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 13 October 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
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,559 4,763 4,871
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.76% 14.46% 12.99%
As % of the Vendors category 32.99% 30.32% 29.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,736 3,109 3,010
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £375 £337 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £482
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -1.45% -3.60%
75th Percentile £590 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £670 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £440 £439
% change year-on-year +3.41% +0.28% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 651 377 250
10th Percentile £13.25 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £14.48 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.32 £22.30
Median % change year-on-year -19.34% +0.09% -3.07%
75th Percentile £29.07 £31.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £65.22 £64.05 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.64 £21.00 £18.35
% change year-on-year -16.00% +14.46% -16.60%

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 22,916 15,709 16,713
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.72% 47.71% 44.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,818 9,689 9,822
10th Percentile £310 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £619 £613 £625
90th Percentile £712 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,421 799 583
10th Percentile £13.70 £14.84 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.25 £17.87 £16.25
Median hourly rate £24.25 £25.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -24.24% -24.79%
75th Percentile £56.43 £38.59 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.18 £21.35 £30.21
% change year-on-year +8.60% -29.33% -29.76%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 October 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 6,562 £493 +3.68% 5,986
UK excluding London 0 4,048 £455 +3.41% 3,830
London +2 2,836 £523 +4.50% 2,533
Work from Home +3 1,911 £500 - 2,698
South East +1 1,091 £475 +5.56% 961
North of England -5 1,004 £461 +5.49% 1,002
Midlands -1 696 £425 +2.72% 592
North West -2 583 £469 +7.09% 499
West Midlands -1 476 £425 -3.41% 328
South West -1 445 £500 +11.11% 385
Scotland +5 380 £450 - 293
Yorkshire -3 369 £460 +3.66% 358
East of England 0 321 £348 -30.85% 358
East Midlands +1 216 £440 +17.33% 264
Wales 0 112 £413 +35.80% 139
North East -19 57 £426 +23.33% 157
Northern Ireland -2 35 £312 -10.86% 152
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 7

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
1 917 (12.13%) SharePoint
2 403 (5.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 164 (2.17%) Confluence
4 39 (0.52%) Apache
5 34 (0.45%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.38%) IIS
7 26 (0.34%) CMS
8 23 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 23 (0.30%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
10 17 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 12 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.13%) nginx
13 6 (0.079%) Exchange Server 2010
13 6 (0.079%) Mendix
13 6 (0.079%) OpenStack
13 6 (0.079%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.066%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.053%) Liferay
15 4 (0.053%) Umbraco
Applications
1 855 (11.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 794 (10.50%) Microsoft Office
3 336 (4.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 210 (2.78%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (1.56%) MS Visio
6 65 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.13%) Revit
12 7 (0.093%) Adobe Illustrator
12 7 (0.093%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.053%) SOLIDWORKS
14 3 (0.040%) 1Password
14 3 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.040%) Final Cut Pro
14 3 (0.040%) Productboard
14 3 (0.040%) Trello
Business Applications
1 272 (3.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 93 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 37 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 29 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.22%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 17 (0.22%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.19%) Primavera
8 12 (0.16%) Aladdin
8 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.15%) Magento
10 10 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
12 8 (0.11%) SAP PP
13 7 (0.093%) iTrent
13 7 (0.093%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.093%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.093%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,103 (41.05%) Azure
2 1,912 (25.29%) Microsoft 365
3 1,309 (17.32%) Power Platform
4 1,226 (16.22%) Entra ID
5 691 (9.14%) AWS
