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 8 July 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
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,188 4,384 5,654
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.86% 13.72% 13.11%
As % of the Vendors category 28.81% 28.85% 30.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,058 2,816 3,675
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £339 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £577 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 375 329 495
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.14
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.76
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.50 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +40.10% -28.72%
75th Percentile £35.53 £31.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £68.10 £63.28 £61.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.74 £20.13 £16.06
% change year-on-year +3.04% +25.33% -15.47%

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 21,481 15,195 18,590
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.17% 47.56% 43.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,367 9,316 11,552
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,099 719 1,147
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.84 £12.40
25th Percentile £19.23 £17.33 £15.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +0.60% -38.27%
75th Percentile £63.75 £53.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.18
% change year-on-year +43.61% -6.41% -22.00%

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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 0 5,387 £493 +3.68% 3,451
UK excluding London -1 3,288 £450 +5.88% 3,023
London -1 2,366 £501 -2.34% 1,030
Work from Home +2 1,596 £500 - 1,819
North of England -4 840 £463 +8.82% 729
South East -2 785 £475 +1.06% 928
Midlands -2 568 £450 +20.00% 446
North West -2 459 £449 +5.65% 360
South West -1 401 £480 +18.15% 317
West Midlands -3 399 £450 +20.00% 218
Yorkshire -2 359 £488 +8.33% 255
East of England 0 290 £350 -30.00% 319
Scotland +5 287 £450 +3.39% 174
East Midlands +1 161 £424 +12.93% 225
Wales +2 115 £370 +23.33% 93
Northern Ireland +3 33 £350 +0.36% 97
North East -42 26 £450 +30.43% 129
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14% 3

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
1 663 (10.71%) SharePoint
2 394 (6.37%) Microsoft Exchange
3 133 (2.15%) Confluence
4 37 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 33 (0.53%) Apache
6 29 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.31%) IIS
8 18 (0.29%) CMS
9 15 (0.24%) HCL Notes
9 15 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 11 (0.18%) SAS
11 9 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 6 (0.097%) Camunda
12 6 (0.097%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.081%) Mendix
13 5 (0.081%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.081%) SharePoint 2013
14 4 (0.065%) Exchange Server 2010
14 4 (0.065%) ThingWorx
14 4 (0.065%) Tomcat
Applications
1 572 (9.24%) Microsoft Office
2 566 (9.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 241 (3.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 140 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.75%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.097%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.048%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.048%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.032%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.032%) InDesign
12 2 (0.032%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.032%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 213 (3.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
3 22 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.26%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.21%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 9 (0.15%) Primavera
10 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
10 9 (0.15%) SAP MM
11 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.097%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.097%) iTrent
13 6 (0.097%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,583 (41.74%) Azure
2 1,534 (24.79%) Microsoft 365
3 1,048 (16.94%) Power Platform
4 864 (13.96%) Entra ID
5 554 (8.95%) AWS
6 492 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
7 475 (7.68%) Dynamics 365
8 350 (5.66%) Power Automate
9 322 (5.20%) PowerApps
10 315 (5.09%) Microsoft Copilot
11 313 (5.06%) Microsoft Purview
12 253 (4.09%) GitHub
13 231 (3.73%) OneDrive
14 226 (3.65%) SaaS
15 200 (3.23%) GCP
