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 16 January 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
16 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 8 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 4,937 4,292 5,553
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.28% 13.47% 13.04%
As % of the Vendors category 28.82% 29.38% 29.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,349 2,703 3,800
10th Percentile £204 £205 £198
25th Percentile £350 £345 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £585 £619
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.82% -5.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 362 191 251
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.49 £12.63
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.62 £14.32
Median hourly rate £19.91 £23.59 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.60% +12.33% +2.51%
75th Percentile £27.13 £33.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £63.72 £55.00 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £21.46 £20.00
% change year-on-year -11.46% +7.30% -

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 17,128 14,609 18,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 46.06% 45.86% 44.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,046 8,663 11,892
10th Percentile £300 £281 £255
25th Percentile £410 £408 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.42%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 799 427 690
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £13.97
25th Percentile £17.87 £19.96 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.75 £27.35 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.16% -36.40% +39.84%
75th Percentile £47.50 £60.06 £63.00
90th Percentile £73.75 £78.50 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £25.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -16.00% -43.82% +74.44%

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 16 January 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 16 January 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 16 January 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 4,351 £475 - 3,371
UK excluding London -1 2,644 £450 +5.82% 3,233
London -2 1,853 £508 +1.50% 690
Work from Home 0 1,260 £500 +2.83% 1,305
North of England +1 700 £420 -2.04% 730
South East +1 602 £475 +5.56% 1,017
Midlands -4 455 £447 +5.18% 465
North West +1 399 £400 -11.11% 332
South West +1 357 £508 +8.85% 327
West Midlands -6 304 £485 +11.49% 224
East of England 0 272 £425 -2.86% 424
Yorkshire +1 269 £449 +11.08% 293
Scotland -1 182 £454 +21.07% 152
East Midlands -1 151 £375 - 235
Wales +3 79 £308 -31.67% 151
North East -17 37 £430 +8.18% 114
Northern Ireland +2 34 £400 +39.13% 50
Channel Islands +1 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
1 568 (11.50%) SharePoint
2 379 (7.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 106 (2.15%) Confluence
4 60 (1.22%) Skype for Business
5 37 (0.75%) CMS
6 24 (0.49%) IIS
7 23 (0.47%) Apache
8 22 (0.45%) HCL Notes
9 21 (0.43%) SAS
10 18 (0.36%) Apache Airflow
10 18 (0.36%) Exchange Server 2013
11 16 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2010
12 14 (0.28%) Apache Spark
13 13 (0.26%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.22%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
15 10 (0.20%) iPlanet
15 10 (0.20%) JBoss
16 9 (0.18%) Mendix
Applications
1 612 (12.40%) Microsoft Office
2 523 (10.59%) Microsoft Excel
3 236 (4.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 123 (2.49%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (2.19%) MS Visio
6 63 (1.28%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.22%) Trello
8 10 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.18%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.12%) Sketch
11 5 (0.10%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.10%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.081%) Adobe After Effects
12 4 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.081%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.081%) InDesign
12 4 (0.081%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.061%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.061%) Windchill
14 2 (0.041%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 181 (3.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.81%) Remedy ITSM
2 40 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 17 (0.34%) Dynamics AX
4 15 (0.30%) Maximo
5 14 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
6 12 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 11 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
9 9 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
11 7 (0.14%) Advent Geneva
11 7 (0.14%) Aladdin
11 7 (0.14%) Shopify
12 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
13 5 (0.10%) Loan IQ
