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 12 June 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
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,753 4,023 5,617
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.51% 13.67% 12.87%
As % of the Vendors category 28.29% 28.71% 30.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,812 2,599 3,654
10th Percentile £213 £213 £193
25th Percentile £375 £343 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.79% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £579 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £460
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.61% +2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 285 478
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.62 £13.20
Median hourly rate £20.70 £19.83 £15.70
Median % change year-on-year +4.36% +26.31% -34.58%
75th Percentile £33.75 £30.63 £25.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.00 £56.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.35 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +7.84% +25.80% -25.00%

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 20,335 14,012 18,430
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.69% 47.61% 42.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,789 8,619 11,469
10th Percentile £313 £280 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £503 £515
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% -2.43% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +4.06% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,043 627 1,137
10th Percentile £15.32 £14.84 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.33 £14.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.32 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.48% +12.00% -44.71%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.37 £58.49
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.50 £23.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +32.61% +4.55% -44.37%

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 12 June 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 12 June 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 12 June 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 5,029 £500 +5.26% 3,033
UK excluding London -1 3,020 £450 +5.88% 2,666
London -2 2,235 £510 -2.23% 854
Work from Home -1 1,454 £500 - 1,417
North of England -4 783 £450 +7.14% 637
South East -1 706 £475 +1.35% 810
Midlands -5 508 £450 +12.50% 451
North West -3 409 £447 +5.18% 372
South West -2 368 £470 +7.43% 319
West Midlands -8 356 £450 +12.50% 252
Yorkshire -3 354 £475 +15.15% 185
East of England 0 298 £375 -25.00% 289
Scotland +4 255 £450 +4.41% 116
East Midlands 0 145 £418 +8.44% 200
Wales +1 98 £370 +23.33% 71
Northern Ireland +1 27 £400 +23.08% 58
North East -41 22 £450 +32.35% 84
Channel Islands -2 2 £550 +84.87%

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
1 619 (10.76%) SharePoint
2 385 (6.69%) Microsoft Exchange
3 111 (1.93%) Confluence
4 38 (0.66%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.50%) Apache
6 26 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.30%) CMS
7 17 (0.30%) HCL Notes
8 16 (0.28%) IIS
9 15 (0.26%) Skype for Business
10 14 (0.24%) SAS
11 8 (0.14%) Mendix
12 6 (0.10%) Camunda
12 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
12 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
13 5 (0.087%) Appian
13 5 (0.087%) nginx
13 5 (0.087%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
14 4 (0.070%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 535 (9.30%) Microsoft Office
2 507 (8.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 221 (3.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 115 (2.00%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.087%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.087%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.087%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.087%) Trello
10 3 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.052%) InDesign
10 3 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.035%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.035%) InfoPath
11 2 (0.035%) MicroStation
11 2 (0.035%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.035%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (3.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.37%) NetSuite
5 16 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.26%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.23%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.17%) Sage X3
11 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
12 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
12 8 (0.14%) Maximo
13 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
14 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
