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 20 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
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,795 4,630 5,010
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.70% 14.10% 12.92%
As % of the Vendors category 30.36% 29.80% 29.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,415 2,962 3,258
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 448 376 345
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.75 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £20.74 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.05% +37.49% -27.06%
75th Percentile £37.31 £30.72 £37.28
90th Percentile £69.88 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.41 £20.04 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.16% +23.49% -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 22,380 15,535 16,974
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.82% 47.31% 43.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,856 9,504 10,556
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
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 £612 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,139 809 815
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.74 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £31.93 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.94% -10.18% -32.15%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.12 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.05 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.28 £27.50
% change year-on-year +40.98% -22.62% -21.43%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 5,928 £490 +3.16% 4,796
UK excluding London 0 3,634 £450 +2.97% 3,970
London 0 2,571 £515 +3.00% 1,574
Work from Home +4 1,768 £500 - 1,716
South East +1 943 £475 +1.35% 1,209
North of England -3 932 £450 +3.45% 919
Midlands -2 626 £445 +11.95% 688
North West +1 554 £450 +2.92% 466
South West +1 455 £470 +15.69% 446
West Midlands -2 426 £447 +11.75% 389
Yorkshire -5 348 £462 +5.90% 332
Scotland +7 329 £449 -0.33% 214
East of England -1 252 £388 -22.50% 409
East Midlands +2 191 £425 +20.74% 298
Wales -1 102 £413 +38.66% 131
North East -37 34 £369 +8.46% 139
Northern Ireland -3 30 £369 +2.08% 52
Channel Islands -2 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
1 798 (11.74%) SharePoint
2 403 (5.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.19%) Confluence
4 39 (0.57%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.56%) Apache
6 30 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) IIS
8 21 (0.31%) CMS
8 21 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 19 (0.28%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
11 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.15%) SAS
13 9 (0.13%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Camunda
15 6 (0.088%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.088%) Mendix
15 6 (0.088%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.088%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.074%) Jupyter
Applications
1 669 (9.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 658 (9.68%) Microsoft Office
3 284 (4.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 182 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 110 (1.62%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.62%) 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 (0.088%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.088%) 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 (0.029%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 238 (3.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
10 10 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.088%) Sage X3
13 6 (0.088%) SAP MM
13 6 (0.088%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,852 (41.97%) Azure
2 1,735 (25.53%) Microsoft 365
3 1,180 (17.37%) Power Platform
4 1,032 (15.19%) Entra ID
5 614 (9.04%) AWS
6 595 (8.76%) Azure DevOps
7 571 (8.40%) Dynamics 365
8 404 (5.95%) Power Automate
9 379 (5.58%) Microsoft Copilot
10 367 (5.40%) PowerApps
11 304 (4.47%) Microsoft Purview
12 294 (4.33%) GitHub
13 254 (3.74%) OneDrive
14 244 (3.59%) SaaS
15 236 (3.47%) GCP
16 188 (2.77%) Azure Data Factory
17 169 (2.49%) Serverless
18 166 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
19 164 (2.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 157 (2.31%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 382 (5.62%) DNS
