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 1 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
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,446 4,540 5,077
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.09% 13.80% 12.87%
As % of the Vendors category 29.23% 29.26% 29.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,221 2,903 3,332
10th Percentile £218 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -3.55% -1.50%
75th Percentile £585 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 389 368 373
10th Percentile £13.69 £13.92 £11.73
25th Percentile £16.50 £16.00 £14.42
Median hourly rate £21.35 £22.41 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% +38.06% -28.55%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £34.75
90th Percentile £73.85 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year +3.68% +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 22,051 15,518 17,140
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.36% 47.18% 43.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,688 9,504 10,753
10th Percentile £313 £280 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £601 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £706 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.52% -4.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,117 782 883
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.55 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £35.00 £25.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.17% -8.55% -34.21%
75th Percentile £65.25 £50.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.32 £25.60
% change year-on-year +52.32% -12.83% -26.33%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 5,620 £490 +3.16% 4,540
UK excluding London -1 3,420 £450 +3.45% 3,712
London -2 2,479 £510 +2.00% 1,453
Work from Home +3 1,677 £500 - 1,949
South East -1 870 £475 +0.53% 1,123
North of England -3 857 £465 +6.29% 894
Midlands -1 592 £448 +19.33% 605
North West -2 492 £450 +2.51% 465
South West 0 427 £473 +8.62% 431
West Midlands -5 418 £450 +16.13% 328
Yorkshire -5 341 £475 +5.56% 301
Scotland +7 316 £450 - 166
East of England -1 256 £375 -25.00% 385
East Midlands +2 166 £407 +15.55% 277
Wales 0 102 £413 +49.48% 116
Northern Ireland -2 32 £350 -3.11% 91
North East -41 29 £450 +38.46% 147
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
1 746 (11.57%) SharePoint
2 394 (6.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 139 (2.16%) Confluence
4 39 (0.61%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.57%) Apache
6 29 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 18 (0.28%) CMS
9 17 (0.26%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.16%) SAS
13 8 (0.12%) nginx
14 6 (0.093%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.093%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.078%) Camunda
15 5 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.078%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.078%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 604 (9.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 587 (9.11%) Microsoft Office
3 251 (3.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 164 (2.54%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.68%) MS Visio
6 39 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.078%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.062%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.062%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.031%) Navisworks
12 2 (0.031%) ProjectWise
12 2 (0.031%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.031%) Revit
Business Applications
1 234 (3.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 28 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.28%) Dynamics NAV
6 14 (0.22%) Aladdin
6 14 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
6 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.19%) Primavera
8 9 (0.14%) Magento
8 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
9 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
9 8 (0.12%) Teamcenter
10 7 (0.11%) iTrent
10 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.11%) SAP MM
10 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
11 6 (0.093%) Dynamics GP
11 6 (0.093%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,716 (42.13%) Azure
2 1,619 (25.12%) Microsoft 365
3 1,122 (17.41%) Power Platform
4 950 (14.74%) Entra ID
5 575 (8.92%) AWS
6 544 (8.44%) Dynamics 365
7 539 (8.36%) Azure DevOps
8 397 (6.16%) Power Automate
9 361 (5.60%) PowerApps
10 349 (5.41%) Microsoft Copilot
