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 22 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
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,226 4,666 4,977
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.24% 14.37% 13.10%
As % of the Vendors category 31.73% 30.25% 29.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,593 3,020 3,100
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £370 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.69% -4.09% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £689
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.92% -2.83% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 576 379 277
10th Percentile £13.35 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.65 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.10% +31.26% -24.55%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.20 £46.18
90th Percentile £67.08 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £20.80 £16.23
% change year-on-year -13.44% +28.13% -18.85%

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 22,776 15,426 16,872
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.74% 47.50% 44.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,912 9,454 10,092
10th Percentile £310 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £701 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,288 793 656
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.69 £14.46
25th Percentile £16.62 £17.44 £15.62
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -18.87% -30.34%
75th Percentile £60.75 £43.75 £63.84
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.05 £30.00
% change year-on-year +22.33% -29.83% -29.82%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 6,249 £490 +3.87% 9,024
UK excluding London +1 3,894 £450 +2.92% 6,271
London 0 2,689 £520 +4.00% 3,825
Work from Home +4 1,834 £500 - 4,210
South East -1 1,016 £475 +5.56% 1,664
North of England -5 966 £465 +6.90% 1,527
Midlands 0 674 £425 +3.66% 1,012
North West -1 570 £469 +7.09% 796
West Midlands -1 460 £425 -1.39% 586
South West -1 452 £470 +10.59% 648
Scotland +5 384 £450 - 499
Yorkshire -6 349 £474 +6.76% 532
East of England 0 288 £335 -36.19% 603
East Midlands +2 208 £425 +16.52% 426
Wales +2 109 £375 +23.46% 164
North East -19 52 £438 +28.75% 221
Northern Ireland -1 37 £342 -2.29% 237
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 5

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
1 872 (12.07%) SharePoint
2 407 (5.63%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.06%) Confluence
4 38 (0.53%) Apache
4 38 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 27 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
5 27 (0.37%) CMS
6 25 (0.35%) IIS
7 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
8 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
9 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.14%) nginx
12 8 (0.11%) SAS
13 6 (0.083%) Apache Superset
13 6 (0.083%) Mendix
13 6 (0.083%) OpenStack
13 6 (0.083%) SharePoint 2013
13 6 (0.083%) ThingWorx
14 5 (0.069%) Camunda
Applications
1 780 (10.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 756 (10.46%) Microsoft Office
3 320 (4.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 192 (2.66%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.21%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.14%) Revit
12 5 (0.069%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.069%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.055%) Trello
14 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
15 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.028%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 265 (3.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 86 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 34 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.39%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) 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 (0.097%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.097%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.097%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.083%) Maximo
13 6 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,969 (41.09%) Azure
2 1,842 (25.49%) Microsoft 365
3 1,268 (17.55%) Power Platform
4 1,140 (15.78%) Entra ID
5 658 (9.11%) AWS
6 610 (8.44%) Azure DevOps
7 608 (8.41%) Dynamics 365
8 443 (6.13%) Microsoft Copilot
9 434 (6.01%) Power Automate
10 385 (5.33%) PowerApps
11 308 (4.26%) Microsoft Purview
12 293 (4.05%) GitHub
13 271 (3.75%) OneDrive
14 268 (3.71%) GCP
15 244 (3.38%) SaaS
16 199 (2.75%) Serverless
17 183 (2.53%) Azure Data Factory
