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 4 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
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,081 4,319 5,660
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.78% 13.69% 13.03%
As % of the Vendors category 28.70% 28.80% 30.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,993 2,769 3,684
10th Percentile £213 £213 £198
25th Percentile £375 £348 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £580 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £429 £450
% change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 375 323 490
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.43 £15.84 £13.69
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.00 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +36.99% -32.68%
75th Percentile £35.22 £31.00 £26.36
90th Percentile £65.00 £62.85 £59.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £19.83 £16.00
% change year-on-year +4.35% +23.94% -15.79%

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 21,187 14,995 18,645
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.05% 47.53% 42.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,195 9,196 11,597
10th Percentile £313 £281 £273
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £501 £514
Median % change year-on-year +0.14% -2.63% -2.10%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,094 709 1,147
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.84 £12.40
25th Percentile £19.08 £17.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £24.65
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +2.03% -39.14%
75th Percentile £62.94 £53.50 £59.98
90th Percentile £80.08 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.00
% change year-on-year +43.61% -5.71% -25.70%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 5,295 £494 +4.00% 3,695
UK excluding London -1 3,228 £450 +4.90% 3,124
London -2 2,328 £508 -1.02% 1,165
Work from Home 0 1,564 £500 - 1,704
North of England -4 827 £460 +8.24% 731
South East -2 761 £475 +1.20% 958
Midlands -2 556 £450 +16.50% 507
North West -2 446 £450 +4.65% 380
South West 0 393 £475 +11.76% 340
West Midlands -3 393 £450 +14.87% 272
Yorkshire -2 360 £481 +6.89% 255
East of England 0 294 £350 -30.00% 317
Scotland +5 283 £450 +1.18% 167
East Midlands +1 155 £425 +13.20% 236
Wales +2 113 £370 +23.33% 104
Northern Ireland +2 32 £350 +0.36% 85
North East -40 25 £450 +30.43% 111
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14%

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
1 653 (10.74%) SharePoint
2 386 (6.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 130 (2.14%) Confluence
4 35 (0.58%) Apache Spark
5 31 (0.51%) Apache
6 28 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.31%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) CMS
9 15 (0.25%) HCL Notes
9 15 (0.25%) Skype for Business
10 11 (0.18%) SAS
11 9 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 6 (0.099%) Camunda
12 6 (0.099%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.082%) Mendix
13 5 (0.082%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.082%) SharePoint 2013
14 4 (0.066%) Appian
14 4 (0.066%) ThingWorx
14 4 (0.066%) Tomcat
Applications
1 561 (9.23%) Microsoft Office
2 552 (9.08%) Microsoft Excel
3 233 (3.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 130 (2.14%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.73%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.099%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.082%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.049%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.049%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.049%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.033%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.033%) InDesign
12 2 (0.033%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.033%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.033%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 206 (3.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.21%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.15%) Primavera
9 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
9 9 (0.15%) SAP MM
10 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
11 7 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
11 7 (0.12%) SAP PSCD
12 6 (0.099%) Dynamics GP
12 6 (0.099%) Magento
12 6 (0.099%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,541 (41.79%) Azure
2 1,513 (24.88%) Microsoft 365
3 1,030 (16.94%) Power Platform
4 855 (14.06%) Entra ID
5 543 (8.93%) AWS
6 481 (7.91%) Azure DevOps
7 467 (7.68%) Dynamics 365
8 344 (5.66%) Power Automate
9 318 (5.23%) Microsoft Purview
10 316 (5.20%) PowerApps
11 303 (4.98%) Microsoft Copilot
12 250 (4.11%) GitHub
