Microsoft Contracts

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 8 December 2024, 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
8 Dec 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 8 7 11
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 4,729 5,967 9,487
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 13.48% 13.29% 12.36%
As % of the Vendors category 29.69% 29.33% 29.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,986 4,128 6,622
10th Percentile £203 £198 £190
25th Percentile £350 £325 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +7.53%
75th Percentile £588 £619 £612
90th Percentile £683 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - +12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 222 252 324
10th Percentile £15.22 £14.16 £12.00
25th Percentile £15.62 £16.40 £15.10
Median hourly rate £23.73 £23.00 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +15.00% +16.87%
75th Percentile £37.00 £46.18 £50.63
90th Percentile £65.00 £60.00 £65.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £22.00 £18.75
% change year-on-year -2.45% +17.33% +16.28%

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 15,930 20,342 31,841
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.42% 45.32% 41.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,455 12,948 21,116
10th Percentile £288 £252 £288
25th Percentile £413 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% +7.50%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £722 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £495
% change year-on-year - +1.01% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 493 692 792
10th Percentile £15.23 £15.33 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.50 £19.06 £16.54
Median hourly rate £29.77 £43.84 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.09% +75.35% +28.21%
75th Percentile £62.56 £63.75 £63.24
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.53 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.13 £41.65 £22.00
% change year-on-year -34.87% +89.32% +22.22%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Microsoft as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Microsoft.

Daily rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 8 December 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Microsoft.

Hourly rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 8 December 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Top 18 Contract 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 8 December 2024. 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 4,081 £475 -5.00% 3,130
UK excluding London +1 2,291 £450 - 2,256
London -1 1,978 £500 -4.76% 1,056
Work from Home -4 1,460 £496 -0.75% 2,548
South East -3 557 £475 +0.11% 526
North of England -2 478 £450 +5.88% 603
Midlands +1 376 £425 - 397
South West +2 327 £475 -9.52% 284
West Midlands +1 297 £445 +4.59% 254
North West 0 296 £450 +12.50% 364
Scotland +1 243 £405 -4.82% 133
East of England +1 235 £438 -12.50% 251
Yorkshire -2 139 £413 -8.33% 172
Wales 0 86 £248 -25.89% 94
East Midlands 0 78 £388 -13.89% 142
North East -2 46 £388 +112.33% 79
Northern Ireland -4 26 £238 +3.26% 30
Channel Islands -3 1 - -

Microsoft
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 530 (11.21%) SharePoint
2 434 (9.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 135 (2.85%) Confluence
4 32 (0.68%) CMS
5 30 (0.63%) Skype for Business
6 28 (0.59%) Apache Spark
7 20 (0.42%) IIS
8 18 (0.38%) Exchange Server 2013
9 17 (0.36%) Apache
10 16 (0.34%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.30%) Blackberry Enterprise Server
