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 24 July 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
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,339 4,539 5,315
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.01% 13.89% 13.02%
As % of the Vendors category 29.09% 29.26% 29.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,168 2,913 3,485
10th Percentile £214 £213 £199
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £585 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £431 £450
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 361 399
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.70 £16.00 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £22.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.11% +38.63% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.50 £31.00 £28.75
90th Percentile £74.06 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.25 £20.50 £16.21
% change year-on-year +3.65% +26.48% -14.68%

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 21,793 15,510 17,748
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.29% 47.45% 43.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,545 9,496 11,147
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,079 767 959
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.73 £13.17
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £15.56
Median hourly rate £35.22 £25.15 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year +40.04% -6.75% -35.01%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.19 £22.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year +51.94% -10.00% -22.60%

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 24 July 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 24 July 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 24 July 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 5,505 £493 +3.68% 3,287
UK excluding London -1 3,368 £450 +4.41% 2,774
London -2 2,419 £510 +1.90% 1,036
Work from Home +3 1,644 £500 - 1,226
South East -1 843 £475 - 877
North of England -5 832 £465 +7.39% 701
Midlands -2 591 £447 +19.20% 443
North West -3 472 £450 +2.97% 357
West Midlands -3 418 £450 +16.13% 244
South West -1 412 £475 +10.47% 285
Yorkshire -5 337 £480 +6.67% 239
Scotland +6 317 £450 - 125
East of England 0 266 £375 -25.00% 306
East Midlands +2 165 £413 +13.79% 198
Wales +1 109 £413 +49.48% 90
Northern Ireland -1 31 £350 -6.04% 37
North East -36 29 £450 +32.35% 120
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
1 715 (11.28%) SharePoint
2 392 (6.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 145 (2.29%) Confluence
4 42 (0.66%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.57%) Apache
6 28 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 16 (0.25%) CMS
9 14 (0.22%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.21%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) SAS
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.095%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.079%) Camunda
15 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.079%) SharePoint Server
16 4 (0.063%) Liferay
Applications
1 589 (9.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 570 (8.99%) Microsoft Office
3 253 (3.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 161 (2.54%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.69%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.095%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.032%) Navisworks
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 235 (3.71%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 28 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.19%) Primavera
10 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.13%) Magento
12 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.11%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.095%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.095%) Loan IQ
13 6 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,646 (41.74%) Azure
2 1,561 (24.63%) Microsoft 365
3 1,080 (17.04%) Power Platform
4 931 (14.69%) Entra ID
5 570 (8.99%) AWS
6 525 (8.28%) Dynamics 365
7 523 (8.25%) Azure DevOps
8 371 (5.85%) Power Automate
9 339 (5.35%) PowerApps
10 331 (5.22%) Microsoft Copilot
11 297 (4.69%) Microsoft Purview
12 259 (4.09%) GitHub
13 233 (3.68%) OneDrive
14 232 (3.66%) SaaS
15 207 (3.27%) GCP
16 164 (2.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 163 (2.57%) Azure Data Factory
18 155 (2.45%) PaaS
19 150 (2.37%) Serverless
20 145 (2.29%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 340 (5.36%) DNS
2 313 (4.94%) Firewall
