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 1 March 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
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 8 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,318 4,086 5,778
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.81% 13.42% 12.94%
As % of the Vendors category 28.81% 28.78% 29.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,592 2,657 3,891
10th Percentile £205 £206 £190
25th Percentile £363 £348 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £498
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.62% -0.40%
75th Percentile £583 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -2.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 173 409
10th Percentile £13.54 £15.44 £11.50
25th Percentile £16.25 £18.13 £13.69
Median hourly rate £19.91 £23.80 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.34% +44.24% -21.43%
75th Percentile £27.50 £33.75 £33.75
90th Percentile £64.13 £62.90 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.10 £22.50 £16.06
% change year-on-year -15.13% +40.10% -19.70%

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 18,462 14,199 19,339
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 44.47% 46.65% 43.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,843 8,658 12,092
10th Percentile £306 £281 £256
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £515
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +0.97% -2.09%
75th Percentile £604 £625 £627
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £500
Number of hourly rates quoted 922 439 985
10th Percentile £15.22 £15.62 £12.74
25th Percentile £18.18 £21.25 £15.25
Median hourly rate £24.28 £30.00 £25.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.08% +17.65% -27.14%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £55.11
90th Percentile £74.64 £81.10 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £27.35 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.26% +9.40% -21.65%

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 1 March 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 1 March 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 1 March 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 4,660 £490 +3.16% 3,762
UK excluding London 0 2,863 £450 +2.86% 3,527
London -3 1,959 £510 +2.00% 830
Work from Home -1 1,339 £500 - 1,463
North of England 0 750 £428 -4.36% 796
South East 0 644 £475 -2.56% 1,116
Midlands -6 490 £450 +5.88% 506
North West -1 425 £415 -7.78% 403
South West +2 357 £520 +10.64% 398
East of England +1 354 £400 -9.86% 424
West Midlands -8 336 £475 +9.42% 236
Yorkshire +1 293 £450 +9.09% 277
Scotland -1 191 £460 +20.26% 192
East Midlands 0 152 £409 +2.31% 262
Wales +3 95 £310 -24.85% 142
North East -15 38 £450 +25.00% 133
Northern Ireland +2 25 £450 +38.46% 39
Channel Islands +3 1 - - 2

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
1 600 (11.28%) SharePoint
2 422 (7.94%) Microsoft Exchange
3 114 (2.14%) Confluence
4 42 (0.79%) Skype for Business
5 25 (0.47%) CMS
6 22 (0.41%) Apache
7 21 (0.39%) Apache Spark
8 17 (0.32%) Apache Airflow
9 16 (0.30%) HCL Notes
10 15 (0.28%) IIS
11 12 (0.23%) SAS
12 9 (0.17%) Mendix
13 8 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.11%) Mattermost
16 5 (0.094%) iPlanet
16 5 (0.094%) JBoss
16 5 (0.094%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 628 (11.81%) Microsoft Office
2 515 (9.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 228 (4.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 126 (2.37%) Microsoft Project
5 104 (1.96%) MS Visio
6 76 (1.43%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.23%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Trello
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 7 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.094%) PTC Creo
13 4 (0.075%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.075%) InDesign
14 3 (0.056%) Photoshop
14 3 (0.056%) Sketch
14 3 (0.056%) SOLIDWORKS
15 2 (0.038%) AutoCAD
15 2 (0.038%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 190 (3.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 50 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.32%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.28%) Dynamics AX
6 14 (0.26%) Aladdin
6 14 (0.26%) Maximo
7 12 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.19%) Loan IQ
8 10 (0.19%) NetSuite
8 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.19%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 7 (0.13%) Advent Geneva
9 7 (0.13%) Shopify
10 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
10 6 (0.11%) Sage X3
10 6 (0.11%) SystmOne
11 5 (0.094%) Primavera
11 5 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
11 5 (0.094%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,120 (39.86%) Azure
