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 30 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
30 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,360 4,724 4,905
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.41% 14.39% 13.04%
As % of the Vendors category 32.16% 30.23% 29.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,648 3,078 3,014
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £372 £337 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 600 379 268
10th Percentile £13.35 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.57 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.32 £18.23
Median % change year-on-year -17.10% +22.44% -19.11%
75th Percentile £30.00 £31.40 £46.18
90th Percentile £65.02 £64.60 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.86 £21.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -14.98% +29.39% -26.23%

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 22,886 15,627 16,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.70% 47.59% 44.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,922 9,629 9,875
10th Percentile £310 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £618 £613 £625
90th Percentile £708 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,332 809 623
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.74 £14.69
25th Percentile £16.38 £17.75 £15.62
Median hourly rate £25.65 £25.15 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.97% -22.62% -24.42%
75th Percentile £57.50 £42.50 £64.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.72 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +16.06% -29.00% -29.41%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 6,383 £490 +3.16% 7,438
UK excluding London 0 3,957 £450 +2.86% 5,232
London -1 2,746 £520 +4.00% 2,747
Work from Home +4 1,851 £500 - 3,074
South East 0 1,056 £475 +5.56% 1,244
North of England -5 973 £473 +8.12% 1,305
Midlands 0 688 £430 +4.88% 877
North West -1 569 £474 +8.28% 677
West Midlands -3 470 £425 -3.41% 500
South West -1 455 £470 +4.44% 560
Scotland +5 377 £450 - 393
Yorkshire -6 356 £475 +6.15% 456
East of England 0 295 £335 -36.19% 525
East Midlands +2 212 £438 +19.95% 377
Wales +2 110 £394 +29.63% 175
North East -22 53 £425 +25.07% 185
Northern Ireland -1 38 £342 -2.29% 237
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 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
1 897 (12.19%) SharePoint
2 410 (5.57%) Microsoft Exchange
3 152 (2.07%) Confluence
4 38 (0.52%) Apache
5 37 (0.50%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 27 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.37%) CMS
8 23 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
10 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
13 7 (0.095%) SAS
14 6 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.082%) Mendix
14 6 (0.082%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.082%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.068%) Apache Superset
15 5 (0.068%) Camunda
Applications
1 809 (10.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 776 (10.54%) Microsoft Office
3 324 (4.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 194 (2.64%) Microsoft Project
5 113 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 53 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.35%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.14%) Revit
12 5 (0.068%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.054%) Trello
14 3 (0.041%) 1Password
14 3 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.041%) Final Cut Pro
15 2 (0.027%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 270 (3.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 91 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
3 37 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 19 (0.26%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.15%) Integrated Workplace Management System
9 11 (0.15%) Magento
10 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.11%) iTrent
11 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
12 7 (0.095%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.095%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.082%) Maximo
13 6 (0.082%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.082%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 3,006 (40.84%) Azure
2 1,892 (25.71%) Microsoft 365
3 1,282 (17.42%) Power Platform
4 1,176 (15.98%) Entra ID
5 672 (9.13%) AWS
6 616 (8.37%) Azure DevOps
7 608 (8.26%) Dynamics 365
8 459 (6.24%) Microsoft Copilot
9 442 (6.01%) Power Automate
10 391 (5.31%) PowerApps
11 316 (4.29%) Microsoft Purview
12 296 (4.02%) GitHub
13 284 (3.86%) GCP
14 273 (3.71%) OneDrive
15 243 (3.30%) SaaS
16 203 (2.76%) Serverless
17 179 (2.43%) Azure Monitor
