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 6 May 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
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,605 3,896 5,618
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.77% 13.29% 13.02%
As % of the Vendors category 28.22% 28.04% 30.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,767 2,586 3,689
10th Percentile £213 £210 £189
25th Percentile £375 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £580 £587 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £429 £450
% change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 359 246 464
10th Percentile £13.60 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.48 £13.00
Median hourly rate £20.09 £19.90 £15.30
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% +30.11% -30.98%
75th Percentile £28.82 £29.07 £25.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £59.96 £54.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £18.51 £15.00
% change year-on-year +7.56% +23.40% -21.05%

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 19,865 13,894 18,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.72% 47.39% 42.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,636 8,704 11,362
10th Percentile £313 £288 £263
25th Percentile £413 £408 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% - -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £628
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 996 570 1,095
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.10 £14.48
Median hourly rate £31.50 £26.45 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.09% +17.56% -48.57%
75th Percentile £60.00 £57.13 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.65 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £24.18 £21.50
% change year-on-year +13.73% +12.47% -45.64%

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 6 May 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 6 May 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 6 May 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 4,915 £494 +3.89% 3,113
UK excluding London 0 2,908 £450 +4.90% 2,676
London -1 2,166 £513 +2.30% 938
Work from Home -1 1,408 £500 - 1,236
North of England +1 781 £450 +5.88% 639
South East -1 662 £478 -2.55% 830
Midlands -5 506 £450 +12.50% 420
North West -1 421 £416 -5.03% 332
West Midlands -6 351 £450 +12.50% 252
Yorkshire -1 336 £465 +16.25% 217
South West -1 329 £456 -2.93% 270
East of England 0 328 £400 -11.11% 311
Scotland +4 207 £450 +10.02% 148
East Midlands -1 149 £400 -4.19% 168
Wales +2 91 £319 +11.84% 97
North East -25 29 £450 +28.57% 98
Northern Ireland +1 23 £450 +38.46% 34
Channel Islands -2 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
1 597 (10.65%) SharePoint
2 382 (6.82%) Microsoft Exchange
3 105 (1.87%) Confluence
4 37 (0.66%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache
6 22 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.36%) HCL Notes
8 19 (0.34%) CMS
9 15 (0.27%) SAS
10 13 (0.23%) IIS
11 12 (0.21%) Mendix
11 12 (0.21%) Skype for Business
12 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
12 6 (0.11%) Camunda
13 5 (0.089%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.089%) Oracle Workflow
14 4 (0.071%) Drupal
14 4 (0.071%) Exchange Server 2013
14 4 (0.071%) MS Project Server
14 4 (0.071%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 566 (10.10%) Microsoft Office
2 514 (9.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 230 (4.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 125 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
5 95 (1.69%) MS Visio
6 71 (1.27%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.14%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.089%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.071%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
14 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 203 (3.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 61 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.34%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 14 (0.25%) NetSuite
6 12 (0.21%) Maximo
6 12 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
7 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
10 8 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.12%) Shopify
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
13 5 (0.089%) assyst
13 5 (0.089%) Primavera
13 5 (0.089%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,360 (42.11%) Azure
2 1,446 (25.80%) Microsoft 365
3 946 (16.88%) Power Platform
4 717 (12.79%) Entra ID
5 467 (8.33%) Dynamics 365
6 460 (8.21%) AWS
7 439 (7.83%) Azure DevOps
