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 3 October 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
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,414 4,774 4,959
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.52% 14.41% 13.04%
As % of the Vendors category 32.47% 30.23% 29.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,657 3,110 3,048
10th Percentile £213 £206 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £349
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.06% -3.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £439 £449
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.28% -0.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 627 382 270
10th Percentile £13.34 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.50 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.25 £22.16 £18.97
Median % change year-on-year -17.64% +16.83% -15.82%
75th Percentile £30.45 £31.30 £45.89
90th Percentile £67.00 £63.72 £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 22,835 15,793 16,937
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.63% 47.65% 44.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,829 9,703 9,998
10th Percentile £310 £278 £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 £619 £613 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,369 818 626
10th Percentile £13.97 £14.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.35 £17.62 £15.81
Median hourly rate £25.50 £25.15 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.39% -21.41% -25.58%
75th Percentile £57.50 £40.82 £64.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.19 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +13.57% -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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 6,431 £490 +3.16% 9,165
UK excluding London 0 3,981 £450 +2.56% 7,271
London +1 2,772 £525 +5.00% 3,274
Work from Home +4 1,861 £500 - 4,482
South East +1 1,069 £475 +5.56% 1,787
North of England -5 980 £471 +8.28% 1,664
Midlands -1 689 £430 +3.93% 1,123
North West -1 573 £473 +8.11% 838
West Midlands -1 472 £425 -3.41% 624
South West -1 452 £475 +5.56% 698
Scotland +5 378 £450 - 757
Yorkshire -4 358 £473 +8.62% 594
East of England 0 303 £348 -33.81% 709
East Midlands +1 211 £438 +17.92% 499
Wales +1 110 £394 +31.25% 330
North East -24 54 £425 +23.26% 254
Northern Ireland -2 35 £312 -10.86% 318
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 6

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 (12.10%) SharePoint
2 407 (5.49%) Microsoft Exchange
3 157 (2.12%) Confluence
4 37 (0.50%) Apache
5 35 (0.47%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 27 (0.36%) CMS
8 25 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 23 (0.31%) Skype for Business
10 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.081%) Mendix
14 6 (0.081%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.081%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.067%) SAS
16 4 (0.054%) ArcGIS
16 4 (0.054%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 823 (11.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 784 (10.57%) Microsoft Office
3 327 (4.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 200 (2.70%) Microsoft Project
5 115 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 54 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.34%) 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 (0.13%) Revit
12 6 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.081%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.040%) 1Password
13 3 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.040%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.040%) Trello
14 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.027%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 269 (3.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 91 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 36 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 18 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 17 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 15 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
9 13 (0.18%) Primavera
10 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) Magento
12 10 (0.13%) Aladdin
12 10 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
13 8 (0.11%) iTrent
13 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
14 7 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
14 7 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
14 7 (0.094%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.094%) SAP PP
14 7 (0.094%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,025 (40.80%) Azure
2 1,882 (25.38%) Microsoft 365
3 1,290 (17.40%) Power Platform