18 176 (2.39%) Azure Data Factory
19 163 (2.21%) Azure Sentinel
20 162 (2.20%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 413 (5.61%) DNS
2 347 (4.71%) Firewall
3 308 (4.18%) VPN
4 275 (3.74%) DHCP
5 206 (2.80%) TCP/IP
6 170 (2.31%) Network Security
7 158 (2.15%) WAN
8 146 (1.98%) LAN
9 137 (1.86%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (0.99%) VLAN
11 71 (0.96%) Wireless
12 53 (0.72%) SAN
13 44 (0.60%) SSL
14 40 (0.54%) Skype
15 38 (0.52%) Unified Communications
16 37 (0.50%) MPLS
17 33 (0.45%) Kerberos
18 32 (0.43%) BGP
19 31 (0.42%) Internet
20 30 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 770 (10.46%) Power BI
2 410 (5.57%) SQL Server
3 171 (2.32%) Data Warehouse
4 160 (2.17%) Metadata
5 148 (2.01%) Data Lake
6 128 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
7 110 (1.49%) Azure SQL Database
8 90 (1.22%) Power Query
9 84 (1.14%) Relational Database
10 73 (0.99%) MySQL
11 67 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 49 (0.67%) NoSQL
13 45 (0.61%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.57%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.54%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.50%) Delta Lake
17 33 (0.45%) Tableau
18 30 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 30 (0.41%) MongoDB
19 28 (0.38%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 334 (4.54%) JIRA
2 249 (3.38%) Git
3 90 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 73 (0.99%) GitLab
5 57 (0.77%) Visual Studio
6 49 (0.67%) MSI
7 37 (0.50%) Selenium
8 26 (0.35%) Claude Code
9 25 (0.34%) Postman
10 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
11 18 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
12 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.22%) Cucumber
14 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
16 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
16 12 (0.16%) Subversion
17 10 (0.14%) ERwin
17 10 (0.14%) MLflow
18 9 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,758 (37.47%) Social Skills
2 1,444 (19.62%) Finance
3 965 (13.11%) Analytical Skills
4 651 (8.85%) Public Sector
5 457 (6.21%) Organisational Skills
6 319 (4.33%) Banking
7 232 (3.15%) Legal
8 213 (2.89%) Manufacturing
9 210 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
10 187 (2.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 165 (2.24%) Retail
12 124 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 113 (1.54%) Marketing
14 102 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
15 94 (1.28%) Aerospace
15 94 (1.28%) Military
16 90 (1.22%) Local Government
17 77 (1.05%) Law
18 75 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
19 55 (0.75%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 833 (11.32%) Architect
2 719 (9.77%) Analyst
3 648 (8.80%) Developer
4 626 (8.51%) Senior
5 476 (6.47%) Lead
6 468 (6.36%) Consultant
7 446 (6.06%) IT Support
8 443 (6.02%) Support Engineer
9 338 (4.59%) Administrator
10 298 (4.05%) IT Engineer
11 286 (3.89%) Solutions Architect
12 265 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 258 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
14 247 (3.36%) IT Support Engineer
15 246 (3.34%) Data Engineer
16 224 (3.04%) Project Manager
17 194 (2.64%) Business Analyst
18 193 (2.62%) Cloud Engineer
19 144 (1.96%) Security Engineer
20 139 (1.89%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 548 (7.45%) Terraform
2 344 (4.67%) .NET
3 294 (3.99%) REST
4 145 (1.97%) JSON
5 143 (1.94%) OAuth
6 116 (1.58%) XML
7 113 (1.54%) SAML
8 109 (1.48%) OpenID
9 105 (1.43%) PySpark
10 103 (1.40%) Microsoft Graph
11 98 (1.33%) ARM Templates
12 92 (1.25%) React
12 92 (1.25%) Web Services
13 90 (1.22%) .NET Framework
14 83 (1.13%) LDAP
15 81 (1.10%) RESTful
16 79 (1.07%) HTML
16 79 (1.07%) OAuth2
17 78 (1.06%) SailPoint
18 69 (0.94%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 598 (8.13%) Onboarding
2 323 (4.39%) Cloud Native
3 306 (4.16%) Management Information System
4 228 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
5 203 (2.76%) Product Ownership
6 166 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
7 164 (2.23%) AI Agents
8 161 (2.19%) PKI
9 158 (2.15%) Data Centre
10 143 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
11 142 (1.93%) Security Posture
12 101 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
13 98 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 97 (1.32%) Driving Licence
15 95 (1.29%) CMDB
16 91 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
17 83 (1.13%) Low-Code
18 79 (1.07%) Virtual Team
19 76 (1.03%) Replication
20 75 (1.02%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,571 (21.35%) Windows
2 483 (6.56%) Windows Server
3 390 (5.30%) Windows 10
4 350 (4.76%) Linux
5 158 (2.15%) Mac OS
6 133 (1.81%) Android
