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 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
9 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,229 4,425 5,689
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.87% 13.70% 13.12%
As % of the Vendors category 28.80% 28.84% 30.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,088 2,841 3,702
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £340 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £580 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 374 335 495
10th Percentile £13.54 £14.20 £11.14
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.76
Median hourly rate £21.13 £22.50 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -6.11% +40.10% -28.72%
75th Percentile £35.45 £31.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £68.20 £63.25 £61.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.73 £20.00 £16.06
% change year-on-year +3.65% +24.53% -15.47%

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 21,630 15,345 18,695
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.21% 47.51% 43.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,453 9,410 11,635
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,107 728 1,145
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.84 £12.40
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £34.38 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.68% +0.60% -38.27%
75th Percentile £63.75 £52.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.70 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.18
% change year-on-year +43.61% -6.41% -22.00%

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 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 9 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 9 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 0 5,423 £493 +3.68% 3,468
UK excluding London -1 3,306 £450 +5.88% 2,987
London -2 2,387 £505 -1.46% 1,069
Work from Home +2 1,605 £500 - 1,434
North of England -4 837 £465 +9.41% 752
South East -2 791 £475 +0.53% 923
Midlands -2 575 £450 +20.00% 436
North West -2 458 £450 +5.88% 364
West Midlands -3 404 £450 +20.00% 226
South West 0 402 £480 +18.15% 321
Yorkshire -2 357 £488 +8.33% 266
East of England 0 293 £350 -30.00% 308
Scotland +5 291 £450 +4.41% 159
East Midlands +1 163 £423 +12.80% 207
Wales +4 115 £370 +23.33% 94
Northern Ireland +3 33 £350 +0.36% 75
North East -38 26 £450 +30.43% 137
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14% 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
1 667 (10.71%) SharePoint
2 394 (6.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 134 (2.15%) Confluence
4 37 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.56%) Apache
6 30 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.31%) IIS
8 18 (0.29%) CMS
9 15 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 14 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) SAS
12 9 (0.14%) Oracle Workflow
13 6 (0.096%) Camunda
13 6 (0.096%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.080%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.080%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.064%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.064%) Mendix
15 4 (0.064%) nginx
15 4 (0.064%) Tomcat
Applications
1 572 (9.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 570 (9.15%) Microsoft Office
3 243 (3.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 142 (2.28%) Microsoft Project
5 110 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.096%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.048%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.048%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.032%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.032%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.032%) InDesign
12 2 (0.032%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 218 (3.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.26%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.21%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.16%) Primavera
11 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
11 9 (0.14%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
13 7 (0.11%) Magento
13 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
13 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.096%) iTrent
14 6 (0.096%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,604 (41.80%) Azure
2 1,535 (24.64%) Microsoft 365
3 1,055 (16.94%) Power Platform
4 872 (14.00%) Entra ID
5 557 (8.94%) AWS
6 499 (8.01%) Azure DevOps
7 482 (7.74%) Dynamics 365
8 355 (5.70%) Power Automate
9 327 (5.25%) PowerApps
10 320 (5.14%) Microsoft Copilot
11 313 (5.02%) Microsoft Purview
12 254 (4.08%) GitHub
