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 3 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
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,930 4,610 5,009
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.92% 14.18% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 30.90% 30.05% 29.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,474 2,961 3,177
10th Percentile £213 £210 £200
25th Percentile £375 £343 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £487
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -2.46% -2.60%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 485 372 308
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.00 £12.34
25th Percentile £15.24 £16.05 £14.84
Median hourly rate £19.41 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -13.02% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £35.00 £31.00 £36.32
90th Percentile £70.14 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -6.20% +24.80% -17.82%

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 22,429 15,339 16,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.83% 47.19% 44.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,832 9,388 10,318
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,168 783 734
10th Percentile £14.28 £14.69 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.20 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.07 £25.15 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.59% -13.28% -31.76%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £62.38
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.26 £28.00
% change year-on-year +31.70% -24.07% -29.29%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -2 5,997 £489 +2.95% 7,098
UK excluding London 0 3,677 £450 +2.86% 5,248
London 0 2,631 £513 +2.50% 2,978
Work from Home +4 1,804 £500 - 3,003
South East +2 964 £475 +2.70% 1,348
North of England -6 925 £450 +3.57% 1,223
Midlands -1 635 £439 +9.69% 843
North West -2 555 £450 +2.97% 649
South West +1 445 £470 +17.50% 640
West Midlands -3 427 £445 +5.33% 489
Scotland +7 357 £450 - 395
Yorkshire -6 337 £460 +4.55% 388
East of England -1 245 £350 -33.33% 520
East Midlands +1 199 £425 +18.38% 353
Wales 0 104 £413 +37.50% 144
North East -34 37 £400 +17.65% 207
Northern Ireland -2 34 £350 - 216
Channel Islands -1 4 £525 -27.59% 3

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
1 817 (11.79%) SharePoint
2 397 (5.73%) Microsoft Exchange
3 147 (2.12%) Confluence
4 40 (0.58%) Apache
4 40 (0.58%) Apache Spark
5 31 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
6 25 (0.36%) CMS
7 23 (0.33%) IIS
8 22 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 17 (0.25%) HCL Notes
10 15 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
12 10 (0.14%) SAS
13 7 (0.10%) Apache Superset
14 6 (0.087%) Camunda
14 6 (0.087%) Mendix
14 6 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.087%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.072%) OpenStack
Applications
1 702 (10.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 692 (9.99%) Microsoft Office
3 303 (4.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 191 (2.76%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.60%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.16%) AutoCAD
10 9 (0.13%) ProjectWise
11 8 (0.12%) Navisworks
11 8 (0.12%) Revit
12 4 (0.058%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.058%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.058%) Trello
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.043%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.043%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.029%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 251 (3.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.39%) Dynamics NAV
5 23 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.17%) Primavera
10 11 (0.16%) Magento
11 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 9 (0.13%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.12%) iTrent
12 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
12 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 8 (0.12%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
14 6 (0.087%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 2,905 (41.92%) Azure
2 1,776 (25.63%) Microsoft 365
3 1,228 (17.72%) Power Platform
4 1,072 (15.47%) Entra ID
5 653 (9.42%) AWS
6 614 (8.86%) Azure DevOps
7 604 (8.72%) Dynamics 365
8 414 (5.97%) Power Automate
9 394 (5.69%) Microsoft Copilot
10 372 (5.37%) PowerApps
11 303 (4.37%) Microsoft Purview
12 299 (4.31%) GitHub
13 264 (3.81%) OneDrive
14 247 (3.56%) GCP
15 245 (3.54%) SaaS
