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 October 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 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,686 4,811 4,887
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.90% 14.46% 12.99%
As % of the Vendors category 33.29% 30.30% 29.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,809 3,136 3,030
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £482
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -1.45% -3.60%
75th Percentile £590 £575 £595
90th Percentile £688 £668 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £440 £449
% change year-on-year +3.53% -2.12% -0.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 680 386 243
10th Percentile £13.25 £13.75 £15.00
25th Percentile £14.36 £16.55 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.00 £22.09
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% -0.41% -3.96%
75th Percentile £28.83 £31.00 £45.59
90th Percentile £65.22 £63.58 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £21.00 £18.35
% change year-on-year -16.67% +14.46% -16.60%

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 23,086 15,878 16,792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.74% 47.72% 44.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,928 9,791 9,890
10th Percentile £310 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £623 £613 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,458 809 574
10th Percentile £13.60 £14.96 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.01 £17.87 £16.44
Median hourly rate £24.19 £24.62 £32.75
Median % change year-on-year -1.75% -24.82% -25.40%
75th Percentile £55.88 £37.50 £64.40
90th Percentile £77.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.18 £21.39 £30.21
% change year-on-year +8.37% -29.18% -30.96%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 6,656 £494 +4.00% 2,100
UK excluding London 0 4,098 £455 +3.53% 1,859
London +2 2,887 £520 +4.00% 518
Work from Home +3 1,939 £500 - 916
South East +1 1,114 £475 +5.56% 504
North of England -5 1,011 £460 +5.26% 487
Midlands -1 698 £425 +3.34% 301
North West -2 592 £465 +6.41% 222
West Midlands -1 473 £425 -4.49% 171
South West -1 444 £500 +11.11% 247
Scotland +5 392 £450 - 101
Yorkshire -3 368 £460 +2.22% 189
East of England 0 324 £335 -33.00% 174
East Midlands +1 221 £440 +17.33% 130
Wales -1 114 £413 +34.15% 75
North East -19 56 £426 +23.33% 85
Northern Ireland -1 36 £312 -10.86% 20
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 4

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
1 924 (12.02%) SharePoint
2 412 (5.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 167 (2.17%) Confluence
4 37 (0.48%) Apache
5 34 (0.44%) Apache Spark
6 30 (0.39%) IIS
7 26 (0.34%) CMS
8 23 (0.30%) Skype for Business
9 22 (0.29%) Apache Airflow
10 21 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
11 17 (0.22%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.078%) Mendix
14 6 (0.078%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.065%) Exchange Server 2013
15 5 (0.065%) SharePoint 2013
16 4 (0.052%) Camunda
16 4 (0.052%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 873 (11.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 820 (10.67%) Microsoft Office
3 345 (4.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 211 (2.75%) Microsoft Project
5 117 (1.52%) MS Visio
6 70 (0.91%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.14%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.14%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.13%) Revit
12 8 (0.10%) Photoshop
13 7 (0.091%) Adobe Illustrator
14 4 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
15 3 (0.039%) 1Password
15 3 (0.039%) Adobe Premiere
15 3 (0.039%) Final Cut Pro
15 3 (0.039%) Productboard
15 3 (0.039%) Trello
Business Applications
1 272 (3.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 94 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
3 38 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 29 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.22%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 17 (0.22%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.18%) Primavera
8 13 (0.17%) Aladdin
9 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.14%) Magento
11 10 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 10 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
13 8 (0.10%) SAP PP
14 7 (0.091%) iTrent
14 7 (0.091%) Oracle ERP
14 7 (0.091%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.091%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,152 (41.01%) Azure
2 1,941 (25.25%) Microsoft 365
3 1,327 (17.27%) Power Platform
4 1,256 (16.34%) Entra ID
5 700 (9.11%) AWS
6 674 (8.77%) Azure DevOps
7 622 (8.09%) Dynamics 365
8 493 (6.41%) Microsoft Copilot
9 458 (5.96%) Power Automate
