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 16 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
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,285 4,515 5,605
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.94% 13.90% 13.15%
As % of the Vendors category 28.93% 29.24% 30.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,128 2,889 3,654
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £489
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.76% -2.30%
75th Percentile £588 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £693
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.29% -4.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 372 353 474
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.50
25th Percentile £16.65 £15.84 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +38.63% -27.87%
75th Percentile £35.73 £31.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £70.20 £63.75 £61.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.77 £16.06
% change year-on-year +1.10% +29.34% -15.32%

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 21,724 15,443 18,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.28% 47.53% 43.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,519 9,438 11,491
10th Percentile £313 £281 £272
25th Percentile £413 £403 £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 £714 £729
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.38% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,096 758 1,110
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.75 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.31 £17.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £35.00 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.17% +0.60% -38.27%
75th Percentile £65.00 £51.74 £60.75
90th Percentile £84.38 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.50 £24.47
% change year-on-year +51.07% -8.03% -18.45%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 5,450 £496 +4.40% 3,015
UK excluding London -1 3,339 £450 +4.29% 2,680
London -2 2,393 £513 +1.59% 854
Work from Home +3 1,628 £500 - 1,137
North of England -5 828 £465 +9.41% 645
South East -2 816 £475 +0.53% 848
Midlands -2 580 £447 +15.73% 413
North West -3 464 £450 +3.69% 335
South West -1 405 £475 +10.47% 311
West Midlands -3 405 £450 +13.64% 217
Yorkshire -5 343 £488 +9.86% 224
Scotland +5 314 £450 - 127
East of England 0 283 £375 -25.00% 281
East Midlands +2 167 £413 +10.00% 196
Wales +2 113 £413 +39.83% 79
Northern Ireland +1 33 £350 -6.04% 64
North East -42 27 £450 +32.35% 101
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
1 685 (10.90%) SharePoint
2 391 (6.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 135 (2.15%) Confluence
4 37 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 33 (0.53%) Apache
6 30 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 18 (0.29%) CMS
9 14 (0.22%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.22%) Skype for Business
10 11 (0.18%) SAS
11 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 7 (0.11%) nginx
13 6 (0.095%) Camunda
13 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.080%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.080%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.064%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.064%) Liferay
15 4 (0.064%) Tomcat
Applications
1 578 (9.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 575 (9.15%) Microsoft Office
3 250 (3.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 152 (2.42%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.70%) MS Visio
6 39 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.095%) Adobe Illustrator
10 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.048%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.048%) PTC Creo
10 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
10 3 (0.048%) Trello
11 2 (0.032%) Acrobat
11 2 (0.032%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.032%) Final Cut Pro
11 2 (0.032%) InDesign
11 2 (0.032%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 228 (3.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.30%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 9 (0.14%) SAP MM
11 8 (0.13%) Magento
12 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.11%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.095%) iTrent
13 6 (0.095%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,625 (41.77%) Azure
2 1,542 (24.53%) Microsoft 365
3 1,065 (16.95%) Power Platform
4 908 (14.45%) Entra ID
5 566 (9.01%) AWS
6 508 (8.08%) Azure DevOps
7 492 (7.83%) Dynamics 365
8 362 (5.76%) Power Automate
9 326 (5.19%) PowerApps
10 325 (5.17%) Microsoft Copilot
11 306 (4.87%) Microsoft Purview
