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 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
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,306 4,746 4,990
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.32% 14.38% 13.00%
As % of the Vendors category 31.95% 30.24% 29.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,627 3,088 3,085
10th Percentile £212 £205 £200
25th Percentile £366 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 587 383 273
10th Percentile £13.34 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.59 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.32 £18.11
Median % change year-on-year -17.10% +23.22% -21.26%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.20 £46.18
90th Percentile £66.66 £64.90 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.97 £21.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -14.43% +29.39% -24.25%

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 22,864 15,696 17,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.67% 47.57% 44.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,944 9,651 10,126
10th Percentile £310 £275 £287
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £615 £613 £625
90th Percentile £703 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,300 810 649
10th Percentile £13.98 £14.75 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.50 £17.79 £15.63
Median hourly rate £25.75 £25.15 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% -22.62% -25.97%
75th Percentile £59.19 £42.50 £64.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.54 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +19.91% -29.00% -29.41%

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 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 25 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 25 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 6,327 £488 +2.63% 8,565
UK excluding London 0 3,932 £450 +2.86% 6,116
London 0 2,723 £516 +3.20% 3,331
Work from Home +3 1,846 £500 - 3,564
South East -1 1,035 £475 +5.56% 1,601
North of England -5 967 £465 +6.41% 1,465
Midlands 0 683 £428 +4.27% 1,018
North West -1 564 £472 +7.76% 745
West Midlands -1 466 £425 -3.41% 570
South West -1 457 £473 +8.00% 612
Scotland +6 381 £450 +0.56% 452
Yorkshire -6 356 £467 +4.41% 524
East of England 0 295 £348 -33.81% 621
East Midlands +2 211 £425 +17.24% 449
Wales +1 112 £394 +29.63% 190
North East -25 52 £425 +25.07% 212
Northern Ireland -1 37 £342 -2.29% 245
Channel Islands -4 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
1 885 (12.11%) SharePoint
2 409 (5.60%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.04%) Confluence
4 39 (0.53%) Apache
4 39 (0.53%) Apache Spark
5 27 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
6 26 (0.36%) CMS
6 26 (0.36%) IIS
7 23 (0.31%) Skype for Business
8 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
9 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.15%) nginx
12 7 (0.096%) SAS
13 6 (0.082%) Apache Superset
13 6 (0.082%) Mendix
13 6 (0.082%) OpenStack
13 6 (0.082%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.068%) Camunda
14 5 (0.068%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 786 (10.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 766 (10.48%) Microsoft Office
3 318 (4.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 190 (2.60%) Microsoft Project
5 110 (1.51%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.21%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.14%) Revit
12 5 (0.068%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.068%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.055%) Trello
14 3 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.041%) Final Cut Pro
15 2 (0.027%) 1Password
15 2 (0.027%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 266 (3.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 87 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 36 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 23 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
9 13 (0.18%) Primavera
10 11 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.15%) Integrated Workplace Management System
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
12 8 (0.11%) iTrent
12 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.096%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.096%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.096%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.082%) Maximo
14 6 (0.082%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 3,001 (41.08%) Azure
2 1,874 (25.65%) Microsoft 365
3 1,290 (17.66%) Power Platform
4 1,154 (15.80%) Entra ID
5 668 (9.14%) AWS
6 617 (8.45%) Azure DevOps
7 604 (8.27%) Dynamics 365
8 450 (6.16%) Microsoft Copilot
9 437 (5.98%) Power Automate
10 392 (5.37%) PowerApps
11 316 (4.33%) Microsoft Purview
12 296 (4.05%) GitHub
13 276 (3.78%) GCP
