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 21 September 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
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,189 4,690 5,024
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.23% 14.36% 13.09%
As % of the Vendors category 31.71% 30.26% 29.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,574 3,036 3,125
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £370 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £474 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.96% -4.34% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £674 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 574 381 286
10th Percentile £13.35 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.69 £16.50 £15.49
Median hourly rate £18.54 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.93% +31.26% -24.49%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £67.25 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.13 £20.77 £16.23
% change year-on-year -12.75% +27.99% -18.85%

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 22,669 15,501 17,034
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.71% 47.46% 44.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,851 9,502 10,192
10th Percentile £310 £275 £286
25th Percentile £413 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,287 795 671
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.69 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.62 £17.44 £15.62
Median hourly rate £26.13 £25.15 £30.41
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -17.30% -30.63%
75th Percentile £60.78 £43.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +22.62% -30.00% -29.12%

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 21 September 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 21 September 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 21 September 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 6,214 £490 +4.03% 9,419
UK excluding London +1 3,872 £450 +2.86% 6,451
London 0 2,677 £520 +4.00% 4,054
Work from Home +2 1,819 £500 - 4,077
South East -1 1,008 £475 +5.56% 1,687
North of England -5 963 £464 +6.55% 1,578
Midlands 0 671 £425 +3.66% 1,044
North West -1 567 £466 +6.51% 828
West Midlands -2 458 £425 -0.93% 598
South West -1 451 £473 +11.18% 671
Scotland +5 384 £450 - 512
Yorkshire -6 349 £474 +6.76% 541
East of England -1 280 £325 -38.10% 630
East Midlands +2 207 £425 +15.80% 446
Wales +2 109 £375 +23.46% 166
North East -25 52 £438 +28.75% 230
Northern Ireland -1 37 £342 -2.29% 246
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 5

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
1 870 (12.10%) SharePoint
2 406 (5.65%) Microsoft Exchange
3 147 (2.04%) Confluence
4 38 (0.53%) Apache
4 38 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 27 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
5 27 (0.38%) CMS
6 25 (0.35%) IIS
7 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
8 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
9 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.14%) nginx
12 8 (0.11%) SAS
13 6 (0.083%) Apache Superset
13 6 (0.083%) Mendix
13 6 (0.083%) SharePoint 2013
13 6 (0.083%) ThingWorx
14 5 (0.070%) Camunda
14 5 (0.070%) OpenStack
Applications
1 778 (10.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 753 (10.47%) Microsoft Office
3 318 (4.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 192 (2.67%) Microsoft Project
5 110 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 52 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 15 (0.21%) AutoCAD
9 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
9 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
10 10 (0.14%) Revit
11 5 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.070%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.056%) Trello
13 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
14 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.028%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 265 (3.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 86 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 33 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.39%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.15%) Integrated Workplace Management System
9 11 (0.15%) Magento
10 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.11%) iTrent
11 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
12 7 (0.097%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.097%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.097%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.083%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.083%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 2,948 (41.01%) Azure
2 1,828 (25.43%) Microsoft 365
3 1,264 (17.58%) Power Platform
4 1,123 (15.62%) Entra ID
5 655 (9.11%) AWS
6 607 (8.44%) Dynamics 365
7 604 (8.40%) Azure DevOps
