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 17 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
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,557 3,897 5,651
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.08% 13.28% 12.88%
As % of the Vendors category 28.27% 28.09% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,745 2,619 3,733
10th Percentile £206 £210 £188
25th Percentile £375 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £576 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £465
% change year-on-year +2.86% -5.91% +0.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 215 450
10th Percentile £13.41 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.73 £12.89
Median hourly rate £20.20 £22.00 £15.30
Median % change year-on-year -8.20% +43.84% -32.02%
75th Percentile £28.85 £30.63 £24.67
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.40 £51.32
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £19.97 £15.00
% change year-on-year -0.30% +33.13% -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 19,655 13,873 18,669
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.72% 47.26% 42.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,586 8,729 11,642
10th Percentile £313 £290 £260
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £517
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -0.92% -1.48%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £630
90th Percentile £700 £711 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 979 529 1,074
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.00 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.72 £18.51 £14.36
Median hourly rate £30.00 £28.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% +24.44% -46.84%
75th Percentile £60.00 £60.00 £56.43
90th Percentile £78.75 £78.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £24.66 £21.37
% change year-on-year +7.46% +15.40% -44.49%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 4,877 £492 +3.58% 3,025
UK excluding London 0 2,903 £450 +2.86% 2,707
London -2 2,128 £510 +2.00% 815
Work from Home -2 1,367 £500 - 1,137
North of England 0 794 £450 +5.88% 655
South East -4 643 £480 -2.83% 795
Midlands -5 502 £450 +10.89% 388
North West -1 436 £420 -5.62% 346
West Midlands -5 353 £450 +12.27% 214
South West 0 340 £470 +0.53% 302
East of England 0 338 £400 -9.86% 336
Yorkshire +3 330 £454 +13.50% 211
Scotland +3 199 £438 +3.55% 166
East Midlands -1 144 £394 -7.35% 173
Wales +3 92 £310 +17.66% 103
North East -18 34 £450 +28.57% 109
Northern Ireland +5 22 £450 +38.46% 35
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
1 603 (10.85%) SharePoint
2 409 (7.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 107 (1.93%) Confluence
4 31 (0.56%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
6 23 (0.41%) Apache
7 22 (0.40%) CMS
8 17 (0.31%) HCL Notes
8 17 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 16 (0.29%) SAS
10 10 (0.18%) IIS
10 10 (0.18%) Mendix
11 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.090%) Camunda
12 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.072%) Drupal
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
14 3 (0.054%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 586 (10.55%) Microsoft Office
2 518 (9.32%) Microsoft Excel
3 232 (4.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 128 (2.30%) Microsoft Project
5 98 (1.76%) MS Visio
6 75 (1.35%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.27%) 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%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
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
1 202 (3.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 54 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 16 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.23%) Maximo
6 13 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
7 11 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 8 (0.14%) Sage X3
9 8 (0.14%) Shopify
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 6 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
11 6 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.11%) SystmOne
12 5 (0.090%) SAP Business One
12 5 (0.090%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,291 (41.23%) Azure
2 1,441 (25.93%) Microsoft 365
3 926 (16.66%) Power Platform
4 710 (12.78%) Entra ID
5 458 (8.24%) Dynamics 365
6 457 (8.22%) AWS
7 445 (8.01%) Azure DevOps
8 333 (5.99%) Power Automate
9 299 (5.38%) PowerApps
10 282 (5.07%) Microsoft Purview
11 265 (4.77%) GitHub
12 217 (3.90%) Microsoft Copilot
13 206 (3.71%) OneDrive
14 202 (3.64%) Azure Data Factory
15 192 (3.46%) SaaS
