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 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
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,468 4,784 4,921
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.70% 14.42% 12.96%
As % of the Vendors category 32.87% 30.27% 29.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,678 3,119 3,030
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £349
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.06% -3.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £673 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £440 £447
% change year-on-year +3.41% -1.46% -0.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 645 382 261
10th Percentile £13.31 £13.75 £14.65
25th Percentile £14.45 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.00 £20.29
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +8.45% -11.80%
75th Percentile £29.07 £31.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £66.08 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.64 £20.79 £17.00
% change year-on-year -15.16% +22.31% -22.73%

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 22,721 15,802 16,899
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.69% 47.64% 44.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,733 9,722 9,953
10th Percentile £310 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £620 £613 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £486 £500
% change year-on-year +2.83% -2.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,391 808 602
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.75 £14.86
25th Percentile £16.10 £17.74 £16.00
Median hourly rate £24.19 £25.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% -23.08% -24.86%
75th Percentile £57.25 £38.80 £64.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.18 £21.10 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.86% -29.67% -29.41%

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 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 9 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 9 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 6,482 £493 +3.68% 8,620
UK excluding London 0 4,006 £455 +3.41% 5,667
London +2 2,795 £520 +4.00% 3,499
Work from Home +4 1,885 £500 - 3,485
South East +1 1,081 £475 +5.56% 1,399
North of England -5 988 £465 +6.90% 1,420
Midlands -1 690 £428 +3.01% 939
North West -1 576 £472 +7.94% 724
West Midlands -1 473 £425 -3.41% 542
South West -1 445 £500 +11.11% 583
Scotland +5 374 £450 - 431
Yorkshire -5 361 £462 +6.21% 493
East of England 0 316 £335 -36.19% 550
East Midlands +1 212 £440 +17.33% 398
Wales +1 113 £413 +35.80% 195
North East -22 56 £425 +23.26% 214
Northern Ireland -1 35 £312 -10.86% 232
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 5

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
1 897 (12.01%) SharePoint
2 404 (5.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 158 (2.12%) Confluence
4 38 (0.51%) Apache
5 33 (0.44%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 26 (0.35%) CMS
8 24 (0.32%) 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 (0.080%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.080%) Mendix
14 6 (0.080%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.080%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.067%) Exchange Server 2013
16 4 (0.054%) ArcGIS
16 4 (0.054%) Liferay
Applications
1 835 (11.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 788 (10.55%) Microsoft Office
3 327 (4.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 200 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 61 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.19%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.13%) Revit
12 6 (0.080%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.080%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.040%) 1Password
13 3 (0.040%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.040%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.040%) Productboard
13 3 (0.040%) SOLIDWORKS
13 3 (0.040%) Trello
Business Applications
1 273 (3.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 92 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 36 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.37%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 17 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.17%) Primavera
9 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.15%) Aladdin
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
12 9 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
14 7 (0.094%) iTrent
14 7 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
14 7 (0.094%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.094%) SAP PP
14 7 (0.094%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,066 (41.06%) Azure
2 1,898 (25.42%) Microsoft 365
3 1,298 (17.38%) Power Platform
