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 17 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
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,219 4,714 5,001
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.21% 14.31% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 31.55% 30.28% 29.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,616 3,049 3,122
10th Percentile £213 £206 £200
25th Percentile £372 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £686 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 381 282
10th Percentile £13.36 £14.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.82 £16.50 £15.29
Median hourly rate £19.00 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.86% +31.26% -24.44%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.40 £44.39
90th Percentile £68.70 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £20.90 £16.23
% change year-on-year -11.47% +28.76% -18.85%

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 22,879 15,566 16,911
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.86% 47.26% 44.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,025 9,545 10,148
10th Percentile £313 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £614 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,259 789 677
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.69 £14.26
25th Percentile £16.72 £17.44 £15.62
Median hourly rate £27.30 £25.15 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.55% -16.17% -31.56%
75th Percentile £63.75 £43.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £21.19 £30.00
% change year-on-year +23.36% -29.37% -27.71%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -1 6,249 £488 +2.63% 9,449
UK excluding London 0 3,877 £450 +3.45% 6,525
London 0 2,703 £515 +3.00% 4,035
Work from Home +5 1,837 £500 - 3,931
South East 0 1,009 £475 +5.56% 1,675
North of England -5 968 £460 +6.36% 1,610
Midlands 0 667 £425 +4.94% 1,065
North West -2 570 £450 +2.97% 848
South West -1 461 £470 +10.59% 668
West Midlands -2 455 £430 +1.18% 622
Scotland +6 380 £450 - 522
Yorkshire -7 354 £475 +8.88% 546
East of England 0 277 £335 -36.19% 633
East Midlands +2 206 £425 +15.80% 442
Wales +2 109 £413 +37.50% 186
North East -25 48 £426 +25.15% 242
Northern Ireland -1 37 £350 - 251
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 6

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
1 873 (12.09%) SharePoint
2 407 (5.64%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.06%) Confluence
4 38 (0.53%) Apache
4 38 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 28 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
5 28 (0.39%) CMS
6 24 (0.33%) IIS
7 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
8 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
8 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
9 15 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 10 (0.14%) nginx
11 9 (0.12%) SAS
12 7 (0.097%) Apache Superset
13 6 (0.083%) Mendix
13 6 (0.083%) SharePoint 2013
13 6 (0.083%) ThingWorx
14 5 (0.069%) Exchange Server 2010
14 5 (0.069%) OpenStack
Applications
1 757 (10.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 741 (10.26%) Microsoft Office
3 311 (4.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 193 (2.67%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.58%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 29 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 10 (0.14%) Navisworks
10 10 (0.14%) ProjectWise
11 9 (0.12%) Revit
12 5 (0.069%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.069%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.069%) Trello
13 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
14 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.028%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 264 (3.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 84 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.37%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 16 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.18%) Primavera
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.14%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
12 8 (0.11%) iTrent
12 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.097%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.097%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.097%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.083%) Maximo
14 6 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,988 (41.39%) Azure
2 1,836 (25.43%) Microsoft 365
3 1,275 (17.66%) Power Platform
4 1,122 (15.54%) Entra ID
5 668 (9.25%) AWS
6 612 (8.48%) Dynamics 365
7 606 (8.39%) Azure DevOps
8 437 (6.05%) Power Automate
9 432 (5.98%) Microsoft Copilot
10 385 (5.33%) PowerApps
11 310 (4.29%) Microsoft Purview
12 293 (4.06%) GitHub
13 272 (3.77%) OneDrive