8 330 (5.89%) Power Automate
9 293 (5.23%) PowerApps
10 289 (5.16%) Microsoft Purview
11 263 (4.69%) GitHub
12 234 (4.17%) Microsoft Copilot
13 207 (3.69%) OneDrive
14 200 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
15 195 (3.48%) SaaS
16 179 (3.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 167 (2.98%) GCP
17 167 (2.98%) Serverless
18 152 (2.71%) PaaS
19 139 (2.48%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 289 (5.16%) Firewall
2 288 (5.14%) DNS
3 204 (3.64%) VPN
4 167 (2.98%) DHCP
5 136 (2.43%) WAN
6 134 (2.39%) Wi-Fi
7 115 (2.05%) LAN
8 114 (2.03%) Network Security
9 103 (1.84%) TCP/IP
10 57 (1.02%) Kerberos
11 52 (0.93%) VLAN
12 45 (0.80%) SD-WAN
13 36 (0.64%) SSL
14 35 (0.62%) SAN
14 35 (0.62%) Wireless
15 30 (0.54%) HTTP
16 29 (0.52%) Skype
17 27 (0.48%) MPLS
18 26 (0.46%) Unified Communications
19 24 (0.43%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 577 (10.29%) Power BI
2 268 (4.78%) SQL Server
3 179 (3.19%) Data Warehouse
4 159 (2.84%) Data Lake
5 124 (2.21%) Azure SQL Database
6 115 (2.05%) Metadata
7 103 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.28%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 48 (0.86%) Oracle Database
11 46 (0.82%) Power Query
12 45 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 44 (0.79%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.79%) Tableau
14 41 (0.73%) Delta Lake
14 41 (0.73%) MySQL
15 39 (0.70%) Star Schema
16 29 (0.52%) Spark SQL
17 27 (0.48%) Snowflake Schema
18 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 256 (4.57%) JIRA
2 173 (3.09%) Git
3 67 (1.20%) Jenkins
4 63 (1.12%) GitLab
5 26 (0.46%) Artifactory
6 24 (0.43%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.39%) MSI
8 21 (0.37%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.30%) Selenium
10 16 (0.29%) JMeter
10 16 (0.29%) Postman
11 15 (0.27%) MLflow
12 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
13 12 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.21%) ERwin
13 12 (0.21%) Maven
14 11 (0.20%) Cucumber
15 10 (0.18%) Gatling
15 10 (0.18%) InstallShield
15 10 (0.18%) JUnit
General
1 1,889 (33.70%) Social Skills
2 1,110 (19.80%) Finance
3 645 (11.51%) Analytical Skills
4 527 (9.40%) Public Sector
5 293 (5.23%) Banking
6 253 (4.51%) Organisational Skills
7 251 (4.48%) Legal
8 143 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
9 105 (1.87%) Manufacturing
10 99 (1.77%) Presentation Skills
11 94 (1.68%) Law
12 89 (1.59%) Marketing
13 88 (1.57%) Telecoms
14 82 (1.46%) Retail
15 79 (1.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 74 (1.32%) Military
17 65 (1.16%) Local Government
18 54 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
19 53 (0.95%) Investment Banking
20 43 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 698 (12.45%) Architect
2 604 (10.78%) Analyst
3 521 (9.30%) Developer
4 472 (8.42%) Senior
5 361 (6.44%) IT Support
6 331 (5.91%) Lead
7 292 (5.21%) Consultant
8 253 (4.51%) Support Engineer
9 225 (4.01%) Data Engineer
10 210 (3.75%) Azure Engineer
11 190 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
12 189 (3.37%) Project Manager
13 181 (3.23%) Business Analyst
14 178 (3.18%) IT Engineer
15 169 (3.02%) Administrator
15 169 (3.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 131 (2.34%) IT Support Engineer
17 113 (2.02%) Security Engineer
18 109 (1.94%) DevOps Engineer
19 102 (1.82%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 248 (4.42%) .NET
2 165 (2.94%) REST
3 127 (2.27%) Microsoft Graph
4 111 (1.98%) OAuth
5 101 (1.80%) PySpark
6 99 (1.77%) SAML
7 85 (1.52%) JSON
8 81 (1.45%) OpenID
9 80 (1.43%) React
10 75 (1.34%) LDAP
11 67 (1.20%) Web Services
12 64 (1.14%) Middleware
13 56 (1.00%) HTML
14 55 (0.98%) AngularJS
15 54 (0.96%) ARM Templates
15 54 (0.96%) OAuth2
16 51 (0.91%) Kafka
17 50 (0.89%) Node.js
18 49 (0.87%) CSS
19 47 (0.84%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 292 (5.21%) Onboarding
2 226 (4.03%) Cloud Native
3 187 (3.34%) Product Ownership
4 126 (2.25%) Management Information System
5 107 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
6 98 (1.75%) Data Centre
7 91 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
8 88 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
9 84 (1.50%) AI Agents
9 84 (1.50%) PKI
10 83 (1.48%) Security Posture
10 83 (1.48%) Self-Motivation
11 76 (1.36%) Replication
12 74 (1.32%) Low-Code
13 70 (1.25%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
15 58 (1.03%) Virtual Team
16 53 (0.95%) Driving Licence
17 48 (0.86%) Operational Technology
18 45 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,207 (21.53%) Windows
2 314 (5.60%) Windows 10