13 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
14 4 (0.081%) assyst
14 4 (0.081%) SystmOne
14 4 (0.081%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,900 (38.48%) Azure
2 1,189 (24.08%) Microsoft 365
3 787 (15.94%) Power Platform
4 571 (11.57%) Entra ID
5 437 (8.85%) AWS
6 384 (7.78%) Dynamics 365
7 359 (7.27%) Azure DevOps
8 323 (6.54%) Power Automate
9 297 (6.02%) PowerApps
10 219 (4.44%) Microsoft Purview
11 213 (4.31%) GitHub
12 183 (3.71%) Serverless
13 173 (3.50%) OneDrive
14 170 (3.44%) GCP
15 165 (3.34%) Azure Data Factory
16 155 (3.14%) SaaS
17 142 (2.88%) Azure Sentinel
18 139 (2.82%) Microsoft Copilot
19 137 (2.77%) Azure Logic Apps
20 121 (2.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 278 (5.63%) Firewall
2 258 (5.23%) DNS
3 176 (3.56%) VPN
4 161 (3.26%) DHCP
5 122 (2.47%) TCP/IP
6 104 (2.11%) Wi-Fi
7 101 (2.05%) WAN
8 93 (1.88%) Network Security
9 86 (1.74%) LAN
10 81 (1.64%) Skype
11 51 (1.03%) Wireless
12 48 (0.97%) VLAN
13 45 (0.91%) Kerberos
14 42 (0.85%) Unified Communications
15 35 (0.71%) SD-WAN
16 34 (0.69%) HTTP
17 29 (0.59%) Internet
18 28 (0.57%) SAN
19 24 (0.49%) VoIP
19 24 (0.49%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 478 (9.68%) Power BI
2 231 (4.68%) SQL Server
3 133 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
4 126 (2.55%) Data Lake
5 88 (1.78%) Azure SQL Database
6 84 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
7 83 (1.68%) Metadata
7 83 (1.68%) Relational Database
8 74 (1.50%) Oracle Database
9 44 (0.89%) MySQL
10 42 (0.85%) Tableau
11 39 (0.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 38 (0.77%) NoSQL
12 38 (0.77%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 35 (0.71%) Power Query
14 26 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
15 22 (0.45%) Delta Lake
16 19 (0.38%) Spark SQL
16 19 (0.38%) Star Schema
17 18 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 225 (4.56%) JIRA
2 155 (3.14%) Git
3 87 (1.76%) Jenkins
4 76 (1.54%) GitLab
5 34 (0.69%) Eclipse
6 26 (0.53%) MSI
7 23 (0.47%) Postman
7 23 (0.47%) Visual Studio
8 21 (0.43%) Android Studio
8 21 (0.43%) Browser DevTools
8 21 (0.43%) Xcode
9 20 (0.41%) Selenium
10 15 (0.30%) Artifactory
10 15 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
11 13 (0.26%) JMeter
12 12 (0.24%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.24%) Cucumber
12 12 (0.24%) InstallShield
13 10 (0.20%) Bitbucket Server
13 10 (0.20%) CA Release Automation
General
1 1,993 (40.37%) Social Skills
2 1,016 (20.58%) Finance
3 638 (12.92%) Analytical Skills
4 504 (10.21%) Public Sector
5 251 (5.08%) Banking
6 231 (4.68%) Organisational Skills
7 191 (3.87%) Legal
8 153 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
9 126 (2.55%) Manufacturing
10 114 (2.31%) Marketing
11 101 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
12 95 (1.92%) Telecoms
13 79 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 76 (1.54%) Retail
15 53 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
16 48 (0.97%) Local Government
17 47 (0.95%) Military
18 44 (0.89%) Investment Banking
19 41 (0.83%) Law
20 38 (0.77%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 650 (13.17%) Analyst
2 520 (10.53%) Architect
3 465 (9.42%) Developer
4 353 (7.15%) Senior
5 298 (6.04%) IT Support
6 295 (5.98%) Support Engineer
7 268 (5.43%) Consultant
8 244 (4.94%) Lead
9 163 (3.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 161 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
11 155 (3.14%) Business Analyst
12 153 (3.10%) Support Analyst
13 151 (3.06%) Administrator
14 144 (2.92%) IT Engineer
15 141 (2.86%) Azure Engineer
16 139 (2.82%) Project Manager
17 135 (2.73%) Data Engineer
18 121 (2.45%) Security Engineer
19 103 (2.09%) IT Support Engineer
20 101 (2.05%) Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (5.04%) .NET
2 158 (3.20%) REST
3 119 (2.41%) OAuth
4 110 (2.23%) React
5 99 (2.01%) SAML
6 84 (1.70%) Microsoft Graph
6 84 (1.70%) RESTful
7 83 (1.68%) OpenID
8 78 (1.58%) AngularJS
9 69 (1.40%) HTML
10 67 (1.36%) CSS
11 66 (1.34%) JSON
12 64 (1.30%) PySpark
13 62 (1.26%) LDAP
14 55 (1.11%) ARM Templates
15 52 (1.05%) Node.js
16 48 (0.97%) Web Services
17 46 (0.93%) OAuth2
18 45 (0.91%) Middleware
19 42 (0.85%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 275 (5.57%) Onboarding
2 188 (3.81%) Cloud Native
3 139 (2.82%) Product Ownership
4 135 (2.73%) Management Information System
5 117 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
6 93 (1.88%) PKI
7 90 (1.82%) Security Posture
8 87 (1.76%) Data Centre
9 83 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
10 77 (1.56%) Driving Licence
11 71 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
11 71 (1.44%) Mobile App
12 69 (1.40%) Low-Code
13 65 (1.32%) Hybrid Cloud
14 56 (1.13%) Analytical Mindset
14 56 (1.13%) Replication
15 52 (1.05%) Virtual Team
16 50 (1.01%) NHS
17 45 (0.91%) Data Protection Act
