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 3 July 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
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,053 4,273 5,648
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.75% 13.66% 12.99%
As % of the Vendors category 28.66% 28.79% 30.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,975 2,735 3,676
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £348 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £580 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £430 £450
% change year-on-year +4.65% -4.44% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 375 321 491
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.43 £15.84 £13.69
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +38.95% -32.17%
75th Percentile £35.22 £31.00 £26.32
90th Percentile £65.00 £63.25 £59.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £19.83 £16.00
% change year-on-year +4.35% +23.94% -15.79%

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 21,123 14,842 18,645
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.00% 47.46% 42.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,162 9,096 11,591
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +3.95% -3.80% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,094 703 1,150
10th Percentile £15.75 £14.84 £12.40
25th Percentile £19.03 £17.33 £14.90
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +2.65% -39.64%
75th Percentile £62.00 £53.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.08 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.00
% change year-on-year +43.61% -5.71% -25.70%

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 3 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 0 5,274 £495 +4.21% 3,695
UK excluding London -1 3,208 £450 +4.65% 3,124
London -2 2,324 £505 -1.51% 1,165
Work from Home 0 1,553 £500 - 1,704
North of England -4 823 £460 +7.60% 731
South East -2 756 £475 +1.35% 958
Midlands -3 550 £450 +16.13% 507
North West -3 444 £450 +4.53% 380
South West 0 390 £475 +11.76% 340
West Midlands -4 387 £450 +14.87% 272
Yorkshire -3 358 £480 +6.67% 255
East of England 0 294 £350 -30.00% 317
Scotland +5 282 £450 +1.18% 167
East Midlands +1 155 £425 +13.20% 236
Wales +1 110 £370 +23.33% 104
Northern Ireland +3 32 £350 +0.36% 85
North East -42 25 £450 +30.43% 111
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14%

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
1 649 (10.72%) SharePoint
2 385 (6.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 131 (2.16%) Confluence
4 35 (0.58%) Apache Spark
5 31 (0.51%) Apache
6 28 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.31%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) CMS
9 15 (0.25%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.23%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.18%) SAS
12 8 (0.13%) Oracle Workflow
13 6 (0.099%) Camunda
13 6 (0.099%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.083%) Mendix
14 5 (0.083%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.083%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.066%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.066%) ThingWorx
15 4 (0.066%) Tomcat
Applications
1 562 (9.28%) Microsoft Office
2 552 (9.12%) Microsoft Excel
3 235 (3.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 128 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.73%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.099%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.050%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.050%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.050%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.033%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.033%) InDesign
12 2 (0.033%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.033%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.033%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 205 (3.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.21%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.15%) Primavera
9 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
9 9 (0.15%) SAP MM
10 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
12 6 (0.099%) Dynamics GP
12 6 (0.099%) Magento
12 6 (0.099%) NEC Housing
12 6 (0.099%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.099%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,536 (41.90%) Azure
2 1,502 (24.81%) Microsoft 365
3 1,030 (17.02%) Power Platform
4 847 (13.99%) Entra ID
5 543 (8.97%) AWS
6 478 (7.90%) Azure DevOps
7 464 (7.67%) Dynamics 365
8 344 (5.68%) Power Automate
9 317 (5.24%) Microsoft Purview
10 316 (5.22%) PowerApps
11 300 (4.96%) Microsoft Copilot
12 249 (4.11%) GitHub
