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 9 May 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
9 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,580 3,891 5,590
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.69% 13.34% 12.96%
As % of the Vendors category 28.12% 28.07% 30.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,756 2,572 3,668
10th Percentile £213 £210 £189
25th Percentile £375 £348 £334
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £583 £582 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 354 237 462
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.02 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.09 £13.00
Median hourly rate £20.09 £18.85 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.58% +25.67% -32.07%
75th Percentile £29.88 £28.99 £25.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £59.83 £55.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.00 £18.50 £15.00
% change year-on-year +8.11% +23.33% -21.05%

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 19,841 13,863 18,278
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.57% 47.53% 42.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,610 8,683 11,336
10th Percentile £313 £284 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.85% -0.07% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £620 £630
90th Percentile £703 £716 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £496 £500
% change year-on-year -1.22% -0.79% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 996 562 1,095
10th Percentile £15.28 £14.84 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.50 £14.41
Median hourly rate £32.36 £25.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +26.91% +13.33% -48.57%
75th Percentile £60.00 £57.13 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.02 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.22 £23.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +22.70% +6.98% -45.67%

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 9 May 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 9 May 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 9 May 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 4,895 £495 +4.21% 3,058
UK excluding London 0 2,896 £450 +5.88% 2,647
London -3 2,156 £515 +3.00% 927
Work from Home 0 1,412 £500 - 1,217
North of England 0 771 £450 +9.09% 627
South East -3 667 £475 -1.04% 860
Midlands -6 505 £450 +12.50% 394
North West -1 415 £420 -1.18% 322
West Midlands -6 351 £450 +12.50% 222
Yorkshire 0 332 £460 +15.00% 221
East of England 0 328 £388 -13.89% 292
South West -2 327 £450 -3.23% 252
Scotland +4 206 £450 +8.43% 159
East Midlands -1 148 £400 -2.44% 172
Wales +2 90 £335 +17.54% 94
North East -23 29 £450 +32.35% 90
Northern Ireland 0 22 £450 +38.46% 35
Channel Islands -3 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
1 598 (10.72%) SharePoint
2 377 (6.76%) Microsoft Exchange
3 106 (1.90%) Confluence
4 35 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.41%) Apache
6 22 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.36%) HCL Notes
8 19 (0.34%) CMS
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 12 (0.22%) IIS
10 12 (0.22%) Mendix
10 12 (0.22%) Skype for Business
11 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
11 6 (0.11%) Camunda
11 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
12 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.072%) Drupal
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.072%) MS Project Server
13 4 (0.072%) OpenEdge
Applications
1 558 (10.00%) Microsoft Office
2 497 (8.91%) Microsoft Excel
3 225 (4.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 124 (2.22%) Microsoft Project
5 94 (1.68%) MS Visio
6 70 (1.25%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.14%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
14 2 (0.036%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 200 (3.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
4 20 (0.36%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
6 12 (0.22%) Teamcenter
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
8 10 (0.18%) Maximo
8 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
9 9 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle Receivables
11 6 (0.11%) Shopify
12 5 (0.090%) Primavera
12 5 (0.090%) SAP Business One
12 5 (0.090%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,349 (42.10%) Azure
2 1,432 (25.66%) Microsoft 365
3 943 (16.90%) Power Platform
4 714 (12.80%) Entra ID
5 463 (8.30%) Dynamics 365
6 453 (8.12%) AWS
7 436 (7.81%) Azure DevOps
8 324 (5.81%) Power Automate
9 287 (5.14%) Microsoft Purview
