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 6 April 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
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,530 3,901 5,645
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.23% 13.34% 12.86%
As % of the Vendors category 28.32% 28.27% 30.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,729 2,634 3,752
10th Percentile £206 £210 £189
25th Percentile £370 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £579 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £663 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £463
% change year-on-year - -2.70% +0.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 382 203 430
10th Percentile £13.51 £14.84 £11.05
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.84 £12.85
Median hourly rate £20.09 £22.27 £15.42
Median % change year-on-year -9.79% +44.42% -31.47%
75th Percentile £27.72 £30.63 £23.82
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.45 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £20.75 £15.00
% change year-on-year -4.05% +38.33% -23.08%

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 19,528 13,798 18,722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 43.18% 47.19% 42.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,546 8,717 11,698
10th Percentile £313 £293 £258
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% - -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £626
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 974 501 1,050
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.02
25th Percentile £18.50 £19.00 £14.37
Median hourly rate £27.36 £28.60 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% +27.11% -46.40%
75th Percentile £59.73 £61.50 £56.43
90th Percentile £78.60 £80.59 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £26.50 £21.50
% change year-on-year -5.66% +23.26% -42.67%

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 6 April 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 6 April 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 6 April 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 4,856 £492 +3.58% 3,243
UK excluding London 0 2,894 £450 - 2,912
London -2 2,109 £510 +2.00% 867
Work from Home -1 1,377 £500 - 1,234
North of England 0 790 £443 +4.24% 701
South East -3 644 £485 -3.00% 876
Midlands -6 499 £450 +5.88% 451
North West -1 438 £414 -8.00% 370
East of England 0 350 £400 - 304
West Midlands -7 350 £473 +11.18% 243
South West -1 329 £500 +5.26% 336
Yorkshire +10 326 £450 +12.50% 237
Scotland +2 193 £425 +6.25% 170
East Midlands -1 144 £377 -11.35% 207
Wales +2 97 £310 -11.43% 102
North East -17 32 £450 +28.57% 104
Northern Ireland +1 22 £450 +38.46% 39
Channel Islands -3 1 - - 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
1 613 (11.08%) SharePoint
2 409 (7.40%) Microsoft Exchange
3 109 (1.97%) Confluence
4 27 (0.49%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (0.42%) CMS
6 22 (0.40%) Skype for Business
7 21 (0.38%) Apache
8 17 (0.31%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 10 (0.18%) IIS
10 10 (0.18%) Mendix
11 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.090%) Camunda
12 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
13 4 (0.072%) SharePoint Server
14 3 (0.054%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 589 (10.65%) Microsoft Office
2 520 (9.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 228 (4.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 125 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
5 102 (1.84%) MS Visio
6 79 (1.43%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Trello
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.090%) Adobe Captivate
11 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.054%) Sketch
13 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 196 (3.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 53 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.31%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 14 (0.25%) Maximo
6 13 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
9 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 8 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 8 (0.14%) Shopify
11 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.13%) SystmOne
12 6 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
12 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
12 6 (0.11%) Primavera
12 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,275 (41.14%) Azure
2 1,421 (25.70%) Microsoft 365
3 921 (16.65%) Power Platform
4 706 (12.77%) Entra ID
5 459 (8.30%) Dynamics 365
6 456 (8.25%) AWS
7 448 (8.10%) Azure DevOps
8 347 (6.27%) Power Automate
9 312 (5.64%) PowerApps
