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 7 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
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,142 4,367 5,659
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.80% 13.72% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 28.70% 28.87% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,028 2,797 3,680
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £340 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £577 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 376 329 495
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.14
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.76
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +38.95% -28.72%
75th Percentile £35.22 £31.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £65.00 £63.28 £61.28
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £20.13 £16.06
% change year-on-year +2.79% +25.33% -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 21,399 15,126 18,618
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.10% 47.53% 43.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,317 9,264 11,573
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
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 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,102 719 1,152
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.84 £12.41
25th Percentile £19.08 £17.33 £15.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.15% +0.60% -38.27%
75th Percentile £63.08 £53.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £81.13 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.18
% change year-on-year +43.61% -6.41% -23.24%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 5,347 £493 +3.68% 3,874
UK excluding London -1 3,258 £450 +5.88% 3,495
London -2 2,351 £505 -1.46% 1,110
Work from Home +1 1,578 £500 - 2,100
North of England -4 835 £465 +9.41% 786
South East -2 772 £475 - 1,019
Midlands -2 564 £450 +20.00% 537
North West -2 453 £450 +5.88% 392
West Midlands -3 397 £450 +20.00% 255
South West 0 396 £475 +18.75% 384
Yorkshire -2 360 £486 +8.06% 282
East of England 0 293 £350 -30.00% 371
Scotland +6 281 £450 +2.39% 231
East Midlands +1 159 £424 +12.93% 281
Wales +3 115 £370 +23.33% 139
Northern Ireland +3 33 £350 +0.36% 118
North East -42 26 £450 +30.43% 129
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14% 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
1 658 (10.71%) SharePoint
2 390 (6.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 133 (2.17%) Confluence
4 36 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 32 (0.52%) Apache
6 29 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.31%) IIS
8 18 (0.29%) CMS
9 15 (0.24%) HCL Notes
9 15 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 11 (0.18%) SAS
11 9 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
12 6 (0.098%) Camunda
12 6 (0.098%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.081%) Mendix
13 5 (0.081%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.081%) SharePoint 2013
14 4 (0.065%) Appian
14 4 (0.065%) ThingWorx
14 4 (0.065%) Tomcat
Applications
1 566 (9.22%) Microsoft Office
2 561 (9.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 236 (3.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 136 (2.21%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.71%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.098%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.049%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.049%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.049%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.049%) Trello
12 2 (0.033%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) InDesign
12 2 (0.033%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.033%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.033%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 211 (3.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 22 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.24%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.21%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 9 (0.15%) Primavera
9 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
9 9 (0.15%) SAP MM
10 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
11 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
11 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 6 (0.098%) iTrent
12 6 (0.098%) Magento
12 6 (0.098%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,563 (41.73%) Azure
2 1,527 (24.86%) Microsoft 365
3 1,037 (16.88%) Power Platform
4 861 (14.02%) Entra ID
5 549 (8.94%) AWS
6 485 (7.90%) Azure DevOps
7 476 (7.75%) Dynamics 365
8 345 (5.62%) Power Automate
9 318 (5.18%) Microsoft Purview
10 317 (5.16%) PowerApps
11 309 (5.03%) Microsoft Copilot
