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 21 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
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,311 4,525 5,413
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.97% 13.89% 13.10%
As % of the Vendors category 29.03% 29.23% 30.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,138 2,901 3,548
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.66% -2.40%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £689
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £433 £450
% change year-on-year +3.93% -3.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 356 414
10th Percentile £13.67 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.70 £15.84 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.41 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +38.06% -27.87%
75th Percentile £35.53 £31.00 £28.32
90th Percentile £70.44 £63.40 £64.27
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.06
% change year-on-year +3.68% +26.12% -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 21,737 15,481 17,935
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.23% 47.51% 43.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,491 9,458 11,258
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +0.50% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.71% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,083 765 984
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.75 £12.90
25th Percentile £19.29 £17.30 £15.50
Median hourly rate £34.94 £25.15 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.93% -3.27% -36.65%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year +51.07% -10.00% -22.24%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 5,477 £494 +3.95% 3,212
UK excluding London -1 3,362 £450 +3.93% 2,630
London -2 2,399 £513 +2.45% 1,022
Work from Home +3 1,623 £500 - 1,257
South East -2 842 £475 - 860
North of England -5 828 £465 +9.41% 651
Midlands -2 584 £446 +15.84% 413
North West -3 469 £450 +3.69% 336
West Midlands -4 413 £450 +12.50% 224
South West -1 409 £475 +8.88% 278
Yorkshire -5 337 £481 +9.94% 222
Scotland +5 315 £449 -0.33% 122
East of England 0 275 £375 -25.00% 286
East Midlands +2 163 £413 +12.40% 188
Wales +1 110 £413 +49.48% 83
Northern Ireland 0 32 £350 -6.04% 26
North East -42 28 £450 +32.35% 109
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
1 705 (11.17%) SharePoint
2 388 (6.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 139 (2.20%) Confluence
4 38 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.55%) Apache
6 30 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 17 (0.27%) CMS
9 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
10 12 (0.19%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) SAS
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
14 6 (0.095%) Camunda
14 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
15 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.079%) SharePoint 2013
16 4 (0.063%) Exchange Server 2010
16 4 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 584 (9.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 566 (8.97%) Microsoft Office
3 254 (4.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 161 (2.55%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.71%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.048%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.048%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.048%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) InDesign
12 2 (0.032%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.032%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 227 (3.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.29%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.19%) Primavera
9 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
9 9 (0.14%) SAP MM
9 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
10 8 (0.13%) Magento
11 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
11 7 (0.11%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
11 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 6 (0.095%) Dynamics GP
12 6 (0.095%) iTrent
Cloud Services
1 2,632 (41.70%) Azure
2 1,552 (24.59%) Microsoft 365
3 1,061 (16.81%) Power Platform
4 923 (14.63%) Entra ID
5 574 (9.10%) AWS
6 507 (8.03%) Dynamics 365
7 501 (7.94%) Azure DevOps
8 359 (5.69%) Power Automate
9 328 (5.20%) Microsoft Copilot
10 327 (5.18%) PowerApps
11 303 (4.80%) Microsoft Purview
12 260 (4.12%) GitHub
13 235 (3.72%) SaaS
14 234 (3.71%) OneDrive
