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 2 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
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,416 4,768 4,973
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.51% 14.40% 13.06%
As % of the Vendors category 32.43% 30.22% 29.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,661 3,109 3,059
10th Percentile £213 £206 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £487
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -2.46% -2.60%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £440 £450
% change year-on-year +2.27% -2.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 622 383 270
10th Percentile £13.33 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.50 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.25 £22.32 £18.35
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +21.62% -18.56%
75th Percentile £30.00 £31.40 £45.89
90th Percentile £66.52 £64.35 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.86 £21.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -14.98% +29.39% -26.23%

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 22,868 15,778 16,957
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.65% 47.64% 44.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,862 9,705 10,012
10th Percentile £310 £275 £285
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 £626
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 1,358 820 628
10th Percentile £13.97 £14.75 £14.78
25th Percentile £16.35 £17.69 £15.70
Median hourly rate £25.28 £25.15 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +0.53% -19.52% -26.90%
75th Percentile £57.50 £41.11 £64.63
90th Percentile £77.73 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.19 £21.30 £29.77
% change year-on-year +13.57% -28.45% -29.95%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 6,429 £490 +3.16% 9,328
UK excluding London 0 3,982 £450 +2.27% 6,615
London +1 2,771 £523 +4.65% 3,696
Work from Home +4 1,864 £500 - 3,870
South East 0 1,061 £475 +5.56% 1,737
North of England -5 984 £470 +7.55% 1,583
Midlands 0 691 £425 +3.03% 1,067
North West -1 575 £473 +7.88% 835
West Midlands -1 471 £425 -3.41% 614
South West -1 454 £475 +5.56% 667
Scotland +5 379 £450 - 528
Yorkshire -5 360 £473 +8.00% 558
East of England 0 300 £335 -36.19% 678
East Midlands +2 214 £431 +16.24% 453
Wales +1 111 £375 +25.00% 243
North East -22 54 £425 +23.26% 209
Northern Ireland -1 37 £342 -2.29% 212
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 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
1 898 (12.11%) SharePoint
2 408 (5.50%) Microsoft Exchange
3 157 (2.12%) Confluence
4 37 (0.50%) Apache
5 36 (0.49%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 27 (0.36%) CMS
8 26 (0.35%) Apache Airflow
9 23 (0.31%) Skype for Business
10 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
12 12 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.081%) Mendix
14 6 (0.081%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.081%) SAS
14 6 (0.081%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.067%) Apache Superset
16 4 (0.054%) Camunda
Applications
1 822 (11.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 787 (10.61%) Microsoft Office
3 329 (4.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 201 (2.71%) Microsoft Project
5 115 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 54 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.34%) 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 (0.13%) Revit
12 6 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.081%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.054%) Trello
14 3 (0.040%) 1Password
14 3 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.040%) Final Cut Pro
15 2 (0.027%) Productboard
15 2 (0.027%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 271 (3.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 91 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 36 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) 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 (0.13%) Aladdin
12 10 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
13 8 (0.11%) iTrent
13 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
14 7 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
14 7 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
14 7 (0.094%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.094%) SAP PP
14 7 (0.094%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,027 (40.82%) Azure
2 1,891 (25.50%) Microsoft 365
3 1,293 (17.44%) Power Platform
4 1,185 (15.98%) Entra ID
5 674 (9.09%) AWS
6 634 (8.55%) Azure DevOps
7 610 (8.23%) Dynamics 365
8 462 (6.23%) Microsoft Copilot
9 444 (5.99%) Power Automate
10 396 (5.34%) PowerApps
11 322 (4.34%) Microsoft Purview