10 412 (5.36%) PowerApps
11 336 (4.37%) Microsoft Purview
12 327 (4.25%) GitHub
13 311 (4.05%) GCP
14 280 (3.64%) OneDrive
15 246 (3.20%) SaaS
16 215 (2.80%) Serverless
17 202 (2.63%) Azure Monitor
18 183 (2.38%) Azure Data Factory
19 182 (2.37%) Copilot Studio
20 178 (2.32%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 428 (5.57%) DNS
2 357 (4.64%) Firewall
3 311 (4.05%) VPN
4 276 (3.59%) DHCP
5 210 (2.73%) TCP/IP
6 178 (2.32%) Network Security
7 161 (2.09%) WAN
8 150 (1.95%) LAN
9 133 (1.73%) Wi-Fi
10 79 (1.03%) VLAN
11 73 (0.95%) Wireless
12 50 (0.65%) SAN
13 45 (0.59%) SSL
14 43 (0.56%) Kerberos
15 40 (0.52%) Internet
16 39 (0.51%) Skype
17 38 (0.49%) BGP
17 38 (0.49%) MPLS
18 34 (0.44%) VoIP
19 33 (0.43%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 783 (10.19%) Power BI
2 427 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 182 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
4 174 (2.26%) Metadata
5 156 (2.03%) Data Lake
6 131 (1.70%) PostgreSQL
7 129 (1.68%) Azure SQL Database
8 94 (1.22%) Power Query
9 88 (1.14%) Relational Database
10 74 (0.96%) MySQL
10 74 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 56 (0.73%) NoSQL
11 56 (0.73%) Oracle Database
12 42 (0.55%) Star Schema
13 41 (0.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 38 (0.49%) Amazon RDS
15 36 (0.47%) Delta Lake
15 36 (0.47%) MongoDB
16 32 (0.42%) BigQuery
17 30 (0.39%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 358 (4.66%) JIRA
2 259 (3.37%) Git
3 87 (1.13%) Jenkins
4 70 (0.91%) GitLab
5 61 (0.79%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.66%) MSI
7 38 (0.49%) Selenium
8 30 (0.39%) Postman
9 27 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 21 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 20 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
12 19 (0.25%) Cucumber
13 17 (0.22%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
15 14 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
16 13 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
16 13 (0.17%) Subversion
17 11 (0.14%) MLflow
18 10 (0.13%) JUnit
18 10 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,900 (37.73%) Social Skills
2 1,534 (19.96%) Finance
3 1,000 (13.01%) Analytical Skills
4 705 (9.17%) Public Sector
5 506 (6.58%) Organisational Skills
6 333 (4.33%) Banking
7 267 (3.47%) Legal
8 243 (3.16%) Manufacturing
9 229 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
10 190 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 166 (2.16%) Retail
12 130 (1.69%) Telecoms
13 122 (1.59%) Marketing
14 109 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
15 108 (1.41%) Aerospace
16 100 (1.30%) Local Government
17 93 (1.21%) Military
18 82 (1.07%) Law
19 80 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
20 59 (0.77%) Billing
Job Titles
1 861 (11.20%) Architect
2 739 (9.61%) Analyst
3 665 (8.65%) Senior
4 661 (8.60%) Developer
5 514 (6.69%) Lead
6 510 (6.64%) Consultant
7 450 (5.85%) IT Support
8 440 (5.72%) Support Engineer
9 386 (5.02%) Administrator
10 303 (3.94%) Solutions Architect
11 300 (3.90%) IT Engineer
12 274 (3.56%) Azure Engineer
13 267 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 249 (3.24%) Data Engineer
14 249 (3.24%) IT Support Engineer
15 231 (3.01%) Project Manager
16 201 (2.62%) Business Analyst
16 201 (2.62%) Cloud Engineer
17 149 (1.94%) Security Engineer
18 140 (1.82%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 581 (7.56%) Terraform
2 355 (4.62%) .NET
3 339 (4.41%) REST
4 170 (2.21%) OAuth
5 149 (1.94%) JSON
6 131 (1.70%) OpenID
7 126 (1.64%) SAML
8 123 (1.60%) XML
9 109 (1.42%) ARM Templates
10 108 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
11 104 (1.35%) PySpark
12 101 (1.31%) React
13 97 (1.26%) LDAP
14 96 (1.25%) Web Services
15 90 (1.17%) OAuth2
16 87 (1.13%) SailPoint
17 86 (1.12%) .NET Framework
18 85 (1.11%) RESTful
19 82 (1.07%) HTML
20 75 (0.98%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 632 (8.22%) Onboarding
2 349 (4.54%) Management Information System
3 337 (4.38%) Cloud Native
4 268 (3.49%) Enterprise Software
5 218 (2.84%) Product Ownership
6 189 (2.46%) AI Agents
7 173 (2.25%) PKI
8 172 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
9 162 (2.11%) Data Centre
10 150 (1.95%) Security Posture
11 141 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
12 110 (1.43%) Data Structures
13 102 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
14 101 (1.31%) CMDB
15 100 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
16 99 (1.29%) Driving Licence
17 86 (1.12%) Low-Code
17 86 (1.12%) Replication
18 85 (1.11%) Virtual Team
19 82 (1.07%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,602 (20.84%) Windows
2 492 (6.40%) Windows Server
3 405 (5.27%) Windows 10
4 360 (4.68%) Linux
5 164 (2.13%) macOS
6 133 (1.73%) Android
