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 15 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
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,741 4,602 5,020
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.56% 13.96% 12.92%
As % of the Vendors category 30.09% 29.56% 29.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,390 2,943 3,274
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £349 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 437 374 355
10th Percentile £13.64 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £43.90
90th Percentile £70.92 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -1.26% +24.80% -14.58%

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 22,404 15,570 17,004
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.76% 47.24% 43.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,872 9,523 10,614
10th Percentile £313 £278 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £523
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.31% -0.48%
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.38% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,146 804 837
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.57 £13.67
25th Percentile £18.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -13.28% -28.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.85 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.11 £21.30 £28.00
% change year-on-year +50.76% -23.93% -17.57%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 5,890 £490 +3.16% 5,903
UK excluding London -1 3,589 £450 +2.97% 4,285
London 0 2,568 £515 +3.00% 2,432
Work from Home +3 1,761 £500 - 2,360
South East 0 935 £475 - 1,252
North of England -4 916 £451 +4.16% 1,024
Midlands -2 624 £448 +15.48% 692
North West 0 539 £450 +2.92% 544
South West +1 447 £470 +8.05% 473
West Midlands -4 426 £448 +11.88% 410
Yorkshire -5 348 £474 +10.24% 354
Scotland +8 321 £450 - 246
East of England -1 246 £375 -25.00% 432
East Midlands +2 188 £425 +20.74% 282
Wales +1 101 £413 +39.83% 136
North East -39 33 £375 +10.29% 144
Northern Ireland -4 31 £369 +2.08% 130
Channel Islands 0 1 £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
1 788 (11.69%) SharePoint
2 406 (6.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 147 (2.18%) Confluence
4 40 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.58%) Apache
6 29 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) IIS
8 21 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.30%) CMS
10 19 (0.28%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.15%) SAS
14 9 (0.13%) nginx
15 6 (0.089%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.089%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.089%) Mendix
15 6 (0.089%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.089%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 662 (9.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 643 (9.54%) Microsoft Office
3 278 (4.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 175 (2.60%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.62%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.089%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.089%) Revit
12 4 (0.059%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.059%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 3 (0.045%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.045%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.045%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.030%) Adobe Captivate
14 2 (0.030%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 235 (3.49%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 23 (0.34%) Oracle Payables
5 22 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
6 21 (0.31%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
9 10 (0.15%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.12%) Sage X3
12 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.10%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.089%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.089%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,829 (41.97%) Azure
2 1,714 (25.43%) Microsoft 365
3 1,176 (17.45%) Power Platform
4 1,020 (15.13%) Entra ID
5 606 (8.99%) AWS
6 578 (8.57%) Azure DevOps
7 567 (8.41%) Dynamics 365
8 405 (6.01%) Power Automate
9 374 (5.55%) Microsoft Copilot
10 365 (5.41%) PowerApps
11 306 (4.54%) Microsoft Purview
12 288 (4.27%) GitHub
13 254 (3.77%) OneDrive
14 243 (3.60%) SaaS
15 231 (3.43%) GCP
16 186 (2.76%) Azure Data Factory
17 162 (2.40%) Serverless
18 161 (2.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 158 (2.34%) Azure Monitor
