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 28 July 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
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,348 4,536 5,197
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.01% 13.85% 12.95%
As % of the Vendors category 29.08% 29.27% 29.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,173 2,908 3,408
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.95% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £585 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £431 £450
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 374 368 387
10th Percentile £13.97 £13.92 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.70 £15.96 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.50 £22.41 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.05% +38.06% -27.96%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £29.38
90th Percentile £74.11 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.25 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year +4.91% +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 21,831 15,499 17,449
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.30% 47.33% 43.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,562 9,484 10,956
10th Percentile £313 £280 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £710 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,092 777 916
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.67 £13.28
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.08 £15.62
Median hourly rate £35.11 £25.15 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.60% -6.85% -35.41%
75th Percentile £65.33 £50.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.00 £22.32 £25.00
% change year-on-year +52.36% -10.74% -28.06%

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 28 July 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 5,521 £492 +3.58% 3,586
UK excluding London -2 3,377 £450 +4.41% 3,038
London -2 2,429 £510 +1.90% 1,106
Work from Home +3 1,654 £500 - 1,385
South East -1 849 £475 - 967
North of England -5 841 £465 +6.90% 755
Midlands -2 583 £450 +20.00% 495
North West 0 482 £450 +2.86% 379
South West -1 417 £475 +9.20% 311
West Midlands -3 414 £450 +20.00% 271
Yorkshire -5 335 £475 +7.04% 257
Scotland +7 317 £450 - 128
East of England 0 263 £375 -25.00% 338
East Midlands +2 161 £418 +15.17% 224
Wales +1 109 £391 +41.78% 98
Northern Ireland -3 31 £350 -6.04% 36
North East -40 30 £450 +32.35% 134
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 1

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
1 732 (11.53%) SharePoint
2 392 (6.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 141 (2.22%) Confluence
4 40 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.55%) Apache
6 27 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 17 (0.27%) CMS
9 15 (0.24%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.16%) SAS
12 9 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.095%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.079%) Camunda
15 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 593 (9.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 567 (8.93%) Microsoft Office
3 255 (4.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 161 (2.54%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.69%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.095%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) InDesign
12 2 (0.032%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.032%) Navisworks
12 2 (0.032%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 232 (3.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 28 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.19%) Primavera
10 9 (0.14%) Magento
10 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
11 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.11%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.095%) iTrent
13 6 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
13 6 (0.095%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,658 (41.87%) Azure
2 1,585 (24.97%) Microsoft 365
3 1,090 (17.17%) Power Platform
4 925 (14.57%) Entra ID
5 566 (8.92%) AWS
6 527 (8.30%) Dynamics 365
7 524 (8.25%) Azure DevOps
8 377 (5.94%) Power Automate
9 344 (5.42%) PowerApps
10 335 (5.28%) Microsoft Copilot
11 296 (4.66%) Microsoft Purview
12 259 (4.08%) GitHub
13 241 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 230 (3.62%) SaaS
15 208 (3.28%) GCP
16 163 (2.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 162 (2.55%) Azure Data Factory
18 151 (2.38%) Serverless
19 150 (2.36%) PaaS