15 212 (3.36%) GCP
16 162 (2.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 158 (2.50%) Azure Data Factory
18 151 (2.39%) PaaS
19 146 (2.31%) Serverless
20 139 (2.20%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 344 (5.45%) DNS
2 308 (4.88%) Firewall
3 242 (3.83%) VPN
4 211 (3.34%) DHCP
5 176 (2.79%) TCP/IP
6 146 (2.31%) WAN
7 145 (2.30%) Wi-Fi
8 137 (2.17%) LAN
8 137 (2.17%) Network Security
9 59 (0.93%) VLAN
10 45 (0.71%) SAN
10 45 (0.71%) Wireless
11 40 (0.63%) MPLS
11 40 (0.63%) SSL
12 36 (0.57%) Kerberos
13 35 (0.55%) Unified Communications
14 31 (0.49%) Internet
14 31 (0.49%) SD-WAN
14 31 (0.49%) VoIP
15 26 (0.41%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 680 (10.77%) Power BI
2 358 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 184 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (2.00%) Data Lake
5 126 (2.00%) Metadata
6 117 (1.85%) Azure SQL Database
7 72 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 71 (1.13%) Relational Database
9 62 (0.98%) MySQL
10 58 (0.92%) Power Query
11 52 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 44 (0.70%) NoSQL
12 44 (0.70%) Oracle Database
13 40 (0.63%) Star Schema
14 37 (0.59%) Tableau
15 34 (0.54%) Delta Lake
16 33 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 26 (0.41%) Big Data
18 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 322 (5.10%) JIRA
2 190 (3.01%) Git
3 85 (1.35%) Jenkins
4 56 (0.89%) GitLab
5 46 (0.73%) Visual Studio
6 31 (0.49%) MSI
7 27 (0.43%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) MLflow
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
10 15 (0.24%) Artifactory
11 14 (0.22%) ERwin
11 14 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
14 11 (0.17%) JUnit
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
15 10 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,095 (33.20%) Social Skills
2 1,256 (19.90%) Finance
3 747 (11.84%) Analytical Skills
4 609 (9.65%) Public Sector
5 311 (4.93%) Banking
6 267 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
7 227 (3.60%) Legal
8 174 (2.76%) Documentation Skills
9 134 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 123 (1.95%) Manufacturing
11 115 (1.82%) Retail
12 111 (1.76%) Telecoms
13 103 (1.63%) Law
14 98 (1.55%) Marketing
15 84 (1.33%) Military
16 79 (1.25%) Local Government
17 77 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
18 72 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
19 61 (0.97%) Investment Banking
20 47 (0.74%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 743 (11.77%) Architect
2 669 (10.60%) Analyst
3 587 (9.30%) Developer
4 538 (8.52%) Senior
5 442 (7.00%) Lead
6 393 (6.23%) IT Support
7 385 (6.10%) Consultant
8 333 (5.28%) Support Engineer
9 240 (3.80%) Data Engineer
10 238 (3.77%) IT Engineer
11 232 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
12 221 (3.50%) Azure Engineer
13 217 (3.44%) Project Manager
14 212 (3.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 191 (3.03%) IT Support Engineer
16 183 (2.90%) Administrator
17 175 (2.77%) Business Analyst
18 149 (2.36%) Cloud Engineer
19 124 (1.96%) Security Engineer
20 111 (1.76%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 290 (4.60%) .NET
2 226 (3.58%) REST
3 130 (2.06%) Microsoft Graph
4 119 (1.89%) JSON
5 107 (1.70%) OAuth
6 100 (1.58%) PySpark
7 89 (1.41%) OpenID
8 88 (1.39%) SAML
8 88 (1.39%) Web Services
9 85 (1.35%) XML
10 79 (1.25%) React
11 78 (1.24%) .NET Framework
11 78 (1.24%) LDAP
12 66 (1.05%) SailPoint
13 64 (1.01%) RESTful
14 63 (1.00%) HTML
15 62 (0.98%) OAuth2
16 61 (0.97%) ARM Templates
16 61 (0.97%) SOAP
17 60 (0.95%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 395 (6.26%) Onboarding
2 302 (4.79%) Cloud Native
3 187 (2.96%) Product Ownership
4 172 (2.73%) Management Information System
5 134 (2.12%) Enterprise Software
6 132 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
7 124 (1.96%) Data Centre
7 124 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
8 121 (1.92%) PKI
9 120 (1.90%) AI Agents
10 109 (1.73%) Security Posture
11 92 (1.46%) Data Structures
12 91 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
13 82 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 81 (1.28%) Virtual Team
15 70 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 67 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
16 67 (1.06%) Replication
17 61 (0.97%) Driving Licence
18 56 (0.89%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,320 (20.92%) Windows
2 341 (5.40%) Windows Server
3 317 (5.02%) Windows 10
4 298 (4.72%) Linux
5 134 (2.12%) Mac OS