4 1,213 (16.24%) Entra ID
5 681 (9.12%) AWS
6 645 (8.64%) Azure DevOps
7 609 (8.15%) Dynamics 365
8 466 (6.24%) Microsoft Copilot
9 445 (5.96%) Power Automate
10 400 (5.36%) PowerApps
11 325 (4.35%) Microsoft Purview
12 321 (4.30%) GitHub
13 298 (3.99%) GCP
14 276 (3.70%) OneDrive
15 244 (3.27%) SaaS
16 209 (2.80%) Serverless
17 196 (2.62%) Azure Monitor
18 179 (2.40%) Azure Data Factory
19 168 (2.25%) Azure Logic Apps
19 168 (2.25%) Copilot Studio
Communications & Networking
1 416 (5.57%) DNS
2 350 (4.69%) Firewall
3 311 (4.16%) VPN
4 274 (3.67%) DHCP
5 211 (2.83%) TCP/IP
6 173 (2.32%) Network Security
7 159 (2.13%) WAN
8 147 (1.97%) LAN
9 135 (1.81%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (0.99%) VLAN
11 72 (0.96%) Wireless
12 48 (0.64%) SAN
13 43 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.54%) Skype
15 39 (0.52%) Kerberos
16 38 (0.51%) Internet
16 38 (0.51%) MPLS
17 36 (0.48%) BGP
18 34 (0.46%) Unified Communications
19 32 (0.43%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 775 (10.38%) Power BI
2 415 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 172 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
4 168 (2.25%) Metadata
5 146 (1.96%) Data Lake
6 130 (1.74%) PostgreSQL
7 122 (1.63%) Azure SQL Database
8 90 (1.21%) Power Query
9 82 (1.10%) Relational Database
10 73 (0.98%) MySQL
11 72 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 55 (0.74%) NoSQL
13 51 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 41 (0.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 41 (0.55%) Star Schema
15 39 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
16 35 (0.47%) Delta Lake
16 35 (0.47%) MongoDB
17 32 (0.43%) Tableau
18 31 (0.42%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 346 (4.63%) JIRA
2 259 (3.47%) Git
3 91 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 70 (0.94%) GitLab
5 60 (0.80%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.68%) MSI
7 38 (0.51%) Selenium
8 29 (0.39%) Postman
9 27 (0.36%) Claude Code
10 21 (0.28%) Cypress.io
11 19 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
12 17 (0.23%) Cucumber
12 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
14 13 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 13 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 12 (0.16%) Subversion
16 10 (0.13%) ERwin
16 10 (0.13%) MLflow
17 9 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,807 (37.59%) Social Skills
2 1,478 (19.79%) Finance
3 969 (12.98%) Analytical Skills
4 683 (9.15%) Public Sector
5 481 (6.44%) Organisational Skills
6 320 (4.28%) Banking
7 245 (3.28%) Legal
8 233 (3.12%) Manufacturing
9 216 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
10 183 (2.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 163 (2.18%) Retail
12 127 (1.70%) Telecoms
13 121 (1.62%) Marketing
14 104 (1.39%) Aerospace
15 102 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
16 95 (1.27%) Military
17 94 (1.26%) Local Government
18 79 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
19 76 (1.02%) Law
20 56 (0.75%) Billing
Job Titles
1 838 (11.22%) Architect
2 718 (9.61%) Analyst
3 654 (8.76%) Senior
4 652 (8.73%) Developer
5 498 (6.67%) Lead
6 488 (6.53%) Consultant
7 446 (5.97%) IT Support
8 435 (5.82%) Support Engineer
9 367 (4.91%) Administrator
10 297 (3.98%) IT Engineer
11 292 (3.91%) Solutions Architect
12 264 (3.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 263 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
14 246 (3.29%) Data Engineer
14 246 (3.29%) IT Support Engineer
15 223 (2.99%) Project Manager
16 194 (2.60%) Business Analyst
17 191 (2.56%) Cloud Engineer
18 146 (1.96%) Security Engineer
19 136 (1.82%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 566 (7.58%) Terraform
2 349 (4.67%) .NET
3 316 (4.23%) REST
4 159 (2.13%) OAuth
5 148 (1.98%) JSON
6 122 (1.63%) SAML
7 121 (1.62%) OpenID
8 118 (1.58%) XML
9 108 (1.45%) ARM Templates
10 105 (1.41%) PySpark
11 103 (1.38%) Microsoft Graph
12 99 (1.33%) React
13 92 (1.23%) Web Services
14 91 (1.22%) LDAP
15 89 (1.19%) OAuth2
16 88 (1.18%) .NET Framework
17 84 (1.12%) RESTful
18 82 (1.10%) SailPoint
19 80 (1.07%) HTML
20 69 (0.92%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 616 (8.25%) Onboarding
2 330 (4.42%) Management Information System
3 324 (4.34%) Cloud Native
4 254 (3.40%) Enterprise Software
5 211 (2.83%) Product Ownership
6 177 (2.37%) AI Agents
7 172 (2.30%) Hybrid Cloud
8 168 (2.25%) PKI
9 159 (2.13%) Data Centre
10 148 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 141 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
12 104 (1.39%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.31%) CMDB
13 98 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
13 98 (1.31%) Driving Licence
13 98 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
14 86 (1.15%) Low-Code
15 81 (1.08%) Replication
16 79 (1.06%) NHS