10 278 (5.03%) Microsoft Purview
11 266 (4.81%) GitHub
12 214 (3.87%) Microsoft Copilot
13 210 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 196 (3.54%) Azure Data Factory
15 191 (3.45%) SaaS
16 180 (3.25%) Serverless
17 166 (3.00%) GCP
18 160 (2.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 156 (2.82%) PaaS
20 148 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 305 (5.52%) Firewall
2 299 (5.41%) DNS
3 212 (3.83%) VPN
4 173 (3.13%) DHCP
5 148 (2.68%) Wi-Fi
6 136 (2.46%) WAN
7 121 (2.19%) Network Security
8 119 (2.15%) LAN
9 116 (2.10%) TCP/IP
10 58 (1.05%) VLAN
11 54 (0.98%) Kerberos
12 44 (0.80%) Skype
13 43 (0.78%) SD-WAN
14 38 (0.69%) Wireless
15 35 (0.63%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.60%) SSL
17 32 (0.58%) SAN
18 28 (0.51%) HTTP
18 28 (0.51%) MPLS
19 23 (0.42%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 570 (10.31%) Power BI
2 278 (5.03%) SQL Server
3 177 (3.20%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (2.80%) Data Lake
5 121 (2.19%) Azure SQL Database
6 110 (1.99%) Metadata
7 103 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 70 (1.27%) Relational Database
10 55 (0.99%) Oracle Database
11 53 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 48 (0.87%) NoSQL
13 46 (0.83%) MySQL
13 46 (0.83%) Tableau
14 41 (0.74%) Power Query
15 39 (0.71%) Delta Lake
16 37 (0.67%) Star Schema
17 26 (0.47%) Snowflake Schema
17 26 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 25 (0.45%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 250 (4.52%) JIRA
2 173 (3.13%) Git
3 70 (1.27%) GitLab
4 68 (1.23%) Jenkins
5 24 (0.43%) Visual Studio
6 23 (0.42%) Artifactory
7 22 (0.40%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.33%) MSI
8 18 (0.33%) Postman
9 17 (0.31%) Selenium
10 16 (0.29%) MLflow
11 15 (0.27%) JMeter
12 13 (0.24%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.24%) JUnit
13 12 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
14 11 (0.20%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.20%) Maven
15 10 (0.18%) Android Studio
15 10 (0.18%) SpecFlow
16 9 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,988 (35.95%) Social Skills
2 1,111 (20.09%) Finance
3 651 (11.77%) Analytical Skills
4 533 (9.64%) Public Sector
5 296 (5.35%) Banking
6 251 (4.54%) Organisational Skills
7 249 (4.50%) Legal
8 154 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
9 120 (2.17%) Manufacturing
10 112 (2.03%) Presentation Skills
11 100 (1.81%) Marketing
12 93 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 88 (1.59%) Law
14 83 (1.50%) Retail
15 79 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 61 (1.10%) Local Government
17 60 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
18 59 (1.07%) Military
19 54 (0.98%) Investment Banking
20 41 (0.74%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 673 (12.17%) Architect
2 628 (11.36%) Analyst
3 529 (9.57%) Developer
4 439 (7.94%) Senior
5 377 (6.82%) IT Support
6 323 (5.84%) Lead
7 287 (5.19%) Consultant
8 278 (5.03%) Support Engineer
9 206 (3.73%) Data Engineer
10 202 (3.65%) IT Engineer
11 201 (3.63%) Solutions Architect
12 196 (3.54%) Azure Engineer
13 176 (3.18%) Administrator
14 175 (3.16%) Business Analyst
15 170 (3.07%) Project Manager
16 167 (3.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 154 (2.78%) IT Support Engineer
18 113 (2.04%) Security Engineer
19 107 (1.93%) DevOps Engineer
20 105 (1.90%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (4.67%) .NET
2 182 (3.29%) REST
3 130 (2.35%) Microsoft Graph
4 121 (2.19%) OAuth
5 103 (1.86%) SAML
6 94 (1.70%) React
7 91 (1.65%) PySpark
8 84 (1.52%) OpenID
9 71 (1.28%) JSON
10 66 (1.19%) LDAP
11 65 (1.18%) Middleware
12 64 (1.16%) RESTful
13 62 (1.12%) Web Services
14 61 (1.10%) HTML
15 60 (1.08%) ARM Templates
16 58 (1.05%) OAuth2
17 57 (1.03%) AngularJS
18 54 (0.98%) CSS
19 52 (0.94%) Node.js
20 50 (0.90%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 285 (5.15%) Onboarding
2 222 (4.01%) Cloud Native
3 188 (3.40%) Product Ownership
4 126 (2.28%) Management Information System
5 111 (2.01%) Enterprise Software
6 94 (1.70%) Data Centre
7 90 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
8 88 (1.59%) PKI
8 88 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
9 83 (1.50%) Security Posture
10 75 (1.36%) AI Agents
11 74 (1.34%) Legacy Systems
12 73 (1.32%) Replication
13 67 (1.21%) Low-Code
14 66 (1.19%) Data Structures
15 63 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
16 58 (1.05%) Driving Licence
17 57 (1.03%) NHS
18 56 (1.01%) Virtual Team
19 44 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,239 (22.41%) Windows
2 345 (6.24%) Windows 10
3 282 (5.10%) Windows Server
4 279 (5.05%) Linux
5 101 (1.83%) Android
6 97 (1.75%) Mac OS