4 1,185 (15.98%) Entra ID
5 678 (9.14%) AWS
6 630 (8.50%) Azure DevOps
7 608 (8.20%) Dynamics 365
8 464 (6.26%) Microsoft Copilot
9 444 (5.99%) Power Automate
10 396 (5.34%) PowerApps
11 322 (4.34%) Microsoft Purview
12 308 (4.15%) GitHub
13 290 (3.91%) GCP
14 273 (3.68%) OneDrive
15 240 (3.24%) SaaS
16 206 (2.78%) Serverless
17 181 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
18 178 (2.40%) Azure Data Factory
19 166 (2.24%) Copilot Studio
20 163 (2.20%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 409 (5.52%) DNS
2 342 (4.61%) Firewall
3 302 (4.07%) VPN
4 271 (3.66%) DHCP
5 204 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 170 (2.29%) Network Security
7 158 (2.13%) WAN
8 146 (1.97%) LAN
9 137 (1.85%) Wi-Fi
10 72 (0.97%) VLAN
11 71 (0.96%) Wireless
12 51 (0.69%) SAN
13 43 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.50%) Kerberos
15 37 (0.50%) MPLS
16 35 (0.47%) Unified Communications
17 32 (0.43%) BGP
18 31 (0.42%) Internet
18 31 (0.42%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 778 (10.49%) Power BI
2 413 (5.57%) SQL Server
3 170 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
4 162 (2.19%) Metadata
5 147 (1.98%) Data Lake
6 128 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
7 115 (1.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 87 (1.17%) Power Query
9 83 (1.12%) Relational Database
10 74 (1.00%) MySQL
11 67 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 52 (0.70%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.63%) Oracle Database
14 41 (0.55%) Star Schema
15 40 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 36 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 35 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
18 34 (0.46%) MongoDB
19 31 (0.42%) Tableau
20 30 (0.40%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 342 (4.61%) JIRA
2 254 (3.43%) Git
3 92 (1.24%) Jenkins
4 71 (0.96%) GitLab
5 58 (0.78%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.69%) MSI
7 36 (0.49%) Selenium
8 26 (0.35%) Claude Code
8 26 (0.35%) Postman
9 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
10 17 (0.23%) Cucumber
10 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
12 13 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 12 (0.16%) Subversion
14 10 (0.13%) ERwin
14 10 (0.13%) MLflow
15 9 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,772 (37.39%) Social Skills
2 1,463 (19.73%) Finance
3 967 (13.04%) Analytical Skills
4 656 (8.85%) Public Sector
5 474 (6.39%) Organisational Skills
6 317 (4.28%) Banking
7 236 (3.18%) Legal
8 223 (3.01%) Manufacturing
9 210 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
10 186 (2.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 166 (2.24%) Retail
12 124 (1.67%) Telecoms
13 117 (1.58%) Marketing
14 101 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
15 99 (1.34%) Aerospace
16 93 (1.25%) Local Government
17 90 (1.21%) Military
18 78 (1.05%) Law
19 75 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
20 55 (0.74%) Billing
Job Titles
1 831 (11.21%) Architect
2 726 (9.79%) Analyst
3 651 (8.78%) Developer
4 641 (8.65%) Senior
5 486 (6.56%) Lead
6 475 (6.41%) Consultant
7 441 (5.95%) IT Support
8 435 (5.87%) Support Engineer
9 352 (4.75%) Administrator
10 292 (3.94%) IT Engineer
11 286 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
12 260 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 258 (3.48%) Azure Engineer
14 245 (3.30%) Data Engineer
15 243 (3.28%) IT Support Engineer
16 227 (3.06%) Project Manager
17 198 (2.67%) Business Analyst
18 187 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
19 146 (1.97%) Security Engineer
20 143 (1.93%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 546 (7.36%) Terraform
2 342 (4.61%) .NET
3 303 (4.09%) REST
4 148 (2.00%) JSON
5 144 (1.94%) OAuth
6 119 (1.61%) XML
7 111 (1.50%) SAML
8 108 (1.46%) OpenID
9 106 (1.43%) Microsoft Graph
10 104 (1.40%) PySpark
11 100 (1.35%) ARM Templates
12 95 (1.28%) React
13 92 (1.24%) Web Services
14 90 (1.21%) .NET Framework
15 83 (1.12%) LDAP
15 83 (1.12%) RESTful
16 80 (1.08%) HTML
17 79 (1.07%) SailPoint
18 78 (1.05%) OAuth2
19 69 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 607 (8.19%) Onboarding
2 323 (4.36%) Cloud Native
3 317 (4.28%) Management Information System
4 237 (3.20%) Enterprise Software
5 204 (2.75%) Product Ownership
6 175 (2.36%) AI Agents
7 165 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
8 164 (2.21%) PKI
9 158 (2.13%) Data Centre
10 146 (1.97%) Security Posture
11 144 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
12 100 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
14 97 (1.31%) Driving Licence
15 94 (1.27%) CMDB
16 91 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
17 85 (1.15%) Low-Code