2 345 (5.08%) Firewall
3 284 (4.18%) VPN
4 249 (3.66%) DHCP
5 192 (2.83%) TCP/IP
6 172 (2.53%) WAN
7 158 (2.33%) Network Security
8 155 (2.28%) LAN
9 147 (2.16%) Wi-Fi
10 78 (1.15%) VLAN
11 57 (0.84%) Wireless
12 50 (0.74%) SAN
13 44 (0.65%) MPLS
14 38 (0.56%) SSL
15 34 (0.50%) Skype
15 34 (0.50%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 31 (0.46%) BGP
17 31 (0.46%) Internet
18 28 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 740 (10.89%) Power BI
2 391 (5.75%) SQL Server
3 188 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
4 138 (2.03%) Metadata
5 137 (2.02%) Data Lake
6 136 (2.00%) Azure SQL Database
7 135 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
8 75 (1.10%) Relational Database
9 70 (1.03%) Power Query
10 67 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 65 (0.96%) MySQL
12 59 (0.87%) NoSQL
13 46 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.62%) Star Schema
15 41 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 34 (0.50%) Tableau
17 33 (0.49%) Delta Lake
18 28 (0.41%) MongoDB
19 27 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
20 24 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 325 (4.78%) JIRA
2 206 (3.03%) Git
3 95 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 74 (1.09%) GitLab
5 60 (0.88%) Visual Studio
6 41 (0.60%) MSI
7 38 (0.56%) Selenium
8 20 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.19%) MLflow
12 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
12 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
13 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,381 (35.04%) Social Skills
2 1,375 (20.24%) Finance
3 869 (12.79%) Analytical Skills
4 630 (9.27%) Public Sector
5 347 (5.11%) Organisational Skills
6 328 (4.83%) Banking
7 223 (3.28%) Legal
8 192 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
9 161 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 148 (2.18%) Manufacturing
11 139 (2.05%) Retail
12 124 (1.82%) Telecoms
13 108 (1.59%) Law
14 103 (1.52%) Marketing
15 92 (1.35%) Local Government
16 87 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
17 81 (1.19%) Military
18 71 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
19 67 (0.99%) Aerospace
20 61 (0.90%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 790 (11.63%) Architect
2 689 (10.14%) Analyst
3 615 (9.05%) Developer
4 584 (8.59%) Senior
5 483 (7.11%) Lead
6 421 (6.20%) Consultant
7 420 (6.18%) IT Support
8 399 (5.87%) Support Engineer
9 272 (4.00%) IT Engineer
10 251 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
11 248 (3.65%) Azure Engineer
12 245 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 241 (3.55%) Data Engineer
14 219 (3.22%) Administrator
15 218 (3.21%) IT Support Engineer
16 215 (3.16%) Project Manager
17 182 (2.68%) Business Analyst
18 170 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
19 128 (1.88%) Security Engineer
20 123 (1.81%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 500 (7.36%) Terraform
2 329 (4.84%) .NET
3 263 (3.87%) REST
4 127 (1.87%) JSON
5 122 (1.80%) OAuth
6 108 (1.59%) PySpark
7 106 (1.56%) Microsoft Graph
8 103 (1.52%) SAML
9 101 (1.49%) XML
10 94 (1.38%) OpenID
11 91 (1.34%) .NET Framework
12 89 (1.31%) Web Services
13 83 (1.22%) React
14 81 (1.19%) ARM Templates
15 75 (1.10%) LDAP
16 73 (1.07%) RESTful
17 69 (1.02%) HTML
17 69 (1.02%) OAuth2
18 67 (0.99%) SailPoint
18 67 (0.99%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 494 (7.27%) Onboarding
2 318 (4.68%) Cloud Native
3 222 (3.27%) Management Information System
4 192 (2.83%) Product Ownership
5 190 (2.80%) Enterprise Software
6 150 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
7 139 (2.05%) Data Centre
8 138 (2.03%) PKI
9 133 (1.96%) Legacy Systems
10 125 (1.84%) AI Agents
10 125 (1.84%) Security Posture
11 93 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
12 89 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
13 87 (1.28%) Data Structures
14 78 (1.15%) Low-Code
15 77 (1.13%) Driving Licence
15 77 (1.13%) Virtual Team
16 72 (1.06%) CMDB
17 66 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
18 65 (0.96%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,456 (21.43%) Windows
2 425 (6.25%) Windows Server
3 363 (5.34%) Windows 10
4 333 (4.90%) Linux
5 137 (2.02%) Mac OS
6 126 (1.85%) Android
7 118 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.65%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.59%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