17 78 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,574 (21.08%) Windows
2 492 (6.59%) Windows Server
3 394 (5.28%) Windows 10
4 358 (4.79%) Linux
5 157 (2.10%) Mac OS
6 133 (1.78%) Android
7 130 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 62 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (0.63%) Unix
10 42 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 37 (0.50%) Windows 7
13 35 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
14 33 (0.44%) VMS
15 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
16 21 (0.28%) CentOS
17 20 (0.27%) Solaris
18 11 (0.15%) SUSE
19 7 (0.094%) AIX
19 7 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,477 (19.78%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,401 (18.76%) Problem-Solving
3 1,147 (15.36%) DevOps
4 1,107 (14.82%) Agile
5 1,009 (13.51%) Migration
6 982 (13.15%) CI/CD
7 956 (12.80%) Continuous Improvement
8 902 (12.08%) AI
9 841 (11.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 796 (10.66%) Business Intelligence
11 762 (10.20%) Analytics
12 743 (9.95%) ITIL
13 704 (9.43%) Customer Service
14 632 (8.46%) Cybersecurity
15 608 (8.14%) Infrastructure as Code
16 588 (7.87%) Roadmaps
17 522 (6.99%) Data Modelling
18 521 (6.98%) Project Delivery
19 513 (6.87%) Decision-Making
20 496 (6.64%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 891 (11.93%) SQL
2 873 (11.69%) PowerShell
3 775 (10.38%) Python
4 372 (4.98%) C#
5 290 (3.88%) JavaScript
6 229 (3.07%) Bicep
7 194 (2.60%) Bash
8 159 (2.13%) Java
9 129 (1.73%) TypeScript
10 116 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 107 (1.43%) T-SQL
12 80 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.43%) VB
14 30 (0.40%) VBA
15 27 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.33%) VBScript
17 22 (0.29%) X++
18 21 (0.28%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.25%) R
20 16 (0.21%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,616 (21.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,193 (15.97%) SC Cleared
3 612 (8.19%) Degree
4 372 (4.98%) Microsoft Certification
5 319 (4.27%) DV Cleared
6 279 (3.74%) Azure Certification
7 204 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.93%) CISSP
9 126 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
10 110 (1.47%) Computer Science Degree
11 99 (1.33%) PMP
12 95 (1.27%) PMI Certification
13 82 (1.10%) AWS Certification
14 79 (1.06%) CISM
15 68 (0.91%) DBS Check
16 58 (0.78%) A+ Certification
17 57 (0.76%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 53 (0.71%) CCNP
19 46 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 45 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 468 (6.27%) Data Quality
2 252 (3.37%) QA
3 240 (3.21%) GDPR
4 220 (2.95%) SLA
5 216 (2.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 215 (2.88%) PMO
7 186 (2.49%) NIST
8 132 (1.77%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
10 89 (1.19%) NCSC
11 65 (0.87%) GRC
12 48 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.62%) WCAG
14 43 (0.58%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 24 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
17 22 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
19 17 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 1,387 (18.57%) Active Directory
2 280 (3.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 246 (3.29%) Docker
4 150 (2.01%) Hyper-V
5 138 (1.85%) Virtual Desktop
6 119 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
7 79 (1.06%) vSphere
8 59 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.25%) Firmware
12 17 (0.23%) VMware NSX
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 (0.080%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.080%) NFS
16 6 (0.080%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.080%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 599 (8.02%) Microsoft Intune
2 340 (4.55%) Kubernetes
3 308 (4.12%) SCCM
4 175 (2.34%) Ansible
5 156 (2.09%) Single Sign-On
6 66 (0.88%) Grafana
7 58 (0.78%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.72%) SCOM
9 46 (0.62%) vCenter Server
10 35 (0.47%) Prometheus
11 31 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 31 (0.42%) QRadar
12 28 (0.37%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.36%) WSUS
14 22 (0.29%) Failover Clustering
15 21 (0.28%) Argo
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
16 20 (0.27%) Puppet
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 546 (7.31%) ServiceNow
2 360 (4.82%) VMware
3 350 (4.69%) Oracle
4 311 (4.16%) SAP
5 295 (3.95%) Google
6 261 (3.49%) Databricks
7 243 (3.25%) Cisco
8 139 (1.86%) Salesforce
9 131 (1.75%) Splunk
10 114 (1.53%) Apple
11 111 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 102 (1.37%) Citrix
13 101 (1.35%) Okta
14 100 (1.34%) OpenAI
15 96 (1.29%) BeyondTrust
16 86 (1.15%) Foundry
17 80 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.88%) Red Hat
19 63 (0.84%) IBM
20 59 (0.79%) Zscaler