12 258 (4.11%) GitHub
13 233 (3.71%) SaaS
14 230 (3.66%) OneDrive
15 208 (3.31%) GCP
16 164 (2.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 157 (2.50%) Azure Data Factory
18 150 (2.39%) PaaS
19 147 (2.34%) Serverless
20 144 (2.29%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 346 (5.51%) DNS
2 298 (4.74%) Firewall
3 238 (3.79%) VPN
4 210 (3.34%) DHCP
5 169 (2.69%) TCP/IP
6 149 (2.37%) WAN
7 146 (2.32%) Wi-Fi
8 138 (2.20%) LAN
9 133 (2.12%) Network Security
10 60 (0.95%) VLAN
11 45 (0.72%) SAN
12 43 (0.68%) Kerberos
13 41 (0.65%) Wireless
14 39 (0.62%) MPLS
14 39 (0.62%) SSL
15 36 (0.57%) Unified Communications
16 34 (0.54%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.51%) VoIP
18 31 (0.49%) Internet
19 26 (0.41%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 681 (10.84%) Power BI
2 349 (5.55%) SQL Server
3 185 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
4 141 (2.24%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (2.00%) Metadata
6 125 (1.99%) Data Lake
7 118 (1.88%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.16%) Relational Database
8 73 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 64 (1.02%) MySQL
10 59 (0.94%) Power Query
11 51 (0.81%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 44 (0.70%) NoSQL
12 44 (0.70%) Star Schema
13 43 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 38 (0.60%) Tableau
15 33 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 32 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 26 (0.41%) Big Data
18 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 318 (5.06%) JIRA
2 193 (3.07%) Git
3 84 (1.34%) Jenkins
4 56 (0.89%) GitLab
5 42 (0.67%) Visual Studio
6 31 (0.49%) MSI
7 26 (0.41%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) ERwin
9 16 (0.25%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) Artifactory
10 15 (0.24%) Postman
11 14 (0.22%) JUnit
12 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
12 13 (0.21%) Cypress.io
12 13 (0.21%) Maven
12 13 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
12 13 (0.21%) WebDriver
13 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,079 (33.08%) Social Skills
2 1,237 (19.68%) Finance
3 739 (11.76%) Analytical Skills
4 595 (9.47%) Public Sector
5 309 (4.92%) Banking
6 265 (4.22%) Organisational Skills
7 230 (3.66%) Legal
8 168 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
9 130 (2.07%) Manufacturing
10 126 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 113 (1.80%) Retail
12 101 (1.61%) Law
12 101 (1.61%) Telecoms
13 90 (1.43%) Marketing
14 83 (1.32%) Military
15 80 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
16 74 (1.18%) Local Government
17 69 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
18 62 (0.99%) Investment Banking
19 46 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 744 (11.84%) Architect
2 667 (10.61%) Analyst
3 595 (9.47%) Developer
4 525 (8.35%) Senior
5 443 (7.05%) Lead
6 391 (6.22%) IT Support
7 378 (6.01%) Consultant
8 331 (5.27%) Support Engineer
9 239 (3.80%) Data Engineer
10 236 (3.75%) IT Engineer
10 236 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
11 220 (3.50%) Project Manager
12 217 (3.45%) Azure Engineer
13 201 (3.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 189 (3.01%) IT Support Engineer
15 185 (2.94%) Administrator
16 175 (2.78%) Business Analyst
17 142 (2.26%) Cloud Engineer
18 120 (1.91%) Security Engineer
19 111 (1.77%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 292 (4.65%) .NET
2 227 (3.61%) REST
3 130 (2.07%) Microsoft Graph
4 118 (1.88%) JSON
5 116 (1.85%) OAuth
6 101 (1.61%) PySpark
7 93 (1.48%) SAML
8 89 (1.42%) OpenID
9 86 (1.37%) Web Services
10 83 (1.32%) React
11 82 (1.30%) LDAP
12 81 (1.29%) XML
13 74 (1.18%) .NET Framework
14 63 (1.00%) HTML
14 63 (1.00%) Node.js
14 63 (1.00%) RESTful
14 63 (1.00%) SailPoint
15 60 (0.95%) OAuth2
16 59 (0.94%) Middleware
17 58 (0.92%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 379 (6.03%) Onboarding
2 301 (4.79%) Cloud Native
3 180 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 162 (2.58%) Management Information System
5 134 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
6 131 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
7 127 (2.02%) Data Centre
8 119 (1.89%) AI Agents
8 119 (1.89%) PKI
9 113 (1.80%) Hybrid Cloud
10 108 (1.72%) Security Posture
11 93 (1.48%) Data Structures
12 92 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
13 82 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
13 82 (1.30%) Virtual Team
14 79 (1.26%) Replication
15 70 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 68 (1.08%) Distributed Systems
17 57 (0.91%) Driving Licence
18 54 (0.86%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,328 (21.13%) Windows
