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 31 August 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
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,897 4,672 5,049
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.83% 14.18% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 30.74% 30.04% 29.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,441 3,000 3,210
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £342 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.69% -2.62% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 481 377 311
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.00 £12.38
25th Percentile £15.25 £16.02 £14.84
Median hourly rate £19.50 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -12.61% +37.49% -26.23%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.00 £36.64
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.33 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.57% +24.80% -16.77%

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 22,440 15,554 16,988
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.75% 47.20% 44.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,821 9,526 10,400
10th Percentile £313 £275 £287
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,170 794 740
10th Percentile £14.35 £14.69 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.29 £25.15 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.44% -13.28% -31.76%
75th Percentile £65.00 £44.01 £62.51
90th Percentile £81.36 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.24 £27.50
% change year-on-year +31.83% -22.76% -30.51%

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 31 August 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 31 August 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 31 August 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 -2 5,977 £488 +2.79% 4,917
UK excluding London 0 3,665 £450 +2.86% 4,026
London 0 2,619 £515 +3.00% 1,719
Work from Home +4 1,801 £500 - 1,871
South East +2 957 £475 +2.70% 1,155
North of England -6 920 £450 +3.45% 925
Midlands -1 638 £443 +10.63% 663
North West -2 549 £450 +2.97% 470
South West +1 443 £470 +15.69% 514
West Midlands -2 432 £445 +5.95% 354
Scotland +8 354 £450 +0.56% 218
Yorkshire -6 340 £460 +2.51% 326
East of England -1 248 £350 -33.33% 423
East Midlands +2 197 £425 +19.72% 306
Wales -1 105 £413 +37.50% 127
North East -33 35 £375 +10.29% 153
Northern Ireland -3 32 £350 - 77
Channel Islands -1 4 £525 -27.59% 3

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
1 813 (11.79%) SharePoint
2 399 (5.79%) Microsoft Exchange
3 150 (2.17%) Confluence
4 38 (0.55%) Apache
5 36 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.35%) CMS
8 23 (0.33%) Skype for Business
9 21 (0.30%) IIS
10 18 (0.26%) HCL Notes
11 14 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.16%) SAS
12 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.14%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.087%) Camunda
15 6 (0.087%) Mendix
15 6 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.087%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.072%) OpenStack
Applications
1 694 (10.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 685 (9.93%) Microsoft Office
3 297 (4.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 191 (2.77%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.61%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.12%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.10%) Navisworks
11 7 (0.10%) Revit
12 4 (0.058%) Trello
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.043%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.043%) MicroStation
13 3 (0.043%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.029%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 250 (3.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
7 13 (0.19%) Primavera
8 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
11 8 (0.12%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.087%) SAP GRC
Cloud Services
1 2,902 (42.08%) Azure
2 1,767 (25.62%) Microsoft 365
3 1,211 (17.56%) Power Platform
4 1,067 (15.47%) Entra ID
5 647 (9.38%) AWS
6 619 (8.97%) Azure DevOps
7 596 (8.64%) Dynamics 365
8 409 (5.93%) Power Automate
9 383 (5.55%) Microsoft Copilot
10 367 (5.32%) PowerApps
11 304 (4.41%) GitHub
12 302 (4.38%) Microsoft Purview
13 262 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 245 (3.55%) SaaS
15 238 (3.45%) GCP
16 188 (2.73%) Azure Data Factory
17 179 (2.60%) Serverless
18 174 (2.52%) Azure Monitor
