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 10 June 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
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,686 4,008 5,623
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.49% 13.65% 12.89%
As % of the Vendors category 28.32% 28.65% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,772 2,590 3,656
10th Percentile £213 £213 £191
25th Percentile £375 £340 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.89% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £583 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £459
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.41% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 363 286 479
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.67 £13.22
Median hourly rate £20.69 £20.00 £15.65
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% +27.80% -34.79%
75th Percentile £33.75 £30.63 £25.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £60.94 £56.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.09 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +6.47% +25.80% -25.00%

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 20,080 13,989 18,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.58% 47.63% 42.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,626 8,611 11,465
10th Percentile £313 £280 £269
25th Percentile £413 £404 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £515
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% -2.72% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +4.06% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,022 624 1,139
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.34 £14.49
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.50 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.45% +8.51% -45.35%
75th Percentile £59.56 £55.00 £58.49
90th Percentile £78.54 £69.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £22.94 £22.00
% change year-on-year +30.79% +4.26% -45.00%

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 10 June 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 10 June 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 10 June 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 4,982 £497 +4.66% 3,028
UK excluding London -1 2,981 £450 +5.88% 2,657
London -3 2,220 £510 -2.53% 833
Work from Home -1 1,434 £500 - 1,312
North of England -3 774 £450 +5.88% 639
South East -1 699 £475 +1.35% 823
Midlands -5 504 £450 +13.07% 425
North West -3 402 £438 +2.94% 370
South West -2 362 £466 +6.46% 311
Yorkshire -3 353 £475 +15.15% 188
West Midlands -7 350 £450 +12.50% 235
East of England 0 296 £375 -25.00% 303
Scotland +2 247 £450 +3.45% 108
East Midlands 0 147 £415 +9.21% 191
Wales +1 97 £370 +23.33% 71
Northern Ireland +1 25 £400 +23.08% 55
North East -33 21 £450 +32.35% 83
Channel Islands -2 2 £550 +84.87%

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
1 611 (10.75%) SharePoint
2 382 (6.72%) Microsoft Exchange
3 110 (1.93%) Confluence
4 40 (0.70%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.51%) Apache
6 26 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.32%) CMS
8 17 (0.30%) HCL Notes
9 16 (0.28%) IIS
10 15 (0.26%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.25%) SAS
12 8 (0.14%) Mendix
13 6 (0.11%) Camunda
13 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
14 5 (0.088%) Appian
14 5 (0.088%) nginx
14 5 (0.088%) OpenEdge
15 4 (0.070%) MS Project Server
15 4 (0.070%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 533 (9.37%) Microsoft Office
2 501 (8.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 220 (3.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 115 (2.02%) Microsoft Project
5 86 (1.51%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.088%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.088%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.088%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.088%) Trello
10 3 (0.053%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.053%) InDesign
10 3 (0.053%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.035%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.035%) InfoPath
11 2 (0.035%) MicroStation
11 2 (0.035%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.035%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 199 (3.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.33%) NetSuite
5 15 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 14 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.23%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
10 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.14%) Maximo
12 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
13 6 (0.11%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.11%) Primavera
13 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