16 175 (3.15%) Serverless
17 169 (3.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 162 (2.92%) GCP
19 148 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
20 146 (2.63%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 307 (5.52%) Firewall
2 301 (5.42%) DNS
3 210 (3.78%) VPN
4 174 (3.13%) DHCP
5 145 (2.61%) Wi-Fi
6 139 (2.50%) WAN
7 123 (2.21%) Network Security
8 118 (2.12%) LAN
9 113 (2.03%) TCP/IP
10 60 (1.08%) VLAN
11 54 (0.97%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.81%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.70%) Wireless
14 38 (0.68%) Skype
15 36 (0.65%) SSL
16 35 (0.63%) Unified Communications
17 34 (0.61%) SAN
18 30 (0.54%) HTTP
19 25 (0.45%) MPLS
20 24 (0.43%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 578 (10.40%) Power BI
2 280 (5.04%) SQL Server
3 181 (3.26%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (2.75%) Data Lake
5 121 (2.18%) Azure SQL Database
6 112 (2.02%) Metadata
7 107 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
8 74 (1.33%) Relational Database
9 71 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 52 (0.94%) Oracle Database
10 52 (0.94%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 49 (0.88%) Tableau
12 48 (0.86%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.85%) MySQL
14 43 (0.77%) Power Query
15 41 (0.74%) Delta Lake
16 40 (0.72%) Star Schema
17 28 (0.50%) Snowflake Schema
17 28 (0.50%) Spark SQL
18 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 254 (4.57%) JIRA
2 174 (3.13%) Git
3 66 (1.19%) GitLab
3 66 (1.19%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.47%) Visual Studio
5 25 (0.45%) Artifactory
6 21 (0.38%) Eclipse
7 19 (0.34%) Selenium
8 18 (0.32%) MSI
8 18 (0.32%) Postman
9 16 (0.29%) JMeter
9 16 (0.29%) MLflow
10 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
10 13 (0.23%) JUnit
10 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
11 12 (0.22%) Bitbucket
12 11 (0.20%) ERwin
12 11 (0.20%) Maven
13 10 (0.18%) SpecFlow
14 9 (0.16%) Android Studio
General
1 1,943 (34.96%) Social Skills
2 1,115 (20.06%) Finance
3 642 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
4 526 (9.47%) Public Sector
5 296 (5.33%) Banking
6 252 (4.53%) Legal
7 250 (4.50%) Organisational Skills
8 161 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
9 115 (2.07%) Manufacturing
10 106 (1.91%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (1.73%) Marketing
12 93 (1.67%) Law
13 89 (1.60%) Telecoms
14 85 (1.53%) Retail
15 82 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 66 (1.19%) Military
17 63 (1.13%) Local Government
18 60 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
19 55 (0.99%) Investment Banking
20 38 (0.68%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 687 (12.36%) Architect
2 602 (10.83%) Analyst
3 529 (9.52%) Developer
4 445 (8.01%) Senior
5 373 (6.71%) IT Support
6 327 (5.88%) Lead
7 279 (5.02%) Consultant
8 265 (4.77%) Support Engineer
9 209 (3.76%) Data Engineer
10 206 (3.71%) Azure Engineer
11 197 (3.55%) Solutions Architect
12 193 (3.47%) IT Engineer
13 183 (3.29%) Project Manager
14 177 (3.19%) Administrator
15 175 (3.15%) Business Analyst
16 163 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 146 (2.63%) IT Support Engineer
18 115 (2.07%) Security Engineer
19 112 (2.02%) DevOps Engineer
20 99 (1.78%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (4.64%) .NET
2 178 (3.20%) REST
3 132 (2.38%) Microsoft Graph
4 121 (2.18%) OAuth
5 105 (1.89%) SAML
6 99 (1.78%) PySpark
7 90 (1.62%) React
8 83 (1.49%) OpenID
9 78 (1.40%) JSON
10 68 (1.22%) LDAP
11 64 (1.15%) Middleware
11 64 (1.15%) Web Services
12 60 (1.08%) OAuth2
13 57 (1.03%) ARM Templates
13 57 (1.03%) HTML
14 56 (1.01%) AngularJS
15 55 (0.99%) RESTful
16 52 (0.94%) Node.js
17 51 (0.92%) .NET Framework
17 51 (0.92%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 282 (5.07%) Onboarding
2 221 (3.98%) Cloud Native
3 193 (3.47%) Product Ownership
4 127 (2.29%) Management Information System
5 108 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
6 101 (1.82%) Data Centre
7 88 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
7 88 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
8 84 (1.51%) PKI
8 84 (1.51%) Security Posture
9 83 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
10 76 (1.37%) AI Agents
11 73 (1.31%) Replication
12 68 (1.22%) Low-Code
13 67 (1.21%) Data Structures
14 63 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
15 58 (1.04%) Driving Licence
16 57 (1.03%) Virtual Team
17 51 (0.92%) NHS
18 47 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,220 (21.95%) Windows
2 328 (5.90%) Windows 10
3 288 (5.18%) Windows Server
4 278 (5.00%) Linux