9 287 (5.14%) PowerApps
10 263 (4.71%) GitHub
11 234 (4.19%) Microsoft Copilot
12 211 (3.78%) OneDrive
13 199 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
14 189 (3.39%) SaaS
15 179 (3.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 168 (3.01%) GCP
17 162 (2.90%) Serverless
18 147 (2.63%) PaaS
19 138 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 283 (5.07%) DNS
2 280 (5.02%) Firewall
3 200 (3.58%) VPN
4 167 (2.99%) DHCP
5 134 (2.40%) Wi-Fi
6 133 (2.38%) WAN
7 114 (2.04%) LAN
8 110 (1.97%) Network Security
9 105 (1.88%) TCP/IP
10 57 (1.02%) Kerberos
11 52 (0.93%) VLAN
12 44 (0.79%) SD-WAN
13 36 (0.65%) SAN
13 36 (0.65%) SSL
14 35 (0.63%) Wireless
15 30 (0.54%) HTTP
16 27 (0.48%) Skype
17 26 (0.47%) MPLS
17 26 (0.47%) Unified Communications
18 24 (0.43%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 575 (10.30%) Power BI
2 266 (4.77%) SQL Server
3 177 (3.17%) Data Warehouse
4 158 (2.83%) Data Lake
5 125 (2.24%) Azure SQL Database
6 113 (2.03%) Metadata
7 100 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
8 71 (1.27%) Relational Database
9 67 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 47 (0.84%) Power Query
11 45 (0.81%) NoSQL
12 44 (0.79%) Oracle Database
12 44 (0.79%) Tableau
13 43 (0.77%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 41 (0.73%) MySQL
15 40 (0.72%) Delta Lake
15 40 (0.72%) Star Schema
16 29 (0.52%) Spark SQL
17 27 (0.48%) Snowflake Schema
18 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 255 (4.57%) JIRA
2 170 (3.05%) Git
3 66 (1.18%) Jenkins
4 64 (1.15%) GitLab
5 26 (0.47%) Artifactory
5 26 (0.47%) Visual Studio
6 23 (0.41%) Eclipse
7 20 (0.36%) MSI
8 17 (0.30%) Selenium
9 16 (0.29%) JMeter
9 16 (0.29%) Postman
10 15 (0.27%) MLflow
11 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
12 13 (0.23%) ERwin
13 12 (0.22%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.22%) Maven
14 10 (0.18%) Cucumber
14 10 (0.18%) InstallShield
14 10 (0.18%) JUnit
15 9 (0.16%) Android Studio
General
1 1,871 (33.53%) Social Skills
2 1,110 (19.89%) Finance
3 640 (11.47%) Analytical Skills
4 523 (9.37%) Public Sector
5 287 (5.14%) Banking
6 252 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
7 247 (4.43%) Legal
8 139 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
9 106 (1.90%) Manufacturing
10 98 (1.76%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (1.72%) Law
12 87 (1.56%) Telecoms
13 83 (1.49%) Marketing
14 81 (1.45%) Retail
15 78 (1.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 75 (1.34%) Military
17 64 (1.15%) Local Government
18 53 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
18 53 (0.95%) Investment Banking
19 43 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 694 (12.44%) Architect
2 595 (10.66%) Analyst
3 521 (9.34%) Developer
4 470 (8.42%) Senior
5 362 (6.49%) IT Support
6 334 (5.99%) Lead
7 294 (5.27%) Consultant
8 260 (4.66%) Support Engineer
9 226 (4.05%) Data Engineer
10 208 (3.73%) Azure Engineer
11 191 (3.42%) Project Manager
12 189 (3.39%) Solutions Architect
13 182 (3.26%) IT Engineer
14 177 (3.17%) Business Analyst
15 168 (3.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 166 (2.97%) Administrator
17 135 (2.42%) IT Support Engineer
18 113 (2.03%) Security Engineer
19 108 (1.94%) DevOps Engineer
20 104 (1.86%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (4.41%) .NET
2 163 (2.92%) REST
3 126 (2.26%) Microsoft Graph
4 110 (1.97%) OAuth
5 102 (1.83%) PySpark
6 98 (1.76%) SAML
7 86 (1.54%) JSON
8 81 (1.45%) React
9 79 (1.42%) OpenID
10 74 (1.33%) LDAP
11 70 (1.25%) Web Services
12 64 (1.15%) Middleware
13 55 (0.99%) AngularJS
13 55 (0.99%) HTML
14 53 (0.95%) ARM Templates
14 53 (0.95%) Node.js
15 52 (0.93%) OAuth2
16 51 (0.91%) Kafka
17 48 (0.86%) CSS
18 47 (0.84%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 299 (5.36%) Onboarding
2 226 (4.05%) Cloud Native
3 181 (3.24%) Product Ownership
4 125 (2.24%) Management Information System
5 105 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
6 98 (1.76%) Data Centre
7 91 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
8 85 (1.52%) Hybrid Cloud
9 83 (1.49%) AI Agents
9 83 (1.49%) PKI
10 82 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
11 80 (1.43%) Security Posture
12 75 (1.34%) Replication
13 73 (1.31%) Low-Code
14 71 (1.27%) Data Structures
15 68 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
16 59 (1.06%) Virtual Team
17 51 (0.91%) Driving Licence
18 46 (0.82%) Operational Technology
19 44 (0.79%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,205 (21.59%) Windows
2 319 (5.72%) Windows 10
3 273 (4.89%) Windows Server
4 265 (4.75%) Linux
5 104 (1.86%) Android