14 259 (3.59%) GCP
15 247 (3.42%) SaaS
16 197 (2.73%) Serverless
17 185 (2.56%) Azure Data Factory
18 178 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
19 167 (2.31%) Azure Logic Apps
20 160 (2.22%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 401 (5.55%) DNS
2 342 (4.74%) Firewall
3 292 (4.04%) VPN
4 266 (3.68%) DHCP
5 208 (2.88%) TCP/IP
6 164 (2.27%) Network Security
7 161 (2.23%) WAN
8 144 (1.99%) LAN
9 141 (1.95%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.04%) VLAN
11 66 (0.91%) Wireless
12 49 (0.68%) SAN
13 41 (0.57%) SSL
14 39 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.51%) MPLS
16 33 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 30 (0.42%) BGP
17 30 (0.42%) Internet
17 30 (0.42%) Kerberos
18 27 (0.37%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 780 (10.80%) Power BI
2 414 (5.73%) SQL Server
3 174 (2.41%) Data Warehouse
4 157 (2.17%) Metadata
5 146 (2.02%) Data Lake
6 134 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
7 114 (1.58%) Azure SQL Database
8 87 (1.21%) Power Query
9 78 (1.08%) Relational Database
10 71 (0.98%) MySQL
11 66 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.65%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.65%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 41 (0.57%) Star Schema
15 39 (0.54%) Delta Lake
16 36 (0.50%) Tableau
17 31 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
18 30 (0.42%) MongoDB
19 21 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 344 (4.77%) JIRA
2 239 (3.31%) Git
3 95 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 71 (0.98%) GitLab
5 59 (0.82%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.61%) MSI
7 36 (0.50%) Selenium
8 23 (0.32%) Claude Code
9 22 (0.30%) Postman
10 17 (0.24%) Cypress.io
11 16 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
12 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
13 13 (0.18%) Cucumber
14 12 (0.17%) MLflow
14 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 12 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
15 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
16 10 (0.14%) Artifactory
16 10 (0.14%) Bitbucket
General
1 2,670 (36.99%) Social Skills
2 1,429 (19.79%) Finance
3 928 (12.85%) Analytical Skills
4 641 (8.88%) Public Sector
5 430 (5.96%) Organisational Skills
6 320 (4.43%) Banking
7 230 (3.19%) Legal
8 206 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 186 (2.58%) Manufacturing
10 176 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 154 (2.13%) Retail
12 125 (1.73%) Telecoms
13 111 (1.54%) Marketing
14 99 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
15 98 (1.36%) Law
16 92 (1.27%) Military
17 89 (1.23%) Aerospace
18 88 (1.22%) Local Government
19 68 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
20 60 (0.83%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 841 (11.65%) Architect
2 728 (10.08%) Analyst
3 634 (8.78%) Developer
4 624 (8.64%) Senior
5 487 (6.75%) Lead
6 464 (6.43%) Consultant
7 450 (6.23%) IT Support
8 433 (6.00%) Support Engineer
9 297 (4.11%) Administrator
10 294 (4.07%) IT Engineer
11 282 (3.91%) Solutions Architect
12 252 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 250 (3.46%) Azure Engineer
14 243 (3.37%) Data Engineer
15 242 (3.35%) IT Support Engineer
16 232 (3.21%) Project Manager
17 190 (2.63%) Business Analyst
18 181 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
19 139 (1.93%) DevOps Engineer
20 134 (1.86%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 533 (7.38%) Terraform
2 343 (4.75%) .NET
3 275 (3.81%) REST
4 141 (1.95%) JSON
5 136 (1.88%) OAuth
6 111 (1.54%) PySpark
6 111 (1.54%) XML
7 107 (1.48%) SAML
8 104 (1.44%) OpenID
9 102 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
10 94 (1.30%) ARM Templates
11 91 (1.26%) React
12 88 (1.22%) Web Services
13 85 (1.18%) .NET Framework
14 79 (1.09%) LDAP
15 77 (1.07%) OAuth2
16 75 (1.04%) SailPoint
17 74 (1.03%) RESTful
18 72 (1.00%) HTML
19 66 (0.91%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 574 (7.95%) Onboarding
2 309 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 281 (3.89%) Management Information System
4 218 (3.02%) Enterprise Software
5 212 (2.94%) Product Ownership
6 158 (2.19%) Hybrid Cloud
7 154 (2.13%) AI Agents
7 154 (2.13%) PKI
8 146 (2.02%) Data Centre
9 136 (1.88%) Security Posture
10 135 (1.87%) Legacy Systems
11 95 (1.32%) Data Structures
12 94 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
14 88 (1.22%) CMDB
15 84 (1.16%) Driving Licence
16 81 (1.12%) Virtual Team
17 80 (1.11%) Low-Code
18 73 (1.01%) Replication
19 70 (0.97%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,548 (21.44%) Windows
2 463 (6.41%) Windows Server
3 388 (5.37%) Windows 10
4 343 (4.75%) Linux
5 152 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 135 (1.87%) Android
