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 22 April 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
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,564 3,927 5,578
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.00% 13.33% 12.84%
As % of the Vendors category 28.27% 28.11% 30.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,748 2,631 3,682
10th Percentile £206 £210 £189
25th Percentile £375 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £434 £463
% change year-on-year +3.81% -6.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 372 225 450
10th Percentile £13.42 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.33 £15.62 £12.89
Median hourly rate £20.33 £21.46 £15.07
Median % change year-on-year -5.29% +42.40% -33.02%
75th Percentile £28.91 £30.63 £24.28
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.40 £51.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £18.94 £15.00
% change year-on-year +5.15% +26.23% -25.00%

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 19,679 13,970 18,438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.45% 47.41% 42.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,577 8,790 11,481
10th Percentile £313 £294 £260
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £517
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -0.87% -1.52%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -0.61% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 993 543 1,075
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.50 £14.36
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.76 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.07% +23.38% -48.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.00 £57.33
90th Percentile £78.75 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.66 £24.66 £21.46
% change year-on-year +8.11% +14.91% -47.11%

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 22 April 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 22 April 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 22 April 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 4,886 £492 +3.63% 3,096
UK excluding London 0 2,896 £450 +3.81% 2,776
London -2 2,140 £513 +2.50% 849
Work from Home -2 1,372 £500 - 1,211
North of England 0 803 £450 +5.88% 640
South East -3 638 £480 -1.29% 792
Midlands -3 502 £450 +12.50% 444
North West -2 439 £423 -5.48% 335
West Midlands -4 350 £468 +16.88% 255
Yorkshire +3 337 £454 +13.50% 206
East of England 0 333 £400 -11.11% 329
South West -2 332 £450 -2.96% 313
Scotland +4 196 £453 +9.10% 159
East Midlands -1 146 £400 -4.19% 189
Wales +3 93 £310 -4.62% 97
North East -22 34 £463 +32.14% 108
Northern Ireland +3 22 £450 +38.46% 79
Channel Islands -2 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
1 605 (10.87%) SharePoint
2 404 (7.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 104 (1.87%) Confluence
4 33 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache
6 23 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
6 23 (0.41%) CMS
7 18 (0.32%) HCL Notes
8 16 (0.29%) SAS
9 15 (0.27%) Skype for Business
10 12 (0.22%) IIS
11 11 (0.20%) Mendix
12 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.090%) Camunda
13 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
14 4 (0.072%) Appian
14 4 (0.072%) Drupal
14 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
14 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
14 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
Applications
1 592 (10.64%) Microsoft Office
2 522 (9.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 234 (4.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 128 (2.30%) Microsoft Project
5 92 (1.65%) MS Visio
6 73 (1.31%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
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%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
14 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 207 (3.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 57 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.31%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.23%) Maximo
6 13 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
7 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 8 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
9 8 (0.14%) Shopify
10 7 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 6 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
11 6 (0.11%) Primavera
11 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.11%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 2,310 (41.52%) Azure
2 1,442 (25.92%) Microsoft 365
3 941 (16.91%) Power Platform
4 710 (12.76%) Entra ID
5 465 (8.36%) Dynamics 365
6 459 (8.25%) AWS
7 449 (8.07%) Azure DevOps
8 342 (6.15%) Power Automate
9 307 (5.52%) PowerApps
10 284 (5.10%) Microsoft Purview