12 251 (4.09%) GitHub
13 231 (3.76%) OneDrive
14 226 (3.68%) SaaS
15 197 (3.21%) GCP
16 158 (2.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 155 (2.52%) Azure Data Factory
18 151 (2.46%) Serverless
19 144 (2.34%) PaaS
20 143 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 338 (5.50%) DNS
2 287 (4.67%) Firewall
3 235 (3.83%) VPN
4 204 (3.32%) DHCP
5 154 (2.51%) TCP/IP
6 152 (2.47%) WAN
7 141 (2.30%) Wi-Fi
8 135 (2.20%) LAN
9 127 (2.07%) Network Security
10 57 (0.93%) VLAN
11 48 (0.78%) Kerberos
12 44 (0.72%) SAN
13 41 (0.67%) SD-WAN
14 40 (0.65%) SSL
14 40 (0.65%) Wireless
15 35 (0.57%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.54%) MPLS
17 31 (0.50%) Internet
17 31 (0.50%) VoIP
18 27 (0.44%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 661 (10.76%) Power BI
2 322 (5.24%) SQL Server
3 176 (2.87%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.17%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (2.07%) Metadata
6 123 (2.00%) Data Lake
7 117 (1.90%) Azure SQL Database
8 72 (1.17%) Relational Database
9 68 (1.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 61 (0.99%) MySQL
11 55 (0.90%) Power Query
12 51 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.72%) NoSQL
13 44 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 40 (0.65%) Oracle Database
14 40 (0.65%) Tableau
15 35 (0.57%) Delta Lake
16 32 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 26 (0.42%) Big Data
18 24 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 309 (5.03%) JIRA
2 181 (2.95%) Git
3 76 (1.24%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.93%) GitLab
5 39 (0.63%) Visual Studio
6 28 (0.46%) MSI
7 20 (0.33%) Selenium
8 17 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 17 (0.28%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.28%) ERwin
9 16 (0.26%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) JUnit
11 14 (0.23%) Maven
11 14 (0.23%) Postman
12 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.20%) Team Foundation Server
13 12 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
14 11 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
15 10 (0.16%) JMeter
15 10 (0.16%) WebDriver
General
1 2,029 (33.03%) Social Skills
2 1,230 (20.03%) Finance
3 696 (11.33%) Analytical Skills
4 571 (9.30%) Public Sector
5 309 (5.03%) Banking
6 268 (4.36%) Organisational Skills
7 239 (3.89%) Legal
8 163 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
9 120 (1.95%) Manufacturing
10 117 (1.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 107 (1.74%) Retail
12 97 (1.58%) Law
13 96 (1.56%) Telecoms
14 85 (1.38%) Marketing
15 84 (1.37%) Military
16 81 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
17 72 (1.17%) Local Government
18 67 (1.09%) Investment Banking
19 64 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
20 45 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 753 (12.26%) Architect
2 648 (10.55%) Analyst
3 570 (9.28%) Developer
4 504 (8.21%) Senior
5 416 (6.77%) Lead
6 385 (6.27%) IT Support
7 377 (6.14%) Consultant
8 309 (5.03%) Support Engineer
9 238 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
10 231 (3.76%) Data Engineer
11 221 (3.60%) IT Engineer
12 215 (3.50%) Project Manager
13 209 (3.40%) Azure Engineer
14 187 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 182 (2.96%) Administrator
16 173 (2.82%) Business Analyst
16 173 (2.82%) IT Support Engineer
17 127 (2.07%) Cloud Engineer
18 118 (1.92%) Security Engineer
19 108 (1.76%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (4.46%) .NET
2 216 (3.52%) REST
3 138 (2.25%) Microsoft Graph
4 118 (1.92%) OAuth
5 108 (1.76%) JSON
6 101 (1.64%) PySpark
6 101 (1.64%) SAML
7 88 (1.43%) OpenID
8 83 (1.35%) Web Services
9 82 (1.34%) LDAP
9 82 (1.34%) React
10 70 (1.14%) XML
11 62 (1.01%) RESTful
12 61 (0.99%) .NET Framework
12 61 (0.99%) Node.js
12 61 (0.99%) SailPoint
13 59 (0.96%) Middleware
13 59 (0.96%) OAuth2
14 58 (0.94%) HTML
15 56 (0.91%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 353 (5.75%) Onboarding
2 284 (4.62%) Cloud Native
3 168 (2.74%) Product Ownership
4 153 (2.49%) Management Information System
5 125 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
6 122 (1.99%) Data Centre
7 119 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
8 108 (1.76%) PKI
9 107 (1.74%) Hybrid Cloud
10 106 (1.73%) AI Agents
11 105 (1.71%) Security Posture
12 90 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
13 87 (1.42%) Data Structures
14 79 (1.29%) Replication
14 79 (1.29%) Virtual Team
15 78 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
16 70 (1.14%) Low-Code
17 64 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
18 53 (0.86%) Driving Licence
19 52 (0.85%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,310 (21.33%) Windows
2 335 (5.45%) Windows Server
3 323 (5.26%) Windows 10
4 269 (4.38%) Linux
