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 23 July 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
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,337 4,524 5,371
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.02% 13.85% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 29.10% 29.19% 30.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,166 2,901 3,522
10th Percentile £215 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.96% -2.10%
75th Percentile £586 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £431 £450
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 358 404
10th Percentile £13.67 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.70 £16.00 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +38.63% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.25 £31.00 £28.75
90th Percentile £74.06 £63.51 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.13 £20.50 £16.13
% change year-on-year +3.04% +27.15% -15.13%

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 21,778 15,500 17,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.30% 47.45% 43.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,534 9,482 11,204
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.72% -2.10%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,078 764 967
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.75 £13.13
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.00 £25.15 £26.03
Median % change year-on-year +39.17% -3.38% -36.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year +51.07% -10.00% -22.24%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 5,503 £494 +3.89% 3,317
UK excluding London -1 3,369 £450 +4.41% 2,709
London -2 2,413 £513 +2.40% 1,076
Work from Home +3 1,641 £500 - 1,297
South East -2 849 £475 - 860
North of England -5 835 £465 +8.77% 671
Midlands -2 587 £445 +18.67% 430
North West -3 473 £450 +2.97% 353
West Midlands -3 415 £450 +14.87% 235
South West -1 413 £475 +10.47% 288
Yorkshire -5 339 £480 +9.71% 227
Scotland +6 312 £450 - 127
East of England 0 264 £375 -25.00% 305
East Midlands +2 164 £413 +13.09% 194
Wales +1 110 £413 +49.48% 89
Northern Ireland 0 32 £350 -6.04% 30
North East -38 29 £450 +32.35% 107
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
1 716 (11.30%) SharePoint
2 390 (6.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.26%) Confluence
4 42 (0.66%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.60%) Apache
6 29 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 17 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.22%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.21%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) SAS
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.095%) Camunda
14 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.095%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.063%) Liferay
16 4 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 582 (9.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 574 (9.06%) Microsoft Office
3 253 (3.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 161 (2.54%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.72%) MS Visio
6 38 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.032%) Navisworks
12 2 (0.032%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 232 (3.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.19%) Primavera
10 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.13%) Magento
11 8 (0.13%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.095%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.095%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 2,652 (41.85%) Azure
2 1,559 (24.60%) Microsoft 365
3 1,073 (16.93%) Power Platform
4 930 (14.68%) Entra ID
5 572 (9.03%) AWS
6 519 (8.19%) Dynamics 365
7 517 (8.16%) Azure DevOps
8 367 (5.79%) Power Automate
9 334 (5.27%) PowerApps
10 332 (5.24%) Microsoft Copilot
11 299 (4.72%) Microsoft Purview
12 256 (4.04%) GitHub
13 239 (3.77%) SaaS
14 234 (3.69%) OneDrive
15 210 (3.31%) GCP
16 166 (2.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 164 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
18 155 (2.45%) PaaS
19 148 (2.34%) Serverless
20 144 (2.27%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 342 (5.40%) DNS
2 311 (4.91%) Firewall
3 246 (3.88%) VPN
4 212 (3.35%) DHCP
5 177 (2.79%) TCP/IP
6 149 (2.35%) WAN
7 148 (2.34%) Wi-Fi
8 140 (2.21%) LAN
9 139 (2.19%) Network Security
10 63 (0.99%) VLAN
