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 22 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
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,342 4,528 5,410
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.03% 13.88% 13.09%
As % of the Vendors category 29.13% 29.24% 30.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,171 2,901 3,546
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 £587 £588 £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 365 356 413
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 £37.25 £31.00 £28.50
90th Percentile £74.06 £63.40 £64.51
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 21,772 15,486 17,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.28% 47.46% 43.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,534 9,470 11,254
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
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 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.71% -4.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,082 759 982
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.74 £12.87
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.04 £15.50
Median hourly rate £35.00 £25.15 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.17% -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 £22.41 £25.00
% change year-on-year +51.69% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 5,504 £494 +4.00% 3,257
UK excluding London -1 3,375 £450 +4.41% 2,657
London -2 2,413 £513 +2.45% 1,045
Work from Home +3 1,634 £500 - 1,283
South East -2 850 £475 - 853
North of England -5 832 £465 +9.41% 662
Midlands -2 590 £445 +15.58% 418
North West -1 472 £450 +3.69% 347
West Midlands -3 417 £450 +13.07% 229
South West -1 409 £475 +9.20% 280
Yorkshire -5 337 £481 +9.94% 226
Scotland +5 316 £447 -0.67% 124
East of England 0 268 £375 -25.00% 298
East Midlands +2 165 £413 +12.40% 188
Wales +1 111 £413 +49.48% 83
Northern Ireland +1 32 £350 -6.04% 28
North East -36 29 £450 +32.35% 104
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
1 711 (11.21%) SharePoint
2 390 (6.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 143 (2.25%) Confluence
4 41 (0.65%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.60%) Apache
6 29 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 17 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.22%) 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
14 6 (0.095%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
16 4 (0.063%) Liferay
16 4 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 582 (9.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 570 (8.99%) Microsoft Office
3 250 (3.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (2.55%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.72%) MS Visio
6 38 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) InDesign
12 2 (0.032%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.032%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 228 (3.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
6 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
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%) Oracle ERP
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 2,651 (41.80%) Azure
2 1,562 (24.63%) Microsoft 365
3 1,067 (16.82%) Power Platform
4 929 (14.65%) Entra ID
5 575 (9.07%) AWS
6 513 (8.09%) Azure DevOps
7 511 (8.06%) Dynamics 365
8 364 (5.74%) Power Automate
9 331 (5.22%) PowerApps
10 329 (5.19%) Microsoft Copilot
11 302 (4.76%) Microsoft Purview
12 259 (4.08%) GitHub
13 237 (3.74%) OneDrive
13 237 (3.74%) SaaS
14 213 (3.36%) GCP
15 165 (2.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 163 (2.57%) Azure Data Factory
17 154 (2.43%) PaaS
18 147 (2.32%) Serverless
19 144 (2.27%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 349 (5.50%) DNS
2 313 (4.94%) Firewall
3 249 (3.93%) VPN
4 216 (3.41%) DHCP
5 180 (2.84%) TCP/IP
6 149 (2.35%) Wi-Fi
7 148 (2.33%) WAN
8 140 (2.21%) Network Security
9 139 (2.19%) LAN
10 63 (0.99%) VLAN
11 46 (0.73%) SAN
11 46 (0.73%) Wireless
12 41 (0.65%) MPLS
12 41 (0.65%) SSL
13 37 (0.58%) Unified Communications
14 34 (0.54%) Kerberos
15 32 (0.50%) SD-WAN
15 32 (0.50%) VoIP
16 31 (0.49%) Internet