5 101 (1.82%) Android
6 97 (1.75%) Apple iOS
7 93 (1.67%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.77%) Windows 7
9 43 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
10 40 (0.72%) Unix
11 28 (0.50%) VMS
12 25 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
13 22 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
14 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
15 10 (0.18%) CentOS
16 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
17 8 (0.14%) AIX
18 5 (0.090%) Solaris
19 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 978 (17.60%) Problem-Solving
2 883 (15.89%) Agile
3 869 (15.64%) DevOps
4 781 (14.05%) Migration
5 752 (13.53%) CI/CD
6 652 (11.73%) Business Intelligence
7 619 (11.14%) Analytics
8 533 (9.59%) Stakeholder Management
9 532 (9.57%) AI
10 513 (9.23%) Continuous Improvement
11 469 (8.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 456 (8.21%) Customer Service
13 422 (7.59%) ITIL
14 403 (7.25%) Data Modelling
15 364 (6.55%) Cybersecurity
16 353 (6.35%) Roadmaps
17 335 (6.03%) Infrastructure as Code
18 315 (5.67%) Project Management
19 305 (5.49%) Decision-Making
20 301 (5.42%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 737 (13.26%) SQL
2 651 (11.71%) PowerShell
3 637 (11.46%) Python
4 287 (5.16%) C#
5 216 (3.89%) JavaScript
6 178 (3.20%) Java
7 126 (2.27%) Bicep
8 102 (1.84%) Kusto Query Language
9 97 (1.75%) Bash
10 83 (1.49%) T-SQL
11 81 (1.46%) TypeScript
12 69 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 36 (0.65%) PL/SQL
14 30 (0.54%) VBA
15 27 (0.49%) C++
16 22 (0.40%) VB
17 19 (0.34%) Perl
18 18 (0.32%) R
18 18 (0.32%) Scala
18 18 (0.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,077 (19.38%) Security Cleared
2 822 (14.79%) SC Cleared
3 559 (10.06%) Degree
4 285 (5.13%) Microsoft Certification
5 208 (3.74%) DV Cleared
6 188 (3.38%) Azure Certification
7 130 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
8 98 (1.76%) CISSP
9 96 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
10 70 (1.26%) PMI Certification
11 69 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
12 62 (1.12%) PMP
13 58 (1.04%) Master's Degree
14 51 (0.92%) CISM
15 41 (0.74%) AWS Certification
16 37 (0.67%) MCSE
17 32 (0.58%) CCNP
17 32 (0.58%) DBS Check
17 32 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
18 29 (0.52%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 262 (4.71%) Data Quality
2 232 (4.17%) GDPR
3 177 (3.19%) QA
4 151 (2.72%) SLA
5 134 (2.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 113 (2.03%) PMO
7 107 (1.93%) NIST
8 70 (1.26%) Accessibility
9 59 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
10 49 (0.88%) NCSC
11 38 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.56%) GRC
13 27 (0.49%) PCI DSS
14 19 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 19 (0.34%) MiFID
15 17 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 14 (0.25%) WCAG
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
18 11 (0.20%) GxP
19 10 (0.18%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,096 (19.72%) Active Directory
2 236 (4.25%) Docker
3 182 (3.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.66%) Hyper-V
5 66 (1.19%) Virtual Machines
6 59 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
7 45 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (0.58%) vSphere
9 26 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.31%) Firmware
12 12 (0.22%) 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%) KVM
16 4 (0.072%) NFS
16 4 (0.072%) Squid
16 4 (0.072%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 435 (7.83%) Microsoft Intune
2 364 (6.55%) Terraform
3 268 (4.82%) Kubernetes
4 207 (3.73%) SCCM
5 134 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
6 119 (2.14%) Ansible
7 96 (1.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
9 43 (0.77%) Grafana
10 36 (0.65%) vCenter Server
11 33 (0.59%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.41%) FortiGate
13 22 (0.40%) SCOM
14 21 (0.38%) Puppet
15 18 (0.32%) WSUS
16 15 (0.27%) AirWatch
17 13 (0.23%) CASB
18 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
19 10 (0.18%) HAProxy
19 10 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 263 (4.73%) VMware
2 259 (4.66%) ServiceNow
3 220 (3.96%) Databricks
4 209 (3.76%) SAP
5 206 (3.71%) Oracle
6 179 (3.22%) Cisco
7 163 (2.93%) Google
8 131 (2.36%) Citrix
9 95 (1.71%) OpenAI
10 93 (1.67%) Salesforce
10 93 (1.67%) Splunk
11 76 (1.37%) Foundry
12 66 (1.19%) Apple
13 55 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
14 48 (0.86%) Palo Alto
15 47 (0.85%) HP
15 47 (0.85%) Red Hat
16 46 (0.83%) Adobe
17 40 (0.72%) Informatica
18 39 (0.70%) CyberArk