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 18 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
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,765 4,604 5,002
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.63% 14.01% 12.91%
As % of the Vendors category 30.25% 29.63% 29.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,400 2,934 3,266
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £343 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.95% -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 447 376 349
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.75 £11.77
25th Percentile £15.81 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -27.06%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £38.75
90th Percentile £70.53 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.50 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.73% +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 22,363 15,539 16,952
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.75% 47.27% 43.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,844 9,486 10,594
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.23% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,149 808 821
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.61 £13.50
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -10.18% -30.86%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.12 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.27 £21.35 £27.50
% change year-on-year +41.81% -22.38% -17.76%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 5,917 £490 +3.16% 5,921
UK excluding London 0 3,618 £450 +2.97% 4,703
London 0 2,570 £515 +3.00% 2,175
Work from Home +4 1,768 £500 - 2,414
South East +2 946 £475 +1.06% 1,307
North of England -3 933 £450 +3.81% 1,116
Midlands -2 622 £445 +18.67% 798
North West +1 553 £450 +2.97% 576
South West +1 446 £470 +9.30% 510
West Midlands -3 421 £447 +11.75% 469
Yorkshire -5 350 £473 +8.62% 371
Scotland +8 324 £450 - 308
East of England -1 248 £400 -20.00% 467
East Midlands +2 192 £425 +21.08% 328
Wales -1 100 £425 +44.07% 163
North East -37 34 £369 +10.90% 189
Northern Ireland -4 30 £369 +2.08% 133
Channel Islands -1 2 £500 -31.03% 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
1 789 (11.66%) SharePoint
2 406 (6.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.19%) Confluence
4 40 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.58%) Apache
6 29 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) IIS
8 21 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.30%) CMS
10 19 (0.28%) HCL Notes
11 14 (0.21%) 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%) Mendix
15 6 (0.089%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.089%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.074%) Camunda
Applications
1 667 (9.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 649 (9.59%) Microsoft Office
3 282 (4.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 181 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.60%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.16%) 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 (0.044%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.030%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 232 (3.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 22 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
4 22 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 20 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 13 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
6 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.18%) Primavera
8 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
8 10 (0.15%) Magento
9 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
10 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
10 7 (0.10%) iTrent
10 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.10%) SAP CRM
10 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
11 6 (0.089%) Sage X3
11 6 (0.089%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.089%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,836 (41.92%) Azure
2 1,726 (25.51%) Microsoft 365
3 1,175 (17.37%) Power Platform
4 1,033 (15.27%) Entra ID
5 610 (9.02%) AWS
6 582 (8.60%) Azure DevOps
7 568 (8.40%) Dynamics 365
8 404 (5.97%) Power Automate
9 380 (5.62%) Microsoft Copilot
10 364 (5.38%) PowerApps
11 305 (4.51%) Microsoft Purview
12 287 (4.24%) GitHub
13 253 (3.74%) OneDrive
14 242 (3.58%) SaaS
15 234 (3.46%) GCP
16 185 (2.73%) Azure Data Factory
