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 25 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
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,372 4,532 5,264
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.03% 13.85% 12.98%
As % of the Vendors category 29.08% 29.23% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,195 2,905 3,458
10th Percentile £216 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.95% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £585 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £431 £450
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 363 391
10th Percentile £13.70 £13.80 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.70 £15.84 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.35 £22.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.11% +38.63% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.81 £28.75
90th Percentile £73.85 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.13 £20.26 £16.13
% change year-on-year +4.30% +25.61% -15.13%

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 21,914 15,504 17,631
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.37% 47.39% 43.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,620 9,484 11,076
10th Percentile £313 £280 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,086 767 942
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.67 £13.25
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.04 £15.62
Median hourly rate £35.36 £25.15 £26.97
Median % change year-on-year +40.60% -6.75% -35.01%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.61 £22.41 £25.00
% change year-on-year +54.47% -10.37% -22.60%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 -1 5,537 £493 +3.68% 3,307
UK excluding London -1 3,390 £450 +4.41% 2,777
London -2 2,428 £510 +1.90% 1,041
Work from Home +3 1,651 £500 - 1,199
South East -1 849 £475 - 890
North of England -5 839 £465 +6.90% 686
Midlands -2 595 £447 +19.20% 452
North West -2 477 £450 +2.92% 349
West Midlands -3 423 £450 +18.03% 252
South West -1 414 £475 +10.47% 295
Yorkshire -5 338 £475 +5.56% 242
Scotland +7 318 £450 - 116
East of England 0 267 £375 -25.00% 313
East Midlands +2 164 £418 +14.46% 199
Wales +1 110 £413 +49.48% 87
Northern Ireland -2 31 £350 -6.04% 34
North East -41 30 £450 +32.35% 112
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
1 726 (11.39%) SharePoint
2 396 (6.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 145 (2.28%) Confluence
4 42 (0.66%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.55%) Apache
6 28 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 16 (0.25%) CMS
9 14 (0.22%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) SAS
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.13%) nginx
15 6 (0.094%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.094%) SharePoint 2013
16 5 (0.078%) Camunda
16 5 (0.078%) OpenEdge
16 5 (0.078%) OpenStack
17 4 (0.063%) Liferay
Applications
1 590 (9.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 573 (8.99%) Microsoft Office
3 254 (3.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 161 (2.53%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.68%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.094%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.031%) Navisworks
12 2 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 236 (3.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.46%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.19%) Primavera
10 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.13%) Magento
12 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.11%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.094%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.094%) Loan IQ
13 6 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,664 (41.81%) Azure
2 1,576 (24.73%) Microsoft 365
3 1,092 (17.14%) Power Platform
4 935 (14.67%) Entra ID
5 570 (8.95%) AWS
6 529 (8.30%) Dynamics 365
7 528 (8.29%) Azure DevOps
8 379 (5.95%) Power Automate
9 347 (5.45%) PowerApps
10 335 (5.26%) Microsoft Copilot
11 296 (4.65%) Microsoft Purview
12 259 (4.06%) GitHub
13 241 (3.78%) OneDrive
14 233 (3.66%) SaaS
15 206 (3.23%) GCP
16 164 (2.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 163 (2.56%) Azure Data Factory
18 154 (2.42%) PaaS
19 151 (2.37%) Serverless
20 145 (2.28%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 338 (5.30%) DNS
2 313 (4.91%) Firewall
3 247 (3.88%) VPN
4 209 (3.28%) DHCP
5 176 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 148 (2.32%) WAN
