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 26 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
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,384 4,565 5,235
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.03% 13.86% 12.96%
As % of the Vendors category 29.09% 29.24% 29.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,200 2,931 3,437
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £585 £585 £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 371 365 389
10th Percentile £13.70 £13.85 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.60 £15.84 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +38.63% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £28.75
90th Percentile £73.75 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.21
% change year-on-year +3.68% +24.95% -14.68%

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 21,946 15,612 17,568
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.35% 47.42% 43.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,634 9,558 11,043
10th Percentile £313 £280 £280
25th Percentile £413 £401 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,090 773 927
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.65 £13.25
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.08 £15.62
Median hourly rate £35.11 £25.15 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.60% -6.85% -35.41%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £34.00 £22.32 £25.00
% change year-on-year +52.36% -10.74% -24.24%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -1 5,549 £493 +3.68% 3,283
UK excluding London -2 3,399 £450 +4.41% 2,760
London -2 2,432 £510 +1.39% 1,032
Work from Home +2 1,652 £500 - 1,208
South East -1 852 £475 - 888
North of England -5 844 £465 +6.90% 682
Midlands -2 595 £447 +19.20% 447
North West -1 481 £450 +2.86% 345
West Midlands -3 423 £450 +20.00% 245
South West -1 413 £475 +11.76% 291
Yorkshire -5 338 £475 +7.04% 240
Scotland +7 319 £450 - 121
East of England 0 268 £375 -25.00% 310
East Midlands +2 164 £418 +14.46% 201
Wales 0 110 £413 +49.48% 84
Northern Ireland -2 31 £350 -6.04% 29
North East -41 31 £450 +32.35% 113
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
1 733 (11.48%) SharePoint
2 397 (6.22%) Microsoft Exchange
3 145 (2.27%) Confluence
4 42 (0.66%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.55%) Apache
6 28 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 16 (0.25%) CMS
9 14 (0.22%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) SAS
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.14%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.13%) nginx
15 6 (0.094%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.094%) SharePoint 2013
16 5 (0.078%) Camunda
16 5 (0.078%) OpenEdge
16 5 (0.078%) OpenStack
17 4 (0.063%) Liferay
Applications
1 593 (9.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 574 (8.99%) Microsoft Office
3 256 (4.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (2.54%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.68%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.094%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.031%) Navisworks
12 2 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 236 (3.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.19%) Primavera
10 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.13%) Magento
12 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.11%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.094%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.094%) Loan IQ
13 6 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,662 (41.70%) Azure
2 1,584 (24.81%) Microsoft 365
3 1,092 (17.11%) Power Platform
4 937 (14.68%) Entra ID
5 570 (8.93%) AWS
6 529 (8.29%) Dynamics 365
7 526 (8.24%) Azure DevOps
8 379 (5.94%) Power Automate
9 347 (5.44%) PowerApps
10 335 (5.25%) Microsoft Copilot
11 295 (4.62%) Microsoft Purview
12 258 (4.04%) GitHub
13 241 (3.78%) OneDrive
14 233 (3.65%) SaaS
15 206 (3.23%) GCP
16 164 (2.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 163 (2.55%) Azure Data Factory
18 154 (2.41%) PaaS
19 151 (2.37%) Serverless
20 145 (2.27%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 339 (5.31%) DNS
2 314 (4.92%) Firewall
3 248 (3.88%) VPN
4 208 (3.26%) DHCP
5 176 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 149 (2.33%) Wi-Fi
7 148 (2.32%) WAN
8 141 (2.21%) LAN
9 140 (2.19%) Network Security