14 271 (3.71%) OneDrive
15 244 (3.34%) SaaS
16 206 (2.82%) Serverless
17 181 (2.48%) Azure Data Factory
18 180 (2.46%) Azure Monitor
19 162 (2.22%) Azure Logic Apps
20 161 (2.20%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 406 (5.56%) DNS
2 341 (4.67%) Firewall
3 300 (4.11%) VPN
4 274 (3.75%) DHCP
5 206 (2.82%) TCP/IP
6 168 (2.30%) Network Security
7 161 (2.20%) WAN
8 145 (1.98%) LAN
9 135 (1.85%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (1.00%) VLAN
11 72 (0.99%) Wireless
12 51 (0.70%) SAN
13 43 (0.59%) SSL
14 40 (0.55%) Skype
15 38 (0.52%) MPLS
16 36 (0.49%) Unified Communications
17 32 (0.44%) BGP
18 31 (0.42%) Kerberos
19 30 (0.41%) Internet
20 28 (0.38%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 777 (10.64%) Power BI
2 402 (5.50%) SQL Server
3 169 (2.31%) Data Warehouse
4 163 (2.23%) Metadata
5 146 (2.00%) Data Lake
6 126 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
7 109 (1.49%) Azure SQL Database
8 89 (1.22%) Power Query
9 81 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 72 (0.99%) MySQL
11 64 (0.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 50 (0.68%) NoSQL
13 45 (0.62%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.57%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 41 (0.56%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 34 (0.47%) Tableau
18 30 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 30 (0.41%) MongoDB
19 27 (0.37%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 335 (4.59%) JIRA
2 243 (3.33%) Git
3 89 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 72 (0.99%) GitLab
5 59 (0.81%) Visual Studio
6 47 (0.64%) MSI
7 37 (0.51%) Selenium
8 25 (0.34%) Postman
9 23 (0.31%) Claude Code
10 18 (0.25%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.22%) Cucumber
12 16 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
13 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
14 12 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
14 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 11 (0.15%) MLflow
15 11 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
16 10 (0.14%) ERwin
16 10 (0.14%) Subversion
General
1 2,735 (37.43%) Social Skills
2 1,427 (19.53%) Finance
3 946 (12.95%) Analytical Skills
4 650 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 442 (6.05%) Organisational Skills
6 317 (4.34%) Banking
7 230 (3.15%) Legal
8 209 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
9 200 (2.74%) Manufacturing
10 187 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 159 (2.18%) Retail
12 125 (1.71%) Telecoms
13 110 (1.51%) Marketing
14 102 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
15 94 (1.29%) Military
16 91 (1.25%) Aerospace
17 87 (1.19%) Law
17 87 (1.19%) Local Government
18 71 (0.97%) Presentation Skills
19 56 (0.77%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 837 (11.46%) Architect
2 724 (9.91%) Analyst
3 645 (8.83%) Developer
4 629 (8.61%) Senior
5 486 (6.65%) Lead
6 466 (6.38%) Consultant
7 454 (6.21%) IT Support
8 436 (5.97%) Support Engineer
9 318 (4.35%) Administrator
10 293 (4.01%) IT Engineer
11 287 (3.93%) Solutions Architect
12 254 (3.48%) Azure Engineer
12 254 (3.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 248 (3.39%) Data Engineer
14 243 (3.33%) IT Support Engineer
15 224 (3.07%) Project Manager
16 191 (2.61%) Business Analyst
17 185 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
18 142 (1.94%) DevOps Engineer
19 137 (1.88%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 550 (7.53%) Terraform
2 342 (4.68%) .NET
3 288 (3.94%) REST
4 144 (1.97%) JSON
5 140 (1.92%) OAuth
6 113 (1.55%) XML
7 110 (1.51%) SAML
8 109 (1.49%) PySpark
9 105 (1.44%) OpenID
10 104 (1.42%) Microsoft Graph
11 97 (1.33%) ARM Templates
12 93 (1.27%) React
13 91 (1.25%) Web Services
14 86 (1.18%) .NET Framework
15 82 (1.12%) LDAP
16 79 (1.08%) RESTful
17 78 (1.07%) OAuth2
18 77 (1.05%) HTML
19 72 (0.99%) SailPoint
20 69 (0.94%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 589 (8.06%) Onboarding
2 325 (4.45%) Cloud Native
3 298 (4.08%) Management Information System
4 220 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
5 202 (2.76%) Product Ownership
6 164 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
7 162 (2.22%) AI Agents
8 158 (2.16%) PKI
9 152 (2.08%) Data Centre
10 139 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
10 139 (1.90%) Security Posture
11 99 (1.36%) CMDB
12 98 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
13 97 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 96 (1.31%) Driving Licence
15 91 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
16 83 (1.14%) Low-Code
17 78 (1.07%) Virtual Team
18 77 (1.05%) NHS
19 76 (1.04%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,559 (21.34%) Windows
2 474 (6.49%) Windows Server
3 389 (5.32%) Windows 10
4 344 (4.71%) Linux
5 158 (2.16%) Mac OS
6 134 (1.83%) Android