13 230 (3.78%) OneDrive
14 225 (3.70%) SaaS
15 193 (3.17%) GCP
16 155 (2.55%) Azure Data Factory
17 154 (2.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 152 (2.50%) Serverless
19 144 (2.37%) PaaS
20 142 (2.34%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 334 (5.49%) DNS
2 286 (4.70%) Firewall
3 232 (3.82%) VPN
4 201 (3.31%) DHCP
5 155 (2.55%) WAN
6 152 (2.50%) TCP/IP
7 140 (2.30%) Wi-Fi
8 133 (2.19%) LAN
9 126 (2.07%) Network Security
10 56 (0.92%) VLAN
11 49 (0.81%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.74%) SD-WAN
13 44 (0.72%) SAN
14 40 (0.66%) SSL
15 39 (0.64%) Wireless
16 34 (0.56%) Unified Communications
17 33 (0.54%) MPLS
18 31 (0.51%) Internet
18 31 (0.51%) VoIP
19 27 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 655 (10.77%) Power BI
2 315 (5.18%) SQL Server
3 173 (2.84%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
5 125 (2.06%) Metadata
6 121 (1.99%) Data Lake
7 117 (1.92%) Azure SQL Database
8 72 (1.18%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 61 (1.00%) MySQL
11 55 (0.90%) Power Query
12 51 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.72%) NoSQL
13 44 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 40 (0.66%) Tableau
15 39 (0.64%) Oracle Database
16 35 (0.58%) Delta Lake
17 32 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 26 (0.43%) Big Data
19 24 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 302 (4.97%) JIRA
2 181 (2.98%) Git
3 76 (1.25%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.94%) GitLab
5 39 (0.64%) Visual Studio
6 28 (0.46%) MSI
7 20 (0.33%) Selenium
8 18 (0.30%) Artifactory
9 17 (0.28%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.28%) ERwin
10 16 (0.26%) MLflow
11 15 (0.25%) JUnit
12 14 (0.23%) Maven
12 14 (0.23%) Postman
13 13 (0.21%) Visual Studio Code
14 12 (0.20%) Bitbucket
14 12 (0.20%) Team Foundation Server
15 11 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
16 10 (0.16%) JMeter
16 10 (0.16%) WebDriver
General
1 2,003 (32.94%) Social Skills
2 1,214 (19.96%) Finance
3 686 (11.28%) Analytical Skills
4 562 (9.24%) Public Sector
5 304 (5.00%) Banking
6 261 (4.29%) Organisational Skills
7 242 (3.98%) Legal
8 162 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
9 117 (1.92%) Manufacturing
10 114 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 104 (1.71%) Retail
12 97 (1.60%) Law
13 94 (1.55%) Telecoms
14 83 (1.36%) Marketing
14 83 (1.36%) Military
15 81 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
16 72 (1.18%) Local Government
17 65 (1.07%) Investment Banking
18 63 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
19 44 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 751 (12.35%) Architect
2 643 (10.57%) Analyst
3 566 (9.31%) Developer
4 498 (8.19%) Senior
5 411 (6.76%) Lead
6 379 (6.23%) IT Support
7 371 (6.10%) Consultant
8 304 (5.00%) Support Engineer
9 238 (3.91%) Solutions Architect
10 226 (3.72%) Data Engineer
11 218 (3.58%) IT Engineer
12 213 (3.50%) Project Manager
13 208 (3.42%) Azure Engineer
14 186 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 182 (2.99%) Administrator
16 171 (2.81%) Business Analyst
17 170 (2.80%) IT Support Engineer
18 125 (2.06%) Cloud Engineer
19 119 (1.96%) Security Engineer
20 107 (1.76%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (4.49%) .NET
2 215 (3.54%) REST
3 137 (2.25%) Microsoft Graph
4 118 (1.94%) OAuth
5 108 (1.78%) JSON
6 101 (1.66%) PySpark
6 101 (1.66%) SAML
7 88 (1.45%) OpenID
8 83 (1.36%) Web Services
9 82 (1.35%) LDAP
10 80 (1.32%) React
11 70 (1.15%) XML
12 61 (1.00%) Node.js
12 61 (1.00%) RESTful
12 61 (1.00%) SailPoint
13 60 (0.99%) .NET Framework
14 59 (0.97%) Middleware
14 59 (0.97%) OAuth2
15 56 (0.92%) HTML
16 55 (0.90%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 347 (5.71%) Onboarding
2 280 (4.60%) Cloud Native
3 167 (2.75%) Product Ownership
4 153 (2.52%) Management Information System
5 125 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
6 123 (2.02%) Data Centre
7 117 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
8 106 (1.74%) Hybrid Cloud
9 105 (1.73%) PKI
10 104 (1.71%) AI Agents
10 104 (1.71%) Security Posture
11 89 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
12 87 (1.43%) Data Structures
13 78 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
13 78 (1.28%) Replication
13 78 (1.28%) Virtual Team
14 70 (1.15%) Low-Code
15 61 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
16 50 (0.82%) Clustering
16 50 (0.82%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,299 (21.36%) Windows
2 330 (5.43%) Windows Server
3 319 (5.25%) Windows 10
4 266 (4.37%) Linux
5 132 (2.17%) Mac OS
6 111 (1.83%) Android
7 106 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 45 (0.74%) Unix
9 44 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 41 (0.67%) Windows 7