18 179 (2.48%) Azure Monitor
19 162 (2.24%) Azure Logic Apps
20 157 (2.17%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 404 (5.59%) DNS
2 340 (4.71%) Firewall
3 293 (4.05%) VPN
4 270 (3.74%) DHCP
5 204 (2.82%) TCP/IP
6 167 (2.31%) Network Security
7 161 (2.23%) WAN
8 145 (2.01%) LAN
9 137 (1.90%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.02%) VLAN
11 71 (0.98%) Wireless
12 51 (0.71%) SAN
13 41 (0.57%) SSL
14 40 (0.55%) Skype
15 37 (0.51%) MPLS
16 34 (0.47%) Unified Communications
17 32 (0.44%) Kerberos
18 31 (0.43%) BGP
18 31 (0.43%) Internet
19 28 (0.39%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 771 (10.67%) Power BI
2 400 (5.54%) SQL Server
3 172 (2.38%) Data Warehouse
4 162 (2.24%) Metadata
5 147 (2.03%) Data Lake
6 125 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
7 112 (1.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 89 (1.23%) Power Query
9 77 (1.07%) Relational Database
10 70 (0.97%) MySQL
11 65 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.66%) NoSQL
13 46 (0.64%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.55%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 35 (0.48%) Tableau
18 31 (0.43%) MongoDB
19 30 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
20 23 (0.32%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 337 (4.66%) JIRA
2 240 (3.32%) Git
3 88 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.00%) GitLab
5 59 (0.82%) Visual Studio
6 46 (0.64%) MSI
7 38 (0.53%) Selenium
8 25 (0.35%) Postman
9 23 (0.32%) Claude Code
10 18 (0.25%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.24%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.22%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
14 12 (0.17%) MLflow
14 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
15 11 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
16 10 (0.14%) Bitbucket
16 10 (0.14%) ERwin
General
1 2,696 (37.31%) Social Skills
2 1,418 (19.62%) Finance
3 945 (13.08%) Analytical Skills
4 643 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 440 (6.09%) Organisational Skills
6 316 (4.37%) Banking
7 228 (3.16%) Legal
8 208 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
9 197 (2.73%) Manufacturing
10 183 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 156 (2.16%) Retail
12 125 (1.73%) Telecoms
13 109 (1.51%) Marketing
14 102 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
15 94 (1.30%) Military
16 92 (1.27%) Aerospace
17 91 (1.26%) Law
18 89 (1.23%) Local Government
19 69 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
20 57 (0.79%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 838 (11.60%) Architect
2 720 (9.96%) Analyst
3 636 (8.80%) Developer
4 619 (8.57%) Senior
5 478 (6.62%) Lead
6 462 (6.39%) Consultant
7 452 (6.26%) IT Support
8 431 (5.96%) Support Engineer
9 313 (4.33%) Administrator
10 291 (4.03%) IT Engineer
11 282 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
12 250 (3.46%) Azure Engineer
13 249 (3.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 242 (3.35%) IT Support Engineer
15 240 (3.32%) Data Engineer
16 223 (3.09%) Project Manager
17 189 (2.62%) Business Analyst
18 183 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
19 139 (1.92%) DevOps Engineer
20 135 (1.87%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 539 (7.46%) Terraform
2 340 (4.71%) .NET
3 278 (3.85%) REST
4 140 (1.94%) OAuth
5 139 (1.92%) JSON
6 111 (1.54%) XML
7 110 (1.52%) SAML
8 108 (1.49%) PySpark
9 105 (1.45%) OpenID
10 101 (1.40%) Microsoft Graph
11 95 (1.31%) ARM Templates
12 90 (1.25%) React
13 87 (1.20%) Web Services
14 85 (1.18%) .NET Framework
15 80 (1.11%) LDAP
16 78 (1.08%) OAuth2
17 75 (1.04%) SailPoint
18 74 (1.02%) HTML
19 73 (1.01%) RESTful
20 66 (0.91%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 580 (8.03%) Onboarding
2 315 (4.36%) Cloud Native
3 290 (4.01%) Management Information System
4 216 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
5 204 (2.82%) Product Ownership
6 160 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
7 159 (2.20%) AI Agents
8 154 (2.13%) PKI
9 150 (2.08%) Data Centre
10 138 (1.91%) Security Posture
11 137 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
12 94 (1.30%) Data Structures
13 93 (1.29%) CMDB
13 93 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
14 92 (1.27%) Driving Licence
15 91 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
16 84 (1.16%) Low-Code
17 79 (1.09%) Virtual Team
18 74 (1.02%) NHS
18 74 (1.02%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,541 (21.33%) Windows
2 467 (6.46%) Windows Server
3 384 (5.31%) Windows 10
4 339 (4.69%) Linux
5 155 (2.15%) Mac OS
6 136 (1.88%) Android
