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 19 August 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
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,780 4,618 5,020
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.66% 14.07% 12.92%
As % of the Vendors category 30.29% 29.77% 29.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,403 2,951 3,263
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £344 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.95% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £579 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 448 376 347
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.75 £11.76
25th Percentile £15.80 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £38.02
90th Percentile £70.31 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.50 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.73% +24.80% -14.58%

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 22,385 15,513 17,023
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.79% 47.27% 43.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,864 9,479 10,592
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,146 809 818
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.97 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £31.96 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.09% -10.18% -31.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.43 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.70 £27.50
% change year-on-year +38.28% -21.11% -21.43%

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 19 August 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 19 August 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 19 August 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 5,923 £490 +3.16% 5,714
UK excluding London 0 3,624 £450 +2.97% 4,615
London 0 2,572 £515 +3.00% 2,069
Work from Home +4 1,767 £500 - 2,318
South East +2 945 £475 +1.35% 1,283
North of England -4 931 £450 +3.51% 1,121
Midlands -2 624 £445 +13.59% 777
North West +1 553 £450 +2.92% 580
South West +1 450 £470 +9.30% 489
West Midlands -4 423 £447 +11.75% 457
Yorkshire -5 348 £462 +6.21% 368
Scotland +8 325 £450 - 307
East of England -1 248 £400 -20.00% 457
East Midlands +2 192 £425 +20.74% 319
Wales -1 102 £413 +37.50% 151
North East -36 34 £369 +10.90% 192
Northern Ireland -3 30 £369 +2.08% 130
Channel Islands -1 2 £500 -31.03%

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
1 792 (11.68%) SharePoint
2 403 (5.94%) Microsoft Exchange
3 150 (2.21%) Confluence
4 39 (0.58%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.56%) Apache
6 30 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) IIS
8 21 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.29%) CMS
10 19 (0.28%) HCL Notes
11 14 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.15%) SAS
14 9 (0.13%) nginx
15 7 (0.10%) Camunda
16 6 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 6 (0.088%) Mendix
16 6 (0.088%) SharePoint 2013
16 6 (0.088%) ThingWorx
17 5 (0.074%) Jupyter
Applications
1 666 (9.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 652 (9.62%) Microsoft Office
3 282 (4.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 182 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.58%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.088%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.088%) Revit
12 4 (0.059%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.059%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 3 (0.044%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.029%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 235 (3.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
9 10 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
9 10 (0.15%) Magento
10 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
10 7 (0.10%) iTrent
10 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.10%) SAP CRM
10 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
11 6 (0.088%) Sage X3
11 6 (0.088%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.088%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,848 (42.01%) Azure
2 1,723 (25.41%) Microsoft 365
3 1,174 (17.32%) Power Platform
4 1,030 (15.19%) Entra ID
5 617 (9.10%) AWS
6 591 (8.72%) Azure DevOps
7 569 (8.39%) Dynamics 365
8 403 (5.94%) Power Automate
9 378 (5.58%) Microsoft Copilot
10 366 (5.40%) PowerApps
11 305 (4.50%) Microsoft Purview
12 291 (4.29%) GitHub
13 250 (3.69%) OneDrive
14 243 (3.58%) SaaS
15 236 (3.48%) GCP
16 186 (2.74%) Azure Data Factory
