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 30 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
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 9 7
Rank change year-on-year +1 -2 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,011 4,188 5,598
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.71% 13.69% 12.97%
As % of the Vendors category 28.62% 28.89% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,947 2,686 3,636
10th Percentile £213 £213 £194
25th Percentile £375 £348 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.89% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £583 £600
90th Percentile £675 £674 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £427 £450
% change year-on-year +5.39% -5.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 313 495
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.69
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -4.77% +38.95% -32.68%
75th Percentile £35.53 £31.00 £25.78
90th Percentile £65.00 £63.37 £59.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.75 £19.83 £15.93
% change year-on-year +4.64% +24.48% -20.35%

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 21,000 14,497 18,478
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.92% 47.38% 42.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,095 8,886 11,472
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,085 687 1,156
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.84 £12.28
25th Percentile £19.03 £17.30 £14.72
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £24.19
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +3.99% -40.35%
75th Percentile £62.00 £53.63 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.79 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.82 £23.50
% change year-on-year +42.45% -2.91% -27.24%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 0 5,240 £500 +5.26% 2,839
UK excluding London -1 3,185 £450 +5.39% 2,528
London -2 2,304 £510 -0.49% 811
Work from Home 0 1,535 £500 - 1,157
North of England -4 821 £460 +8.24% 602
South East -2 750 £475 +1.20% 809
Midlands -3 544 £450 +18.42% 399
North West -3 435 £450 +5.88% 314
South West -1 388 £475 +11.76% 296
West Midlands -4 381 £450 +16.13% 207
Yorkshire -3 364 £480 +6.67% 210
East of England 0 293 £350 -30.00% 284
Scotland +2 275 £465 +5.80% 110
East Midlands +1 156 £425 +13.33% 193
Wales +1 108 £370 +23.33% 82
Northern Ireland +1 31 £350 +7.69% 28
North East -37 26 £450 +30.43% 92
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14%

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
1 646 (10.75%) SharePoint
2 387 (6.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 129 (2.15%) Confluence
4 36 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 31 (0.52%) Apache
6 28 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.30%) CMS
7 18 (0.30%) IIS
8 15 (0.25%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.23%) Skype for Business
10 12 (0.20%) SAS
11 7 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
12 6 (0.100%) Camunda
12 6 (0.100%) Jupyter
12 6 (0.100%) Mendix
13 5 (0.083%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.083%) SharePoint 2013
14 4 (0.067%) Exchange Server 2010
14 4 (0.067%) nginx
14 4 (0.067%) Tomcat
Applications
1 562 (9.35%) Microsoft Office
2 551 (9.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 236 (3.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 122 (2.03%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.75%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.100%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.050%) Acrobat
11 3 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.050%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.050%) Trello
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.033%) InDesign
12 2 (0.033%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.033%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 209 (3.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.32%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.22%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.15%) Primavera
9 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
9 9 (0.15%) SAP MM
10 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
12 6 (0.100%) Dynamics GP
12 6 (0.100%) NEC Housing
12 6 (0.100%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.100%) Salesforce CRM
13 5 (0.083%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 2,523 (41.97%) Azure
2 1,494 (24.85%) Microsoft 365
3 1,030 (17.14%) Power Platform
4 837 (13.92%) Entra ID
5 532 (8.85%) AWS
6 477 (7.94%) Azure DevOps
7 466 (7.75%) Dynamics 365
8 342 (5.69%) Power Automate
9 321 (5.34%) Microsoft Purview
10 312 (5.19%) PowerApps