11 294 (4.56%) Microsoft Purview
12 267 (4.14%) GitHub
13 245 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 233 (3.61%) SaaS
15 213 (3.30%) GCP
16 167 (2.59%) Azure Data Factory
17 166 (2.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 154 (2.39%) Serverless
19 151 (2.34%) PaaS
20 144 (2.23%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 346 (5.37%) DNS
2 326 (5.06%) Firewall
3 256 (3.97%) VPN
4 211 (3.27%) DHCP
5 179 (2.78%) TCP/IP
6 149 (2.31%) WAN
7 145 (2.25%) Network Security
8 140 (2.17%) Wi-Fi
9 139 (2.16%) LAN
10 71 (1.10%) VLAN
11 51 (0.79%) Wireless
12 45 (0.70%) SAN
13 41 (0.64%) MPLS
14 39 (0.61%) SSL
15 37 (0.57%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 29 (0.45%) Internet
17 29 (0.45%) VoIP
18 27 (0.42%) BGP
19 26 (0.40%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 708 (10.98%) Power BI
2 372 (5.77%) SQL Server
3 192 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
4 131 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
5 130 (2.02%) Data Lake
6 125 (1.94%) Azure SQL Database
7 124 (1.92%) Metadata
8 74 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 73 (1.13%) Relational Database
10 64 (0.99%) MySQL
10 64 (0.99%) Power Query
11 49 (0.76%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.73%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.65%) Star Schema
15 37 (0.57%) Tableau
16 33 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 30 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 24 (0.37%) Big Data
18 24 (0.37%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 315 (4.89%) JIRA
2 193 (2.99%) Git
3 89 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 63 (0.98%) GitLab
5 54 (0.84%) Visual Studio
6 33 (0.51%) MSI
7 28 (0.43%) Selenium
8 17 (0.26%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.26%) Postman
9 16 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
9 16 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 13 (0.20%) Artifactory
10 13 (0.20%) MLflow
11 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
11 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
11 12 (0.19%) ERwin
11 12 (0.19%) JUnit
11 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
12 11 (0.17%) Cucumber
12 11 (0.17%) Maven
General
1 2,186 (33.91%) Social Skills
2 1,308 (20.29%) Finance
3 797 (12.36%) Analytical Skills
4 617 (9.57%) Public Sector
5 318 (4.93%) Banking
6 288 (4.47%) Organisational Skills
7 220 (3.41%) Legal
8 172 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 132 (2.05%) Manufacturing
11 126 (1.95%) Retail
12 110 (1.71%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.58%) Law
13 102 (1.58%) Marketing
14 86 (1.33%) Local Government
15 85 (1.32%) Military
16 71 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
17 69 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
18 63 (0.98%) Investment Banking
19 51 (0.79%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 745 (11.56%) Architect
2 672 (10.43%) Analyst
3 626 (9.71%) Developer
4 576 (8.94%) Senior
5 460 (7.14%) Lead
6 402 (6.24%) IT Support
7 393 (6.10%) Consultant
8 356 (5.52%) Support Engineer
9 253 (3.92%) IT Engineer
10 247 (3.83%) Data Engineer
11 242 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
12 225 (3.49%) Azure Engineer
13 224 (3.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 214 (3.32%) Project Manager
15 200 (3.10%) IT Support Engineer
16 190 (2.95%) Administrator
17 182 (2.82%) Business Analyst
18 155 (2.40%) Cloud Engineer
19 125 (1.94%) Security Engineer
20 110 (1.71%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (4.73%) .NET
2 246 (3.82%) REST
3 126 (1.95%) JSON
4 123 (1.91%) Microsoft Graph
5 115 (1.78%) OAuth
6 107 (1.66%) PySpark
7 95 (1.47%) OpenID
8 94 (1.46%) SAML
9 93 (1.44%) XML
10 87 (1.35%) .NET Framework
10 87 (1.35%) Web Services
11 80 (1.24%) React
12 73 (1.13%) RESTful
13 68 (1.05%) HTML
14 66 (1.02%) SOAP
15 65 (1.01%) ARM Templates
15 65 (1.01%) OAuth2
16 63 (0.98%) LDAP
17 62 (0.96%) Middleware
18 61 (0.95%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 429 (6.66%) Onboarding
2 303 (4.70%) Cloud Native
3 185 (2.87%) Management Information System
4 184 (2.85%) Product Ownership
5 159 (2.47%) Enterprise Software
6 135 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
7 130 (2.02%) Hybrid Cloud
8 125 (1.94%) PKI
9 124 (1.92%) AI Agents
10 121 (1.88%) Data Centre
11 120 (1.86%) Security Posture
12 95 (1.47%) Data Structures
13 88 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
14 82 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 80 (1.24%) Virtual Team
16 73 (1.13%) Low-Code
17 68 (1.05%) Driving Licence