13 228 (3.77%) OneDrive
14 224 (3.70%) SaaS
15 195 (3.22%) GCP
16 157 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
17 154 (2.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 151 (2.49%) Serverless
19 143 (2.36%) PaaS
20 141 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 331 (5.47%) DNS
2 286 (4.72%) Firewall
3 230 (3.80%) VPN
4 200 (3.30%) DHCP
5 155 (2.56%) WAN
6 150 (2.48%) TCP/IP
7 141 (2.33%) Wi-Fi
8 133 (2.20%) LAN
9 128 (2.11%) Network Security
10 56 (0.93%) VLAN
11 49 (0.81%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.74%) SAN
12 45 (0.74%) SD-WAN
13 40 (0.66%) SSL
14 39 (0.64%) Wireless
15 35 (0.58%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.55%) MPLS
17 31 (0.51%) Internet
17 31 (0.51%) VoIP
18 26 (0.43%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 658 (10.87%) Power BI
2 316 (5.22%) SQL Server
3 173 (2.86%) Data Warehouse
4 132 (2.18%) PostgreSQL
5 124 (2.05%) Metadata
6 122 (2.02%) Data Lake
7 118 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
8 71 (1.17%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 61 (1.01%) MySQL
11 57 (0.94%) Power Query
12 51 (0.84%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.74%) Star Schema
14 44 (0.73%) NoSQL
15 40 (0.66%) Tableau
16 39 (0.64%) Oracle Database
17 35 (0.58%) Delta Lake
18 32 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 26 (0.43%) Big Data
20 23 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 304 (5.02%) JIRA
2 180 (2.97%) Git
3 78 (1.29%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.94%) GitLab
5 39 (0.64%) Visual Studio
6 28 (0.46%) MSI
7 20 (0.33%) Selenium
8 18 (0.30%) Artifactory
9 17 (0.28%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.28%) ERwin
10 16 (0.26%) MLflow
11 15 (0.25%) JUnit
12 14 (0.23%) Maven
12 14 (0.23%) Postman
13 13 (0.21%) Visual Studio Code
14 12 (0.20%) Bitbucket
14 12 (0.20%) Team Foundation Server
15 11 (0.18%) JMeter
15 11 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
16 10 (0.17%) WebDriver
General
1 1,996 (32.98%) Social Skills
2 1,209 (19.97%) Finance
3 684 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
4 558 (9.22%) Public Sector
5 305 (5.04%) Banking
6 260 (4.30%) Organisational Skills
7 239 (3.95%) Legal
8 164 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 117 (1.93%) Manufacturing
10 111 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 103 (1.70%) Retail
12 96 (1.59%) Law
13 94 (1.55%) Telecoms
14 83 (1.37%) Marketing
15 82 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
16 81 (1.34%) Military
17 69 (1.14%) Local Government
18 65 (1.07%) Investment Banking
19 63 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
20 45 (0.74%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 747 (12.34%) Architect
2 645 (10.66%) Analyst
3 563 (9.30%) Developer
4 496 (8.19%) Senior
5 410 (6.77%) Lead
6 377 (6.23%) IT Support
7 368 (6.08%) Consultant
8 300 (4.96%) Support Engineer
9 236 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
10 225 (3.72%) Data Engineer
11 215 (3.55%) IT Engineer
12 209 (3.45%) Project Manager
13 204 (3.37%) Azure Engineer
14 184 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 180 (2.97%) Administrator
16 173 (2.86%) Business Analyst
17 167 (2.76%) IT Support Engineer
18 125 (2.07%) Cloud Engineer
19 118 (1.95%) Security Engineer
20 108 (1.78%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (4.48%) .NET
2 208 (3.44%) REST
3 136 (2.25%) Microsoft Graph
4 118 (1.95%) OAuth
5 107 (1.77%) JSON
6 103 (1.70%) PySpark
7 101 (1.67%) SAML
8 88 (1.45%) OpenID
9 83 (1.37%) LDAP
10 82 (1.35%) Web Services
11 80 (1.32%) React
12 68 (1.12%) XML
13 61 (1.01%) Node.js
13 61 (1.01%) SailPoint
14 60 (0.99%) RESTful
15 59 (0.97%) .NET Framework
15 59 (0.97%) OAuth2
16 58 (0.96%) Middleware
17 56 (0.93%) HTML
18 55 (0.91%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 346 (5.72%) Onboarding
2 281 (4.64%) Cloud Native
3 167 (2.76%) Product Ownership
4 152 (2.51%) Management Information System
5 124 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
6 123 (2.03%) Data Centre
7 115 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
8 106 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
9 105 (1.73%) Security Posture
10 104 (1.72%) PKI
11 102 (1.69%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
13 87 (1.44%) Data Structures
14 78 (1.29%) Virtual Team
15 77 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 77 (1.27%) Replication
16 70 (1.16%) Low-Code
17 61 (1.01%) Distributed Systems
18 50 (0.83%) Clustering
18 50 (0.83%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,292 (21.34%) Windows
2 327 (5.40%) Windows Server
3 316 (5.22%) Windows 10
4 266 (4.39%) Linux
5 130 (2.15%) Mac OS
6 110 (1.82%) Android
7 105 (1.73%) Apple iOS
