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 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
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,269 4,728 5,040
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.25% 14.35% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 31.68% 30.26% 29.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,636 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 £686 £673 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 577 381 286
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 £67.90 £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 22,942 15,624 17,063
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.82% 47.42% 44.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,043 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 1,291 791 679
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.75 £14.38
25th Percentile £16.64 £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 £62.25 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.35 £29.89
% change year-on-year +20.64% -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 19 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 19 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 19 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 6,287 £490 +3.16% 8,308
UK excluding London +1 3,914 £450 +2.97% 5,863
London 0 2,709 £520 +4.00% 3,375
Work from Home +4 1,839 £500 - 3,330
South East 0 1,021 £475 +5.56% 1,549
North of England -5 979 £466 +7.25% 1,463
Midlands 0 677 £425 +3.66% 942
North West -1 572 £465 +6.41% 768
West Midlands -1 461 £430 -0.23% 537
South West -1 456 £470 +10.59% 617
Scotland +7 385 £450 - 429
Yorkshire -6 360 £475 +8.88% 500
East of England 0 280 £325 -38.10% 582
East Midlands +1 210 £425 +14.56% 404
Wales +2 109 £375 +23.46% 160
North East -29 52 £438 +28.75% 210
Northern Ireland -1 38 £350 - 200
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
1 878 (12.08%) SharePoint
2 409 (5.63%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.05%) Confluence
4 38 (0.52%) Apache
4 38 (0.52%) Apache Spark
5 28 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
5 28 (0.39%) CMS
6 25 (0.34%) IIS
7 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
8 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
9 17 (0.23%) 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 (0.069%) Camunda
14 5 (0.069%) OpenStack
Applications
1 780 (10.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 756 (10.40%) Microsoft Office
3 320 (4.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 194 (2.67%) Microsoft Project
5 113 (1.55%) 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 (0.069%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.069%) Photoshop
11 5 (0.069%) Trello
12 3 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.041%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
13 2 (0.028%) MicroStation
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 268 (3.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 87 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 33 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.39%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.30%) 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 (0.096%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.096%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.096%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.083%) Maximo
13 6 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,994 (41.19%) Azure
2 1,850 (25.45%) Microsoft 365
3 1,277 (17.57%) Power Platform
4 1,131 (15.56%) Entra ID
5 669 (9.20%) AWS
6 615 (8.46%) Dynamics 365
7 613 (8.43%) Azure DevOps
8 442 (6.08%) Microsoft Copilot
9 435 (5.98%) Power Automate
10 385 (5.30%) PowerApps
11 310 (4.26%) Microsoft Purview
12 299 (4.11%) GitHub
13 274 (3.77%) OneDrive
14 267 (3.67%) GCP
15 248 (3.41%) SaaS
16 201 (2.77%) Serverless
17 185 (2.55%) Azure Data Factory
18 180 (2.48%) Azure Monitor
19 166 (2.28%) Azure Logic Apps
20 161 (2.21%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 402 (5.53%) DNS
2 344 (4.73%) Firewall
3 292 (4.02%) VPN
4 269 (3.70%) DHCP
5 207 (2.85%) TCP/IP
6 167 (2.30%) Network Security
7 160 (2.20%) WAN
8 143 (1.97%) LAN
9 138 (1.90%) Wi-Fi
10 76 (1.05%) VLAN
11 68 (0.94%) Wireless
12 51 (0.70%) SAN
13 41 (0.56%) SSL
14 40 (0.55%) Skype
15 37 (0.51%) MPLS
16 35 (0.48%) Unified Communications
17 31 (0.43%) Kerberos
18 30 (0.41%) BGP
18 30 (0.41%) Internet
