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 24 August 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
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,823 4,644 5,056
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.72% 14.08% 13.02%
As % of the Vendors category 30.50% 29.78% 29.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,413 2,975 3,241
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -3.16% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 464 377 335
10th Percentile £13.47 £13.75 £11.74
25th Percentile £15.50 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £20.60 £22.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.36% +35.55% -27.87%
75th Percentile £36.57 £30.63 £35.50
90th Percentile £70.16 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.34 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.52% +24.80% -16.77%

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 22,370 15,592 16,983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.71% 47.26% 43.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,814 9,531 10,482
10th Percentile £313 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,156 810 785
10th Percentile £14.45 £14.69 £13.35
25th Percentile £17.50 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.28% -10.18% -34.12%
75th Percentile £65.00 £46.30 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.13 £67.55 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.04 £21.24 £26.03
% change year-on-year +36.70% -18.40% -30.59%

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 24 August 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 24 August 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 24 August 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 5,930 £489 +2.95% 4,143
UK excluding London 0 3,636 £450 +2.97% 3,773
London 0 2,583 £515 +3.00% 1,117
Work from Home +4 1,773 £500 - 1,429
South East +1 942 £475 +2.70% 1,095
North of England -3 932 £450 +3.45% 873
Midlands -2 621 £443 +10.63% 641
North West 0 553 £450 +2.86% 430
South West +1 452 £470 +17.50% 490
West Midlands -2 424 £447 +11.06% 352
Yorkshire -5 348 £460 +5.14% 323
Scotland +7 342 £450 - 176
East of England -1 250 £375 -25.82% 411
East Midlands +2 188 £425 +19.72% 289
Wales -1 101 £419 +40.76% 127
North East -36 35 £375 +10.29% 143
Northern Ireland -4 30 £369 -1.01% 57
Channel Islands 0 3 £525 -27.59% 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
1 801 (11.74%) SharePoint
2 404 (5.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.17%) Confluence
4 38 (0.56%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.53%) Apache
6 30 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) IIS
8 22 (0.32%) CMS
8 22 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.26%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
12 11 (0.16%) SAS
13 9 (0.13%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Camunda
15 6 (0.088%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.088%) Mendix
15 6 (0.088%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.088%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.073%) Jupyter
Applications
1 672 (9.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 667 (9.78%) Microsoft Office
3 289 (4.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 184 (2.70%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.63%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.088%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.088%) Revit
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
13 3 (0.044%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.029%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 243 (3.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 25 (0.37%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.088%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.088%) SAP MM
13 6 (0.088%) Teamcenter
14 5 (0.073%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,855 (41.84%) Azure
2 1,748 (25.62%) Microsoft 365
3 1,188 (17.41%) Power Platform
4 1,033 (15.14%) Entra ID
5 618 (9.06%) AWS
6 603 (8.84%) Azure DevOps
7 588 (8.62%) Dynamics 365
8 407 (5.97%) Power Automate
9 379 (5.55%) Microsoft Copilot
10 369 (5.41%) PowerApps
11 301 (4.41%) Microsoft Purview
12 292 (4.28%) GitHub
13 255 (3.74%) OneDrive
14 244 (3.58%) SaaS
15 239 (3.50%) GCP
16 187 (2.74%) Azure Data Factory
17 171 (2.51%) Azure Monitor
18 168 (2.46%) Serverless