3 245 (3.86%) VPN
4 211 (3.33%) DHCP
5 176 (2.78%) TCP/IP
6 148 (2.33%) Wi-Fi
7 147 (2.32%) WAN
8 140 (2.21%) LAN
9 139 (2.19%) Network Security
10 64 (1.01%) VLAN
11 46 (0.73%) Wireless
12 44 (0.69%) SAN
13 41 (0.65%) MPLS
13 41 (0.65%) SSL
14 37 (0.58%) Unified Communications
15 30 (0.47%) Internet
15 30 (0.47%) Kerberos
15 30 (0.47%) SD-WAN
15 30 (0.47%) VoIP
16 27 (0.43%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 686 (10.82%) Power BI
2 361 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 186 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 132 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
5 131 (2.07%) Data Lake
6 125 (1.97%) Metadata
7 123 (1.94%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 72 (1.14%) Relational Database
10 63 (0.99%) MySQL
11 59 (0.93%) Power Query
12 51 (0.80%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 50 (0.79%) NoSQL
14 45 (0.71%) Oracle Database
15 40 (0.63%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.58%) Tableau
17 34 (0.54%) Delta Lake
18 33 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 26 (0.41%) Big Data
20 25 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 326 (5.14%) JIRA
2 198 (3.12%) Git
3 86 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 59 (0.93%) GitLab
5 50 (0.79%) Visual Studio
6 32 (0.50%) MSI
7 27 (0.43%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
10 15 (0.24%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
11 14 (0.22%) ERwin
11 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 13 (0.21%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
14 11 (0.17%) JUnit
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,105 (33.21%) Social Skills
2 1,288 (20.32%) Finance
3 757 (11.94%) Analytical Skills
4 615 (9.70%) Public Sector
5 316 (4.99%) Banking
6 273 (4.31%) Organisational Skills
7 216 (3.41%) Legal
8 172 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 134 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 123 (1.94%) Manufacturing
11 118 (1.86%) Retail
12 110 (1.74%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.61%) Law
14 96 (1.51%) Marketing
15 85 (1.34%) Military
16 81 (1.28%) Local Government
17 74 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
18 71 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
19 60 (0.95%) Investment Banking
20 47 (0.74%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 743 (11.72%) Architect
2 673 (10.62%) Analyst
3 603 (9.51%) Developer
4 549 (8.66%) Senior
5 445 (7.02%) Lead
6 390 (6.15%) IT Support
7 386 (6.09%) Consultant
8 333 (5.25%) Support Engineer
9 243 (3.83%) Data Engineer
10 236 (3.72%) IT Engineer
11 235 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
12 224 (3.53%) Azure Engineer
13 210 (3.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 210 (3.31%) Project Manager
14 190 (3.00%) IT Support Engineer
15 181 (2.86%) Administrator
15 181 (2.86%) Business Analyst
16 147 (2.32%) Cloud Engineer
17 127 (2.00%) Security Engineer
18 114 (1.80%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 299 (4.72%) .NET
2 240 (3.79%) REST
3 130 (2.05%) Microsoft Graph
4 122 (1.92%) JSON
5 113 (1.78%) OAuth
6 105 (1.66%) PySpark
7 93 (1.47%) OpenID
8 92 (1.45%) SAML
9 88 (1.39%) Web Services
9 88 (1.39%) XML
10 84 (1.33%) .NET Framework
11 82 (1.29%) React
12 70 (1.10%) LDAP
12 70 (1.10%) RESTful
13 68 (1.07%) HTML
14 67 (1.06%) ARM Templates
15 66 (1.04%) SailPoint
16 64 (1.01%) SOAP
17 63 (0.99%) CSS
17 63 (0.99%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 402 (6.34%) Onboarding
2 304 (4.80%) Cloud Native
3 188 (2.97%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.78%) Management Information System
5 144 (2.27%) Enterprise Software
6 133 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
7 124 (1.96%) AI Agents
8 123 (1.94%) Hybrid Cloud
9 122 (1.92%) PKI
10 121 (1.91%) Data Centre
11 111 (1.75%) Security Posture
12 98 (1.55%) Data Structures
13 90 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
14 81 (1.28%) Virtual Team
15 80 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
16 71 (1.12%) Low-Code
17 67 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
18 64 (1.01%) Replication
19 63 (0.99%) Driving Licence
20 55 (0.87%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,330 (20.98%) Windows
2 345 (5.44%) Windows Server
3 320 (5.05%) Windows 10
4 303 (4.78%) Linux
5 134 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 118 (1.86%) Android
7 109 (1.72%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.71%) Unix
10 36 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