11 14 (0.30%) Umbraco
12 11 (0.23%) Tomcat
13 10 (0.21%) Drupal
13 10 (0.21%) IBM Notes
14 8 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
14 8 (0.17%) WordPress
15 7 (0.15%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.13%) BizTalk Server
16 6 (0.13%) Site Server
Applications
1 751 (15.88%) Microsoft Office
2 493 (10.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 238 (5.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 104 (2.20%) MS Visio
5 94 (1.99%) Microsoft Project
6 32 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.21%) Trello
8 9 (0.19%) Acrobat
9 7 (0.15%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.13%) InfoPath
11 5 (0.11%) Camtasia
12 3 (0.063%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 3 (0.063%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.042%) 1Password
13 2 (0.042%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.042%) Sketch
13 2 (0.042%) SPSS
13 2 (0.042%) UserZoom
14 1 (0.021%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 189 (4.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 16 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
3 8 (0.17%) Elite 3E
3 8 (0.17%) NetSuite
3 8 (0.17%) SAP HR
4 7 (0.15%) Oracle Payables
4 7 (0.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 6 (0.13%) assyst
5 6 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
5 6 (0.13%) Endur
5 6 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
5 6 (0.13%) SAP CO
5 6 (0.13%) SAP FI
5 6 (0.13%) SAP FI/CO
6 5 (0.11%) Kondor
6 5 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 5 (0.11%) Primavera
6 5 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
6 5 (0.11%) SAP MDG
6 5 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,706 (36.08%) Azure
2 1,145 (24.21%) Microsoft 365
3 622 (13.15%) Power Platform
4 456 (9.64%) Entra ID
5 407 (8.61%) Dynamics 365
6 373 (7.89%) AWS
7 282 (5.96%) PowerApps
8 275 (5.82%) Azure DevOps
9 260 (5.50%) Power Automate
10 164 (3.47%) OneDrive
11 139 (2.94%) Serverless
12 131 (2.77%) GitHub
13 117 (2.47%) SaaS
14 113 (2.39%) GCP
15 108 (2.28%) Azure Functions
16 104 (2.20%) Azure Data Factory
16 104 (2.20%) PaaS
17 98 (2.07%) IaaS
18 92 (1.95%) Azure Logic Apps
19 88 (1.86%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 298 (6.30%) Firewall
2 240 (5.08%) DNS
3 199 (4.21%) DHCP
4 198 (4.19%) VPN
5 128 (2.71%) TCP/IP
6 127 (2.69%) WAN
7 116 (2.45%) Network Security
8 109 (2.30%) LAN
9 96 (2.03%) Wi-Fi
10 63 (1.33%) SMTP
11 60 (1.27%) VLAN
12 57 (1.21%) Remote Desktop
13 55 (1.16%) Skype
14 50 (1.06%) Wireless
15 49 (1.04%) SAN
16 48 (1.02%) SSL
17 40 (0.85%) Internet
18 36 (0.76%) VoIP
19 35 (0.74%) HTTP
20 30 (0.63%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 434 (9.18%) SQL Server
2 390 (8.25%) Power BI
3 107 (2.26%) Azure SQL Database
4 98 (2.07%) Data Warehouse
5 94 (1.99%) Relational Database
6 93 (1.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 80 (1.69%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 68 (1.44%) Data Lake
9 65 (1.37%) NoSQL
10 61 (1.29%) PostgreSQL
11 58 (1.23%) Big Data
12 45 (0.95%) MySQL
13 44 (0.93%) MongoDB
13 44 (0.93%) Tableau
14 34 (0.72%) RDBMS
15 31 (0.66%) Power Query
16 27 (0.57%) Oracle Database
17 21 (0.44%) MS Access
18 19 (0.40%) Elasticsearch
18 19 (0.40%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 222 (4.69%) JIRA
2 123 (2.60%) Git
3 90 (1.90%) Visual Studio
4 64 (1.35%) GitLab
5 59 (1.25%) Jenkins
6 37 (0.78%) Postman
7 31 (0.66%) Eclipse
8 24 (0.51%) MSI
9 22 (0.47%) Team Foundation Server
10 19 (0.40%) Selenium
11 17 (0.36%) Bitbucket
