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 July 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 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,297 4,473 5,657
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.91% 13.78% 13.16%
As % of the Vendors category 28.87% 28.99% 30.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,136 2,876 3,688
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.95% -2.96% -2.10%
75th Percentile £588 £581 £600
90th Percentile £675 £668 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £430 £450
% change year-on-year +4.65% -4.44% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 339 483
10th Percentile £13.57 £14.16 £11.46
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.19
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.83% -28.14%
75th Percentile £35.30 £31.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £68.00 £63.40 £61.57
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £20.04 £16.06
% change year-on-year +3.34% +24.80% -15.47%

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 21,810 15,429 18,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.24% 47.54% 43.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,572 9,456 11,571
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,110 733 1,125
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.75 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £34.30 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.39% +0.60% -38.34%
75th Percentile £63.75 £52.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £82.38 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.18
% change year-on-year +43.61% -6.41% -20.72%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 0 5,472 £492 +3.58% 3,248
UK excluding London -1 3,342 £450 +4.65% 2,821
London -2 2,407 £505 -0.98% 976
Work from Home +2 1,627 £500 - 1,381
North of England -4 845 £466 +9.59% 675
South East -2 800 £475 - 905
Midlands -2 581 £447 +19.27% 445
North West -2 463 £450 +5.88% 339
West Midlands -3 407 £450 +20.00% 228
South West 0 406 £480 +14.63% 296
Yorkshire -3 361 £488 +9.86% 237
Scotland +5 299 £450 +2.39% 141
East of England 0 293 £350 -30.00% 294
East Midlands +1 166 £418 +11.33% 215
Wales +3 116 £391 +30.42% 81
Northern Ireland +2 33 £350 -6.04% 67
North East -36 27 £450 +32.35% 115
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14% 3

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
1 676 (10.74%) SharePoint
2 400 (6.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 136 (2.16%) Confluence
4 37 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.56%) Apache
6 30 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 19 (0.30%) CMS
9 15 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 14 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.17%) SAS
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 6 (0.095%) Camunda
13 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.079%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.064%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.064%) nginx
15 4 (0.064%) OpenStack
15 4 (0.064%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 581 (9.23%) Microsoft Office
2 579 (9.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 246 (3.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 144 (2.29%) Microsoft Project
5 113 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.095%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.079%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.048%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.048%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.048%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.032%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.032%) InDesign
12 2 (0.032%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 221 (3.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.30%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.21%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.16%) Primavera
11 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
11 9 (0.14%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
13 7 (0.11%) Magento
13 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
13 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.095%) iTrent
14 6 (0.095%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,633 (41.81%) Azure
2 1,553 (24.66%) Microsoft 365
3 1,068 (16.96%) Power Platform
4 897 (14.24%) Entra ID
5 563 (8.94%) AWS
6 505 (8.02%) Azure DevOps
7 486 (7.72%) Dynamics 365
8 357 (5.67%) Power Automate
9 329 (5.22%) PowerApps
10 324 (5.15%) Microsoft Copilot
11 314 (4.99%) Microsoft Purview
12 255 (4.05%) GitHub
13 236 (3.75%) OneDrive
14 230 (3.65%) SaaS
15 206 (3.27%) GCP
