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 18 September 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
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,194 4,728 5,040
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.22% 14.35% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 31.61% 30.26% 29.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,587 3,061 3,139
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £371 £340 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £684 £673 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 570 381 286
10th Percentile £13.35 £13.84 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.75 £16.50 £15.49
Median hourly rate £18.58 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.76% +31.26% -24.49%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.40 £45.00
90th Percentile £67.60 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.25 £21.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -13.10% +29.39% -18.85%

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 22,759 15,624 17,063
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.83% 47.42% 44.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,928 9,586 10,230
10th Percentile £310 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.30% -4.13% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,273 791 679
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.75 £14.38
25th Percentile £16.70 £17.45 £15.62
Median hourly rate £26.66 £25.15 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.00% -16.17% -32.58%
75th Percentile £62.75 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.92 £21.35 £29.89
% change year-on-year +21.43% -28.58% -29.68%

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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 6,225 £490 +3.16% 7,929
UK excluding London 0 3,872 £450 +2.97% 5,691
London 0 2,686 £520 +4.00% 3,175
Work from Home +4 1,822 £500 - 3,127
South East 0 1,011 £475 +5.56% 1,509
North of England -5 968 £465 +7.02% 1,408
Midlands 0 669 £425 +3.66% 933
North West -1 566 £460 +5.26% 734
West Midlands -1 456 £430 -0.23% 531
South West -1 455 £470 +10.59% 589
Scotland +7 380 £450 - 411
Yorkshire -6 356 £475 +8.88% 479
East of England 0 275 £325 -38.10% 566
East Midlands +1 207 £425 +14.56% 401
Wales +2 107 £394 +29.63% 164
North East -27 51 £426 +25.15% 213
Northern Ireland -1 38 £350 - 198
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 6

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
1 872 (12.12%) SharePoint
2 405 (5.63%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.07%) Confluence
4 38 (0.53%) Apache
4 38 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 28 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
5 28 (0.39%) CMS
6 24 (0.33%) IIS
7 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
8 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
9 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.14%) nginx
12 8 (0.11%) SAS
13 6 (0.083%) Apache Superset
13 6 (0.083%) Mendix
13 6 (0.083%) SharePoint 2013
13 6 (0.083%) ThingWorx
14 5 (0.070%) Exchange Server 2010
14 5 (0.070%) OpenStack
Applications
1 770 (10.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 750 (10.43%) Microsoft Office
3 316 (4.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 191 (2.65%) Microsoft Project
5 113 (1.57%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 15 (0.21%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
9 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
10 10 (0.14%) Revit
11 5 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.070%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.070%) Trello
12 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.028%) MicroStation
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 265 (3.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 85 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.39%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.15%) Integrated Workplace Management System
9 11 (0.15%) Magento
10 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.11%) iTrent
11 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
12 7 (0.097%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.097%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.097%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.083%) Maximo
13 6 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,968 (41.26%) Azure
2 1,830 (25.44%) Microsoft 365
3 1,264 (17.57%) Power Platform
4 1,121 (15.58%) Entra ID
5 660 (9.17%) AWS
6 607 (8.44%) Dynamics 365
7 605 (8.41%) Azure DevOps
8 437 (6.07%) Microsoft Copilot
9 431 (5.99%) Power Automate
10 383 (5.32%) PowerApps
11 310 (4.31%) Microsoft Purview
12 293 (4.07%) GitHub
