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 26 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
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,853 4,615 5,052
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.78% 14.11% 13.01%
As % of the Vendors category 30.63% 29.89% 29.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,426 2,953 3,238
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £471 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -3.78% -2.10%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 467 380 331
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.75 £11.71
25th Percentile £15.28 £16.02 £14.48
Median hourly rate £19.50 £22.16 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -11.99% +36.52% -27.87%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.00 £36.00
90th Percentile £70.24 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.33 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.57% +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 22,375 15,442 16,970
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.71% 47.20% 43.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,812 9,439 10,467
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 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,157 809 781
10th Percentile £14.36 £14.68 £13.25
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.07 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.59% -10.18% -36.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £46.30 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.40 £67.60 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.24 £27.00
% change year-on-year +31.83% -21.33% -32.16%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 5,948 £488 +2.63% 4,713
UK excluding London 0 3,656 £450 +3.45% 3,574
London 0 2,597 £515 +3.00% 1,786
Work from Home +4 1,790 £500 - 2,060
South East +1 946 £475 +3.54% 732
North of England -5 930 £450 +3.45% 898
Midlands -1 633 £443 +10.63% 642
North West -1 552 £450 +2.80% 471
South West +1 447 £470 +17.50% 489
West Midlands -2 431 £447 +9.69% 391
Scotland +7 349 £450 +1.12% 256
Yorkshire -5 347 £460 +5.75% 294
East of England -1 248 £375 -28.57% 355
East Midlands +2 193 £425 +19.72% 251
Wales 0 104 £413 +37.50% 113
North East -37 35 £375 +10.29% 148
Northern Ireland -2 32 £350 - 175
Channel Islands 0 4 £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
1 800 (11.67%) SharePoint
2 401 (5.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.16%) Confluence
4 37 (0.54%) Apache
5 36 (0.53%) Apache Spark
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 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
11 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
12 11 (0.16%) SAS
13 10 (0.15%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.10%) Camunda
15 6 (0.088%) Mendix
15 6 (0.088%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.088%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.073%) Jupyter
Applications
1 687 (10.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 672 (9.81%) Microsoft Office
3 287 (4.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 185 (2.70%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.36%) 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 (0.058%) 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
1 248 (3.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.35%) 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%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) 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 MM
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.088%) Oracle ERP
14 5 (0.073%) SAP GRC
14 5 (0.073%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,882 (42.05%) Azure
2 1,747 (25.49%) Microsoft 365
3 1,193 (17.41%) Power Platform
4 1,049 (15.31%) Entra ID
5 630 (9.19%) AWS
6 608 (8.87%) Azure DevOps
7 593 (8.65%) Dynamics 365
8 407 (5.94%) Power Automate
9 378 (5.52%) Microsoft Copilot
10 367 (5.36%) PowerApps
11 300 (4.38%) Microsoft Purview
12 298 (4.35%) GitHub
13 257 (3.75%) OneDrive
14 245 (3.58%) SaaS
15 240 (3.50%) GCP
16 188 (2.74%) Azure Data Factory
17 174 (2.54%) Serverless
18 171 (2.50%) Azure Monitor
19 163 (2.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 157 (2.29%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 385 (5.62%) DNS
2 344 (5.02%) Firewall
3 285 (4.16%) VPN
4 252 (3.68%) DHCP
5 186 (2.71%) TCP/IP
6 174 (2.54%) WAN
7 165 (2.41%) Network Security
8 153 (2.23%) LAN