6 656 (8.68%) Azure DevOps
7 617 (8.16%) Dynamics 365
8 477 (6.31%) Microsoft Copilot
9 449 (5.94%) Power Automate
10 407 (5.38%) PowerApps
11 331 (4.38%) Microsoft Purview
12 323 (4.27%) GitHub
13 303 (4.01%) GCP
14 279 (3.69%) OneDrive
15 245 (3.24%) SaaS
16 209 (2.76%) Serverless
17 199 (2.63%) Azure Monitor
18 178 (2.35%) Azure Data Factory
19 173 (2.29%) Copilot Studio
20 172 (2.28%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 423 (5.60%) DNS
2 352 (4.66%) Firewall
3 312 (4.13%) VPN
4 276 (3.65%) DHCP
5 211 (2.79%) TCP/IP
6 172 (2.28%) Network Security
7 160 (2.12%) WAN
8 148 (1.96%) LAN
9 133 (1.76%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (0.99%) VLAN
11 73 (0.97%) Wireless
12 50 (0.66%) SAN
13 44 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.53%) Kerberos
14 40 (0.53%) Skype
15 39 (0.52%) Internet
16 38 (0.50%) MPLS
17 37 (0.49%) BGP
18 33 (0.44%) Unified Communications
18 33 (0.44%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 779 (10.31%) Power BI
2 420 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 174 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
4 171 (2.26%) Metadata
5 149 (1.97%) Data Lake
6 136 (1.80%) PostgreSQL
7 126 (1.67%) Azure SQL Database
8 93 (1.23%) Power Query
9 84 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 74 (0.98%) MySQL
11 73 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 56 (0.74%) NoSQL
13 54 (0.71%) Oracle Database
14 41 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 41 (0.54%) Star Schema
15 39 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
16 36 (0.48%) Delta Lake
16 36 (0.48%) MongoDB
17 32 (0.42%) BigQuery
18 30 (0.40%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 356 (4.71%) JIRA
2 259 (3.43%) Git
3 92 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 70 (0.93%) GitLab
5 61 (0.81%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.67%) MSI
7 38 (0.50%) Selenium
8 29 (0.38%) Postman
9 28 (0.37%) Claude Code
10 21 (0.28%) Cypress.io
11 19 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
12 18 (0.24%) Cucumber
13 17 (0.22%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
15 13 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
16 12 (0.16%) Subversion
17 10 (0.13%) ERwin
17 10 (0.13%) MLflow
17 10 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,839 (37.56%) Social Skills
2 1,501 (19.86%) Finance
3 989 (13.08%) Analytical Skills
4 693 (9.17%) Public Sector
5 487 (6.44%) Organisational Skills
6 330 (4.37%) Banking
7 252 (3.33%) Legal
8 237 (3.14%) Manufacturing
9 220 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
10 186 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 162 (2.14%) Retail
12 126 (1.67%) Telecoms
13 120 (1.59%) Marketing
14 105 (1.39%) Aerospace
15 103 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
16 95 (1.26%) Local Government
17 92 (1.22%) Military
18 80 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
19 76 (1.01%) Law
20 56 (0.74%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 842 (11.14%) Architect
2 726 (9.60%) Analyst
3 659 (8.72%) Senior
4 658 (8.70%) Developer
5 508 (6.72%) Lead
6 500 (6.61%) Consultant
7 443 (5.86%) IT Support
8 435 (5.75%) Support Engineer
9 375 (4.96%) Administrator
10 295 (3.90%) IT Engineer
11 293 (3.88%) Solutions Architect
12 267 (3.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 266 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
14 246 (3.25%) Data Engineer
15 244 (3.23%) IT Support Engineer
16 221 (2.92%) Project Manager
17 198 (2.62%) Business Analyst
18 195 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
19 148 (1.96%) Security Engineer
20 137 (1.81%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 574 (7.59%) Terraform
2 351 (4.64%) .NET
3 321 (4.25%) REST
4 161 (2.13%) OAuth
5 148 (1.96%) JSON
6 124 (1.64%) OpenID
7 122 (1.61%) SAML
8 118 (1.56%) XML
9 108 (1.43%) ARM Templates
10 106 (1.40%) Microsoft Graph
11 105 (1.39%) PySpark
12 99 (1.31%) React
13 93 (1.23%) Web Services
14 92 (1.22%) LDAP
15 89 (1.18%) OAuth2
16 87 (1.15%) .NET Framework
17 85 (1.12%) RESTful
18 81 (1.07%) HTML
18 81 (1.07%) SailPoint
19 70 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 622 (8.23%) Onboarding
2 335 (4.43%) Management Information System
3 327 (4.33%) Cloud Native
4 259 (3.43%) Enterprise Software
5 214 (2.83%) Product Ownership
6 183 (2.42%) AI Agents
7 173 (2.29%) Hybrid Cloud
8 168 (2.22%) PKI
9 160 (2.12%) Data Centre
10 150 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
12 107 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 100 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
14 99 (1.31%) CMDB
15 98 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
16 97 (1.28%) Driving Licence
17 88 (1.16%) Low-Code
18 83 (1.10%) Replication
19 81 (1.07%) Virtual Team
20 79 (1.05%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,584 (20.96%) Windows
2 492 (6.51%) Windows Server
3 397 (5.25%) Windows 10
4 361 (4.78%) Linux
5 161 (2.13%) macOS