11 37 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
12 32 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.48%) VMS
14 22 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
15 17 (0.28%) Ubuntu
16 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
17 12 (0.20%) CentOS
18 11 (0.18%) SUSE
19 9 (0.15%) Solaris
20 6 (0.099%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,044 (17.17%) Problem-Solving
2 959 (15.77%) DevOps
3 898 (14.77%) Agile
4 852 (14.01%) Migration
5 788 (12.96%) CI/CD
6 733 (12.05%) Stakeholder Management
7 670 (11.02%) Business Intelligence
8 667 (10.97%) AI
9 633 (10.41%) Analytics
10 615 (10.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 594 (9.77%) Continuous Improvement
12 544 (8.95%) ITIL
13 460 (7.56%) Customer Service
14 444 (7.30%) Data Modelling
15 429 (7.05%) Roadmaps
16 415 (6.82%) Cybersecurity
17 398 (6.54%) Infrastructure as Code
18 393 (6.46%) Decision-Making
19 367 (6.04%) Validation
20 363 (5.97%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 775 (12.74%) SQL
2 662 (10.89%) PowerShell
3 636 (10.46%) Python
4 284 (4.67%) C#
5 216 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 192 (3.16%) Java
7 155 (2.55%) Bicep
8 109 (1.79%) T-SQL
9 87 (1.43%) Bash
10 85 (1.40%) TypeScript
11 83 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.22%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.59%) VBA
14 33 (0.54%) C++
15 28 (0.46%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.44%) VB
17 19 (0.31%) VBScript
18 17 (0.28%) Scala
19 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
20 15 (0.25%) R
Qualifications
1 1,187 (19.52%) Security Cleared
2 916 (15.06%) SC Cleared
3 586 (9.64%) Degree
4 293 (4.82%) Microsoft Certification
5 205 (3.37%) DV Cleared
6 200 (3.29%) Azure Certification
7 121 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 120 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
9 113 (1.86%) CISSP
10 104 (1.71%) Cisco Certification
11 61 (1.00%) PMP
12 59 (0.97%) CISM
13 56 (0.92%) PMI Certification
14 55 (0.90%) AWS Certification
15 53 (0.87%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.79%) CCNP
17 43 (0.71%) DBS Check
17 43 (0.71%) MCSE
18 42 (0.69%) CCNA
19 39 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 313 (5.15%) Data Quality
2 230 (3.78%) GDPR
3 199 (3.27%) QA
4 177 (2.91%) SLA
5 162 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 133 (2.19%) NIST
7 119 (1.96%) PMO
8 87 (1.43%) Accessibility
9 84 (1.38%) Cyber Essentials
10 68 (1.12%) NCSC
11 38 (0.62%) GRC
12 35 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 33 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 32 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 25 (0.41%) WCAG
16 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
17 16 (0.26%) NIST 800
18 15 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
19 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
20 12 (0.20%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,171 (19.26%) Active Directory
2 230 (3.78%) Docker
3 209 (3.44%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.81%) Hyper-V
5 91 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 86 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.99%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (0.95%) vSphere
9 33 (0.54%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.33%) Firmware
13 9 (0.15%) NFS
14 7 (0.12%) IAG
15 5 (0.082%) RACF
15 5 (0.082%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.082%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.066%) Snort
16 4 (0.066%) XenDesktop
17 3 (0.049%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 482 (7.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 395 (6.50%) Terraform
3 264 (4.34%) Kubernetes
4 211 (3.47%) SCCM
5 130 (2.14%) Ansible
6 129 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
7 69 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 61 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
9 50 (0.82%) vCenter Server
10 42 (0.69%) Grafana
11 32 (0.53%) Prometheus
12 30 (0.49%) SCOM
13 27 (0.44%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.33%) Puppet
15 19 (0.31%) WSUS
16 16 (0.26%) QRadar
17 13 (0.21%) AirWatch
18 12 (0.20%) vMotion
19 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
19 11 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 382 (6.28%) ServiceNow
2 283 (4.65%) VMware
3 270 (4.44%) Oracle
4 255 (4.19%) SAP
5 207 (3.40%) Cisco
5 207 (3.40%) Databricks
6 182 (2.99%) Google
7 120 (1.97%) Salesforce
8 107 (1.76%) Citrix
9 94 (1.55%) Splunk
10 87 (1.43%) Apple
11 77 (1.27%) Foundry
12 74 (1.22%) Okta
13 73 (1.20%) OpenAI
14 67 (1.10%) CyberArk
15 65 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
16 50 (0.82%) HP
17 47 (0.77%) Red Hat
18 45 (0.74%) Zscaler
19 43 (0.71%) Dell