9 145 (2.12%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.08%) VLAN
11 56 (0.82%) Wireless
12 47 (0.69%) SAN
13 40 (0.58%) MPLS
14 36 (0.53%) Skype
15 35 (0.51%) SSL
16 33 (0.48%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.47%) BGP
17 32 (0.47%) Internet
17 32 (0.47%) Unified Communications
18 28 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 752 (10.97%) Power BI
2 389 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 186 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
4 144 (2.10%) Metadata
5 138 (2.01%) Data Lake
6 133 (1.94%) Azure SQL Database
7 130 (1.90%) PostgreSQL
8 76 (1.11%) Relational Database
9 67 (0.98%) Power Query
10 66 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 60 (0.88%) MySQL
12 55 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.69%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.61%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 42 (0.61%) Star Schema
15 38 (0.55%) Tableau
16 35 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 29 (0.42%) MongoDB
18 28 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
19 22 (0.32%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 329 (4.80%) JIRA
2 208 (3.04%) Git
3 97 (1.42%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.07%) GitLab
5 50 (0.73%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.64%) MSI
7 38 (0.55%) Selenium
8 20 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Claude Code
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 16 (0.23%) MLflow
11 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.16%) Artifactory
14 11 (0.16%) ERwin
14 11 (0.16%) Maven
14 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,423 (35.36%) Social Skills
2 1,388 (20.25%) Finance
3 873 (12.74%) Analytical Skills
4 629 (9.18%) Public Sector
5 366 (5.34%) Organisational Skills
6 334 (4.87%) Banking
7 223 (3.25%) Legal
8 193 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 154 (2.25%) Manufacturing
11 142 (2.07%) Retail
12 124 (1.81%) Telecoms
13 106 (1.55%) Law
14 103 (1.50%) Marketing
15 94 (1.37%) Local Government
16 86 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
17 74 (1.08%) Military
18 69 (1.01%) Aerospace
19 66 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
20 64 (0.93%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 811 (11.83%) Architect
2 697 (10.17%) Analyst
3 616 (8.99%) Developer
4 588 (8.58%) Senior
5 486 (7.09%) Lead
6 442 (6.45%) Consultant
7 424 (6.19%) IT Support
8 410 (5.98%) Support Engineer
9 280 (4.09%) IT Engineer
10 259 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
11 246 (3.59%) Azure Engineer
12 244 (3.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 239 (3.49%) Data Engineer
14 235 (3.43%) Administrator
15 224 (3.27%) IT Support Engineer
16 218 (3.18%) Project Manager
17 178 (2.60%) Business Analyst
18 171 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
19 130 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
20 129 (1.88%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 503 (7.34%) Terraform
2 339 (4.95%) .NET
3 266 (3.88%) REST
4 127 (1.85%) JSON
5 124 (1.81%) OAuth
6 109 (1.59%) PySpark
7 106 (1.55%) Microsoft Graph
8 103 (1.50%) SAML
9 101 (1.47%) XML
10 94 (1.37%) OpenID
11 92 (1.34%) .NET Framework
12 85 (1.24%) React
13 84 (1.23%) Web Services
14 83 (1.21%) ARM Templates
15 77 (1.12%) LDAP
16 75 (1.09%) RESTful
17 72 (1.05%) HTML
18 69 (1.01%) OAuth2
18 69 (1.01%) SOAP
19 67 (0.98%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 515 (7.51%) Onboarding
2 311 (4.54%) Cloud Native
3 227 (3.31%) Management Information System
4 195 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
4 195 (2.85%) Product Ownership
5 149 (2.17%) Hybrid Cloud
6 141 (2.06%) PKI
7 140 (2.04%) Data Centre
8 136 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
9 133 (1.94%) AI Agents
10 121 (1.77%) Security Posture
11 92 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
12 91 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
13 89 (1.30%) Data Structures
14 80 (1.17%) Low-Code
15 76 (1.11%) Driving Licence
16 75 (1.09%) CMDB
17 72 (1.05%) Virtual Team
18 65 (0.95%) Video Conferencing
19 64 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 1,471 (21.47%) Windows
2 433 (6.32%) Windows Server
3 370 (5.40%) Windows 10
4 330 (4.82%) Linux
5 139 (2.03%) Mac OS
6 121 (1.77%) Android
7 114 (1.66%) Apple iOS
8 63 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
13 34 (0.50%) Ubuntu
13 34 (0.50%) VMS