14 5 (0.088%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,429 (42.72%) Azure
2 1,465 (25.77%) Microsoft 365
3 962 (16.92%) Power Platform
4 783 (13.77%) Entra ID
5 478 (8.41%) AWS
6 447 (7.86%) Dynamics 365
7 446 (7.84%) Azure DevOps
8 321 (5.65%) Power Automate
9 310 (5.45%) Microsoft Purview
10 283 (4.98%) PowerApps
11 267 (4.70%) Microsoft Copilot
12 244 (4.29%) GitHub
13 227 (3.99%) OneDrive
14 209 (3.68%) SaaS
15 180 (3.17%) Azure Data Factory
15 180 (3.17%) GCP
16 167 (2.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 146 (2.57%) Serverless
18 144 (2.53%) PaaS
19 133 (2.34%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 299 (5.26%) DNS
2 261 (4.59%) Firewall
3 218 (3.83%) VPN
4 188 (3.31%) DHCP
5 141 (2.48%) WAN
6 135 (2.37%) Wi-Fi
7 124 (2.18%) LAN
7 124 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 116 (2.04%) Network Security
9 55 (0.97%) VLAN
10 53 (0.93%) Kerberos
11 47 (0.83%) SD-WAN
12 38 (0.67%) SAN
13 34 (0.60%) SSL
14 33 (0.58%) Wireless
15 31 (0.55%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.53%) VoIP
17 28 (0.49%) HTTP
17 28 (0.49%) Skype
18 24 (0.42%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 598 (10.52%) Power BI
2 275 (4.84%) SQL Server
3 170 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 147 (2.59%) Data Lake
5 118 (2.08%) Azure SQL Database
6 115 (2.02%) Metadata
7 107 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
8 71 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 64 (1.13%) Relational Database
10 51 (0.90%) Power Query
11 46 (0.81%) NoSQL
11 46 (0.81%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 45 (0.79%) MySQL
13 43 (0.76%) Tableau
14 40 (0.70%) Delta Lake
14 40 (0.70%) Star Schema
15 33 (0.58%) Oracle Database
16 29 (0.51%) Spark SQL
17 28 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 26 (0.46%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 277 (4.87%) JIRA
2 168 (2.95%) Git
3 60 (1.06%) Jenkins
4 55 (0.97%) GitLab
5 36 (0.63%) Visual Studio
6 24 (0.42%) Artifactory
7 22 (0.39%) MSI
8 18 (0.32%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.28%) ERwin
10 15 (0.26%) MLflow
11 14 (0.25%) Selenium
11 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
12 13 (0.23%) JMeter
13 12 (0.21%) Maven
13 12 (0.21%) Postman
14 10 (0.18%) Bitbucket
14 10 (0.18%) Team Foundation Server
15 9 (0.16%) Gatling
16 8 (0.14%) AdminStudio
16 8 (0.14%) InstallShield
General
1 1,856 (32.64%) Social Skills
2 1,132 (19.91%) Finance
3 614 (10.80%) Analytical Skills
4 505 (8.88%) Public Sector
5 300 (5.28%) Banking
6 247 (4.34%) Legal
7 229 (4.03%) Organisational Skills
8 146 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
9 102 (1.79%) Manufacturing
10 100 (1.76%) Retail
11 98 (1.72%) Law
12 87 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 82 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
14 77 (1.35%) Telecoms
15 76 (1.34%) Marketing
16 71 (1.25%) Military
17 69 (1.21%) Local Government
18 64 (1.13%) Investment Banking
19 56 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
20 44 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 709 (12.47%) Architect
2 609 (10.71%) Analyst
3 508 (8.93%) Developer
4 476 (8.37%) Senior
5 364 (6.40%) IT Support
6 363 (6.38%) Lead
7 322 (5.66%) Consultant
8 270 (4.75%) Support Engineer
9 235 (4.13%) Data Engineer
10 213 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
11 202 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
12 193 (3.39%) Project Manager
13 188 (3.31%) IT Engineer
14 180 (3.17%) Business Analyst
14 180 (3.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 170 (2.99%) Administrator
16 145 (2.55%) IT Support Engineer
17 121 (2.13%) Security Engineer
18 108 (1.90%) Cloud Engineer
19 107 (1.88%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (4.31%) .NET
2 185 (3.25%) REST
3 140 (2.46%) Microsoft Graph
4 115 (2.02%) OAuth
5 106 (1.86%) PySpark
6 104 (1.83%) SAML
7 94 (1.65%) JSON
8 88 (1.55%) OpenID
9 80 (1.41%) LDAP
10 77 (1.35%) React
11 76 (1.34%) Web Services
12 59 (1.04%) Middleware
13 57 (1.00%) SailPoint
14 56 (0.98%) Node.js
15 55 (0.97%) HTML
15 55 (0.97%) OAuth2
15 55 (0.97%) XML
16 52 (0.91%) CSS
17 50 (0.88%) ARM Templates
18 48 (0.84%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 312 (5.49%) Onboarding
2 244 (4.29%) Cloud Native
3 170 (2.99%) Product Ownership
4 128 (2.25%) Management Information System
5 111 (1.95%) Data Centre
6 103 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
7 101 (1.78%) Hybrid Cloud
8 98 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
9 92 (1.62%) Security Posture
10 86 (1.51%) AI Agents
11 84 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
12 82 (1.44%) PKI
13 76 (1.34%) Replication
14 72 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 67 (1.18%) Data Structures
15 67 (1.18%) Virtual Team
16 65 (1.14%) Low-Code
17 50 (0.88%) Public Cloud
