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 31 January 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
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,157 4,285 5,862
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.31% 13.63% 13.10%
As % of the Vendors category 29.20% 29.47% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,493 2,697 3,998
10th Percentile £203 £206 £195
25th Percentile £350 £348 £320
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year - -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £609
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 368 184 352
10th Percentile £13.67 £15.44 £11.79
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.62 £14.00
Median hourly rate £19.23 £23.59 £18.40
Median % change year-on-year -18.48% +28.21% -10.11%
75th Percentile £25.47 £33.75 £40.00
90th Percentile £63.34 £57.62 £53.65
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £21.73 £17.86
% change year-on-year -13.16% +21.67% -10.70%

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 17,661 14,540 19,631
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.58% 46.24% 43.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,354 8,598 12,385
10th Percentile £300 £281 £250
25th Percentile £410 £409 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -2.33%
75th Percentile £610 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 837 425 889
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.00 £16.00
Median hourly rate £23.83 £28.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.91% -6.67% +1.69%
75th Percentile £51.02 £61.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £73.00 £80.06 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £25.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -14.16% -16.67% +16.37%

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 31 January 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 31 January 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 31 January 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 4,529 £475 - 2,770
UK excluding London 0 2,779 £450 +4.17% 2,604
London -4 1,902 £509 +1.75% 721
Work from Home 0 1,325 £500 +1.21% 1,034
North of England +2 728 £425 - 604
South East -1 628 £475 +1.60% 833
Midlands -4 478 £450 +5.88% 423
North West 0 418 £400 -11.11% 290
South West 0 363 £500 +6.38% 249
West Midlands -7 322 £486 +11.14% 240
East of England 0 315 £413 -9.14% 288
Yorkshire +1 276 £450 +9.69% 245
Scotland -2 195 £454 +21.07% 145
East Midlands +1 155 £394 -1.56% 182
Wales +2 85 £308 -29.71% 99
North East -14 39 £450 +13.21% 79
Northern Ireland 0 27 £463 +42.31% 22
Channel Islands +1 1 - - 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
1 588 (11.40%) SharePoint
2 395 (7.66%) Microsoft Exchange
3 112 (2.17%) Confluence
4 59 (1.14%) Skype for Business
5 39 (0.76%) CMS
6 23 (0.45%) Apache
6 23 (0.45%) IIS
7 22 (0.43%) SAS
8 20 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 18 (0.35%) Apache Spark
10 17 (0.33%) HCL Notes
11 15 (0.29%) Exchange Server 2013
12 13 (0.25%) Mattermost
13 11 (0.21%) Exchange Server 2010
13 11 (0.21%) WebSphere
13 11 (0.21%) WebSphere Application Server
14 10 (0.19%) iPlanet
14 10 (0.19%) JBoss
14 10 (0.19%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.17%) Mendix
Applications
1 627 (12.16%) Microsoft Office
2 518 (10.04%) Microsoft Excel
3 228 (4.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 126 (2.44%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (2.11%) MS Visio
6 71 (1.38%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.21%) Trello
8 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.12%) Sketch
10 5 (0.097%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.097%) Adobe Illustrator
11 4 (0.078%) Adobe After Effects
11 4 (0.078%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.078%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.078%) InDesign
11 4 (0.078%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.078%) PTC Creo
12 3 (0.058%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.058%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 196 (3.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 40 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.33%) Dynamics AX
5 16 (0.31%) Maximo
6 15 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
7 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
7 11 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
9 9 (0.17%) Aladdin
9 9 (0.17%) Loan IQ
9 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
9 9 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 7 (0.14%) Advent Geneva
10 7 (0.14%) Shopify
11 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
12 5 (0.097%) SAP ERP
12 5 (0.097%) SystmOne
13 4 (0.078%) Salesforce CRM