16 160 (2.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 156 (2.52%) Azure Data Factory
18 151 (2.44%) Serverless
19 146 (2.36%) Azure Logic Apps
20 145 (2.34%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 342 (5.53%) DNS
2 290 (4.69%) Firewall
3 237 (3.83%) VPN
4 205 (3.31%) DHCP
5 154 (2.49%) TCP/IP
5 154 (2.49%) WAN
6 141 (2.28%) Wi-Fi
7 137 (2.21%) LAN
8 129 (2.08%) Network Security
9 57 (0.92%) VLAN
10 48 (0.78%) Kerberos
11 44 (0.71%) SAN
12 41 (0.66%) SD-WAN
13 40 (0.65%) SSL
13 40 (0.65%) Wireless
14 35 (0.57%) MPLS
14 35 (0.57%) Unified Communications
15 31 (0.50%) Internet
15 31 (0.50%) VoIP
16 28 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 671 (10.84%) Power BI
2 325 (5.25%) SQL Server
3 176 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 124 (2.00%) Metadata
6 121 (1.96%) Data Lake
7 119 (1.92%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 68 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 62 (1.00%) MySQL
11 58 (0.94%) Power Query
12 51 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.71%) NoSQL
13 44 (0.71%) Star Schema
14 40 (0.65%) Oracle Database
14 40 (0.65%) Tableau
15 35 (0.57%) Delta Lake
16 32 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 27 (0.44%) Big Data
18 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 310 (5.01%) JIRA
2 184 (2.97%) Git
3 77 (1.24%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.92%) GitLab
5 39 (0.63%) Visual Studio
6 28 (0.45%) MSI
7 20 (0.32%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Artifactory
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.27%) ERwin
9 16 (0.26%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) JUnit
11 14 (0.23%) Maven
11 14 (0.23%) Postman
12 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.19%) Team Foundation Server
13 12 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
14 10 (0.16%) JMeter
14 10 (0.16%) WebDriver
General
1 2,034 (32.87%) Social Skills
2 1,232 (19.91%) Finance
3 701 (11.33%) Analytical Skills
4 576 (9.31%) Public Sector
5 308 (4.98%) Banking
6 266 (4.30%) Organisational Skills
7 242 (3.91%) Legal
8 164 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
9 121 (1.96%) Manufacturing
10 118 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 109 (1.76%) Retail
12 99 (1.60%) Telecoms
13 97 (1.57%) Law
14 89 (1.44%) Marketing
15 86 (1.39%) Military
16 81 (1.31%) Presentation Skills
17 73 (1.18%) Local Government
18 67 (1.08%) Investment Banking
19 64 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
20 45 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 756 (12.22%) Architect
2 658 (10.63%) Analyst
3 578 (9.34%) Developer
4 506 (8.18%) Senior
5 417 (6.74%) Lead
6 386 (6.24%) IT Support
7 376 (6.08%) Consultant
8 312 (5.04%) Support Engineer
9 239 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
10 233 (3.77%) Data Engineer
11 224 (3.62%) IT Engineer
12 218 (3.52%) Project Manager
13 210 (3.39%) Azure Engineer
14 187 (3.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 181 (2.93%) Administrator
16 176 (2.84%) Business Analyst
16 176 (2.84%) IT Support Engineer
17 129 (2.08%) Cloud Engineer
18 117 (1.89%) Security Engineer
19 109 (1.76%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (4.46%) .NET
2 220 (3.56%) REST
3 137 (2.21%) Microsoft Graph
4 120 (1.94%) OAuth
5 112 (1.81%) JSON
6 102 (1.65%) PySpark
7 101 (1.63%) SAML
8 89 (1.44%) OpenID
9 84 (1.36%) React
9 84 (1.36%) Web Services
10 82 (1.33%) LDAP
11 71 (1.15%) XML
12 64 (1.03%) RESTful
13 62 (1.00%) Node.js
13 62 (1.00%) SailPoint
14 61 (0.99%) .NET Framework
15 60 (0.97%) OAuth2
16 58 (0.94%) HTML
16 58 (0.94%) Middleware
17 56 (0.90%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 360 (5.82%) Onboarding
2 289 (4.67%) Cloud Native
3 169 (2.73%) Product Ownership
4 155 (2.50%) Management Information System
5 126 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
6 123 (1.99%) Data Centre
7 122 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
8 108 (1.75%) AI Agents
8 108 (1.75%) PKI
9 107 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
10 105 (1.70%) Security Posture
11 90 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
12 89 (1.44%) Data Structures
13 79 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
13 79 (1.28%) Replication
13 79 (1.28%) Virtual Team
14 70 (1.13%) Low-Code
15 66 (1.07%) Distributed Systems
16 54 (0.87%) Driving Licence
17 53 (0.86%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,317 (21.28%) Windows
2 337 (5.45%) Windows Server
3 326 (5.27%) Windows 10
4 271 (4.38%) Linux
5 133 (2.15%) Mac OS
6 112 (1.81%) Android
7 106 (1.71%) Apple iOS
8 46 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 46 (0.74%) Unix
9 41 (0.66%) Windows 7
