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 5 February 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
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,200 4,217 5,840
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.28% 13.54% 13.13%
As % of the Vendors category 29.24% 29.33% 30.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,524 2,665 3,983
10th Percentile £204 £205 £194
25th Percentile £355 £348 £320
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £586 £605
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £432 £450
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 181 367
10th Percentile £13.60 £15.44 £11.79
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.62 £13.76
Median hourly rate £19.50 £23.59 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.34% +31.06% -11.59%
75th Percentile £27.25 £33.75 £37.77
90th Percentile £63.15 £57.62 £53.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £22.00 £17.72
% change year-on-year -13.64% +24.15% -11.40%

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 17,782 14,379 19,458
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.42% 46.17% 43.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,440 8,539 12,289
10th Percentile £300 £275 £253
25th Percentile £410 £408 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -2.33%
75th Percentile £608 £625 £633
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 848 422 916
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £12.93
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.30 £15.63
Median hourly rate £23.83 £28.60 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.70% -4.67% +4.53%
75th Percentile £55.00 £62.25 £59.93
90th Percentile £73.75 £80.09 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £26.42 £26.66
% change year-on-year -16.72% -0.91% +3.41%

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 5 February 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 5 February 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 5 February 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 4,556 £475 - 3,069
UK excluding London 0 2,801 £450 +4.17% 2,783
London -3 1,913 £503 +0.55% 838
Work from Home 0 1,331 £500 +2.56% 1,256
North of England +2 730 £425 - 670
South East -1 636 £475 +0.53% 883
Midlands -4 479 £450 +5.88% 437
North West -1 414 £400 -11.11% 342
South West +1 365 £504 +7.75% 273
West Midlands -6 327 £483 +10.92% 259
East of England 0 321 £413 -8.33% 289
Yorkshire -1 282 £450 +9.09% 245
Scotland 0 195 £454 +21.07% 160
East Midlands -1 151 £400 - 177
Wales +2 88 £308 -31.67% 103
North East -13 40 £450 +25.00% 89
Northern Ireland +2 28 £463 +42.31% 26
Channel Islands +1 1 - - 2

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
1 595 (11.44%) SharePoint
2 404 (7.77%) Microsoft Exchange
3 112 (2.15%) Confluence
4 58 (1.12%) Skype for Business
5 38 (0.73%) CMS
6 24 (0.46%) Apache
7 21 (0.40%) IIS
7 21 (0.40%) SAS
8 19 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
8 19 (0.37%) Apache Spark
9 17 (0.33%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.27%) Exchange Server 2013
11 13 (0.25%) Mattermost
12 10 (0.19%) Exchange Server 2010
13 9 (0.17%) Mendix
13 9 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.15%) iPlanet
14 8 (0.15%) JBoss
14 8 (0.15%) WebSphere
14 8 (0.15%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 633 (12.17%) Microsoft Office
2 528 (10.15%) Microsoft Excel
3 233 (4.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 130 (2.50%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (2.13%) MS Visio
6 72 (1.38%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.21%) Trello
8 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.12%) Sketch
10 5 (0.096%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.096%) Adobe Captivate
10 5 (0.096%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.077%) Adobe After Effects
11 4 (0.077%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.077%) InDesign
11 4 (0.077%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.058%) Adobe Premiere
12 3 (0.058%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 195 (3.75%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
3 40 (0.77%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.33%) Dynamics AX
5 16 (0.31%) Maximo
6 15 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
7 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
7 11 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.19%) Aladdin
8 10 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
8 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
9 9 (0.17%) Loan IQ
9 9 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 7 (0.13%) Advent Geneva
10 7 (0.13%) Shopify
11 6 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
11 6 (0.12%) SystmOne
12 5 (0.096%) Primavera
12 5 (0.096%) Salesforce CRM
12 5 (0.096%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,036 (39.15%) Azure
