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 28 May 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
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,675 3,874 5,548
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.62% 13.52% 12.98%
As % of the Vendors category 28.37% 28.32% 30.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,794 2,525 3,645
10th Percentile £211 £211 £189
25th Percentile £375 £350 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.89% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £586 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £430 £450
% change year-on-year +4.65% -4.44% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 257 468
10th Percentile £13.64 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.62 £13.00
Median hourly rate £20.22 £18.87 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.15% +25.80% -33.38%
75th Percentile £29.88 £29.07 £24.81
90th Percentile £64.38 £55.29 £55.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.09 £18.51 £15.00
% change year-on-year +8.54% +23.40% -21.05%

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 20,001 13,678 18,096
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.95% 47.74% 42.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,624 8,506 11,301
10th Percentile £313 £281 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -0.49% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £492 £500
% change year-on-year +0.10% -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,034 573 1,107
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.55 £17.30 £14.48
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.30 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.46% +12.44% -47.06%
75th Percentile £58.75 £56.00 £57.41
90th Percentile £76.62 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.75 £22.50 £21.46
% change year-on-year +32.22% +4.85% -45.74%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 4,971 £498 +3.65% 3,013
UK excluding London -1 2,964 £450 +4.65% 2,620
London -3 2,201 £515 -0.96% 888
Work from Home -1 1,415 £500 - 1,215
North of England -3 766 £450 +5.88% 626
South East -2 690 £475 +1.82% 825
Midlands -3 514 £447 +11.75% 424
North West -2 396 £433 +1.88% 346
West Midlands -5 358 £450 +12.50% 243
Yorkshire -3 351 £474 +8.34% 197
South West -2 347 £450 - 286
East of England 0 315 £375 -25.00% 273
Scotland +6 239 £450 +5.88% 120
East Midlands 0 149 £400 -2.44% 180
Wales +1 94 £345 +21.05% 90
North East -33 24 £450 +38.46% 87
Northern Ireland -3 21 £450 +38.46% 37
Channel Islands -2 2 £550 +84.87%

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
1 609 (10.73%) SharePoint
2 374 (6.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 107 (1.89%) Confluence
4 39 (0.69%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.51%) Apache
6 26 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.42%) HCL Notes
8 20 (0.35%) CMS
9 15 (0.26%) Skype for Business
10 14 (0.25%) SAS
11 13 (0.23%) IIS
12 12 (0.21%) Mendix
13 6 (0.11%) Camunda
13 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
14 5 (0.088%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.088%) OpenEdge
15 4 (0.070%) Drupal
15 4 (0.070%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.070%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 558 (9.83%) Microsoft Office
2 486 (8.56%) Microsoft Excel
3 214 (3.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 116 (2.04%) Microsoft Project
5 93 (1.64%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.11%) Trello
10 5 (0.088%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.088%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.070%) InDesign
11 4 (0.070%) SOLIDWORKS
12 3 (0.053%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.053%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.053%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.035%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.035%) InfoPath
13 2 (0.035%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (3.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.30%) NetSuite
5 15 (0.26%) Aladdin
5 15 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
6 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
6 13 (0.23%) Teamcenter
7 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.18%) Maximo
8 10 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 8 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
9 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
10 6 (0.11%) Dynamics GP
10 6 (0.11%) NEC Housing
10 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
10 6 (0.11%) Primavera
10 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,405 (42.38%) Azure
2 1,441 (25.39%) Microsoft 365
3 964 (16.99%) Power Platform
4 745 (13.13%) Entra ID
5 462 (8.14%) AWS
6 456 (8.04%) Dynamics 365