7 128 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.65%) Unix
10 42 (0.57%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
14 32 (0.43%) VMS
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 21 (0.29%) Solaris
16 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.16%) SUSE
18 8 (0.11%) AIX
18 8 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,408 (19.13%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,388 (18.86%) Problem-Solving
3 1,110 (15.08%) DevOps
4 1,098 (14.92%) Agile
5 1,008 (13.70%) Migration
6 965 (13.11%) CI/CD
7 913 (12.40%) Continuous Improvement
8 877 (11.92%) AI
9 826 (11.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 781 (10.61%) Business Intelligence
11 749 (10.18%) Analytics
12 724 (9.84%) ITIL
13 692 (9.40%) Customer Service
14 587 (7.98%) Cybersecurity
14 587 (7.98%) Infrastructure as Code
15 561 (7.62%) Roadmaps
16 516 (7.01%) Project Delivery
17 508 (6.90%) Data Modelling
18 501 (6.81%) Decision-Making
19 491 (6.67%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 877 (11.92%) SQL
2 833 (11.32%) PowerShell
3 753 (10.23%) Python
4 361 (4.90%) C#
5 284 (3.86%) JavaScript
6 216 (2.93%) Bicep
7 178 (2.42%) Bash
8 162 (2.20%) Java
9 118 (1.60%) TypeScript
10 114 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 108 (1.47%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.43%) VBA
14 30 (0.41%) VB
15 27 (0.37%) C++
16 25 (0.34%) VBScript
17 23 (0.31%) X++
18 20 (0.27%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.26%) R
20 16 (0.22%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,583 (21.51%) Security Cleared
2 1,170 (15.90%) SC Cleared
3 626 (8.51%) Degree
4 376 (5.11%) Microsoft Certification
5 320 (4.35%) DV Cleared
6 277 (3.76%) Azure Certification
7 186 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.96%) CISSP
9 127 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
10 108 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.29%) PMP
12 92 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 79 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 77 (1.05%) CISM
15 63 (0.86%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 59 (0.80%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 54 (0.73%) CCNP
18 47 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 44 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 452 (6.14%) Data Quality
2 254 (3.45%) QA
3 240 (3.26%) GDPR
4 221 (3.00%) SLA
5 208 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 208 (2.83%) PMO
6 183 (2.49%) NIST
7 125 (1.70%) Accessibility
8 87 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
9 86 (1.17%) NCSC
10 65 (0.88%) GRC
11 47 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 46 (0.63%) WCAG
13 42 (0.57%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 25 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
16 23 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
19 16 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,379 (18.74%) Active Directory
2 280 (3.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 253 (3.44%) Docker
4 146 (1.98%) Hyper-V
5 131 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
6 115 (1.56%) Virtual Machines
7 77 (1.05%) vSphere
8 65 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.48%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.26%) Firmware
12 17 (0.23%) VMware NSX
13 14 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 9 (0.12%) IAG
16 8 (0.11%) NFS
17 7 (0.095%) zsh
18 6 (0.082%) ISA Server
18 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
18 6 (0.082%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 595 (8.08%) Microsoft Intune
2 341 (4.63%) Kubernetes
3 293 (3.98%) SCCM
4 170 (2.31%) Ansible
5 149 (2.02%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
7 59 (0.80%) Grafana
8 56 (0.76%) SCOM
9 51 (0.69%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 34 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 30 (0.41%) QRadar
13 27 (0.37%) Progress Chef
14 25 (0.34%) WSUS
15 22 (0.30%) Puppet
16 20 (0.27%) Failover Clustering
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 18 (0.24%) Argo
18 17 (0.23%) WMI
19 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 554 (7.53%) ServiceNow
2 360 (4.89%) VMware
3 339 (4.61%) Oracle
4 300 (4.08%) SAP
5 280 (3.80%) Google
6 257 (3.49%) Databricks
7 249 (3.38%) Cisco
8 135 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 132 (1.79%) Splunk
10 115 (1.56%) Apple
11 110 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 94 (1.28%) Okta
13 92 (1.25%) OpenAI
14 91 (1.24%) Citrix
15 89 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
16 76 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
16 76 (1.03%) Foundry
17 67 (0.91%) Red Hat
18 61 (0.83%) IBM
19 59 (0.80%) Zscaler