6 148 (2.32%) Wi-Fi
7 141 (2.21%) LAN
8 140 (2.20%) Network Security
9 64 (1.00%) VLAN
10 46 (0.72%) Wireless
11 44 (0.69%) SAN
12 41 (0.64%) MPLS
12 41 (0.64%) SSL
13 37 (0.58%) Unified Communications
14 30 (0.47%) Internet
14 30 (0.47%) SD-WAN
14 30 (0.47%) VoIP
15 29 (0.46%) Kerberos
16 27 (0.42%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 689 (10.81%) Power BI
2 366 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 187 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 132 (2.07%) PostgreSQL
5 131 (2.06%) Data Lake
6 127 (1.99%) Metadata
7 123 (1.93%) Azure SQL Database
8 74 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 72 (1.13%) Relational Database
10 63 (0.99%) MySQL
11 60 (0.94%) Power Query
12 52 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 50 (0.78%) NoSQL
14 45 (0.71%) Oracle Database
15 40 (0.63%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.58%) Tableau
17 34 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 34 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 26 (0.41%) Big Data
19 25 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 326 (5.12%) JIRA
2 197 (3.09%) Git
3 86 (1.35%) Jenkins
4 59 (0.93%) GitLab
5 51 (0.80%) Visual Studio
6 32 (0.50%) MSI
7 28 (0.44%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.27%) Postman
9 16 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
10 15 (0.24%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) WebDriver
11 14 (0.22%) ERwin
12 13 (0.20%) Artifactory
12 13 (0.20%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.17%) JUnit
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,122 (33.30%) Social Skills
2 1,294 (20.31%) Finance
3 764 (11.99%) Analytical Skills
4 618 (9.70%) Public Sector
5 316 (4.96%) Banking
6 273 (4.28%) Organisational Skills
7 218 (3.42%) Legal
8 173 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (2.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 123 (1.93%) Manufacturing
11 119 (1.87%) Retail
12 110 (1.73%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.60%) Law
14 97 (1.52%) Marketing
15 85 (1.33%) Military
16 82 (1.29%) Local Government
17 74 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
18 71 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
19 60 (0.94%) Investment Banking
20 47 (0.74%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 744 (11.68%) Architect
2 679 (10.66%) Analyst
3 608 (9.54%) Developer
4 553 (8.68%) Senior
5 446 (7.00%) Lead
6 393 (6.17%) IT Support
7 390 (6.12%) Consultant
8 336 (5.27%) Support Engineer
9 244 (3.83%) Data Engineer
10 240 (3.77%) IT Engineer
11 235 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
12 225 (3.53%) Azure Engineer
13 214 (3.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 210 (3.30%) Project Manager
15 192 (3.01%) IT Support Engineer
16 182 (2.86%) Administrator
16 182 (2.86%) Business Analyst
17 150 (2.35%) Cloud Engineer
18 127 (1.99%) Security Engineer
19 114 (1.79%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 300 (4.71%) .NET
2 240 (3.77%) REST
3 130 (2.04%) Microsoft Graph
4 123 (1.93%) JSON
5 113 (1.77%) OAuth
6 105 (1.65%) PySpark
7 93 (1.46%) OpenID
8 92 (1.44%) SAML
9 89 (1.40%) XML
10 88 (1.38%) Web Services
11 85 (1.33%) .NET Framework
12 82 (1.29%) React
13 71 (1.11%) RESTful
14 69 (1.08%) LDAP
15 68 (1.07%) HTML
16 67 (1.05%) ARM Templates
17 65 (1.02%) SailPoint
17 65 (1.02%) SOAP
18 63 (0.99%) CSS
18 63 (0.99%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 410 (6.43%) Onboarding
2 304 (4.77%) Cloud Native
3 191 (3.00%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.76%) Management Information System
5 146 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
6 133 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
7 124 (1.95%) AI Agents
7 124 (1.95%) Data Centre
8 123 (1.93%) Hybrid Cloud
9 122 (1.91%) PKI
10 113 (1.77%) Security Posture
11 98 (1.54%) Data Structures
12 91 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
13 81 (1.27%) Virtual Team
14 80 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
15 71 (1.11%) Low-Code
16 67 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
17 66 (1.04%) Driving Licence
18 63 (0.99%) Replication
19 55 (0.86%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,336 (20.97%) Windows
2 345 (5.41%) Windows Server
3 321 (5.04%) Windows 10
4 304 (4.77%) Linux
5 134 (2.10%) Mac OS
6 119 (1.87%) Android
7 111 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.71%) Unix
10 36 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