11 303 (5.04%) Microsoft Copilot
12 252 (4.19%) GitHub
13 234 (3.89%) OneDrive
14 223 (3.71%) SaaS
15 193 (3.21%) GCP
16 167 (2.78%) Azure Data Factory
17 161 (2.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 157 (2.61%) Serverless
19 144 (2.40%) Azure Logic Apps
20 142 (2.36%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 323 (5.37%) DNS
2 288 (4.79%) Firewall
3 226 (3.76%) VPN
4 195 (3.24%) DHCP
5 162 (2.70%) WAN
6 149 (2.48%) TCP/IP
7 141 (2.35%) Wi-Fi
8 138 (2.30%) LAN
9 128 (2.13%) Network Security
10 57 (0.95%) VLAN
11 50 (0.83%) Kerberos
12 48 (0.80%) SD-WAN
13 45 (0.75%) SAN
14 39 (0.65%) SSL
15 37 (0.62%) Wireless
16 34 (0.57%) Unified Communications
17 32 (0.53%) MPLS
17 32 (0.53%) VoIP
18 31 (0.52%) Internet
19 26 (0.43%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 656 (10.91%) Power BI
2 320 (5.32%) SQL Server
3 179 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
4 138 (2.30%) Data Lake
5 131 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
6 127 (2.11%) Metadata
7 123 (2.05%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.21%) Relational Database
8 73 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 61 (1.01%) MySQL
10 54 (0.90%) Power Query
11 50 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 45 (0.75%) NoSQL
13 44 (0.73%) Star Schema
14 41 (0.68%) Tableau
15 37 (0.62%) Delta Lake
16 36 (0.60%) Oracle Database
17 32 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 26 (0.43%) Big Data
19 24 (0.40%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 307 (5.11%) JIRA
2 178 (2.96%) Git
3 77 (1.28%) Jenkins
4 58 (0.96%) GitLab
5 39 (0.65%) Visual Studio
6 26 (0.43%) MSI
7 20 (0.33%) Selenium
8 19 (0.32%) Artifactory
9 17 (0.28%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.28%) ERwin
10 16 (0.27%) MLflow
11 15 (0.25%) JUnit
12 14 (0.23%) Maven
12 14 (0.23%) Postman
13 13 (0.22%) Bitbucket
13 13 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
14 12 (0.20%) Team Foundation Server
15 11 (0.18%) JMeter
15 11 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
16 10 (0.17%) WebDriver
General
1 1,970 (32.77%) Social Skills
2 1,209 (20.11%) Finance
3 668 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
4 543 (9.03%) Public Sector
5 313 (5.21%) Banking
6 256 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
7 237 (3.94%) Legal
8 158 (2.63%) Documentation Skills
9 116 (1.93%) Manufacturing
10 109 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 103 (1.71%) Retail
12 95 (1.58%) Law
13 92 (1.53%) Telecoms
14 84 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
15 81 (1.35%) Marketing
16 79 (1.31%) Military
17 67 (1.11%) Investment Banking
17 67 (1.11%) Local Government
18 62 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
19 46 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 746 (12.41%) Architect
2 635 (10.56%) Analyst
3 559 (9.30%) Developer
4 496 (8.25%) Senior
5 399 (6.64%) Lead
6 372 (6.19%) IT Support
7 356 (5.92%) Consultant
8 292 (4.86%) Support Engineer
9 234 (3.89%) Data Engineer
10 233 (3.88%) Solutions Architect
11 211 (3.51%) IT Engineer
12 206 (3.43%) Project Manager
13 204 (3.39%) Azure Engineer
14 186 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 178 (2.96%) Administrator
16 176 (2.93%) Business Analyst
17 164 (2.73%) IT Support Engineer
18 120 (2.00%) Cloud Engineer
18 120 (2.00%) Security Engineer
19 103 (1.71%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (4.51%) .NET
2 205 (3.41%) REST
3 140 (2.33%) Microsoft Graph
4 118 (1.96%) OAuth
5 107 (1.78%) JSON
6 106 (1.76%) PySpark
7 101 (1.68%) SAML
8 88 (1.46%) OpenID
9 83 (1.38%) LDAP
9 83 (1.38%) React
10 82 (1.36%) Web Services
11 65 (1.08%) XML
12 61 (1.01%) Node.js
12 61 (1.01%) SailPoint
13 59 (0.98%) OAuth2
13 59 (0.98%) RESTful
14 58 (0.96%) Middleware
15 57 (0.95%) HTML
16 55 (0.91%) .NET Framework
16 55 (0.91%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 338 (5.62%) Onboarding
2 276 (4.59%) Cloud Native
3 172 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 148 (2.46%) Management Information System
5 123 (2.05%) Data Centre
6 120 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
7 116 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
8 108 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
9 102 (1.70%) Security Posture
10 101 (1.68%) AI Agents
10 101 (1.68%) PKI
11 90 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
12 88 (1.46%) Data Structures
13 78 (1.30%) Replication
13 78 (1.30%) Virtual Team
14 77 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
15 68 (1.13%) Low-Code
16 60 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
17 51 (0.85%) Public Cloud
18 50 (0.83%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 1,269 (21.11%) Windows
