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 11 May 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
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,542 3,926 5,586
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.64% 13.35% 12.99%
As % of the Vendors category 28.10% 28.09% 30.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,722 2,596 3,681
10th Percentile £212 £208 £189
25th Percentile £375 £344 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.95% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £583 £582 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £459
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.51% -0.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 357 240 460
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.15 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.12 £13.00
Median hourly rate £20.09 £18.85 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.58% +25.67% -32.31%
75th Percentile £30.00 £28.99 £24.81
90th Percentile £65.00 £59.43 £55.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.09 £18.51 £15.00
% change year-on-year +8.54% +23.40% -21.05%

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 19,724 13,978 18,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.42% 47.54% 42.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,511 8,753 11,339
10th Percentile £313 £281 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £514 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.72% -0.19% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £630
90th Percentile £703 £716 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -1.01% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 998 569 1,095
10th Percentile £15.29 £14.84 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.50 £14.48
Median hourly rate £32.36 £25.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.91% +13.33% -48.43%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.81 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.05 £23.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +21.93% +6.98% -45.71%

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 11 May 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 11 May 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 11 May 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 4,865 £496 +4.34% 3,011
UK excluding London 0 2,879 £450 +5.88% 2,605
London -2 2,141 £515 +3.00% 915
Work from Home 0 1,399 £500 - 1,217
North of England 0 767 £450 +8.89% 617
South East -2 660 £475 -1.04% 862
Midlands -6 500 £450 +12.50% 380
North West -2 411 £420 -1.18% 322
West Midlands -6 348 £450 +12.50% 211
Yorkshire 0 332 £465 +16.25% 211
South West -2 330 £450 -3.23% 244
East of England 0 328 £388 -13.89% 295
Scotland +4 203 £449 +8.07% 149
East Midlands -2 146 £400 -0.12% 169
Wales +2 90 £335 +11.67% 90
North East -23 29 £450 +32.35% 89
Northern Ireland -2 20 £450 +38.46% 32
Channel Islands -3 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
1 596 (10.75%) SharePoint
2 376 (6.78%) Microsoft Exchange
3 105 (1.89%) Confluence
4 35 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 22 (0.40%) Apache
5 22 (0.40%) Apache Airflow
6 20 (0.36%) HCL Notes
7 18 (0.32%) CMS
8 14 (0.25%) SAS
9 12 (0.22%) IIS
9 12 (0.22%) Mendix
9 12 (0.22%) Skype for Business
10 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
10 6 (0.11%) Camunda
10 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
11 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
12 4 (0.072%) Appian
12 4 (0.072%) Drupal
12 4 (0.072%) MS Project Server
12 4 (0.072%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 557 (10.05%) Microsoft Office
2 494 (8.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 223 (4.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 125 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
5 94 (1.70%) MS Visio
6 67 (1.21%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.14%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
14 2 (0.036%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 194 (3.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 20 (0.36%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
6 12 (0.22%) Teamcenter
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
8 10 (0.18%) Maximo
8 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
9 9 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
11 6 (0.11%) Shopify
12 5 (0.090%) assyst
12 5 (0.090%) SAP Business One
12 5 (0.090%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 2,338 (42.19%) Azure
2 1,428 (25.77%) Microsoft 365
3 938 (16.93%) Power Platform
4 710 (12.81%) Entra ID
5 456 (8.23%) Dynamics 365