5 133 (2.17%) Mac OS
6 112 (1.82%) Android
7 106 (1.73%) Apple iOS
8 46 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 46 (0.75%) Unix
9 41 (0.67%) Windows 7
10 39 (0.63%) Windows Server 2016
11 33 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 29 (0.47%) VMS
13 22 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
14 17 (0.28%) Ubuntu
15 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
16 12 (0.20%) CentOS
16 12 (0.20%) SUSE
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 7 (0.11%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,052 (17.13%) Problem-Solving
2 966 (15.73%) DevOps
3 908 (14.78%) Agile
4 862 (14.03%) Migration
5 793 (12.91%) CI/CD
6 748 (12.18%) Stakeholder Management
7 677 (11.02%) Business Intelligence
8 675 (10.99%) AI
9 644 (10.49%) Analytics
10 626 (10.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 606 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 548 (8.92%) ITIL
13 468 (7.62%) Customer Service
14 452 (7.36%) Data Modelling
15 432 (7.03%) Roadmaps
16 417 (6.79%) Cybersecurity
17 401 (6.53%) Infrastructure as Code
18 400 (6.51%) Decision-Making
19 370 (6.02%) Validation
20 367 (5.98%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 780 (12.70%) SQL
2 665 (10.83%) PowerShell
3 639 (10.40%) Python
4 286 (4.66%) C#
5 219 (3.57%) JavaScript
6 193 (3.14%) Java
7 156 (2.54%) Bicep
8 110 (1.79%) T-SQL
9 88 (1.43%) Bash
10 86 (1.40%) TypeScript
11 85 (1.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 73 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.59%) VBA
14 33 (0.54%) C++
15 28 (0.46%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.44%) VB
17 19 (0.31%) VBScript
18 17 (0.28%) Scala
19 16 (0.26%) Shell Script
20 15 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,204 (19.60%) Security Cleared
2 926 (15.08%) SC Cleared
3 590 (9.61%) Degree
4 297 (4.84%) Microsoft Certification
5 209 (3.40%) DV Cleared
6 202 (3.29%) Azure Certification
7 124 (2.02%) BPSS Clearance
8 122 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
9 113 (1.84%) CISSP
10 104 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
11 63 (1.03%) PMP
12 59 (0.96%) CISM
13 58 (0.94%) PMI Certification
14 56 (0.91%) AWS Certification
15 53 (0.86%) Master's Degree
16 48 (0.78%) CCNP
17 45 (0.73%) DBS Check
18 43 (0.70%) MCSE
19 42 (0.68%) CCNA
20 39 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 316 (5.14%) Data Quality
2 233 (3.79%) GDPR
3 203 (3.31%) QA
4 178 (2.90%) SLA
5 163 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 134 (2.18%) NIST
7 125 (2.04%) PMO
8 90 (1.47%) Accessibility
9 83 (1.35%) Cyber Essentials
10 68 (1.11%) NCSC
11 38 (0.62%) GRC
12 35 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 33 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 32 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.44%) WCAG
16 17 (0.28%) NIST 800
16 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
17 16 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
18 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 12 (0.20%) MiFID
System Software
1 1,183 (19.26%) Active Directory
2 234 (3.81%) Docker
3 210 (3.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.79%) Hyper-V
5 92 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 86 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.98%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (0.94%) vSphere
9 33 (0.54%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.33%) Firmware
13 9 (0.15%) NFS
14 7 (0.11%) IAG
15 5 (0.081%) RACF
15 5 (0.081%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.081%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.065%) Snort
16 4 (0.065%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 488 (7.95%) Microsoft Intune
2 397 (6.46%) Terraform
3 268 (4.36%) Kubernetes
4 214 (3.48%) SCCM
5 131 (2.13%) Ansible
6 128 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
7 69 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 62 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
9 51 (0.83%) vCenter Server
10 44 (0.72%) Grafana
11 33 (0.54%) Prometheus
12 32 (0.52%) SCOM
13 23 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.33%) Puppet
15 19 (0.31%) WSUS
16 16 (0.26%) QRadar
17 13 (0.21%) AirWatch
18 12 (0.20%) vMotion
19 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
19 11 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 384 (6.25%) ServiceNow
2 284 (4.62%) VMware
3 277 (4.51%) Oracle
4 257 (4.18%) SAP
5 208 (3.39%) Databricks
6 203 (3.31%) Cisco
7 186 (3.03%) Google
8 121 (1.97%) Salesforce
9 107 (1.74%) Citrix
10 95 (1.55%) Splunk
11 89 (1.45%) Apple
12 78 (1.27%) Foundry
13 75 (1.22%) Okta
13 75 (1.22%) OpenAI
14 67 (1.09%) CyberArk
15 64 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
16 51 (0.83%) HP
17 47 (0.77%) Red Hat
18 46 (0.75%) Zscaler
19 44 (0.72%) Dell