2 1,271 (24.44%) Microsoft 365
3 832 (16.00%) Power Platform
4 642 (12.35%) Entra ID
5 449 (8.63%) AWS
6 398 (7.65%) Dynamics 365
7 381 (7.33%) Azure DevOps
8 340 (6.54%) Power Automate
9 308 (5.92%) PowerApps
10 243 (4.67%) Microsoft Purview
11 228 (4.38%) GitHub
12 198 (3.81%) OneDrive
13 193 (3.71%) Serverless
14 179 (3.44%) GCP
15 173 (3.33%) Azure Data Factory
16 169 (3.25%) SaaS
17 164 (3.15%) Microsoft Copilot
18 147 (2.83%) Azure Logic Apps
19 135 (2.60%) Azure Sentinel
20 130 (2.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 300 (5.77%) DNS
2 282 (5.42%) Firewall
3 192 (3.69%) DHCP
4 187 (3.60%) VPN
5 126 (2.42%) Wi-Fi
6 124 (2.38%) TCP/IP
7 116 (2.23%) WAN
8 103 (1.98%) Network Security
9 100 (1.92%) LAN
10 85 (1.63%) Skype
11 68 (1.31%) Kerberos
12 52 (1.00%) VLAN
13 47 (0.90%) Wireless
14 46 (0.88%) Unified Communications
15 36 (0.69%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.62%) HTTP
17 31 (0.60%) Internet
18 28 (0.54%) SSL
19 25 (0.48%) SAN
19 25 (0.48%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 507 (9.75%) Power BI
2 239 (4.60%) SQL Server
3 138 (2.65%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (2.50%) Data Lake
5 92 (1.77%) Metadata
6 90 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
7 89 (1.71%) Azure SQL Database
8 80 (1.54%) Relational Database
9 66 (1.27%) Oracle Database
10 47 (0.90%) MySQL
11 45 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 45 (0.87%) Tableau
12 44 (0.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 37 (0.71%) NoSQL
13 37 (0.71%) Power Query
14 28 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
15 27 (0.52%) Star Schema
16 24 (0.46%) Delta Lake
17 18 (0.35%) Big Data
17 18 (0.35%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 233 (4.48%) JIRA
2 152 (2.92%) Git
3 80 (1.54%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.40%) GitLab
5 26 (0.50%) Eclipse
6 25 (0.48%) MSI
7 21 (0.40%) Postman
8 19 (0.37%) Visual Studio
9 18 (0.35%) Android Studio
9 18 (0.35%) Artifactory
9 18 (0.35%) Browser DevTools
10 17 (0.33%) JMeter
10 17 (0.33%) Selenium
11 16 (0.31%) Xcode
12 15 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
13 13 (0.25%) Cucumber
14 12 (0.23%) InstallShield
15 10 (0.19%) Bitbucket
15 10 (0.19%) MLflow
15 10 (0.19%) SonarQube
General
1 2,060 (39.62%) Social Skills
2 1,034 (19.88%) Finance
3 663 (12.75%) Analytical Skills
4 526 (10.12%) Public Sector
5 253 (4.87%) Organisational Skills
6 248 (4.77%) Banking
7 207 (3.98%) Legal
8 163 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
9 132 (2.54%) Manufacturing
10 111 (2.13%) Presentation Skills
11 110 (2.12%) Marketing
12 97 (1.87%) Telecoms
13 76 (1.46%) Retail
14 69 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 54 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
16 47 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 47 (0.90%) Military
17 44 (0.85%) Law
18 42 (0.81%) Local Government
19 36 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 677 (13.02%) Analyst
2 573 (11.02%) Architect
3 496 (9.54%) Developer
4 379 (7.29%) Senior
5 322 (6.19%) IT Support
6 295 (5.67%) Support Engineer
7 281 (5.40%) Consultant
8 264 (5.08%) Lead
9 180 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
10 172 (3.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 165 (3.17%) Business Analyst
12 164 (3.15%) Azure Engineer
13 156 (3.00%) Administrator
13 156 (3.00%) IT Engineer
14 150 (2.88%) Data Engineer
15 148 (2.85%) Project Manager
16 147 (2.83%) Support Analyst
17 119 (2.29%) IT Support Engineer
18 112 (2.15%) Security Engineer
19 100 (1.92%) Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (4.90%) .NET
2 171 (3.29%) REST
3 136 (2.62%) OAuth
4 114 (2.19%) SAML
5 111 (2.13%) React
6 101 (1.94%) Microsoft Graph
7 91 (1.75%) OpenID
8 81 (1.56%) LDAP
9 79 (1.52%) RESTful
10 76 (1.46%) AngularJS
11 68 (1.31%) JSON
12 66 (1.27%) HTML
13 65 (1.25%) CSS
14 64 (1.23%) PySpark
15 61 (1.17%) ARM Templates
16 57 (1.10%) Node.js
17 52 (1.00%) OAuth2
18 51 (0.98%) Middleware
18 51 (0.98%) Web Services
19 42 (0.81%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 296 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 196 (3.77%) Cloud Native
3 154 (2.96%) Product Ownership
4 136 (2.62%) Management Information System
5 114 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
6 96 (1.85%) PKI
7 91 (1.75%) Data Centre
8 87 (1.67%) Security Posture
8 87 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
9 76 (1.46%) Replication
10 74 (1.42%) Driving Licence
11 73 (1.40%) Hybrid Cloud
12 71 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
13 70 (1.35%) Low-Code
14 67 (1.29%) Mobile App
15 56 (1.08%) Virtual Team
16 55 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
16 55 (1.06%) NHS
17 52 (1.00%) AI Agents
18 51 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 1,234 (23.73%) Windows
2 357 (6.87%) Windows 10
