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 29 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
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,921 4,671 5,029
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.84% 14.18% 13.05%
As % of the Vendors category 30.71% 30.04% 29.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,463 3,000 3,216
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £342 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.69% -3.11% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 479 377 314
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.00 £12.41
25th Percentile £15.25 £16.02 £14.84
Median hourly rate £19.50 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -12.61% +37.49% -26.23%
75th Percentile £34.35 £31.00 £36.96
90th Percentile £70.05 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.33 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.57% +24.80% -16.77%

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 22,533 15,547 16,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.81% 47.19% 43.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,888 9,521 10,392
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,169 793 745
10th Percentile £14.35 £14.69 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.96 £25.15 £28.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.13% -11.75% -33.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.39 £67.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.24 £27.50
% change year-on-year +31.83% -22.76% -31.25%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -2 5,997 £489 +2.95% 6,747
UK excluding London 0 3,668 £450 +2.86% 5,115
London 0 2,635 £515 +3.00% 2,731
Work from Home +4 1,809 £500 - 2,822
South East +2 951 £475 +2.70% 1,358
North of England -6 923 £450 +3.45% 1,227
Midlands -1 639 £444 +10.94% 839
North West -2 552 £450 +2.97% 633
South West +1 447 £470 +15.69% 626
West Midlands -2 433 £447 +6.43% 467
Scotland +8 354 £450 +0.56% 338
Yorkshire -6 340 £460 +2.51% 415
East of England -1 250 £363 -30.95% 497
East Midlands +2 197 £425 +19.72% 370
Wales -1 105 £413 +37.50% 156
North East -33 35 £375 +10.29% 207
Northern Ireland -3 32 £350 - 167
Channel Islands 0 4 £525 -27.59% 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
1 813 (11.75%) SharePoint
2 402 (5.81%) Microsoft Exchange
3 150 (2.17%) Confluence
4 38 (0.55%) Apache
5 36 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 30 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.33%) CMS
7 23 (0.33%) Skype for Business
8 21 (0.30%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.16%) SAS
11 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) Apache Superset
14 6 (0.087%) Camunda
14 6 (0.087%) Mendix
14 6 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.087%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.072%) OpenStack
Applications
1 698 (10.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 685 (9.90%) Microsoft Office
3 297 (4.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 191 (2.76%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.60%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.12%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.10%) Navisworks
11 7 (0.10%) Revit
12 4 (0.058%) Trello
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.043%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.043%) MicroStation
13 3 (0.043%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.029%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 249 (3.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.19%) Primavera
8 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
11 8 (0.12%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
13 6 (0.087%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 2,914 (42.10%) Azure
2 1,767 (25.53%) Microsoft 365
3 1,217 (17.58%) Power Platform
4 1,068 (15.43%) Entra ID
5 645 (9.32%) AWS
6 619 (8.94%) Azure DevOps
7 598 (8.64%) Dynamics 365
8 408 (5.90%) Power Automate
9 385 (5.56%) Microsoft Copilot
10 367 (5.30%) PowerApps
11 305 (4.41%) GitHub
11 305 (4.41%) Microsoft Purview
12 262 (3.79%) OneDrive
13 247 (3.57%) SaaS
14 240 (3.47%) GCP
15 194 (2.80%) Azure Data Factory
16 181 (2.62%) Serverless
17 174 (2.51%) Azure Monitor
18 164 (2.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 162 (2.34%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 387 (5.59%) DNS
2 346 (5.00%) Firewall
3 284 (4.10%) VPN
4 256 (3.70%) DHCP
5 190 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 173 (2.50%) WAN