16 189 (2.73%) Azure Data Factory
17 188 (2.71%) Serverless
18 168 (2.42%) Azure Monitor
19 166 (2.40%) Azure Logic Apps
20 159 (2.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 387 (5.58%) DNS
2 341 (4.92%) Firewall
3 284 (4.10%) VPN
4 258 (3.72%) DHCP
5 190 (2.74%) TCP/IP
6 170 (2.45%) WAN
7 159 (2.29%) Network Security
8 151 (2.18%) LAN
9 144 (2.08%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.07%) VLAN
11 60 (0.87%) Wireless
12 47 (0.68%) SAN
13 39 (0.56%) SSL
14 38 (0.55%) MPLS
14 38 (0.55%) Skype
15 32 (0.46%) SD-WAN
15 32 (0.46%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.43%) BGP
16 30 (0.43%) Internet
17 28 (0.40%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 776 (11.20%) Power BI
2 407 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 179 (2.58%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (2.18%) Metadata
5 145 (2.09%) Data Lake
6 130 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
7 126 (1.82%) Azure SQL Database
8 77 (1.11%) Power Query
9 75 (1.08%) Relational Database
10 69 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 67 (0.97%) MySQL
12 53 (0.76%) NoSQL
13 48 (0.69%) Oracle Database
14 45 (0.65%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 42 (0.61%) Star Schema
16 40 (0.58%) Delta Lake
17 38 (0.55%) Tableau
18 29 (0.42%) MongoDB
19 28 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
20 22 (0.32%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 332 (4.79%) JIRA
2 226 (3.26%) Git
3 94 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.04%) GitLab
5 50 (0.72%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.63%) MSI
7 37 (0.53%) Selenium
8 18 (0.26%) Claude Code
8 18 (0.26%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) MLflow
10 16 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 12 (0.17%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.16%) Bitbucket
13 11 (0.16%) ERwin
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
13 11 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,488 (35.90%) Social Skills
2 1,411 (20.36%) Finance
3 893 (12.89%) Analytical Skills
4 635 (9.16%) Public Sector
5 383 (5.53%) Organisational Skills
6 331 (4.78%) Banking
7 223 (3.22%) Legal
8 198 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
9 169 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 158 (2.28%) Manufacturing
11 145 (2.09%) Retail
12 123 (1.77%) Telecoms
13 107 (1.54%) Marketing
14 105 (1.52%) Law
15 91 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
15 91 (1.31%) Local Government
16 84 (1.21%) Military
17 74 (1.07%) Aerospace
18 62 (0.89%) Investment Banking
18 62 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 821 (11.85%) Architect
2 713 (10.29%) Analyst
3 608 (8.77%) Developer
4 607 (8.76%) Senior
5 482 (6.96%) Lead
6 450 (6.49%) Consultant
7 435 (6.28%) IT Support
8 423 (6.10%) Support Engineer
9 289 (4.17%) IT Engineer
10 264 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
11 250 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 245 (3.54%) Azure Engineer
12 245 (3.54%) Data Engineer
13 244 (3.52%) Administrator
14 237 (3.42%) IT Support Engineer
15 226 (3.26%) Project Manager
16 181 (2.61%) Business Analyst
17 173 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
18 131 (1.89%) DevOps Engineer
19 126 (1.82%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 514 (7.42%) Terraform
2 340 (4.91%) .NET
3 262 (3.78%) REST
4 131 (1.89%) JSON
5 127 (1.83%) OAuth
6 113 (1.63%) PySpark
7 106 (1.53%) XML
8 102 (1.47%) Microsoft Graph
8 102 (1.47%) SAML
9 95 (1.37%) OpenID
10 86 (1.24%) .NET Framework
10 86 (1.24%) React
11 84 (1.21%) ARM Templates
12 77 (1.11%) LDAP
13 76 (1.10%) Web Services
14 73 (1.05%) RESTful
15 72 (1.04%) HTML
16 70 (1.01%) OAuth2
17 67 (0.97%) SailPoint
18 66 (0.95%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 538 (7.76%) Onboarding
2 313 (4.52%) Cloud Native
3 250 (3.61%) Management Information System
4 201 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
5 196 (2.83%) Product Ownership
6 152 (2.19%) Hybrid Cloud
7 145 (2.09%) PKI
8 141 (2.03%) AI Agents
8 141 (2.03%) Data Centre
9 131 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
10 123 (1.77%) Security Posture
11 93 (1.34%) Data Structures
12 92 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
14 81 (1.17%) Low-Code
15 80 (1.15%) CMDB
16 76 (1.10%) Driving Licence
17 75 (1.08%) Virtual Team
18 70 (1.01%) Replication
19 67 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 1,489 (21.49%) Windows
2 451 (6.51%) Windows Server
3 365 (5.27%) Windows 10
4 329 (4.75%) Linux
5 144 (2.08%) Mac OS
6 123 (1.77%) Android
