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 10 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
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,269 4,437 5,671
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.91% 13.71% 13.14%
As % of the Vendors category 28.89% 28.87% 30.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,120 2,849 3,688
10th Percentile £213 £213 £194
25th Percentile £375 £348 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £582 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £429 £450
% change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 375 339 491
10th Percentile £13.55 £14.16 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.93
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +38.95% -28.72%
75th Percentile £35.38 £31.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £68.10 £63.28 £61.43
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £19.83 £16.06
% change year-on-year +4.45% +23.47% -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 21,701 15,371 18,628
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.23% 47.50% 43.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,508 9,423 11,588
10th Percentile £313 £281 £267
25th Percentile £413 £403 £406
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 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,110 733 1,141
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.75 £12.40
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £34.61 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.62% +0.60% -38.34%
75th Percentile £63.94 £52.16 £60.00
90th Percentile £82.55 £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 10 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 10 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 10 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 5,450 £492 +3.58% 3,476
UK excluding London -1 3,326 £450 +4.90% 3,032
London -2 2,399 £505 -1.46% 1,056
Work from Home +3 1,617 £500 - 1,439
North of England -4 843 £466 +9.59% 745
South East -2 793 £475 - 930
Midlands -3 578 £447 +19.27% 437
North West -2 461 £450 +5.88% 362
West Midlands -3 404 £450 +20.00% 224
South West 0 403 £480 +16.36% 369
Yorkshire -3 360 £488 +11.43% 261
Scotland +6 297 £450 +4.41% 158
East of England 0 293 £350 -30.00% 313
East Midlands +2 166 £418 +11.33% 210
Wales +4 116 £391 +30.42% 85
Northern Ireland +2 33 £350 +0.36% 77
North East -41 26 £450 +30.43% 136
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
1 673 (10.74%) SharePoint
2 398 (6.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 135 (2.15%) Confluence
4 37 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.56%) Apache
6 30 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.32%) 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%) Appian
15 4 (0.064%) Mendix
15 4 (0.064%) ThingWorx
15 4 (0.064%) Tomcat
Applications
1 577 (9.20%) Microsoft Excel
1 577 (9.20%) Microsoft Office
2 245 (3.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 143 (2.28%) Microsoft Project
4 112 (1.79%) MS Visio
5 40 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
6 24 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 6 (0.096%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
10 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.048%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
10 3 (0.048%) Trello
11 2 (0.032%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.032%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.032%) InDesign
11 2 (0.032%) InfoPath
11 2 (0.032%) MicroStation
11 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 221 (3.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.30%) 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 2,620 (41.79%) Azure
2 1,546 (24.66%) Microsoft 365
3 1,063 (16.96%) Power Platform
4 887 (14.15%) Entra ID
5 560 (8.93%) AWS
6 503 (8.02%) Azure DevOps
7 486 (7.75%) Dynamics 365
8 357 (5.69%) Power Automate
9 329 (5.25%) PowerApps
10 324 (5.17%) Microsoft Copilot
11 314 (5.01%) Microsoft Purview
12 255 (4.07%) GitHub
13 234 (3.73%) OneDrive
14 228 (3.64%) SaaS
15 204 (3.25%) GCP
16 165 (2.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 162 (2.58%) Azure Data Factory
18 152 (2.42%) Serverless
19 148 (2.36%) Azure Logic Apps
20 145 (2.31%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 345 (5.50%) DNS
2 292 (4.66%) Firewall
3 237 (3.78%) VPN
4 205 (3.27%) DHCP
5 158 (2.52%) TCP/IP