14 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
14 6 (0.10%) Primavera
14 6 (0.10%) SAP MM
15 5 (0.087%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,453 (42.64%) Azure
2 1,472 (25.59%) Microsoft 365
3 982 (17.07%) Power Platform
4 790 (13.73%) Entra ID
5 480 (8.34%) AWS
6 455 (7.91%) Dynamics 365
7 451 (7.84%) Azure DevOps
8 331 (5.75%) Power Automate
9 316 (5.49%) Microsoft Purview
10 293 (5.09%) PowerApps
11 273 (4.75%) Microsoft Copilot
12 247 (4.29%) GitHub
13 231 (4.02%) OneDrive
14 208 (3.62%) SaaS
15 180 (3.13%) Azure Data Factory
15 180 (3.13%) GCP
16 167 (2.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 150 (2.61%) Serverless
18 144 (2.50%) PaaS
19 134 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 302 (5.25%) DNS
2 267 (4.64%) Firewall
3 218 (3.79%) VPN
4 189 (3.29%) DHCP
5 148 (2.57%) WAN
6 136 (2.36%) Wi-Fi
7 126 (2.19%) TCP/IP
8 125 (2.17%) LAN
9 116 (2.02%) Network Security
10 54 (0.94%) VLAN
11 52 (0.90%) Kerberos
12 46 (0.80%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.66%) SAN
14 34 (0.59%) SSL
14 34 (0.59%) Wireless
15 31 (0.54%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.52%) VoIP
17 28 (0.49%) HTTP
17 28 (0.49%) Skype
18 24 (0.42%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (10.64%) Power BI
2 283 (4.92%) SQL Server
3 172 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (2.62%) Data Lake
5 119 (2.07%) Azure SQL Database
6 116 (2.02%) Metadata
7 111 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 66 (1.15%) Relational Database
10 53 (0.92%) Power Query
11 46 (0.80%) MySQL
11 46 (0.80%) NoSQL
11 46 (0.80%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 43 (0.75%) Tableau
13 40 (0.70%) Delta Lake
13 40 (0.70%) Star Schema
14 34 (0.59%) Oracle Database
15 29 (0.50%) Spark SQL
16 28 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 24 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 279 (4.85%) JIRA
2 171 (2.97%) Git
3 62 (1.08%) Jenkins
4 58 (1.01%) GitLab
5 36 (0.63%) Visual Studio
6 23 (0.40%) Artifactory
7 22 (0.38%) MSI
8 18 (0.31%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.28%) ERwin
9 16 (0.28%) Selenium
10 15 (0.26%) MLflow
11 14 (0.24%) Maven
11 14 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
12 13 (0.23%) JMeter
13 12 (0.21%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.19%) Postman
15 10 (0.17%) JUnit
15 10 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
16 9 (0.16%) Gatling
17 8 (0.14%) InstallShield
General
1 1,878 (32.64%) Social Skills
2 1,149 (19.97%) Finance
3 622 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
4 509 (8.85%) Public Sector
5 301 (5.23%) Banking
6 245 (4.26%) Legal
7 231 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
8 148 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
9 103 (1.79%) Manufacturing
10 101 (1.76%) Retail
11 98 (1.70%) Law
12 90 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 83 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
14 79 (1.37%) Marketing
14 79 (1.37%) Telecoms
15 71 (1.23%) Military
16 68 (1.18%) Local Government
17 65 (1.13%) Investment Banking
18 57 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
19 45 (0.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 710 (12.34%) Architect
2 617 (10.72%) Analyst
3 516 (8.97%) Developer
4 476 (8.27%) Senior
5 370 (6.43%) IT Support
6 369 (6.41%) Lead
7 331 (5.75%) Consultant
8 275 (4.78%) Support Engineer
9 236 (4.10%) Data Engineer
10 213 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
11 203 (3.53%) Azure Engineer
12 195 (3.39%) IT Engineer
13 193 (3.35%) Project Manager
14 184 (3.20%) Business Analyst
15 177 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 172 (2.99%) Administrator
17 150 (2.61%) IT Support Engineer
18 120 (2.09%) Security Engineer
19 111 (1.93%) Cloud Engineer
20 106 (1.84%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (4.33%) .NET
2 188 (3.27%) REST
3 142 (2.47%) Microsoft Graph
4 112 (1.95%) OAuth
5 106 (1.84%) PySpark
6 102 (1.77%) SAML
7 96 (1.67%) JSON
8 86 (1.49%) OpenID
9 79 (1.37%) LDAP
10 78 (1.36%) React
11 77 (1.34%) Web Services
12 62 (1.08%) Middleware
13 57 (0.99%) XML
14 56 (0.97%) Node.js
14 56 (0.97%) SailPoint
15 55 (0.96%) HTML
15 55 (0.96%) OAuth2
16 53 (0.92%) CSS
17 50 (0.87%) ARM Templates
18 49 (0.85%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 318 (5.53%) Onboarding
2 248 (4.31%) Cloud Native
3 172 (2.99%) Product Ownership
4 129 (2.24%) Management Information System
5 112 (1.95%) Data Centre
6 102 (1.77%) Legacy Systems
7 100 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
7 100 (1.74%) Hybrid Cloud
8 91 (1.58%) Security Posture
9 89 (1.55%) AI Agents
10 85 (1.48%) PKI
11 83 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
12 78 (1.36%) Replication
13 73 (1.27%) Data Structures
14 71 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 68 (1.18%) Low-Code