3 273 (4.87%) Windows Server
4 270 (4.82%) Linux
5 102 (1.82%) Android
6 98 (1.75%) Apple iOS
7 94 (1.68%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.77%) Unix
8 43 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
9 42 (0.75%) Windows 7
10 39 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 28 (0.50%) VMS
11 28 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
12 25 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
14 10 (0.18%) CentOS
15 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
16 6 (0.11%) AIX
17 5 (0.089%) Solaris
18 4 (0.071%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 970 (17.31%) Problem-Solving
2 885 (15.79%) DevOps
3 884 (15.77%) Agile
4 790 (14.09%) Migration
5 765 (13.65%) CI/CD
6 639 (11.40%) Business Intelligence
7 616 (10.99%) Analytics
8 551 (9.83%) AI
9 541 (9.65%) Stakeholder Management
10 506 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
11 466 (8.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 446 (7.96%) ITIL
13 439 (7.83%) Customer Service
14 413 (7.37%) Data Modelling
15 371 (6.62%) Roadmaps
16 357 (6.37%) Cybersecurity
17 344 (6.14%) Infrastructure as Code
18 337 (6.01%) Decision-Making
19 323 (5.76%) Project Delivery
20 310 (5.53%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 724 (12.92%) SQL
2 639 (11.40%) PowerShell
3 615 (10.97%) Python
4 267 (4.76%) C#
5 201 (3.59%) JavaScript
6 175 (3.12%) Java
7 127 (2.27%) Bicep
8 89 (1.59%) Bash
9 87 (1.55%) Kusto Query Language
10 84 (1.50%) T-SQL
11 77 (1.37%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 34 (0.61%) PL/SQL
14 29 (0.52%) VBA
15 28 (0.50%) C++
16 22 (0.39%) VB
17 20 (0.36%) Scala
18 18 (0.32%) R
19 16 (0.29%) Shell Script
20 14 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,079 (19.25%) Security Cleared
2 840 (14.99%) SC Cleared
3 555 (9.90%) Degree
4 278 (4.96%) Microsoft Certification
5 190 (3.39%) DV Cleared
6 184 (3.28%) Azure Certification
7 131 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
8 101 (1.80%) CISSP
9 93 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
10 73 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
11 64 (1.14%) PMI Certification
12 59 (1.05%) PMP
13 57 (1.02%) Master's Degree
14 56 (1.00%) CISM
15 43 (0.77%) MCSE
16 39 (0.70%) AWS Certification
17 31 (0.55%) DBS Check
18 30 (0.54%) CCNP
18 30 (0.54%) MCSA
19 29 (0.52%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 271 (4.83%) Data Quality
2 229 (4.09%) GDPR
3 186 (3.32%) QA
4 157 (2.80%) SLA
5 141 (2.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 114 (2.03%) NIST
7 105 (1.87%) PMO
8 75 (1.34%) Accessibility
9 71 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
10 45 (0.80%) NCSC
11 38 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.55%) GRC
13 28 (0.50%) PCI DSS
14 21 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 20 (0.36%) MiFID
16 17 (0.30%) NIST 800
17 14 (0.25%) WCAG
18 13 (0.23%) FINRA
19 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
20 11 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,077 (19.21%) Active Directory
2 236 (4.21%) Docker
3 195 (3.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 97 (1.73%) Hyper-V
5 76 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
6 70 (1.25%) Virtual Desktop
7 52 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
8 39 (0.70%) vSphere
9 26 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 17 (0.30%) Firmware
13 7 (0.12%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.089%) IAG
15 5 (0.089%) NFS
15 5 (0.089%) Snort
15 5 (0.089%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.071%) KVM
16 4 (0.071%) Squid
Systems Management
1 428 (7.64%) Microsoft Intune
2 368 (6.57%) Terraform
3 261 (4.66%) Kubernetes
4 204 (3.64%) SCCM
5 135 (2.41%) Ansible
6 121 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
7 75 (1.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.79%) vCenter Server
9 39 (0.70%) Grafana
10 38 (0.68%) Jamf Pro
11 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.43%) SCOM
13 21 (0.37%) FortiGate
13 21 (0.37%) Puppet
14 17 (0.30%) WSUS
15 16 (0.29%) AirWatch
16 14 (0.25%) QRadar
17 12 (0.21%) ServiceCenter
18 11 (0.20%) CASB
18 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 263 (4.69%) VMware
2 261 (4.66%) ServiceNow
3 216 (3.85%) Databricks
3 216 (3.85%) SAP
4 208 (3.71%) Oracle
5 173 (3.09%) Cisco
6 153 (2.73%) Google
7 121 (2.16%) Citrix
8 101 (1.80%) Salesforce
9 89 (1.59%) OpenAI
10 88 (1.57%) Splunk
11 73 (1.30%) Foundry
12 66 (1.18%) Apple
13 54 (0.96%) CrowdStrike
14 48 (0.86%) HP
15 47 (0.84%) Adobe
16 44 (0.79%) Okta
16 44 (0.79%) Palo Alto
17 43 (0.77%) Informatica
18 40 (0.71%) CyberArk