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 7 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
7 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +4
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 4,986 4,371 5,582
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.47% 13.55% 13.10%
As % of the Vendors category 29.00% 29.63% 29.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,366 2,759 3,840
10th Percentile £205 £204 £195
25th Percentile £350 £350 £320
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £578 £588 £614
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 193 234
10th Percentile £14.12 £15.49 £13.29
25th Percentile £16.49 £15.62 £15.29
Median hourly rate £20.00 £23.59 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.22% +7.23% +7.47%
75th Percentile £27.83 £33.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £65.00 £57.62 £58.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.23 £21.46 £21.00
% change year-on-year -10.39% +2.19% +6.29%

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 17,196 14,754 18,877
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 46.45% 45.75% 44.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,046 8,758 11,974
10th Percentile £300 £285 £253
25th Percentile £410 £409 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.33%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £700 £715 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 803 431 657
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.96 £19.30 £18.50
Median hourly rate £23.83 £27.35 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.89% -38.54% +63.30%
75th Percentile £47.00 £60.38 £63.75
90th Percentile £74.26 £80.00 £76.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.50 £25.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -14.00% -45.51% +91.17%

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 7 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 7 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Top 17 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 7 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 4,390 £475 - 2,631
UK excluding London -1 2,661 £450 +2.86% 2,325
London -1 1,883 £501 +0.10% 655
Work from Home 0 1,274 £500 +2.56% 967
North of England +2 700 £420 -2.89% 543
South East +1 608 £475 +4.63% 727
Midlands -4 456 £450 +5.88% 339
North West +2 410 £400 -11.11% 269
South West 0 360 £500 +5.26% 222
West Midlands -6 306 £488 +11.43% 190
East of England -1 266 £425 -4.23% 336
Yorkshire 0 258 £435 +5.45% 201
Scotland -3 191 £450 +12.50% 98
East Midlands 0 150 £375 - 146
Wales +2 79 £295 -28.48% 82
Northern Ireland +4 41 £361 +25.65% 27
North East -14 37 £430 +16.22% 77

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
1 572 (11.47%) SharePoint
2 378 (7.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 107 (2.15%) Confluence
4 58 (1.16%) Skype for Business
5 38 (0.76%) CMS
6 25 (0.50%) IIS
7 22 (0.44%) Apache
8 21 (0.42%) HCL Notes
8 21 (0.42%) SAS
9 19 (0.38%) Apache Airflow
10 18 (0.36%) Exchange Server 2013
11 16 (0.32%) Exchange Server 2010
12 15 (0.30%) Apache Spark
13 13 (0.26%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
14 12 (0.24%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.22%) WebSphere Application Server
16 10 (0.20%) iPlanet
16 10 (0.20%) JBoss
17 8 (0.16%) Mendix
Applications
1 617 (12.37%) Microsoft Office
2 535 (10.73%) Microsoft Excel
3 248 (4.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 127 (2.55%) Microsoft Project
5 102 (2.05%) MS Visio
6 58 (1.16%) Spreadsheet
7 12 (0.24%) Trello
8 11 (0.22%) 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 (0.080%) Adobe After Effects
12 4 (0.080%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.080%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.080%) InDesign
12 4 (0.080%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.060%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.060%) Windchill
14 2 (0.040%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 189 (3.79%) Dynamics CRM
2 41 (0.82%) Remedy ITSM
3 35 (0.70%) SAP S/4HANA
4 17 (0.34%) Dynamics AX
5 16 (0.32%) Maximo
6 15 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.26%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
10 9 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 8 (0.16%) Teamcenter
12 7 (0.14%) Advent Geneva
12 7 (0.14%) Aladdin
12 7 (0.14%) Shopify
13 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
14 5 (0.10%) assyst
14 5 (0.10%) SAP ERP
15 4 (0.080%) Loan IQ
15 4 (0.080%) Primavera
15 4 (0.080%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 1,889 (37.89%) Azure
2 1,187 (23.81%) Microsoft 365
3 802 (16.09%) Power Platform
4 571 (11.45%) Entra ID
5 433 (8.68%) AWS