19 162 (2.35%) Azure Logic Apps
20 159 (2.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 387 (5.61%) DNS
2 346 (5.02%) Firewall
3 284 (4.12%) VPN
4 256 (3.71%) DHCP
5 190 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 173 (2.51%) WAN
7 163 (2.36%) Network Security
8 152 (2.20%) LAN
9 145 (2.10%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.09%) VLAN
11 59 (0.86%) Wireless
12 47 (0.68%) SAN
13 39 (0.57%) MPLS
14 37 (0.54%) Skype
15 35 (0.51%) SSL
16 33 (0.48%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.46%) Internet
17 32 (0.46%) Unified Communications
18 31 (0.45%) BGP
19 28 (0.41%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 765 (11.09%) Power BI
2 390 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 181 (2.62%) Data Warehouse
4 148 (2.15%) Metadata
5 142 (2.06%) Data Lake
6 130 (1.88%) Azure SQL Database
7 125 (1.81%) PostgreSQL
8 74 (1.07%) Relational Database
9 70 (1.01%) Power Query
10 66 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 61 (0.88%) MySQL
12 53 (0.77%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.62%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 43 (0.62%) Star Schema
15 38 (0.55%) Delta Lake
16 36 (0.52%) Tableau
17 28 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 26 (0.38%) MongoDB
19 22 (0.32%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 332 (4.81%) JIRA
2 220 (3.19%) Git
3 95 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.06%) GitLab
5 50 (0.72%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.64%) MSI
7 38 (0.55%) Selenium
8 19 (0.28%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Claude Code
10 16 (0.23%) MLflow
10 16 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.17%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.16%) Artifactory
14 11 (0.16%) Maven
14 11 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,460 (35.67%) Social Skills
2 1,393 (20.20%) Finance
3 885 (12.83%) Analytical Skills
4 638 (9.25%) Public Sector
5 376 (5.45%) Organisational Skills
6 329 (4.77%) Banking
7 221 (3.20%) Legal
8 195 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
9 165 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 158 (2.29%) Manufacturing
11 141 (2.04%) Retail
12 124 (1.80%) Telecoms
13 105 (1.52%) Law
14 104 (1.51%) Marketing
15 94 (1.36%) Local Government
16 89 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
17 82 (1.19%) Military
18 73 (1.06%) Aerospace
19 62 (0.90%) Investment Banking
20 61 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 811 (11.76%) Architect
2 711 (10.31%) Analyst
3 610 (8.84%) Developer
4 603 (8.74%) Senior
5 487 (7.06%) Lead
6 448 (6.50%) Consultant
7 431 (6.25%) IT Support
8 417 (6.05%) Support Engineer
9 286 (4.15%) IT Engineer
10 262 (3.80%) Solutions Architect
11 253 (3.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 245 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
13 242 (3.51%) Data Engineer
14 236 (3.42%) Administrator
15 231 (3.35%) IT Support Engineer
16 223 (3.23%) Project Manager
17 181 (2.62%) Business Analyst
18 172 (2.49%) Cloud Engineer
19 131 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
20 129 (1.87%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 515 (7.47%) Terraform
2 343 (4.97%) .NET
3 268 (3.89%) REST
4 127 (1.84%) JSON
5 126 (1.83%) OAuth
6 113 (1.64%) PySpark
7 109 (1.58%) Microsoft Graph
8 102 (1.48%) SAML
9 101 (1.46%) XML
10 94 (1.36%) OpenID
11 92 (1.33%) .NET Framework
12 85 (1.23%) ARM Templates
12 85 (1.23%) React
13 83 (1.20%) Web Services
14 78 (1.13%) LDAP
15 75 (1.09%) RESTful
16 69 (1.00%) HTML
16 69 (1.00%) OAuth2
17 68 (0.99%) SOAP
18 67 (0.97%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 521 (7.55%) Onboarding
2 313 (4.54%) Cloud Native
3 237 (3.44%) Management Information System
4 195 (2.83%) Enterprise Software
5 194 (2.81%) Product Ownership
6 156 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
7 145 (2.10%) PKI
8 139 (2.02%) AI Agents
8 139 (2.02%) Data Centre
9 131 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
10 121 (1.75%) Security Posture
11 92 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
12 90 (1.30%) Data Structures
13 88 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
14 84 (1.22%) Low-Code
15 79 (1.15%) CMDB
16 77 (1.12%) Driving Licence
17 72 (1.04%) Virtual Team
18 66 (0.96%) Distributed Systems
18 66 (0.96%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,477 (21.42%) Windows
2 443 (6.42%) Windows Server
3 366 (5.31%) Windows 10
4 331 (4.80%) Linux
5 141 (2.04%) Mac OS
6 120 (1.74%) Android
