) Infrastructure as Code
16 560 (7.59%) Roadmaps
17 519 (7.03%) Project Delivery
18 513 (6.95%) Data Modelling
19 507 (6.87%) Decision-Making
20 489 (6.63%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 881 (11.94%) SQL
2 844 (11.43%) PowerShell
3 754 (10.22%) Python
4 362 (4.90%) C#
5 281 (3.81%) JavaScript
6 217 (2.94%) Bicep
7 179 (2.43%) Bash
8 160 (2.17%) Java
9 118 (1.60%) TypeScript
10 113 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 108 (1.46%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 30 (0.41%) VB
13 30 (0.41%) VBA
14 27 (0.37%) C++
15 25 (0.34%) VBScript
16 23 (0.31%) X++
17 20 (0.27%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.26%) R
19 16 (0.22%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,584 (21.46%) Security Cleared
2 1,171 (15.87%) SC Cleared
3 625 (8.47%) Degree
4 378 (5.12%) Microsoft Certification
5 314 (4.25%) DV Cleared
6 278 (3.77%) Azure Certification
7 188 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
8 143 (1.94%) CISSP
9 126 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
10 108 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
11 97 (1.31%) PMP
12 95 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 78 (1.06%) AWS Certification
14 77 (1.04%) CISM
15 65 (0.88%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 59 (0.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 54 (0.73%) CCNP
18 47 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 44 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 461 (6.25%) Data Quality
2 253 (3.43%) QA
3 237 (3.21%) GDPR
4 221 (2.99%) SLA
5 209 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 209 (2.83%) PMO
6 185 (2.51%) NIST
7 127 (1.72%) Accessibility
8 88 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
9 86 (1.17%) NCSC
10 65 (0.88%) GRC
11 47 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 46 (0.62%) WCAG
13 42 (0.57%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 25 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
16 22 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
19 16 (0.22%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,382 (18.72%) Active Directory
2 285 (3.86%) VMware Infrastructure
3 251 (3.40%) Docker
4 151 (2.05%) Hyper-V
5 135 (1.83%) Virtual Desktop
6 118 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
7 80 (1.08%) vSphere
8 67 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.23%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.22%) Firmware
13 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 8 (0.11%) IAG
16 7 (0.095%) NFS
16 7 (0.095%) zsh
17 6 (0.081%) ISA Server
17 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
17 6 (0.081%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 601 (8.14%) Microsoft Intune
2 336 (4.55%) Kubernetes
3 299 (4.05%) SCCM
4 169 (2.29%) Ansible
5 148 (2.01%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
7 59 (0.80%) Grafana
8 56 (0.76%) SCOM
9 51 (0.69%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 33 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 30 (0.41%) QRadar
13 27 (0.37%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.37%) WSUS
14 22 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
14 22 (0.30%) Puppet
15 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
16 18 (0.24%) Argo
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 555 (7.52%) ServiceNow
2 366 (4.96%) VMware
3 339 (4.59%) Oracle
4 302 (4.09%) SAP
5 281 (3.81%) Google
6 258 (3.50%) Databricks
7 245 (3.32%) Cisco
8 133 (1.80%) Salesforce
9 131 (1.77%) Splunk
10 117 (1.59%) Apple
11 111 (1.50%) CyberArk
12 96 (1.30%) Citrix
13 94 (1.27%) Okta
14 93 (1.26%) OpenAI
15 89 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
16 76 (1.03%) Foundry
17 75 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
18 67 (0.91%) Red Hat
19 61 (0.83%) IBM
20 59 (0.80%) Zscaler