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 10 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
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,584 4,586 5,020
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.34% 13.83% 12.94%
As % of the Vendors category 29.73% 29.26% 29.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,286 2,938 3,280
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £585 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 428 374 357
10th Percentile £13.64 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -27.96%
75th Percentile £37.31 £30.63 £43.75
90th Percentile £70.53 £63.36 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.51 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year +1.26% +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 22,146 15,674 16,938
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.52% 47.28% 43.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,674 9,588 10,606
10th Percentile £313 £280 £287
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £606 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.28% -4.10% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,158 798 841
10th Percentile £14.94 £14.50 £13.69
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -13.28% -30.12%
75th Percentile £65.00 £48.75 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.36 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £21.39 £28.00
% change year-on-year +49.60% -23.61% -18.84%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 5,759 £490 +3.16% 5,069
UK excluding London -1 3,512 £450 +2.86% 3,948
London -2 2,520 £510 +2.00% 1,804
Work from Home +3 1,718 £500 - 1,957
South East 0 909 £475 +0.53% 1,196
North of England -4 874 £454 +3.89% 946
Midlands -2 616 £448 +15.86% 617
North West +1 505 £450 +2.86% 501
South West 0 439 £470 +9.30% 458
West Midlands -4 425 £450 +12.50% 353
Yorkshire -5 342 £475 +8.57% 329
Scotland +7 318 £450 - 205
East of England -1 255 £375 -25.00% 410
East Midlands +2 182 £425 +20.74% 264
Wales 0 99 £413 +39.83% 133
Northern Ireland -3 32 £369 -1.01% 70
North East -40 31 £450 +35.34% 135
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 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
1 770 (11.70%) SharePoint
2 397 (6.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 145 (2.20%) Confluence
4 39 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.58%) Apache
6 31 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) IIS
8 19 (0.29%) CMS
9 18 (0.27%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.15%) SAS
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
14 6 (0.091%) Apache Superset
14 6 (0.091%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.091%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.091%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.091%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.076%) Camunda
Applications
1 640 (9.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 615 (9.34%) Microsoft Office
3 267 (4.06%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 173 (2.63%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.64%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.11%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.091%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.091%) Revit
12 4 (0.061%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.061%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.046%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.046%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.046%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.046%) MicroStation
13 3 (0.046%) Trello
14 2 (0.030%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 240 (3.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 20 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
4 20 (0.30%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
6 13 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.18%) Primavera
8 11 (0.17%) Aladdin
9 10 (0.15%) Magento
10 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.12%) Sage X3
12 7 (0.11%) iTrent
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.11%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
13 6 (0.091%) Integrated Workplace Management System
13 6 (0.091%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,770 (42.07%) Azure
2 1,677 (25.47%) Microsoft 365
3 1,152 (17.50%) Power Platform
4 999 (15.17%) Entra ID
5 581 (8.82%) AWS
6 556 (8.44%) Dynamics 365
7 553 (8.40%) Azure DevOps
8 406 (6.17%) Power Automate
9 366 (5.56%) PowerApps
10 361 (5.48%) Microsoft Copilot
11 302 (4.59%) Microsoft Purview
12 284 (4.31%) GitHub
13 252 (3.83%) OneDrive
14 231 (3.51%) SaaS
15 220 (3.34%) GCP
16 173 (2.63%) Azure Data Factory