19 163 (2.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 156 (2.29%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 377 (5.53%) DNS
2 340 (4.98%) Firewall
3 280 (4.10%) VPN
4 245 (3.59%) DHCP
5 193 (2.83%) TCP/IP
6 171 (2.51%) WAN
7 160 (2.35%) Network Security
8 153 (2.24%) LAN
9 144 (2.11%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.08%) VLAN
11 56 (0.82%) Wireless
12 47 (0.69%) SAN
13 41 (0.60%) MPLS
14 35 (0.51%) Skype
14 35 (0.51%) SSL
15 34 (0.50%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.48%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.47%) BGP
18 31 (0.45%) Internet
19 28 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 746 (10.93%) Power BI
2 383 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 186 (2.73%) Data Warehouse
4 142 (2.08%) Metadata
5 135 (1.98%) Data Lake
6 131 (1.92%) Azure SQL Database
7 129 (1.89%) PostgreSQL
8 75 (1.10%) Relational Database
9 65 (0.95%) Power Query
9 65 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 59 (0.86%) MySQL
11 57 (0.84%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.69%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 43 (0.63%) Star Schema
14 36 (0.53%) Tableau
15 33 (0.48%) Delta Lake
16 29 (0.43%) MongoDB
17 27 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 326 (4.78%) JIRA
2 207 (3.03%) Git
3 96 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.07%) GitLab
5 59 (0.86%) Visual Studio
6 42 (0.62%) MSI
7 38 (0.56%) Selenium
8 20 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 15 (0.22%) MLflow
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
12 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
12 12 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
13 11 (0.16%) Artifactory
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,399 (35.16%) Social Skills
2 1,380 (20.23%) Finance
3 868 (12.72%) Analytical Skills
4 625 (9.16%) Public Sector
5 352 (5.16%) Organisational Skills
6 337 (4.94%) Banking
7 228 (3.34%) Legal
8 192 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
9 163 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 151 (2.21%) Manufacturing
11 142 (2.08%) Retail
12 122 (1.79%) Telecoms
13 109 (1.60%) Law
14 106 (1.55%) Marketing
15 92 (1.35%) Local Government
16 87 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.17%) Military
18 71 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
19 68 (1.00%) Aerospace
20 64 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 802 (11.75%) Architect
2 691 (10.13%) Analyst
3 617 (9.04%) Developer
4 587 (8.60%) Senior
5 485 (7.11%) Lead
6 432 (6.33%) Consultant
7 421 (6.17%) IT Support
8 404 (5.92%) Support Engineer
9 274 (4.02%) IT Engineer
10 257 (3.77%) Solutions Architect
11 245 (3.59%) Azure Engineer
11 245 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 240 (3.52%) Data Engineer
13 224 (3.28%) Administrator
14 222 (3.25%) Project Manager
15 221 (3.24%) IT Support Engineer
16 182 (2.67%) Business Analyst
17 171 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
18 130 (1.91%) Security Engineer
19 129 (1.89%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 499 (7.31%) Terraform
2 336 (4.92%) .NET
3 264 (3.87%) REST
4 128 (1.88%) JSON
5 124 (1.82%) OAuth
6 112 (1.64%) PySpark
7 108 (1.58%) Microsoft Graph
8 102 (1.49%) SAML
9 101 (1.48%) XML
10 94 (1.38%) OpenID
11 91 (1.33%) .NET Framework
11 91 (1.33%) Web Services
12 85 (1.25%) React
13 82 (1.20%) ARM Templates
14 77 (1.13%) LDAP
15 74 (1.08%) RESTful
16 70 (1.03%) HTML
16 70 (1.03%) OAuth2
17 69 (1.01%) SOAP
18 68 (1.00%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 507 (7.43%) Onboarding
2 313 (4.59%) Cloud Native
3 221 (3.24%) Management Information System
4 196 (2.87%) Product Ownership
5 190 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
6 147 (2.15%) Hybrid Cloud
7 142 (2.08%) Data Centre
8 140 (2.05%) PKI
9 133 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
10 126 (1.85%) AI Agents
11 122 (1.79%) Security Posture
12 92 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
14 89 (1.30%) Data Structures
15 79 (1.16%) Low-Code
16 76 (1.11%) Driving Licence
17 74 (1.08%) CMDB
18 72 (1.06%) Virtual Team
19 64 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
19 64 (0.94%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,464 (21.46%) Windows
2 427 (6.26%) Windows Server
3 362 (5.31%) Windows 10
4 337 (4.94%) Linux
5 138 (2.02%) Mac OS
6 120 (1.76%) Android
7 115 (1.69%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
13 34 (0.50%) VMS
14 33 (0.48%) Ubuntu
