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 2 February 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
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,111 4,210 5,949
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.30% 13.55% 13.20%
As % of the Vendors category 29.23% 29.33% 30.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,464 2,648 4,050
10th Percentile £203 £206 £195
25th Percentile £350 £348 £321
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £608
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 182 370
10th Percentile £13.57 £15.44 £11.79
25th Percentile £16.24 £15.62 £13.87
Median hourly rate £19.20 £23.59 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.60% +31.06% -11.59%
75th Percentile £25.47 £33.75 £37.91
90th Percentile £63.36 £57.62 £52.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £21.73 £17.72
% change year-on-year -13.16% +22.63% -11.40%

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 17,487 14,355 19,765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.51% 46.20% 43.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,256 8,481 12,469
10th Percentile £300 £280 £250
25th Percentile £410 £408 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -2.33%
75th Percentile £609 £625 £635
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 827 420 920
10th Percentile £14.99 £15.62 £13.00
25th Percentile £17.78 £20.14 £15.83
Median hourly rate £23.75 £28.21 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.80% -5.98% -3.69%
75th Percentile £52.27 £61.50 £58.71
90th Percentile £73.75 £80.15 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.48 £25.00 £26.97
% change year-on-year -14.08% -7.31% +3.74%

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 2 February 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 2 February 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 2 February 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 4,490 £475 - 3,099
UK excluding London 0 2,755 £450 +4.17% 2,798
London -3 1,883 £510 +2.00% 838
Work from Home -1 1,313 £500 +3.73% 1,255
North of England +2 718 £425 - 655
South East -1 623 £475 +0.53% 891
Midlands -4 473 £450 +5.88% 465
North West 0 412 £400 -11.11% 328
South West 0 362 £500 +6.38% 273
West Midlands -6 320 £488 +12.07% 276
East of England 0 316 £413 -8.74% 294
Yorkshire 0 272 £450 +10.29% 253
Scotland -2 190 £454 +21.07% 157
East Midlands -1 152 £400 -2.44% 188
Wales +2 84 £308 -29.71% 96
North East -14 39 £450 +25.00% 80
Northern Ireland 0 28 £463 +42.31% 23
Channel Islands +1 1 - - 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
1 583 (11.41%) SharePoint
2 395 (7.73%) Microsoft Exchange
3 110 (2.15%) Confluence
4 58 (1.13%) Skype for Business
5 39 (0.76%) CMS
6 23 (0.45%) Apache
6 23 (0.45%) IIS
7 22 (0.43%) SAS
8 20 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
9 17 (0.33%) Apache Spark
9 17 (0.33%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
11 13 (0.25%) Mattermost
12 10 (0.20%) Exchange Server 2010
12 10 (0.20%) iPlanet
12 10 (0.20%) JBoss
12 10 (0.20%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.20%) WebSphere Application Server
13 9 (0.18%) Mendix
13 9 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 626 (12.25%) Microsoft Office
2 514 (10.06%) Microsoft Excel
3 229 (4.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 125 (2.45%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (2.13%) MS Visio
6 71 (1.39%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.22%) Trello
8 9 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.12%) Sketch
10 5 (0.098%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.078%) Adobe After Effects
11 4 (0.078%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.078%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.078%) InDesign
11 4 (0.078%) Photoshop
11 4 (0.078%) PTC Creo
12 3 (0.059%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.059%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 191 (3.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 40 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.33%) Dynamics AX
5 16 (0.31%) Maximo
6 15 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
7 11 (0.22%) NetSuite
7 11 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
9 9 (0.18%) Aladdin
9 9 (0.18%) Loan IQ
9 9 (0.18%) Teamcenter
9 9 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 7 (0.14%) Advent Geneva
10 7 (0.14%) Shopify
11 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
12 5 (0.098%) Salesforce CRM
12 5 (0.098%) SAP ERP
12 5 (0.098%) SystmOne
13 4 (0.078%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 1,995 (39.03%) Azure
2 1,254 (24.54%) Microsoft 365
3 819 (16.02%) Power Platform
4 629 (12.31%) Entra ID
5 442 (8.65%) AWS