17 166 (2.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 153 (2.32%) Azure Monitor
19 152 (2.31%) Serverless
20 147 (2.23%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 360 (5.47%) DNS
2 336 (5.10%) Firewall
3 268 (4.07%) VPN
4 220 (3.34%) DHCP
5 185 (2.81%) TCP/IP
6 151 (2.29%) WAN
7 149 (2.26%) Network Security
8 140 (2.13%) Wi-Fi
9 137 (2.08%) LAN
10 71 (1.08%) VLAN
11 51 (0.77%) Wireless
12 47 (0.71%) SAN
13 42 (0.64%) MPLS
14 35 (0.53%) SSL
15 34 (0.52%) Unified Communications
16 31 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 29 (0.44%) Internet
18 28 (0.43%) VoIP
19 27 (0.41%) BGP
20 26 (0.39%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 720 (10.94%) Power BI
2 375 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 194 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.02%) Data Lake
4 133 (2.02%) Metadata
5 132 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
6 130 (1.97%) Azure SQL Database
7 74 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 71 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.02%) Power Query
10 63 (0.96%) MySQL
11 54 (0.82%) NoSQL
12 46 (0.70%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.64%) Star Schema
15 36 (0.55%) Delta Lake
16 35 (0.53%) Tableau
17 28 (0.43%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 24 (0.36%) Big Data
18 24 (0.36%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 322 (4.89%) JIRA
2 200 (3.04%) Git
3 90 (1.37%) Jenkins
4 71 (1.08%) GitLab
5 57 (0.87%) Visual Studio
6 38 (0.58%) MSI
7 31 (0.47%) Selenium
8 19 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.26%) Eclipse
10 16 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
10 16 (0.24%) WebDriver
11 14 (0.21%) MLflow
12 13 (0.20%) Claude Code
12 13 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.18%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.18%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.18%) ERwin
13 12 (0.18%) JUnit
General
1 2,269 (34.46%) Social Skills
2 1,325 (20.12%) Finance
3 835 (12.68%) Analytical Skills
4 624 (9.48%) Public Sector
5 325 (4.94%) Organisational Skills
6 321 (4.88%) Banking
7 229 (3.48%) Legal
8 176 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
9 150 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 139 (2.11%) Manufacturing
11 134 (2.04%) Retail
12 115 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 104 (1.58%) Law
13 104 (1.58%) Marketing
14 92 (1.40%) Local Government
15 83 (1.26%) Military
16 79 (1.20%) Influencing Skills
17 69 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
18 63 (0.96%) Investment Banking
19 58 (0.88%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 749 (11.38%) Architect
2 676 (10.27%) Analyst
3 614 (9.33%) Developer
4 575 (8.73%) Senior
5 466 (7.08%) Lead
6 413 (6.27%) IT Support
7 405 (6.15%) Consultant
8 375 (5.70%) Support Engineer
9 263 (3.99%) IT Engineer
10 249 (3.78%) Data Engineer
11 248 (3.77%) Solutions Architect
12 232 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
13 231 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 219 (3.33%) Administrator
15 217 (3.30%) Project Manager
16 210 (3.19%) IT Support Engineer
17 181 (2.75%) Business Analyst
18 165 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
19 129 (1.96%) Security Engineer
20 111 (1.69%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 313 (4.75%) .NET
2 256 (3.89%) REST
3 129 (1.96%) JSON
4 115 (1.75%) OAuth
5 113 (1.72%) Microsoft Graph
6 105 (1.59%) PySpark
7 98 (1.49%) XML
8 94 (1.43%) SAML
9 92 (1.40%) OpenID
10 90 (1.37%) .NET Framework
11 83 (1.26%) Web Services
12 77 (1.17%) React
13 73 (1.11%) RESTful
14 71 (1.08%) HTML
15 68 (1.03%) LDAP
16 67 (1.02%) ARM Templates
16 67 (1.02%) OAuth2
17 64 (0.97%) SOAP
18 63 (0.96%) SailPoint
19 61 (0.93%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 455 (6.91%) Onboarding
2 308 (4.68%) Cloud Native
3 205 (3.11%) Management Information System
4 183 (2.78%) Product Ownership
5 167 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
6 142 (2.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 137 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
8 127 (1.93%) AI Agents
8 127 (1.93%) PKI
9 125 (1.90%) Security Posture
10 122 (1.85%) Data Centre
11 93 (1.41%) Data Structures
12 92 (1.40%) Self-Motivation
13 85 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
14 79 (1.20%) Virtual Team
15 75 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 70 (1.06%) Driving Licence
17 66 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
18 62 (0.94%) Analytical Mindset
18 62 (0.94%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 1,398 (21.23%) Windows
2 395 (6.00%) Windows Server
3 336 (5.10%) Windows 10
4 314 (4.77%) Linux
5 136 (2.07%) Mac OS
6 123 (1.87%) Android