13 4 (0.078%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,012 (39.01%) Azure
2 1,262 (24.47%) Microsoft 365
3 824 (15.98%) Power Platform
4 634 (12.29%) Entra ID
5 447 (8.67%) AWS
6 396 (7.68%) Dynamics 365
7 379 (7.35%) Azure DevOps
8 340 (6.59%) Power Automate
9 304 (5.89%) PowerApps
10 241 (4.67%) Microsoft Purview
11 226 (4.38%) GitHub
12 193 (3.74%) OneDrive
13 186 (3.61%) Serverless
14 175 (3.39%) GCP
15 174 (3.37%) Azure Data Factory
16 162 (3.14%) SaaS
17 159 (3.08%) Microsoft Copilot
18 143 (2.77%) Azure Logic Apps
19 134 (2.60%) Azure Sentinel
20 129 (2.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 298 (5.78%) DNS
2 285 (5.53%) Firewall
3 192 (3.72%) DHCP
4 187 (3.63%) VPN
5 125 (2.42%) TCP/IP
6 124 (2.40%) Wi-Fi
7 115 (2.23%) WAN
8 100 (1.94%) LAN
9 99 (1.92%) Network Security
10 85 (1.65%) Skype
11 67 (1.30%) Kerberos
12 51 (0.99%) VLAN
13 48 (0.93%) Wireless
14 44 (0.85%) Unified Communications
15 37 (0.72%) SD-WAN
16 36 (0.70%) HTTP
17 31 (0.60%) Internet
18 26 (0.50%) SAN
19 25 (0.48%) SSL
19 25 (0.48%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 499 (9.68%) Power BI
2 239 (4.63%) SQL Server
3 137 (2.66%) Data Warehouse
4 129 (2.50%) Data Lake
5 94 (1.82%) Metadata
6 92 (1.78%) PostgreSQL
7 91 (1.76%) Azure SQL Database
8 82 (1.59%) Relational Database
9 69 (1.34%) Oracle Database
10 47 (0.91%) MySQL
11 45 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 44 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 44 (0.85%) Tableau
13 37 (0.72%) NoSQL
13 37 (0.72%) Power Query
14 28 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
15 26 (0.50%) Star Schema
16 24 (0.47%) Delta Lake
17 18 (0.35%) Amazon RDS
17 18 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 233 (4.52%) JIRA
2 156 (3.03%) Git
3 85 (1.65%) Jenkins
4 76 (1.47%) GitLab
5 27 (0.52%) Eclipse
6 25 (0.48%) MSI
7 22 (0.43%) Postman
8 19 (0.37%) Android Studio
8 19 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
8 19 (0.37%) Visual Studio
9 18 (0.35%) Selenium
10 17 (0.33%) Artifactory
10 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
10 17 (0.33%) Xcode
11 15 (0.29%) JMeter
12 13 (0.25%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.23%) InstallShield
14 11 (0.21%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.19%) Bitbucket Server
15 10 (0.19%) SonarQube
General
1 2,047 (39.69%) Social Skills
2 1,020 (19.78%) Finance
3 654 (12.68%) Analytical Skills
4 513 (9.95%) Public Sector
5 250 (4.85%) Organisational Skills
6 246 (4.77%) Banking
7 205 (3.98%) Legal
8 162 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
9 134 (2.60%) Manufacturing
10 110 (2.13%) Marketing
10 110 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
11 97 (1.88%) Telecoms
12 76 (1.47%) Retail
13 70 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 54 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
15 47 (0.91%) Military
16 46 (0.89%) Law
17 45 (0.87%) Investment Banking
18 40 (0.78%) Local Government
19 36 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 669 (12.97%) Analyst
2 559 (10.84%) Architect
3 489 (9.48%) Developer
4 367 (7.12%) Senior
5 321 (6.22%) IT Support
6 300 (5.82%) Support Engineer
7 281 (5.45%) Consultant
8 252 (4.89%) Lead
9 179 (3.47%) Solutions Architect
10 173 (3.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 164 (3.18%) Azure Engineer
12 163 (3.16%) Business Analyst
13 156 (3.03%) Administrator
14 155 (3.01%) IT Engineer
15 149 (2.89%) Data Engineer
16 146 (2.83%) Project Manager
16 146 (2.83%) Support Analyst
17 118 (2.29%) IT Support Engineer
18 114 (2.21%) Security Engineer
19 102 (1.98%) Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (4.85%) .NET
2 165 (3.20%) REST
3 132 (2.56%) OAuth
4 112 (2.17%) React
4 112 (2.17%) SAML
5 93 (1.80%) Microsoft Graph
6 88 (1.71%) OpenID
7 84 (1.63%) LDAP
8 79 (1.53%) AngularJS
8 79 (1.53%) RESTful
9 68 (1.32%) HTML
10 67 (1.30%) CSS
11 65 (1.26%) JSON
12 64 (1.24%) PySpark
13 61 (1.18%) ARM Templates
14 56 (1.09%) Node.js
15 48 (0.93%) Middleware
15 48 (0.93%) OAuth2
16 46 (0.89%) Web Services
17 42 (0.81%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 293 (5.68%) Onboarding
2 193 (3.74%) Cloud Native
3 151 (2.93%) Product Ownership
4 134 (2.60%) Management Information System
5 115 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
6 95 (1.84%) PKI
7 91 (1.76%) Data Centre
8 87 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
9 86 (1.67%) Security Posture
10 78 (1.51%) Replication
11 74 (1.43%) Driving Licence
12 72 (1.40%) Hybrid Cloud
12 72 (1.40%) Legacy Systems
13 70 (1.36%) Low-Code
14 69 (1.34%) Mobile App
15 55 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
15 55 (1.07%) NHS
16 54 (1.05%) Virtual Team
17 50 (0.97%) AI Agents
18 48 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 1,233 (23.91%) Windows
2 359 (6.96%) Windows 10
3 309 (5.99%) Linux