7 114 (1.65%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.63%) Unix
10 41 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.52%) Windows Server 2016
13 32 (0.46%) VMS
14 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
15 20 (0.29%) CentOS
16 15 (0.22%) Solaris
17 12 (0.17%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,271 (18.34%) Problem-Solving
2 1,216 (17.55%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,093 (15.77%) DevOps
4 1,069 (15.43%) Agile
5 985 (14.21%) Migration
6 920 (13.28%) CI/CD
7 856 (12.35%) Continuous Improvement
8 806 (11.63%) AI
9 795 (11.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 778 (11.23%) Business Intelligence
11 716 (10.33%) Analytics
12 690 (9.96%) ITIL
13 633 (9.13%) Customer Service
14 543 (7.84%) Infrastructure as Code
15 534 (7.71%) Cybersecurity
16 515 (7.43%) Data Modelling
17 511 (7.37%) Roadmaps
18 478 (6.90%) Project Delivery
19 457 (6.59%) Decision-Making
20 454 (6.55%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 869 (12.54%) SQL
2 760 (10.97%) PowerShell
3 717 (10.35%) Python
4 333 (4.81%) C#
5 249 (3.59%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.89%) Bicep
7 180 (2.60%) Java
8 165 (2.38%) Bash
9 111 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 111 (1.60%) T-SQL
10 100 (1.44%) TypeScript
11 67 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
12 31 (0.45%) VBA
13 29 (0.42%) VB
14 27 (0.39%) VBScript
15 23 (0.33%) X++
16 20 (0.29%) C++
16 20 (0.29%) PL/SQL
17 19 (0.27%) R
18 16 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,495 (21.57%) Security Cleared
2 1,117 (16.12%) SC Cleared
3 637 (9.19%) Degree
4 364 (5.25%) Microsoft Certification
5 286 (4.13%) DV Cleared
6 253 (3.65%) Azure Certification
7 168 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
8 133 (1.92%) CISSP
9 128 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
10 124 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.39%) PMP
12 89 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 73 (1.05%) AWS Certification
13 73 (1.05%) CISM
14 59 (0.85%) DBS Check
15 58 (0.84%) A+ Certification
15 58 (0.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 56 (0.81%) CCNP
17 48 (0.69%) CCNA
18 47 (0.68%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 410 (5.92%) Data Quality
2 243 (3.51%) QA
3 233 (3.36%) GDPR
4 205 (2.96%) SLA
5 197 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 186 (2.68%) PMO
7 172 (2.48%) NIST
8 115 (1.66%) Accessibility
9 85 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
9 85 (1.23%) NCSC
10 55 (0.79%) GRC
11 42 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 41 (0.59%) WCAG
13 37 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 32 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 22 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
16 21 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 15 (0.22%) GMP
17 15 (0.22%) P3O
17 15 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,318 (19.02%) Active Directory
2 259 (3.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 256 (3.69%) Docker
4 147 (2.12%) Hyper-V
5 123 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
6 98 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (0.91%) vSphere
8 58 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.51%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.26%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.23%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.072%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.072%) XenApp
16 4 (0.058%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 555 (8.01%) Microsoft Intune
2 337 (4.86%) Kubernetes
3 281 (4.05%) SCCM
4 170 (2.45%) Ansible
5 126 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.87%) Grafana
7 58 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
8 53 (0.76%) SCOM
9 47 (0.68%) vCenter Server
10 40 (0.58%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.40%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
14 22 (0.32%) Progress Chef
15 20 (0.29%) Puppet
16 18 (0.26%) Failover Clustering
17 15 (0.22%) Argo
18 14 (0.20%) WMI
19 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 528 (7.62%) ServiceNow
2 337 (4.86%) VMware
3 334 (4.82%) Oracle
4 276 (3.98%) SAP
5 246 (3.55%) Databricks
6 245 (3.54%) Google
7 233 (3.36%) Cisco
8 130 (1.88%) Salesforce
9 118 (1.70%) Splunk
10 111 (1.60%) Apple
11 91 (1.31%) CyberArk
12 89 (1.28%) Citrix
13 80 (1.15%) Okta
14 79 (1.14%) OpenAI
15 74 (1.07%) BeyondTrust
15 74 (1.07%) Foundry
16 72 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
17 68 (0.98%) Red Hat
18 54 (0.78%) Adobe
19 53 (0.76%) Zscaler