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 September 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 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,123 4,694 5,025
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.07% 14.23% 13.12%
As % of the Vendors category 31.24% 30.14% 29.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,564 3,022 3,166
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £343 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 543 377 281
10th Percentile £13.33 £14.12 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.82 £16.50 £15.10
Median hourly rate £19.00 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.86% +31.26% -23.60%
75th Percentile £31.69 £31.40 £45.00
90th Percentile £69.30 £64.25 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.38 £20.75 £16.23
% change year-on-year -11.45% +27.85% -16.77%

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 22,804 15,574 16,904
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.85% 47.21% 44.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,992 9,525 10,215
10th Percentile £313 £275 £289
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £626
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,252 784 693
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.69 £14.18
25th Percentile £16.72 £17.36 £15.62
Median hourly rate £27.34 £25.15 £31.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.71% -18.87% -27.06%
75th Percentile £63.26 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £21.28 £30.00
% change year-on-year +22.84% -29.07% -25.00%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 6,160 £490 +3.16% 4,938
UK excluding London -1 3,809 £450 +3.45% 3,978
London 0 2,677 £515 +3.00% 1,727
Work from Home +4 1,833 £500 - 1,891
South East 0 999 £475 +5.56% 1,153
North of England -5 962 £455 +5.57% 942
Midlands +1 647 £430 +7.50% 669
North West -2 573 £450 +4.05% 481
South West -1 455 £470 +13.94% 469
West Midlands -3 433 £445 +4.71% 371
Scotland +5 372 £450 - 220
Yorkshire -5 349 £473 +8.31% 335
East of England -1 260 £345 -34.29% 419
East Midlands +3 207 £425 +18.72% 297
Wales +2 109 £413 +37.50% 112
North East -34 44 £413 +21.32% 147
Northern Ireland -1 37 £350 - 77
Channel Islands -2 4 £525 -27.59% 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
1 847 (11.89%) SharePoint
2 405 (5.69%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.08%) Confluence
4 38 (0.53%) Apache
4 38 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 31 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
6 27 (0.38%) CMS
7 24 (0.34%) IIS
8 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
10 16 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
12 10 (0.14%) SAS
13 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
14 6 (0.084%) Mendix
14 6 (0.084%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.084%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.070%) Exchange Server 2010
15 5 (0.070%) OpenStack
Applications
1 752 (10.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 736 (10.33%) Microsoft Office
3 312 (4.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 195 (2.74%) Microsoft Project
5 113 (1.59%) MS Visio
6 48 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
10 10 (0.14%) ProjectWise
11 9 (0.13%) Navisworks
11 9 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.070%) Trello
13 4 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
13 4 (0.056%) Photoshop
14 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
14 3 (0.042%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 253 (3.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 79 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 26 (0.37%) Dynamics NAV
5 24 (0.34%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.28%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.17%) Primavera
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.14%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
13 8 (0.11%) iTrent
13 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
14 7 (0.098%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.098%) SAP MM
14 7 (0.098%) SAP PSCD
15 6 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
15 6 (0.084%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 2,948 (41.39%) Azure
2 1,812 (25.44%) Microsoft 365
3 1,262 (17.72%) Power Platform
4 1,091 (15.32%) Entra ID
5 662 (9.29%) AWS
6 609 (8.55%) Dynamics 365
7 608 (8.54%) Azure DevOps
8 426 (5.98%) Power Automate
9 415 (5.83%) Microsoft Copilot
10 382 (5.36%) PowerApps
11 306 (4.30%) Microsoft Purview
12 302 (4.24%) GitHub
13 272 (3.82%) OneDrive
14 255 (3.58%) GCP
15 244 (3.43%) SaaS
16 191 (2.68%) Serverless
17 189 (2.65%) Azure Data Factory
18 172 (2.41%) Azure Monitor