6 393 (7.88%) Dynamics 365
7 354 (7.10%) Azure DevOps
8 328 (6.58%) Power Automate
9 304 (6.10%) PowerApps
10 209 (4.19%) Microsoft Purview
11 208 (4.17%) GitHub
12 176 (3.53%) Serverless
13 170 (3.41%) GCP
14 166 (3.33%) OneDrive
15 157 (3.15%) Azure Data Factory
16 155 (3.11%) SaaS
17 146 (2.93%) Azure Sentinel
18 135 (2.71%) Microsoft Copilot
19 132 (2.65%) Azure Logic Apps
20 119 (2.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 286 (5.74%) Firewall
2 262 (5.25%) DNS
3 175 (3.51%) VPN
4 162 (3.25%) DHCP
5 135 (2.71%) TCP/IP
6 101 (2.03%) Wi-Fi
7 96 (1.93%) Network Security
8 93 (1.87%) WAN
9 82 (1.64%) LAN
10 79 (1.58%) Skype
11 55 (1.10%) Wireless
12 45 (0.90%) VLAN
13 42 (0.84%) Unified Communications
14 40 (0.80%) Kerberos
15 33 (0.66%) HTTP
16 32 (0.64%) Internet
17 30 (0.60%) SD-WAN
18 29 (0.58%) SAN
19 27 (0.54%) VoIP
20 25 (0.50%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 487 (9.77%) Power BI
2 232 (4.65%) SQL Server
3 134 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
4 128 (2.57%) Data Lake
5 89 (1.78%) PostgreSQL
6 87 (1.74%) Metadata
7 84 (1.68%) Azure SQL Database
8 83 (1.66%) Relational Database
9 75 (1.50%) Oracle Database
10 46 (0.92%) MySQL
11 43 (0.86%) Tableau
12 41 (0.82%) NoSQL
13 40 (0.80%) Power Query
14 39 (0.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 38 (0.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 25 (0.50%) Oracle Reports
17 24 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 20 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
18 20 (0.40%) Spark SQL
19 18 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 243 (4.87%) JIRA
2 153 (3.07%) Git
3 91 (1.83%) Jenkins
4 77 (1.54%) GitLab
5 38 (0.76%) Eclipse
6 26 (0.52%) MSI
7 24 (0.48%) Postman
7 24 (0.48%) Visual Studio
8 23 (0.46%) Android Studio
8 23 (0.46%) Browser DevTools
8 23 (0.46%) Xcode
9 19 (0.38%) Selenium
10 16 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
11 13 (0.26%) Artifactory
11 13 (0.26%) Bitbucket
11 13 (0.26%) JMeter
12 12 (0.24%) Cucumber
12 12 (0.24%) InstallShield
13 10 (0.20%) CA Release Automation
13 10 (0.20%) SonarQube
General
1 2,029 (40.69%) Social Skills
2 1,021 (20.48%) Finance
3 655 (13.14%) Analytical Skills
4 521 (10.45%) Public Sector
5 258 (5.17%) Banking
6 230 (4.61%) Organisational Skills
7 182 (3.65%) Legal
8 153 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
9 133 (2.67%) Manufacturing
10 115 (2.31%) Marketing
11 106 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
12 91 (1.83%) Telecoms
13 82 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 79 (1.58%) Retail
15 59 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
16 53 (1.06%) Local Government
17 45 (0.90%) Military
18 42 (0.84%) Investment Banking
19 40 (0.80%) Law
20 38 (0.76%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 679 (13.62%) Analyst
2 517 (10.37%) Architect
3 466 (9.35%) Developer
4 352 (7.06%) Senior
5 306 (6.14%) Support Engineer
6 284 (5.70%) IT Support
7 275 (5.52%) Consultant
8 240 (4.81%) Lead
9 161 (3.23%) Business Analyst
9 161 (3.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 161 (3.23%) Solutions Architect
10 159 (3.19%) Administrator
11 152 (3.05%) Support Analyst
12 150 (3.01%) Project Manager
13 146 (2.93%) IT Engineer
14 142 (2.85%) Azure Engineer
15 128 (2.57%) Data Engineer
16 125 (2.51%) Security Engineer
17 107 (2.15%) Desktop Support
18 103 (2.07%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (4.93%) .NET
2 161 (3.23%) REST
3 113 (2.27%) OAuth
4 108 (2.17%) React
5 88 (1.76%) SAML
6 86 (1.72%) RESTful
7 80 (1.60%) AngularJS
8 79 (1.58%) OpenID
9 77 (1.54%) Microsoft Graph
10 70 (1.40%) HTML
11 68 (1.36%) CSS
11 68 (1.36%) JSON
12 62 (1.24%) PySpark
13 54 (1.08%) ARM Templates
13 54 (1.08%) LDAP
14 52 (1.04%) Node.js
15 50 (1.00%) Web Services
16 47 (0.94%) Middleware
17 46 (0.92%) SOAP
18 45 (0.90%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 271 (5.44%) Onboarding
2 196 (3.93%) Cloud Native
3 141 (2.83%) Product Ownership
4 133 (2.67%) Management Information System
5 115 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
6 96 (1.93%) Security Posture
7 92 (1.85%) PKI
8 91 (1.83%) Data Centre
9 88 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
10 76 (1.52%) Driving Licence
11 74 (1.48%) Mobile App
12 71 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
13 68 (1.36%) Low-Code
14 65 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
15 61 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
16 54 (1.08%) Virtual Team
17 52 (1.04%) Replication
18 48 (0.96%) Data Protection Act
18 48 (0.96%) NHS
19 41 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 1,185 (23.77%) Windows
2 338 (6.78%) Windows 10
3 297 (5.96%) Linux
4 264 (5.29%) Windows Server
5 108 (2.17%) Mac OS