6 449 (8.10%) AWS
7 433 (7.81%) Azure DevOps
8 324 (5.85%) Power Automate
9 288 (5.20%) PowerApps
10 284 (5.12%) Microsoft Purview
11 262 (4.73%) GitHub
12 234 (4.22%) Microsoft Copilot
13 211 (3.81%) OneDrive
14 195 (3.52%) Azure Data Factory
15 189 (3.41%) SaaS
16 177 (3.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 169 (3.05%) GCP
18 160 (2.89%) Serverless
19 146 (2.63%) PaaS
20 137 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 282 (5.09%) DNS
2 276 (4.98%) Firewall
3 201 (3.63%) VPN
4 166 (3.00%) DHCP
5 134 (2.42%) Wi-Fi
6 133 (2.40%) WAN
7 113 (2.04%) LAN
8 108 (1.95%) Network Security
9 105 (1.89%) TCP/IP
10 57 (1.03%) Kerberos
11 52 (0.94%) VLAN
12 44 (0.79%) SD-WAN
13 36 (0.65%) SAN
14 35 (0.63%) SSL
15 34 (0.61%) Wireless
16 29 (0.52%) HTTP
17 28 (0.51%) Skype
18 26 (0.47%) MPLS
18 26 (0.47%) Unified Communications
19 24 (0.43%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 575 (10.38%) Power BI
2 264 (4.76%) SQL Server
3 175 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
4 156 (2.81%) Data Lake
5 124 (2.24%) Azure SQL Database
6 112 (2.02%) Metadata
7 99 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
8 71 (1.28%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 48 (0.87%) Power Query
11 45 (0.81%) NoSQL
12 44 (0.79%) Tableau
13 42 (0.76%) Oracle Database
13 42 (0.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 41 (0.74%) MySQL
14 41 (0.74%) Star Schema
15 40 (0.72%) Delta Lake
16 29 (0.52%) Spark SQL
17 27 (0.49%) Snowflake Schema
18 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 253 (4.57%) JIRA
2 167 (3.01%) Git
3 66 (1.19%) Jenkins
4 62 (1.12%) GitLab
5 26 (0.47%) Artifactory
5 26 (0.47%) Visual Studio
6 23 (0.42%) Eclipse
7 20 (0.36%) MSI
8 17 (0.31%) Selenium
9 16 (0.29%) JMeter
9 16 (0.29%) Postman
10 15 (0.27%) MLflow
11 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
12 13 (0.23%) ERwin
13 12 (0.22%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.22%) Maven
14 10 (0.18%) Cucumber
14 10 (0.18%) InstallShield
14 10 (0.18%) JUnit
15 9 (0.16%) Android Studio
General
1 1,858 (33.53%) Social Skills
2 1,107 (19.97%) Finance
3 637 (11.49%) Analytical Skills
4 517 (9.33%) Public Sector
5 284 (5.12%) Banking
6 249 (4.49%) Organisational Skills
7 246 (4.44%) Legal
8 138 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
9 106 (1.91%) Manufacturing
10 97 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
11 95 (1.71%) Law
12 87 (1.57%) Telecoms
13 82 (1.48%) Marketing
14 81 (1.46%) Retail
15 79 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 74 (1.34%) Military
17 65 (1.17%) Local Government
18 53 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
18 53 (0.96%) Investment Banking
19 43 (0.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 690 (12.45%) Architect
2 594 (10.72%) Analyst
3 514 (9.27%) Developer
4 466 (8.41%) Senior
5 363 (6.55%) IT Support
6 332 (5.99%) Lead
7 291 (5.25%) Consultant
8 259 (4.67%) Support Engineer
9 224 (4.04%) Data Engineer
10 206 (3.72%) Azure Engineer
11 188 (3.39%) Project Manager
11 188 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
12 183 (3.30%) IT Engineer
13 177 (3.19%) Business Analyst
14 167 (3.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 165 (2.98%) Administrator
16 136 (2.45%) IT Support Engineer
17 113 (2.04%) Security Engineer
18 107 (1.93%) DevOps Engineer
19 104 (1.88%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (4.35%) .NET
2 161 (2.91%) REST
3 126 (2.27%) Microsoft Graph
4 109 (1.97%) OAuth
5 101 (1.82%) PySpark
6 97 (1.75%) SAML
7 86 (1.55%) JSON
8 79 (1.43%) OpenID
8 79 (1.43%) React
9 74 (1.34%) LDAP
10 70 (1.26%) Web Services
11 64 (1.15%) Middleware
12 55 (0.99%) HTML
13 53 (0.96%) AngularJS
13 53 (0.96%) ARM Templates
14 51 (0.92%) Node.js
14 51 (0.92%) OAuth2
15 50 (0.90%) Kafka
16 48 (0.87%) CSS
16 48 (0.87%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 299 (5.40%) Onboarding
2 223 (4.02%) Cloud Native
3 176 (3.18%) Product Ownership
4 125 (2.26%) Management Information System
5 105 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
6 97 (1.75%) Data Centre
7 91 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
8 86 (1.55%) Hybrid Cloud
9 81 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
10 80 (1.44%) AI Agents
10 80 (1.44%) PKI
10 80 (1.44%) Security Posture
11 75 (1.35%) Replication
12 71 (1.28%) Data Structures
13 70 (1.26%) Low-Code
14 67 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
15 60 (1.08%) Virtual Team
16 48 (0.87%) Driving Licence
17 46 (0.83%) Operational Technology
18 44 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,196 (21.58%) Windows
2 319 (5.76%) Windows 10