17 165 (2.44%) Serverless
18 162 (2.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 160 (2.37%) Azure Monitor
20 156 (2.31%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 383 (5.66%) DNS
2 344 (5.08%) Firewall
3 281 (4.15%) VPN
4 246 (3.64%) DHCP
5 191 (2.82%) TCP/IP
6 167 (2.47%) WAN
7 153 (2.26%) Network Security
8 150 (2.22%) LAN
9 145 (2.14%) Wi-Fi
10 77 (1.14%) VLAN
11 55 (0.81%) Wireless
12 49 (0.72%) SAN
13 43 (0.64%) MPLS
14 38 (0.56%) SSL
15 34 (0.50%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.49%) SD-WAN
16 33 (0.49%) Skype
17 31 (0.46%) Internet
18 29 (0.43%) BGP
19 27 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 737 (10.89%) Power BI
2 388 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 187 (2.76%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.03%) Azure SQL Database
5 136 (2.01%) Metadata
6 135 (2.00%) Data Lake
6 135 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
7 74 (1.09%) Relational Database
8 70 (1.03%) Power Query
9 67 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 66 (0.98%) MySQL
11 57 (0.84%) NoSQL
12 45 (0.67%) Oracle Database
13 42 (0.62%) Star Schema
14 41 (0.61%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 34 (0.50%) Tableau
16 32 (0.47%) Delta Lake
17 26 (0.38%) MongoDB
18 24 (0.35%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 321 (4.75%) JIRA
2 199 (2.94%) Git
3 94 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.06%) GitLab
5 59 (0.87%) Visual Studio
6 40 (0.59%) MSI
7 37 (0.55%) Selenium
8 20 (0.30%) 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 14 (0.21%) Cypress.io
12 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.19%) MLflow
13 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.16%) ERwin
14 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,360 (34.89%) Social Skills
2 1,378 (20.37%) Finance
3 861 (12.73%) Analytical Skills
4 626 (9.25%) Public Sector
5 342 (5.06%) Organisational Skills
6 327 (4.83%) Banking
7 227 (3.36%) Legal
8 190 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 145 (2.14%) Manufacturing
11 138 (2.04%) Retail
12 121 (1.79%) Telecoms
13 105 (1.55%) Law
14 101 (1.49%) Marketing
15 92 (1.36%) Local Government
16 84 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.18%) Military
18 70 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
19 67 (0.99%) Aerospace
20 61 (0.90%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 790 (11.68%) Architect
2 689 (10.18%) Analyst
3 615 (9.09%) Developer
4 585 (8.65%) Senior
5 477 (7.05%) Lead
6 423 (6.25%) IT Support
7 421 (6.22%) Consultant
8 396 (5.85%) Support Engineer
9 274 (4.05%) IT Engineer
10 253 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
11 243 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 242 (3.58%) Azure Engineer
12 242 (3.58%) Data Engineer
13 220 (3.25%) Administrator
14 219 (3.24%) IT Support Engineer
15 216 (3.19%) Project Manager
16 183 (2.71%) Business Analyst
17 171 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
18 129 (1.91%) Security Engineer
19 115 (1.70%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (4.80%) .NET
2 261 (3.86%) REST
3 128 (1.89%) JSON
4 123 (1.82%) OAuth
5 109 (1.61%) Microsoft Graph
6 108 (1.60%) PySpark
7 103 (1.52%) SAML
8 101 (1.49%) XML
9 94 (1.39%) OpenID
10 90 (1.33%) .NET Framework
11 89 (1.32%) Web Services
12 81 (1.20%) React
13 75 (1.11%) LDAP
14 74 (1.09%) ARM Templates
15 71 (1.05%) RESTful
16 70 (1.03%) HTML
17 69 (1.02%) OAuth2
18 68 (1.01%) SailPoint
19 67 (0.99%) SOAP
20 63 (0.93%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 490 (7.24%) Onboarding
2 319 (4.72%) Cloud Native
3 222 (3.28%) Management Information System
4 190 (2.81%) Product Ownership
5 188 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
6 149 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 137 (2.03%) PKI
8 136 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
9 135 (2.00%) Data Centre
10 127 (1.88%) Security Posture
11 121 (1.79%) AI Agents
12 90 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
12 90 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
14 78 (1.15%) Low-Code
15 77 (1.14%) Virtual Team
16 74 (1.09%) Driving Licence
17 72 (1.06%) CMDB
18 67 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
19 65 (0.96%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,450 (21.43%) Windows
2 421 (6.22%) Windows Server
3 362 (5.35%) Windows 10
4 331 (4.89%) Linux
5 136 (2.01%) Mac OS
6 127 (1.88%) Android
7 120 (1.77%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.67%) Unix