17 27 (0.43%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 682 (10.75%) Power BI
2 362 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 185 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.14%) PostgreSQL
5 129 (2.03%) Data Lake
6 126 (1.99%) Metadata
7 122 (1.92%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.15%) Relational Database
8 73 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 63 (0.99%) MySQL
10 58 (0.91%) Power Query
11 52 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 49 (0.77%) NoSQL
13 44 (0.69%) Oracle Database
14 40 (0.63%) Star Schema
15 37 (0.58%) Tableau
16 34 (0.54%) Delta Lake
17 33 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 26 (0.41%) Big Data
19 25 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 319 (5.03%) JIRA
2 195 (3.07%) Git
3 86 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.90%) GitLab
5 49 (0.77%) Visual Studio
6 31 (0.49%) MSI
7 27 (0.43%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
10 15 (0.24%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
11 14 (0.22%) Artifactory
11 14 (0.22%) ERwin
11 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 13 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.17%) JUnit
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
15 10 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,105 (33.19%) Social Skills
2 1,274 (20.09%) Finance
3 756 (11.92%) Analytical Skills
4 611 (9.63%) Public Sector
5 315 (4.97%) Banking
6 268 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
7 226 (3.56%) Legal
8 176 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
9 132 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 126 (1.99%) Manufacturing
11 115 (1.81%) Retail
12 111 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 103 (1.62%) Law
14 98 (1.55%) Marketing
15 84 (1.32%) Military
16 80 (1.26%) Local Government
17 76 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
18 74 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
19 60 (0.95%) Investment Banking
20 47 (0.74%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 746 (11.76%) Architect
2 666 (10.50%) Analyst
3 596 (9.40%) Developer
4 547 (8.63%) Senior
5 443 (6.99%) Lead
6 393 (6.20%) IT Support
7 389 (6.13%) Consultant
8 335 (5.28%) Support Engineer
9 244 (3.85%) Data Engineer
10 240 (3.78%) IT Engineer
11 235 (3.71%) Solutions Architect
12 225 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
13 219 (3.45%) Project Manager
14 214 (3.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 193 (3.04%) IT Support Engineer
16 184 (2.90%) Administrator
17 176 (2.78%) Business Analyst
18 148 (2.33%) Cloud Engineer
19 124 (1.96%) Security Engineer
20 111 (1.75%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 296 (4.67%) .NET
2 234 (3.69%) REST
3 131 (2.07%) Microsoft Graph
4 121 (1.91%) JSON
5 109 (1.72%) OAuth
6 104 (1.64%) PySpark
7 92 (1.45%) OpenID
8 90 (1.42%) SAML
9 89 (1.40%) XML
10 88 (1.39%) Web Services
11 82 (1.29%) .NET Framework
12 79 (1.25%) React
13 76 (1.20%) LDAP
14 66 (1.04%) RESTful
14 66 (1.04%) SailPoint
15 65 (1.02%) ARM Templates
15 65 (1.02%) HTML
16 64 (1.01%) SOAP
17 62 (0.98%) OAuth2
18 60 (0.95%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 399 (6.29%) Onboarding
2 304 (4.79%) Cloud Native
3 189 (2.98%) Product Ownership
4 175 (2.76%) Management Information System
5 140 (2.21%) Enterprise Software
6 131 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
7 126 (1.99%) Hybrid Cloud
8 125 (1.97%) Data Centre
9 123 (1.94%) AI Agents
10 122 (1.92%) PKI
11 110 (1.73%) Security Posture
12 97 (1.53%) Data Structures
13 90 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
14 83 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
15 81 (1.28%) Virtual Team
16 69 (1.09%) Low-Code
17 67 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
17 67 (1.06%) Replication
18 62 (0.98%) Driving Licence
19 56 (0.88%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,329 (20.96%) Windows
2 346 (5.46%) Windows Server
3 318 (5.01%) Windows 10
4 300 (4.73%) Linux
5 134 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 117 (1.84%) Android
7 109 (1.72%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.71%) Unix