6 118 (1.87%) Android
7 110 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.70%) Unix
10 37 (0.59%) Windows Server 2016
11 34 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 31 (0.49%) VMS
13 30 (0.48%) Windows 7
14 24 (0.38%) Ubuntu
15 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.21%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
20 6 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,084 (17.18%) Problem-Solving
2 994 (15.75%) DevOps
3 957 (15.16%) Agile
4 884 (14.01%) Migration
5 831 (13.17%) Stakeholder Management
6 817 (12.95%) CI/CD
7 713 (11.30%) AI
8 692 (10.96%) Business Intelligence
9 667 (10.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 663 (10.51%) Continuous Improvement
11 657 (10.41%) Analytics
12 584 (9.25%) ITIL
13 493 (7.81%) Customer Service
14 468 (7.42%) Data Modelling
15 454 (7.19%) Roadmaps
16 442 (7.00%) Cybersecurity
17 441 (6.99%) Infrastructure as Code
18 411 (6.51%) Decision-Making
19 398 (6.31%) Validation
20 396 (6.27%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 792 (12.55%) SQL
2 677 (10.73%) PowerShell
3 646 (10.24%) Python
4 302 (4.79%) C#
5 226 (3.58%) JavaScript
6 201 (3.18%) Java
7 171 (2.71%) Bicep
8 117 (1.85%) Bash
9 112 (1.77%) T-SQL
10 90 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 84 (1.33%) TypeScript
12 72 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
13 40 (0.63%) VBA
14 34 (0.54%) C++
15 27 (0.43%) PL/SQL
16 25 (0.40%) VB
17 16 (0.25%) R
17 16 (0.25%) Scala
17 16 (0.25%) Shell Script
17 16 (0.25%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,285 (20.36%) Security Cleared
2 973 (15.42%) SC Cleared
3 612 (9.70%) Degree
4 321 (5.09%) Microsoft Certification
5 243 (3.85%) DV Cleared
6 220 (3.49%) Azure Certification
7 138 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
8 120 (1.90%) CISSP
9 119 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
9 119 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
10 81 (1.28%) PMP
11 73 (1.16%) PMI Certification
12 65 (1.03%) AWS Certification
12 65 (1.03%) CISM
13 53 (0.84%) Master's Degree
14 50 (0.79%) CCNP
15 47 (0.74%) CCNA
15 47 (0.74%) DBS Check
16 40 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
16 40 (0.63%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 328 (5.20%) Data Quality
2 219 (3.47%) GDPR
3 215 (3.41%) QA
4 178 (2.82%) SLA
5 170 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 143 (2.27%) NIST
6 143 (2.27%) PMO
7 102 (1.62%) Accessibility
8 81 (1.28%) Cyber Essentials
9 75 (1.19%) NCSC
10 45 (0.71%) GRC
11 35 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 31 (0.49%) WCAG
13 30 (0.48%) PCI DSS
14 26 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
16 16 (0.25%) NIST 800
16 16 (0.25%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
17 13 (0.21%) GMP
System Software
1 1,218 (19.30%) Active Directory
2 233 (3.69%) Docker
3 212 (3.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.73%) Hyper-V
5 92 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 87 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
7 59 (0.93%) vSphere
8 57 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.43%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.35%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.29%) Firmware
13 8 (0.13%) NFS
14 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 7 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.079%) RACF
15 5 (0.079%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.063%) Snort
16 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 499 (7.91%) Microsoft Intune
2 438 (6.94%) Terraform
3 291 (4.61%) Kubernetes
4 220 (3.49%) SCCM
5 148 (2.35%) Ansible
6 125 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
7 64 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
8 53 (0.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 52 (0.82%) vCenter Server
10 49 (0.78%) Grafana
11 37 (0.59%) Prometheus
12 35 (0.55%) SCOM
13 22 (0.35%) Puppet
14 20 (0.32%) QRadar
15 19 (0.30%) FortiGate
16 18 (0.29%) WSUS
17 15 (0.24%) Progress Chef
18 13 (0.21%) Argo
19 12 (0.19%) Avamar
20 11 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 420 (6.66%) ServiceNow
2 296 (4.69%) Oracle
3 294 (4.66%) VMware
4 253 (4.01%) SAP
5 212 (3.36%) Databricks
6 206 (3.26%) Cisco
7 204 (3.23%) Google
8 124 (1.96%) Salesforce
9 108 (1.71%) Citrix
10 96 (1.52%) Apple
11 95 (1.51%) Splunk
12 80 (1.27%) Foundry
13 74 (1.17%) CyberArk
13 74 (1.17%) OpenAI
14 73 (1.16%) Okta
15 70 (1.11%) CrowdStrike
16 61 (0.97%) Red Hat
17 57 (0.90%) BeyondTrust
18 50 (0.79%) Zscaler
19 47 (0.74%) HP