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 5 October 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
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,355 4,761 4,917
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.52% 14.43% 12.94%
As % of the Vendors category 32.55% 30.28% 29.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,607 3,102 3,023
10th Percentile £213 £206 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.06% -3.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £440 £443
% change year-on-year +2.39% -0.85% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 629 382 266
10th Percentile £13.33 £13.75 £14.21
25th Percentile £14.50 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.25 £22.32 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +11.58% -12.15%
75th Percentile £30.00 £31.30 £45.89
90th Percentile £66.66 £63.72 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.71 £21.00 £16.96
% change year-on-year -15.69% +23.82% -22.91%

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 22,593 15,722 16,912
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.54% 47.64% 44.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,661 9,666 9,975
10th Percentile £310 £278 £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 £619 £613 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,367 815 619
10th Percentile £13.86 £14.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.25 £17.79 £16.00
Median hourly rate £25.26 £25.15 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.46% -22.63% -24.42%
75th Percentile £57.50 £40.65 £64.38
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.19 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +13.57% -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 5 October 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 5 October 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 5 October 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 6,381 £490 +3.16% 9,242
UK excluding London 0 3,957 £450 +2.39% 6,868
London +1 2,745 £524 +4.80% 3,439
Work from Home +4 1,847 £500 - 4,037
South East +1 1,062 £475 +5.56% 1,793
North of England -5 978 £465 +6.65% 1,597
Midlands -1 681 £430 +4.88% 1,090
North West -1 573 £473 +8.11% 795
West Midlands -1 465 £425 -2.58% 595
South West -1 448 £475 +5.56% 680
Scotland +5 376 £450 - 588
Yorkshire -4 354 £460 +5.14% 565
East of England 0 304 £325 -38.10% 682
East Midlands +1 210 £438 +16.67% 495
Wales 0 108 £413 +35.80% 267
North East -16 56 £425 +23.26% 256
Northern Ireland -2 35 £312 -10.86% 278
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 6

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
1 894 (12.15%) SharePoint
2 403 (5.48%) Microsoft Exchange
3 156 (2.12%) Confluence
4 37 (0.50%) Apache
5 34 (0.46%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 27 (0.37%) CMS
8 25 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 23 (0.31%) Skype for Business
10 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.14%) nginx
14 6 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.082%) Mendix
14 6 (0.082%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.082%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.068%) SAS
16 4 (0.054%) Camunda
16 4 (0.054%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 827 (11.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 785 (10.67%) Microsoft Office
3 329 (4.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 201 (2.73%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 57 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.14%) Revit
12 6 (0.082%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.082%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.041%) 1Password
13 3 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.041%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.041%) Trello
14 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.027%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 264 (3.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 91 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
3 36 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 18 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 17 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 15 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
9 13 (0.18%) Primavera
10 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) Magento
12 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
12 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
13 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
14 7 (0.095%) iTrent
14 7 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
14 7 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
14 7 (0.095%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.095%) SAP PP
14 7 (0.095%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 2,996 (40.73%) Azure
2 1,869 (25.41%) Microsoft 365
3 1,279 (17.39%) Power Platform