7 128 (1.77%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 49 (0.68%) Unix
10 42 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.53%) Ubuntu
13 36 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
14 31 (0.43%) VMS
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 21 (0.29%) Solaris
16 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.17%) SUSE
18 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.097%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,353 (18.74%) Problem-Solving
2 1,332 (18.45%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,107 (15.33%) DevOps
4 1,097 (15.20%) Agile
5 984 (13.63%) Migration
6 949 (13.15%) CI/CD
7 908 (12.58%) Continuous Improvement
8 852 (11.80%) AI
9 823 (11.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 784 (10.86%) Business Intelligence
11 747 (10.35%) Analytics
12 704 (9.75%) ITIL
13 679 (9.41%) Customer Service
14 576 (7.98%) Cybersecurity
15 569 (7.88%) Infrastructure as Code
16 550 (7.62%) Roadmaps
17 522 (7.23%) Data Modelling
18 500 (6.93%) Project Delivery
19 486 (6.73%) Decision-Making
20 464 (6.43%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 864 (11.97%) SQL
2 806 (11.16%) PowerShell
3 736 (10.20%) Python
4 349 (4.83%) C#
5 267 (3.70%) JavaScript
6 209 (2.90%) Bicep
7 175 (2.42%) Java
8 170 (2.35%) Bash
9 111 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 108 (1.50%) T-SQL
10 108 (1.50%) TypeScript
11 74 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
12 31 (0.43%) VBA
13 29 (0.40%) VB
14 27 (0.37%) C++
15 25 (0.35%) VBScript
16 24 (0.33%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.32%) X++
18 18 (0.25%) R
19 17 (0.24%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,562 (21.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,160 (16.07%) SC Cleared
3 641 (8.88%) Degree
4 379 (5.25%) Microsoft Certification
5 305 (4.22%) DV Cleared
6 277 (3.84%) Azure Certification
7 187 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 145 (2.01%) CISSP
9 132 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
10 116 (1.61%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.33%) PMP
12 90 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 78 (1.08%) CISM
14 73 (1.01%) AWS Certification
15 60 (0.83%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 58 (0.80%) A+ Certification
18 56 (0.78%) CCNP
19 47 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 47 (0.65%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 436 (6.04%) Data Quality
2 240 (3.32%) QA
3 237 (3.28%) GDPR
4 206 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 203 (2.81%) SLA
6 202 (2.80%) PMO
7 180 (2.49%) NIST
8 120 (1.66%) Accessibility
9 95 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 90 (1.25%) NCSC
11 60 (0.83%) GRC
12 50 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 45 (0.62%) WCAG
14 38 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 30 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 22 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.24%) NIST 800
20 16 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,348 (18.67%) Active Directory
2 269 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 255 (3.53%) Docker
4 144 (1.99%) Hyper-V
5 129 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
6 106 (1.47%) Virtual Machines
7 70 (0.97%) vSphere
8 63 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 18 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.24%) VMware NSX
12 15 (0.21%) Firmware
13 9 (0.12%) IAG
13 9 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
15 7 (0.097%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.097%) zsh
16 6 (0.083%) XenApp
17 5 (0.069%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 5 (0.069%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 584 (8.09%) Microsoft Intune
2 339 (4.70%) Kubernetes
3 298 (4.13%) SCCM
4 169 (2.34%) Ansible
5 141 (1.95%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
7 61 (0.84%) Grafana
8 56 (0.78%) SCOM
9 50 (0.69%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.51%) Prometheus
11 36 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.39%) QRadar
12 28 (0.39%) WSUS
13 23 (0.32%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.26%) Puppet
16 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
17 16 (0.22%) Argo
18 15 (0.21%) WMI
19 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 546 (7.56%) ServiceNow
2 349 (4.83%) Oracle
2 349 (4.83%) VMware
3 292 (4.04%) SAP
4 252 (3.49%) Google
5 249 (3.45%) Databricks
6 240 (3.32%) Cisco
7 129 (1.79%) Salesforce
8 128 (1.77%) Splunk
9 111 (1.54%) Apple
10 102 (1.41%) CyberArk
11 91 (1.26%) Citrix
12 89 (1.23%) OpenAI
13 88 (1.22%) Okta
14 85 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
15 81 (1.12%) Foundry
16 75 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
17 66 (0.91%) Red Hat
18 57 (0.79%) Zscaler
19 55 (0.76%) Adobe