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 5 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
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,469 4,542 5,071
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.16% 13.80% 12.94%
As % of the Vendors category 29.37% 29.27% 29.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,231 2,911 3,310
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £585 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.51% -3.39% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 395 371 362
10th Percentile £13.67 £13.75 £11.72
25th Percentile £16.50 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.77% +37.49% -31.96%
75th Percentile £38.25 £30.63 £36.00
90th Percentile £74.06 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year +3.68% +24.80% -14.58%

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 22,028 15,518 17,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.41% 47.16% 43.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,643 9,508 10,703
10th Percentile £313 £280 £281
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +1.20% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £605 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.38% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,126 786 855
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.48 £13.57
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.13 £15.62
Median hourly rate £34.97 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.05% -10.18% -33.85%
75th Percentile £65.58 £50.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.32 £27.25
% change year-on-year +52.32% -18.11% -23.24%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 5,654 £490 +3.16% 5,185
UK excluding London -1 3,443 £450 +3.51% 4,200
London -2 2,486 £511 +2.25% 1,725
Work from Home +3 1,681 £500 - 2,188
South East -1 888 £475 +0.53% 1,204
North of England -4 862 £452 +3.91% 1,016
Midlands -1 592 £447 +19.27% 700
North West 0 494 £450 +2.97% 544
South West 0 429 £470 +9.30% 473
West Midlands -4 416 £450 +12.50% 381
Yorkshire -5 341 £475 +8.57% 346
Scotland +8 316 £450 - 210
East of England -1 256 £375 -25.00% 421
East Midlands +2 167 £418 +18.61% 318
Wales 0 99 £413 +49.48% 126
Northern Ireland -3 31 £350 -3.11% 144
North East -38 31 £450 +38.46% 143
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 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
1 755 (11.67%) SharePoint
2 392 (6.06%) Microsoft Exchange
3 145 (2.24%) Confluence
4 39 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.57%) Apache
6 31 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.32%) IIS
8 18 (0.28%) CMS
8 18 (0.28%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
10 11 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
10 11 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
11 10 (0.15%) SAS
12 8 (0.12%) nginx
13 6 (0.093%) Apache Superset
13 6 (0.093%) Exchange Server 2010
13 6 (0.093%) Jupyter
13 6 (0.093%) SharePoint 2013
13 6 (0.093%) ThingWorx
14 5 (0.077%) Camunda
Applications
1 608 (9.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 585 (9.04%) Microsoft Office
3 257 (3.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 166 (2.57%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.68%) MS Visio
6 39 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.11%) AutoCAD
10 5 (0.077%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.077%) ProjectWise
11 4 (0.062%) Navisworks
11 4 (0.062%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.062%) Revit
12 3 (0.046%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.046%) Final Cut Pro
12 3 (0.046%) MicroStation
12 3 (0.046%) Trello
13 2 (0.031%) InDesign
13 2 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 233 (3.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
5 20 (0.31%) NetSuite
6 18 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
7 14 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.20%) Aladdin
9 11 (0.17%) Primavera
10 9 (0.14%) Magento
10 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
11 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.11%) iTrent
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
13 6 (0.093%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.093%) SAP CRM
13 6 (0.093%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,734 (42.26%) Azure
2 1,645 (25.43%) Microsoft 365
3 1,132 (17.50%) Power Platform
4 967 (14.95%) Entra ID
5 578 (8.93%) AWS
6 544 (8.41%) Azure DevOps
7 543 (8.39%) Dynamics 365
8 398 (6.15%) Power Automate
9 357 (5.52%) PowerApps
10 352 (5.44%) Microsoft Copilot
11 292 (4.51%) Microsoft Purview
12 271 (4.19%) GitHub
13 244 (3.77%) OneDrive