2 317 (5.27%) Windows Server
3 315 (5.24%) Windows 10
4 261 (4.34%) Linux
5 126 (2.10%) Mac OS
6 110 (1.83%) Android
7 107 (1.78%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.70%) Windows 7
9 41 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 39 (0.65%) Unix
11 36 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
12 31 (0.52%) VMS
12 31 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
13 23 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.27%) Ubuntu
15 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
16 11 (0.18%) CentOS
16 11 (0.18%) SUSE
17 9 (0.15%) Solaris
18 6 (0.100%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,027 (17.09%) Problem-Solving
2 960 (15.97%) DevOps
3 893 (14.86%) Agile
4 842 (14.01%) Migration
5 784 (13.04%) CI/CD
6 712 (11.84%) Stakeholder Management
7 670 (11.15%) Business Intelligence
8 660 (10.98%) AI
9 638 (10.61%) Analytics
10 585 (9.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 581 (9.67%) Continuous Improvement
12 525 (8.73%) ITIL
13 445 (7.40%) Data Modelling
14 443 (7.37%) Customer Service
15 428 (7.12%) Roadmaps
16 408 (6.79%) Cybersecurity
17 390 (6.49%) Decision-Making
18 381 (6.34%) Infrastructure as Code
19 359 (5.97%) Validation
20 356 (5.92%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 776 (12.91%) SQL
2 662 (11.01%) PowerShell
3 624 (10.38%) Python
4 280 (4.66%) C#
5 214 (3.56%) JavaScript
6 184 (3.06%) Java
7 148 (2.46%) Bicep
8 109 (1.81%) T-SQL
9 85 (1.41%) TypeScript
10 82 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.31%) Bash
12 75 (1.25%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.60%) VBA
14 30 (0.50%) C++
15 28 (0.47%) PL/SQL
15 28 (0.47%) VB
16 18 (0.30%) VBScript
17 17 (0.28%) Scala
18 16 (0.27%) Shell Script
19 13 (0.22%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,155 (19.21%) Security Cleared
2 894 (14.87%) SC Cleared
3 583 (9.70%) Degree
4 291 (4.84%) Microsoft Certification
5 201 (3.34%) Azure Certification
6 198 (3.29%) DV Cleared
7 121 (2.01%) Computer Science Degree
8 113 (1.88%) CISSP
9 111 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
10 103 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
11 61 (1.01%) CISM
12 60 (1.00%) PMP
13 55 (0.91%) PMI Certification
14 54 (0.90%) AWS Certification
15 52 (0.87%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.80%) CCNP
17 43 (0.72%) MCSE
18 42 (0.70%) DBS Check
19 41 (0.68%) CCNA
20 38 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 318 (5.29%) Data Quality
2 233 (3.88%) GDPR
3 195 (3.24%) QA
4 167 (2.78%) SLA
5 155 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 130 (2.16%) NIST
7 114 (1.90%) PMO
8 82 (1.36%) Accessibility
9 81 (1.35%) Cyber Essentials
10 64 (1.06%) NCSC
11 37 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 36 (0.60%) GRC
13 32 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 31 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 23 (0.38%) WCAG
16 18 (0.30%) NIST 800
17 16 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 15 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
19 14 (0.23%) MiFID
20 12 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,140 (18.97%) Active Directory
2 225 (3.74%) Docker
3 201 (3.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.78%) Hyper-V
5 92 (1.53%) Virtual Desktop
6 86 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (1.00%) VMware ESXi
8 56 (0.93%) vSphere
9 33 (0.55%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.33%) Firmware
13 8 (0.13%) NFS
14 7 (0.12%) IAG
15 5 (0.083%) RACF
15 5 (0.083%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.067%) Snort
16 4 (0.067%) XenDesktop
17 3 (0.050%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 480 (7.99%) Microsoft Intune
2 380 (6.32%) Terraform
3 262 (4.36%) Kubernetes
4 205 (3.41%) SCCM
5 132 (2.20%) Ansible
6 131 (2.18%) Single Sign-On
7 72 (1.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 57 (0.95%) Jamf Pro
9 48 (0.80%) vCenter Server
10 36 (0.60%) Grafana
11 30 (0.50%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.50%) Prometheus
12 29 (0.48%) SCOM
13 19 (0.32%) Puppet
13 19 (0.32%) WSUS
14 16 (0.27%) QRadar
15 15 (0.25%) AirWatch
16 12 (0.20%) vMotion
17 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
17 11 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 364 (6.06%) ServiceNow
2 275 (4.57%) VMware
3 255 (4.24%) Oracle
4 247 (4.11%) SAP
5 213 (3.54%) Databricks
6 209 (3.48%) Cisco
7 177 (2.94%) Google
8 120 (2.00%) Salesforce
9 103 (1.71%) Citrix
10 95 (1.58%) Splunk
11 83 (1.38%) Apple
12 77 (1.28%) OpenAI
13 76 (1.26%) Foundry
14 72 (1.20%) Okta
15 66 (1.10%) CrowdStrike
15 66 (1.10%) CyberArk
16 50 (0.83%) HP
17 48 (0.80%) Red Hat
18 47 (0.78%) Palo Alto
19 44 (0.73%) Zscaler