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 14 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
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,684 4,583 5,033
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.52% 13.92% 12.93%
As % of the Vendors category 30.02% 29.45% 29.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,351 2,933 3,282
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £586 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 433 375 355
10th Percentile £13.63 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £43.90
90th Percentile £70.45 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -1.26% +24.80% -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 22,262 15,561 17,029
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.70% 47.27% 43.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,777 9,523 10,618
10th Percentile £313 £280 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £522
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.21% -0.57%
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £702 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,140 803 837
10th Percentile £14.69 £14.56 £13.67
25th Percentile £18.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -13.28% -28.40%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.88 £67.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.23 £21.35 £28.00
% change year-on-year +50.97% -23.77% -17.57%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 5,841 £490 +3.16% 4,745
UK excluding London -1 3,559 £450 +2.97% 3,795
London 0 2,550 £514 +2.75% 1,634
Work from Home +3 1,747 £500 - 1,831
South East 0 924 £475 +1.06% 1,157
North of England -4 907 £450 +4.05% 924
Midlands -3 623 £447 +15.42% 609
North West +1 531 £450 +2.86% 498
South West +1 441 £470 +10.59% 432
West Midlands -4 426 £448 +11.88% 349
Yorkshire -5 347 £474 +11.47% 314
Scotland +7 318 £450 - 184
East of England -1 245 £375 -25.00% 387
East Midlands +2 187 £425 +20.74% 260
Wales 0 101 £413 +39.83% 131
North East -39 33 £375 +10.29% 128
Northern Ireland -3 31 £369 +2.08% 66
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 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
1 781 (11.68%) SharePoint
2 403 (6.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 147 (2.20%) Confluence
4 40 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.58%) Apache
6 29 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) IIS
8 21 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.30%) CMS
10 18 (0.27%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.15%) SAS
14 9 (0.13%) nginx
15 6 (0.090%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.090%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.090%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.090%) Mendix
15 6 (0.090%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.090%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 655 (9.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 633 (9.47%) Microsoft Office
3 274 (4.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 174 (2.60%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.63%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.090%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.090%) Revit
12 4 (0.060%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.060%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 3 (0.045%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.045%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.045%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.030%) Adobe Captivate
14 2 (0.030%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 237 (3.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 23 (0.34%) Oracle Payables
5 22 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
6 21 (0.31%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
9 10 (0.15%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.12%) Sage X3
12 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.10%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.090%) SAP MM
13 6 (0.090%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,807 (42.00%) Azure
2 1,699 (25.42%) Microsoft 365
3 1,167 (17.46%) Power Platform
4 1,014 (15.17%) Entra ID
5 597 (8.93%) AWS
6 575 (8.60%) Azure DevOps
7 563 (8.42%) Dynamics 365
8 402 (6.01%) Power Automate
9 370 (5.54%) Microsoft Copilot
10 362 (5.42%) PowerApps
11 303 (4.53%) Microsoft Purview
12 288 (4.31%) GitHub
13 254 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 238 (3.56%) SaaS
15 229 (3.43%) GCP
16 184 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