16 166 (2.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 162 (2.57%) Azure Data Factory
18 152 (2.41%) Serverless
19 149 (2.37%) Azure Logic Apps
20 146 (2.32%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 348 (5.53%) DNS
2 296 (4.70%) Firewall
3 241 (3.83%) VPN
4 207 (3.29%) DHCP
5 160 (2.54%) TCP/IP
6 159 (2.53%) WAN
7 145 (2.30%) Wi-Fi
8 142 (2.26%) LAN
9 132 (2.10%) Network Security
10 59 (0.94%) VLAN
11 46 (0.73%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.71%) SAN
13 43 (0.68%) Wireless
14 42 (0.67%) SSL
15 41 (0.65%) SD-WAN
16 38 (0.60%) MPLS
17 35 (0.56%) Unified Communications
18 31 (0.49%) Internet
18 31 (0.49%) VoIP
19 29 (0.46%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 683 (10.85%) Power BI
2 340 (5.40%) SQL Server
3 181 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
4 142 (2.26%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (2.02%) Metadata
6 124 (1.97%) Data Lake
7 123 (1.95%) Azure SQL Database
8 75 (1.19%) Relational Database
9 70 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 66 (1.05%) MySQL
11 59 (0.94%) Power Query
12 52 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.71%) Star Schema
14 44 (0.70%) NoSQL
15 41 (0.65%) Oracle Database
16 40 (0.64%) Tableau
17 33 (0.52%) Delta Lake
17 33 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 27 (0.43%) Big Data
19 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 320 (5.08%) JIRA
2 190 (3.02%) Git
3 80 (1.27%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.91%) GitLab
5 40 (0.64%) Visual Studio
6 30 (0.48%) MSI
7 21 (0.33%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Artifactory
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.27%) ERwin
9 16 (0.25%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) JUnit
10 15 (0.24%) Postman
11 14 (0.22%) Maven
12 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
12 13 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
13 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.19%) Visual Studio Code
14 11 (0.17%) WebDriver
15 10 (0.16%) Cypress.io
General
1 2,077 (32.98%) Social Skills
2 1,257 (19.96%) Finance
3 727 (11.55%) Analytical Skills
4 594 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 317 (5.03%) Banking
6 274 (4.35%) Organisational Skills
7 246 (3.91%) Legal
8 173 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (1.97%) Manufacturing
10 123 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 112 (1.78%) Retail
12 103 (1.64%) Law
13 101 (1.60%) Telecoms
14 89 (1.41%) Marketing
15 86 (1.37%) Military
16 81 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
17 74 (1.18%) Local Government
18 67 (1.06%) Investment Banking
19 65 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
20 46 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 760 (12.07%) Architect
2 674 (10.70%) Analyst
3 586 (9.31%) Developer
4 520 (8.26%) Senior
5 433 (6.88%) Lead
6 389 (6.18%) IT Support
7 382 (6.07%) Consultant
8 320 (5.08%) Support Engineer
9 242 (3.84%) Solutions Architect
10 240 (3.81%) Data Engineer
11 230 (3.65%) IT Engineer
12 221 (3.51%) Project Manager
13 216 (3.43%) Azure Engineer
14 196 (3.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 186 (2.95%) Administrator
16 181 (2.87%) IT Support Engineer
17 180 (2.86%) Business Analyst
18 137 (2.18%) Cloud Engineer
19 120 (1.91%) Security Engineer
20 109 (1.73%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (4.48%) .NET
2 224 (3.56%) REST
3 137 (2.18%) Microsoft Graph
4 120 (1.91%) OAuth
5 116 (1.84%) JSON
6 104 (1.65%) PySpark
7 101 (1.60%) SAML
8 90 (1.43%) OpenID
9 85 (1.35%) Web Services
10 83 (1.32%) React
11 81 (1.29%) LDAP
12 74 (1.18%) XML
13 65 (1.03%) RESTful
14 64 (1.02%) .NET Framework
15 63 (1.00%) Node.js
16 62 (0.98%) SailPoint
17 61 (0.97%) HTML
17 61 (0.97%) OAuth2
18 59 (0.94%) Middleware
19 57 (0.91%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 372 (5.91%) Onboarding
2 299 (4.75%) Cloud Native
3 176 (2.79%) Product Ownership
4 165 (2.62%) Management Information System
5 136 (2.16%) Legacy Systems
6 128 (2.03%) Data Centre
7 125 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
8 113 (1.79%) AI Agents
9 111 (1.76%) Hybrid Cloud
10 110 (1.75%) PKI
11 106 (1.68%) Security Posture
12 90 (1.43%) Data Structures
12 90 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
13 80 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
13 80 (1.27%) Replication
13 80 (1.27%) Virtual Team
14 73 (1.16%) Low-Code
15 66 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
16 57 (0.91%) Driving Licence
17 55 (0.87%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,339 (21.26%) Windows
2 343 (5.45%) Windows Server
3 331 (5.26%) Windows 10
4 280 (4.45%) Linux
5 135 (2.14%) Mac OS