10 36 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
11 34 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 31 (0.49%) VMS
13 29 (0.46%) Windows 7
14 25 (0.39%) Ubuntu
15 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
16 13 (0.20%) CentOS
17 12 (0.19%) SUSE
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
19 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
20 6 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,097 (17.30%) Problem-Solving
2 1,002 (15.80%) DevOps
3 962 (15.17%) Agile
4 889 (14.02%) Migration
5 843 (13.29%) Stakeholder Management
6 822 (12.96%) CI/CD
7 720 (11.35%) AI
8 696 (10.97%) Business Intelligence
9 678 (10.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 675 (10.64%) Analytics
11 672 (10.60%) Continuous Improvement
12 587 (9.26%) ITIL
13 497 (7.84%) Customer Service
14 470 (7.41%) Data Modelling
15 460 (7.25%) Roadmaps
16 446 (7.03%) Cybersecurity
17 445 (7.02%) Infrastructure as Code
18 413 (6.51%) Decision-Making
19 402 (6.34%) Validation
20 397 (6.26%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 806 (12.71%) SQL
2 681 (10.74%) PowerShell
3 657 (10.36%) Python
4 309 (4.87%) C#
5 227 (3.58%) JavaScript
6 201 (3.17%) Java
7 175 (2.76%) Bicep
8 120 (1.89%) Bash
9 114 (1.80%) T-SQL
10 91 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 83 (1.31%) TypeScript
12 72 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
13 41 (0.65%) VBA
14 34 (0.54%) C++
15 27 (0.43%) PL/SQL
16 26 (0.41%) VB
17 17 (0.27%) X++
18 16 (0.25%) R
18 16 (0.25%) Scala
18 16 (0.25%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,287 (20.29%) Security Cleared
2 974 (15.36%) SC Cleared
3 616 (9.71%) Degree
4 320 (5.05%) Microsoft Certification
5 241 (3.80%) DV Cleared
6 227 (3.58%) Azure Certification
7 139 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
8 122 (1.92%) Computer Science Degree
9 121 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
9 121 (1.91%) CISSP
10 84 (1.32%) PMP
11 76 (1.20%) PMI Certification
12 66 (1.04%) AWS Certification
12 66 (1.04%) CISM
13 52 (0.82%) CCNP
13 52 (0.82%) Master's Degree
14 48 (0.76%) DBS Check
15 46 (0.73%) CCNA
16 39 (0.61%) A+ Certification
16 39 (0.61%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 332 (5.23%) Data Quality
2 219 (3.45%) GDPR
3 215 (3.39%) QA
4 177 (2.79%) SLA
5 170 (2.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 144 (2.27%) PMO
7 143 (2.25%) NIST
8 100 (1.58%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 75 (1.18%) NCSC
11 44 (0.69%) GRC
12 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 31 (0.49%) WCAG
14 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 26 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 15 (0.24%) SOC 2
19 13 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
19 13 (0.20%) GMP
System Software
1 1,226 (19.33%) Active Directory
2 231 (3.64%) Docker
3 213 (3.36%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.73%) Hyper-V
5 93 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 59 (0.93%) vSphere
8 57 (0.90%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.43%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.28%) 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%) zsh
Systems Management
1 504 (7.95%) Microsoft Intune
2 442 (6.97%) Terraform
3 289 (4.56%) Kubernetes
4 223 (3.52%) SCCM
5 150 (2.37%) Ansible
6 123 (1.94%) Single Sign-On
7 64 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.82%) vCenter Server
9 51 (0.80%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 49 (0.77%) Grafana
11 37 (0.58%) Prometheus
12 36 (0.57%) SCOM
13 23 (0.36%) Puppet
14 20 (0.32%) QRadar
15 19 (0.30%) FortiGate
16 18 (0.28%) WSUS
17 16 (0.25%) Progress Chef
18 13 (0.20%) Argo
19 12 (0.19%) Avamar
20 11 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 426 (6.72%) ServiceNow
2 301 (4.75%) Oracle
3 297 (4.68%) VMware
4 257 (4.05%) SAP
5 215 (3.39%) Databricks
6 210 (3.31%) Cisco
7 204 (3.22%) Google
8 122 (1.92%) Salesforce
9 108 (1.70%) Citrix
10 94 (1.48%) Apple
10 94 (1.48%) Splunk
11 80 (1.26%) Foundry
12 75 (1.18%) OpenAI
13 73 (1.15%) CyberArk
14 72 (1.14%) Okta
15 70 (1.10%) CrowdStrike
16 61 (0.96%) Red Hat
17 57 (0.90%) BeyondTrust
18 52 (0.82%) Zscaler
19 47 (0.74%) HP