7 115 (1.75%) Apple iOS
8 60 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.68%) Unix
10 38 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.52%) Windows Server 2016
12 33 (0.50%) Windows 7
13 32 (0.49%) VMS
14 28 (0.43%) Ubuntu
15 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.21%) CentOS
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 10 (0.15%) Solaris
18 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
19 6 (0.091%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,182 (17.95%) Problem-Solving
2 1,042 (15.83%) DevOps
3 1,002 (15.22%) Agile
4 962 (14.61%) Stakeholder Management
5 933 (14.17%) Migration
6 862 (13.09%) CI/CD
7 761 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 753 (11.44%) AI
9 746 (11.33%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 731 (11.10%) Business Intelligence
11 687 (10.43%) Analytics
12 629 (9.55%) ITIL
13 558 (8.48%) Customer Service
14 486 (7.38%) Data Modelling
15 484 (7.35%) Infrastructure as Code
16 480 (7.29%) Cybersecurity
17 473 (7.18%) Roadmaps
18 433 (6.58%) Project Delivery
19 425 (6.46%) Decision-Making
20 420 (6.38%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 830 (12.61%) SQL
2 703 (10.68%) PowerShell
3 677 (10.28%) Python
4 324 (4.92%) C#
5 245 (3.72%) JavaScript
6 185 (2.81%) Bicep
6 185 (2.81%) Java
7 141 (2.14%) Bash
8 114 (1.73%) T-SQL
9 105 (1.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 87 (1.32%) TypeScript
11 69 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
12 38 (0.58%) VBA
13 31 (0.47%) C++
14 25 (0.38%) PL/SQL
15 23 (0.35%) VB
16 21 (0.32%) X++
17 18 (0.27%) VBScript
18 17 (0.26%) Scala
19 16 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,375 (20.88%) Security Cleared
2 1,037 (15.75%) SC Cleared
3 636 (9.66%) Degree
4 345 (5.24%) Microsoft Certification
5 261 (3.96%) DV Cleared
6 237 (3.60%) Azure Certification
7 161 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
8 127 (1.93%) CISSP
9 124 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 118 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
11 90 (1.37%) PMP
12 83 (1.26%) PMI Certification
13 68 (1.03%) AWS Certification
13 68 (1.03%) CISM
14 55 (0.84%) CCNP
15 51 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 49 (0.74%) DBS Check
17 48 (0.73%) A+ Certification
18 47 (0.71%) CCNA
19 41 (0.62%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 362 (5.50%) Data Quality
2 227 (3.45%) GDPR
3 225 (3.42%) QA
4 192 (2.92%) SLA
5 186 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 165 (2.51%) PMO
7 160 (2.43%) NIST
8 107 (1.63%) Accessibility
9 83 (1.26%) NCSC
10 80 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
11 46 (0.70%) GRC
12 38 (0.58%) WCAG
13 34 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 34 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 33 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 19 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
16 15 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 14 (0.21%) P3O
17 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,272 (19.32%) Active Directory
2 242 (3.68%) Docker
3 234 (3.55%) VMware Infrastructure
4 127 (1.93%) Hyper-V
5 104 (1.58%) Virtual Desktop
6 94 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.91%) vSphere
8 58 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.39%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.29%) Firmware
11 19 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.12%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) zsh
14 6 (0.091%) Virtual Servers
15 5 (0.076%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.046%) Snort
Systems Management
1 538 (8.17%) Microsoft Intune
2 477 (7.24%) Terraform
3 315 (4.78%) Kubernetes
4 239 (3.63%) SCCM
5 163 (2.48%) Ansible
6 116 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (0.93%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.82%) Grafana
9 52 (0.79%) vCenter Server
10 40 (0.61%) SCOM
11 36 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 36 (0.55%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.35%) WSUS
13 22 (0.33%) Puppet
13 22 (0.33%) QRadar
14 20 (0.30%) Progress Chef
15 19 (0.29%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.24%) Argo
17 14 (0.21%) CASB
17 14 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 476 (7.23%) ServiceNow
2 321 (4.88%) VMware
3 304 (4.62%) Oracle
4 259 (3.93%) SAP
5 223 (3.39%) Google
6 221 (3.36%) Databricks
7 210 (3.19%) Cisco
8 115 (1.75%) Salesforce
9 107 (1.63%) Citrix
10 105 (1.59%) Splunk
11 98 (1.49%) Apple
12 80 (1.22%) CyberArk
13 79 (1.20%) Foundry
14 75 (1.14%) OpenAI
15 74 (1.12%) Okta
16 70 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
17 62 (0.94%) Red Hat
18 61 (0.93%) BeyondTrust
19 56 (0.85%) Zscaler
20 51 (0.77%) Meraki