14 228 (3.52%) SaaS
15 215 (3.32%) GCP
16 171 (2.64%) Azure Data Factory
17 166 (2.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 151 (2.33%) Serverless
19 143 (2.21%) PaaS
20 142 (2.20%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 354 (5.47%) DNS
2 328 (5.07%) Firewall
3 259 (4.00%) VPN
4 216 (3.34%) DHCP
5 181 (2.80%) TCP/IP
6 149 (2.30%) WAN
7 143 (2.21%) Network Security
8 140 (2.16%) Wi-Fi
9 139 (2.15%) LAN
10 70 (1.08%) VLAN
11 51 (0.79%) Wireless
12 45 (0.70%) SAN
13 42 (0.65%) MPLS
14 36 (0.56%) SSL
15 35 (0.54%) Unified Communications
16 29 (0.45%) Internet
16 29 (0.45%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.45%) VoIP
17 27 (0.42%) BGP
18 26 (0.40%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 713 (11.02%) Power BI
2 377 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 193 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
4 132 (2.04%) Data Lake
5 130 (2.01%) PostgreSQL
6 129 (1.99%) Azure SQL Database
7 128 (1.98%) Metadata
8 77 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 72 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 66 (1.02%) Power Query
11 63 (0.97%) MySQL
12 50 (0.77%) NoSQL
13 49 (0.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 44 (0.68%) Oracle Database
15 41 (0.63%) Star Schema
16 35 (0.54%) Delta Lake
16 35 (0.54%) Tableau
17 31 (0.48%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 24 (0.37%) Big Data
18 24 (0.37%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 321 (4.96%) JIRA
2 198 (3.06%) Git
3 90 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 66 (1.02%) GitLab
5 54 (0.83%) Visual Studio
6 36 (0.56%) MSI
7 29 (0.45%) Selenium
8 18 (0.28%) Postman
9 17 (0.26%) Eclipse
10 16 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
10 16 (0.25%) WebDriver
11 13 (0.20%) MLflow
11 13 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
12 12 (0.19%) Artifactory
12 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.19%) Claude Code
12 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
12 12 (0.19%) ERwin
12 12 (0.19%) JUnit
13 11 (0.17%) Maven
General
1 2,201 (34.02%) Social Skills
2 1,308 (20.22%) Finance
3 813 (12.57%) Analytical Skills
4 609 (9.41%) Public Sector
5 319 (4.93%) Banking
6 292 (4.51%) Organisational Skills
7 223 (3.45%) Legal
8 175 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 149 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 131 (2.03%) Manufacturing
11 128 (1.98%) Retail
12 113 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.58%) Law
14 101 (1.56%) Marketing
15 84 (1.30%) Local Government
15 84 (1.30%) Military
16 73 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
17 68 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
18 61 (0.94%) Investment Banking
19 56 (0.87%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 742 (11.47%) Architect
2 669 (10.34%) Analyst
3 618 (9.55%) Developer
4 570 (8.81%) Senior
5 460 (7.11%) Lead
6 408 (6.31%) IT Support
7 397 (6.14%) Consultant
8 364 (5.63%) Support Engineer
9 256 (3.96%) IT Engineer
10 251 (3.88%) Data Engineer
11 247 (3.82%) Solutions Architect
12 230 (3.56%) Azure Engineer
13 226 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 214 (3.31%) Project Manager
15 205 (3.17%) IT Support Engineer
16 194 (3.00%) Administrator
17 183 (2.83%) Business Analyst
18 159 (2.46%) Cloud Engineer
19 126 (1.95%) Security Engineer
20 109 (1.68%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 304 (4.70%) .NET
2 245 (3.79%) REST
3 125 (1.93%) JSON
4 116 (1.79%) Microsoft Graph
5 112 (1.73%) OAuth
6 107 (1.65%) PySpark
7 96 (1.48%) XML
8 93 (1.44%) SAML
9 92 (1.42%) OpenID
10 88 (1.36%) .NET Framework
11 83 (1.28%) Web Services
12 78 (1.21%) React
13 75 (1.16%) RESTful
14 71 (1.10%) HTML
15 66 (1.02%) ARM Templates
16 65 (1.00%) LDAP
17 64 (0.99%) SailPoint
18 63 (0.97%) OAuth2
18 63 (0.97%) SOAP
19 62 (0.96%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 439 (6.79%) Onboarding
2 304 (4.70%) Cloud Native
3 188 (2.91%) Management Information System
4 181 (2.80%) Product Ownership
5 161 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
6 139 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
7 136 (2.10%) Hybrid Cloud
8 124 (1.92%) PKI
9 123 (1.90%) AI Agents
10 122 (1.89%) Data Centre
10 122 (1.89%) Security Posture
11 93 (1.44%) Data Structures
12 89 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
13 83 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
14 78 (1.21%) Virtual Team
15 72 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 68 (1.05%) Driving Licence
17 66 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
18 60 (0.93%) Analytical Mindset
18 60 (0.93%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,367 (21.13%) Windows