19 29 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 777 (10.69%) Power BI
2 407 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 174 (2.39%) Data Warehouse
4 162 (2.23%) Metadata
5 147 (2.02%) Data Lake
6 131 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
7 113 (1.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 88 (1.21%) Power Query
9 76 (1.05%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.95%) MySQL
11 66 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.65%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.65%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.59%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 41 (0.56%) Star Schema
15 37 (0.51%) Delta Lake
16 36 (0.50%) Tableau
17 30 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
17 30 (0.41%) MongoDB
18 23 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 344 (4.73%) JIRA
2 238 (3.27%) Git
3 95 (1.31%) Jenkins
4 72 (0.99%) GitLab
5 59 (0.81%) Visual Studio
6 46 (0.63%) MSI
7 38 (0.52%) Selenium
8 25 (0.34%) Postman
9 23 (0.32%) Claude Code
10 18 (0.25%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.22%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
14 12 (0.17%) MLflow
14 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
15 11 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
16 10 (0.14%) Artifactory
16 10 (0.14%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,700 (37.14%) Social Skills
2 1,437 (19.77%) Finance
3 945 (13.00%) Analytical Skills
4 648 (8.91%) Public Sector
5 442 (6.08%) Organisational Skills
6 319 (4.39%) Banking
7 229 (3.15%) Legal
8 210 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
9 195 (2.68%) Manufacturing
10 181 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 154 (2.12%) Retail
12 125 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 111 (1.53%) Marketing
14 103 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
15 96 (1.32%) Law
16 94 (1.29%) Military
17 92 (1.27%) Aerospace
18 90 (1.24%) Local Government
19 68 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
20 59 (0.81%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 845 (11.62%) Architect
2 732 (10.07%) Analyst
3 630 (8.67%) Developer
4 624 (8.58%) Senior
5 485 (6.67%) Lead
6 465 (6.40%) Consultant
7 450 (6.19%) IT Support
8 435 (5.98%) Support Engineer
9 309 (4.25%) Administrator
10 295 (4.06%) IT Engineer
11 281 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
12 254 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 251 (3.45%) Azure Engineer
14 243 (3.34%) Data Engineer
14 243 (3.34%) IT Support Engineer
15 226 (3.11%) Project Manager
16 191 (2.63%) Business Analyst
17 180 (2.48%) Cloud Engineer
18 142 (1.95%) DevOps Engineer
19 137 (1.88%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 543 (7.47%) Terraform
2 342 (4.70%) .NET
3 279 (3.84%) REST
4 140 (1.93%) JSON
5 137 (1.88%) OAuth
6 111 (1.53%) XML
7 110 (1.51%) PySpark
8 108 (1.49%) SAML
9 104 (1.43%) OpenID
10 103 (1.42%) Microsoft Graph
11 95 (1.31%) ARM Templates
12 89 (1.22%) React
13 87 (1.20%) Web Services
14 85 (1.17%) .NET Framework
15 79 (1.09%) LDAP
16 77 (1.06%) OAuth2
17 75 (1.03%) SailPoint
18 73 (1.00%) HTML
18 73 (1.00%) RESTful
19 66 (0.91%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 583 (8.02%) Onboarding
2 316 (4.35%) Cloud Native
3 287 (3.95%) Management Information System
4 215 (2.96%) Enterprise Software
5 205 (2.82%) Product Ownership
6 160 (2.20%) AI Agents
6 160 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 154 (2.12%) PKI
8 147 (2.02%) Data Centre
9 142 (1.95%) Security Posture
10 137 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
11 94 (1.29%) Data Structures
12 93 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
13 92 (1.27%) CMDB
14 91 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
15 90 (1.24%) Driving Licence
16 84 (1.16%) Low-Code
17 79 (1.09%) Virtual Team
18 74 (1.02%) NHS
19 73 (1.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,555 (21.39%) Windows
2 469 (6.45%) Windows Server
3 388 (5.34%) Windows 10
4 346 (4.76%) Linux
5 151 (2.08%) Mac OS
6 133 (1.83%) Android
7 126 (1.73%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 50 (0.69%) Unix
10 42 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.54%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.48%) 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 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
18 7 (0.096%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,367 (18.81%) Problem-Solving