11 33 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 30 (0.47%) VMS
12 30 (0.47%) Windows 7
13 26 (0.41%) Ubuntu
14 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
15 13 (0.20%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
19 6 (0.094%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,106 (17.36%) Problem-Solving
2 1,012 (15.88%) DevOps
3 979 (15.36%) Agile
4 901 (14.14%) Migration
5 864 (13.56%) Stakeholder Management
6 832 (13.06%) CI/CD
7 726 (11.39%) AI
8 704 (11.05%) Business Intelligence
9 696 (10.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 689 (10.81%) Continuous Improvement
11 675 (10.59%) Analytics
12 586 (9.20%) ITIL
13 503 (7.89%) Customer Service
14 469 (7.36%) Data Modelling
15 464 (7.28%) Roadmaps
16 449 (7.05%) Cybersecurity
17 448 (7.03%) Infrastructure as Code
18 418 (6.56%) Decision-Making
19 410 (6.43%) Validation
20 402 (6.31%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 814 (12.77%) SQL
2 682 (10.70%) PowerShell
3 655 (10.28%) Python
4 319 (5.01%) C#
5 237 (3.72%) JavaScript
6 200 (3.14%) Java
7 181 (2.84%) Bicep
8 123 (1.93%) Bash
9 114 (1.79%) T-SQL
10 92 (1.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.35%) TypeScript
12 73 (1.15%) Kusto Query Language
13 42 (0.66%) VBA
14 33 (0.52%) C++
15 28 (0.44%) PL/SQL
15 28 (0.44%) VB
16 19 (0.30%) X++
17 16 (0.25%) R
17 16 (0.25%) Scala
17 16 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,301 (20.42%) Security Cleared
2 987 (15.49%) SC Cleared
3 625 (9.81%) Degree
4 322 (5.05%) Microsoft Certification
5 245 (3.84%) DV Cleared
6 227 (3.56%) Azure Certification
7 147 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
8 121 (1.90%) CISSP
9 119 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
10 117 (1.84%) Computer Science Degree
11 88 (1.38%) PMP
12 81 (1.27%) PMI Certification
13 66 (1.04%) AWS Certification
13 66 (1.04%) CISM
14 51 (0.80%) CCNP
15 50 (0.78%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.75%) DBS Check
17 44 (0.69%) CCNA
18 39 (0.61%) A+ Certification
18 39 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (5.30%) Data Quality
2 222 (3.48%) GDPR
3 218 (3.42%) QA
4 181 (2.84%) SLA
5 172 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 150 (2.35%) PMO
7 145 (2.28%) NIST
8 103 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 76 (1.19%) NCSC
11 43 (0.67%) GRC
12 34 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 33 (0.52%) WCAG
14 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 26 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.24%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.24%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 13 (0.20%) GMP
System Software
1 1,218 (19.11%) Active Directory
2 236 (3.70%) Docker
3 213 (3.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.73%) Hyper-V
5 95 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 87 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
7 56 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.88%) vSphere
8 28 (0.44%) BitLocker
9 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.31%) Firmware
10 20 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.13%) NFS
11 8 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 5 (0.078%) RACF
13 5 (0.078%) Terminal Services
13 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
14 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
14 4 (0.063%) zsh
Systems Management
1 505 (7.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 448 (7.03%) Terraform
3 295 (4.63%) Kubernetes
4 228 (3.58%) SCCM
5 149 (2.34%) Ansible
6 120 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
7 63 (0.99%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.80%) vCenter Server
9 48 (0.75%) Grafana
10 43 (0.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 35 (0.55%) Prometheus
11 35 (0.55%) SCOM
12 23 (0.36%) Puppet
13 20 (0.31%) QRadar
14 18 (0.28%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.28%) WSUS
15 16 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 13 (0.20%) Argo
17 12 (0.19%) Avamar
17 12 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 438 (6.87%) ServiceNow
2 301 (4.72%) Oracle
3 299 (4.69%) VMware
4 257 (4.03%) SAP
5 219 (3.44%) Databricks
6 206 (3.23%) Cisco
7 203 (3.19%) Google
8 117 (1.84%) Salesforce
9 107 (1.68%) Citrix
10 97 (1.52%) Splunk
11 94 (1.48%) Apple
12 81 (1.27%) Foundry
13 79 (1.24%) OpenAI
14 75 (1.18%) CyberArk
15 73 (1.15%) Okta
16 71 (1.11%) CrowdStrike
17 60 (0.94%) Red Hat
18 58 (0.91%) BeyondTrust
19 52 (0.82%) Zscaler
20 47 (0.74%) Meraki