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 23 April 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
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,575 3,932 5,619
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.01% 13.31% 12.85%
As % of the Vendors category 28.36% 28.05% 30.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,755 2,637 3,712
10th Percentile £208 £210 £189
25th Percentile £375 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £463
% change year-on-year +4.17% -6.59% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 367 227 453
10th Percentile £13.58 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.62 £12.99
Median hourly rate £20.35 £21.46 £15.17
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +41.46% -32.58%
75th Percentile £29.25 £30.51 £24.75
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.35 £52.61
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £18.86 £15.00
% change year-on-year +5.57% +25.73% -25.00%

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 19,659 14,020 18,575
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.35% 47.47% 42.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,561 8,809 11,569
10th Percentile £313 £293 £260
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £514 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.72% -0.19% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -0.82% -0.79% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 987 551 1,078
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.50 £14.36
Median hourly rate £30.49 £27.35 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.48% +21.56% -48.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £58.75 £57.33
90th Percentile £78.75 £77.19 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £24.66 £21.46
% change year-on-year +9.49% +14.91% -46.35%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 23 April 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 4,896 £494 +3.89% 2,736
UK excluding London 0 2,904 £450 +4.17% 2,501
London -1 2,147 £513 +2.50% 741
Work from Home -2 1,380 £500 - 1,137
North of England 0 805 £450 +5.88% 584
South East -2 645 £480 -2.09% 729
Midlands -2 498 £450 +12.50% 387
North West -2 439 £420 -6.04% 301
West Midlands -3 347 £465 +16.25% 232
Yorkshire +4 339 £450 +12.50% 190
South West -2 333 £450 -2.96% 275
East of England 0 330 £400 -11.11% 314
Scotland +3 198 £453 +9.10% 134
East Midlands 0 145 £400 -4.19% 155
Wales +3 93 £310 -4.62% 86
North East -19 34 £463 +32.14% 102
Northern Ireland +4 22 £450 +38.46% 68
Channel Islands -1 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
1 605 (10.85%) SharePoint
2 405 (7.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 104 (1.87%) Confluence
4 33 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache
6 23 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
6 23 (0.41%) CMS
7 19 (0.34%) HCL Notes
8 16 (0.29%) SAS
9 15 (0.27%) Skype for Business
10 12 (0.22%) IIS
10 12 (0.22%) Mendix
11 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.090%) Camunda
12 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.072%) Appian
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
13 4 (0.072%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 589 (10.57%) Microsoft Office
2 521 (9.35%) Microsoft Excel
3 234 (4.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 126 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
5 90 (1.61%) MS Visio
6 73 (1.31%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.072%) 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
1 208 (3.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 57 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.23%) Maximo
6 13 (0.23%) 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 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.13%) Shopify
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
12 6 (0.11%) Primavera
12 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
12 6 (0.11%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 2,323 (41.67%) Azure
2 1,437 (25.78%) Microsoft 365
3 948 (17.00%) Power Platform
4 712 (12.77%) Entra ID
5 472 (8.47%) Dynamics 365
6 458 (8.22%) AWS
7 446 (8.00%) Azure DevOps
8 342 (6.13%) Power Automate
9 308 (5.52%) PowerApps
10 286 (5.13%) Microsoft Purview
11 265 (4.75%) GitHub
12 228 (4.09%) Microsoft Copilot
13 203 (3.64%) Azure Data Factory
14 202 (3.62%) OneDrive
15 187 (3.35%) SaaS
16 175 (3.14%) Serverless
17 173 (3.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 163 (2.92%) GCP
19 146 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