5 158 (2.52%) WAN
6 144 (2.30%) Wi-Fi
7 141 (2.25%) LAN
8 132 (2.11%) Network Security
9 58 (0.93%) VLAN
10 46 (0.73%) Kerberos
11 45 (0.72%) SAN
12 42 (0.67%) SSL
12 42 (0.67%) Wireless
13 41 (0.65%) SD-WAN
14 37 (0.59%) MPLS
15 35 (0.56%) Unified Communications
16 31 (0.49%) Internet
16 31 (0.49%) VoIP
17 28 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 679 (10.83%) Power BI
2 337 (5.38%) SQL Server
3 181 (2.89%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (2.23%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (2.03%) Metadata
6 124 (1.98%) Data Lake
7 123 (1.96%) Azure SQL Database
8 74 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 69 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 66 (1.05%) MySQL
11 59 (0.94%) Power Query
12 52 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 44 (0.70%) NoSQL
15 40 (0.64%) Oracle Database
15 40 (0.64%) Tableau
16 33 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 33 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 27 (0.43%) Big Data
18 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 319 (5.09%) JIRA
2 188 (3.00%) Git
3 79 (1.26%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.91%) GitLab
5 39 (0.62%) Visual Studio
6 29 (0.46%) MSI
7 21 (0.33%) 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 2,065 (32.94%) Social Skills
2 1,252 (19.97%) Finance
3 720 (11.49%) Analytical Skills
4 591 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 314 (5.01%) Banking
6 273 (4.35%) Organisational Skills
7 244 (3.89%) Legal
8 171 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
9 125 (1.99%) Manufacturing
10 121 (1.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 112 (1.79%) Retail
12 102 (1.63%) Law
13 101 (1.61%) Telecoms
14 89 (1.42%) Marketing
15 86 (1.37%) Military
16 80 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
17 74 (1.18%) Local Government
18 67 (1.07%) Investment Banking
19 65 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
20 45 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 758 (12.09%) Architect
2 669 (10.67%) Analyst
3 583 (9.30%) Developer
4 517 (8.25%) Senior
5 429 (6.84%) Lead
6 388 (6.19%) IT Support
7 383 (6.11%) Consultant
8 318 (5.07%) Support Engineer
9 242 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
10 239 (3.81%) Data Engineer
11 228 (3.64%) IT Engineer
12 220 (3.51%) Project Manager
13 215 (3.43%) Azure Engineer
14 194 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 186 (2.97%) Administrator
16 180 (2.87%) Business Analyst
16 180 (2.87%) IT Support Engineer
17 135 (2.15%) Cloud Engineer
18 119 (1.90%) Security Engineer
19 109 (1.74%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 279 (4.45%) .NET
2 223 (3.56%) REST
3 137 (2.19%) Microsoft Graph
4 119 (1.90%) OAuth
5 115 (1.83%) JSON
6 103 (1.64%) PySpark
7 100 (1.60%) SAML
8 89 (1.42%) OpenID
9 84 (1.34%) Web Services
10 83 (1.32%) React
11 81 (1.29%) LDAP
12 72 (1.15%) XML
13 64 (1.02%) RESTful
14 63 (1.00%) Node.js
15 62 (0.99%) SailPoint
16 61 (0.97%) .NET Framework
17 60 (0.96%) OAuth2
18 59 (0.94%) HTML
19 58 (0.93%) Middleware
20 56 (0.89%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 367 (5.85%) Onboarding
2 300 (4.79%) Cloud Native
3 176 (2.81%) Product Ownership
4 160 (2.55%) Management Information System
5 134 (2.14%) Legacy Systems
6 128 (2.04%) Data Centre
7 124 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
8 112 (1.79%) AI Agents
9 110 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
10 109 (1.74%) PKI
11 106 (1.69%) Security Posture
12 90 (1.44%) Data Structures
12 90 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
13 80 (1.28%) Virtual Team
14 79 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
14 79 (1.26%) Replication
15 73 (1.16%) Low-Code
16 66 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
17 56 (0.89%) Driving Licence
18 55 (0.88%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,328 (21.18%) Windows
2 340 (5.42%) Windows Server
3 329 (5.25%) Windows 10
4 279 (4.45%) Linux
5 133 (2.12%) Mac OS
6 114 (1.82%) Android
7 107 (1.71%) Apple iOS
8 48 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (0.75%) Unix
10 40 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 39 (0.62%) Windows 7
12 33 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.46%) VMS
14 22 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
15 18 (0.29%) Ubuntu
16 12 (0.19%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