18 66 (1.02%) Distributed Systems
19 60 (0.93%) Replication
20 58 (0.90%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,356 (21.04%) Windows
2 367 (5.69%) Windows Server
3 332 (5.15%) Windows 10
4 304 (4.72%) Linux
5 130 (2.02%) Mac OS
6 120 (1.86%) Android
7 109 (1.69%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.68%) Unix
10 37 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
11 35 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
12 33 (0.51%) Windows 7
13 31 (0.48%) VMS
14 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.20%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,132 (17.56%) Problem-Solving
2 1,027 (15.93%) DevOps
3 986 (15.30%) Agile
4 912 (14.15%) Migration
5 909 (14.10%) Stakeholder Management
6 846 (13.12%) CI/CD
7 743 (11.53%) AI
8 724 (11.23%) Continuous Improvement
9 723 (11.22%) Business Intelligence
10 721 (11.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 682 (10.58%) Analytics
12 608 (9.43%) ITIL
13 522 (8.10%) Customer Service
14 477 (7.40%) Data Modelling
15 466 (7.23%) Cybersecurity
15 466 (7.23%) Roadmaps
16 452 (7.01%) Infrastructure as Code
17 427 (6.62%) Decision-Making
18 412 (6.39%) Validation
19 410 (6.36%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 817 (12.67%) SQL
2 682 (10.58%) PowerShell
3 660 (10.24%) Python
4 321 (4.98%) C#
5 245 (3.80%) JavaScript
6 194 (3.01%) Java
7 179 (2.78%) Bicep
8 128 (1.99%) Bash
9 118 (1.83%) T-SQL
10 97 (1.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.35%) TypeScript
12 71 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
13 40 (0.62%) VBA
14 30 (0.47%) C++
15 27 (0.42%) PL/SQL
16 26 (0.40%) VB
17 20 (0.31%) X++
18 17 (0.26%) VBScript
19 16 (0.25%) R
19 16 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,323 (20.52%) Security Cleared
2 1,002 (15.54%) SC Cleared
3 628 (9.74%) Degree
4 337 (5.23%) Microsoft Certification
5 249 (3.86%) DV Cleared
6 229 (3.55%) Azure Certification
7 152 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
8 125 (1.94%) CISSP
9 123 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
10 121 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
11 90 (1.40%) PMP
12 83 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 70 (1.09%) CISM
14 69 (1.07%) AWS Certification
15 54 (0.84%) CCNP
16 50 (0.78%) Master's Degree
17 48 (0.74%) DBS Check
18 47 (0.73%) CCNA
19 46 (0.71%) A+ Certification
20 40 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 346 (5.37%) Data Quality
2 222 (3.44%) QA
3 220 (3.41%) GDPR
4 194 (3.01%) SLA
5 180 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 154 (2.39%) NIST
6 154 (2.39%) PMO
7 107 (1.66%) Accessibility
8 84 (1.30%) Cyber Essentials
9 77 (1.19%) NCSC
10 43 (0.67%) GRC
11 37 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 36 (0.56%) WCAG
13 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
16 15 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.23%) SOC 2
17 14 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,231 (19.10%) Active Directory
2 234 (3.63%) Docker
3 218 (3.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.78%) Hyper-V
5 99 (1.54%) Virtual Desktop
6 92 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (0.88%) vSphere
8 56 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.43%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.37%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.31%) Firmware
11 20 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.12%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 5 (0.078%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.062%) RACF
15 4 (0.062%) zsh
16 3 (0.047%) Snort
Systems Management
1 524 (8.13%) Microsoft Intune
2 451 (7.00%) Terraform
3 295 (4.58%) Kubernetes
4 233 (3.61%) SCCM
5 156 (2.42%) Ansible
6 116 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 49 (0.76%) Grafana
10 37 (0.57%) SCOM
11 36 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.51%) Prometheus
13 23 (0.36%) Puppet
14 22 (0.34%) QRadar
15 19 (0.29%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.29%) WSUS
16 17 (0.26%) Progress Chef
17 15 (0.23%) Argo
18 13 (0.20%) Avamar
19 12 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 461 (7.15%) ServiceNow
2 307 (4.76%) VMware
3 301 (4.67%) Oracle
4 261 (4.05%) SAP
5 223 (3.46%) Databricks
6 210 (3.26%) Cisco
6 210 (3.26%) Google
7 118 (1.83%) Salesforce
8 107 (1.66%) Citrix
9 100 (1.55%) Splunk
10 92 (1.43%) Apple
11 79 (1.23%) Foundry
12 78 (1.21%) CyberArk
13 76 (1.18%) OpenAI
14 71 (1.10%) Okta
15 68 (1.05%) CrowdStrike
16 61 (0.95%) Red Hat
17 58 (0.90%) BeyondTrust
18 54 (0.84%) Zscaler
19 48 (0.74%) Meraki