10 39 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
11 33 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.47%) VMS
13 22 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
14 17 (0.27%) Ubuntu
15 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
16 12 (0.19%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 7 (0.11%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,057 (17.08%) Problem-Solving
2 977 (15.79%) DevOps
3 915 (14.79%) Agile
4 861 (13.91%) Migration
5 804 (12.99%) CI/CD
6 760 (12.28%) Stakeholder Management
7 686 (11.09%) AI
7 686 (11.09%) Business Intelligence
8 648 (10.47%) Analytics
9 630 (10.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 612 (9.89%) Continuous Improvement
11 553 (8.94%) ITIL
12 473 (7.64%) Customer Service
13 456 (7.37%) Data Modelling
14 433 (7.00%) Roadmaps
15 422 (6.82%) Cybersecurity
16 409 (6.61%) Infrastructure as Code
17 405 (6.54%) Decision-Making
18 377 (6.09%) Validation
19 371 (6.00%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 789 (12.75%) SQL
2 666 (10.76%) PowerShell
3 644 (10.41%) Python
4 284 (4.59%) C#
5 220 (3.56%) JavaScript
6 194 (3.14%) Java
7 157 (2.54%) Bicep
8 110 (1.78%) T-SQL
9 91 (1.47%) Bash
10 88 (1.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.39%) TypeScript
12 78 (1.26%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.58%) VBA
14 33 (0.53%) C++
15 28 (0.45%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.44%) VB
17 19 (0.31%) VBScript
18 17 (0.27%) Scala
18 17 (0.27%) Shell Script
19 15 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,220 (19.72%) Security Cleared
2 939 (15.17%) SC Cleared
3 593 (9.58%) Degree
4 298 (4.82%) Microsoft Certification
5 210 (3.39%) DV Cleared
6 204 (3.30%) Azure Certification
7 125 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 122 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
9 113 (1.83%) CISSP
10 105 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
11 67 (1.08%) PMP
12 61 (0.99%) PMI Certification
13 59 (0.95%) CISM
14 56 (0.90%) AWS Certification
15 53 (0.86%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.78%) CCNP
17 45 (0.73%) DBS Check
18 43 (0.69%) CCNA
18 43 (0.69%) MCSE
19 39 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 317 (5.12%) Data Quality
2 234 (3.78%) GDPR
3 203 (3.28%) QA
4 176 (2.84%) SLA
5 163 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 135 (2.18%) NIST
7 129 (2.08%) PMO
8 90 (1.45%) Accessibility
9 82 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
10 69 (1.12%) NCSC
11 39 (0.63%) GRC
12 35 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 32 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 32 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.44%) WCAG
15 17 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
15 17 (0.27%) NIST 800
15 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
16 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
17 12 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 1,189 (19.21%) Active Directory
2 237 (3.83%) Docker
3 210 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.79%) Hyper-V
5 93 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 86 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.97%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (0.94%) vSphere
9 33 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.32%) Firmware
13 9 (0.15%) NFS
14 7 (0.11%) IAG
15 5 (0.081%) RACF
15 5 (0.081%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.081%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.065%) Snort
16 4 (0.065%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 489 (7.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 404 (6.53%) Terraform
3 274 (4.43%) Kubernetes
4 215 (3.47%) SCCM
5 132 (2.13%) Ansible
6 128 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
7 69 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 63 (1.02%) Jamf Pro
9 51 (0.82%) vCenter Server
10 45 (0.73%) Grafana
11 34 (0.55%) Prometheus
12 32 (0.52%) SCOM
13 23 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.32%) Puppet
15 19 (0.31%) WSUS
16 16 (0.26%) QRadar
17 12 (0.19%) vMotion
18 11 (0.18%) AirWatch
18 11 (0.18%) Argo
18 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 390 (6.30%) ServiceNow
2 284 (4.59%) VMware
3 279 (4.51%) Oracle
4 260 (4.20%) SAP
5 209 (3.38%) Databricks
6 205 (3.31%) Cisco
7 190 (3.07%) Google
8 125 (2.02%) Salesforce
9 108 (1.75%) Citrix
10 95 (1.54%) Splunk
11 90 (1.45%) Apple
12 79 (1.28%) Foundry
13 77 (1.24%) OpenAI
14 75 (1.21%) Okta
15 66 (1.07%) CyberArk
16 63 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
17 50 (0.81%) HP
18 47 (0.76%) Red Hat
19 46 (0.74%) Zscaler
20 43 (0.69%) Dell