7 166 (2.40%) Network Security
8 152 (2.20%) LAN
9 144 (2.08%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.08%) VLAN
11 58 (0.84%) Wireless
12 47 (0.68%) SAN
13 39 (0.56%) MPLS
14 37 (0.53%) Skype
15 35 (0.51%) SSL
16 33 (0.48%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.46%) Internet
17 32 (0.46%) Unified Communications
18 31 (0.45%) BGP
19 28 (0.40%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 770 (11.13%) Power BI
2 393 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 186 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
4 150 (2.17%) Metadata
5 144 (2.08%) Data Lake
6 134 (1.94%) Azure SQL Database
7 127 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
8 75 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 73 (1.05%) Power Query
10 66 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 61 (0.88%) MySQL
12 54 (0.78%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 45 (0.65%) Star Schema
15 43 (0.62%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 39 (0.56%) Delta Lake
16 39 (0.56%) Tableau
17 28 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
18 26 (0.38%) MongoDB
19 22 (0.32%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 334 (4.83%) JIRA
2 220 (3.18%) Git
3 96 (1.39%) Jenkins
4 74 (1.07%) GitLab
5 50 (0.72%) Visual Studio
6 43 (0.62%) MSI
7 38 (0.55%) Selenium
8 19 (0.27%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Claude Code
10 16 (0.23%) MLflow
10 16 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.17%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.16%) Artifactory
14 11 (0.16%) ERwin
14 11 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,468 (35.66%) Social Skills
2 1,408 (20.34%) Finance
3 883 (12.76%) Analytical Skills
4 642 (9.28%) Public Sector
5 376 (5.43%) Organisational Skills
6 332 (4.80%) Banking
7 223 (3.22%) Legal
8 197 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 165 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 160 (2.31%) Manufacturing
11 143 (2.07%) Retail
12 124 (1.79%) Telecoms
13 107 (1.55%) Law
14 104 (1.50%) Marketing
15 95 (1.37%) Local Government
16 89 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
17 82 (1.18%) Military
18 73 (1.05%) Aerospace
19 64 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
20 62 (0.90%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 818 (11.82%) Architect
2 713 (10.30%) Analyst
3 613 (8.86%) Developer
4 605 (8.74%) Senior
5 490 (7.08%) Lead
6 448 (6.47%) Consultant
7 427 (6.17%) IT Support
8 416 (6.01%) Support Engineer
9 285 (4.12%) IT Engineer
10 264 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
11 253 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 247 (3.57%) Data Engineer
13 246 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
14 237 (3.42%) Administrator
15 229 (3.31%) IT Support Engineer
16 222 (3.21%) Project Manager
17 183 (2.64%) Business Analyst
18 173 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
19 131 (1.89%) DevOps Engineer
20 129 (1.86%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 517 (7.47%) Terraform
2 343 (4.96%) .NET
3 268 (3.87%) REST
4 127 (1.83%) JSON
4 127 (1.83%) OAuth
5 115 (1.66%) PySpark
6 109 (1.57%) Microsoft Graph
7 103 (1.49%) SAML
8 101 (1.46%) XML
9 95 (1.37%) OpenID
10 93 (1.34%) .NET Framework
11 86 (1.24%) React
12 85 (1.23%) ARM Templates
13 83 (1.20%) Web Services
14 79 (1.14%) LDAP
15 75 (1.08%) RESTful
16 70 (1.01%) OAuth2
17 69 (1.00%) HTML
18 68 (0.98%) SailPoint
18 68 (0.98%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 521 (7.53%) Onboarding
2 316 (4.57%) Cloud Native
3 236 (3.41%) Management Information System
4 197 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
5 194 (2.80%) Product Ownership
6 157 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
7 145 (2.10%) PKI
8 141 (2.04%) AI Agents
9 139 (2.01%) Data Centre
10 134 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
11 121 (1.75%) Security Posture
12 91 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
12 91 (1.31%) Data Structures
13 89 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
14 84 (1.21%) Low-Code
15 78 (1.13%) CMDB
16 77 (1.11%) Driving Licence
17 72 (1.04%) Virtual Team
18 67 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
19 66 (0.95%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,478 (21.36%) Windows
2 442 (6.39%) Windows Server
3 368 (5.32%) Windows 10
4 333 (4.81%) Linux
5 142 (2.05%) Mac OS
6 119 (1.72%) Android
7 111 (1.60%) Apple iOS
8 63 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