2 1,355 (18.64%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,113 (15.31%) DevOps
4 1,095 (15.06%) Agile
5 983 (13.52%) Migration
6 953 (13.11%) CI/CD
7 916 (12.60%) Continuous Improvement
8 856 (11.78%) AI
9 828 (11.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 784 (10.79%) Business Intelligence
11 748 (10.29%) Analytics
12 718 (9.88%) ITIL
13 682 (9.38%) Customer Service
14 579 (7.97%) Cybersecurity
15 575 (7.91%) Infrastructure as Code
16 548 (7.54%) Roadmaps
17 519 (7.14%) Data Modelling
18 498 (6.85%) Project Delivery
19 488 (6.71%) Decision-Making
20 471 (6.48%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 865 (11.90%) SQL
2 811 (11.16%) PowerShell
3 744 (10.24%) Python
4 351 (4.83%) C#
5 272 (3.74%) JavaScript
6 210 (2.89%) Bicep
7 172 (2.37%) Java
8 171 (2.35%) Bash
9 112 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 110 (1.51%) TypeScript
11 106 (1.46%) T-SQL
12 75 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.43%) VBA
14 29 (0.40%) VB
15 26 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.34%) VBScript
17 24 (0.33%) X++
18 22 (0.30%) PL/SQL
19 18 (0.25%) R
20 17 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,568 (21.57%) Security Cleared
2 1,165 (16.03%) SC Cleared
3 643 (8.85%) Degree
4 376 (5.17%) Microsoft Certification
5 308 (4.24%) DV Cleared
6 275 (3.78%) Azure Certification
7 188 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.98%) CISSP
9 129 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
10 112 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.32%) PMP
12 91 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 77 (1.06%) AWS Certification
13 77 (1.06%) CISM
14 65 (0.89%) DBS Check
15 61 (0.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 59 (0.81%) A+ Certification
17 55 (0.76%) CCNP
18 46 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 45 (0.62%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (6.09%) Data Quality
2 245 (3.37%) QA
3 240 (3.30%) GDPR
4 210 (2.89%) SLA
5 209 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 205 (2.82%) PMO
7 183 (2.52%) NIST
8 122 (1.68%) Accessibility
9 92 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
10 88 (1.21%) NCSC
11 62 (0.85%) GRC
12 49 (0.67%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.63%) WCAG
14 40 (0.55%) PCI DSS
15 29 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 24 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
17 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.23%) NIST 800
20 16 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,353 (18.61%) Active Directory
2 270 (3.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 259 (3.56%) Docker
4 144 (1.98%) Hyper-V
5 129 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
6 107 (1.47%) Virtual Machines
7 71 (0.98%) vSphere
8 64 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
11 16 (0.22%) Firmware
11 16 (0.22%) VMware NSX
12 10 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
13 9 (0.12%) IAG
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
15 7 (0.096%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.096%) zsh
16 6 (0.083%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 6 (0.083%) XenApp
17 5 (0.069%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 583 (8.02%) Microsoft Intune
2 345 (4.75%) Kubernetes
3 296 (4.07%) SCCM
4 170 (2.34%) Ansible
5 141 (1.94%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.83%) Grafana
7 59 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
8 57 (0.78%) SCOM
9 50 (0.69%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.51%) Prometheus
11 36 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 30 (0.41%) QRadar
13 28 (0.39%) WSUS
14 24 (0.33%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
16 19 (0.26%) Puppet
17 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
18 16 (0.22%) Argo
19 15 (0.21%) WMI
20 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 551 (7.58%) ServiceNow
2 351 (4.83%) VMware
3 343 (4.72%) Oracle
4 296 (4.07%) SAP
5 260 (3.58%) Google
6 252 (3.47%) Databricks
7 241 (3.32%) Cisco
8 133 (1.83%) Splunk
9 129 (1.77%) Salesforce
10 108 (1.49%) Apple
11 104 (1.43%) CyberArk
12 94 (1.29%) Citrix
13 91 (1.25%) OpenAI
14 90 (1.24%) Okta
15 86 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
16 84 (1.16%) Foundry
17 75 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
18 68 (0.94%) Red Hat
19 58 (0.80%) IBM
20 57 (0.78%) Zscaler