11 266 (4.78%) GitHub
12 226 (4.06%) Microsoft Copilot
13 205 (3.68%) Azure Data Factory
14 201 (3.61%) OneDrive
15 187 (3.36%) SaaS
16 176 (3.16%) Serverless
17 172 (3.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 164 (2.95%) GCP
19 148 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
20 146 (2.62%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 298 (5.36%) Firewall
2 293 (5.27%) DNS
3 213 (3.83%) VPN
4 171 (3.07%) DHCP
5 144 (2.59%) Wi-Fi
6 139 (2.50%) WAN
7 121 (2.17%) Network Security
8 117 (2.10%) LAN
9 109 (1.96%) TCP/IP
10 58 (1.04%) VLAN
11 54 (0.97%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.81%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.68%) Wireless
14 37 (0.66%) SSL
15 36 (0.65%) Skype
16 35 (0.63%) SAN
17 31 (0.56%) HTTP
18 30 (0.54%) Unified Communications
19 24 (0.43%) IPsec
19 24 (0.43%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 584 (10.50%) Power BI
2 276 (4.96%) SQL Server
3 178 (3.20%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (2.79%) Data Lake
5 122 (2.19%) Azure SQL Database
6 109 (1.96%) Metadata
7 105 (1.89%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 71 (1.28%) Relational Database
10 51 (0.92%) Oracle Database
11 50 (0.90%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 48 (0.86%) Tableau
13 47 (0.84%) NoSQL
14 45 (0.81%) MySQL
15 43 (0.77%) Power Query
16 42 (0.75%) Delta Lake
17 40 (0.72%) Star Schema
18 29 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
19 27 (0.49%) Spark SQL
20 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 257 (4.62%) JIRA
2 171 (3.07%) Git
3 66 (1.19%) GitLab
3 66 (1.19%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.47%) Artifactory
5 25 (0.45%) Visual Studio
6 22 (0.40%) MSI
7 20 (0.36%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.32%) Postman
8 18 (0.32%) Selenium
9 16 (0.29%) MLflow
10 15 (0.27%) JMeter
11 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
12 12 (0.22%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.22%) JUnit
12 12 (0.22%) Maven
13 11 (0.20%) ERwin
14 10 (0.18%) Gatling
14 10 (0.18%) InstallShield
General
1 1,928 (34.65%) Social Skills
2 1,105 (19.86%) Finance
3 649 (11.66%) Analytical Skills
4 523 (9.40%) Public Sector
5 296 (5.32%) Banking
6 255 (4.58%) Legal
7 252 (4.53%) Organisational Skills
8 154 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
9 115 (2.07%) Manufacturing
10 103 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
11 95 (1.71%) Marketing
12 93 (1.67%) Law
13 89 (1.60%) Telecoms
14 80 (1.44%) Retail
15 79 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 70 (1.26%) Military
17 64 (1.15%) Local Government
18 58 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
19 55 (0.99%) Investment Banking
20 40 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 685 (12.31%) Architect
2 598 (10.75%) Analyst
3 534 (9.60%) Developer
4 454 (8.16%) Senior
5 375 (6.74%) IT Support
6 331 (5.95%) Lead
7 282 (5.07%) Consultant
8 260 (4.67%) Support Engineer
9 214 (3.85%) Data Engineer
10 208 (3.74%) Azure Engineer
11 194 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
12 191 (3.43%) IT Engineer
13 178 (3.20%) Project Manager
14 175 (3.15%) Business Analyst
15 174 (3.13%) Administrator
16 165 (2.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 143 (2.57%) IT Support Engineer
18 116 (2.08%) DevOps Engineer
19 113 (2.03%) Security Engineer
20 101 (1.82%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (4.76%) .NET
2 177 (3.18%) REST
3 135 (2.43%) Microsoft Graph
4 113 (2.03%) OAuth
5 100 (1.80%) PySpark
6 97 (1.74%) SAML
7 88 (1.58%) React
8 86 (1.55%) JSON
9 75 (1.35%) OpenID
10 70 (1.26%) LDAP
11 63 (1.13%) Middleware
12 62 (1.11%) Web Services
13 58 (1.04%) HTML
14 56 (1.01%) ARM Templates
15 54 (0.97%) AngularJS
15 54 (0.97%) RESTful
16 51 (0.92%) Node.js
16 51 (0.92%) OAuth2
17 50 (0.90%) .NET Framework
17 50 (0.90%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 284 (5.10%) Onboarding
2 223 (4.01%) Cloud Native
3 195 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 131 (2.35%) Management Information System
5 107 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
6 100 (1.80%) Data Centre
7 91 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
8 89 (1.60%) Hybrid Cloud
9 87 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
10 84 (1.51%) Security Posture
11 80 (1.44%) PKI
12 79 (1.42%) AI Agents
13 73 (1.31%) Replication
14 72 (1.29%) Low-Code
15 69 (1.24%) Data Structures
16 63 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
17 56 (1.01%) Virtual Team
18 54 (0.97%) Driving Licence
19 53 (0.95%) NHS
20 47 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,220 (21.93%) Windows
2 326 (5.86%) Windows 10
3 288 (5.18%) Windows Server
4 276 (4.96%) Linux
5 102 (1.83%) Android