18 49 (0.86%) Operational Technology
19 48 (0.84%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 1,236 (21.74%) Windows
2 322 (5.66%) Windows 10
3 303 (5.33%) Windows Server
4 248 (4.36%) Linux
5 118 (2.08%) Mac OS
6 110 (1.93%) Apple iOS
7 108 (1.90%) Android
8 43 (0.76%) Windows 7
9 40 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
10 39 (0.69%) Unix
11 38 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
13 31 (0.55%) VMS
14 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
15 15 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
16 14 (0.25%) Ubuntu
17 11 (0.19%) CentOS
18 6 (0.11%) AIX
19 5 (0.088%) Solaris
19 5 (0.088%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 966 (16.99%) Problem-Solving
2 909 (15.99%) DevOps
3 833 (14.65%) Agile
4 812 (14.28%) Migration
5 745 (13.10%) CI/CD
6 625 (10.99%) Business Intelligence
7 610 (10.73%) Stakeholder Management
8 608 (10.69%) Analytics
9 591 (10.39%) AI
10 519 (9.13%) Continuous Improvement
11 513 (9.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 486 (8.55%) ITIL
13 427 (7.51%) Customer Service
14 424 (7.46%) Data Modelling
15 396 (6.96%) Roadmaps
16 378 (6.65%) Cybersecurity
17 355 (6.24%) Decision-Making
18 341 (6.00%) Infrastructure as Code
19 334 (5.87%) Project Delivery
20 329 (5.79%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 718 (12.63%) SQL
2 653 (11.48%) PowerShell
3 578 (10.17%) Python
4 266 (4.68%) C#
5 200 (3.52%) JavaScript
6 179 (3.15%) Java
7 135 (2.37%) Bicep
8 102 (1.79%) T-SQL
9 78 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 77 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
11 69 (1.21%) Bash
12 68 (1.20%) TypeScript
13 35 (0.62%) VBA
14 29 (0.51%) VB
15 27 (0.47%) C++
16 25 (0.44%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.32%) Scala
18 16 (0.28%) VBScript
19 14 (0.25%) Shell Script
20 11 (0.19%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,080 (18.99%) Security Cleared
2 848 (14.91%) SC Cleared
3 543 (9.55%) Degree
4 275 (4.84%) Microsoft Certification
5 185 (3.25%) Azure Certification
6 171 (3.01%) DV Cleared
7 116 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 107 (1.88%) CISSP
9 96 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
10 84 (1.48%) Cisco Certification
11 59 (1.04%) CISM
12 56 (0.98%) PMP
13 53 (0.93%) PMI Certification
14 50 (0.88%) Master's Degree
15 48 (0.84%) AWS Certification
16 45 (0.79%) MCSE
17 39 (0.69%) DBS Check
18 37 (0.65%) CCNP
19 35 (0.62%) MCSA
20 34 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 294 (5.17%) Data Quality
2 226 (3.97%) GDPR
3 183 (3.22%) QA
4 165 (2.90%) SLA
5 151 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 128 (2.25%) NIST
7 105 (1.85%) PMO
8 78 (1.37%) Accessibility
9 76 (1.34%) Cyber Essentials
10 57 (1.00%) NCSC
11 35 (0.62%) GRC
11 35 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 29 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 29 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 22 (0.39%) NIST 800
14 19 (0.33%) MiFID
14 19 (0.33%) WCAG
15 18 (0.32%) SOC 2
16 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.23%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,093 (19.22%) Active Directory
2 208 (3.66%) Docker
3 198 (3.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.92%) Hyper-V
5 85 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 81 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
8 59 (1.04%) vSphere
9 32 (0.56%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
12 18 (0.32%) Firmware
13 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
14 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 5 (0.088%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.070%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.070%) Snort
16 4 (0.070%) XenDesktop
17 3 (0.053%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 465 (8.18%) Microsoft Intune
2 344 (6.05%) Terraform
3 237 (4.17%) Kubernetes
4 205 (3.61%) SCCM
5 126 (2.22%) Ansible
5 126 (2.22%) Single Sign-On
6 80 (1.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 53 (0.93%) vCenter Server
8 50 (0.88%) Jamf Pro
9 32 (0.56%) Grafana
10 29 (0.51%) Prometheus
11 26 (0.46%) FortiGate
12 24 (0.42%) SCOM
13 19 (0.33%) Puppet
14 15 (0.26%) AirWatch
14 15 (0.26%) WSUS
15 14 (0.25%) QRadar
16 12 (0.21%) HAProxy
16 12 (0.21%) vMotion
17 10 (0.18%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 321 (5.65%) ServiceNow
2 269 (4.73%) VMware
3 225 (3.96%) SAP
4 221 (3.89%) Oracle
5 216 (3.80%) Databricks
6 193 (3.39%) Cisco
7 169 (2.97%) Google
8 115 (2.02%) Salesforce
9 110 (1.93%) Citrix
10 88 (1.55%) Splunk
11 76 (1.34%) OpenAI
12 73 (1.28%) Apple
13 70 (1.23%) Foundry
14 60 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
15 56 (0.98%) Okta
16 52 (0.91%) CyberArk
17 48 (0.84%) HP
18 45 (0.79%) Adobe
19 42 (0.74%) Red Hat
20 41 (0.72%) Dell