20 145 (2.28%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 333 (5.25%) DNS
2 316 (4.98%) Firewall
3 246 (3.88%) VPN
4 203 (3.20%) DHCP
5 174 (2.74%) TCP/IP
6 150 (2.36%) WAN
6 150 (2.36%) Wi-Fi
7 143 (2.25%) LAN
8 142 (2.24%) Network Security
9 66 (1.04%) VLAN
10 46 (0.72%) Wireless
11 44 (0.69%) SAN
12 41 (0.65%) MPLS
13 38 (0.60%) SSL
13 38 (0.60%) Unified Communications
14 30 (0.47%) Internet
14 30 (0.47%) SD-WAN
14 30 (0.47%) VoIP
15 27 (0.43%) BGP
15 27 (0.43%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 692 (10.90%) Power BI
2 370 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 188 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
4 131 (2.06%) Data Lake
4 131 (2.06%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (1.98%) Metadata
6 124 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
7 73 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 72 (1.13%) Relational Database
9 63 (0.99%) MySQL
10 60 (0.95%) Power Query
11 50 (0.79%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 49 (0.77%) NoSQL
13 43 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 39 (0.61%) Star Schema
15 38 (0.60%) Tableau
16 34 (0.54%) Delta Lake
17 32 (0.50%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 25 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
18 25 (0.39%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 325 (5.12%) JIRA
2 191 (3.01%) Git
3 87 (1.37%) Jenkins
4 60 (0.95%) GitLab
5 51 (0.80%) Visual Studio
6 32 (0.50%) MSI
7 27 (0.43%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
9 16 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
10 15 (0.24%) ERwin
10 15 (0.24%) WebDriver
11 14 (0.22%) MLflow
12 13 (0.20%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
14 11 (0.17%) JUnit
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
15 10 (0.16%) Cucumber
General
1 2,132 (33.59%) Social Skills
2 1,283 (20.21%) Finance
3 767 (12.08%) Analytical Skills
4 615 (9.69%) Public Sector
5 311 (4.90%) Banking
6 280 (4.41%) Organisational Skills
7 216 (3.40%) Legal
8 172 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 123 (1.94%) Manufacturing
11 119 (1.87%) Retail
12 113 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.61%) Law
14 97 (1.53%) Marketing
15 86 (1.35%) Military
16 83 (1.31%) Local Government
17 75 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
18 71 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
19 60 (0.95%) Investment Banking
20 47 (0.74%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 740 (11.66%) Architect
2 666 (10.49%) Analyst
3 604 (9.51%) Developer
4 558 (8.79%) Senior
5 450 (7.09%) Lead
6 398 (6.27%) IT Support
7 388 (6.11%) Consultant
8 345 (5.43%) Support Engineer
9 245 (3.86%) Data Engineer
9 245 (3.86%) IT Engineer
10 231 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
11 223 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
12 218 (3.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 210 (3.31%) Project Manager
14 197 (3.10%) IT Support Engineer
15 183 (2.88%) Administrator
16 180 (2.84%) Business Analyst
17 153 (2.41%) Cloud Engineer
18 128 (2.02%) Security Engineer
19 109 (1.72%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (4.74%) .NET
2 236 (3.72%) REST
3 128 (2.02%) Microsoft Graph
4 123 (1.94%) JSON
5 110 (1.73%) OAuth
6 105 (1.65%) PySpark
7 91 (1.43%) OpenID
8 90 (1.42%) SAML
8 90 (1.42%) XML
9 88 (1.39%) Web Services
10 85 (1.34%) .NET Framework
11 79 (1.24%) React
12 72 (1.13%) RESTful
13 66 (1.04%) SOAP
14 65 (1.02%) HTML
14 65 (1.02%) LDAP
15 63 (0.99%) ARM Templates
16 62 (0.98%) Middleware
17 61 (0.96%) OAuth2
18 60 (0.95%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 415 (6.54%) Onboarding
2 299 (4.71%) Cloud Native
3 184 (2.90%) Product Ownership
4 181 (2.85%) Management Information System
5 151 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
6 133 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
7 123 (1.94%) Data Centre
7 123 (1.94%) Hybrid Cloud
8 121 (1.91%) AI Agents
8 121 (1.91%) PKI
9 114 (1.80%) Security Posture
10 97 (1.53%) Data Structures
11 89 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
12 81 (1.28%) Virtual Team
13 79 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
14 73 (1.15%) Low-Code
15 66 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
15 66 (1.04%) Driving Licence
16 60 (0.95%) Replication
17 55 (0.87%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,342 (21.14%) Windows
2 351 (5.53%) Windows Server
3 324 (5.10%) Windows 10
4 303 (4.77%) Linux
5 134 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 122 (1.92%) Android