2 1,353 (25.44%) Microsoft 365
3 851 (16.00%) Power Platform
4 681 (12.81%) Entra ID
5 450 (8.46%) AWS
6 398 (7.48%) Azure DevOps
7 397 (7.47%) Dynamics 365
8 339 (6.37%) Power Automate
9 301 (5.66%) PowerApps
10 271 (5.10%) Microsoft Purview
11 228 (4.29%) GitHub
12 213 (4.01%) OneDrive
13 188 (3.54%) Serverless
14 187 (3.52%) Microsoft Copilot
15 185 (3.48%) Azure Data Factory
16 182 (3.42%) SaaS
17 172 (3.23%) GCP
18 147 (2.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 139 (2.61%) Azure Logic Apps
20 135 (2.54%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 305 (5.74%) DNS
2 288 (5.42%) Firewall
3 199 (3.74%) VPN
4 186 (3.50%) DHCP
5 142 (2.67%) Wi-Fi
6 127 (2.39%) TCP/IP
7 123 (2.31%) WAN
8 107 (2.01%) LAN
9 101 (1.90%) Network Security
10 69 (1.30%) Skype
11 63 (1.18%) Kerberos
12 57 (1.07%) VLAN
13 46 (0.86%) Unified Communications
14 43 (0.81%) Wireless
15 35 (0.66%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.60%) HTTP
17 30 (0.56%) SSL
18 29 (0.55%) Internet
19 28 (0.53%) MPLS
19 28 (0.53%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 523 (9.83%) Power BI
2 249 (4.68%) SQL Server
3 159 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 141 (2.65%) Data Lake
5 104 (1.96%) Metadata
5 104 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
6 97 (1.82%) Azure SQL Database
7 76 (1.43%) Relational Database
8 65 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 57 (1.07%) Oracle Database
10 53 (1.00%) MySQL
11 52 (0.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 46 (0.86%) NoSQL
13 37 (0.70%) Power Query
13 37 (0.70%) Tableau
14 29 (0.55%) Delta Lake
15 27 (0.51%) Oracle Reports
16 25 (0.47%) Star Schema
17 23 (0.43%) Spark SQL
17 23 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 242 (4.55%) JIRA
2 166 (3.12%) Git
3 76 (1.43%) GitLab
4 73 (1.37%) Jenkins
5 30 (0.56%) Eclipse
6 26 (0.49%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.41%) MSI
8 20 (0.38%) Postman
9 19 (0.36%) Artifactory
10 16 (0.30%) Android Studio
10 16 (0.30%) JMeter
11 15 (0.28%) Browser DevTools
11 15 (0.28%) Selenium
12 14 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
13 13 (0.24%) Cucumber
13 13 (0.24%) Xcode
14 11 (0.21%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.21%) JUnit
14 11 (0.21%) MLflow
15 10 (0.19%) ERwin
General
1 2,049 (38.53%) Social Skills
2 1,026 (19.29%) Finance
3 666 (12.52%) Analytical Skills
4 514 (9.67%) Public Sector
5 256 (4.81%) Banking
6 252 (4.74%) Organisational Skills
7 232 (4.36%) Legal
8 168 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
9 120 (2.26%) Manufacturing
10 116 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
11 103 (1.94%) Marketing
12 93 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 73 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 72 (1.35%) Retail
15 61 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
16 55 (1.03%) Military
17 49 (0.92%) Law
18 46 (0.86%) Investment Banking
19 40 (0.75%) Pharmaceutical
20 37 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 646 (12.15%) Analyst
2 605 (11.38%) Architect
3 503 (9.46%) Developer
4 414 (7.78%) Senior
5 356 (6.69%) IT Support
6 289 (5.43%) Support Engineer
7 288 (5.42%) Consultant
8 262 (4.93%) Lead
9 184 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
10 181 (3.40%) IT Engineer
11 178 (3.35%) Azure Engineer
11 178 (3.35%) Data Engineer
12 170 (3.20%) Business Analyst
13 168 (3.16%) Administrator
14 165 (3.10%) Project Manager
15 163 (3.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 139 (2.61%) IT Support Engineer
17 127 (2.39%) Support Analyst
18 118 (2.22%) Security Engineer
19 101 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (4.70%) .NET
2 167 (3.14%) REST
3 131 (2.46%) OAuth
4 113 (2.12%) Microsoft Graph
4 113 (2.12%) SAML
5 101 (1.90%) React
6 94 (1.77%) OpenID
7 78 (1.47%) PySpark
8 75 (1.41%) LDAP
9 74 (1.39%) RESTful
10 73 (1.37%) AngularJS
10 73 (1.37%) HTML
11 72 (1.35%) JSON
12 65 (1.22%) CSS
13 61 (1.15%) ARM Templates
14 57 (1.07%) Middleware
15 56 (1.05%) Node.js
16 54 (1.02%) OAuth2
16 54 (1.02%) Web Services
17 43 (0.81%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 295 (5.55%) Onboarding
2 204 (3.84%) Cloud Native
3 161 (3.03%) Product Ownership
4 135 (2.54%) Management Information System
5 111 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
6 94 (1.77%) Data Centre
7 91 (1.71%) Security Posture
8 90 (1.69%) PKI
9 83 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
10 81 (1.52%) Hybrid Cloud
11 75 (1.41%) Replication
12 73 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
13 71 (1.34%) Low-Code
14 67 (1.26%) Driving Licence
15 58 (1.09%) AI Agents
15 58 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
16 57 (1.07%) Mobile App
16 57 (1.07%) Virtual Team
17 56 (1.05%) Data Structures
17 56 (1.05%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,244 (23.39%) Windows