12 307 (4.14%) GitHub
13 290 (3.91%) GCP
14 272 (3.67%) OneDrive
15 243 (3.28%) SaaS
16 206 (2.78%) Serverless
17 183 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
18 177 (2.39%) Azure Data Factory
19 164 (2.21%) Copilot Studio
20 162 (2.18%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 410 (5.53%) DNS
2 345 (4.65%) Firewall
3 305 (4.11%) VPN
4 271 (3.65%) DHCP
5 203 (2.74%) TCP/IP
6 171 (2.31%) Network Security
7 158 (2.13%) WAN
8 146 (1.97%) LAN
9 137 (1.85%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (0.98%) VLAN
11 71 (0.96%) Wireless
12 50 (0.67%) SAN
13 43 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.50%) Kerberos
15 37 (0.50%) MPLS
16 35 (0.47%) Unified Communications
17 32 (0.43%) BGP
18 31 (0.42%) Internet
19 30 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 780 (10.52%) Power BI
2 415 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 170 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
4 161 (2.17%) Metadata
5 146 (1.97%) Data Lake
6 129 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
7 116 (1.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 87 (1.17%) Power Query
9 84 (1.13%) Relational Database
10 74 (1.00%) MySQL
11 68 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 52 (0.70%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.63%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.57%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.54%) Star Schema
16 36 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 35 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
18 33 (0.44%) MongoDB
19 31 (0.42%) Tableau
20 29 (0.39%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 343 (4.63%) JIRA
2 253 (3.41%) Git
3 92 (1.24%) Jenkins
4 72 (0.97%) GitLab
5 57 (0.77%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.69%) MSI
7 36 (0.49%) Selenium
8 26 (0.35%) Claude Code
8 26 (0.35%) Postman
9 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
10 18 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
11 17 (0.23%) Cucumber
11 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
12 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
13 13 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
14 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 12 (0.16%) Subversion
15 10 (0.13%) ERwin
15 10 (0.13%) MLflow
16 9 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,780 (37.49%) Social Skills
2 1,460 (19.69%) Finance
3 970 (13.08%) Analytical Skills
4 658 (8.87%) Public Sector
5 469 (6.32%) Organisational Skills
6 317 (4.27%) Banking
7 236 (3.18%) Legal
8 223 (3.01%) Manufacturing
9 210 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
10 189 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 164 (2.21%) Retail
12 125 (1.69%) Telecoms
13 116 (1.56%) Marketing
14 102 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
15 98 (1.32%) Aerospace
16 92 (1.24%) Military
17 91 (1.23%) Local Government
18 77 (1.04%) Law
19 76 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
20 55 (0.74%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 831 (11.21%) Architect
2 722 (9.74%) Analyst
3 652 (8.79%) Developer
4 634 (8.55%) Senior
5 482 (6.50%) Lead
6 474 (6.39%) Consultant
7 444 (5.99%) IT Support
8 436 (5.88%) Support Engineer
9 347 (4.68%) Administrator
10 294 (3.96%) IT Engineer
11 284 (3.83%) Solutions Architect
12 260 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 259 (3.49%) Azure Engineer
14 246 (3.32%) Data Engineer
15 244 (3.29%) IT Support Engineer
16 228 (3.07%) Project Manager
17 197 (2.66%) Business Analyst
18 187 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
19 144 (1.94%) Security Engineer
20 143 (1.93%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 549 (7.40%) Terraform
2 345 (4.65%) .NET
3 302 (4.07%) REST
4 147 (1.98%) JSON
5 143 (1.93%) OAuth
6 117 (1.58%) XML
7 112 (1.51%) SAML
8 109 (1.47%) OpenID
9 105 (1.42%) Microsoft Graph
10 104 (1.40%) PySpark
11 101 (1.36%) ARM Templates
12 95 (1.28%) React
13 92 (1.24%) Web Services
14 90 (1.21%) .NET Framework
15 83 (1.12%) LDAP
15 83 (1.12%) RESTful
16 80 (1.08%) HTML
17 78 (1.05%) OAuth2
17 78 (1.05%) SailPoint
18 69 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 604 (8.14%) Onboarding
2 323 (4.36%) Cloud Native
3 315 (4.25%) Management Information System
4 234 (3.16%) Enterprise Software
5 203 (2.74%) Product Ownership
6 171 (2.31%) AI Agents
7 165 (2.22%) Hybrid Cloud
8 162 (2.18%) PKI
9 158 (2.13%) Data Centre
10 145 (1.96%) Security Posture
11 143 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
12 99 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
14 97 (1.31%) Driving Licence
15 94 (1.27%) CMDB
16 92 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
17 85 (1.15%) Low-Code
18 81 (1.09%) NHS
19 79 (1.07%) Replication