6 393 (7.69%) Dynamics 365
7 374 (7.32%) Azure DevOps
8 339 (6.63%) Power Automate
9 304 (5.95%) PowerApps
10 236 (4.62%) Microsoft Purview
11 222 (4.34%) GitHub
12 192 (3.76%) OneDrive
13 186 (3.64%) Serverless
14 172 (3.37%) Azure Data Factory
14 172 (3.37%) GCP
15 161 (3.15%) SaaS
16 159 (3.11%) Microsoft Copilot
17 144 (2.82%) Azure Logic Apps
18 134 (2.62%) Azure Sentinel
19 128 (2.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 297 (5.81%) DNS
2 277 (5.42%) Firewall
3 191 (3.74%) DHCP
4 186 (3.64%) VPN
5 123 (2.41%) TCP/IP
6 122 (2.39%) Wi-Fi
7 113 (2.21%) WAN
8 99 (1.94%) Network Security
9 97 (1.90%) LAN
10 85 (1.66%) Skype
11 67 (1.31%) Kerberos
12 51 (1.00%) VLAN
13 48 (0.94%) Wireless
14 44 (0.86%) Unified Communications
15 36 (0.70%) HTTP
15 36 (0.70%) SD-WAN
16 31 (0.61%) Internet
17 25 (0.49%) SSL
17 25 (0.49%) VoIP
18 24 (0.47%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 495 (9.68%) Power BI
2 237 (4.64%) SQL Server
3 137 (2.68%) Data Warehouse
4 128 (2.50%) Data Lake
5 93 (1.82%) Metadata
6 90 (1.76%) Azure SQL Database
6 90 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
7 82 (1.60%) Relational Database
8 68 (1.33%) Oracle Database
9 47 (0.92%) MySQL
10 45 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 44 (0.86%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 43 (0.84%) Tableau
13 37 (0.72%) Power Query
14 36 (0.70%) NoSQL
15 28 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
16 26 (0.51%) Star Schema
17 24 (0.47%) Delta Lake
18 18 (0.35%) Amazon RDS
18 18 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 230 (4.50%) JIRA
2 155 (3.03%) Git
3 81 (1.58%) Jenkins
4 74 (1.45%) GitLab
5 27 (0.53%) Eclipse
6 25 (0.49%) MSI
7 21 (0.41%) Postman
8 19 (0.37%) Android Studio
8 19 (0.37%) Browser DevTools
8 19 (0.37%) Visual Studio
9 17 (0.33%) Artifactory
9 17 (0.33%) Selenium
9 17 (0.33%) Xcode
10 16 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
11 15 (0.29%) JMeter
12 13 (0.25%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.23%) InstallShield
14 11 (0.22%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.20%) Bitbucket Server
15 10 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 2,029 (39.70%) Social Skills
2 1,010 (19.76%) Finance
3 650 (12.72%) Analytical Skills
4 511 (10.00%) Public Sector
5 251 (4.91%) Organisational Skills
6 245 (4.79%) Banking
7 203 (3.97%) Legal
8 161 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
9 130 (2.54%) Manufacturing
10 110 (2.15%) Marketing
10 110 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (1.88%) Telecoms
12 75 (1.47%) Retail
13 69 (1.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 54 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
15 46 (0.90%) Military
16 45 (0.88%) Investment Banking
17 44 (0.86%) Law
18 39 (0.76%) Local Government
19 37 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 662 (12.95%) Analyst
2 553 (10.82%) Architect
3 489 (9.57%) Developer
4 363 (7.10%) Senior
5 319 (6.24%) IT Support
6 296 (5.79%) Support Engineer
7 280 (5.48%) Consultant
8 253 (4.95%) Lead
9 176 (3.44%) Solutions Architect
10 171 (3.35%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 162 (3.17%) Azure Engineer
12 161 (3.15%) Business Analyst
13 154 (3.01%) Administrator
14 153 (2.99%) IT Engineer
15 147 (2.88%) Data Engineer
16 144 (2.82%) Project Manager
16 144 (2.82%) Support Analyst
17 117 (2.29%) IT Support Engineer
18 112 (2.19%) Security Engineer
19 102 (2.00%) Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 251 (4.91%) .NET
2 165 (3.23%) REST
3 132 (2.58%) OAuth
4 112 (2.19%) React
4 112 (2.19%) SAML
5 92 (1.80%) Microsoft Graph
6 88 (1.72%) OpenID
7 83 (1.62%) LDAP
8 79 (1.55%) AngularJS
8 79 (1.55%) RESTful
9 68 (1.33%) HTML
10 67 (1.31%) CSS
11 65 (1.27%) JSON
12 64 (1.25%) PySpark
13 59 (1.15%) ARM Templates
14 56 (1.10%) Node.js
15 48 (0.94%) OAuth2
16 47 (0.92%) Middleware
17 46 (0.90%) Web Services
18 42 (0.82%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 291 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 192 (3.76%) Cloud Native
3 149 (2.92%) Product Ownership
4 132 (2.58%) Management Information System
5 113 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
6 95 (1.86%) PKI
7 90 (1.76%) Data Centre
8 87 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
9 85 (1.66%) Security Posture
10 76 (1.49%) Replication
11 73 (1.43%) Driving Licence
12 72 (1.41%) Hybrid Cloud
13 71 (1.39%) Legacy Systems
14 70 (1.37%) Low-Code
15 68 (1.33%) Mobile App
16 55 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
17 54 (1.06%) NHS
17 54 (1.06%) Virtual Team
18 50 (0.98%) AI Agents
19 48 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 1,221 (23.89%) Windows
2 356 (6.97%) Windows 10
3 304 (5.95%) Linux
4 282 (5.52%) Windows Server
5 111 (2.17%) Mac OS