10 42 (0.62%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
13 33 (0.49%) Ubuntu
14 31 (0.46%) VMS
15 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.31%) CentOS
17 13 (0.19%) Solaris
18 12 (0.18%) SUSE
19 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,221 (18.05%) Problem-Solving
2 1,068 (15.79%) DevOps
3 1,054 (15.58%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,030 (15.23%) Agile
5 956 (14.13%) Migration
6 883 (13.05%) CI/CD
7 795 (11.75%) Continuous Improvement
8 779 (11.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 769 (11.37%) AI
10 744 (11.00%) Business Intelligence
11 700 (10.35%) Analytics
12 673 (9.95%) ITIL
13 592 (8.75%) Customer Service
14 507 (7.49%) Infrastructure as Code
15 501 (7.41%) Cybersecurity
16 497 (7.35%) Data Modelling
17 490 (7.24%) Roadmaps
18 458 (6.77%) Project Delivery
19 440 (6.50%) Decision-Making
20 434 (6.42%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 852 (12.59%) SQL
2 740 (10.94%) PowerShell
3 683 (10.10%) Python
4 329 (4.86%) C#
5 250 (3.70%) JavaScript
6 188 (2.78%) Bicep
6 188 (2.78%) Java
7 147 (2.17%) Bash
8 107 (1.58%) T-SQL
9 105 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 88 (1.30%) TypeScript
11 68 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
12 38 (0.56%) VBA
13 31 (0.46%) VB
14 30 (0.44%) C++
15 27 (0.40%) VBScript
16 25 (0.37%) PL/SQL
17 21 (0.31%) X++
18 17 (0.25%) R
19 16 (0.24%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,448 (21.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,088 (16.08%) SC Cleared
3 635 (9.39%) Degree
4 351 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 284 (4.20%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.61%) Azure Certification
7 164 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
8 129 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
8 129 (1.91%) CISSP
9 118 (1.74%) Computer Science Degree
10 95 (1.40%) PMP
11 89 (1.32%) PMI Certification
12 71 (1.05%) AWS Certification
12 71 (1.05%) CISM
13 56 (0.83%) CCNP
14 55 (0.81%) A+ Certification
15 51 (0.75%) DBS Check
16 48 (0.71%) CCNA
16 48 (0.71%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 48 (0.71%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (5.56%) Data Quality
2 231 (3.41%) QA
3 227 (3.36%) GDPR
4 204 (3.02%) SLA
5 188 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 172 (2.54%) PMO
7 165 (2.44%) NIST
8 108 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.30%) NCSC
10 78 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
11 51 (0.75%) GRC
12 37 (0.55%) WCAG
13 35 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 33 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 32 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.24%) P3O
18 14 (0.21%) NIST 800
18 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
19 13 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,318 (19.48%) Active Directory
2 251 (3.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 242 (3.58%) Docker
4 138 (2.04%) Hyper-V
5 117 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 98 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (0.93%) vSphere
8 59 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.35%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.28%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 6 (0.089%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
16 5 (0.074%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 553 (8.17%) Microsoft Intune
2 493 (7.29%) Terraform
3 319 (4.72%) Kubernetes
4 263 (3.89%) SCCM
5 171 (2.53%) Ansible
6 120 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
7 57 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
8 55 (0.81%) Grafana
9 52 (0.77%) vCenter Server
10 42 (0.62%) SCOM
11 38 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 37 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.37%) WSUS
14 23 (0.34%) QRadar
15 22 (0.33%) Puppet
16 21 (0.31%) Progress Chef
17 20 (0.30%) FortiGate
18 16 (0.24%) Failover Clustering
19 15 (0.22%) Argo
20 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 507 (7.49%) ServiceNow
2 340 (5.03%) VMware
3 323 (4.77%) Oracle
4 271 (4.01%) SAP
5 239 (3.53%) Google
6 231 (3.41%) Databricks
7 224 (3.31%) Cisco
8 119 (1.76%) Salesforce
9 109 (1.61%) Splunk
10 105 (1.55%) Apple
11 102 (1.51%) Citrix
12 88 (1.30%) CyberArk
13 77 (1.14%) Foundry
14 76 (1.12%) Okta
15 73 (1.08%) OpenAI
16 69 (1.02%) BeyondTrust
17 67 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.98%) Red Hat
19 54 (0.80%) Meraki
19 54 (0.80%) Zscaler