8 441 (6.13%) Microsoft Copilot
9 431 (6.00%) Power Automate
10 381 (5.30%) PowerApps
11 306 (4.26%) Microsoft Purview
12 291 (4.05%) GitHub
13 271 (3.77%) OneDrive
14 265 (3.69%) GCP
15 244 (3.39%) SaaS
16 199 (2.77%) Serverless
17 183 (2.55%) Azure Data Factory
18 176 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
19 160 (2.23%) Azure Logic Apps
20 156 (2.17%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 400 (5.56%) DNS
2 339 (4.72%) Firewall
3 287 (3.99%) VPN
4 268 (3.73%) DHCP
5 203 (2.82%) TCP/IP
6 166 (2.31%) Network Security
7 159 (2.21%) WAN
8 142 (1.98%) LAN
9 137 (1.91%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.03%) VLAN
11 69 (0.96%) Wireless
12 51 (0.71%) SAN
13 41 (0.57%) SSL
14 40 (0.56%) Skype
15 37 (0.51%) MPLS
16 34 (0.47%) Unified Communications
17 31 (0.43%) Kerberos
18 30 (0.42%) BGP
18 30 (0.42%) Internet
19 28 (0.39%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 770 (10.71%) Power BI
2 398 (5.54%) SQL Server
3 171 (2.38%) Data Warehouse
4 161 (2.24%) Metadata
5 146 (2.03%) Data Lake
6 124 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
7 111 (1.54%) Azure SQL Database
8 88 (1.22%) Power Query
9 76 (1.06%) Relational Database
10 69 (0.96%) MySQL
11 65 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 47 (0.65%) NoSQL
13 46 (0.64%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.58%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.56%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 35 (0.49%) Tableau
18 30 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
18 30 (0.42%) MongoDB
19 23 (0.32%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 335 (4.66%) JIRA
2 238 (3.31%) Git
3 88 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.00%) GitLab
5 59 (0.82%) Visual Studio
6 46 (0.64%) MSI
7 38 (0.53%) Selenium
8 25 (0.35%) Postman
9 23 (0.32%) Claude Code
10 18 (0.25%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.24%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.22%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
14 12 (0.17%) MLflow
14 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
15 11 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
16 10 (0.14%) Bitbucket
16 10 (0.14%) ERwin
General
1 2,686 (37.36%) Social Skills
2 1,417 (19.71%) Finance
3 938 (13.05%) Analytical Skills
4 640 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 438 (6.09%) Organisational Skills
6 314 (4.37%) Banking
7 228 (3.17%) Legal
8 208 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
9 195 (2.71%) Manufacturing
10 180 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 156 (2.17%) Retail
12 124 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 108 (1.50%) Marketing
14 102 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
15 94 (1.31%) Military
16 92 (1.28%) Law
17 91 (1.27%) Aerospace
18 88 (1.22%) Local Government
19 69 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
20 55 (0.77%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 837 (11.64%) Architect
2 717 (9.97%) Analyst
3 631 (8.78%) Developer
4 614 (8.54%) Senior
5 480 (6.68%) Lead
6 462 (6.43%) Consultant
7 450 (6.26%) IT Support
8 429 (5.97%) Support Engineer
9 309 (4.30%) Administrator
10 292 (4.06%) IT Engineer
11 279 (3.88%) Solutions Architect
12 247 (3.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 245 (3.41%) Azure Engineer
14 242 (3.37%) IT Support Engineer
15 240 (3.34%) Data Engineer
16 224 (3.12%) Project Manager
17 188 (2.62%) Business Analyst
18 179 (2.49%) Cloud Engineer
19 138 (1.92%) DevOps Engineer
20 132 (1.84%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 533 (7.41%) Terraform
2 340 (4.73%) .NET
3 276 (3.84%) REST
4 139 (1.93%) JSON
5 137 (1.91%) OAuth
6 111 (1.54%) XML
7 108 (1.50%) PySpark
7 108 (1.50%) SAML
8 104 (1.45%) OpenID
9 101 (1.40%) Microsoft Graph
10 95 (1.32%) ARM Templates
11 89 (1.24%) React
12 87 (1.21%) Web Services
13 85 (1.18%) .NET Framework
14 79 (1.10%) LDAP
15 77 (1.07%) OAuth2
16 75 (1.04%) SailPoint
17 73 (1.02%) HTML
17 73 (1.02%) RESTful
18 66 (0.92%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 576 (8.01%) Onboarding
2 315 (4.38%) Cloud Native
3 289 (4.02%) Management Information System
4 213 (2.96%) Enterprise Software
5 204 (2.84%) Product Ownership
6 159 (2.21%) AI Agents
7 157 (2.18%) Hybrid Cloud
8 152 (2.11%) PKI
9 148 (2.06%) Data Centre
10 136 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
10 136 (1.89%) Security Posture
11 93 (1.29%) CMDB
11 93 (1.29%) Data Structures
12 92 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
13 91 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 90 (1.25%) Driving Licence
15 84 (1.17%) Low-Code
16 79 (1.10%) Virtual Team
17 74 (1.03%) NHS
18 73 (1.02%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,537 (21.38%) Windows
2 467 (6.50%) Windows Server
3 381 (5.30%) Windows 10
4 339 (4.72%) Linux
5 152 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 134 (1.86%) Android