11 46 (0.73%) Wireless
12 45 (0.71%) SAN
13 41 (0.65%) MPLS
13 41 (0.65%) SSL
14 37 (0.58%) Unified Communications
15 32 (0.50%) Kerberos
15 32 (0.50%) SD-WAN
16 31 (0.49%) Internet
17 30 (0.47%) VoIP
18 27 (0.43%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 685 (10.81%) Power BI
2 361 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 185 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
4 134 (2.11%) PostgreSQL
5 132 (2.08%) Data Lake
6 124 (1.96%) Metadata
7 123 (1.94%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.15%) Relational Database
9 72 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 63 (0.99%) MySQL
11 58 (0.92%) Power Query
12 52 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 50 (0.79%) NoSQL
14 44 (0.69%) Oracle Database
15 40 (0.63%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.58%) Tableau
17 35 (0.55%) Delta Lake
18 33 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 26 (0.41%) Big Data
20 25 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 320 (5.05%) JIRA
2 197 (3.11%) Git
3 86 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.90%) GitLab
5 49 (0.77%) Visual Studio
6 32 (0.50%) MSI
7 27 (0.43%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
10 15 (0.24%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
11 14 (0.22%) ERwin
11 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 13 (0.21%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.17%) JUnit
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
15 10 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,098 (33.11%) Social Skills
2 1,279 (20.18%) Finance
3 758 (11.96%) Analytical Skills
4 613 (9.67%) Public Sector
5 316 (4.99%) Banking
6 270 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
7 224 (3.53%) Legal
8 175 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
9 135 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 126 (1.99%) Manufacturing
11 117 (1.85%) Retail
12 109 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 103 (1.63%) Law
14 97 (1.53%) Marketing
15 84 (1.33%) Military
16 80 (1.26%) Local Government
17 75 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
18 74 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
19 60 (0.95%) Investment Banking
20 47 (0.74%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 747 (11.79%) Architect
2 666 (10.51%) Analyst
3 600 (9.47%) Developer
4 545 (8.60%) Senior
5 445 (7.02%) Lead
6 391 (6.17%) IT Support
7 388 (6.12%) Consultant
8 332 (5.24%) Support Engineer
9 245 (3.87%) Data Engineer
10 237 (3.74%) IT Engineer
10 237 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
11 224 (3.53%) Azure Engineer
12 214 (3.38%) Project Manager
13 210 (3.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 190 (3.00%) IT Support Engineer
15 182 (2.87%) Administrator
16 176 (2.78%) Business Analyst
17 147 (2.32%) Cloud Engineer
18 125 (1.97%) Security Engineer
19 111 (1.75%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (4.67%) .NET
2 239 (3.77%) REST
3 130 (2.05%) Microsoft Graph
4 122 (1.93%) JSON
5 112 (1.77%) OAuth
6 105 (1.66%) PySpark
7 93 (1.47%) OpenID
8 92 (1.45%) SAML
9 89 (1.40%) XML
10 88 (1.39%) Web Services
11 84 (1.33%) .NET Framework
12 81 (1.28%) React
13 72 (1.14%) LDAP
14 68 (1.07%) RESTful
15 67 (1.06%) ARM Templates
15 67 (1.06%) HTML
16 66 (1.04%) SailPoint
17 64 (1.01%) SOAP
18 62 (0.98%) CSS
18 62 (0.98%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 403 (6.36%) Onboarding
2 304 (4.80%) Cloud Native
3 186 (2.94%) Product Ownership
4 173 (2.73%) Management Information System
5 143 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
6 133 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
7 124 (1.96%) AI Agents
7 124 (1.96%) Data Centre
7 124 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
8 122 (1.93%) PKI
9 110 (1.74%) Security Posture
10 98 (1.55%) Data Structures
11 90 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
12 82 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
13 81 (1.28%) Virtual Team
14 69 (1.09%) Low-Code
15 67 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
16 64 (1.01%) Replication
17 63 (0.99%) Driving Licence
18 56 (0.88%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,323 (20.88%) Windows
2 343 (5.41%) Windows Server
3 317 (5.00%) Windows 10
4 301 (4.75%) Linux
5 132 (2.08%) Mac OS
6 118 (1.86%) Android
7 109 (1.72%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.71%) Unix