7 113 (1.64%) Apple iOS
8 63 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
13 35 (0.51%) Ubuntu
14 34 (0.49%) VMS
15 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
16 20 (0.29%) CentOS
17 13 (0.19%) Solaris
18 12 (0.17%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,266 (18.36%) Problem-Solving
2 1,185 (17.18%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,101 (15.96%) DevOps
4 1,068 (15.48%) Agile
5 980 (14.21%) Migration
6 905 (13.12%) CI/CD
7 852 (12.35%) Continuous Improvement
8 792 (11.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 789 (11.44%) AI
10 765 (11.09%) Business Intelligence
11 723 (10.48%) Analytics
12 685 (9.93%) ITIL
13 628 (9.11%) Customer Service
14 539 (7.81%) Infrastructure as Code
15 537 (7.79%) Cybersecurity
16 500 (7.25%) Roadmaps
17 499 (7.24%) Data Modelling
18 476 (6.90%) Project Delivery
19 456 (6.61%) ITSM
20 454 (6.58%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 854 (12.38%) SQL
2 760 (11.02%) PowerShell
3 710 (10.29%) Python
4 332 (4.81%) C#
5 246 (3.57%) JavaScript
6 201 (2.91%) Bicep
7 181 (2.62%) Java
8 166 (2.41%) Bash
9 105 (1.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 105 (1.52%) T-SQL
10 95 (1.38%) TypeScript
11 75 (1.09%) Kusto Query Language
12 32 (0.46%) VBA
13 30 (0.43%) VB
14 27 (0.39%) VBScript
15 23 (0.33%) X++
16 20 (0.29%) C++
16 20 (0.29%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.26%) R
18 16 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,506 (21.84%) Security Cleared
2 1,124 (16.30%) SC Cleared
3 631 (9.15%) Degree
4 358 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 289 (4.19%) DV Cleared
6 252 (3.65%) Azure Certification
7 167 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
8 132 (1.91%) CISSP
9 130 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 122 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.39%) PMP
12 89 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 75 (1.09%) AWS Certification
14 72 (1.04%) CISM
15 58 (0.84%) DBS Check
16 56 (0.81%) A+ Certification
16 56 (0.81%) CCNP
17 53 (0.77%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 49 (0.71%) CCNA
19 47 (0.68%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 390 (5.65%) Data Quality
2 241 (3.49%) QA
3 230 (3.33%) GDPR
4 203 (2.94%) SLA
5 195 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 183 (2.65%) PMO
7 170 (2.46%) NIST
8 114 (1.65%) Accessibility
9 91 (1.32%) NCSC
10 85 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.77%) GRC
12 41 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 39 (0.57%) WCAG
14 37 (0.54%) PCI DSS
15 32 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 21 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 21 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.22%) GMP
17 15 (0.22%) P3O
18 14 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,320 (19.14%) Active Directory
2 257 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 256 (3.71%) Docker
4 146 (2.12%) Hyper-V
5 120 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 96 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (0.90%) vSphere
8 58 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.52%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.28%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.23%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.072%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.072%) XenApp
16 4 (0.058%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 549 (7.96%) Microsoft Intune
2 339 (4.92%) Kubernetes
3 276 (4.00%) SCCM
4 174 (2.52%) Ansible
5 124 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.87%) Grafana
7 57 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 49 (0.71%) vCenter Server
9 47 (0.68%) SCOM
10 39 (0.57%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 26 (0.38%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 21 (0.30%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.30%) Puppet
16 18 (0.26%) Failover Clustering
17 15 (0.22%) Argo
18 14 (0.20%) WMI
19 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 518 (7.51%) ServiceNow
2 337 (4.89%) VMware
3 328 (4.76%) Oracle
4 273 (3.96%) SAP
5 243 (3.52%) Databricks
6 235 (3.41%) Google
7 228 (3.31%) Cisco
8 124 (1.80%) Salesforce
9 118 (1.71%) Splunk
10 109 (1.58%) Apple
11 91 (1.32%) CyberArk
12 87 (1.26%) Citrix
13 80 (1.16%) OpenAI
14 78 (1.13%) Okta
15 74 (1.07%) BeyondTrust
15 74 (1.07%) Foundry
16 71 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
17 67 (0.97%) Red Hat
18 53 (0.77%) Adobe
18 53 (0.77%) Zscaler