13 34 (0.50%) VMS
14 33 (0.49%) Ubuntu
15 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.31%) CentOS
17 13 (0.19%) Solaris
18 12 (0.18%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,230 (18.10%) Problem-Solving
2 1,084 (15.95%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,083 (15.94%) DevOps
4 1,044 (15.36%) Agile
5 953 (14.03%) Migration
6 896 (13.19%) CI/CD
7 807 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
8 778 (11.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 776 (11.42%) AI
10 745 (10.96%) Business Intelligence
11 709 (10.43%) Analytics
12 675 (9.93%) ITIL
13 596 (8.77%) Customer Service
14 514 (7.56%) Infrastructure as Code
15 505 (7.43%) Cybersecurity
16 499 (7.34%) Data Modelling
17 492 (7.24%) Roadmaps
18 464 (6.83%) Project Delivery
19 445 (6.55%) Decision-Making
20 440 (6.48%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 859 (12.64%) SQL
2 746 (10.98%) PowerShell
3 688 (10.13%) Python
4 330 (4.86%) C#
5 248 (3.65%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.86%) Bicep
7 187 (2.75%) Java
8 155 (2.28%) Bash
9 106 (1.56%) T-SQL
10 105 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.34%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 37 (0.54%) VBA
14 31 (0.46%) VB
15 30 (0.44%) C++
16 27 (0.40%) VBScript
17 24 (0.35%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) X++
19 17 (0.25%) R
20 15 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,458 (21.46%) Security Cleared
2 1,090 (16.04%) SC Cleared
3 636 (9.36%) Degree
4 353 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 288 (4.24%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.59%) Azure Certification
7 166 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
8 134 (1.97%) Cisco Certification
9 127 (1.87%) CISSP
10 119 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
11 93 (1.37%) PMP
12 87 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.06%) AWS Certification
14 70 (1.03%) CISM
15 61 (0.90%) CCNP
16 55 (0.81%) A+ Certification
17 53 (0.78%) DBS Check
18 52 (0.77%) CCNA
19 48 (0.71%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
19 48 (0.71%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 382 (5.62%) Data Quality
2 236 (3.47%) QA
3 225 (3.31%) GDPR
4 206 (3.03%) SLA
5 189 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 175 (2.58%) PMO
7 164 (2.41%) NIST
8 109 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.30%) NCSC
10 78 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
11 52 (0.77%) GRC
12 37 (0.54%) WCAG
13 35 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 34 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 31 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 16 (0.24%) P3O
18 14 (0.21%) NIST 800
19 13 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,316 (19.37%) Active Directory
2 252 (3.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 251 (3.69%) Docker
4 139 (2.05%) Hyper-V
5 117 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
6 99 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (0.94%) vSphere
8 59 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.29%) 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 (0.088%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 5 (0.074%) XenApp
16 5 (0.074%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 550 (8.09%) Microsoft Intune
2 328 (4.83%) Kubernetes
3 266 (3.91%) SCCM
4 171 (2.52%) Ansible
5 122 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
6 59 (0.87%) Grafana
7 56 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.77%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.62%) SCOM
10 39 (0.57%) Prometheus
11 38 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 25 (0.37%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) Puppet
15 21 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 20 (0.29%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
18 15 (0.22%) Argo
19 13 (0.19%) Avamar
19 13 (0.19%) CASB
Vendors
1 507 (7.46%) ServiceNow
2 340 (5.00%) VMware
3 324 (4.77%) Oracle
4 271 (3.99%) SAP
5 238 (3.50%) Google
6 234 (3.44%) Databricks
7 227 (3.34%) Cisco
8 120 (1.77%) Salesforce
9 112 (1.65%) Splunk
10 106 (1.56%) Apple
11 99 (1.46%) Citrix
12 88 (1.30%) CyberArk
13 76 (1.12%) Foundry
14 75 (1.10%) Okta
15 74 (1.09%) OpenAI
16 70 (1.03%) BeyondTrust
17 67 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.97%) Red Hat
19 55 (0.81%) Zscaler
20 53 (0.78%) Meraki