17 162 (2.42%) Serverless
18 159 (2.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 156 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
20 155 (2.32%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 372 (5.57%) DNS
2 340 (5.09%) Firewall
3 276 (4.13%) VPN
4 235 (3.52%) DHCP
5 184 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 162 (2.42%) WAN
7 152 (2.27%) Network Security
8 147 (2.20%) Wi-Fi
9 146 (2.18%) LAN
10 78 (1.17%) VLAN
11 54 (0.81%) Wireless
12 48 (0.72%) SAN
13 43 (0.64%) MPLS
14 37 (0.55%) SSL
15 34 (0.51%) Skype
15 34 (0.51%) Unified Communications
16 31 (0.46%) SD-WAN
17 30 (0.45%) Internet
18 29 (0.43%) BGP
19 28 (0.42%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 731 (10.94%) Power BI
2 380 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 189 (2.83%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.02%) Data Lake
4 135 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (1.99%) Azure SQL Database
6 131 (1.96%) Metadata
7 73 (1.09%) Relational Database
8 70 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 69 (1.03%) Power Query
10 66 (0.99%) MySQL
11 58 (0.87%) NoSQL
12 45 (0.67%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.64%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 42 (0.63%) Star Schema
15 34 (0.51%) Tableau
16 33 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 26 (0.39%) MongoDB
18 25 (0.37%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 24 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 320 (4.79%) JIRA
2 197 (2.95%) Git
3 94 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 70 (1.05%) GitLab
5 59 (0.88%) Visual Studio
6 40 (0.60%) MSI
7 34 (0.51%) Selenium
8 19 (0.28%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 14 (0.21%) Claude Code
12 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.19%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.18%) MLflow
13 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.16%) ERwin
14 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,327 (34.81%) Social Skills
2 1,351 (20.21%) Finance
3 847 (12.67%) Analytical Skills
4 626 (9.37%) Public Sector
5 327 (4.89%) Organisational Skills
6 326 (4.88%) Banking
7 228 (3.41%) Legal
8 188 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
9 159 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 145 (2.17%) Manufacturing
11 136 (2.03%) Retail
12 118 (1.77%) Telecoms
13 107 (1.60%) Law
14 101 (1.51%) Marketing
15 93 (1.39%) Local Government
16 84 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.20%) Military
18 66 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
19 63 (0.94%) Investment Banking
20 60 (0.90%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 768 (11.49%) Architect
2 684 (10.23%) Analyst
3 617 (9.23%) Developer
4 585 (8.75%) Senior
5 471 (7.05%) Lead
6 415 (6.21%) Consultant
7 411 (6.15%) IT Support
8 384 (5.75%) Support Engineer
9 266 (3.98%) IT Engineer
10 252 (3.77%) Solutions Architect
11 245 (3.67%) Data Engineer
12 242 (3.62%) Azure Engineer
13 240 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 217 (3.25%) Administrator
15 216 (3.23%) Project Manager
16 212 (3.17%) IT Support Engineer
17 185 (2.77%) Business Analyst
18 168 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
19 127 (1.90%) Security Engineer
20 115 (1.72%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (4.73%) .NET
2 256 (3.83%) REST
3 130 (1.94%) JSON
4 118 (1.77%) OAuth
5 109 (1.63%) Microsoft Graph
6 108 (1.62%) PySpark
7 98 (1.47%) SAML
8 97 (1.45%) XML
9 92 (1.38%) OpenID
10 89 (1.33%) .NET Framework
11 85 (1.27%) Web Services
12 79 (1.18%) React
13 74 (1.11%) ARM Templates
14 70 (1.05%) RESTful
15 69 (1.03%) LDAP
16 68 (1.02%) HTML
16 68 (1.02%) OAuth2
17 65 (0.97%) SOAP
18 64 (0.96%) SailPoint
19 63 (0.94%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 474 (7.09%) Onboarding
2 315 (4.71%) Cloud Native
3 216 (3.23%) Management Information System
4 190 (2.84%) Product Ownership
5 180 (2.69%) Enterprise Software
6 146 (2.18%) Hybrid Cloud
7 138 (2.06%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (1.97%) PKI
9 129 (1.93%) Data Centre
10 124 (1.86%) AI Agents
10 124 (1.86%) Security Posture
11 90 (1.35%) Data Structures
12 89 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
14 80 (1.20%) Virtual Team
15 76 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 72 (1.08%) Driving Licence
17 70 (1.05%) CMDB
18 67 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
19 62 (0.93%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,416 (21.18%) Windows
2 406 (6.07%) Windows Server
3 344 (5.15%) Windows 10
4 318 (4.76%) Linux