10 64 (1.00%) VLAN
11 46 (0.72%) Wireless
12 44 (0.69%) SAN
13 42 (0.66%) SSL
14 41 (0.64%) MPLS
15 37 (0.58%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.47%) Internet
16 30 (0.47%) SD-WAN
16 30 (0.47%) VoIP
17 27 (0.42%) BGP
17 27 (0.42%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 689 (10.79%) Power BI
2 368 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 187 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 132 (2.07%) PostgreSQL
5 131 (2.05%) Data Lake
6 127 (1.99%) Metadata
7 123 (1.93%) Azure SQL Database
8 74 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 72 (1.13%) Relational Database
10 63 (0.99%) MySQL
11 60 (0.94%) Power Query
12 52 (0.81%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 50 (0.78%) NoSQL
14 45 (0.70%) Oracle Database
15 40 (0.63%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.58%) Tableau
17 34 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 34 (0.53%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 26 (0.41%) Big Data
19 25 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 326 (5.11%) JIRA
2 197 (3.09%) Git
3 86 (1.35%) Jenkins
4 59 (0.92%) GitLab
5 51 (0.80%) Visual Studio
6 32 (0.50%) MSI
7 28 (0.44%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.27%) Postman
9 16 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
10 15 (0.23%) MLflow
10 15 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 14 (0.22%) ERwin
12 13 (0.20%) Artifactory
12 13 (0.20%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.17%) JUnit
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 2,133 (33.41%) Social Skills
2 1,296 (20.30%) Finance
3 772 (12.09%) Analytical Skills
4 618 (9.68%) Public Sector
5 316 (4.95%) Banking
6 278 (4.35%) Organisational Skills
7 218 (3.41%) Legal
8 173 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 124 (1.94%) Manufacturing
11 119 (1.86%) Retail
12 110 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 102 (1.60%) Law
14 97 (1.52%) Marketing
15 85 (1.33%) Military
16 82 (1.28%) Local Government
17 74 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
18 72 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
19 60 (0.94%) Investment Banking
20 47 (0.74%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 745 (11.67%) Architect
2 679 (10.64%) Analyst
3 609 (9.54%) Developer
4 552 (8.65%) Senior
5 447 (7.00%) Lead
6 400 (6.27%) IT Support
7 389 (6.09%) Consultant
8 342 (5.36%) Support Engineer
9 245 (3.84%) IT Engineer
10 244 (3.82%) Data Engineer
11 235 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
12 225 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
13 215 (3.37%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 210 (3.29%) Project Manager
15 197 (3.09%) IT Support Engineer
16 182 (2.85%) Administrator
17 181 (2.84%) Business Analyst
18 150 (2.35%) Cloud Engineer
19 127 (1.99%) Security Engineer
20 113 (1.77%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (4.71%) .NET
2 240 (3.76%) REST
3 130 (2.04%) Microsoft Graph
4 123 (1.93%) JSON
5 113 (1.77%) OAuth
6 105 (1.64%) PySpark
7 93 (1.46%) OpenID
8 92 (1.44%) SAML
9 90 (1.41%) XML
10 89 (1.39%) Web Services
11 87 (1.36%) .NET Framework
12 82 (1.28%) React
13 71 (1.11%) RESTful
14 68 (1.07%) HTML
14 68 (1.07%) LDAP
15 67 (1.05%) ARM Templates
16 66 (1.03%) SOAP
17 64 (1.00%) SailPoint
18 63 (0.99%) CSS
18 63 (0.99%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 413 (6.47%) Onboarding
2 303 (4.75%) Cloud Native
3 189 (2.96%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.76%) Management Information System
5 147 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
6 133 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
7 124 (1.94%) AI Agents
7 124 (1.94%) Data Centre
7 124 (1.94%) PKI
8 123 (1.93%) Hybrid Cloud
9 113 (1.77%) Security Posture
10 98 (1.54%) Data Structures
11 91 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
12 81 (1.27%) Virtual Team
13 80 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
14 71 (1.11%) Low-Code
15 66 (1.03%) Distributed Systems
15 66 (1.03%) Driving Licence
16 61 (0.96%) Replication
17 55 (0.86%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,344 (21.05%) Windows
2 348 (5.45%) Windows Server
3 324 (5.08%) Windows 10
4 304 (4.76%) Linux
5 135 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 120 (1.88%) Android
7 111 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.70%) Unix
10 36 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