6 104 (2.09%) Android
7 91 (1.83%) Apple iOS
8 79 (1.58%) Unix
9 37 (0.74%) Windows 7
10 35 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
11 29 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
12 28 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 21 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
14 20 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
15 16 (0.32%) VMS
16 9 (0.18%) Mac OS X
16 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
17 6 (0.12%) AIX
17 6 (0.12%) Ubuntu
18 5 (0.10%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,033 (20.72%) Problem-Solving
2 895 (17.95%) Agile
3 728 (14.60%) DevOps
4 630 (12.64%) Migration
5 585 (11.73%) CI/CD
6 574 (11.51%) Business Intelligence
7 512 (10.27%) Stakeholder Management
8 496 (9.95%) Analytics
9 465 (9.33%) ITIL
10 432 (8.66%) Continuous Improvement
11 412 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 410 (8.22%) Customer Service
13 361 (7.24%) Cybersecurity
14 358 (7.18%) AI
15 330 (6.62%) Project Management
16 306 (6.14%) Change Management
17 288 (5.78%) Data Modelling
18 268 (5.38%) Roadmaps
19 259 (5.19%) CRM
20 258 (5.17%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 636 (12.76%) SQL
2 591 (11.85%) PowerShell
3 562 (11.27%) Python
4 260 (5.21%) C#
5 216 (4.33%) JavaScript
6 156 (3.13%) Java
7 110 (2.21%) Kusto Query Language
8 102 (2.05%) Bash
9 97 (1.95%) Bicep
10 75 (1.50%) TypeScript
11 54 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 49 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 39 (0.78%) Perl
14 27 (0.54%) Shell Script
15 26 (0.52%) C++
16 25 (0.50%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.46%) Go
18 21 (0.42%) R
19 20 (0.40%) VB
20 19 (0.38%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 978 (19.61%) Security Cleared
2 736 (14.76%) SC Cleared
3 526 (10.55%) Degree
4 344 (6.90%) Microsoft Certification
5 199 (3.99%) DV Cleared
6 179 (3.59%) Azure Certification
7 129 (2.59%) CISSP
8 117 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
9 76 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
10 68 (1.36%) CISM
11 64 (1.28%) Cisco Certification
12 57 (1.14%) PMI Certification
13 56 (1.12%) Master's Degree
14 54 (1.08%) MCSE
15 53 (1.06%) A+ Certification
16 51 (1.02%) ITIL Certification
17 47 (0.94%) PMP
18 45 (0.90%) MCP
19 44 (0.88%) AWS Certification
20 35 (0.70%) CompTIA Security+
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 227 (4.55%) GDPR
2 173 (3.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 154 (3.09%) Data Quality
4 147 (2.95%) QA
5 138 (2.77%) NIST
6 124 (2.49%) SLA
7 102 (2.05%) PMO
8 86 (1.72%) Accessibility
9 51 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 33 (0.66%) NCSC
11 27 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 26 (0.52%) WCAG
13 22 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 22 (0.44%) EU AI Act
14 21 (0.42%) HIPAA
15 20 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 15 (0.30%) GRC
17 11 (0.22%) NIST 800
17 11 (0.22%) SOC 2
18 9 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
System Software
1 1,005 (20.16%) Active Directory
2 192 (3.85%) Docker
3 169 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 68 (1.36%) Hyper-V
5 57 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
6 40 (0.80%) vSphere
7 38 (0.76%) Virtual Desktop
8 36 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
9 15 (0.30%) BitLocker
9 15 (0.30%) VMware NSX
10 14 (0.28%) Firmware
11 11 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.16%) NFS
12 8 (0.16%) Tivoli Directory Server
12 8 (0.16%) XenApp
13 7 (0.14%) ISA Server
13 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) Brightmail
14 6 (0.12%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.10%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 372 (7.46%) Microsoft Intune
2 283 (5.68%) SCCM
3 270 (5.42%) Terraform
4 234 (4.69%) Kubernetes
5 124 (2.49%) Single Sign-On
6 105 (2.11%) Ansible
7 77 (1.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 49 (0.98%) SCOM
9 39 (0.78%) vCenter Server
10 38 (0.76%) Jamf Pro
11 33 (0.66%) Grafana
12 26 (0.52%) Prometheus
13 21 (0.42%) HP SiteScope
14 20 (0.40%) WSUS
15 19 (0.38%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.34%) QRadar
17 15 (0.30%) Progress Chef
18 14 (0.28%) Kibana
18 14 (0.28%) Microsoft Clustering
19 13 (0.26%) Puppet
Vendors
1 266 (5.33%) ServiceNow
2 229 (4.59%) VMware
3 222 (4.45%) Oracle
4 183 (3.67%) Cisco
5 175 (3.51%) SAP
6 171 (3.43%) Splunk
7 148 (2.97%) Google
8 144 (2.89%) Databricks
9 117 (2.35%) Citrix
10 85 (1.70%) Apple
11 77 (1.54%) Salesforce
12 72 (1.44%) OpenAI
13 67 (1.34%) CrowdStrike
14 61 (1.22%) Palo Alto
15 54 (1.08%) IBM
16 50 (1.00%) Remedy
17 45 (0.90%) HP
17 45 (0.90%) Veeam
18 44 (0.88%) Adobe
19 43 (0.86%) Foundry