13 232 (3.72%) OneDrive
14 226 (3.63%) SaaS
15 201 (3.23%) GCP
16 163 (2.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 159 (2.55%) Azure Data Factory
18 151 (2.42%) Serverless
19 147 (2.36%) Azure Logic Apps
20 145 (2.33%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 343 (5.51%) DNS
2 292 (4.69%) Firewall
3 239 (3.84%) VPN
4 204 (3.28%) DHCP
5 156 (2.50%) TCP/IP
5 156 (2.50%) WAN
6 142 (2.28%) Wi-Fi
7 139 (2.23%) LAN
8 130 (2.09%) Network Security
9 56 (0.90%) VLAN
10 46 (0.74%) Kerberos
11 44 (0.71%) SAN
12 42 (0.67%) SSL
12 42 (0.67%) Wireless
13 41 (0.66%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.58%) MPLS
15 35 (0.56%) Unified Communications
16 31 (0.50%) Internet
16 31 (0.50%) VoIP
17 28 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 676 (10.85%) Power BI
2 330 (5.30%) SQL Server
3 179 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
4 138 (2.22%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (2.04%) Metadata
6 123 (1.97%) Azure SQL Database
7 122 (1.96%) Data Lake
8 73 (1.17%) Relational Database
9 68 (1.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 64 (1.03%) MySQL
11 59 (0.95%) Power Query
12 52 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 44 (0.71%) NoSQL
15 40 (0.64%) Tableau
16 39 (0.63%) Oracle Database
17 33 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 33 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 27 (0.43%) Big Data
19 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 315 (5.06%) JIRA
2 186 (2.99%) Git
3 78 (1.25%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.92%) GitLab
5 39 (0.63%) Visual Studio
6 29 (0.47%) MSI
7 21 (0.34%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Artifactory
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.27%) ERwin
9 16 (0.26%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) JUnit
10 15 (0.24%) Postman
11 14 (0.22%) Maven
12 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.19%) Team Foundation Server
13 12 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
14 11 (0.18%) WebDriver
15 10 (0.16%) Cypress.io
General
1 2,047 (32.86%) Social Skills
2 1,236 (19.84%) Finance
3 709 (11.38%) Analytical Skills
4 586 (9.41%) Public Sector
5 310 (4.98%) Banking
6 270 (4.33%) Organisational Skills
7 244 (3.92%) Legal
8 167 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
9 122 (1.96%) Manufacturing
10 120 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 111 (1.78%) Retail
12 100 (1.61%) Law
12 100 (1.61%) Telecoms
13 89 (1.43%) Marketing
14 86 (1.38%) Military
15 81 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
16 73 (1.17%) Local Government
17 67 (1.08%) Investment Banking
18 65 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
19 45 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 757 (12.15%) Architect
2 662 (10.63%) Analyst
3 583 (9.36%) Developer
4 513 (8.24%) Senior
5 422 (6.77%) Lead
6 385 (6.18%) IT Support
7 379 (6.08%) Consultant
8 314 (5.04%) Support Engineer
9 241 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
10 237 (3.80%) Data Engineer
11 226 (3.63%) IT Engineer
12 219 (3.52%) Project Manager
13 212 (3.40%) Azure Engineer
14 189 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 183 (2.94%) Administrator
16 178 (2.86%) IT Support Engineer
17 176 (2.83%) Business Analyst
18 131 (2.10%) Cloud Engineer
19 119 (1.91%) Security Engineer
20 109 (1.75%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (4.46%) .NET
2 222 (3.56%) REST
3 137 (2.20%) Microsoft Graph
4 119 (1.91%) OAuth
5 114 (1.83%) JSON
6 103 (1.65%) PySpark
7 100 (1.61%) SAML
8 89 (1.43%) OpenID
9 84 (1.35%) Web Services
10 83 (1.33%) React
11 80 (1.28%) LDAP
12 71 (1.14%) XML
13 64 (1.03%) RESTful
14 63 (1.01%) Node.js
15 62 (1.00%) SailPoint
16 61 (0.98%) .NET Framework
17 60 (0.96%) OAuth2
18 58 (0.93%) HTML
18 58 (0.93%) Middleware
19 56 (0.90%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 364 (5.84%) Onboarding
2 297 (4.77%) Cloud Native
3 174 (2.79%) Product Ownership
4 158 (2.54%) Management Information System
5 132 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
6 124 (1.99%) Data Centre
7 123 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
8 111 (1.78%) AI Agents
8 111 (1.78%) PKI
9 108 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
10 106 (1.70%) Security Posture
11 90 (1.44%) Data Structures
12 89 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
13 79 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
13 79 (1.27%) Virtual Team
14 77 (1.24%) Replication
15 70 (1.12%) Low-Code
16 66 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
17 55 (0.88%) Driving Licence
18 53 (0.85%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,322 (21.22%) Windows
2 339 (5.44%) Windows Server
3 325 (5.22%) Windows 10