6 114 (1.81%) Android
7 107 (1.70%) Apple iOS
8 48 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (0.75%) Unix
10 40 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 39 (0.62%) Windows 7
12 34 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.46%) VMS
14 22 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.30%) Ubuntu
16 12 (0.19%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
16 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2003
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 7 (0.11%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,079 (17.14%) Problem-Solving
2 998 (15.85%) DevOps
3 935 (14.85%) Agile
4 881 (13.99%) Migration
5 819 (13.01%) CI/CD
6 780 (12.39%) Stakeholder Management
7 699 (11.10%) AI
8 697 (11.07%) Business Intelligence
9 656 (10.42%) Analytics
10 644 (10.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 630 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
12 569 (9.04%) ITIL
13 477 (7.58%) Customer Service
14 464 (7.37%) Data Modelling
15 443 (7.04%) Roadmaps
16 430 (6.83%) Cybersecurity
17 420 (6.67%) Infrastructure as Code
18 408 (6.48%) Decision-Making
19 388 (6.16%) Validation
20 381 (6.05%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 805 (12.78%) SQL
2 677 (10.75%) PowerShell
3 658 (10.45%) Python
4 290 (4.61%) C#
5 221 (3.51%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.10%) Java
7 160 (2.54%) Bicep
8 114 (1.81%) T-SQL
9 98 (1.56%) Bash
10 90 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.38%) TypeScript
12 80 (1.27%) Kusto Query Language
13 38 (0.60%) VBA
14 33 (0.52%) C++
15 30 (0.48%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.43%) VB
17 19 (0.30%) VBScript
18 17 (0.27%) Scala
18 17 (0.27%) Shell Script
19 15 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,250 (19.85%) Security Cleared
2 968 (15.37%) SC Cleared
3 607 (9.64%) Degree
4 314 (4.99%) Microsoft Certification
5 219 (3.48%) DV Cleared
6 212 (3.37%) Azure Certification
7 131 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
8 126 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
9 117 (1.86%) CISSP
10 110 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
11 70 (1.11%) PMP
12 64 (1.02%) PMI Certification
13 62 (0.98%) CISM
14 58 (0.92%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.87%) Master's Degree
16 49 (0.78%) CCNP
17 45 (0.71%) DBS Check
18 44 (0.70%) CCNA
18 44 (0.70%) MCSE
19 39 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 324 (5.15%) Data Quality
2 236 (3.75%) GDPR
3 209 (3.32%) QA
4 182 (2.89%) SLA
5 166 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 139 (2.21%) NIST
7 128 (2.03%) PMO
8 95 (1.51%) Accessibility
9 84 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
10 73 (1.16%) NCSC
11 40 (0.64%) GRC
12 36 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 32 (0.51%) PCI DSS
15 29 (0.46%) WCAG
16 19 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 17 (0.27%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 12 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 1,211 (19.23%) Active Directory
2 238 (3.78%) Docker
3 211 (3.35%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.76%) Hyper-V
5 94 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
7 59 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (0.92%) vSphere
9 32 (0.51%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Firmware
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 5 (0.079%) RACF
14 5 (0.079%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.064%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.064%) Snort
15 4 (0.064%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 497 (7.89%) Microsoft Intune
2 416 (6.61%) Terraform
3 283 (4.49%) Kubernetes
4 223 (3.54%) SCCM
5 138 (2.19%) Ansible
6 129 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
7 67 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 64 (1.02%) Jamf Pro
9 51 (0.81%) vCenter Server
10 47 (0.75%) Grafana
11 36 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 32 (0.51%) SCOM
13 23 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 19 (0.30%) Puppet
14 19 (0.30%) WSUS
15 18 (0.29%) QRadar
16 11 (0.17%) AirWatch
16 11 (0.17%) Argo
16 11 (0.17%) HAProxy
16 11 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 400 (6.35%) ServiceNow
2 291 (4.62%) Oracle
2 291 (4.62%) VMware
3 257 (4.08%) SAP
4 210 (3.33%) Databricks
5 209 (3.32%) Cisco
6 195 (3.10%) Google
7 125 (1.99%) Salesforce
8 108 (1.72%) Citrix
9 100 (1.59%) Splunk
10 93 (1.48%) Apple
11 81 (1.29%) Foundry
12 79 (1.25%) OpenAI
13 75 (1.19%) Okta
14 72 (1.14%) CyberArk
15 64 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
16 50 (0.79%) Red Hat
17 49 (0.78%) HP
18 47 (0.75%) Zscaler
19 44 (0.70%) BeyondTrust