6 133 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 63 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 48 (0.62%) Unix
9 42 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
10 40 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 36 (0.47%) Windows 7
12 34 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
13 32 (0.42%) VMS
14 21 (0.27%) CentOS
15 19 (0.25%) Solaris
15 19 (0.25%) Windows Server 2012
16 10 (0.13%) SUSE
17 7 (0.091%) AIX
17 7 (0.091%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,547 (20.13%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,436 (18.68%) Problem-Solving
3 1,181 (15.37%) DevOps
4 1,153 (15.00%) Agile
5 1,040 (13.53%) Migration
6 1,014 (13.19%) CI/CD
7 991 (12.89%) Continuous Improvement
8 950 (12.36%) AI
9 870 (11.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 810 (10.54%) Business Intelligence
11 787 (10.24%) Analytics
12 752 (9.78%) ITIL
13 736 (9.58%) Customer Service
14 656 (8.53%) Cybersecurity
15 628 (8.17%) Infrastructure as Code
16 603 (7.85%) Roadmaps
17 543 (7.06%) Project Delivery
18 539 (7.01%) Data Modelling
19 522 (6.79%) Decision-Making
20 518 (6.74%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 913 (11.88%) SQL
2 901 (11.72%) PowerShell
3 794 (10.33%) Python
4 387 (5.04%) C#
5 304 (3.96%) JavaScript
6 240 (3.12%) Bicep
7 197 (2.56%) Bash
8 159 (2.07%) Java
9 143 (1.86%) TypeScript
10 117 (1.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 107 (1.39%) T-SQL
12 85 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.42%) VB
14 31 (0.40%) VBA
15 28 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.33%) VBScript
17 22 (0.29%) X++
18 21 (0.27%) PL/SQL
19 18 (0.23%) R
20 17 (0.22%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,652 (21.49%) Security Cleared
2 1,220 (15.87%) SC Cleared
3 625 (8.13%) Degree
4 375 (4.88%) Microsoft Certification
5 330 (4.29%) DV Cleared
6 284 (3.70%) Azure Certification
7 216 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
8 145 (1.89%) CISSP
9 126 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
10 115 (1.50%) Computer Science Degree
11 103 (1.34%) PMP
12 100 (1.30%) PMI Certification
13 83 (1.08%) AWS Certification
14 80 (1.04%) CISM
15 70 (0.91%) DBS Check
16 57 (0.74%) A+ Certification
16 57 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 52 (0.68%) CCNP
18 48 (0.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 47 (0.61%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 487 (6.34%) Data Quality
2 264 (3.43%) QA
3 242 (3.15%) GDPR
4 226 (2.94%) SLA
5 223 (2.90%) PMO
6 220 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 193 (2.51%) NIST
8 134 (1.74%) Accessibility
9 91 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
10 87 (1.13%) NCSC
11 64 (0.83%) GRC
12 49 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 47 (0.61%) WCAG
14 45 (0.59%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 26 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
17 24 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
17 24 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.22%) ISO 19650
19 16 (0.21%) P3O
System Software
1 1,410 (18.35%) Active Directory
2 277 (3.60%) VMware Infrastructure
3 249 (3.24%) Docker
4 151 (1.96%) Hyper-V
5 142 (1.85%) Virtual Desktop
6 123 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
7 80 (1.04%) vSphere
8 58 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 37 (0.48%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
11 21 (0.27%) Firmware
12 16 (0.21%) VMware NSX
13 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 7 (0.091%) IAG
15 7 (0.091%) zsh
16 6 (0.078%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.078%) NFS
16 6 (0.078%) Oracle RAC
17 5 (0.065%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 612 (7.96%) Microsoft Intune
2 345 (4.49%) Kubernetes
3 316 (4.11%) SCCM
4 178 (2.32%) Ansible
5 163 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
6 67 (0.87%) Grafana
7 61 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
8 53 (0.69%) SCOM
9 45 (0.59%) vCenter Server
10 34 (0.44%) Prometheus
11 32 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 31 (0.40%) QRadar
13 27 (0.35%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.35%) WSUS
14 22 (0.29%) Argo
15 20 (0.26%) Failover Clustering
15 20 (0.26%) FortiGate
15 20 (0.26%) Puppet
16 17 (0.22%) WMI
17 14 (0.18%) Avamar
Vendors
1 560 (7.29%) ServiceNow
2 367 (4.77%) Oracle
3 359 (4.67%) VMware
4 323 (4.20%) SAP
5 311 (4.05%) Google
6 274 (3.56%) Databricks
7 242 (3.15%) Cisco
8 141 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 136 (1.77%) Splunk
10 118 (1.54%) CyberArk
11 117 (1.52%) Apple
12 111 (1.44%) OpenAI
13 106 (1.38%) Citrix
13 106 (1.38%) Okta
14 101 (1.31%) BeyondTrust
15 93 (1.21%) Foundry
16 86 (1.12%) CrowdStrike
17 68 (0.88%) Red Hat
18 64 (0.83%) IBM
19 57 (0.74%) Zscaler