12 16 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 14 (0.30%) TeamCity
14 13 (0.27%) Cypress.io
14 13 (0.27%) SonarQube
15 12 (0.25%) InstallShield
15 12 (0.25%) SpecFlow
16 10 (0.21%) Appium
16 10 (0.21%) Visual Studio Team System
17 9 (0.19%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,668 (35.27%) Social Skills
2 943 (19.94%) Finance
3 630 (13.32%) Analytical Skills
4 556 (11.76%) Public Sector
5 254 (5.37%) Banking
6 204 (4.31%) Marketing
7 174 (3.68%) Telecoms
8 157 (3.32%) Legal
9 140 (2.96%) Organisational Skills
10 134 (2.83%) Manufacturing
11 111 (2.35%) Presentation Skills
12 89 (1.88%) Electronics
13 76 (1.61%) Military
14 74 (1.56%) Retail
15 66 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 63 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
17 62 (1.31%) Law
17 62 (1.31%) Local Government
18 57 (1.21%) Back Office
19 46 (0.97%) German Language
Job Titles
1 630 (13.32%) Analyst
2 481 (10.17%) Developer
3 461 (9.75%) Architect
4 353 (7.46%) Senior
5 272 (5.75%) Support Engineer
6 270 (5.71%) Lead
7 249 (5.27%) Consultant
8 186 (3.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 183 (3.87%) Project Manager
10 165 (3.49%) IT Support
11 160 (3.38%) Azure Engineer
12 144 (3.05%) Service Analyst
13 130 (2.75%) Solutions Architect
14 129 (2.73%) Service Desk Analyst
15 113 (2.39%) Administrator
16 110 (2.33%) Business Analyst
17 103 (2.18%) IT Engineer
18 98 (2.07%) Desktop Support
18 98 (2.07%) Support Analyst
19 96 (2.03%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 321 (6.79%) .NET
2 143 (3.02%) HTML
3 136 (2.88%) CSS
4 97 (2.05%) Web Services
5 89 (1.88%) React
6 82 (1.73%) .NET Framework
7 78 (1.65%) ASP.NET
8 74 (1.56%) REST
9 72 (1.52%) AngularJS
10 69 (1.46%) .NET Core
11 67 (1.42%) RESTful
12 60 (1.27%) Kafka
13 59 (1.25%) Middleware
14 49 (1.04%) Node.js
15 48 (1.02%) SAML
15 48 (1.02%) XML
16 46 (0.97%) JSON
17 43 (0.91%) OAuth
18 39 (0.82%) LDAP
19 38 (0.80%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 176 (3.72%) Management Information System
2 139 (2.94%) Product Ownership
3 131 (2.77%) PKI
4 122 (2.58%) Data Centre
5 116 (2.45%) Onboarding
6 97 (2.05%) Public Cloud
6 97 (2.05%) Self-Motivation
7 93 (1.97%) Video Conferencing
8 79 (1.67%) Clustering
9 56 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
10 53 (1.12%) Cloud Native
11 51 (1.08%) Driving Licence
12 45 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
12 45 (0.95%) Security Posture
13 42 (0.89%) Mobile App
14 40 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
14 40 (0.85%) Virtual Team
15 39 (0.82%) Legacy Systems
15 39 (0.82%) NHS
16 35 (0.74%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,292 (27.32%) Windows
2 400 (8.46%) Windows 10
3 369 (7.80%) Windows Server
4 345 (7.30%) Linux
5 108 (2.28%) Android
6 106 (2.24%) Unix
7 104 (2.20%) Apple iOS
8 73 (1.54%) Windows Server 2012
9 68 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
10 51 (1.08%) Mac OS
11 49 (1.04%) Windows Server 2019
12 33 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 29 (0.61%) Windows 7
14 22 (0.47%) Ubuntu
15 20 (0.42%) CentOS
16 17 (0.36%) Windows Server 2008
17 15 (0.32%) Mac OS X
18 13 (0.27%) VMS
19 10 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
20 8 (0.17%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 938 (19.84%) Problem-Solving
2 840 (17.76%) Agile
3 572 (12.10%) DevOps
4 493 (10.43%) Customer Service
5 486 (10.28%) ITIL
6 470 (9.94%) Migration
7 458 (9.68%) Project Management
8 443 (9.37%) Business Intelligence
9 333 (7.04%) CI/CD
10 285 (6.03%) Stakeholder Management
11 262 (5.54%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 258 (5.46%) Analytics
