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 11 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
11 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,233 4,186 5,805
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.18% 13.60% 13.02%
As % of the Vendors category 29.24% 29.40% 29.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,554 2,648 3,952
10th Percentile £204 £205 £191
25th Percentile £356 £339 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £430 £450
% change year-on-year +4.65% -4.44% -1.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 372 176 370
10th Percentile £13.58 £15.35 £11.79
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.62 £13.87
Median hourly rate £19.91 £23.59 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -15.60% +33.13% -13.43%
75th Percentile £26.03 £33.75 £35.91
90th Percentile £61.41 £61.13 £52.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £22.00 £17.72
% change year-on-year -13.64% +24.19% -11.43%

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 17,897 14,240 19,446
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.09% 46.26% 43.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,533 8,504 12,228
10th Percentile £300 £275 £255
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -1.32%
75th Percentile £608 £625 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 864 415 920
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.62 £12.98
25th Percentile £17.88 £21.00 £15.50
Median hourly rate £23.91 £29.00 £26.72
Median % change year-on-year -17.54% +8.53% -16.26%
75th Percentile £56.55 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £73.75 £80.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £27.13 £26.00
% change year-on-year -18.89% +4.33% -4.59%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 4,589 £475 - 2,892
UK excluding London 0 2,824 £450 +4.65% 2,697
London -2 1,934 £500 - 723
Work from Home +1 1,321 £500 +3.73% 1,155
North of England 0 741 £425 - 632
South East -1 650 £475 - 865
Midlands -5 475 £450 +5.88% 402
North West -1 420 £400 -11.11% 331
South West 0 357 £500 +7.53% 288
East of England 0 328 £413 -7.04% 298
West Midlands -6 324 £475 +9.42% 232
Yorkshire -1 286 £450 +9.09% 218
Scotland -2 197 £450 +20.00% 157
East Midlands -1 150 £400 -1.23% 170
Wales +3 92 £310 -29.14% 83
North East -12 41 £450 +28.57% 91
Northern Ireland +1 26 £450 +38.46% 25
Channel Islands +2 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
1 598 (11.43%) SharePoint
2 407 (7.78%) Microsoft Exchange
3 113 (2.16%) Confluence
4 56 (1.07%) Skype for Business
5 37 (0.71%) CMS
6 23 (0.44%) Apache
7 20 (0.38%) IIS
8 19 (0.36%) Apache Spark
9 16 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
9 16 (0.31%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.27%) SAS
11 13 (0.25%) Exchange Server 2013
11 13 (0.25%) Mattermost
12 9 (0.17%) Exchange Server 2010
12 9 (0.17%) Mendix
13 8 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 7 (0.13%) iPlanet
14 7 (0.13%) JBoss
14 7 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 7 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 637 (12.17%) Microsoft Office
2 523 (9.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 234 (4.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 131 (2.50%) Microsoft Project
5 110 (2.10%) MS Visio
6 74 (1.41%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.21%) Trello
8 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.13%) Adobe Illustrator
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
10 6 (0.11%) Sketch
11 5 (0.096%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.096%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.076%) Adobe After Effects
12 4 (0.076%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.076%) InDesign
12 4 (0.076%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.057%) SOLIDWORKS
13 3 (0.057%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 189 (3.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 45 (0.86%) SAP S/4HANA
3 41 (0.78%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.32%) Dynamics AX
5 16 (0.31%) Maximo
6 15 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.25%) Aladdin
8 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
9 10 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
9 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
10 9 (0.17%) Loan IQ
10 9 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 7 (0.13%) Advent Geneva
11 7 (0.13%) Shopify
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
12 6 (0.11%) SystmOne
13 5 (0.096%) Primavera
13 5 (0.096%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,080 (39.75%) Azure
2 1,288 (24.61%) Microsoft 365
3 829 (15.84%) Power Platform