4 276 (4.43%) Linux
5 133 (2.14%) Mac OS
6 114 (1.83%) Android
7 107 (1.72%) Apple iOS
8 47 (0.75%) Unix
9 46 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 40 (0.64%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
12 33 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.47%) VMS
14 22 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
15 18 (0.29%) Ubuntu
16 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
17 12 (0.19%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 7 (0.11%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,060 (17.02%) Problem-Solving
2 991 (15.91%) DevOps
3 924 (14.83%) Agile
4 867 (13.92%) Migration
5 813 (13.05%) CI/CD
6 769 (12.35%) Stakeholder Management
7 691 (11.09%) Business Intelligence
8 690 (11.08%) AI
9 651 (10.45%) Analytics
10 635 (10.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 621 (9.97%) Continuous Improvement
12 557 (8.94%) ITIL
13 470 (7.55%) Customer Service
14 461 (7.40%) Data Modelling
15 434 (6.97%) Roadmaps
16 427 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
17 414 (6.65%) Infrastructure as Code
18 406 (6.52%) Decision-Making
19 381 (6.12%) Validation
20 376 (6.04%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 796 (12.78%) SQL
2 670 (10.76%) PowerShell
3 651 (10.45%) Python
4 286 (4.59%) C#
5 221 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.13%) Java
7 158 (2.54%) Bicep
8 111 (1.78%) T-SQL
9 96 (1.54%) Bash
10 89 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.38%) TypeScript
12 79 (1.27%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.58%) VBA
14 33 (0.53%) C++
15 28 (0.45%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.43%) VB
17 19 (0.31%) VBScript
18 17 (0.27%) Scala
18 17 (0.27%) Shell Script
19 15 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,234 (19.81%) Security Cleared
2 953 (15.30%) SC Cleared
3 599 (9.62%) Degree
4 306 (4.91%) Microsoft Certification
5 217 (3.48%) DV Cleared
6 206 (3.31%) Azure Certification
7 125 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 123 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
9 114 (1.83%) CISSP
10 107 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
11 68 (1.09%) PMP
12 62 (1.00%) PMI Certification
13 60 (0.96%) CISM
14 56 (0.90%) AWS Certification
15 54 (0.87%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.77%) CCNP
17 45 (0.72%) DBS Check
18 44 (0.71%) MCSE
19 43 (0.69%) CCNA
20 39 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 319 (5.12%) Data Quality
2 234 (3.76%) GDPR
3 206 (3.31%) QA
4 178 (2.86%) SLA
5 164 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 136 (2.18%) NIST
7 127 (2.04%) PMO
8 93 (1.49%) Accessibility
9 83 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
10 71 (1.14%) NCSC
11 39 (0.63%) GRC
12 34 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 33 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 32 (0.51%) PCI DSS
15 28 (0.45%) WCAG
16 18 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
17 17 (0.27%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 12 (0.19%) MiFID
System Software
1 1,192 (19.14%) Active Directory
2 237 (3.80%) Docker
3 211 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 112 (1.80%) Hyper-V
5 94 (1.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 86 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (0.93%) vSphere
9 33 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.32%) Firmware
13 9 (0.14%) NFS
14 7 (0.11%) IAG
15 5 (0.080%) RACF
15 5 (0.080%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.064%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.064%) Snort
16 4 (0.064%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 490 (7.87%) Microsoft Intune
2 410 (6.58%) Terraform
3 278 (4.46%) Kubernetes
4 217 (3.48%) SCCM
5 135 (2.17%) Ansible
6 127 (2.04%) Single Sign-On
7 67 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 63 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
9 51 (0.82%) vCenter Server
10 46 (0.74%) Grafana
11 35 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 32 (0.51%) SCOM
13 23 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.32%) Puppet
15 19 (0.31%) WSUS
16 16 (0.26%) QRadar
17 12 (0.19%) vMotion
18 11 (0.18%) AirWatch
18 11 (0.18%) Argo
18 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 393 (6.31%) ServiceNow
2 289 (4.64%) VMware
3 281 (4.51%) Oracle
4 258 (4.14%) SAP
5 209 (3.36%) Databricks
6 207 (3.32%) Cisco
7 192 (3.08%) Google
8 126 (2.02%) Salesforce
9 109 (1.75%) Citrix
10 95 (1.53%) Splunk
11 92 (1.48%) Apple
12 80 (1.28%) Foundry
13 78 (1.25%) OpenAI
14 74 (1.19%) Okta
15 68 (1.09%) CyberArk
16 63 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
17 49 (0.79%) HP
18 48 (0.77%) Red Hat
19 46 (0.74%) Zscaler
20 43 (0.69%) Dell