18 79 (1.07%) Replication
19 78 (1.05%) NHS
20 77 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,570 (21.18%) Windows
2 489 (6.60%) Windows Server
3 389 (5.25%) Windows 10
4 353 (4.76%) Linux
5 156 (2.10%) Mac OS
6 135 (1.82%) Android
7 131 (1.77%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.65%) Unix
10 41 (0.55%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.45%) VMS
14 32 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 21 (0.28%) Solaris
16 21 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.16%) SUSE
18 8 (0.11%) AIX
19 7 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,427 (19.25%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,402 (18.91%) Problem-Solving
3 1,124 (15.16%) DevOps
4 1,110 (14.97%) Agile
5 1,001 (13.50%) Migration
6 970 (13.08%) CI/CD
7 935 (12.61%) Continuous Improvement
8 896 (12.09%) AI
9 839 (11.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 794 (10.71%) Business Intelligence
11 749 (10.10%) Analytics
12 724 (9.77%) ITIL
13 692 (9.33%) Customer Service
14 602 (8.12%) Cybersecurity
15 585 (7.89%) Infrastructure as Code
16 573 (7.73%) Roadmaps
17 518 (6.99%) Project Delivery
18 517 (6.97%) Decision-Making
19 515 (6.95%) Data Modelling
20 489 (6.60%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 884 (11.92%) SQL
2 848 (11.44%) PowerShell
3 758 (10.22%) Python
4 363 (4.90%) C#
5 284 (3.83%) JavaScript
6 215 (2.90%) Bicep
7 185 (2.50%) Bash
8 159 (2.14%) Java
9 120 (1.62%) TypeScript
10 112 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 109 (1.47%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.43%) VB
14 30 (0.40%) VBA
15 27 (0.36%) 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 1,593 (21.49%) Security Cleared
2 1,178 (15.89%) SC Cleared
3 621 (8.38%) Degree
4 376 (5.07%) Microsoft Certification
5 318 (4.29%) DV Cleared
6 274 (3.70%) Azure Certification
7 192 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.94%) CISSP
9 126 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
10 107 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
11 98 (1.32%) PMP
12 94 (1.27%) PMI Certification
13 78 (1.05%) AWS Certification
13 78 (1.05%) CISM
14 66 (0.89%) DBS Check
15 59 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 58 (0.78%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 54 (0.73%) CCNP
18 47 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 44 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 464 (6.26%) Data Quality
2 253 (3.41%) QA
3 240 (3.24%) GDPR
4 221 (2.98%) SLA
5 211 (2.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 211 (2.85%) PMO
6 187 (2.52%) NIST
7 129 (1.74%) Accessibility
8 89 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
9 86 (1.16%) NCSC
10 64 (0.86%) GRC
11 48 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 46 (0.62%) WCAG
13 43 (0.58%) PCI DSS
14 28 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 25 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
16 22 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
18 17 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 1,375 (18.55%) Active Directory
2 284 (3.83%) VMware Infrastructure
3 251 (3.39%) Docker
4 151 (2.04%) Hyper-V
5 136 (1.83%) Virtual Desktop
6 119 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
7 80 (1.08%) vSphere
8 65 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.23%) Firmware
11 17 (0.23%) VMware NSX
12 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 7 (0.094%) IAG
14 7 (0.094%) zsh
15 6 (0.081%) ISA Server
15 6 (0.081%) NFS
15 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.081%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 595 (8.03%) Microsoft Intune
2 335 (4.52%) Kubernetes
3 299 (4.03%) SCCM
4 170 (2.29%) Ansible
5 148 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (0.82%) Grafana
7 60 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
8 56 (0.76%) SCOM
9 49 (0.66%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 33 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 32 (0.43%) QRadar
13 27 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.36%) WSUS
14 22 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
15 21 (0.28%) Argo
15 21 (0.28%) Puppet
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 553 (7.46%) ServiceNow
2 365 (4.92%) VMware
3 344 (4.64%) Oracle
4 308 (4.15%) SAP
5 286 (3.86%) Google
6 258 (3.48%) Databricks
7 244 (3.29%) Cisco
8 135 (1.82%) Salesforce
8 135 (1.82%) Splunk
9 117 (1.58%) Apple
10 110 (1.48%) CyberArk
11 98 (1.32%) Citrix
12 95 (1.28%) Okta
12 95 (1.28%) OpenAI
13 89 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
14 79 (1.07%) Foundry
15 76 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
16 67 (0.90%) Red Hat
17 62 (0.84%) IBM
18 59 (0.80%) Adobe