16 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 7 (0.11%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,071 (17.08%) Problem-Solving
2 995 (15.87%) DevOps
3 930 (14.83%) Agile
4 879 (14.02%) Migration
5 817 (13.03%) CI/CD
6 778 (12.41%) Stakeholder Management
7 698 (11.13%) AI
8 694 (11.07%) Business Intelligence
9 652 (10.40%) Analytics
10 639 (10.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 629 (10.03%) Continuous Improvement
12 561 (8.95%) ITIL
13 474 (7.56%) Customer Service
14 461 (7.35%) Data Modelling
15 442 (7.05%) Roadmaps
16 430 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
17 418 (6.67%) Infrastructure as Code
18 407 (6.49%) Decision-Making
19 385 (6.14%) Validation
20 379 (6.05%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 801 (12.78%) SQL
2 673 (10.74%) PowerShell
3 655 (10.45%) Python
4 287 (4.58%) C#
5 221 (3.53%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.11%) Java
7 158 (2.52%) Bicep
8 113 (1.80%) T-SQL
9 97 (1.55%) Bash
10 89 (1.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.37%) TypeScript
12 80 (1.28%) Kusto Query Language
13 37 (0.59%) VBA
14 33 (0.53%) C++
15 29 (0.46%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.43%) VB
17 19 (0.30%) VBScript
18 17 (0.27%) Scala
18 17 (0.27%) Shell Script
19 15 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,237 (19.73%) Security Cleared
2 959 (15.30%) SC Cleared
3 604 (9.63%) Degree
4 310 (4.94%) Microsoft Certification
5 215 (3.43%) DV Cleared
6 209 (3.33%) Azure Certification
7 126 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
8 124 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
9 116 (1.85%) CISSP
10 109 (1.74%) Cisco Certification
11 69 (1.10%) PMP
12 63 (1.00%) PMI Certification
13 61 (0.97%) CISM
14 57 (0.91%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.88%) Master's Degree
16 49 (0.78%) CCNP
17 45 (0.72%) DBS Check
18 44 (0.70%) MCSE
19 43 (0.69%) CCNA
20 39 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 322 (5.14%) Data Quality
2 234 (3.73%) GDPR
3 207 (3.30%) QA
4 182 (2.90%) SLA
5 164 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 137 (2.19%) NIST
7 128 (2.04%) PMO
8 93 (1.48%) Accessibility
9 84 (1.34%) Cyber Essentials
10 72 (1.15%) NCSC
11 40 (0.64%) GRC
12 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 34 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 32 (0.51%) PCI DSS
14 28 (0.45%) WCAG
15 19 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
16 17 (0.27%) NIST 800
16 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
18 12 (0.19%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,200 (19.14%) Active Directory
2 237 (3.78%) Docker
3 210 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.77%) Hyper-V
5 94 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 87 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 59 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (0.93%) vSphere
9 32 (0.51%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Firmware
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 5 (0.080%) RACF
14 5 (0.080%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.064%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.064%) Snort
15 4 (0.064%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 493 (7.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 413 (6.59%) Terraform
3 280 (4.47%) Kubernetes
4 222 (3.54%) SCCM
5 137 (2.19%) Ansible
6 127 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
7 67 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 63 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
9 50 (0.80%) vCenter Server
10 47 (0.75%) Grafana
11 36 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 32 (0.51%) SCOM
13 23 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 19 (0.30%) Puppet
14 19 (0.30%) WSUS
15 18 (0.29%) QRadar
16 11 (0.18%) Argo
16 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
16 11 (0.18%) vMotion
16 11 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 395 (6.30%) ServiceNow
2 289 (4.61%) VMware
3 287 (4.58%) Oracle
4 258 (4.12%) SAP
5 211 (3.37%) Databricks
6 209 (3.33%) Cisco
7 193 (3.08%) Google
8 125 (1.99%) Salesforce
9 108 (1.72%) Citrix
10 100 (1.60%) Splunk
11 92 (1.47%) Apple
12 81 (1.29%) Foundry
13 79 (1.26%) OpenAI
14 75 (1.20%) Okta
15 69 (1.10%) CyberArk
16 64 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
17 49 (0.78%) HP
18 48 (0.77%) Red Hat
19 47 (0.75%) Zscaler
20 43 (0.69%) Dell