8 43 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 42 (0.69%) Unix
10 41 (0.68%) Windows 7
11 37 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
12 31 (0.51%) VMS
12 31 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 23 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.26%) Ubuntu
15 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
16 11 (0.18%) CentOS
16 11 (0.18%) SUSE
17 9 (0.15%) Solaris
18 6 (0.099%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,039 (17.17%) Problem-Solving
2 961 (15.88%) DevOps
3 894 (14.77%) Agile
4 855 (14.13%) Migration
5 788 (13.02%) CI/CD
6 731 (12.08%) Stakeholder Management
7 672 (11.10%) Business Intelligence
8 660 (10.90%) AI
9 631 (10.42%) Analytics
10 608 (10.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 595 (9.83%) Continuous Improvement
12 538 (8.89%) ITIL
13 455 (7.52%) Customer Service
14 445 (7.35%) Data Modelling
15 429 (7.09%) Roadmaps
16 415 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
17 397 (6.56%) Infrastructure as Code
18 391 (6.46%) Decision-Making
19 367 (6.06%) Validation
20 365 (6.03%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 775 (12.80%) SQL
2 660 (10.90%) PowerShell
3 634 (10.47%) Python
4 281 (4.64%) C#
5 215 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 187 (3.09%) Java
7 153 (2.53%) Bicep
8 111 (1.83%) T-SQL
9 86 (1.42%) Bash
10 85 (1.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 85 (1.40%) TypeScript
11 74 (1.22%) Kusto Query Language
12 36 (0.59%) VBA
13 32 (0.53%) C++
14 28 (0.46%) PL/SQL
15 27 (0.45%) VB
16 19 (0.31%) VBScript
17 17 (0.28%) Scala
18 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
19 14 (0.23%) R
Qualifications
1 1,179 (19.48%) Security Cleared
2 909 (15.02%) SC Cleared
3 585 (9.66%) Degree
4 290 (4.79%) Microsoft Certification
5 204 (3.37%) DV Cleared
6 197 (3.25%) Azure Certification
7 120 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 119 (1.97%) BPSS Clearance
9 112 (1.85%) CISSP
10 104 (1.72%) Cisco Certification
11 60 (0.99%) PMP
12 59 (0.97%) CISM
13 55 (0.91%) AWS Certification
13 55 (0.91%) PMI Certification
14 52 (0.86%) Master's Degree
15 48 (0.79%) CCNP
16 44 (0.73%) MCSE
17 43 (0.71%) DBS Check
18 42 (0.69%) CCNA
19 38 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 314 (5.19%) Data Quality
2 229 (3.78%) GDPR
3 198 (3.27%) QA
4 175 (2.89%) SLA
5 162 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 135 (2.23%) NIST
7 118 (1.95%) PMO
8 85 (1.40%) Accessibility
9 84 (1.39%) Cyber Essentials
10 67 (1.11%) NCSC
11 37 (0.61%) GRC
12 35 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 33 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 32 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 25 (0.41%) WCAG
16 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
17 16 (0.26%) NIST 800
18 15 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
19 12 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
19 12 (0.20%) MiFID
System Software
1 1,165 (19.25%) Active Directory
2 230 (3.80%) Docker
3 206 (3.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.82%) Hyper-V
5 91 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 86 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (1.01%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (0.96%) vSphere
9 33 (0.55%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.33%) Firmware
13 9 (0.15%) NFS
14 7 (0.12%) IAG
15 5 (0.083%) RACF
15 5 (0.083%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.083%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.066%) Snort
16 4 (0.066%) XenDesktop
17 3 (0.050%) zsh
Systems Management
1 480 (7.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 395 (6.53%) Terraform
3 265 (4.38%) Kubernetes
4 210 (3.47%) SCCM
5 133 (2.20%) Ansible
6 129 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
7 70 (1.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 60 (0.99%) Jamf Pro
9 50 (0.83%) vCenter Server
10 42 (0.69%) Grafana
11 32 (0.53%) Prometheus
12 30 (0.50%) SCOM
13 27 (0.45%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.33%) Puppet
15 19 (0.31%) WSUS
16 16 (0.26%) QRadar
17 13 (0.21%) AirWatch
18 12 (0.20%) vMotion
19 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
19 11 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 377 (6.23%) ServiceNow
2 280 (4.63%) VMware
3 269 (4.44%) Oracle
4 252 (4.16%) SAP
5 208 (3.44%) Databricks
6 207 (3.42%) Cisco
7 182 (3.01%) Google
8 120 (1.98%) Salesforce
9 107 (1.77%) Citrix
10 94 (1.55%) Splunk
11 86 (1.42%) Apple
12 76 (1.26%) Foundry
13 74 (1.22%) Okta
14 72 (1.19%) OpenAI
15 67 (1.11%) CyberArk
16 64 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
17 50 (0.83%) HP
18 47 (0.78%) Red Hat
19 45 (0.74%) Zscaler
20 43 (0.71%) Dell