20 156 (2.31%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 377 (5.59%) DNS
2 344 (5.10%) Firewall
3 280 (4.15%) VPN
4 239 (3.55%) DHCP
5 185 (2.74%) TCP/IP
6 166 (2.46%) WAN
7 153 (2.27%) Network Security
8 149 (2.21%) LAN
9 148 (2.20%) Wi-Fi
10 78 (1.16%) VLAN
11 54 (0.80%) Wireless
12 50 (0.74%) SAN
13 43 (0.64%) MPLS
14 37 (0.55%) SSL
15 34 (0.50%) Skype
15 34 (0.50%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 30 (0.45%) Internet
18 29 (0.43%) BGP
19 27 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 739 (10.96%) Power BI
2 384 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 190 (2.82%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.02%) Data Lake
5 135 (2.00%) Azure SQL Database
5 135 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
6 134 (1.99%) Metadata
7 74 (1.10%) Relational Database
8 70 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 69 (1.02%) Power Query
10 66 (0.98%) MySQL
11 58 (0.86%) NoSQL
12 46 (0.68%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.64%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 42 (0.62%) Star Schema
15 35 (0.52%) Tableau
16 34 (0.50%) Delta Lake
17 26 (0.39%) MongoDB
18 25 (0.37%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 24 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 321 (4.76%) JIRA
2 198 (2.94%) Git
3 95 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.07%) GitLab
5 59 (0.88%) Visual Studio
6 40 (0.59%) MSI
7 36 (0.53%) Selenium
8 19 (0.28%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.19%) Cypress.io
12 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
12 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.18%) MLflow
12 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.16%) ERwin
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,344 (34.77%) Social Skills
2 1,367 (20.28%) Finance
3 853 (12.65%) Analytical Skills
4 628 (9.32%) Public Sector
5 330 (4.90%) Banking
5 330 (4.90%) Organisational Skills
6 231 (3.43%) Legal
7 192 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
8 162 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 145 (2.15%) Manufacturing
10 136 (2.02%) Retail
11 121 (1.79%) Telecoms
12 107 (1.59%) Law
13 101 (1.50%) Marketing
14 93 (1.38%) Local Government
15 85 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
16 80 (1.19%) Military
17 68 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
18 63 (0.93%) Investment Banking
19 62 (0.92%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 786 (11.66%) Architect
2 689 (10.22%) Analyst
3 619 (9.18%) Developer
4 587 (8.71%) Senior
5 475 (7.05%) Lead
6 419 (6.22%) Consultant
7 413 (6.13%) IT Support
8 386 (5.73%) Support Engineer
9 270 (4.01%) IT Engineer
10 253 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
11 246 (3.65%) Data Engineer
12 243 (3.60%) Azure Engineer
12 243 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 219 (3.25%) Project Manager
14 217 (3.22%) Administrator
15 213 (3.16%) IT Support Engineer
16 188 (2.79%) Business Analyst
17 169 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
18 127 (1.88%) Security Engineer
19 116 (1.72%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (4.75%) .NET
2 258 (3.83%) REST
3 130 (1.93%) JSON
4 120 (1.78%) OAuth
5 109 (1.62%) Microsoft Graph
5 109 (1.62%) PySpark
6 101 (1.50%) SAML
7 99 (1.47%) XML
8 92 (1.36%) OpenID
9 89 (1.32%) .NET Framework
10 87 (1.29%) Web Services
11 80 (1.19%) React
12 74 (1.10%) ARM Templates
13 72 (1.07%) LDAP
14 70 (1.04%) HTML
14 70 (1.04%) RESTful
15 68 (1.01%) OAuth2
16 67 (0.99%) SOAP
17 65 (0.96%) SailPoint
18 64 (0.95%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 484 (7.18%) Onboarding
2 318 (4.72%) Cloud Native
3 217 (3.22%) Management Information System
4 191 (2.83%) Product Ownership
5 186 (2.76%) Enterprise Software
6 149 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
7 138 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
8 135 (2.00%) PKI
9 133 (1.97%) Data Centre
10 125 (1.85%) AI Agents
11 124 (1.84%) Security Posture
12 90 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 89 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
14 86 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
15 80 (1.19%) Virtual Team
16 78 (1.16%) Low-Code
17 74 (1.10%) Driving Licence
18 70 (1.04%) CMDB
19 67 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
20 63 (0.93%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,431 (21.23%) Windows
2 411 (6.10%) Windows Server
3 350 (5.19%) Windows 10
4 325 (4.82%) Linux
5 135 (2.00%) Mac OS
6 126 (1.87%) Android
7 115 (1.71%) Apple iOS
8 60 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.67%) Unix