19 160 (2.25%) Azure Logic Apps
20 158 (2.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 397 (5.57%) DNS
2 344 (4.83%) Firewall
3 287 (4.03%) VPN
4 264 (3.71%) DHCP
5 193 (2.71%) TCP/IP
6 165 (2.32%) WAN
7 161 (2.26%) Network Security
8 146 (2.05%) LAN
9 142 (1.99%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.04%) VLAN
11 61 (0.86%) Wireless
12 48 (0.67%) SAN
13 40 (0.56%) SSL
14 39 (0.55%) Skype
15 37 (0.52%) MPLS
16 32 (0.45%) Internet
17 31 (0.44%) Unified Communications
18 30 (0.42%) BGP
18 30 (0.42%) Kerberos
18 30 (0.42%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 791 (11.10%) Power BI
2 418 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 180 (2.53%) Data Warehouse
4 154 (2.16%) Metadata
5 148 (2.08%) Data Lake
6 134 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
7 125 (1.75%) Azure SQL Database
8 84 (1.18%) Power Query
9 76 (1.07%) Relational Database
10 72 (1.01%) MySQL
11 68 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 50 (0.70%) NoSQL
13 48 (0.67%) Oracle Database
14 45 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 42 (0.59%) Star Schema
16 40 (0.56%) Tableau
17 38 (0.53%) Delta Lake
18 30 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
19 29 (0.41%) MongoDB
20 21 (0.29%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 338 (4.75%) JIRA
2 228 (3.20%) Git
3 94 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.01%) GitLab
5 50 (0.70%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.62%) MSI
7 37 (0.52%) Selenium
8 20 (0.28%) Claude Code
9 19 (0.27%) Postman
10 16 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 16 (0.22%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.21%) MLflow
11 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
12 12 (0.17%) Cucumber
13 11 (0.15%) Bitbucket
13 11 (0.15%) ERwin
13 11 (0.15%) Maven
13 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 11 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,602 (36.53%) Social Skills
2 1,430 (20.08%) Finance
3 925 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 632 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 421 (5.91%) Organisational Skills
6 335 (4.70%) Banking
7 233 (3.27%) Legal
8 201 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
9 181 (2.54%) Manufacturing
10 174 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 153 (2.15%) Retail
12 124 (1.74%) Telecoms
13 111 (1.56%) Marketing
14 104 (1.46%) Law
15 96 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
16 93 (1.31%) Local Government
17 83 (1.17%) Military
18 82 (1.15%) Aerospace
19 64 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
20 61 (0.86%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 834 (11.71%) Architect
2 717 (10.07%) Analyst
3 625 (8.77%) Developer
4 622 (8.73%) Senior
5 490 (6.88%) Lead
6 462 (6.49%) Consultant
7 443 (6.22%) IT Support
8 429 (6.02%) Support Engineer
9 294 (4.13%) IT Engineer
10 286 (4.02%) Administrator
11 271 (3.80%) Solutions Architect
12 255 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 250 (3.51%) Data Engineer
14 244 (3.43%) Azure Engineer
15 240 (3.37%) IT Support Engineer
16 235 (3.30%) Project Manager
17 183 (2.57%) Business Analyst
18 175 (2.46%) Cloud Engineer
19 132 (1.85%) DevOps Engineer
20 131 (1.84%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 520 (7.30%) Terraform
2 350 (4.91%) .NET
3 269 (3.78%) REST
4 131 (1.84%) JSON
5 130 (1.83%) OAuth
6 113 (1.59%) PySpark
7 110 (1.54%) XML
8 104 (1.46%) SAML
9 103 (1.45%) Microsoft Graph
10 99 (1.39%) OpenID
11 90 (1.26%) React
12 86 (1.21%) .NET Framework
12 86 (1.21%) ARM Templates
13 78 (1.10%) LDAP
13 78 (1.10%) Web Services
14 73 (1.02%) HTML
14 73 (1.02%) OAuth2
14 73 (1.02%) RESTful
15 70 (0.98%) SailPoint
16 67 (0.94%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 556 (7.81%) Onboarding
2 311 (4.37%) Cloud Native
3 264 (3.71%) Management Information System
4 210 (2.95%) Enterprise Software
5 202 (2.84%) Product Ownership
6 157 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 151 (2.12%) PKI
8 147 (2.06%) AI Agents
9 146 (2.05%) Data Centre
10 131 (1.84%) Legacy Systems
11 127 (1.78%) Security Posture
12 96 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 93 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
14 92 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
15 83 (1.17%) CMDB
16 81 (1.14%) Driving Licence
17 79 (1.11%) Low-Code
18 75 (1.05%) Virtual Team
19 71 (1.00%) Replication
20 68 (0.95%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,520 (21.34%) Windows
2 459 (6.44%) Windows Server
3 372 (5.22%) Windows 10
4 337 (4.73%) Linux
5 144 (2.02%) Mac OS
6 128 (1.80%) Android
7 120 (1.68%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.67%) Unix
10 42 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.53%) Ubuntu