20 77 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,573 (21.21%) Windows
2 490 (6.61%) Windows Server
3 392 (5.29%) Windows 10
4 351 (4.73%) Linux
5 155 (2.09%) Mac OS
6 135 (1.82%) Android
7 131 (1.77%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.65%) Unix
10 41 (0.55%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 34 (0.46%) VMS
14 33 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
15 22 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.28%) Solaris
17 12 (0.16%) SUSE
18 8 (0.11%) AIX
18 8 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,425 (19.22%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,402 (18.91%) Problem-Solving
3 1,126 (15.18%) DevOps
4 1,111 (14.98%) Agile
5 1,003 (13.52%) Migration
6 975 (13.15%) CI/CD
7 932 (12.57%) Continuous Improvement
8 889 (11.99%) AI
9 836 (11.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 794 (10.71%) Business Intelligence
11 750 (10.11%) Analytics
12 726 (9.79%) ITIL
13 694 (9.36%) Customer Service
14 599 (8.08%) Cybersecurity
15 587 (7.92%) Infrastructure as Code
16 568 (7.66%) Roadmaps
17 519 (7.00%) Project Delivery
18 513 (6.92%) Data Modelling
18 513 (6.92%) Decision-Making
19 489 (6.59%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 885 (11.93%) SQL
2 844 (11.38%) PowerShell
3 757 (10.21%) Python
4 365 (4.92%) C#
5 284 (3.83%) JavaScript
6 217 (2.93%) Bicep
7 184 (2.48%) Bash
8 159 (2.14%) Java
9 121 (1.63%) TypeScript
10 112 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 110 (1.48%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.42%) VB
14 29 (0.39%) VBA
15 27 (0.36%) 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%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,592 (21.47%) Security Cleared
2 1,179 (15.90%) SC Cleared
3 627 (8.45%) Degree
4 377 (5.08%) Microsoft Certification
5 313 (4.22%) DV Cleared
6 276 (3.72%) Azure Certification
7 192 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.94%) CISSP
9 126 (1.70%) Cisco Certification
10 108 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
11 99 (1.33%) PMP
12 96 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 78 (1.05%) AWS Certification
13 78 (1.05%) CISM
14 66 (0.89%) DBS Check
15 59 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 58 (0.78%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 54 (0.73%) CCNP
18 47 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 44 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 463 (6.24%) Data Quality
2 253 (3.41%) QA
3 239 (3.22%) GDPR
4 220 (2.97%) SLA
5 210 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 210 (2.83%) PMO
6 186 (2.51%) NIST
7 129 (1.74%) Accessibility
8 88 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
9 84 (1.13%) NCSC
10 64 (0.86%) GRC
11 47 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 46 (0.62%) WCAG
13 43 (0.58%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 25 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
16 22 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
19 16 (0.22%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,379 (18.59%) Active Directory
2 284 (3.83%) VMware Infrastructure
3 252 (3.40%) Docker
4 151 (2.04%) Hyper-V
5 136 (1.83%) Virtual Desktop
6 118 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
7 80 (1.08%) vSphere
8 66 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.46%) 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 (0.094%) IAG
15 7 (0.094%) zsh
16 6 (0.081%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.081%) NFS
16 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.081%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 598 (8.06%) Microsoft Intune
2 335 (4.52%) Kubernetes
3 300 (4.05%) SCCM
4 169 (2.28%) Ansible
5 147 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (0.84%) Grafana
7 60 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
8 56 (0.76%) SCOM
9 49 (0.66%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 33 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 30 (0.40%) QRadar
13 27 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.36%) WSUS
14 22 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
15 21 (0.28%) Argo
15 21 (0.28%) Puppet
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 554 (7.47%) ServiceNow
2 365 (4.92%) VMware
3 345 (4.65%) Oracle
4 308 (4.15%) SAP
5 286 (3.86%) Google
6 258 (3.48%) Databricks
7 245 (3.30%) Cisco
8 136 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 133 (1.79%) Splunk
10 117 (1.58%) Apple
11 110 (1.48%) CyberArk
12 97 (1.31%) Citrix
13 94 (1.27%) Okta
13 94 (1.27%) OpenAI
14 89 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
15 78 (1.05%) Foundry
16 76 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
17 67 (0.90%) Red Hat
18 62 (0.84%) IBM
19 59 (0.80%) Adobe