13 272 (3.78%) OneDrive
14 258 (3.59%) GCP
15 244 (3.39%) SaaS
16 195 (2.71%) Serverless
17 184 (2.56%) Azure Data Factory
18 180 (2.50%) Azure Monitor
19 162 (2.25%) Azure Logic Apps
20 160 (2.22%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 401 (5.57%) DNS
2 338 (4.70%) Firewall
3 289 (4.02%) VPN
4 268 (3.73%) DHCP
5 206 (2.86%) TCP/IP
6 163 (2.27%) Network Security
7 160 (2.22%) WAN
8 143 (1.99%) LAN
9 137 (1.90%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.04%) VLAN
11 67 (0.93%) Wireless
12 51 (0.71%) SAN
13 40 (0.56%) Skype
13 40 (0.56%) SSL
14 37 (0.51%) MPLS
15 34 (0.47%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.42%) BGP
16 30 (0.42%) Internet
17 29 (0.40%) Kerberos
17 29 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 772 (10.73%) Power BI
2 406 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 172 (2.39%) Data Warehouse
4 162 (2.25%) Metadata
5 146 (2.03%) Data Lake
6 131 (1.82%) PostgreSQL
7 113 (1.57%) Azure SQL Database
8 86 (1.20%) Power Query
9 76 (1.06%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.96%) MySQL
11 66 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.65%) NoSQL
13 45 (0.63%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 41 (0.57%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 36 (0.50%) Tableau
18 30 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
19 29 (0.40%) MongoDB
20 23 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 343 (4.77%) JIRA
2 236 (3.28%) Git
3 94 (1.31%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.00%) GitLab
5 59 (0.82%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.61%) MSI
7 36 (0.50%) Selenium
8 23 (0.32%) Claude Code
8 23 (0.32%) Postman
9 17 (0.24%) Cypress.io
10 16 (0.22%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
11 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
12 14 (0.19%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.17%) MLflow
13 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
15 10 (0.14%) Artifactory
15 10 (0.14%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,669 (37.10%) Social Skills
2 1,421 (19.75%) Finance
3 929 (12.91%) Analytical Skills
4 642 (8.92%) Public Sector
5 438 (6.09%) Organisational Skills
6 317 (4.41%) Banking
7 227 (3.16%) Legal
8 205 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 190 (2.64%) Manufacturing
10 179 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 154 (2.14%) Retail
12 125 (1.74%) Telecoms
13 111 (1.54%) Marketing
14 99 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
15 96 (1.33%) Law
16 92 (1.28%) Military
17 90 (1.25%) Aerospace
18 89 (1.24%) Local Government
19 67 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
20 59 (0.82%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 837 (11.63%) Architect
2 724 (10.06%) Analyst
3 624 (8.67%) Developer
4 618 (8.59%) Senior
5 481 (6.69%) Lead
6 460 (6.39%) Consultant
7 447 (6.21%) IT Support
8 433 (6.02%) Support Engineer
9 304 (4.23%) Administrator
10 294 (4.09%) IT Engineer
11 276 (3.84%) Solutions Architect
12 252 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 250 (3.48%) Azure Engineer
14 242 (3.36%) IT Support Engineer
15 241 (3.35%) Data Engineer
16 224 (3.11%) Project Manager
17 188 (2.61%) Business Analyst
18 180 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
19 141 (1.96%) DevOps Engineer
20 132 (1.83%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 537 (7.46%) Terraform
2 340 (4.73%) .NET
3 273 (3.79%) REST
4 140 (1.95%) JSON
5 136 (1.89%) OAuth
6 111 (1.54%) XML
7 109 (1.52%) PySpark
8 107 (1.49%) SAML
9 104 (1.45%) OpenID
10 98 (1.36%) Microsoft Graph
11 95 (1.32%) ARM Templates
12 89 (1.24%) React
13 87 (1.21%) Web Services
14 85 (1.18%) .NET Framework
15 78 (1.08%) LDAP
16 77 (1.07%) OAuth2
17 75 (1.04%) SailPoint
18 73 (1.01%) RESTful
19 72 (1.00%) HTML
20 66 (0.92%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 578 (8.03%) Onboarding
2 310 (4.31%) Cloud Native
3 284 (3.95%) Management Information System
4 214 (2.97%) Enterprise Software
5 204 (2.84%) Product Ownership
6 158 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 155 (2.15%) AI Agents
8 153 (2.13%) PKI
9 146 (2.03%) Data Centre
10 138 (1.92%) Security Posture
11 136 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
12 94 (1.31%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
14 91 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
15 90 (1.25%) Driving Licence
16 89 (1.24%) CMDB
17 80 (1.11%) Low-Code
18 79 (1.10%) Virtual Team
19 73 (1.01%) NHS
20 72 (1.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,543 (21.45%) Windows
2 464 (6.45%) Windows Server
3 386 (5.37%) Windows 10
4 341 (4.74%) Linux
5 149 (2.07%) Mac OS
6 133 (1.85%) Android
7 126 (1.75%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 50 (0.70%) Unix