2 337 (5.36%) Windows Server
3 322 (5.12%) Windows 10
4 283 (4.50%) Linux
5 132 (2.10%) Mac OS
6 114 (1.81%) Android
7 108 (1.72%) Apple iOS
8 55 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.70%) Unix
10 38 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
11 35 (0.56%) Windows 7
11 35 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.46%) VMS
13 22 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
14 21 (0.33%) Ubuntu
15 12 (0.19%) SUSE
16 11 (0.18%) CentOS
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
19 6 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,078 (17.15%) Problem-Solving
2 999 (15.89%) DevOps
3 944 (15.02%) Agile
4 886 (14.10%) Migration
5 811 (12.90%) CI/CD
6 804 (12.79%) Stakeholder Management
7 704 (11.20%) AI
8 696 (11.07%) Business Intelligence
9 663 (10.55%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 653 (10.39%) Analytics
11 647 (10.29%) Continuous Improvement
12 566 (9.01%) ITIL
13 483 (7.68%) Customer Service
14 472 (7.51%) Data Modelling
15 446 (7.10%) Roadmaps
16 425 (6.76%) Cybersecurity
17 423 (6.73%) Infrastructure as Code
18 409 (6.51%) Decision-Making
19 390 (6.21%) Project Delivery
20 388 (6.17%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 797 (12.68%) SQL
2 680 (10.82%) PowerShell
3 651 (10.36%) Python
4 300 (4.77%) C#
5 226 (3.60%) JavaScript
6 204 (3.25%) Java
7 157 (2.50%) Bicep
8 113 (1.80%) T-SQL
9 103 (1.64%) Bash
10 90 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.37%) TypeScript
12 74 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
13 37 (0.59%) VBA
14 33 (0.53%) C++
15 28 (0.45%) PL/SQL
16 25 (0.40%) VB
17 17 (0.27%) Scala
17 17 (0.27%) VBScript
18 14 (0.22%) Shell Script
18 14 (0.22%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,273 (20.25%) Security Cleared
2 981 (15.61%) SC Cleared
3 606 (9.64%) Degree
4 314 (5.00%) Microsoft Certification
5 227 (3.61%) DV Cleared
6 218 (3.47%) Azure Certification
7 130 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
8 120 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
9 119 (1.89%) CISSP
10 117 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
11 75 (1.19%) PMP
12 67 (1.07%) PMI Certification
13 65 (1.03%) CISM
14 64 (1.02%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.88%) Master's Degree
16 51 (0.81%) CCNP
17 45 (0.72%) CCNA
17 45 (0.72%) DBS Check
18 42 (0.67%) MCSE
19 39 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 329 (5.23%) Data Quality
2 222 (3.53%) GDPR
3 212 (3.37%) QA
4 175 (2.78%) SLA
5 165 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 142 (2.26%) NIST
7 136 (2.16%) PMO
8 97 (1.54%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
10 73 (1.16%) NCSC
11 42 (0.67%) GRC
12 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 32 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 30 (0.48%) WCAG
15 29 (0.46%) PCI DSS
16 19 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 17 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 16 (0.25%) SOC 2
19 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 13 (0.21%) GMP
System Software
1 1,207 (19.20%) Active Directory
2 233 (3.71%) Docker
3 211 (3.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.70%) Hyper-V
5 95 (1.51%) Virtual Desktop
6 90 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.95%) VMware ESXi
8 59 (0.94%) vSphere
9 30 (0.48%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.35%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Firmware
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.080%) RACF
14 5 (0.080%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.064%) Snort
15 4 (0.064%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 493 (7.84%) Microsoft Intune
2 418 (6.65%) Terraform
3 284 (4.52%) Kubernetes
4 221 (3.52%) SCCM
5 147 (2.34%) Ansible
6 125 (1.99%) Single Sign-On
7 64 (1.02%) Jamf Pro
8 62 (0.99%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 53 (0.84%) vCenter Server
10 49 (0.78%) Grafana
11 38 (0.60%) Prometheus
12 34 (0.54%) SCOM
13 23 (0.37%) Puppet
14 18 (0.29%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.29%) QRadar
14 18 (0.29%) WSUS
15 14 (0.22%) Progress Chef
16 11 (0.18%) Argo
16 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
16 11 (0.18%) vMotion
Vendors
1 413 (6.57%) ServiceNow
2 297 (4.73%) Oracle
3 286 (4.55%) VMware
4 258 (4.11%) SAP
5 209 (3.33%) Databricks
6 204 (3.25%) Cisco
7 197 (3.13%) Google
8 126 (2.00%) Salesforce
9 109 (1.73%) Citrix
10 97 (1.54%) Splunk
11 93 (1.48%) Apple
12 79 (1.26%) Foundry
12 79 (1.26%) Okta
13 77 (1.23%) OpenAI
14 71 (1.13%) CyberArk
15 61 (0.97%) CrowdStrike
16 56 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 49 (0.78%) BeyondTrust
18 48 (0.76%) HP
19 47 (0.75%) Zscaler