15 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.28%) CentOS
17 14 (0.21%) Solaris
18 12 (0.18%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 8 (0.12%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,238 (18.14%) Problem-Solving
2 1,113 (16.31%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,088 (15.95%) DevOps
4 1,061 (15.55%) Agile
5 959 (14.06%) Migration
6 902 (13.22%) CI/CD
7 817 (11.97%) Continuous Improvement
8 778 (11.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 773 (11.33%) AI
10 749 (10.98%) Business Intelligence
11 712 (10.44%) Analytics
12 678 (9.94%) ITIL
13 606 (8.88%) Customer Service
14 518 (7.59%) Infrastructure as Code
15 513 (7.52%) Cybersecurity
16 494 (7.24%) Data Modelling
17 492 (7.21%) Roadmaps
18 467 (6.84%) Project Delivery
19 447 (6.55%) Decision-Making
20 441 (6.46%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 854 (12.52%) SQL
2 748 (10.96%) PowerShell
3 694 (10.17%) Python
4 336 (4.92%) C#
5 250 (3.66%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.89%) Bicep
7 184 (2.70%) Java
8 159 (2.33%) Bash
9 105 (1.54%) T-SQL
10 104 (1.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.33%) TypeScript
12 71 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 35 (0.51%) VBA
14 31 (0.45%) VB
15 30 (0.44%) C++
16 27 (0.40%) VBScript
17 23 (0.34%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.34%) X++
18 17 (0.25%) R
19 15 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,474 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 1,099 (16.11%) SC Cleared
3 628 (9.20%) Degree
4 347 (5.09%) Microsoft Certification
5 286 (4.19%) DV Cleared
6 250 (3.66%) Azure Certification
7 163 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
8 132 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
9 129 (1.89%) CISSP
10 120 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
11 94 (1.38%) PMP
12 87 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 73 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 71 (1.04%) CISM
15 58 (0.85%) CCNP
16 56 (0.82%) A+ Certification
17 54 (0.79%) DBS Check
18 51 (0.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
19 49 (0.72%) CCNA
20 48 (0.70%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 384 (5.63%) Data Quality
2 237 (3.47%) QA
3 223 (3.27%) GDPR
4 209 (3.06%) SLA
5 193 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 175 (2.56%) PMO
7 167 (2.45%) NIST
8 110 (1.61%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.29%) NCSC
10 81 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.78%) GRC
12 38 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 36 (0.53%) WCAG
14 35 (0.51%) PCI DSS
15 31 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
17 19 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 16 (0.23%) P3O
19 14 (0.21%) NIST 800
20 13 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,309 (19.19%) Active Directory
2 252 (3.69%) Docker
3 249 (3.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (2.02%) Hyper-V
5 119 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 95 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (0.91%) vSphere
8 57 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
11 20 (0.29%) Firmware
11 20 (0.29%) VMware NSX
12 8 (0.12%) IAG
12 8 (0.12%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.10%) zsh
14 5 (0.073%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.073%) XenApp
14 5 (0.073%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 547 (8.02%) Microsoft Intune
2 331 (4.85%) Kubernetes
3 266 (3.90%) SCCM
4 170 (2.49%) Ansible
5 121 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
6 58 (0.85%) Grafana
6 58 (0.85%) Jamf Pro
7 51 (0.75%) vCenter Server
8 41 (0.60%) SCOM
9 38 (0.56%) Prometheus
10 37 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 25 (0.37%) WSUS
12 24 (0.35%) QRadar
13 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.31%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.31%) Puppet
15 16 (0.23%) Argo
15 16 (0.23%) Failover Clustering
16 13 (0.19%) Avamar
16 13 (0.19%) CASB
Vendors
1 509 (7.46%) ServiceNow
2 332 (4.87%) VMware
3 322 (4.72%) Oracle
4 269 (3.94%) SAP
5 239 (3.50%) Google
6 237 (3.47%) Databricks
7 228 (3.34%) Cisco
8 117 (1.71%) Salesforce
9 113 (1.66%) Splunk
10 109 (1.60%) Apple
11 96 (1.41%) Citrix
12 89 (1.30%) CyberArk
13 78 (1.14%) Okta
13 78 (1.14%) OpenAI
14 74 (1.08%) Foundry
15 72 (1.06%) BeyondTrust
16 68 (1.00%) CrowdStrike
17 66 (0.97%) Red Hat
18 56 (0.82%) Zscaler
19 53 (0.78%) Adobe