7 128 (1.77%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 50 (0.69%) Unix
10 42 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.54%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
13 32 (0.44%) VMS
14 23 (0.32%) CentOS
15 21 (0.29%) Solaris
16 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.17%) SUSE
18 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.097%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,361 (18.83%) Problem-Solving
2 1,355 (18.75%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,101 (15.24%) DevOps
4 1,084 (15.00%) Agile
5 977 (13.52%) Migration
6 952 (13.17%) CI/CD
7 908 (12.57%) Continuous Improvement
8 851 (11.78%) AI
9 824 (11.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 778 (10.77%) Business Intelligence
11 737 (10.20%) Analytics
12 719 (9.95%) ITIL
13 680 (9.41%) Customer Service
14 576 (7.97%) Infrastructure as Code
15 574 (7.94%) Cybersecurity
16 547 (7.57%) Roadmaps
17 513 (7.10%) Data Modelling
18 498 (6.89%) Project Delivery
19 489 (6.77%) Decision-Making
20 478 (6.62%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 863 (11.94%) SQL
2 809 (11.20%) PowerShell
3 739 (10.23%) Python
4 352 (4.87%) C#
5 273 (3.78%) JavaScript
6 211 (2.92%) Bicep
7 171 (2.37%) Bash
8 167 (2.31%) Java
9 114 (1.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 111 (1.54%) TypeScript
11 107 (1.48%) T-SQL
12 73 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.43%) VBA
14 29 (0.40%) VB
15 27 (0.37%) C++
16 25 (0.35%) VBScript
17 24 (0.33%) X++
18 22 (0.30%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.26%) R
20 15 (0.21%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,551 (21.46%) Security Cleared
2 1,150 (15.91%) SC Cleared
3 634 (8.77%) Degree
4 375 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 310 (4.29%) DV Cleared
6 274 (3.79%) Azure Certification
7 186 (2.57%) BPSS Clearance
8 145 (2.01%) CISSP
9 129 (1.79%) Cisco Certification
10 108 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.31%) PMP
12 90 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 77 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 76 (1.05%) CISM
15 64 (0.89%) DBS Check
16 60 (0.83%) A+ Certification
17 59 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 55 (0.76%) CCNP
19 46 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 45 (0.62%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 441 (6.10%) Data Quality
2 242 (3.35%) QA
3 236 (3.27%) GDPR
4 212 (2.93%) SLA
5 208 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 206 (2.85%) PMO
7 179 (2.48%) NIST
8 123 (1.70%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 87 (1.20%) NCSC
11 62 (0.86%) GRC
12 49 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.64%) WCAG
14 39 (0.54%) PCI DSS
15 28 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 24 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
17 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.24%) NIST 800
20 16 (0.22%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 1,350 (18.68%) Active Directory
2 269 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 253 (3.50%) Docker
4 140 (1.94%) Hyper-V
5 130 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
6 109 (1.51%) Virtual Machines
7 73 (1.01%) vSphere
8 65 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
11 16 (0.22%) Firmware
12 15 (0.21%) VMware NSX
13 10 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.11%) IAG
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
15 7 (0.097%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.097%) zsh
16 6 (0.083%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 6 (0.083%) XenApp
17 5 (0.069%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 583 (8.07%) Microsoft Intune
2 339 (4.69%) Kubernetes
3 296 (4.10%) SCCM
4 166 (2.30%) Ansible
5 144 (1.99%) Single Sign-On
6 58 (0.80%) Grafana
6 58 (0.80%) Jamf Pro
7 57 (0.79%) SCOM
8 50 (0.69%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 26 (0.36%) QRadar
11 26 (0.36%) WSUS
12 24 (0.33%) Progress Chef
13 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
14 19 (0.26%) Puppet
15 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
16 16 (0.22%) Argo
17 15 (0.21%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 546 (7.56%) ServiceNow
2 349 (4.83%) VMware
3 335 (4.64%) Oracle
4 291 (4.03%) SAP
5 261 (3.61%) Google
6 251 (3.47%) Databricks
7 240 (3.32%) Cisco
8 131 (1.81%) Splunk
9 127 (1.76%) Salesforce
10 112 (1.55%) Apple
11 106 (1.47%) CyberArk
12 92 (1.27%) Citrix
13 91 (1.26%) Okta
13 91 (1.26%) OpenAI
14 87 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
15 85 (1.18%) Foundry
16 76 (1.05%) CrowdStrike
17 66 (0.91%) Red Hat
18 57 (0.79%) IBM
18 57 (0.79%) Zscaler