11 33 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 31 (0.49%) Windows 7
13 30 (0.47%) VMS
14 25 (0.39%) Ubuntu
15 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.21%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
20 6 (0.095%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,101 (17.37%) Problem-Solving
2 1,007 (15.89%) DevOps
3 970 (15.30%) Agile
4 893 (14.09%) Migration
5 858 (13.54%) Stakeholder Management
6 831 (13.11%) CI/CD
7 722 (11.39%) AI
8 701 (11.06%) Business Intelligence
9 690 (10.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 681 (10.74%) Continuous Improvement
11 673 (10.62%) Analytics
12 583 (9.20%) ITIL
13 499 (7.87%) Customer Service
14 467 (7.37%) Data Modelling
15 459 (7.24%) Roadmaps
16 448 (7.07%) Infrastructure as Code
17 445 (7.02%) Cybersecurity
18 417 (6.58%) Decision-Making
19 408 (6.44%) Validation
20 402 (6.34%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 810 (12.78%) SQL
2 678 (10.70%) PowerShell
3 654 (10.32%) Python
4 315 (4.97%) C#
5 235 (3.71%) JavaScript
6 200 (3.16%) Java
7 180 (2.84%) Bicep
8 121 (1.91%) Bash
9 114 (1.80%) T-SQL
10 91 (1.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.36%) TypeScript
12 72 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
13 41 (0.65%) VBA
14 33 (0.52%) C++
15 28 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.43%) VB
17 19 (0.30%) X++
18 16 (0.25%) R
18 16 (0.25%) Scala
18 16 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,297 (20.46%) Security Cleared
2 982 (15.49%) SC Cleared
3 621 (9.80%) Degree
4 321 (5.06%) Microsoft Certification
5 246 (3.88%) DV Cleared
6 228 (3.60%) Azure Certification
7 140 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
8 121 (1.91%) CISSP
9 119 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 117 (1.85%) Computer Science Degree
11 88 (1.39%) PMP
12 81 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 66 (1.04%) AWS Certification
13 66 (1.04%) CISM
14 51 (0.80%) CCNP
15 50 (0.79%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.76%) DBS Check
17 44 (0.69%) CCNA
18 40 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
19 38 (0.60%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 337 (5.32%) Data Quality
2 220 (3.47%) GDPR
3 216 (3.41%) QA
4 182 (2.87%) SLA
5 170 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 150 (2.37%) PMO
7 143 (2.26%) NIST
8 101 (1.59%) Accessibility
9 79 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 76 (1.20%) NCSC
11 42 (0.66%) GRC
12 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 32 (0.50%) WCAG
14 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 26 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.24%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.24%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
18 13 (0.21%) GMP
System Software
1 1,220 (19.25%) Active Directory
2 235 (3.71%) Docker
3 211 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.72%) Hyper-V
5 95 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 85 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
7 56 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.88%) vSphere
8 28 (0.44%) BitLocker
9 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.32%) Firmware
10 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.13%) NFS
11 8 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 5 (0.079%) RACF
13 5 (0.079%) Terminal Services
13 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
14 4 (0.063%) Snort
14 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 502 (7.92%) Microsoft Intune
2 448 (7.07%) Terraform
3 293 (4.62%) Kubernetes
4 226 (3.57%) SCCM
5 150 (2.37%) Ansible
6 121 (1.91%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (0.99%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.80%) vCenter Server
9 48 (0.76%) Grafana
10 46 (0.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 35 (0.55%) Prometheus
11 35 (0.55%) SCOM
12 23 (0.36%) Puppet
13 20 (0.32%) QRadar
14 18 (0.28%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.28%) WSUS
15 16 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 13 (0.21%) Argo
17 12 (0.19%) Avamar
18 11 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 434 (6.85%) ServiceNow
2 301 (4.75%) Oracle
3 295 (4.65%) VMware
4 257 (4.05%) SAP
5 217 (3.42%) Databricks
6 206 (3.25%) Cisco
7 204 (3.22%) Google
8 116 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 106 (1.67%) Citrix
10 96 (1.51%) Splunk
11 94 (1.48%) Apple
12 81 (1.28%) Foundry
13 78 (1.23%) OpenAI
14 74 (1.17%) CyberArk
15 73 (1.15%) Okta
16 71 (1.12%) CrowdStrike
17 60 (0.95%) Red Hat
18 57 (0.90%) BeyondTrust
19 52 (0.82%) Zscaler
20 47 (0.74%) Meraki