2 361 (6.79%) Windows 10
3 298 (5.60%) Linux
4 276 (5.19%) Windows Server
5 109 (2.05%) Mac OS
6 103 (1.94%) Android
7 97 (1.82%) Apple iOS
8 63 (1.18%) Unix
9 46 (0.86%) Windows 7
10 42 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
11 38 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 22 (0.41%) VMS
12 22 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2012
14 20 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
15 8 (0.15%) AIX
15 8 (0.15%) CentOS
15 8 (0.15%) Ubuntu
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.094%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,025 (19.27%) Problem-Solving
2 871 (16.38%) Agile
3 793 (14.91%) DevOps
4 700 (13.16%) Migration
5 672 (12.64%) CI/CD
6 620 (11.66%) Business Intelligence
7 577 (10.85%) Analytics
8 538 (10.12%) Stakeholder Management
9 455 (8.56%) AI
9 455 (8.56%) Customer Service
10 453 (8.52%) Continuous Improvement
11 434 (8.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 433 (8.14%) ITIL
13 368 (6.92%) Cybersecurity
14 344 (6.47%) Data Modelling
15 311 (5.85%) Project Management
16 308 (5.79%) Roadmaps
17 301 (5.66%) Change Management
18 293 (5.51%) Project Delivery
19 292 (5.49%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 676 (12.71%) SQL
2 675 (12.69%) PowerShell
3 622 (11.70%) Python
4 276 (5.19%) C#
5 232 (4.36%) JavaScript
6 148 (2.78%) Java
7 114 (2.14%) Bicep
8 108 (2.03%) Bash
9 103 (1.94%) Kusto Query Language
10 87 (1.64%) TypeScript
11 73 (1.37%) T-SQL
12 61 (1.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 35 (0.66%) PL/SQL
14 32 (0.60%) C++
15 29 (0.55%) Perl
16 26 (0.49%) VB
17 25 (0.47%) VBA
18 23 (0.43%) Shell Script
19 17 (0.32%) Go
20 16 (0.30%) R
Qualifications
1 1,058 (19.89%) Security Cleared
2 791 (14.87%) SC Cleared
3 543 (10.21%) Degree
4 326 (6.13%) Microsoft Certification
5 218 (4.10%) DV Cleared
6 186 (3.50%) Azure Certification
7 120 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 111 (2.09%) CISSP
9 92 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
10 62 (1.17%) CISM
11 58 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
12 57 (1.07%) Master's Degree
13 55 (1.03%) PMI Certification
14 48 (0.90%) PMP
15 46 (0.86%) MCSE
16 44 (0.83%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.83%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 39 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.71%) A+ Certification
19 33 (0.62%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 238 (4.48%) GDPR
2 209 (3.93%) Data Quality
3 156 (2.93%) QA
4 154 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 152 (2.86%) SLA
6 120 (2.26%) NIST
7 118 (2.22%) PMO
8 75 (1.41%) Accessibility
9 55 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 36 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 34 (0.64%) NCSC
12 26 (0.49%) PCI DSS
13 22 (0.41%) GRC
13 22 (0.41%) WCAG
14 21 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
16 17 (0.32%) MiFID
16 17 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 15 (0.28%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,101 (20.70%) Active Directory
2 211 (3.97%) Docker
3 172 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 78 (1.47%) Hyper-V
5 68 (1.28%) Virtual Machines
6 49 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
7 38 (0.71%) vSphere
8 34 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 21 (0.39%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.36%) BitLocker
11 14 (0.26%) Firmware
12 9 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.13%) Snort
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 5 (0.094%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 5 (0.094%) Tivoli Directory Server
15 5 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
16 4 (0.075%) KVM
16 4 (0.075%) Squid
Systems Management
1 428 (8.05%) Microsoft Intune
2 324 (6.09%) Terraform
3 263 (4.95%) SCCM
4 247 (4.64%) Kubernetes
5 159 (2.99%) Single Sign-On
6 105 (1.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 105 (1.97%) Ansible
7 47 (0.88%) Jamf Pro
8 40 (0.75%) Grafana
9 35 (0.66%) Prometheus
10 34 (0.64%) vCenter Server
11 33 (0.62%) SCOM
12 24 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 19 (0.36%) WSUS
14 16 (0.30%) Puppet
15 14 (0.26%) AirWatch
15 14 (0.26%) Nessus
15 14 (0.26%) Progress Chef
15 14 (0.26%) WMI
16 11 (0.21%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 270 (5.08%) ServiceNow
2 259 (4.87%) VMware
3 198 (3.72%) SAP
4 195 (3.67%) Oracle
5 189 (3.55%) Databricks
6 188 (3.54%) Cisco
7 153 (2.88%) Google
8 137 (2.58%) Citrix
9 126 (2.37%) Splunk
10 86 (1.62%) Salesforce
11 83 (1.56%) OpenAI
12 73 (1.37%) Apple
13 65 (1.22%) Foundry
14 63 (1.18%) CrowdStrike
15 59 (1.11%) Palo Alto
16 53 (1.00%) HP
17 45 (0.85%) Okta
18 43 (0.81%) Remedy
19 42 (0.79%) CyberArk
20 39 (0.73%) IBM