7 126 (1.75%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 50 (0.70%) Unix
10 42 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.54%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
13 31 (0.43%) VMS
14 23 (0.32%) CentOS
15 21 (0.29%) Solaris
16 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.17%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.097%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,355 (18.85%) Problem-Solving
2 1,350 (18.78%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,094 (15.22%) DevOps
4 1,081 (15.04%) Agile
5 974 (13.55%) Migration
6 943 (13.12%) CI/CD
7 910 (12.66%) Continuous Improvement
8 846 (11.77%) AI
9 821 (11.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 776 (10.79%) Business Intelligence
11 734 (10.21%) Analytics
12 713 (9.92%) ITIL
13 676 (9.40%) Customer Service
14 571 (7.94%) Cybersecurity
15 570 (7.93%) Infrastructure as Code
16 544 (7.57%) Roadmaps
17 509 (7.08%) Data Modelling
18 496 (6.90%) Project Delivery
19 486 (6.76%) Decision-Making
20 473 (6.58%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 857 (11.92%) SQL
2 800 (11.13%) PowerShell
3 734 (10.21%) Python
4 351 (4.88%) C#
5 270 (3.76%) JavaScript
6 209 (2.91%) Bicep
7 170 (2.36%) Bash
8 166 (2.31%) Java
9 112 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 110 (1.53%) TypeScript
11 106 (1.47%) T-SQL
12 71 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.43%) VBA
14 29 (0.40%) VB
15 26 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.35%) VBScript
17 24 (0.33%) X++
18 22 (0.31%) PL/SQL
19 18 (0.25%) R
20 15 (0.21%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,548 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,148 (15.97%) SC Cleared
3 634 (8.82%) Degree
4 373 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 309 (4.30%) DV Cleared
6 273 (3.80%) Azure Certification
7 186 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 143 (1.99%) CISSP
9 128 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
10 108 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.32%) PMP
12 90 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 77 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 76 (1.06%) CISM
15 64 (0.89%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.82%) A+ Certification
16 59 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 55 (0.77%) CCNP
18 45 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 45 (0.63%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (6.09%) Data Quality
2 242 (3.37%) QA
3 235 (3.27%) GDPR
4 210 (2.92%) SLA
5 207 (2.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 205 (2.85%) PMO
7 179 (2.49%) NIST
8 122 (1.70%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 87 (1.21%) NCSC
11 62 (0.86%) GRC
12 49 (0.68%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.64%) WCAG
14 39 (0.54%) PCI DSS
15 28 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 24 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
17 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.24%) NIST 800
20 16 (0.22%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 1,341 (18.65%) Active Directory
2 268 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 252 (3.51%) Docker
4 141 (1.96%) Hyper-V
5 129 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
6 106 (1.47%) Virtual Machines
7 71 (0.99%) vSphere
8 64 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.45%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
11 16 (0.22%) Firmware
12 15 (0.21%) VMware NSX
13 10 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.11%) IAG
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
15 7 (0.097%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.097%) zsh
16 6 (0.083%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 6 (0.083%) XenApp
17 5 (0.070%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 577 (8.03%) Microsoft Intune
2 335 (4.66%) Kubernetes
3 293 (4.08%) SCCM
4 166 (2.31%) Ansible
5 141 (1.96%) Single Sign-On
6 58 (0.81%) Grafana
6 58 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
7 57 (0.79%) SCOM
8 50 (0.70%) vCenter Server
9 36 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 36 (0.50%) Prometheus
10 26 (0.36%) QRadar
10 26 (0.36%) WSUS
11 24 (0.33%) Progress Chef
12 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
13 19 (0.26%) Puppet
14 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
15 16 (0.22%) Argo
16 15 (0.21%) WMI
17 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 543 (7.55%) ServiceNow
2 347 (4.83%) VMware
3 335 (4.66%) Oracle
4 291 (4.05%) SAP
5 255 (3.55%) Google
6 249 (3.46%) Databricks
7 237 (3.30%) Cisco
8 130 (1.81%) Splunk
9 127 (1.77%) Salesforce
10 108 (1.50%) Apple
11 105 (1.46%) CyberArk
12 91 (1.27%) Citrix
12 91 (1.27%) Okta
12 91 (1.27%) OpenAI
13 87 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
14 84 (1.17%) Foundry
15 75 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
16 66 (0.92%) Red Hat
17 57 (0.79%) IBM
17 57 (0.79%) Zscaler