7 128 (1.75%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 49 (0.67%) Unix
10 42 (0.57%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.55%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
13 34 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
14 32 (0.44%) VMS
15 23 (0.31%) CentOS
16 21 (0.29%) Solaris
17 20 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
18 12 (0.16%) SUSE
19 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.096%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,379 (18.87%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,377 (18.85%) Problem-Solving
3 1,114 (15.25%) DevOps
4 1,087 (14.88%) Agile
5 994 (13.61%) Migration
6 965 (13.21%) CI/CD
7 909 (12.44%) Continuous Improvement
8 863 (11.81%) AI
9 829 (11.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 785 (10.74%) Business Intelligence
11 747 (10.22%) Analytics
12 726 (9.94%) ITIL
13 693 (9.49%) Customer Service
14 584 (7.99%) Infrastructure as Code
15 575 (7.87%) Cybersecurity
16 551 (7.54%) Roadmaps
17 517 (7.08%) Data Modelling
18 506 (6.93%) Project Delivery
19 499 (6.83%) Decision-Making
20 487 (6.67%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 870 (11.91%) SQL
2 824 (11.28%) PowerShell
3 749 (10.25%) Python
4 354 (4.85%) C#
5 281 (3.85%) JavaScript
6 215 (2.94%) Bicep
7 175 (2.40%) Bash
8 166 (2.27%) Java
9 114 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 114 (1.56%) TypeScript
10 107 (1.46%) T-SQL
11 75 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
12 32 (0.44%) VBA
13 30 (0.41%) VB
14 28 (0.38%) C++
15 25 (0.34%) VBScript
16 24 (0.33%) X++
17 22 (0.30%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.26%) R
19 16 (0.22%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,573 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,166 (15.96%) SC Cleared
3 631 (8.64%) Degree
4 376 (5.15%) Microsoft Certification
5 315 (4.31%) DV Cleared
6 279 (3.82%) Azure Certification
7 186 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
8 143 (1.96%) CISSP
9 128 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
10 109 (1.49%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.31%) PMP
12 90 (1.23%) PMI Certification
13 78 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 75 (1.03%) CISM
15 63 (0.86%) DBS Check
16 60 (0.82%) A+ Certification
17 59 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 55 (0.75%) CCNP
19 46 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 45 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 450 (6.16%) Data Quality
2 244 (3.34%) QA
3 240 (3.28%) GDPR
4 215 (2.94%) SLA
5 205 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 205 (2.81%) PMO
6 179 (2.45%) NIST
7 123 (1.68%) Accessibility
8 87 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
9 86 (1.18%) NCSC
10 63 (0.86%) GRC
11 47 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 46 (0.63%) WCAG
13 38 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 24 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
16 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
17 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.22%) ISO 19650
18 16 (0.22%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,367 (18.71%) Active Directory
2 276 (3.78%) VMware Infrastructure
3 255 (3.49%) Docker
4 144 (1.97%) Hyper-V
5 130 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
6 111 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
7 75 (1.03%) vSphere
8 65 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.23%) Firmware
12 16 (0.22%) VMware NSX
13 11 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
14 9 (0.12%) IAG
15 8 (0.11%) NFS
16 7 (0.096%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 7 (0.096%) Oracle RAC
16 7 (0.096%) zsh
17 6 (0.082%) XenApp
18 5 (0.068%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 591 (8.09%) Microsoft Intune
2 342 (4.68%) Kubernetes
3 296 (4.05%) SCCM
4 168 (2.30%) Ansible
5 146 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
7 59 (0.81%) Grafana
8 57 (0.78%) SCOM
9 50 (0.68%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.51%) Prometheus
11 35 (0.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (0.37%) QRadar
13 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.34%) WSUS
14 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.27%) Puppet
15 19 (0.26%) Failover Clustering
16 17 (0.23%) Argo
17 16 (0.22%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 553 (7.57%) ServiceNow
2 356 (4.87%) VMware
3 334 (4.57%) Oracle
4 289 (3.96%) SAP
5 274 (3.75%) Google
6 258 (3.53%) Databricks
7 244 (3.34%) Cisco
8 129 (1.77%) Splunk
9 126 (1.72%) Salesforce
10 115 (1.57%) Apple
11 104 (1.42%) CyberArk
12 93 (1.27%) OpenAI
13 91 (1.25%) Citrix
14 90 (1.23%) Okta
15 86 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
16 83 (1.14%) Foundry
17 75 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
18 67 (0.92%) Red Hat
19 60 (0.82%) IBM
20 58 (0.79%) Zscaler