17 167 (2.46%) Serverless
18 164 (2.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 163 (2.40%) Azure Monitor
20 158 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 382 (5.63%) DNS
2 344 (5.07%) Firewall
3 283 (4.17%) VPN
4 248 (3.66%) DHCP
5 191 (2.82%) TCP/IP
6 170 (2.51%) WAN
7 157 (2.32%) Network Security
8 153 (2.26%) LAN
9 146 (2.15%) Wi-Fi
10 78 (1.15%) VLAN
11 57 (0.84%) Wireless
12 50 (0.74%) SAN
13 42 (0.62%) MPLS
14 38 (0.56%) SSL
15 34 (0.50%) Skype
15 34 (0.50%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 31 (0.46%) BGP
17 31 (0.46%) Internet
18 27 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 737 (10.87%) Power BI
2 392 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 188 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.02%) Azure SQL Database
4 137 (2.02%) Metadata
5 136 (2.01%) Data Lake
5 136 (2.01%) PostgreSQL
6 74 (1.09%) Relational Database
7 70 (1.03%) Power Query
8 66 (0.97%) MySQL
8 66 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 59 (0.87%) NoSQL
10 46 (0.68%) Oracle Database
11 42 (0.62%) Star Schema
12 41 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 34 (0.50%) Tableau
14 32 (0.47%) Delta Lake
15 29 (0.43%) MongoDB
16 27 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
17 24 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 323 (4.76%) JIRA
2 203 (2.99%) Git
3 94 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.08%) GitLab
5 59 (0.87%) Visual Studio
6 41 (0.60%) MSI
7 38 (0.56%) Selenium
8 20 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.19%) MLflow
12 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
12 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.16%) ERwin
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,369 (34.94%) Social Skills
2 1,377 (20.31%) Finance
3 867 (12.79%) Analytical Skills
4 627 (9.25%) Public Sector
5 344 (5.07%) Organisational Skills
6 327 (4.82%) Banking
7 226 (3.33%) Legal
8 192 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
9 161 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 148 (2.18%) Manufacturing
11 139 (2.05%) Retail
12 121 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 106 (1.56%) Law
14 100 (1.47%) Marketing
15 92 (1.36%) Local Government
16 85 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
17 82 (1.21%) Military
18 70 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
19 67 (0.99%) Aerospace
20 61 (0.90%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 790 (11.65%) Architect
2 690 (10.18%) Analyst
3 617 (9.10%) Developer
4 590 (8.70%) Senior
5 477 (7.04%) Lead
6 421 (6.21%) Consultant
6 421 (6.21%) IT Support
7 396 (5.84%) Support Engineer
8 272 (4.01%) IT Engineer
9 251 (3.70%) Solutions Architect
10 247 (3.64%) Azure Engineer
11 244 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 240 (3.54%) Data Engineer
13 221 (3.26%) Administrator
14 218 (3.22%) IT Support Engineer
15 216 (3.19%) Project Manager
16 182 (2.68%) Business Analyst
17 171 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
18 131 (1.93%) Security Engineer
19 120 (1.77%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (4.84%) .NET
2 262 (3.86%) REST
3 127 (1.87%) JSON
4 124 (1.83%) OAuth
5 108 (1.59%) Microsoft Graph
6 107 (1.58%) PySpark
7 103 (1.52%) SAML
8 101 (1.49%) XML
9 95 (1.40%) OpenID
10 90 (1.33%) .NET Framework
11 89 (1.31%) Web Services
12 83 (1.22%) React
13 78 (1.15%) ARM Templates
14 75 (1.11%) LDAP
15 73 (1.08%) RESTful
16 70 (1.03%) OAuth2
17 69 (1.02%) HTML
18 68 (1.00%) SailPoint
19 67 (0.99%) SOAP
20 64 (0.94%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 492 (7.26%) Onboarding
2 324 (4.78%) Cloud Native
3 222 (3.27%) Management Information System
4 193 (2.85%) Product Ownership
5 190 (2.80%) Enterprise Software
6 149 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 138 (2.04%) Data Centre
8 136 (2.01%) PKI
9 135 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
10 129 (1.90%) Security Posture
11 124 (1.83%) AI Agents
12 91 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
13 87 (1.28%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
14 79 (1.17%) Low-Code
15 77 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 74 (1.09%) Driving Licence
17 71 (1.05%) CMDB
18 67 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
19 66 (0.97%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,455 (21.46%) Windows
2 426 (6.28%) Windows Server
3 363 (5.35%) Windows 10
4 335 (4.94%) Linux
5 137 (2.02%) Mac OS
6 127 (1.87%) Android