4 284 (5.51%) Windows Server
5 112 (2.17%) Mac OS
6 97 (1.88%) Android
7 89 (1.73%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.38%) Unix
9 48 (0.93%) Windows 7
10 40 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
11 32 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 26 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.43%) Windows Server 2003
13 22 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
14 17 (0.33%) VMS
15 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
16 7 (0.14%) AIX
16 7 (0.14%) Windows 8
17 6 (0.12%) CentOS
17 6 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,037 (20.11%) Problem-Solving
2 879 (17.04%) Agile
3 763 (14.80%) DevOps
4 663 (12.86%) Migration
5 627 (12.16%) CI/CD
6 586 (11.36%) Business Intelligence
7 544 (10.55%) Analytics
8 523 (10.14%) Stakeholder Management
9 461 (8.94%) ITIL
10 451 (8.75%) Customer Service
11 439 (8.51%) Continuous Improvement
12 426 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 400 (7.76%) AI
14 349 (6.77%) Cybersecurity
15 321 (6.22%) Project Management
16 306 (5.93%) Data Modelling
17 287 (5.57%) Change Management
18 284 (5.51%) Roadmaps
19 275 (5.33%) Project Delivery
20 274 (5.31%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 670 (12.99%) SQL
2 653 (12.66%) PowerShell
3 596 (11.56%) Python
4 266 (5.16%) C#
5 221 (4.29%) JavaScript
6 137 (2.66%) Java
7 106 (2.06%) Bicep
8 103 (2.00%) Bash
9 100 (1.94%) Kusto Query Language
10 81 (1.57%) TypeScript
11 55 (1.07%) T-SQL
12 50 (0.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 35 (0.68%) Perl
14 29 (0.56%) PL/SQL
14 29 (0.56%) Shell Script
15 27 (0.52%) C++
16 26 (0.50%) VB
17 23 (0.45%) VBScript
18 19 (0.37%) R
18 19 (0.37%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,029 (19.95%) Security Cleared
2 769 (14.91%) SC Cleared
3 532 (10.32%) Degree
4 335 (6.50%) Microsoft Certification
5 216 (4.19%) DV Cleared
6 190 (3.68%) Azure Certification
7 126 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 116 (2.25%) CISSP
9 79 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
10 66 (1.28%) CISM
11 59 (1.14%) Cisco Certification
11 59 (1.14%) Master's Degree
12 55 (1.07%) PMI Certification
13 52 (1.01%) ITIL Certification
14 49 (0.95%) A+ Certification
15 48 (0.93%) MCSE
16 46 (0.89%) PMP
17 42 (0.81%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 40 (0.78%) AWS Certification
19 34 (0.66%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 230 (4.46%) GDPR
2 180 (3.49%) Data Quality
3 162 (3.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 150 (2.91%) QA
5 145 (2.81%) SLA
6 126 (2.44%) NIST
7 112 (2.17%) PMO
8 79 (1.53%) Accessibility
9 50 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 35 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 33 (0.64%) NCSC
12 31 (0.60%) PCI DSS
13 22 (0.43%) EU AI Act
13 22 (0.43%) WCAG
14 21 (0.41%) GRC
15 19 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 18 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.27%) MiFID
17 14 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 12 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,081 (20.96%) Active Directory
2 204 (3.96%) Docker
3 173 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.43%) Hyper-V
5 67 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 42 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
7 40 (0.78%) vSphere
8 35 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
9 19 (0.37%) BitLocker
10 17 (0.33%) VMware NSX
11 12 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
12 11 (0.21%) Firmware
13 8 (0.16%) Tivoli Directory Server
14 6 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 5 (0.097%) KVM
15 5 (0.097%) NFS
15 5 (0.097%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.097%) Snort
15 5 (0.097%) Squid
Systems Management
1 389 (7.54%) Microsoft Intune
2 293 (5.68%) Terraform
3 279 (5.41%) SCCM
4 230 (4.46%) Kubernetes
5 159 (3.08%) Single Sign-On
6 106 (2.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 106 (2.06%) Ansible
7 49 (0.95%) SCOM
8 45 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
9 39 (0.76%) vCenter Server
10 36 (0.70%) Grafana
11 31 (0.60%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 21 (0.41%) HP SiteScope
13 21 (0.41%) WSUS
14 16 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 15 (0.29%) Puppet
15 15 (0.29%) QRadar
15 15 (0.29%) WMI
16 14 (0.27%) Kibana
Vendors
1 267 (5.18%) ServiceNow
2 241 (4.67%) VMware
3 215 (4.17%) Oracle
4 190 (3.68%) Cisco
5 176 (3.41%) SAP
6 165 (3.20%) Databricks
7 159 (3.08%) Splunk
8 150 (2.91%) Google
9 109 (2.11%) Citrix
10 89 (1.73%) Salesforce
11 83 (1.61%) OpenAI
12 82 (1.59%) Apple
13 65 (1.26%) CrowdStrike
14 60 (1.16%) Palo Alto
15 53 (1.03%) Foundry
16 50 (0.97%) Remedy
17 48 (0.93%) IBM
18 44 (0.85%) HP
19 40 (0.78%) CyberArk
19 40 (0.78%) Veeam