11 33 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 31 (0.49%) Windows 7
13 30 (0.47%) VMS
14 26 (0.41%) Ubuntu
15 18 (0.28%) 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 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,114 (17.45%) Problem-Solving
2 1,009 (15.81%) DevOps
3 980 (15.35%) Agile
4 899 (14.08%) Migration
5 869 (13.61%) Stakeholder Management
6 831 (13.02%) CI/CD
7 728 (11.40%) AI
8 704 (11.03%) Business Intelligence
9 700 (10.96%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 692 (10.84%) Continuous Improvement
11 675 (10.57%) Analytics
12 587 (9.19%) ITIL
13 508 (7.96%) Customer Service
14 469 (7.35%) Data Modelling
15 465 (7.28%) Roadmaps
16 450 (7.05%) Cybersecurity
17 448 (7.02%) Infrastructure as Code
18 419 (6.56%) Decision-Making
19 410 (6.42%) Validation
20 402 (6.30%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 813 (12.73%) SQL
2 681 (10.67%) PowerShell
3 655 (10.26%) Python
4 320 (5.01%) C#
5 238 (3.73%) JavaScript
6 200 (3.13%) Java
7 181 (2.84%) Bicep
8 123 (1.93%) Bash
9 114 (1.79%) T-SQL
10 92 (1.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.35%) TypeScript
12 73 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
13 42 (0.66%) VBA
14 33 (0.52%) C++
15 28 (0.44%) PL/SQL
15 28 (0.44%) VB
16 19 (0.30%) X++
17 16 (0.25%) R
17 16 (0.25%) Scala
17 16 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,305 (20.44%) Security Cleared
2 986 (15.44%) SC Cleared
3 626 (9.81%) Degree
4 323 (5.06%) Microsoft Certification
5 250 (3.92%) DV Cleared
6 228 (3.57%) Azure Certification
7 148 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
8 122 (1.91%) CISSP
9 119 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
10 117 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
11 88 (1.38%) PMP
12 81 (1.27%) PMI Certification
13 67 (1.05%) CISM
14 66 (1.03%) AWS Certification
15 51 (0.80%) CCNP
16 50 (0.78%) Master's Degree
17 48 (0.75%) DBS Check
18 44 (0.69%) CCNA
19 39 (0.61%) A+ Certification
19 39 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (5.29%) Data Quality
2 222 (3.48%) GDPR
3 217 (3.40%) QA
4 182 (2.85%) SLA
5 172 (2.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 154 (2.41%) PMO
7 145 (2.27%) NIST
8 103 (1.61%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 76 (1.19%) NCSC
11 43 (0.67%) GRC
12 34 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 33 (0.52%) WCAG
14 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 26 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.23%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 13 (0.20%) GMP
System Software
1 1,222 (19.14%) Active Directory
2 235 (3.68%) Docker
3 213 (3.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.74%) Hyper-V
5 95 (1.49%) Virtual Desktop
6 87 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
7 56 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
7 56 (0.88%) vSphere
8 28 (0.44%) BitLocker
9 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.31%) Firmware
10 20 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
11 8 (0.13%) NFS
11 8 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
12 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 5 (0.078%) RACF
13 5 (0.078%) Terminal Services
13 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
14 4 (0.063%) Snort
14 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 509 (7.97%) Microsoft Intune
2 448 (7.02%) Terraform
3 294 (4.61%) Kubernetes
4 228 (3.57%) SCCM
5 149 (2.33%) Ansible
6 121 (1.90%) Single Sign-On
7 64 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.80%) vCenter Server
9 48 (0.75%) Grafana
10 41 (0.64%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 35 (0.55%) Prometheus
11 35 (0.55%) SCOM
12 23 (0.36%) Puppet
13 20 (0.31%) QRadar
14 18 (0.28%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.28%) WSUS
15 16 (0.25%) Progress Chef
16 13 (0.20%) Argo
17 12 (0.19%) Avamar
17 12 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 439 (6.88%) ServiceNow
2 301 (4.71%) Oracle
3 300 (4.70%) VMware
4 258 (4.04%) SAP
5 219 (3.43%) Databricks
6 206 (3.23%) Cisco
7 203 (3.18%) Google
8 117 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 108 (1.69%) Citrix
10 97 (1.52%) Splunk
11 94 (1.47%) Apple
12 81 (1.27%) Foundry
13 79 (1.24%) OpenAI
14 75 (1.17%) CyberArk
15 73 (1.14%) Okta
16 71 (1.11%) CrowdStrike
17 60 (0.94%) Red Hat
18 58 (0.91%) BeyondTrust
19 53 (0.83%) Zscaler
20 48 (0.75%) Adobe