7 450 (7.93%) Azure DevOps
8 332 (5.85%) Power Automate
9 306 (5.39%) Microsoft Purview
10 297 (5.23%) PowerApps
11 250 (4.41%) GitHub
12 249 (4.39%) Microsoft Copilot
13 216 (3.81%) OneDrive
14 201 (3.54%) SaaS
15 187 (3.30%) Azure Data Factory
16 175 (3.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 175 (3.08%) GCP
17 156 (2.75%) Serverless
18 143 (2.52%) PaaS
19 140 (2.47%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 286 (5.04%) DNS
2 261 (4.60%) Firewall
3 214 (3.77%) VPN
4 177 (3.12%) DHCP
5 136 (2.40%) WAN
6 135 (2.38%) Wi-Fi
7 120 (2.11%) LAN
8 112 (1.97%) Network Security
9 109 (1.92%) TCP/IP
10 54 (0.95%) VLAN
11 53 (0.93%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.79%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.67%) SAN
14 36 (0.63%) Wireless
15 35 (0.62%) SSL
16 30 (0.53%) HTTP
17 29 (0.51%) Skype
18 28 (0.49%) Unified Communications
19 25 (0.44%) IPsec
19 25 (0.44%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 586 (10.33%) Power BI
2 270 (4.76%) SQL Server
3 174 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 154 (2.71%) Data Lake
5 123 (2.17%) Azure SQL Database
6 114 (2.01%) Metadata
7 97 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
8 68 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 67 (1.18%) Relational Database
10 50 (0.88%) Power Query
11 46 (0.81%) NoSQL
11 46 (0.81%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 46 (0.81%) Tableau
12 43 (0.76%) MySQL
13 41 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 40 (0.70%) Delta Lake
15 37 (0.65%) Oracle Database
16 31 (0.55%) Spark SQL
17 27 (0.48%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 25 (0.44%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 269 (4.74%) JIRA
2 168 (2.96%) Git
3 64 (1.13%) Jenkins
4 60 (1.06%) GitLab
5 33 (0.58%) Visual Studio
6 24 (0.42%) Artifactory
7 20 (0.35%) Eclipse
8 19 (0.33%) MSI
9 15 (0.26%) ERwin
9 15 (0.26%) MLflow
10 14 (0.25%) Selenium
10 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
11 13 (0.23%) JMeter
12 12 (0.21%) Maven
12 12 (0.21%) Postman
13 11 (0.19%) Bitbucket
14 10 (0.18%) Team Foundation Server
15 9 (0.16%) Browser DevTools
15 9 (0.16%) Gatling
16 8 (0.14%) Android Studio
General
1 1,840 (32.42%) Social Skills
2 1,127 (19.86%) Finance
3 619 (10.91%) Analytical Skills
4 500 (8.81%) Public Sector
5 293 (5.16%) Banking
6 250 (4.41%) Legal
7 240 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
8 139 (2.45%) Documentation Skills
9 98 (1.73%) Manufacturing
10 96 (1.69%) Law
11 92 (1.62%) Retail
12 84 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
13 78 (1.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 77 (1.36%) Marketing
14 77 (1.36%) Telecoms
15 70 (1.23%) Local Government
15 70 (1.23%) Military
16 57 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
16 57 (1.00%) Investment Banking
17 47 (0.83%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 707 (12.46%) Architect
2 614 (10.82%) Analyst
3 508 (8.95%) Developer
4 471 (8.30%) Senior
5 364 (6.41%) IT Support
6 360 (6.34%) Lead
7 315 (5.55%) Consultant
8 264 (4.65%) Support Engineer
9 233 (4.11%) Data Engineer
10 207 (3.65%) Azure Engineer
11 203 (3.58%) Solutions Architect
12 197 (3.47%) Project Manager
13 182 (3.21%) Business Analyst
13 182 (3.21%) IT Engineer
14 173 (3.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 163 (2.87%) Administrator
16 137 (2.41%) IT Support Engineer
17 119 (2.10%) Security Engineer
18 111 (1.96%) DevOps Engineer
19 107 (1.89%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (4.33%) .NET
2 174 (3.07%) REST
3 135 (2.38%) Microsoft Graph
4 107 (1.89%) OAuth
5 106 (1.87%) PySpark
6 99 (1.74%) SAML
7 87 (1.53%) JSON
8 83 (1.46%) React
9 81 (1.43%) OpenID
10 78 (1.37%) LDAP
11 70 (1.23%) Web Services
12 62 (1.09%) Middleware
13 55 (0.97%) Node.js
13 55 (0.97%) XML
14 52 (0.92%) ARM Templates
14 52 (0.92%) HTML
14 52 (0.92%) SailPoint
15 50 (0.88%) CSS
15 50 (0.88%) OAuth2
16 48 (0.85%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 300 (5.29%) Onboarding
2 236 (4.16%) Cloud Native
3 172 (3.03%) Product Ownership
4 130 (2.29%) Management Information System
5 103 (1.81%) Data Centre
5 103 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
6 99 (1.74%) Legacy Systems
7 98 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
8 88 (1.55%) Security Posture
9 86 (1.52%) AI Agents
10 78 (1.37%) PKI
10 78 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
11 77 (1.36%) Replication
12 72 (1.27%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.25%) Low-Code
14 69 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
15 64 (1.13%) Virtual Team
16 48 (0.85%) Public Cloud
17 46 (0.81%) Driving Licence
17 46 (0.81%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,221 (21.52%) Windows
2 333 (5.87%) Windows 10
3 286 (5.04%) Windows Server
4 255 (4.49%) Linux