7 112 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 57 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.69%) Unix
10 36 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
11 33 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 31 (0.49%) Windows 7
13 30 (0.47%) VMS
14 26 (0.41%) Ubuntu
15 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.20%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
20 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,109 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
2 1,003 (15.80%) DevOps
3 977 (15.39%) Agile
4 894 (14.08%) Migration
5 873 (13.75%) Stakeholder Management
6 825 (13.00%) CI/CD
7 724 (11.41%) AI
8 706 (11.12%) Business Intelligence
9 701 (11.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 695 (10.95%) Continuous Improvement
11 671 (10.57%) Analytics
12 591 (9.31%) ITIL
13 508 (8.00%) Customer Service
14 471 (7.42%) Data Modelling
15 456 (7.18%) Roadmaps
16 448 (7.06%) Cybersecurity
17 447 (7.04%) Infrastructure as Code
18 415 (6.54%) Decision-Making
19 408 (6.43%) Validation
20 404 (6.36%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 807 (12.71%) SQL
2 677 (10.66%) PowerShell
3 649 (10.22%) Python
4 316 (4.98%) C#
5 235 (3.70%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.07%) Java
7 177 (2.79%) Bicep
8 121 (1.91%) Bash
9 115 (1.81%) T-SQL
10 91 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 85 (1.34%) TypeScript
12 72 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
13 41 (0.65%) VBA
14 30 (0.47%) C++
15 28 (0.44%) PL/SQL
15 28 (0.44%) VB
16 19 (0.30%) X++
17 16 (0.25%) R
17 16 (0.25%) Scala
17 16 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,307 (20.59%) Security Cleared
2 992 (15.63%) SC Cleared
3 618 (9.74%) Degree
4 326 (5.14%) Microsoft Certification
5 250 (3.94%) DV Cleared
6 226 (3.56%) Azure Certification
7 149 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
8 121 (1.91%) CISSP
9 120 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
10 117 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
11 89 (1.40%) PMP
12 82 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 68 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 67 (1.06%) CISM
15 51 (0.80%) CCNP
16 49 (0.77%) DBS Check
16 49 (0.77%) Master's Degree
17 45 (0.71%) CCNA
18 40 (0.63%) A+ Certification
19 39 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 339 (5.34%) Data Quality
2 220 (3.47%) QA
3 218 (3.43%) GDPR
4 185 (2.91%) SLA
5 174 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 154 (2.43%) PMO
7 146 (2.30%) NIST
8 103 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 76 (1.20%) NCSC
11 41 (0.65%) GRC
12 33 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 33 (0.52%) WCAG
13 29 (0.46%) PCI DSS
14 26 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
16 15 (0.24%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.24%) SOC 2
17 14 (0.22%) GMP
18 13 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,207 (19.01%) Active Directory
2 232 (3.65%) Docker
3 212 (3.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.81%) Hyper-V
5 94 (1.48%) Virtual Desktop
6 90 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.90%) vSphere
8 56 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Firmware
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.13%) NFS
12 8 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 5 (0.079%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.063%) RACF
15 4 (0.063%) Snort
15 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 518 (8.16%) Microsoft Intune
2 446 (7.03%) Terraform
3 294 (4.63%) Kubernetes
4 230 (3.62%) SCCM
5 150 (2.36%) Ansible
6 113 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (0.99%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.80%) vCenter Server
9 48 (0.76%) Grafana
10 36 (0.57%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 35 (0.55%) SCOM
12 33 (0.52%) Prometheus
13 23 (0.36%) Puppet
14 20 (0.32%) QRadar
15 18 (0.28%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.28%) WSUS
16 16 (0.25%) Progress Chef
17 14 (0.22%) Argo
18 12 (0.19%) Avamar
18 12 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 442 (6.96%) ServiceNow
2 301 (4.74%) Oracle
2 301 (4.74%) VMware
3 253 (3.99%) SAP
4 223 (3.51%) Databricks
5 209 (3.29%) Cisco
6 201 (3.17%) Google
7 119 (1.87%) Salesforce
8 107 (1.69%) Citrix
9 98 (1.54%) Splunk
10 94 (1.48%) Apple
11 81 (1.28%) Foundry
12 78 (1.23%) OpenAI
13 76 (1.20%) CyberArk
14 67 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
14 67 (1.06%) Okta
15 59 (0.93%) Red Hat
16 54 (0.85%) BeyondTrust
16 54 (0.85%) Zscaler
17 48 (0.76%) Meraki