6 96 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 93 (1.67%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
10 42 (0.75%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.70%) Unix
12 27 (0.49%) VMS
13 26 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
14 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
15 17 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
16 10 (0.18%) CentOS
17 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
18 7 (0.13%) AIX
19 5 (0.090%) Solaris
20 4 (0.072%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 987 (17.74%) Problem-Solving
2 883 (15.87%) Agile
3 880 (15.82%) DevOps
4 779 (14.00%) Migration
5 757 (13.61%) CI/CD
6 656 (11.79%) Business Intelligence
7 613 (11.02%) Analytics
8 542 (9.74%) AI
9 530 (9.53%) Stakeholder Management
10 510 (9.17%) Continuous Improvement
11 465 (8.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 455 (8.18%) Customer Service
13 433 (7.78%) ITIL
14 404 (7.26%) Data Modelling
15 375 (6.74%) Cybersecurity
16 357 (6.42%) Roadmaps
17 333 (5.98%) Infrastructure as Code
18 315 (5.66%) Decision-Making
19 309 (5.55%) Project Management
20 302 (5.43%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 730 (13.12%) SQL
2 649 (11.66%) PowerShell
3 631 (11.34%) Python
4 286 (5.14%) C#
5 217 (3.90%) JavaScript
6 179 (3.22%) Java
7 126 (2.26%) Bicep
8 98 (1.76%) Kusto Query Language
9 97 (1.74%) Bash
10 82 (1.47%) T-SQL
10 82 (1.47%) TypeScript
11 69 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 35 (0.63%) PL/SQL
13 29 (0.52%) VBA
14 27 (0.49%) C++
15 22 (0.40%) VB
16 20 (0.36%) R
17 19 (0.34%) Scala
18 18 (0.32%) Perl
18 18 (0.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,073 (19.28%) Security Cleared
2 830 (14.92%) SC Cleared
3 566 (10.17%) Degree
4 281 (5.05%) Microsoft Certification
5 201 (3.61%) DV Cleared
6 188 (3.38%) Azure Certification
7 132 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 99 (1.78%) CISSP
9 95 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 70 (1.26%) PMI Certification
11 69 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
12 62 (1.11%) PMP
13 57 (1.02%) Master's Degree
14 53 (0.95%) CISM
15 43 (0.77%) MCSE
16 39 (0.70%) AWS Certification
17 34 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
18 33 (0.59%) CCNP
19 31 (0.56%) DBS Check
20 30 (0.54%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 261 (4.69%) Data Quality
2 236 (4.24%) GDPR
3 176 (3.16%) QA
4 154 (2.77%) SLA
5 129 (2.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 110 (1.98%) PMO
7 102 (1.83%) NIST
8 71 (1.28%) Accessibility
9 57 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 46 (0.83%) NCSC
11 39 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.56%) GRC
13 27 (0.49%) PCI DSS
14 19 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 19 (0.34%) MiFID
15 17 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.27%) WCAG
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
18 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
19 11 (0.20%) GxP
System Software
1 1,085 (19.50%) Active Directory
2 236 (4.24%) Docker
3 189 (3.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 95 (1.71%) Hyper-V
5 73 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
6 62 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
7 49 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
8 36 (0.65%) vSphere
9 26 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.31%) Firmware
12 13 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.13%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.090%) IAG
15 5 (0.090%) Snort
16 4 (0.072%) KVM
16 4 (0.072%) Squid
16 4 (0.072%) XenApp
16 4 (0.072%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 431 (7.75%) Microsoft Intune
2 367 (6.60%) Terraform
3 266 (4.78%) Kubernetes
4 210 (3.77%) SCCM
5 128 (2.30%) Ansible
6 121 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
7 85 (1.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (0.75%) Grafana
9 41 (0.74%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (0.74%) vCenter Server
10 32 (0.58%) Prometheus
11 23 (0.41%) FortiGate
11 23 (0.41%) SCOM
12 21 (0.38%) Puppet
13 18 (0.32%) WSUS
14 16 (0.29%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.22%) CASB
15 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
16 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
17 10 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 265 (4.76%) VMware
2 263 (4.73%) ServiceNow
3 220 (3.95%) Databricks
4 215 (3.86%) SAP
5 205 (3.68%) Oracle
6 184 (3.31%) Cisco
7 163 (2.93%) Google
8 129 (2.32%) Citrix
9 95 (1.71%) OpenAI
10 94 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 90 (1.62%) Splunk
12 75 (1.35%) Foundry
13 66 (1.19%) Apple
14 53 (0.95%) CrowdStrike
15 48 (0.86%) Adobe
15 48 (0.86%) Palo Alto
16 47 (0.84%) HP
17 46 (0.83%) Red Hat
18 40 (0.72%) Informatica
18 40 (0.72%) Workday