18 42 (0.85%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 1,177 (23.84%) Windows
2 342 (6.93%) Windows 10
3 296 (6.00%) Linux
4 260 (5.27%) Windows Server
5 104 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 100 (2.03%) Android
7 88 (1.78%) Apple iOS
8 78 (1.58%) Unix
9 40 (0.81%) Windows 7
10 37 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
11 30 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 25 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 24 (0.49%) Windows Server 2003
14 20 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
15 16 (0.32%) VMS
16 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
17 7 (0.14%) AIX
17 7 (0.14%) Mac OS X
18 6 (0.12%) CentOS
18 6 (0.12%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,014 (20.54%) Problem-Solving
2 872 (17.66%) Agile
3 732 (14.83%) DevOps
4 616 (12.48%) Migration
5 595 (12.05%) CI/CD
6 566 (11.46%) Business Intelligence
7 503 (10.19%) Analytics
8 502 (10.17%) Stakeholder Management
9 464 (9.40%) ITIL
10 426 (8.63%) Continuous Improvement
11 423 (8.57%) Customer Service
12 403 (8.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 363 (7.35%) AI
14 354 (7.17%) Cybersecurity
15 317 (6.42%) Project Management
16 290 (5.87%) Change Management
17 277 (5.61%) Data Modelling
18 264 (5.35%) Roadmaps
19 258 (5.23%) Infrastructure as Code
20 255 (5.17%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 641 (12.98%) SQL
2 594 (12.03%) PowerShell
3 567 (11.48%) Python
4 258 (5.23%) C#
5 216 (4.38%) JavaScript
6 141 (2.86%) Java
7 111 (2.25%) Kusto Query Language
8 102 (2.07%) Bash
9 99 (2.01%) Bicep
10 77 (1.56%) TypeScript
11 54 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 45 (0.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 37 (0.75%) Perl
14 30 (0.61%) Shell Script
15 27 (0.55%) PL/SQL
16 25 (0.51%) C++
17 21 (0.43%) R
17 21 (0.43%) VB
17 21 (0.43%) VBScript
18 20 (0.41%) Go
Qualifications
1 981 (19.87%) Security Cleared
2 730 (14.79%) SC Cleared
3 510 (10.33%) Degree
4 330 (6.68%) Microsoft Certification
5 211 (4.27%) DV Cleared
6 172 (3.48%) Azure Certification
7 124 (2.51%) CISSP
8 119 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
9 76 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
10 68 (1.38%) CISM
11 61 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
12 55 (1.11%) Master's Degree
13 54 (1.09%) PMI Certification
14 51 (1.03%) ITIL Certification
15 50 (1.01%) A+ Certification
16 49 (0.99%) MCSE
17 44 (0.89%) MCP
18 43 (0.87%) PMP
19 40 (0.81%) AWS Certification
20 33 (0.67%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 223 (4.52%) GDPR
2 166 (3.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 156 (3.16%) Data Quality
4 148 (3.00%) QA
5 138 (2.80%) SLA
6 130 (2.63%) NIST
7 101 (2.05%) PMO
8 84 (1.70%) Accessibility
9 49 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
10 32 (0.65%) NCSC
11 30 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 26 (0.53%) WCAG
13 25 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 22 (0.45%) EU AI Act
15 21 (0.43%) HIPAA
16 18 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 17 (0.34%) GRC
18 12 (0.24%) SOC 2
19 11 (0.22%) MiFID
20 10 (0.20%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,012 (20.50%) Active Directory
2 195 (3.95%) Docker
3 167 (3.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 70 (1.42%) Hyper-V
5 57 (1.15%) Virtual Machines
6 36 (0.73%) vSphere
7 35 (0.71%) Virtual Desktop
8 33 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 16 (0.32%) BitLocker
9 16 (0.32%) VMware NSX
10 12 (0.24%) Firmware
10 12 (0.24%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.16%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 7 (0.14%) ISA Server
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.12%) Brightmail
13 6 (0.12%) NFS
14 5 (0.10%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 5 (0.10%) Snort
14 5 (0.10%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 371 (7.51%) Microsoft Intune
2 272 (5.51%) Terraform
3 268 (5.43%) SCCM
4 230 (4.66%) Kubernetes
5 135 (2.73%) Single Sign-On
6 103 (2.09%) Ansible
7 79 (1.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 48 (0.97%) SCOM
9 39 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
10 36 (0.73%) vCenter Server
11 32 (0.65%) Grafana
12 26 (0.53%) Prometheus
13 23 (0.47%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.43%) HP SiteScope
14 21 (0.43%) WSUS
15 17 (0.34%) QRadar
16 16 (0.32%) Progress Chef
17 15 (0.30%) Puppet
17 15 (0.30%) WMI
18 14 (0.28%) Kibana
Vendors
1 259 (5.25%) ServiceNow
2 231 (4.68%) VMware
3 213 (4.31%) Oracle
4 185 (3.75%) Cisco
5 174 (3.52%) SAP
6 162 (3.28%) Splunk
7 150 (3.04%) Databricks
8 143 (2.90%) Google
9 112 (2.27%) Citrix
10 83 (1.68%) Apple
11 78 (1.58%) Salesforce
12 75 (1.52%) OpenAI
13 66 (1.34%) CrowdStrike
14 60 (1.22%) Palo Alto
15 52 (1.05%) IBM
16 49 (0.99%) Remedy
17 46 (0.93%) Foundry
18 43 (0.87%) HP
18 43 (0.87%) Veeam
19 38 (0.77%) CyberArk