4 1,173 (15.95%) Entra ID
5 672 (9.14%) AWS
6 625 (8.50%) Azure DevOps
7 601 (8.17%) Dynamics 365
8 462 (6.28%) Microsoft Copilot
9 440 (5.98%) Power Automate
10 392 (5.33%) PowerApps
11 316 (4.30%) Microsoft Purview
12 306 (4.16%) GitHub
13 287 (3.90%) GCP
14 270 (3.67%) OneDrive
15 232 (3.15%) SaaS
16 203 (2.76%) Serverless
17 182 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
18 177 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
19 165 (2.24%) Copilot Studio
20 161 (2.19%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 407 (5.53%) DNS
2 341 (4.64%) Firewall
3 299 (4.07%) VPN
4 269 (3.66%) DHCP
5 203 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 171 (2.32%) Network Security
7 156 (2.12%) WAN
8 144 (1.96%) LAN
9 136 (1.85%) Wi-Fi
10 71 (0.97%) VLAN
11 70 (0.95%) Wireless
12 51 (0.69%) SAN
13 43 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.50%) Kerberos
15 37 (0.50%) MPLS
16 34 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 32 (0.44%) BGP
17 32 (0.44%) VoIP
18 31 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 770 (10.47%) Power BI
2 411 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 169 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
4 160 (2.18%) Metadata
5 145 (1.97%) Data Lake
6 128 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
7 115 (1.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 86 (1.17%) Power Query
9 82 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 74 (1.01%) MySQL
11 66 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 52 (0.71%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.64%) Oracle Database
14 40 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 40 (0.54%) Star Schema
15 35 (0.48%) Amazon RDS
15 35 (0.48%) Delta Lake
16 34 (0.46%) MongoDB
17 30 (0.41%) BigQuery
18 29 (0.39%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 342 (4.65%) JIRA
2 255 (3.47%) Git
3 90 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 70 (0.95%) GitLab
5 58 (0.79%) Visual Studio
6 50 (0.68%) MSI
7 36 (0.49%) Selenium
8 26 (0.35%) Claude Code
8 26 (0.35%) Postman
9 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
10 17 (0.23%) Cucumber
10 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
12 13 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 12 (0.16%) Subversion
14 10 (0.14%) ERwin
14 10 (0.14%) MLflow
15 9 (0.12%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,753 (37.43%) Social Skills
2 1,448 (19.69%) Finance
3 956 (13.00%) Analytical Skills
4 653 (8.88%) Public Sector
5 473 (6.43%) Organisational Skills
6 311 (4.23%) Banking
7 234 (3.18%) Legal
8 225 (3.06%) Manufacturing
9 210 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
10 185 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 163 (2.22%) Retail
12 124 (1.69%) Telecoms
13 116 (1.58%) Marketing
14 100 (1.36%) Aerospace
14 100 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
15 91 (1.24%) Local Government
16 89 (1.21%) Military
17 78 (1.06%) Law
18 75 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
19 56 (0.76%) Billing
Job Titles
1 821 (11.16%) Architect
2 715 (9.72%) Analyst
3 646 (8.78%) Developer
4 632 (8.59%) Senior
5 482 (6.55%) Lead
6 470 (6.39%) Consultant
7 442 (6.01%) IT Support
8 436 (5.93%) Support Engineer
9 358 (4.87%) Administrator
10 293 (3.98%) IT Engineer
11 283 (3.85%) Solutions Architect
12 258 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
13 254 (3.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 244 (3.32%) IT Support Engineer
15 241 (3.28%) Data Engineer
16 225 (3.06%) Project Manager
17 195 (2.65%) Business Analyst
18 186 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
19 146 (1.99%) Security Engineer
20 140 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 543 (7.38%) Terraform
2 341 (4.64%) .NET
3 301 (4.09%) REST
4 146 (1.99%) JSON
5 144 (1.96%) OAuth
6 119 (1.62%) XML
7 110 (1.50%) SAML
8 107 (1.45%) OpenID
9 104 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
9 104 (1.41%) PySpark
10 100 (1.36%) ARM Templates
11 94 (1.28%) React
12 92 (1.25%) Web Services
13 90 (1.22%) .NET Framework
14 83 (1.13%) LDAP
15 82 (1.11%) RESTful
16 80 (1.09%) HTML
17 78 (1.06%) OAuth2
17 78 (1.06%) SailPoint
18 69 (0.94%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 604 (8.21%) Onboarding
2 320 (4.35%) Cloud Native
3 317 (4.31%) Management Information System
4 238 (3.24%) Enterprise Software
5 201 (2.73%) Product Ownership
6 174 (2.37%) AI Agents
7 164 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
8 163 (2.22%) PKI
9 156 (2.12%) Data Centre
10 145 (1.97%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
12 100 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 97 (1.32%) Driving Licence
14 96 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
15 94 (1.28%) CMDB
16 88 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
17 85 (1.16%) Low-Code
18 78 (1.06%) NHS
18 78 (1.06%) Replication