7 119 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 66 (0.97%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.65%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
13 33 (0.49%) Ubuntu
14 32 (0.47%) VMS
15 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.31%) CentOS
17 13 (0.19%) Solaris
18 12 (0.18%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,229 (18.13%) Problem-Solving
2 1,080 (15.93%) DevOps
3 1,067 (15.74%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,039 (15.32%) Agile
5 951 (14.03%) Migration
6 893 (13.17%) CI/CD
7 808 (11.92%) Continuous Improvement
8 774 (11.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 772 (11.39%) AI
10 742 (10.94%) Business Intelligence
11 703 (10.37%) Analytics
12 672 (9.91%) ITIL
13 592 (8.73%) Customer Service
14 512 (7.55%) Infrastructure as Code
15 504 (7.43%) Cybersecurity
16 497 (7.33%) Data Modelling
17 490 (7.23%) Roadmaps
18 460 (6.78%) Project Delivery
19 442 (6.52%) Decision-Making
20 435 (6.42%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 856 (12.63%) SQL
2 749 (11.05%) PowerShell
3 689 (10.16%) Python
4 329 (4.85%) C#
5 247 (3.64%) JavaScript
6 193 (2.85%) Bicep
7 191 (2.82%) Java
8 154 (2.27%) Bash
9 106 (1.56%) T-SQL
10 104 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 89 (1.31%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 38 (0.56%) VBA
14 31 (0.46%) VB
15 30 (0.44%) C++
16 27 (0.40%) VBScript
17 24 (0.35%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) X++
19 17 (0.25%) R
20 15 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,456 (21.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,093 (16.12%) SC Cleared
3 638 (9.41%) Degree
4 352 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 287 (4.23%) DV Cleared
6 245 (3.61%) Azure Certification
7 164 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
8 131 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
9 129 (1.90%) CISSP
10 119 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
11 94 (1.39%) PMP
12 88 (1.30%) PMI Certification
13 73 (1.08%) AWS Certification
14 71 (1.05%) CISM
15 58 (0.86%) CCNP
16 55 (0.81%) A+ Certification
17 51 (0.75%) DBS Check
18 48 (0.71%) CCNA
18 48 (0.71%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 48 (0.71%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (5.55%) Data Quality
2 233 (3.44%) QA
3 224 (3.30%) GDPR
4 204 (3.01%) SLA
5 190 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 174 (2.57%) PMO
7 165 (2.43%) NIST
8 109 (1.61%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.30%) NCSC
10 77 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
11 52 (0.77%) GRC
12 37 (0.55%) WCAG
13 35 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 34 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 32 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.24%) P3O
18 14 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
18 14 (0.21%) NIST 800
18 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,314 (19.38%) Active Directory
2 253 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 252 (3.72%) Docker
4 140 (2.06%) Hyper-V
5 117 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 99 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (0.94%) vSphere
8 59 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.28%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 6 (0.088%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 5 (0.074%) XenApp
16 5 (0.074%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 550 (8.11%) Microsoft Intune
2 499 (7.36%) Terraform
3 329 (4.85%) Kubernetes
4 267 (3.94%) SCCM
5 170 (2.51%) Ansible
6 121 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
7 56 (0.83%) Grafana
7 56 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.77%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.62%) SCOM
10 39 (0.58%) Prometheus
11 38 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 25 (0.37%) WSUS
13 23 (0.34%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) Progress Chef
14 22 (0.32%) Puppet
15 20 (0.29%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
17 15 (0.22%) Argo
18 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 505 (7.45%) ServiceNow
2 342 (5.04%) VMware
3 325 (4.79%) Oracle
4 269 (3.97%) SAP
5 239 (3.53%) Google
6 232 (3.42%) Databricks
7 225 (3.32%) Cisco
8 120 (1.77%) Salesforce
9 111 (1.64%) Splunk
10 107 (1.58%) Apple
11 100 (1.47%) Citrix
12 88 (1.30%) CyberArk
13 76 (1.12%) Foundry
14 75 (1.11%) Okta
15 74 (1.09%) OpenAI
16 69 (1.02%) BeyondTrust
17 67 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
17 67 (0.99%) Red Hat
18 55 (0.81%) Zscaler
19 54 (0.80%) Meraki