13 35 (0.51%) Ubuntu
14 34 (0.49%) VMS
15 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
16 20 (0.29%) CentOS
17 13 (0.19%) Solaris
18 12 (0.17%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,266 (18.29%) Problem-Solving
2 1,187 (17.15%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,107 (15.99%) DevOps
4 1,070 (15.46%) Agile
5 992 (14.33%) Migration
6 912 (13.18%) CI/CD
7 852 (12.31%) Continuous Improvement
8 797 (11.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 793 (11.46%) AI
10 771 (11.14%) Business Intelligence
11 727 (10.50%) Analytics
12 689 (9.96%) ITIL
13 625 (9.03%) Customer Service
14 540 (7.80%) Infrastructure as Code
15 537 (7.76%) Cybersecurity
16 505 (7.30%) Data Modelling
16 505 (7.30%) Roadmaps
17 478 (6.91%) Project Delivery
18 455 (6.57%) Decision-Making
19 454 (6.56%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 866 (12.51%) SQL
2 763 (11.02%) PowerShell
3 717 (10.36%) Python
4 331 (4.78%) C#
5 246 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 202 (2.92%) Bicep
7 181 (2.62%) Java
8 167 (2.41%) Bash
9 109 (1.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 105 (1.52%) T-SQL
11 95 (1.37%) TypeScript
12 75 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
13 34 (0.49%) VBA
14 30 (0.43%) VB
15 27 (0.39%) VBScript
16 23 (0.33%) X++
17 20 (0.29%) C++
17 20 (0.29%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.27%) R
19 16 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,505 (21.75%) Security Cleared
2 1,128 (16.30%) SC Cleared
3 638 (9.22%) Degree
4 358 (5.17%) Microsoft Certification
5 287 (4.15%) DV Cleared
6 256 (3.70%) Azure Certification
7 168 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
8 132 (1.91%) CISSP
9 130 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 124 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.39%) PMP
12 89 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 75 (1.08%) AWS Certification
14 72 (1.04%) CISM
15 57 (0.82%) DBS Check
16 56 (0.81%) A+ Certification
16 56 (0.81%) CCNP
17 52 (0.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 49 (0.71%) CCNA
19 48 (0.69%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 395 (5.71%) Data Quality
2 241 (3.48%) QA
3 232 (3.35%) GDPR
4 205 (2.96%) SLA
5 196 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 181 (2.62%) PMO
7 172 (2.49%) NIST
8 114 (1.65%) Accessibility
9 91 (1.31%) NCSC
10 85 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.77%) GRC
12 41 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 39 (0.56%) WCAG
14 37 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 32 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 21 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 21 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.22%) P3O
18 14 (0.20%) NIST 800
18 14 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,325 (19.14%) Active Directory
2 260 (3.76%) Docker
3 258 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
4 146 (2.11%) Hyper-V
5 120 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 97 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (0.91%) vSphere
8 58 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.52%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.27%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.23%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.072%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.072%) XenApp
16 4 (0.058%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 552 (7.98%) Microsoft Intune
2 343 (4.96%) Kubernetes
3 276 (3.99%) SCCM
4 175 (2.53%) Ansible
5 124 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (0.90%) Grafana
7 57 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.74%) vCenter Server
9 47 (0.68%) SCOM
10 41 (0.59%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 26 (0.38%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 21 (0.30%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.30%) Puppet
16 18 (0.26%) Failover Clustering
17 15 (0.22%) Argo
18 13 (0.19%) Avamar
18 13 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 519 (7.50%) ServiceNow
2 339 (4.90%) VMware
3 328 (4.74%) Oracle
4 275 (3.97%) SAP
5 246 (3.55%) Databricks
6 236 (3.41%) Google
7 229 (3.31%) Cisco
8 122 (1.76%) Salesforce
9 118 (1.70%) Splunk
10 110 (1.59%) Apple
11 91 (1.31%) CyberArk
12 87 (1.26%) Citrix
13 82 (1.18%) OpenAI
14 78 (1.13%) Okta
15 75 (1.08%) Foundry
16 74 (1.07%) BeyondTrust
17 70 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
18 67 (0.97%) Red Hat
19 54 (0.78%) Zscaler
20 53 (0.77%) Adobe