5 104 (1.86%) Apple iOS
6 98 (1.76%) Mac OS
7 44 (0.79%) Unix
8 42 (0.75%) Windows 7
8 42 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
9 39 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 30 (0.54%) VMS
11 28 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
12 23 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
14 10 (0.18%) Ubuntu
15 9 (0.16%) CentOS
16 5 (0.090%) AIX
16 5 (0.090%) Solaris
17 4 (0.072%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 960 (17.20%) Problem-Solving
2 885 (15.86%) DevOps
3 875 (15.68%) Agile
4 788 (14.12%) Migration
5 769 (13.78%) CI/CD
6 635 (11.38%) Business Intelligence
7 607 (10.88%) Analytics
8 549 (9.84%) AI
9 543 (9.73%) Stakeholder Management
10 496 (8.89%) Continuous Improvement
11 462 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 445 (7.97%) ITIL
13 433 (7.76%) Customer Service
14 413 (7.40%) Data Modelling
15 371 (6.65%) Roadmaps
16 350 (6.27%) Cybersecurity
17 344 (6.16%) Infrastructure as Code
18 343 (6.15%) Decision-Making
19 322 (5.77%) Project Delivery
20 308 (5.52%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 719 (12.89%) SQL
2 632 (11.33%) PowerShell
3 606 (10.86%) Python
4 264 (4.73%) C#
5 204 (3.66%) JavaScript
6 179 (3.21%) Java
7 126 (2.26%) Bicep
8 88 (1.58%) T-SQL
9 87 (1.56%) Bash
10 86 (1.54%) Kusto Query Language
11 75 (1.34%) TypeScript
12 71 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 33 (0.59%) PL/SQL
14 30 (0.54%) C++
15 29 (0.52%) VBA
16 22 (0.39%) VB
17 20 (0.36%) Scala
18 18 (0.32%) R
19 16 (0.29%) Shell Script
20 13 (0.23%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,076 (19.28%) Security Cleared
2 840 (15.05%) SC Cleared
3 545 (9.77%) Degree
4 270 (4.84%) Microsoft Certification
5 185 (3.32%) DV Cleared
6 183 (3.28%) Azure Certification
7 130 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
8 97 (1.74%) CISSP
9 92 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
10 73 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
11 63 (1.13%) PMI Certification
12 59 (1.06%) PMP
13 56 (1.00%) Master's Degree
14 53 (0.95%) CISM
15 42 (0.75%) AWS Certification
16 38 (0.68%) MCSE
17 31 (0.56%) DBS Check
18 30 (0.54%) ITIL Certification
18 30 (0.54%) MCSA
19 29 (0.52%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 273 (4.89%) Data Quality
2 224 (4.01%) GDPR
3 190 (3.41%) QA
4 156 (2.80%) SLA
5 140 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 112 (2.01%) NIST
7 107 (1.92%) PMO
8 73 (1.31%) Accessibility
9 70 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 47 (0.84%) NCSC
11 38 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 33 (0.59%) GRC
13 27 (0.48%) PCI DSS
14 22 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 20 (0.36%) MiFID
16 18 (0.32%) NIST 800
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
17 13 (0.23%) WCAG
18 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
19 11 (0.20%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,068 (19.14%) Active Directory
2 233 (4.18%) Docker
3 194 (3.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.76%) Hyper-V
5 76 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
6 73 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
7 52 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
8 39 (0.70%) vSphere
9 24 (0.43%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 16 (0.29%) Firmware
13 7 (0.13%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.090%) IAG
15 5 (0.090%) NFS
15 5 (0.090%) Snort
15 5 (0.090%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.072%) KVM
16 4 (0.072%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 419 (7.51%) Microsoft Intune
2 363 (6.51%) Terraform
3 260 (4.66%) Kubernetes
4 199 (3.57%) SCCM
5 133 (2.38%) Ansible
6 118 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
7 76 (1.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.79%) vCenter Server
9 38 (0.68%) Grafana
9 38 (0.68%) Jamf Pro
10 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
11 23 (0.41%) SCOM
12 21 (0.38%) FortiGate
13 19 (0.34%) Puppet
14 16 (0.29%) AirWatch
14 16 (0.29%) WSUS
15 14 (0.25%) QRadar
16 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
17 11 (0.20%) CASB
17 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 264 (4.73%) VMware
2 260 (4.66%) ServiceNow
3 218 (3.91%) Databricks
4 216 (3.87%) SAP
5 207 (3.71%) Oracle
6 169 (3.03%) Cisco
7 153 (2.74%) Google
8 118 (2.11%) Citrix
9 97 (1.74%) Salesforce
10 89 (1.59%) Splunk
11 87 (1.56%) OpenAI
12 72 (1.29%) Foundry
13 68 (1.22%) Apple
14 54 (0.97%) CrowdStrike
15 48 (0.86%) HP
16 46 (0.82%) Adobe
16 46 (0.82%) Palo Alto
17 45 (0.81%) Okta
18 43 (0.77%) Informatica
19 42 (0.75%) CyberArk