13 253 (5.35%) Project Delivery
14 250 (5.29%) Cybersecurity
15 245 (5.18%) CRM
16 222 (4.69%) Service Management
17 221 (4.67%) Roadmaps
18 214 (4.53%) Change Management
19 204 (4.31%) Incident Management
20 203 (4.29%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 678 (14.34%) SQL
2 576 (12.18%) PowerShell
3 334 (7.06%) C#
4 333 (7.04%) Python
5 250 (5.29%) JavaScript
6 139 (2.94%) Java
7 77 (1.63%) T-SQL
8 73 (1.54%) C++
9 54 (1.14%) TypeScript
10 50 (1.06%) Bicep
11 48 (1.02%) R
12 42 (0.89%) Bash
12 42 (0.89%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.76%) VB.NET
14 33 (0.70%) VBA
15 31 (0.66%) Go
16 29 (0.61%) PL/SQL
17 26 (0.55%) PHP
18 25 (0.53%) VB
19 24 (0.51%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 921 (19.48%) Security Cleared
2 648 (13.70%) SC Cleared
3 584 (12.35%) Degree
4 280 (5.92%) Microsoft Certification
5 264 (5.58%) DV Cleared
6 151 (3.19%) Azure Certification
7 91 (1.92%) Computer Science Degree
8 81 (1.71%) CISSP
9 65 (1.37%) Cisco Certification
9 65 (1.37%) MCSE
10 59 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
11 52 (1.10%) CCNA
12 50 (1.06%) PMI Certification
12 50 (1.06%) PMP
13 44 (0.93%) AWS Certification
14 43 (0.91%) CISM
15 40 (0.85%) A+ Certification
16 36 (0.76%) Master's Degree
17 32 (0.68%) CCNP
18 29 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 139 (2.94%) QA
2 120 (2.54%) SLA
3 99 (2.09%) Data Quality
4 89 (1.88%) GDPR
5 74 (1.56%) PMO
6 70 (1.48%) NIST
7 69 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 47 (0.99%) Accessibility
9 40 (0.85%) PCI DSS
10 31 (0.66%) Cyber Essentials
11 20 (0.42%) NCSC
12 15 (0.32%) GRC
13 14 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 13 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
15 12 (0.25%) HIPAA
16 11 (0.23%) WCAG
17 10 (0.21%) HL7
17 10 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
18 9 (0.19%) NIST 800
19 7 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 1,037 (21.93%) Active Directory
2 259 (5.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 115 (2.43%) Hyper-V
4 101 (2.14%) Docker
5 97 (2.05%) VMware ESXi
6 83 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (1.29%) vSphere
8 60 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
9 59 (1.25%) Microsoft App-V
10 50 (1.06%) BitLocker
11 38 (0.80%) Terminal Services
12 28 (0.59%) XenApp
13 26 (0.55%) VMware NSX
13 26 (0.55%) XenDesktop
14 14 (0.30%) Firmware
14 14 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 6 (0.13%) KVM
16 6 (0.13%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
17 5 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 386 (8.16%) Microsoft Intune
2 312 (6.60%) SCCM
3 189 (4.00%) Kubernetes
4 175 (3.70%) Terraform
5 108 (2.28%) Ansible
6 80 (1.69%) vCenter Server
7 50 (1.06%) WSUS
8 49 (1.04%) Single Sign-On
9 46 (0.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.82%) SCOM
11 34 (0.72%) Grafana
11 34 (0.72%) Puppet
11 34 (0.72%) vMotion
12 25 (0.53%) Kibana
12 25 (0.53%) Nessus
13 22 (0.47%) Prometheus
14 21 (0.44%) Progress Chef
15 20 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
16 19 (0.40%) Microsoft Clustering
17 15 (0.32%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 410 (8.67%) VMware
2 253 (5.35%) SAP
3 246 (5.20%) Oracle
4 207 (4.38%) ServiceNow
5 170 (3.59%) Citrix
6 159 (3.36%) Cisco
7 128 (2.71%) Salesforce
8 119 (2.52%) Apple
9 118 (2.50%) Google
10 81 (1.71%) Databricks
11 66 (1.40%) Palo Alto
12 58 (1.23%) Dell
13 56 (1.18%) HP
13 56 (1.18%) Red Hat
14 49 (1.04%) Splunk
15 48 (1.02%) Adobe
16 42 (0.89%) CyberArk
17 40 (0.85%) IBM
18 36 (0.76%) Qualys
19 33 (0.70%) Meraki