10 42 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.54%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
13 31 (0.43%) VMS
14 23 (0.32%) CentOS
15 21 (0.29%) Solaris
15 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
16 12 (0.17%) SUSE
17 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
18 7 (0.097%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,352 (18.79%) Problem-Solving
2 1,335 (18.56%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,101 (15.30%) DevOps
4 1,086 (15.10%) Agile
5 976 (13.57%) Migration
6 945 (13.14%) CI/CD
7 904 (12.57%) Continuous Improvement
8 847 (11.77%) AI
9 819 (11.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 779 (10.83%) Business Intelligence
11 745 (10.36%) Analytics
12 708 (9.84%) ITIL
13 680 (9.45%) Customer Service
14 569 (7.91%) Infrastructure as Code
15 567 (7.88%) Cybersecurity
16 544 (7.56%) Roadmaps
17 514 (7.14%) Data Modelling
18 495 (6.88%) Project Delivery
19 486 (6.76%) Decision-Making
20 467 (6.49%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 857 (11.91%) SQL
2 803 (11.16%) PowerShell
3 732 (10.18%) Python
4 348 (4.84%) C#
5 267 (3.71%) JavaScript
6 210 (2.92%) Bicep
7 170 (2.36%) Bash
8 168 (2.34%) Java
9 110 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 108 (1.50%) TypeScript
11 106 (1.47%) T-SQL
12 74 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.43%) VBA
14 29 (0.40%) VB
15 26 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.35%) VBScript
17 23 (0.32%) X++
18 22 (0.31%) PL/SQL
19 18 (0.25%) R
20 17 (0.24%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,552 (21.57%) Security Cleared
2 1,151 (16.00%) SC Cleared
3 634 (8.81%) Degree
4 374 (5.20%) Microsoft Certification
5 305 (4.24%) DV Cleared
6 273 (3.79%) Azure Certification
7 186 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 141 (1.96%) CISSP
9 126 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
10 112 (1.56%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.32%) PMP
12 89 (1.24%) PMI Certification
13 74 (1.03%) AWS Certification
13 74 (1.03%) CISM
14 64 (0.89%) DBS Check
15 61 (0.85%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 58 (0.81%) A+ Certification
17 55 (0.76%) CCNP
18 45 (0.63%) CCNA
19 43 (0.60%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (6.16%) Data Quality
2 241 (3.35%) QA
3 238 (3.31%) GDPR
4 207 (2.88%) SLA
5 204 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 203 (2.82%) PMO
7 178 (2.47%) NIST
8 121 (1.68%) Accessibility
9 91 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 88 (1.22%) NCSC
11 60 (0.83%) GRC
12 49 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 45 (0.63%) WCAG
14 38 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 29 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 22 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.24%) NIST 800
20 16 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,345 (18.70%) Active Directory
2 268 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 255 (3.54%) Docker
4 144 (2.00%) Hyper-V
5 129 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
6 107 (1.49%) Virtual Machines
7 71 (0.99%) vSphere
8 63 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 18 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
11 16 (0.22%) Firmware
11 16 (0.22%) VMware NSX
12 9 (0.13%) IAG
12 9 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 8 (0.11%) NFS
14 7 (0.097%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.097%) zsh
15 6 (0.083%) XenApp
16 5 (0.070%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 5 (0.070%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 580 (8.06%) Microsoft Intune
2 340 (4.73%) Kubernetes
3 294 (4.09%) SCCM
4 169 (2.35%) Ansible
5 141 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.83%) Grafana
7 59 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
8 57 (0.79%) SCOM
9 50 (0.70%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.51%) Prometheus
11 35 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.39%) QRadar
12 28 (0.39%) WSUS
13 23 (0.32%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.26%) Puppet
16 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
17 16 (0.22%) Argo
18 15 (0.21%) WMI
19 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 547 (7.60%) ServiceNow
2 348 (4.84%) VMware
3 339 (4.71%) Oracle
4 291 (4.05%) SAP
5 251 (3.49%) Google
6 249 (3.46%) Databricks
7 239 (3.32%) Cisco
8 129 (1.79%) Splunk
9 127 (1.77%) Salesforce
10 108 (1.50%) Apple
11 103 (1.43%) CyberArk
12 91 (1.26%) Citrix
13 90 (1.25%) Okta
14 87 (1.21%) OpenAI
15 86 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
16 80 (1.11%) Foundry
17 74 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.92%) Red Hat
19 57 (0.79%) Zscaler
20 55 (0.76%) Adobe