16 66 (1.15%) Virtual Team
17 50 (0.87%) Public Cloud
18 48 (0.83%) Distributed Systems
18 48 (0.83%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,245 (21.64%) Windows
2 322 (5.60%) Windows 10
3 303 (5.27%) Windows Server
4 252 (4.38%) Linux
5 120 (2.09%) Mac OS
6 113 (1.96%) Apple iOS
7 111 (1.93%) Android
8 43 (0.75%) Windows 7
9 40 (0.70%) Unix
10 39 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
11 38 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 31 (0.54%) VMS
12 31 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
14 15 (0.26%) Ubuntu
14 15 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
15 12 (0.21%) CentOS
16 7 (0.12%) SUSE
17 6 (0.10%) AIX
18 5 (0.087%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 978 (17.00%) Problem-Solving
2 924 (16.06%) DevOps
3 842 (14.64%) Agile
4 832 (14.46%) Migration
5 756 (13.14%) CI/CD
6 639 (11.11%) Business Intelligence
7 631 (10.97%) Stakeholder Management
8 617 (10.72%) Analytics
9 604 (10.50%) AI
10 525 (9.13%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 524 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
12 491 (8.53%) ITIL
13 430 (7.47%) Customer Service
14 427 (7.42%) Data Modelling
15 400 (6.95%) Roadmaps
16 379 (6.59%) Cybersecurity
17 360 (6.26%) Decision-Making
18 351 (6.10%) Infrastructure as Code
19 337 (5.86%) Validation
20 336 (5.84%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 731 (12.71%) SQL
2 652 (11.33%) PowerShell
3 588 (10.22%) Python
4 270 (4.69%) C#
5 203 (3.53%) JavaScript
6 179 (3.11%) Java
7 136 (2.36%) Bicep
8 103 (1.79%) T-SQL
9 81 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 77 (1.34%) Kusto Query Language
11 70 (1.22%) TypeScript
12 66 (1.15%) Bash
13 35 (0.61%) VBA
14 29 (0.50%) VB
15 28 (0.49%) C++
16 26 (0.45%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.31%) Scala
18 16 (0.28%) VBScript
19 14 (0.24%) Shell Script
20 13 (0.23%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,089 (18.93%) Security Cleared
2 854 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 545 (9.47%) Degree
4 278 (4.83%) Microsoft Certification
5 190 (3.30%) Azure Certification
6 173 (3.01%) DV Cleared
7 115 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 108 (1.88%) CISSP
9 97 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
10 85 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
11 60 (1.04%) CISM
12 57 (0.99%) PMP
13 54 (0.94%) PMI Certification
14 50 (0.87%) AWS Certification
15 48 (0.83%) Master's Degree
16 45 (0.78%) MCSE
17 40 (0.70%) DBS Check
18 38 (0.66%) CCNP
19 35 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
19 35 (0.61%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 298 (5.18%) Data Quality
2 225 (3.91%) GDPR
3 185 (3.22%) QA
4 166 (2.89%) SLA
5 151 (2.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 128 (2.22%) NIST
7 107 (1.86%) PMO
8 77 (1.34%) Accessibility
9 76 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 56 (0.97%) NCSC
11 36 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 35 (0.61%) GRC
13 31 (0.54%) PCI DSS
14 29 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 21 (0.37%) NIST 800
16 19 (0.33%) MiFID
16 19 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 19 (0.33%) WCAG
17 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,100 (19.12%) Active Directory
2 210 (3.65%) Docker
3 193 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.86%) Hyper-V
5 88 (1.53%) Virtual Desktop
6 82 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
8 59 (1.03%) vSphere
9 32 (0.56%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
12 18 (0.31%) Firmware
13 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 6 (0.10%) IAG
14 6 (0.10%) RACF
15 5 (0.087%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.070%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.070%) Snort
16 4 (0.070%) XenDesktop
17 3 (0.052%) Squid
Systems Management
1 470 (8.17%) Microsoft Intune
2 355 (6.17%) Terraform
3 241 (4.19%) Kubernetes
4 206 (3.58%) SCCM
5 128 (2.22%) Ansible
6 126 (2.19%) Single Sign-On
7 80 (1.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 53 (0.92%) vCenter Server
9 52 (0.90%) Jamf Pro
10 33 (0.57%) Grafana
11 31 (0.54%) FortiGate
12 29 (0.50%) Prometheus
13 24 (0.42%) SCOM
14 19 (0.33%) Puppet
15 15 (0.26%) AirWatch
15 15 (0.26%) WSUS
16 14 (0.24%) QRadar
17 12 (0.21%) HAProxy
17 12 (0.21%) vMotion
18 10 (0.17%) Nessus
Vendors
1 332 (5.77%) ServiceNow
2 262 (4.55%) VMware
3 232 (4.03%) SAP
4 229 (3.98%) Oracle
5 217 (3.77%) Databricks
6 193 (3.35%) Cisco
7 168 (2.92%) Google
8 117 (2.03%) Salesforce
9 107 (1.86%) Citrix
10 89 (1.55%) Splunk
11 77 (1.34%) OpenAI
12 73 (1.27%) Apple
13 72 (1.25%) Foundry
14 61 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
15 59 (1.03%) Okta
16 53 (0.92%) CyberArk
17 47 (0.82%) HP
18 45 (0.78%) Adobe
19 44 (0.76%) Red Hat
20 41 (0.71%) Dell