2 375 (5.80%) Windows Server
3 335 (5.18%) Windows 10
4 305 (4.71%) Linux
5 131 (2.03%) Mac OS
6 122 (1.89%) Android
7 113 (1.75%) Apple iOS
8 57 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.68%) Unix
10 36 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 33 (0.51%) Windows 7
11 33 (0.51%) Windows Server 2016
12 29 (0.45%) VMS
13 28 (0.43%) Ubuntu
14 21 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.22%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
17 10 (0.15%) Solaris
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,155 (17.85%) Problem-Solving
2 1,028 (15.89%) DevOps
3 988 (15.27%) Agile
4 927 (14.33%) Stakeholder Management
5 913 (14.11%) Migration
6 844 (13.05%) CI/CD
7 743 (11.49%) AI
8 733 (11.33%) Continuous Improvement
9 726 (11.22%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 725 (11.21%) Business Intelligence
11 681 (10.53%) Analytics
12 612 (9.46%) ITIL
13 536 (8.29%) Customer Service
14 483 (7.47%) Data Modelling
15 474 (7.33%) Cybersecurity
16 465 (7.19%) Infrastructure as Code
16 465 (7.19%) Roadmaps
17 422 (6.52%) Project Delivery
18 421 (6.51%) Decision-Making
19 413 (6.38%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 822 (12.71%) SQL
2 690 (10.67%) PowerShell
3 664 (10.26%) Python
4 318 (4.92%) C#
5 242 (3.74%) JavaScript
6 188 (2.91%) Java
7 186 (2.88%) Bicep
8 136 (2.10%) Bash
9 117 (1.81%) T-SQL
10 101 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.34%) TypeScript
12 67 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 39 (0.60%) VBA
14 30 (0.46%) C++
15 26 (0.40%) PL/SQL
16 25 (0.39%) VB
17 20 (0.31%) X++
18 17 (0.26%) VBScript
19 16 (0.25%) R
19 16 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,336 (20.65%) Security Cleared
2 1,008 (15.58%) SC Cleared
3 638 (9.86%) Degree
4 341 (5.27%) Microsoft Certification
5 257 (3.97%) DV Cleared
6 229 (3.54%) Azure Certification
7 152 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
8 126 (1.95%) CISSP
9 125 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
10 123 (1.90%) Computer Science Degree
11 88 (1.36%) PMP
12 81 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 69 (1.07%) AWS Certification
13 69 (1.07%) CISM
14 55 (0.85%) CCNP
15 52 (0.80%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.74%) CCNA
16 48 (0.74%) DBS Check
17 46 (0.71%) A+ Certification
18 41 (0.63%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 351 (5.43%) Data Quality
2 226 (3.49%) QA
3 222 (3.43%) GDPR
4 191 (2.95%) SLA
5 181 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 157 (2.43%) NIST
6 157 (2.43%) PMO
7 105 (1.62%) Accessibility
8 83 (1.28%) Cyber Essentials
9 79 (1.22%) NCSC
10 43 (0.66%) GRC
11 38 (0.59%) WCAG
12 36 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 34 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 29 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 19 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
16 15 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 14 (0.22%) P3O
17 14 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,251 (19.34%) Active Directory
2 239 (3.69%) Docker
3 220 (3.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 120 (1.86%) Hyper-V
5 96 (1.48%) Virtual Desktop
6 93 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 59 (0.91%) vSphere
8 57 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.37%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.29%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.11%) IAG
15 6 (0.093%) zsh
16 5 (0.077%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.062%) Virtual Servers
18 3 (0.046%) OpenAM
Systems Management
1 524 (8.10%) Microsoft Intune
2 462 (7.14%) Terraform
3 305 (4.71%) Kubernetes
4 227 (3.51%) SCCM
5 161 (2.49%) Ansible
6 112 (1.73%) Single Sign-On
7 58 (0.90%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.80%) Grafana
9 51 (0.79%) vCenter Server
10 36 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.56%) SCOM
11 35 (0.54%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.36%) Puppet
13 22 (0.34%) QRadar
14 21 (0.32%) WSUS
15 19 (0.29%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 15 (0.23%) Argo
17 13 (0.20%) Avamar
17 13 (0.20%) CASB
Vendors
1 464 (7.17%) ServiceNow
2 307 (4.75%) VMware
3 299 (4.62%) Oracle
4 250 (3.86%) SAP
5 224 (3.46%) Databricks
6 213 (3.29%) Google
7 212 (3.28%) Cisco
8 114 (1.76%) Salesforce
9 107 (1.65%) Citrix
10 103 (1.59%) Splunk
11 93 (1.44%) Apple
12 81 (1.25%) CyberArk
13 79 (1.22%) Foundry
14 75 (1.16%) OpenAI
15 72 (1.11%) Okta
16 69 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
17 61 (0.94%) Red Hat
18 60 (0.93%) BeyondTrust
19 55 (0.85%) Zscaler
20 50 (0.77%) Meraki