18 78 (1.06%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,554 (21.13%) Windows
2 485 (6.59%) Windows Server
3 387 (5.26%) Windows 10
4 350 (4.76%) Linux
5 155 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 133 (1.81%) Android
7 128 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.65%) Unix
10 41 (0.56%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
13 32 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
14 31 (0.42%) VMS
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 21 (0.29%) Solaris
16 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.16%) SUSE
18 8 (0.11%) AIX
19 7 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,425 (19.37%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,395 (18.97%) Problem-Solving
3 1,113 (15.13%) DevOps
4 1,101 (14.97%) Agile
5 993 (13.50%) Migration
6 960 (13.05%) CI/CD
7 932 (12.67%) Continuous Improvement
8 887 (12.06%) AI
9 830 (11.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 785 (10.67%) Business Intelligence
11 743 (10.10%) Analytics
12 721 (9.80%) ITIL
13 690 (9.38%) Customer Service
14 600 (8.16%) Cybersecurity
15 582 (7.91%) Infrastructure as Code
16 568 (7.72%) Roadmaps
17 519 (7.06%) Project Delivery
18 514 (6.99%) Decision-Making
19 510 (6.93%) Data Modelling
20 485 (6.59%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 876 (11.91%) SQL
2 839 (11.41%) PowerShell
3 755 (10.27%) Python
4 361 (4.91%) C#
5 283 (3.85%) JavaScript
6 214 (2.91%) Bicep
7 186 (2.53%) Bash
8 157 (2.13%) Java
9 120 (1.63%) TypeScript
10 111 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 109 (1.48%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.42%) VB
14 29 (0.39%) VBA
15 27 (0.37%) C++
16 25 (0.34%) VBScript
17 23 (0.31%) X++
18 20 (0.27%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.26%) R
20 16 (0.22%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,578 (21.45%) Security Cleared
2 1,165 (15.84%) SC Cleared
3 614 (8.35%) Degree
4 375 (5.10%) Microsoft Certification
5 316 (4.30%) DV Cleared
6 272 (3.70%) Azure Certification
7 193 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
8 143 (1.94%) CISSP
9 125 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
10 107 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
11 98 (1.33%) PMP
12 94 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 78 (1.06%) AWS Certification
13 78 (1.06%) CISM
14 66 (0.90%) DBS Check
15 59 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 57 (0.77%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 53 (0.72%) CCNP
18 47 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 44 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (6.23%) Data Quality
2 251 (3.41%) QA
3 237 (3.22%) GDPR
4 220 (2.99%) SLA
5 212 (2.88%) PMO
6 209 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 185 (2.52%) NIST
8 129 (1.75%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
10 86 (1.17%) NCSC
11 63 (0.86%) GRC
12 48 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.63%) WCAG
14 43 (0.58%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 25 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
17 22 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
19 17 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 1,366 (18.57%) Active Directory
2 281 (3.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 250 (3.40%) Docker
4 150 (2.04%) Hyper-V
5 135 (1.84%) Virtual Desktop
6 117 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
7 78 (1.06%) vSphere
8 64 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.23%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.22%) Firmware
13 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 7 (0.095%) IAG
15 7 (0.095%) zsh
16 6 (0.082%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.082%) NFS
16 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.082%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 585 (7.95%) Microsoft Intune
2 334 (4.54%) Kubernetes
3 294 (4.00%) SCCM
4 169 (2.30%) Ansible
5 147 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (0.83%) Grafana
7 58 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.73%) SCOM
9 49 (0.67%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 33 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 31 (0.42%) QRadar
13 27 (0.37%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.37%) WSUS
14 22 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
15 21 (0.29%) Argo
15 21 (0.29%) Puppet
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 548 (7.45%) ServiceNow
2 360 (4.89%) VMware
3 339 (4.61%) Oracle
4 306 (4.16%) SAP
5 285 (3.87%) Google
6 254 (3.45%) Databricks
7 242 (3.29%) Cisco
8 134 (1.82%) Salesforce
9 132 (1.79%) Splunk
10 115 (1.56%) Apple
11 109 (1.48%) CyberArk
12 98 (1.33%) Citrix
13 95 (1.29%) Okta
13 95 (1.29%) OpenAI
14 89 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
15 79 (1.07%) Foundry
16 75 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
17 66 (0.90%) Red Hat
18 61 (0.83%) IBM
19 58 (0.79%) Adobe