19 146 (2.62%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 298 (5.35%) Firewall
2 293 (5.26%) DNS
3 212 (3.80%) VPN
4 171 (3.07%) DHCP
5 145 (2.60%) Wi-Fi
6 139 (2.49%) WAN
7 121 (2.17%) Network Security
8 117 (2.10%) LAN
9 109 (1.96%) TCP/IP
10 58 (1.04%) VLAN
11 55 (0.99%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.81%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.68%) Wireless
14 37 (0.66%) SSL
15 36 (0.65%) Skype
16 35 (0.63%) SAN
17 31 (0.56%) HTTP
18 28 (0.50%) Unified Communications
19 24 (0.43%) IPsec
19 24 (0.43%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 589 (10.57%) Power BI
2 275 (4.93%) SQL Server
3 180 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (2.78%) Data Lake
5 123 (2.21%) Azure SQL Database
6 110 (1.97%) Metadata
7 105 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 71 (1.27%) Relational Database
10 52 (0.93%) Oracle Database
11 49 (0.88%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 48 (0.86%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.84%) Tableau
14 45 (0.81%) MySQL
15 43 (0.77%) Power Query
16 42 (0.75%) Delta Lake
17 40 (0.72%) Star Schema
18 29 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
19 27 (0.48%) Spark SQL
20 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 255 (4.57%) JIRA
2 171 (3.07%) Git
3 66 (1.18%) GitLab
3 66 (1.18%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.47%) Artifactory
4 26 (0.47%) Visual Studio
5 22 (0.39%) MSI
6 21 (0.38%) Eclipse
7 19 (0.34%) Selenium
8 18 (0.32%) Postman
9 16 (0.29%) JMeter
9 16 (0.29%) MLflow
10 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
10 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
11 12 (0.22%) Bitbucket
11 12 (0.22%) JUnit
11 12 (0.22%) Maven
12 11 (0.20%) ERwin
13 10 (0.18%) Gatling
13 10 (0.18%) InstallShield
General
1 1,922 (34.48%) Social Skills
2 1,113 (19.96%) Finance
3 654 (11.73%) Analytical Skills
4 537 (9.63%) Public Sector
5 298 (5.35%) Banking
6 257 (4.61%) Legal
7 253 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
8 155 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
9 115 (2.06%) Manufacturing
10 103 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
11 93 (1.67%) Marketing
12 92 (1.65%) Law
13 89 (1.60%) Telecoms
14 79 (1.42%) Retail
15 77 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 71 (1.27%) Military
17 64 (1.15%) Local Government
18 58 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
19 55 (0.99%) Investment Banking
20 40 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 692 (12.41%) Architect
2 591 (10.60%) Analyst
3 534 (9.58%) Developer
4 458 (8.22%) Senior
5 368 (6.60%) IT Support
6 330 (5.92%) Lead
7 282 (5.06%) Consultant
8 257 (4.61%) Support Engineer
9 214 (3.84%) Data Engineer
10 211 (3.78%) Azure Engineer
11 195 (3.50%) Solutions Architect
12 187 (3.35%) IT Engineer
13 180 (3.23%) Project Manager
14 176 (3.16%) Administrator
15 175 (3.14%) Business Analyst
16 168 (3.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 139 (2.49%) IT Support Engineer
18 116 (2.08%) DevOps Engineer
19 112 (2.01%) Security Engineer
20 99 (1.78%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 262 (4.70%) .NET
2 175 (3.14%) REST
3 133 (2.39%) Microsoft Graph
4 118 (2.12%) OAuth
5 102 (1.83%) SAML
6 100 (1.79%) PySpark
7 89 (1.60%) React
8 86 (1.54%) JSON
9 81 (1.45%) OpenID
10 74 (1.33%) LDAP
11 66 (1.18%) Web Services
12 64 (1.15%) Middleware
13 58 (1.04%) HTML
14 57 (1.02%) OAuth2
15 56 (1.00%) AngularJS
16 55 (0.99%) RESTful
17 54 (0.97%) ARM Templates
18 51 (0.91%) Node.js
19 50 (0.90%) .NET Framework
19 50 (0.90%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 283 (5.08%) Onboarding
2 223 (4.00%) Cloud Native
3 194 (3.48%) Product Ownership
4 132 (2.37%) Management Information System
5 106 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
6 100 (1.79%) Data Centre
7 90 (1.61%) Hybrid Cloud
7 90 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
8 87 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
9 84 (1.51%) Security Posture
10 81 (1.45%) AI Agents
11 79 (1.42%) PKI
12 76 (1.36%) Low-Code
13 75 (1.35%) Replication
14 71 (1.27%) Data Structures
15 62 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
16 55 (0.99%) Virtual Team
17 53 (0.95%) Driving Licence
17 53 (0.95%) NHS
18 47 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,220 (21.88%) Windows
2 326 (5.85%) Windows 10
3 290 (5.20%) Windows Server
4 278 (4.99%) Linux
5 103 (1.85%) Android
6 94 (1.69%) Apple iOS
7 92 (1.65%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
10 42 (0.75%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.72%) Unix