6 135 (1.79%) Android
7 133 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 63 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 49 (0.65%) Unix
10 42 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.48%) Windows 7
13 35 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
14 33 (0.44%) VMS
15 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.28%) CentOS
17 20 (0.26%) Solaris
18 11 (0.15%) SUSE
19 8 (0.11%) AIX
20 7 (0.093%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,504 (19.90%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,426 (18.86%) Problem-Solving
3 1,163 (15.39%) DevOps
4 1,131 (14.96%) Agile
5 1,015 (13.43%) Migration
6 996 (13.18%) CI/CD
7 974 (12.89%) Continuous Improvement
8 921 (12.18%) AI
9 854 (11.30%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 802 (10.61%) Business Intelligence
11 765 (10.12%) Analytics
12 750 (9.92%) ITIL
13 714 (9.45%) Customer Service
14 639 (8.45%) Cybersecurity
15 617 (8.16%) Infrastructure as Code
16 594 (7.86%) Roadmaps
17 533 (7.05%) Project Delivery
18 529 (7.00%) Data Modelling
19 520 (6.88%) Decision-Making
20 506 (6.69%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 903 (11.95%) SQL
2 885 (11.71%) PowerShell
3 786 (10.40%) Python
4 374 (4.95%) C#
5 295 (3.90%) JavaScript
6 234 (3.10%) Bicep
7 195 (2.58%) Bash
8 162 (2.14%) Java
9 134 (1.77%) TypeScript
10 117 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 108 (1.43%) T-SQL
12 82 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.42%) VB
14 31 (0.41%) VBA
15 27 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.33%) VBScript
17 22 (0.29%) X++
18 21 (0.28%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.25%) R
20 16 (0.21%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,635 (21.63%) Security Cleared
2 1,202 (15.90%) SC Cleared
3 616 (8.15%) Degree
4 374 (4.95%) Microsoft Certification
5 330 (4.37%) DV Cleared
6 278 (3.68%) Azure Certification
7 209 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 143 (1.89%) CISSP
9 125 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
10 111 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
11 100 (1.32%) PMP
12 97 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 82 (1.08%) AWS Certification
14 79 (1.05%) CISM
15 68 (0.90%) DBS Check
16 57 (0.75%) A+ Certification
16 57 (0.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 53 (0.70%) CCNP
18 47 (0.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 45 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 474 (6.27%) Data Quality
2 255 (3.37%) QA
3 242 (3.20%) GDPR
4 225 (2.98%) SLA
5 220 (2.91%) PMO
6 215 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 188 (2.49%) NIST
8 133 (1.76%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
10 88 (1.16%) NCSC
11 65 (0.86%) GRC
12 48 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 47 (0.62%) WCAG
14 43 (0.57%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 24 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
17 23 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 23 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.22%) ISO 19650
18 17 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,392 (18.42%) Active Directory
2 282 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 250 (3.31%) Docker
4 150 (1.98%) Hyper-V
5 138 (1.83%) Virtual Desktop
6 122 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
7 80 (1.06%) vSphere
8 59 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.48%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
11 20 (0.26%) Firmware
12 17 (0.22%) VMware NSX
13 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 7 (0.093%) IAG
15 7 (0.093%) zsh
16 6 (0.079%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.079%) NFS
16 6 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.079%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 605 (8.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 344 (4.55%) Kubernetes
3 313 (4.14%) SCCM
4 177 (2.34%) Ansible
5 156 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
6 67 (0.89%) Grafana
7 60 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.71%) SCOM
9 46 (0.61%) vCenter Server
10 35 (0.46%) Prometheus
11 31 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 31 (0.41%) QRadar
12 27 (0.36%) Progress Chef
12 27 (0.36%) WSUS
13 22 (0.29%) Failover Clustering
14 21 (0.28%) Argo
15 20 (0.26%) FortiGate
15 20 (0.26%) Puppet
16 17 (0.22%) WMI
17 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 549 (7.26%) ServiceNow
2 362 (4.79%) VMware
3 360 (4.76%) Oracle
4 317 (4.19%) SAP
5 301 (3.98%) Google
6 265 (3.51%) Databricks
7 244 (3.23%) Cisco
8 140 (1.85%) Salesforce
9 132 (1.75%) Splunk
10 115 (1.52%) Apple
11 111 (1.47%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.39%) Citrix
12 105 (1.39%) OpenAI
13 100 (1.32%) Okta
14 96 (1.27%) BeyondTrust
15 90 (1.19%) Foundry
16 82 (1.08%) CrowdStrike
17 68 (0.90%) Red Hat
18 64 (0.85%) IBM
19 59 (0.78%) Zscaler