4 656 (12.54%) Entra ID
5 459 (8.77%) AWS
6 398 (7.61%) Dynamics 365
7 389 (7.43%) Azure DevOps
8 333 (6.36%) Power Automate
9 301 (5.75%) PowerApps
10 243 (4.64%) Microsoft Purview
11 224 (4.28%) GitHub
12 204 (3.90%) OneDrive
13 193 (3.69%) Serverless
14 181 (3.46%) GCP
15 180 (3.44%) Azure Data Factory
16 174 (3.33%) SaaS
17 165 (3.15%) Microsoft Copilot
18 146 (2.79%) Azure Logic Apps
19 137 (2.62%) Azure Sentinel
19 137 (2.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 306 (5.85%) DNS
2 280 (5.35%) Firewall
3 195 (3.73%) DHCP
4 194 (3.71%) VPN
5 129 (2.47%) Wi-Fi
6 126 (2.41%) TCP/IP
7 118 (2.25%) WAN
8 102 (1.95%) LAN
9 99 (1.89%) Network Security
10 83 (1.59%) Skype
11 67 (1.28%) Kerberos
12 53 (1.01%) VLAN
13 48 (0.92%) Wireless
14 46 (0.88%) Unified Communications
15 35 (0.67%) SD-WAN
16 31 (0.59%) HTTP
16 31 (0.59%) Internet
17 29 (0.55%) SSL
18 26 (0.50%) VoIP
19 25 (0.48%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 513 (9.80%) Power BI
2 236 (4.51%) SQL Server
3 144 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.58%) Data Lake
5 95 (1.82%) Metadata
6 93 (1.78%) Azure SQL Database
7 92 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
8 81 (1.55%) Relational Database
9 64 (1.22%) Oracle Database
10 50 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 49 (0.94%) MySQL
12 48 (0.92%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.86%) Tableau
14 38 (0.73%) NoSQL
15 37 (0.71%) Power Query
16 25 (0.48%) Oracle Reports
16 25 (0.48%) Star Schema
17 24 (0.46%) Delta Lake
18 18 (0.34%) Big Data
18 18 (0.34%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 240 (4.59%) JIRA
2 153 (2.92%) Git
3 75 (1.43%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.38%) GitLab
5 25 (0.48%) Eclipse
5 25 (0.48%) MSI
6 20 (0.38%) Postman
7 18 (0.34%) Android Studio
7 18 (0.34%) Artifactory
7 18 (0.34%) Browser DevTools
7 18 (0.34%) Visual Studio
8 16 (0.31%) Selenium
8 16 (0.31%) Xcode
9 15 (0.29%) JMeter
9 15 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
10 13 (0.25%) Cucumber
11 10 (0.19%) Bitbucket
11 10 (0.19%) ERwin
11 10 (0.19%) JUnit
12 9 (0.17%) MLflow
General
1 2,064 (39.44%) Social Skills
2 1,048 (20.03%) Finance
3 666 (12.73%) Analytical Skills
4 515 (9.84%) Public Sector
5 255 (4.87%) Organisational Skills
6 250 (4.78%) Banking
7 213 (4.07%) Legal
8 163 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
9 130 (2.48%) Manufacturing
10 110 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
11 109 (2.08%) Marketing
12 99 (1.89%) Telecoms
13 76 (1.45%) Retail
14 69 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 54 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
16 47 (0.90%) Military
17 46 (0.88%) Investment Banking
18 43 (0.82%) Law
19 39 (0.75%) Local Government
20 37 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 679 (12.98%) Analyst
2 585 (11.18%) Architect
3 505 (9.65%) Developer
4 391 (7.47%) Senior
5 331 (6.33%) IT Support
6 299 (5.71%) Support Engineer
7 277 (5.29%) Consultant
8 269 (5.14%) Lead
9 181 (3.46%) Solutions Architect
10 173 (3.31%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 169 (3.23%) Business Analyst
12 168 (3.21%) Azure Engineer
13 166 (3.17%) IT Engineer
14 156 (2.98%) Administrator
15 155 (2.96%) Data Engineer
16 153 (2.92%) Project Manager
17 147 (2.81%) Support Analyst
18 127 (2.43%) IT Support Engineer
19 110 (2.10%) Security Engineer
20 100 (1.91%) Desktop Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (4.76%) .NET
2 172 (3.29%) REST
3 137 (2.62%) OAuth
4 115 (2.20%) SAML
5 111 (2.12%) React
6 107 (2.04%) Microsoft Graph
7 93 (1.78%) OpenID
8 80 (1.53%) LDAP
8 80 (1.53%) RESTful
9 74 (1.41%) AngularJS
10 71 (1.36%) CSS
10 71 (1.36%) HTML
11 70 (1.34%) PySpark
12 69 (1.32%) JSON
13 61 (1.17%) ARM Templates
14 55 (1.05%) Node.js
15 52 (0.99%) OAuth2
16 50 (0.96%) Middleware
17 49 (0.94%) Web Services
18 42 (0.80%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 298 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 195 (3.73%) Cloud Native
3 156 (2.98%) Product Ownership
4 135 (2.58%) Management Information System
5 114 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
6 96 (1.83%) PKI
7 90 (1.72%) Data Centre
7 90 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
8 84 (1.61%) Security Posture
9 78 (1.49%) Hybrid Cloud
10 76 (1.45%) Replication
11 73 (1.39%) Driving Licence
12 72 (1.38%) Low-Code
13 69 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
13 69 (1.32%) Mobile App
14 57 (1.09%) NHS
15 54 (1.03%) Analytical Mindset
16 53 (1.01%) AI Agents
17 52 (0.99%) Virtual Team
18 51 (0.97%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 1,239 (23.68%) Windows
2 366 (6.99%) Windows 10
3 305 (5.83%) Linux
4 285 (5.45%) Windows Server
5 119 (2.27%) Mac OS