12 27 (0.48%) VMS
13 26 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
14 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
15 17 (0.30%) Windows Server 2003
16 10 (0.18%) CentOS
17 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
18 7 (0.13%) AIX
19 5 (0.090%) Solaris
20 4 (0.072%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 988 (17.72%) Problem-Solving
2 890 (15.96%) Agile
3 884 (15.86%) DevOps
4 782 (14.03%) Migration
5 756 (13.56%) CI/CD
6 661 (11.86%) Business Intelligence
7 620 (11.12%) Analytics
8 547 (9.81%) AI
9 537 (9.63%) Stakeholder Management
10 507 (9.09%) Continuous Improvement
11 467 (8.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 454 (8.14%) Customer Service
13 434 (7.78%) ITIL
14 407 (7.30%) Data Modelling
15 371 (6.65%) Cybersecurity
16 362 (6.49%) Roadmaps
17 335 (6.01%) Infrastructure as Code
18 318 (5.70%) Decision-Making
19 311 (5.58%) Project Management
20 307 (5.51%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 729 (13.08%) SQL
2 653 (11.71%) PowerShell
3 635 (11.39%) Python
4 287 (5.15%) C#
5 216 (3.87%) JavaScript
6 181 (3.25%) Java
7 127 (2.28%) Bicep
8 100 (1.79%) Kusto Query Language
9 97 (1.74%) Bash
10 82 (1.47%) T-SQL
11 81 (1.45%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 35 (0.63%) PL/SQL
14 29 (0.52%) VBA
15 27 (0.48%) C++
16 22 (0.39%) VB
17 20 (0.36%) R
18 19 (0.34%) Perl
18 19 (0.34%) Scala
19 18 (0.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,078 (19.34%) Security Cleared
2 833 (14.94%) SC Cleared
3 567 (10.17%) Degree
4 284 (5.09%) Microsoft Certification
5 200 (3.59%) DV Cleared
6 187 (3.35%) Azure Certification
7 133 (2.39%) Computer Science Degree
8 98 (1.76%) CISSP
9 97 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
10 70 (1.26%) PMI Certification
11 69 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
12 63 (1.13%) PMP
13 57 (1.02%) Master's Degree
14 52 (0.93%) CISM
15 44 (0.79%) MCSE
16 40 (0.72%) AWS Certification
17 34 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
18 33 (0.59%) CCNP
19 31 (0.56%) DBS Check
20 30 (0.54%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 263 (4.72%) Data Quality
2 237 (4.25%) GDPR
3 180 (3.23%) QA
4 154 (2.76%) SLA
5 133 (2.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 110 (1.97%) PMO
7 106 (1.90%) NIST
8 71 (1.27%) Accessibility
9 57 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 45 (0.81%) NCSC
11 39 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.56%) GRC
13 27 (0.48%) PCI DSS
14 19 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 19 (0.34%) MiFID
15 17 (0.30%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.27%) WCAG
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
18 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
19 11 (0.20%) GxP
System Software
1 1,090 (19.55%) Active Directory
2 236 (4.23%) Docker
3 190 (3.41%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.72%) Hyper-V
5 75 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
6 64 (1.15%) Virtual Desktop
7 50 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
8 37 (0.66%) vSphere
9 26 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.39%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.30%) Firmware
12 13 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.13%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.090%) IAG
15 5 (0.090%) Snort
16 4 (0.072%) NFS
16 4 (0.072%) Squid
16 4 (0.072%) XenApp
16 4 (0.072%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 429 (7.70%) Microsoft Intune
2 369 (6.62%) Terraform
3 266 (4.77%) Kubernetes
4 206 (3.70%) SCCM
5 130 (2.33%) Ansible
6 123 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
7 85 (1.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 42 (0.75%) Grafana
8 42 (0.75%) vCenter Server
9 39 (0.70%) Jamf Pro
10 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
11 23 (0.41%) FortiGate
11 23 (0.41%) SCOM
12 21 (0.38%) Puppet
13 18 (0.32%) WSUS
14 16 (0.29%) AirWatch
15 12 (0.22%) CASB
15 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
16 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
17 10 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 265 (4.75%) VMware
2 259 (4.65%) ServiceNow
3 218 (3.91%) Databricks
4 216 (3.87%) SAP
5 205 (3.68%) Oracle
6 184 (3.30%) Cisco
7 163 (2.92%) Google
8 129 (2.31%) Citrix
9 94 (1.69%) Salesforce
10 93 (1.67%) OpenAI
11 90 (1.61%) Splunk
12 76 (1.36%) Foundry
13 67 (1.20%) Apple
14 51 (0.91%) CrowdStrike
15 48 (0.86%) Adobe
16 47 (0.84%) HP
16 47 (0.84%) Palo Alto
17 46 (0.83%) Red Hat
18 40 (0.72%) Informatica
18 40 (0.72%) Workday