7 96 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 43 (0.78%) Windows 7
8 43 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
9 40 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 40 (0.72%) Unix
10 29 (0.52%) VMS
11 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
12 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
12 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.18%) CentOS
14 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
15 8 (0.14%) AIX
16 4 (0.072%) CatOS
16 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 983 (17.78%) Problem-Solving
2 879 (15.90%) Agile
3 857 (15.50%) DevOps
4 767 (13.87%) Migration
5 736 (13.31%) CI/CD
6 653 (11.81%) Business Intelligence
7 621 (11.23%) Analytics
8 532 (9.62%) Stakeholder Management
9 527 (9.53%) AI
10 506 (9.15%) Continuous Improvement
11 463 (8.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 462 (8.35%) Customer Service
13 425 (7.69%) ITIL
14 392 (7.09%) Data Modelling
15 379 (6.85%) Cybersecurity
16 335 (6.06%) Roadmaps
17 322 (5.82%) Infrastructure as Code
18 302 (5.46%) Project Management
19 300 (5.42%) Change Management
20 295 (5.33%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 733 (13.25%) SQL
2 665 (12.03%) PowerShell
3 624 (11.28%) Python
4 289 (5.23%) C#
5 222 (4.01%) JavaScript
6 173 (3.13%) Java
7 125 (2.26%) Bicep
8 106 (1.92%) Kusto Query Language
9 95 (1.72%) Bash
10 85 (1.54%) TypeScript
11 78 (1.41%) T-SQL
12 69 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 37 (0.67%) PL/SQL
14 31 (0.56%) VBA
15 28 (0.51%) C++
16 23 (0.42%) VB
17 21 (0.38%) Perl
18 18 (0.33%) Shell Script
19 17 (0.31%) R
20 15 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,075 (19.44%) Security Cleared
2 820 (14.83%) SC Cleared
3 554 (10.02%) Degree
4 295 (5.33%) Microsoft Certification
5 214 (3.87%) DV Cleared
6 186 (3.36%) Azure Certification
7 130 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 99 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
9 96 (1.74%) CISSP
10 68 (1.23%) PMI Certification
11 65 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
12 61 (1.10%) PMP
13 57 (1.03%) Master's Degree
14 53 (0.96%) CISM
15 41 (0.74%) AWS Certification
16 40 (0.72%) MCSE
17 35 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 33 (0.60%) DBS Check
19 31 (0.56%) A+ Certification
19 31 (0.56%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (4.50%) Data Quality
2 238 (4.30%) GDPR
3 167 (3.02%) QA
4 154 (2.78%) SLA
5 137 (2.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 113 (2.04%) PMO
7 107 (1.93%) NIST
8 71 (1.28%) Accessibility
9 62 (1.12%) Cyber Essentials
10 47 (0.85%) NCSC
11 39 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 30 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 28 (0.51%) GRC
14 23 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 19 (0.34%) MiFID
16 18 (0.33%) WCAG
17 15 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 13 (0.24%) FINRA
18 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
19 12 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,092 (19.75%) Active Directory
2 221 (4.00%) Docker
3 175 (3.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (1.61%) Hyper-V
5 64 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
6 55 (0.99%) Virtual Desktop
7 38 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
8 31 (0.56%) vSphere
9 25 (0.45%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.31%) Firmware
12 12 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
14 5 (0.090%) IAG
14 5 (0.090%) Snort
15 4 (0.072%) KVM
15 4 (0.072%) NFS
15 4 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.054%) DFS Replication
Systems Management
1 437 (7.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 354 (6.40%) Terraform
3 267 (4.83%) Kubernetes
4 210 (3.80%) SCCM
5 140 (2.53%) Single Sign-On
6 115 (2.08%) Ansible
7 98 (1.77%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 45 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (0.74%) Grafana
10 32 (0.58%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 23 (0.42%) SCOM
14 19 (0.34%) Puppet
15 16 (0.29%) WSUS
16 15 (0.27%) AirWatch
16 15 (0.27%) CASB
17 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
18 11 (0.20%) QRadar
18 11 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 259 (4.68%) ServiceNow
2 255 (4.61%) VMware
3 215 (3.89%) Databricks
4 207 (3.74%) Oracle
5 206 (3.73%) SAP
6 180 (3.25%) Cisco
7 166 (3.00%) Google
8 133 (2.41%) Citrix
9 102 (1.84%) Splunk
10 95 (1.72%) OpenAI
11 91 (1.65%) Salesforce
12 79 (1.43%) Foundry
13 65 (1.18%) Apple
14 57 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
15 49 (0.89%) HP
15 49 (0.89%) Palo Alto
16 47 (0.85%) Red Hat
17 43 (0.78%) Adobe
18 40 (0.72%) Okta
19 39 (0.71%) Informatica