10 41 (0.61%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
13 31 (0.46%) VMS
14 29 (0.43%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 17 (0.25%) CentOS
17 12 (0.18%) Solaris
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
19 6 (0.089%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,204 (17.86%) Problem-Solving
2 1,070 (15.87%) DevOps
3 1,036 (15.37%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,034 (15.34%) Agile
5 956 (14.18%) Migration
6 877 (13.01%) CI/CD
7 792 (11.75%) Continuous Improvement
8 777 (11.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 770 (11.42%) AI
10 748 (11.10%) Business Intelligence
11 696 (10.32%) Analytics
12 664 (9.85%) ITIL
13 576 (8.54%) Customer Service
14 502 (7.45%) Infrastructure as Code
15 501 (7.43%) Cybersecurity
16 494 (7.33%) Data Modelling
17 487 (7.22%) Roadmaps
18 457 (6.78%) Project Delivery
19 436 (6.47%) Decision-Making
20 432 (6.41%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 851 (12.62%) SQL
2 732 (10.86%) PowerShell
3 687 (10.19%) Python
4 327 (4.85%) C#
5 250 (3.71%) JavaScript
6 188 (2.79%) Bicep
7 187 (2.77%) Java
8 146 (2.17%) Bash
9 110 (1.63%) T-SQL
10 108 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.29%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 39 (0.58%) VBA
14 31 (0.46%) VB
15 30 (0.45%) C++
16 26 (0.39%) VBScript
17 25 (0.37%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) X++
19 17 (0.25%) R
19 17 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,438 (21.33%) Security Cleared
2 1,081 (16.04%) SC Cleared
3 637 (9.45%) Degree
4 351 (5.21%) Microsoft Certification
5 278 (4.12%) DV Cleared
6 245 (3.63%) Azure Certification
7 158 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
8 130 (1.93%) CISSP
9 128 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
10 120 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
11 94 (1.39%) PMP
12 87 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.07%) CISM
14 69 (1.02%) AWS Certification
15 56 (0.83%) CCNP
16 52 (0.77%) A+ Certification
17 49 (0.73%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.71%) CCNA
18 48 (0.71%) DBS Check
19 47 (0.70%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (5.55%) Data Quality
2 230 (3.41%) GDPR
3 229 (3.40%) QA
4 202 (3.00%) SLA
5 187 (2.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 171 (2.54%) PMO
7 165 (2.45%) NIST
8 108 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 87 (1.29%) NCSC
10 77 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
11 50 (0.74%) GRC
12 38 (0.56%) WCAG
13 36 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 33 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 33 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
16 16 (0.24%) P3O
17 15 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
17 15 (0.22%) NIST 800
18 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,295 (19.21%) Active Directory
2 243 (3.60%) Docker
2 243 (3.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 132 (1.96%) Hyper-V
4 109 (1.62%) Virtual Desktop
5 98 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
6 60 (0.89%) vSphere
7 58 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
8 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
9 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.27%) Firmware
12 8 (0.12%) IAG
12 8 (0.12%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.10%) zsh
14 5 (0.074%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
15 3 (0.045%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 546 (8.10%) Microsoft Intune
2 493 (7.31%) Terraform
3 321 (4.76%) Kubernetes
4 257 (3.81%) SCCM
5 170 (2.52%) Ansible
6 118 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
7 58 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
8 55 (0.82%) Grafana
9 52 (0.77%) vCenter Server
10 41 (0.61%) SCOM
11 38 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 36 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.37%) WSUS
14 23 (0.34%) QRadar
15 21 (0.31%) Puppet
16 20 (0.30%) FortiGate
16 20 (0.30%) Progress Chef
17 16 (0.24%) Failover Clustering
18 15 (0.22%) Argo
19 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 504 (7.48%) ServiceNow
2 334 (4.95%) VMware
3 322 (4.78%) Oracle
4 269 (3.99%) SAP
5 234 (3.47%) Google
6 233 (3.46%) Databricks
7 222 (3.29%) Cisco
8 118 (1.75%) Salesforce
9 111 (1.65%) Splunk
10 105 (1.56%) Citrix
11 99 (1.47%) Apple
12 87 (1.29%) CyberArk
13 79 (1.17%) Okta
14 77 (1.14%) Foundry
15 74 (1.10%) OpenAI
16 68 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
17 67 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (0.95%) Red Hat
19 56 (0.83%) Zscaler
20 53 (0.79%) Meraki