5 112 (1.97%) Mac OS
6 111 (1.96%) Apple iOS
7 106 (1.87%) Android
8 44 (0.78%) Windows 7
9 43 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 41 (0.72%) Unix
11 40 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
12 31 (0.55%) VMS
13 30 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
14 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
15 15 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
16 14 (0.25%) Ubuntu
17 11 (0.19%) CentOS
18 6 (0.11%) AIX
19 4 (0.070%) Solaris
19 4 (0.070%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 967 (17.04%) Problem-Solving
2 912 (16.07%) DevOps
3 853 (15.03%) Agile
4 800 (14.10%) Migration
5 764 (13.46%) CI/CD
6 625 (11.01%) Business Intelligence
7 617 (10.87%) Analytics
8 575 (10.13%) Stakeholder Management
9 572 (10.08%) AI
10 515 (9.07%) Continuous Improvement
11 487 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 475 (8.37%) ITIL
13 438 (7.72%) Customer Service
14 434 (7.65%) Data Modelling
15 397 (7.00%) Roadmaps
16 368 (6.48%) Cybersecurity
17 355 (6.26%) Decision-Making
18 338 (5.96%) Infrastructure as Code
19 327 (5.76%) Project Delivery
20 321 (5.66%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 732 (12.90%) SQL
2 648 (11.42%) PowerShell
3 598 (10.54%) Python
4 257 (4.53%) C#
5 198 (3.49%) JavaScript
6 185 (3.26%) Java
7 134 (2.36%) Bicep
8 94 (1.66%) T-SQL
9 85 (1.50%) Kusto Query Language
10 80 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (1.27%) Bash
12 65 (1.15%) TypeScript
13 35 (0.62%) VBA
14 30 (0.53%) VB
15 28 (0.49%) C++
16 27 (0.48%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.32%) Scala
18 17 (0.30%) R
19 16 (0.28%) VBScript
20 14 (0.25%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,065 (18.77%) Security Cleared
2 833 (14.68%) SC Cleared
3 551 (9.71%) Degree
4 267 (4.70%) Microsoft Certification
5 184 (3.24%) Azure Certification
6 177 (3.12%) DV Cleared
7 122 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 114 (2.01%) CISSP
9 98 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
10 81 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
11 64 (1.13%) CISM
12 56 (0.99%) PMP
13 53 (0.93%) Master's Degree
13 53 (0.93%) PMI Certification
14 42 (0.74%) MCSE
15 41 (0.72%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.72%) DBS Check
16 35 (0.62%) CCNP
17 32 (0.56%) MCSA
18 30 (0.53%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 290 (5.11%) Data Quality
2 231 (4.07%) GDPR
3 181 (3.19%) QA
4 165 (2.91%) SLA
5 148 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 125 (2.20%) NIST
7 100 (1.76%) PMO
8 76 (1.34%) Cyber Essentials
9 73 (1.29%) Accessibility
10 53 (0.93%) NCSC
11 37 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 35 (0.62%) GRC
13 31 (0.55%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.48%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 22 (0.39%) NIST 800
16 19 (0.33%) MiFID
17 18 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 15 (0.26%) WCAG
19 13 (0.23%) FINRA
19 13 (0.23%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,079 (19.01%) Active Directory
2 213 (3.75%) Docker
3 196 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 102 (1.80%) Hyper-V
5 81 (1.43%) Virtual Desktop
6 72 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
7 58 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
8 53 (0.93%) vSphere
9 30 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.33%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.32%) Firmware
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
14 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 5 (0.088%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.088%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.070%) Snort
16 4 (0.070%) XenDesktop
17 3 (0.053%) Squid
Systems Management
1 447 (7.88%) Microsoft Intune
2 351 (6.19%) Terraform
3 250 (4.41%) Kubernetes
4 205 (3.61%) SCCM
5 124 (2.19%) Ansible
6 123 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
7 79 (1.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 50 (0.88%) vCenter Server
9 45 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
10 36 (0.63%) Grafana
11 32 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.41%) FortiGate
13 21 (0.37%) SCOM
14 17 (0.30%) Puppet
15 15 (0.26%) AirWatch
16 14 (0.25%) QRadar
17 13 (0.23%) WSUS
18 12 (0.21%) HAProxy
18 12 (0.21%) ServiceCenter
19 10 (0.18%) CASB
Vendors
1 297 (5.23%) ServiceNow
2 267 (4.70%) VMware
3 221 (3.89%) Databricks
4 220 (3.88%) SAP
5 215 (3.79%) Oracle
6 191 (3.37%) Cisco
7 156 (2.75%) Google
8 108 (1.90%) Citrix
9 107 (1.89%) Salesforce
10 95 (1.67%) Splunk
11 80 (1.41%) OpenAI
12 73 (1.29%) Apple
13 66 (1.16%) Foundry
14 58 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
15 52 (0.92%) CyberArk
16 50 (0.88%) HP
16 50 (0.88%) Okta
17 46 (0.81%) Adobe
18 44 (0.78%) Palo Alto
19 42 (0.74%) Dell