5 134 (2.00%) Mac OS
6 124 (1.86%) Android
7 113 (1.69%) Apple iOS
8 59 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.61%) Windows 7
11 38 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 34 (0.51%) Windows Server 2016
13 30 (0.45%) VMS
14 28 (0.42%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 16 (0.24%) CentOS
17 12 (0.18%) Solaris
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
19 6 (0.090%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,197 (17.91%) Problem-Solving
2 1,061 (15.87%) DevOps
3 1,025 (15.34%) Agile
4 1,021 (15.28%) Stakeholder Management
5 948 (14.18%) Migration
6 870 (13.02%) CI/CD
7 786 (11.76%) Continuous Improvement
8 767 (11.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 757 (11.33%) AI
10 740 (11.07%) Business Intelligence
11 690 (10.32%) Analytics
12 653 (9.77%) ITIL
13 571 (8.54%) Customer Service
14 496 (7.42%) Infrastructure as Code
15 493 (7.38%) Cybersecurity
16 490 (7.33%) Data Modelling
17 482 (7.21%) Roadmaps
18 450 (6.73%) Project Delivery
19 432 (6.46%) Decision-Making
20 428 (6.40%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 841 (12.58%) SQL
2 726 (10.86%) PowerShell
3 681 (10.19%) Python
4 327 (4.89%) C#
5 249 (3.73%) JavaScript
6 187 (2.80%) Bicep
7 184 (2.75%) Java
8 146 (2.18%) Bash
9 110 (1.65%) T-SQL
10 107 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.29%) TypeScript
12 68 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
13 38 (0.57%) VBA
14 31 (0.46%) VB
15 30 (0.45%) C++
16 26 (0.39%) VBScript
17 25 (0.37%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) X++
19 17 (0.25%) Scala
20 16 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,410 (21.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,063 (15.90%) SC Cleared
3 634 (9.49%) Degree
4 348 (5.21%) Microsoft Certification
5 269 (4.02%) DV Cleared
6 243 (3.64%) Azure Certification
7 158 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
8 127 (1.90%) CISSP
9 126 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
10 119 (1.78%) Computer Science Degree
11 93 (1.39%) PMP
12 86 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 71 (1.06%) CISM
14 68 (1.02%) AWS Certification
15 56 (0.84%) CCNP
16 50 (0.75%) A+ Certification
17 48 (0.72%) DBS Check
17 48 (0.72%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.70%) CCNA
19 45 (0.67%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (5.57%) Data Quality
2 227 (3.40%) GDPR
2 227 (3.40%) QA
3 199 (2.98%) SLA
4 187 (2.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 168 (2.51%) PMO
6 164 (2.45%) NIST
7 107 (1.60%) Accessibility
8 84 (1.26%) NCSC
9 77 (1.15%) Cyber Essentials
10 49 (0.73%) GRC
11 38 (0.57%) WCAG
12 35 (0.52%) PCI DSS
13 33 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 32 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
16 15 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
16 15 (0.22%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.22%) P3O
17 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,280 (19.15%) Active Directory
2 244 (3.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 243 (3.64%) Docker
4 131 (1.96%) Hyper-V
5 106 (1.59%) Virtual Desktop
6 95 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (0.91%) vSphere
8 58 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.54%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.27%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.075%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.045%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 543 (8.12%) Microsoft Intune
2 489 (7.32%) Terraform
3 318 (4.76%) Kubernetes
4 253 (3.79%) SCCM
5 168 (2.51%) Ansible
6 117 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
7 58 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.81%) Grafana
9 52 (0.78%) vCenter Server
10 40 (0.60%) SCOM
11 37 (0.55%) Prometheus
12 34 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.37%) WSUS
14 23 (0.34%) QRadar
15 21 (0.31%) FortiGate
15 21 (0.31%) Puppet
16 19 (0.28%) Progress Chef
17 15 (0.22%) Argo
17 15 (0.22%) Failover Clustering
18 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 497 (7.44%) ServiceNow
2 334 (5.00%) VMware
3 317 (4.74%) Oracle
4 267 (3.99%) SAP
5 233 (3.49%) Google
6 230 (3.44%) Databricks
7 219 (3.28%) Cisco
8 118 (1.77%) Salesforce
9 108 (1.62%) Splunk
10 105 (1.57%) Citrix
11 98 (1.47%) Apple
12 85 (1.27%) CyberArk
13 78 (1.17%) Okta
14 77 (1.15%) Foundry
15 73 (1.09%) OpenAI
16 68 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
17 66 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (0.96%) Red Hat
19 56 (0.84%) Zscaler
20 53 (0.79%) Meraki