6 99 (1.89%) Android
7 92 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 70 (1.34%) Unix
9 47 (0.90%) Windows 7
10 42 (0.80%) Windows Server 2016
11 32 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 24 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
13 22 (0.42%) Windows Server 2003
13 22 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
14 20 (0.38%) VMS
15 7 (0.13%) AIX
15 7 (0.13%) Ubuntu
16 6 (0.11%) CentOS
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
17 5 (0.096%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,042 (19.91%) Problem-Solving
2 892 (17.05%) Agile
3 771 (14.73%) DevOps
4 680 (12.99%) Migration
5 642 (12.27%) CI/CD
6 599 (11.45%) Business Intelligence
7 570 (10.89%) Analytics
8 539 (10.30%) Stakeholder Management
9 460 (8.79%) ITIL
10 455 (8.69%) Customer Service
11 444 (8.48%) Continuous Improvement
12 427 (8.16%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 421 (8.05%) AI
14 364 (6.96%) Cybersecurity
15 324 (6.19%) Data Modelling
16 321 (6.13%) Project Management
17 296 (5.66%) Roadmaps
18 291 (5.56%) Change Management
19 279 (5.33%) Infrastructure as Code
19 279 (5.33%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 672 (12.84%) SQL
2 663 (12.67%) PowerShell
3 615 (11.75%) Python
4 263 (5.03%) C#
5 226 (4.32%) JavaScript
6 143 (2.73%) Java
7 113 (2.16%) Bicep
8 106 (2.03%) Bash
8 106 (2.03%) Kusto Query Language
9 87 (1.66%) TypeScript
10 59 (1.13%) T-SQL
11 53 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 34 (0.65%) Perl
13 30 (0.57%) PL/SQL
14 28 (0.54%) Shell Script
15 27 (0.52%) VB
16 25 (0.48%) C++
17 20 (0.38%) VBA
18 18 (0.34%) R
18 18 (0.34%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,025 (19.59%) Security Cleared
2 762 (14.56%) SC Cleared
3 540 (10.32%) Degree
4 329 (6.29%) Microsoft Certification
5 215 (4.11%) DV Cleared
6 187 (3.57%) Azure Certification
7 126 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
8 116 (2.22%) CISSP
9 83 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
10 67 (1.28%) CISM
11 61 (1.17%) Master's Degree
12 58 (1.11%) PMI Certification
13 57 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
14 50 (0.96%) ITIL Certification
15 49 (0.94%) PMP
16 48 (0.92%) MCSE
17 45 (0.86%) A+ Certification
18 44 (0.84%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 40 (0.76%) AWS Certification
20 32 (0.61%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 240 (4.59%) GDPR
2 188 (3.59%) Data Quality
3 162 (3.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 152 (2.90%) QA
5 145 (2.77%) SLA
6 120 (2.29%) NIST
7 117 (2.24%) PMO
8 80 (1.53%) Accessibility
9 56 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
10 36 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 31 (0.59%) NCSC
12 30 (0.57%) PCI DSS
13 23 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 22 (0.42%) EU AI Act
15 21 (0.40%) GRC
16 20 (0.38%) WCAG
17 15 (0.29%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.29%) MiFID
17 15 (0.29%) SOC 2
18 12 (0.23%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,104 (21.10%) Active Directory
2 199 (3.80%) Docker
3 177 (3.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 79 (1.51%) Hyper-V
5 69 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
6 45 (0.86%) Virtual Desktop
7 40 (0.76%) vSphere
8 34 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 19 (0.36%) BitLocker
10 17 (0.32%) VMware NSX
11 13 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.17%) Firmware
13 6 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
13 6 (0.11%) Tivoli Directory Server
13 6 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 5 (0.096%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.096%) Snort
14 5 (0.096%) Squid
15 4 (0.076%) NFS
Systems Management
1 402 (7.68%) Microsoft Intune
2 304 (5.81%) Terraform
3 280 (5.35%) SCCM
4 229 (4.38%) Kubernetes
5 166 (3.17%) Single Sign-On
6 105 (2.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 103 (1.97%) Ansible
8 48 (0.92%) SCOM
9 47 (0.90%) Jamf Pro
10 39 (0.75%) Grafana
10 39 (0.75%) vCenter Server
11 34 (0.65%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 21 (0.40%) HP SiteScope
14 20 (0.38%) WSUS
15 15 (0.29%) WMI
16 14 (0.27%) AirWatch
16 14 (0.27%) Puppet
17 13 (0.25%) Nessus
18 12 (0.23%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 275 (5.26%) ServiceNow
2 252 (4.82%) VMware
3 195 (3.73%) Oracle
4 189 (3.61%) SAP
5 188 (3.59%) Cisco
6 182 (3.48%) Databricks
7 154 (2.94%) Splunk
8 151 (2.89%) Google
9 113 (2.16%) Citrix
10 94 (1.80%) Salesforce
11 83 (1.59%) OpenAI
12 82 (1.57%) Apple
13 64 (1.22%) CrowdStrike
14 58 (1.11%) Palo Alto
15 56 (1.07%) Foundry
16 50 (0.96%) Remedy
17 48 (0.92%) HP
18 43 (0.82%) CyberArk
19 42 (0.80%) IBM
20 41 (0.78%) Okta