10 36 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
11 33 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 31 (0.49%) VMS
13 30 (0.47%) Windows 7
14 25 (0.39%) Ubuntu
15 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.21%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
20 6 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,094 (17.26%) Problem-Solving
2 1,000 (15.78%) DevOps
3 962 (15.18%) Agile
4 892 (14.08%) Migration
5 845 (13.33%) Stakeholder Management
6 821 (12.96%) CI/CD
7 723 (11.41%) AI
8 699 (11.03%) Business Intelligence
9 686 (10.83%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 676 (10.67%) Analytics
11 674 (10.64%) Continuous Improvement
12 584 (9.22%) ITIL
13 498 (7.86%) Customer Service
14 470 (7.42%) Data Modelling
15 462 (7.29%) Roadmaps
16 446 (7.04%) Cybersecurity
17 444 (7.01%) Infrastructure as Code
18 414 (6.53%) Decision-Making
19 406 (6.41%) Validation
20 396 (6.25%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 806 (12.72%) SQL
2 680 (10.73%) PowerShell
3 655 (10.34%) Python
4 312 (4.92%) C#
5 231 (3.65%) JavaScript
6 200 (3.16%) Java
7 178 (2.81%) Bicep
8 119 (1.88%) Bash
9 114 (1.80%) T-SQL
10 90 (1.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 85 (1.34%) TypeScript
12 72 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
13 41 (0.65%) VBA
14 33 (0.52%) C++
15 27 (0.43%) PL/SQL
15 27 (0.43%) VB
16 17 (0.27%) X++
17 16 (0.25%) R
17 16 (0.25%) Scala
17 16 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,286 (20.29%) Security Cleared
2 972 (15.34%) SC Cleared
3 615 (9.70%) Degree
4 319 (5.03%) Microsoft Certification
5 242 (3.82%) DV Cleared
6 229 (3.61%) Azure Certification
7 138 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
8 121 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
8 121 (1.91%) CISSP
9 119 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
10 83 (1.31%) PMP
11 76 (1.20%) PMI Certification
12 66 (1.04%) AWS Certification
12 66 (1.04%) CISM
13 52 (0.82%) CCNP
14 50 (0.79%) Master's Degree
15 49 (0.77%) DBS Check
16 46 (0.73%) CCNA
17 39 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
18 38 (0.60%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 332 (5.24%) Data Quality
2 219 (3.46%) GDPR
3 217 (3.42%) QA
4 180 (2.84%) SLA
5 170 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 146 (2.30%) PMO
7 143 (2.26%) NIST
8 101 (1.59%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 76 (1.20%) NCSC
11 44 (0.69%) GRC
12 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 32 (0.50%) WCAG
14 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 26 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 15 (0.24%) SOC 2
19 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 13 (0.21%) GMP
System Software
1 1,219 (19.24%) Active Directory
2 232 (3.66%) Docker
3 211 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.74%) Hyper-V
5 93 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 86 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
7 56 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.88%) vSphere
8 28 (0.44%) BitLocker
9 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.28%) Firmware
12 8 (0.13%) NFS
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.079%) RACF
14 5 (0.079%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.063%) Snort
15 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 503 (7.94%) Microsoft Intune
2 443 (6.99%) Terraform
3 291 (4.59%) Kubernetes
4 224 (3.53%) SCCM
5 149 (2.35%) Ansible
6 122 (1.93%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (0.99%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.80%) vCenter Server
9 49 (0.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 48 (0.76%) Grafana
11 35 (0.55%) Prometheus
11 35 (0.55%) SCOM
12 23 (0.36%) Puppet
13 20 (0.32%) QRadar
14 18 (0.28%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.28%) WSUS
15 16 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 13 (0.21%) Argo
17 12 (0.19%) Avamar
18 11 (0.17%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 428 (6.75%) ServiceNow
2 301 (4.75%) Oracle
3 293 (4.62%) VMware
4 259 (4.09%) SAP
5 219 (3.46%) Databricks
6 207 (3.27%) Cisco
7 201 (3.17%) Google
8 120 (1.89%) Salesforce
9 108 (1.70%) Citrix
10 95 (1.50%) Splunk
11 94 (1.48%) Apple
12 81 (1.28%) Foundry
13 77 (1.22%) OpenAI
14 73 (1.15%) CyberArk
14 73 (1.15%) Okta
15 71 (1.12%) CrowdStrike
16 60 (0.95%) Red Hat
17 57 (0.90%) BeyondTrust
18 52 (0.82%) Zscaler
19 47 (0.74%) HP