14 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.28%) CentOS
16 14 (0.20%) Solaris
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.12%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,248 (18.21%) Problem-Solving
2 1,143 (16.68%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,098 (16.02%) DevOps
4 1,053 (15.37%) Agile
5 977 (14.26%) Migration
6 896 (13.07%) CI/CD
7 832 (12.14%) Continuous Improvement
8 789 (11.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 772 (11.27%) AI
10 753 (10.99%) Business Intelligence
11 714 (10.42%) Analytics
12 682 (9.95%) ITIL
13 620 (9.05%) Customer Service
14 522 (7.62%) Infrastructure as Code
15 521 (7.60%) Cybersecurity
16 497 (7.25%) Data Modelling
17 495 (7.22%) Roadmaps
18 469 (6.84%) Project Delivery
19 446 (6.51%) Decision-Making
19 446 (6.51%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 856 (12.49%) SQL
2 747 (10.90%) PowerShell
3 698 (10.19%) Python
4 326 (4.76%) C#
5 245 (3.58%) JavaScript
6 198 (2.89%) Bicep
7 185 (2.70%) Java
8 159 (2.32%) Bash
9 106 (1.55%) T-SQL
10 105 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 93 (1.36%) TypeScript
12 73 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
13 35 (0.51%) VBA
14 30 (0.44%) VB
15 27 (0.39%) VBScript
16 23 (0.34%) X++
17 22 (0.32%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) C++
19 18 (0.26%) R
20 16 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,478 (21.57%) Security Cleared
2 1,103 (16.10%) SC Cleared
3 624 (9.11%) Degree
4 350 (5.11%) Microsoft Certification
5 287 (4.19%) DV Cleared
6 252 (3.68%) Azure Certification
7 166 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
8 130 (1.90%) CISSP
9 129 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 119 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.39%) PMP
12 87 (1.27%) PMI Certification
13 73 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 71 (1.04%) CISM
15 57 (0.83%) CCNP
16 56 (0.82%) A+ Certification
17 55 (0.80%) DBS Check
18 51 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
19 48 (0.70%) CCNA
19 48 (0.70%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (5.65%) Data Quality
2 239 (3.49%) QA
3 227 (3.31%) GDPR
4 204 (2.98%) SLA
5 193 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 177 (2.58%) PMO
7 168 (2.45%) NIST
8 112 (1.63%) Accessibility
9 87 (1.27%) NCSC
10 84 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.77%) GRC
12 41 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 37 (0.54%) WCAG
14 35 (0.51%) PCI DSS
15 31 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 21 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 20 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 15 (0.22%) P3O
19 14 (0.20%) NIST 800
20 12 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,316 (19.20%) Active Directory
2 254 (3.71%) Docker
3 251 (3.66%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (2.01%) Hyper-V
5 121 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
6 96 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (0.92%) vSphere
8 58 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
11 20 (0.29%) VMware NSX
12 18 (0.26%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) IAG
14 7 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.073%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.073%) XenApp
15 5 (0.073%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 551 (8.04%) Microsoft Intune
2 333 (4.86%) Kubernetes
3 274 (4.00%) SCCM
4 170 (2.48%) Ansible
5 123 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.88%) Grafana
7 57 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.74%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.60%) SCOM
10 39 (0.57%) Prometheus
11 36 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 26 (0.38%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 21 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.31%) Puppet
16 16 (0.23%) Argo
16 16 (0.23%) Failover Clustering
17 13 (0.19%) Avamar
17 13 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 511 (7.46%) ServiceNow
2 333 (4.86%) VMware
3 327 (4.77%) Oracle
4 271 (3.95%) SAP
5 239 (3.49%) Databricks
5 239 (3.49%) Google
6 227 (3.31%) Cisco
7 118 (1.72%) Salesforce
8 116 (1.69%) Splunk
9 110 (1.61%) Apple
10 93 (1.36%) Citrix
11 89 (1.30%) CyberArk
12 78 (1.14%) Okta
12 78 (1.14%) OpenAI
13 73 (1.07%) BeyondTrust
14 72 (1.05%) Foundry
15 69 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
16 65 (0.95%) Red Hat
17 57 (0.83%) Zscaler
18 52 (0.76%) Meraki