13 36 (0.51%) Windows Server 2016
14 32 (0.45%) VMS
15 22 (0.31%) CentOS
15 22 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.27%) Solaris
17 12 (0.17%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.098%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,323 (18.57%) Problem-Solving
2 1,276 (17.91%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,099 (15.43%) DevOps
4 1,082 (15.19%) Agile
5 999 (14.02%) Migration
6 920 (12.92%) CI/CD
7 887 (12.45%) Continuous Improvement
8 829 (11.64%) AI
9 813 (11.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 794 (11.15%) Business Intelligence
11 732 (10.28%) Analytics
12 696 (9.77%) ITIL
13 659 (9.25%) Customer Service
14 553 (7.76%) Cybersecurity
15 550 (7.72%) Infrastructure as Code
16 525 (7.37%) Roadmaps
17 519 (7.29%) Data Modelling
18 492 (6.91%) Project Delivery
19 476 (6.68%) Decision-Making
20 462 (6.49%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 875 (12.28%) SQL
2 780 (10.95%) PowerShell
3 728 (10.22%) Python
4 340 (4.77%) C#
5 256 (3.59%) JavaScript
6 203 (2.85%) Bicep
7 174 (2.44%) Java
8 165 (2.32%) Bash
9 112 (1.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 112 (1.57%) T-SQL
10 103 (1.45%) TypeScript
11 69 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
12 31 (0.44%) VBA
13 29 (0.41%) VB
14 25 (0.35%) VBScript
15 23 (0.32%) X++
16 22 (0.31%) PL/SQL
17 20 (0.28%) C++
18 19 (0.27%) R
19 16 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,534 (21.54%) Security Cleared
2 1,146 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 642 (9.01%) Degree
4 366 (5.14%) Microsoft Certification
5 294 (4.13%) DV Cleared
6 261 (3.66%) Azure Certification
7 181 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
8 138 (1.94%) CISSP
9 131 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
10 120 (1.68%) Computer Science Degree
11 100 (1.40%) PMP
12 94 (1.32%) PMI Certification
13 76 (1.07%) CISM
14 74 (1.04%) AWS Certification
15 63 (0.88%) DBS Check
16 58 (0.81%) A+ Certification
16 58 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 56 (0.79%) CCNP
18 47 (0.66%) CCNA
19 46 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (6.06%) Data Quality
2 250 (3.51%) QA
3 235 (3.30%) GDPR
4 204 (2.86%) SLA
5 199 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 198 (2.78%) PMO
7 176 (2.47%) NIST
8 119 (1.67%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.24%) Cyber Essentials
9 88 (1.24%) NCSC
10 56 (0.79%) GRC
11 45 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 41 (0.58%) WCAG
13 37 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 30 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 22 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
16 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
17 18 (0.25%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.22%) P3O
19 15 (0.21%) GMP
System Software
1 1,336 (18.76%) Active Directory
2 266 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 256 (3.59%) Docker
4 149 (2.09%) Hyper-V
5 129 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
6 102 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (0.91%) vSphere
8 62 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.49%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.24%) VMware NSX
12 14 (0.20%) Firmware
13 9 (0.13%) IAG
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
14 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.098%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.098%) zsh
16 5 (0.070%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 5 (0.070%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.070%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 564 (7.92%) Microsoft Intune
2 336 (4.72%) Kubernetes
3 289 (4.06%) SCCM
4 169 (2.37%) Ansible
5 132 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
6 58 (0.81%) Grafana
6 58 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
7 54 (0.76%) SCOM
8 49 (0.69%) vCenter Server
9 38 (0.53%) Prometheus
10 37 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 28 (0.39%) WSUS
12 27 (0.38%) QRadar
13 22 (0.31%) FortiGate
13 22 (0.31%) Progress Chef
14 20 (0.28%) Puppet
15 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
16 16 (0.22%) Argo
17 15 (0.21%) WMI
18 13 (0.18%) Avamar
Vendors
1 531 (7.45%) ServiceNow
2 347 (4.87%) Oracle
3 345 (4.84%) VMware
4 285 (4.00%) SAP
5 250 (3.51%) Google
6 244 (3.43%) Databricks
7 234 (3.29%) Cisco
8 131 (1.84%) Salesforce
9 123 (1.73%) Splunk
10 110 (1.54%) Apple
11 98 (1.38%) CyberArk
12 91 (1.28%) Citrix
13 84 (1.18%) Okta
14 81 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
14 81 (1.14%) OpenAI
15 78 (1.10%) Foundry
16 74 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
17 68 (0.95%) Red Hat
18 56 (0.79%) Adobe
19 53 (0.74%) Zscaler