6 95 (1.86%) Android
7 87 (1.70%) Apple iOS
8 71 (1.39%) Unix
9 46 (0.90%) Windows 7
10 40 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
11 31 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 26 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
13 21 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
14 17 (0.33%) VMS
15 8 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
16 7 (0.14%) AIX
17 6 (0.12%) CentOS
17 6 (0.12%) Ubuntu
18 5 (0.098%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,028 (20.11%) Problem-Solving
2 870 (17.02%) Agile
3 753 (14.73%) DevOps
4 653 (12.78%) Migration
5 620 (12.13%) CI/CD
6 581 (11.37%) Business Intelligence
7 542 (10.60%) Analytics
8 519 (10.15%) Stakeholder Management
9 458 (8.96%) ITIL
10 451 (8.82%) Customer Service
11 433 (8.47%) Continuous Improvement
12 421 (8.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 398 (7.79%) AI
14 346 (6.77%) Cybersecurity
15 319 (6.24%) Project Management
16 304 (5.95%) Data Modelling
17 285 (5.58%) Change Management
18 281 (5.50%) Roadmaps
19 275 (5.38%) Project Delivery
20 271 (5.30%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 664 (12.99%) SQL
2 649 (12.70%) PowerShell
3 592 (11.58%) Python
4 265 (5.18%) C#
5 220 (4.30%) JavaScript
6 133 (2.60%) Java
7 106 (2.07%) Bicep
8 102 (2.00%) Bash
9 99 (1.94%) Kusto Query Language
10 81 (1.58%) TypeScript
11 55 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 50 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 35 (0.68%) Perl
14 28 (0.55%) PL/SQL
14 28 (0.55%) Shell Script
15 27 (0.53%) C++
16 26 (0.51%) VB
17 23 (0.45%) VBScript
18 19 (0.37%) VBA
19 18 (0.35%) R
Qualifications
1 1,021 (19.98%) Security Cleared
2 764 (14.95%) SC Cleared
3 528 (10.33%) Degree
4 329 (6.44%) Microsoft Certification
5 214 (4.19%) DV Cleared
6 185 (3.62%) Azure Certification
7 125 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 115 (2.25%) CISSP
9 79 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
10 66 (1.29%) CISM
11 59 (1.15%) Master's Degree
12 58 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
13 54 (1.06%) PMI Certification
14 52 (1.02%) ITIL Certification
15 49 (0.96%) A+ Certification
16 47 (0.92%) MCSE
17 45 (0.88%) PMP
18 41 (0.80%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 40 (0.78%) AWS Certification
20 34 (0.67%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 228 (4.46%) GDPR
2 179 (3.50%) Data Quality
3 162 (3.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 150 (2.93%) QA
5 143 (2.80%) SLA
6 125 (2.45%) NIST
7 112 (2.19%) PMO
8 79 (1.55%) Accessibility
9 49 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
10 35 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 32 (0.63%) NCSC
12 31 (0.61%) PCI DSS
13 22 (0.43%) EU AI Act
13 22 (0.43%) WCAG
14 21 (0.41%) GRC
15 19 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 18 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.27%) MiFID
17 14 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 12 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,072 (20.97%) Active Directory
2 203 (3.97%) Docker
3 171 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 73 (1.43%) Hyper-V
5 67 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
6 42 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
7 40 (0.78%) vSphere
8 35 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
9 17 (0.33%) BitLocker
9 17 (0.33%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
11 9 (0.18%) Firmware
12 8 (0.16%) Tivoli Directory Server
13 6 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.098%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.098%) Snort
14 5 (0.098%) Squid
15 4 (0.078%) HDFS
15 4 (0.078%) NFS
Systems Management
1 387 (7.57%) Microsoft Intune
2 289 (5.65%) Terraform
3 275 (5.38%) SCCM
4 228 (4.46%) Kubernetes
5 159 (3.11%) Single Sign-On
6 106 (2.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 102 (2.00%) Ansible
8 48 (0.94%) SCOM
9 44 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
10 39 (0.76%) vCenter Server
11 36 (0.70%) Grafana
12 31 (0.61%) Prometheus
13 23 (0.45%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.41%) HP SiteScope
14 21 (0.41%) WSUS
15 16 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 15 (0.29%) QRadar
16 15 (0.29%) WMI
17 14 (0.27%) Kibana
18 13 (0.25%) Puppet
Vendors
1 268 (5.24%) ServiceNow
2 239 (4.68%) VMware
3 212 (4.15%) Oracle
4 187 (3.66%) Cisco
5 174 (3.40%) SAP
6 163 (3.19%) Databricks
7 159 (3.11%) Splunk
8 146 (2.86%) Google
9 106 (2.07%) Citrix
10 89 (1.74%) Salesforce
11 83 (1.62%) OpenAI
12 80 (1.57%) Apple
13 64 (1.25%) CrowdStrike
14 58 (1.13%) Palo Alto
15 53 (1.04%) Foundry
16 50 (0.98%) Remedy
17 46 (0.90%) IBM
18 44 (0.86%) HP
19 40 (0.78%) CyberArk
19 40 (0.78%) Veeam