3 271 (4.89%) Windows Server
4 260 (4.69%) Linux
5 104 (1.88%) Android
6 103 (1.86%) Apple iOS
7 96 (1.73%) Mac OS
8 42 (0.76%) Unix
8 42 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
9 41 (0.74%) Windows 7
10 39 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 30 (0.54%) VMS
12 28 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
15 10 (0.18%) Ubuntu
16 9 (0.16%) CentOS
17 5 (0.090%) AIX
17 5 (0.090%) Solaris
18 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 951 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
2 881 (15.90%) DevOps
3 859 (15.50%) Agile
4 781 (14.09%) Migration
5 760 (13.71%) CI/CD
6 634 (11.44%) Business Intelligence
7 604 (10.90%) Analytics
8 544 (9.82%) AI
9 540 (9.74%) Stakeholder Management
10 492 (8.88%) Continuous Improvement
11 460 (8.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 445 (8.03%) ITIL
13 433 (7.81%) Customer Service
14 409 (7.38%) Data Modelling
15 371 (6.69%) Roadmaps
16 350 (6.32%) Cybersecurity
17 341 (6.15%) Decision-Making
18 339 (6.12%) Infrastructure as Code
19 317 (5.72%) Project Delivery
20 308 (5.56%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 716 (12.92%) SQL
2 631 (11.39%) PowerShell
3 594 (10.72%) Python
4 259 (4.67%) C#
5 200 (3.61%) JavaScript
6 178 (3.21%) Java
7 124 (2.24%) Bicep
8 88 (1.59%) T-SQL
9 85 (1.53%) Bash
9 85 (1.53%) Kusto Query Language
10 75 (1.35%) TypeScript
11 72 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 32 (0.58%) PL/SQL
13 30 (0.54%) C++
14 29 (0.52%) VBA
15 22 (0.40%) VB
16 19 (0.34%) Scala
17 18 (0.32%) R
18 16 (0.29%) Shell Script
19 13 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,064 (19.20%) Security Cleared
2 831 (14.99%) SC Cleared
3 540 (9.74%) Degree
4 265 (4.78%) Microsoft Certification
5 182 (3.28%) DV Cleared
6 180 (3.25%) Azure Certification
7 124 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 98 (1.77%) CISSP
9 90 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
10 73 (1.32%) Cisco Certification
11 60 (1.08%) PMI Certification
12 59 (1.06%) PMP
13 55 (0.99%) Master's Degree
14 54 (0.97%) CISM
15 41 (0.74%) AWS Certification
16 37 (0.67%) MCSE
17 32 (0.58%) DBS Check
18 30 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
19 29 (0.52%) CCNP
19 29 (0.52%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 272 (4.91%) Data Quality
2 221 (3.99%) GDPR
3 188 (3.39%) QA
4 156 (2.81%) SLA
5 139 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 112 (2.02%) NIST
7 106 (1.91%) PMO
8 71 (1.28%) Accessibility
9 70 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 47 (0.85%) NCSC
11 38 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.61%) GRC
13 26 (0.47%) PCI DSS
14 22 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 20 (0.36%) MiFID
16 18 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
18 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
18 12 (0.22%) WCAG
19 11 (0.20%) GxP
System Software
1 1,059 (19.11%) Active Directory
2 228 (4.11%) Docker
3 192 (3.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 97 (1.75%) Hyper-V
5 77 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
6 74 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
7 53 (0.96%) VMware ESXi
8 40 (0.72%) vSphere
9 24 (0.43%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.42%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 16 (0.29%) Firmware
13 7 (0.13%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.090%) IAG
15 5 (0.090%) NFS
15 5 (0.090%) Snort
15 5 (0.090%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.072%) KVM
16 4 (0.072%) Squid
Systems Management
1 420 (7.58%) Microsoft Intune
2 358 (6.46%) Terraform
3 256 (4.62%) Kubernetes
4 200 (3.61%) SCCM
5 131 (2.36%) Ansible
6 117 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
7 76 (1.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.79%) vCenter Server
9 39 (0.70%) Jamf Pro
10 36 (0.65%) Grafana
11 32 (0.58%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.42%) SCOM
13 21 (0.38%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.32%) Puppet
15 16 (0.29%) AirWatch
15 16 (0.29%) WSUS
16 14 (0.25%) QRadar
17 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
18 11 (0.20%) CASB
18 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 261 (4.71%) VMware
2 258 (4.66%) ServiceNow
3 217 (3.92%) SAP
4 214 (3.86%) Databricks
5 205 (3.70%) Oracle
6 169 (3.05%) Cisco
7 152 (2.74%) Google
8 118 (2.13%) Citrix
9 97 (1.75%) Salesforce
10 89 (1.61%) Splunk
11 85 (1.53%) OpenAI
12 69 (1.25%) Foundry
13 68 (1.23%) Apple
14 54 (0.97%) CrowdStrike
15 48 (0.87%) HP
16 47 (0.85%) Palo Alto
17 45 (0.81%) Adobe
17 45 (0.81%) Okta
18 43 (0.78%) Informatica
19 42 (0.76%) CyberArk