3 306 (5.88%) Linux
4 284 (5.46%) Windows Server
5 114 (2.19%) Mac OS
6 96 (1.85%) Android
7 88 (1.69%) Apple iOS
8 70 (1.35%) Unix
9 46 (0.88%) Windows 7
10 42 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
11 32 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 27 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2003
13 21 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
14 19 (0.37%) VMS
15 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
16 7 (0.13%) AIX
17 6 (0.12%) CentOS
17 6 (0.12%) Ubuntu
18 5 (0.096%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,035 (19.90%) Problem-Solving
2 887 (17.06%) Agile
3 767 (14.75%) DevOps
4 671 (12.90%) Migration
5 635 (12.21%) CI/CD
6 596 (11.46%) Business Intelligence
7 559 (10.75%) Analytics
8 537 (10.33%) Stakeholder Management
9 463 (8.90%) ITIL
10 451 (8.67%) Customer Service
11 445 (8.56%) Continuous Improvement
12 435 (8.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 413 (7.94%) AI
14 360 (6.92%) Cybersecurity
15 324 (6.23%) Project Management
16 312 (6.00%) Data Modelling
17 292 (5.62%) Change Management
18 291 (5.60%) Roadmaps
19 278 (5.35%) Infrastructure as Code
20 275 (5.29%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 669 (12.87%) SQL
2 660 (12.69%) PowerShell
3 602 (11.58%) Python
4 270 (5.19%) C#
5 223 (4.29%) JavaScript
6 139 (2.67%) Java
7 107 (2.06%) Bicep
8 104 (2.00%) Kusto Query Language
9 101 (1.94%) Bash
10 84 (1.62%) TypeScript
11 55 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 50 (0.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 34 (0.65%) Perl
14 29 (0.56%) PL/SQL
14 29 (0.56%) Shell Script
15 27 (0.52%) C++
15 27 (0.52%) VB
16 23 (0.44%) VBScript
17 21 (0.40%) VBA
18 18 (0.35%) R
Qualifications
1 1,034 (19.88%) Security Cleared
2 774 (14.88%) SC Cleared
3 532 (10.23%) Degree
4 329 (6.33%) Microsoft Certification
5 215 (4.13%) DV Cleared
6 188 (3.62%) Azure Certification
7 123 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 117 (2.25%) CISSP
9 81 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
10 68 (1.31%) CISM
11 59 (1.13%) Master's Degree
12 58 (1.12%) PMI Certification
13 57 (1.10%) Cisco Certification
14 51 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
15 49 (0.94%) A+ Certification
15 49 (0.94%) PMP
16 47 (0.90%) MCSE
17 42 (0.81%) Microsoft Certified Professional
18 39 (0.75%) AWS Certification
19 34 (0.65%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 237 (4.56%) GDPR
2 186 (3.58%) Data Quality
3 163 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 149 (2.87%) QA
5 145 (2.79%) SLA
6 124 (2.38%) NIST
7 113 (2.17%) PMO
8 83 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 51 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 35 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 32 (0.62%) NCSC
12 31 (0.60%) PCI DSS
13 22 (0.42%) EU AI Act
13 22 (0.42%) WCAG
14 21 (0.40%) GRC
15 20 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 18 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.29%) MiFID
17 15 (0.29%) SOC 2
18 12 (0.23%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,082 (20.81%) Active Directory
2 203 (3.90%) Docker
3 176 (3.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 74 (1.42%) Hyper-V
5 68 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
6 46 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
7 40 (0.77%) vSphere
8 35 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 18 (0.35%) BitLocker
10 17 (0.33%) VMware NSX
11 12 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.17%) Firmware
13 7 (0.13%) Tivoli Directory Server
14 6 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 6 (0.12%) RACF
14 6 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
15 5 (0.096%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.096%) Snort
15 5 (0.096%) Squid
16 4 (0.077%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 399 (7.67%) Microsoft Intune
2 296 (5.69%) Terraform
3 284 (5.46%) SCCM
4 231 (4.44%) Kubernetes
5 164 (3.15%) Single Sign-On
6 107 (2.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 102 (1.96%) Ansible
8 49 (0.94%) SCOM
9 45 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
10 40 (0.77%) vCenter Server
11 36 (0.69%) Grafana
12 31 (0.60%) Prometheus
13 24 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.40%) HP SiteScope
14 21 (0.40%) WSUS
15 16 (0.31%) QRadar
16 15 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 15 (0.29%) WMI
17 13 (0.25%) Kibana
17 13 (0.25%) Puppet
Vendors
1 268 (5.15%) ServiceNow
2 249 (4.79%) VMware
3 209 (4.02%) Oracle
4 191 (3.67%) SAP
5 187 (3.60%) Cisco
6 169 (3.25%) Databricks
7 157 (3.02%) Splunk
8 152 (2.92%) Google
9 110 (2.12%) Citrix
10 94 (1.81%) Salesforce
11 85 (1.63%) OpenAI
12 81 (1.56%) Apple
13 65 (1.25%) CrowdStrike
14 58 (1.12%) Palo Alto
15 54 (1.04%) Foundry
16 49 (0.94%) Remedy
17 47 (0.90%) HP
18 43 (0.83%) IBM
19 41 (0.79%) CyberArk
20 40 (0.77%) Veeam