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 19 June 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
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,836 4,086 5,665
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.55% 13.70% 12.91%
As % of the Vendors category 28.38% 28.78% 30.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,862 2,634 3,675
10th Percentile £213 £213 £194
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.89% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £674 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £460
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.61% +2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 298 492
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.31
Median hourly rate £21.00 £19.92 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.45% +24.47% -36.00%
75th Percentile £35.22 £30.91 £25.25
90th Percentile £65.00 £63.30 £59.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +9.64% +25.80% -25.00%

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 20,567 14,197 18,573
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.70% 47.60% 42.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,899 8,734 11,515
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,054 655 1,156
10th Percentile £15.38 £14.84 £12.19
25th Percentile £18.90 £17.30 £14.50
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +35.13% +5.67% -45.13%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.85 £59.50
90th Percentile £80.08 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £22.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +42.22% - -43.75%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 5,099 £495 +4.21% 2,910
UK excluding London -1 3,080 £450 +5.88% 2,617
London -3 2,251 £510 - 839
Work from Home -1 1,486 £500 - 1,286
North of England -4 791 £450 +5.88% 601
South East -2 726 £475 +4.11% 829
Midlands -5 517 £450 +15.09% 422
North West -3 415 £447 +5.18% 348
South West -1 383 £470 +10.59% 294
West Midlands -9 363 £450 +12.50% 221
Yorkshire -2 355 £475 +8.57% 182
East of England 0 298 £375 -25.00% 287
Scotland +3 262 £451 +4.77% 124
East Midlands 0 147 £425 +15.80% 201
Wales +2 99 £370 +37.04% 81
Northern Ireland +1 27 £350 +7.69% 70
North East -40 25 £450 +32.35% 81
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14%

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
1 638 (10.93%) SharePoint
2 384 (6.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 117 (2.00%) Confluence
4 37 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.50%) Apache
6 27 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.29%) IIS
8 16 (0.27%) CMS
8 16 (0.27%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.24%) SAS
9 14 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 7 (0.12%) Mendix
11 6 (0.10%) Camunda
11 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
12 5 (0.086%) OpenEdge
12 5 (0.086%) SharePoint 2013
13 4 (0.069%) Appian
13 4 (0.069%) nginx
13 4 (0.069%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 544 (9.32%) Microsoft Office
2 522 (8.94%) Microsoft Excel
3 227 (3.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 120 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (1.51%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.086%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.086%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.086%) Trello
11 3 (0.051%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.051%) InDesign
11 3 (0.051%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.034%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.034%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.034%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.034%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 198 (3.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.33%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.26%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
12 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
13 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.14%) Maximo
13 8 (0.14%) Primavera
13 8 (0.14%) SAP MM
14 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
15 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
15 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
15 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,467 (42.27%) Azure
2 1,490 (25.53%) Microsoft 365
3 996 (17.07%) Power Platform
4 809 (13.86%) Entra ID
5 496 (8.50%) AWS
6 460 (7.88%) Azure DevOps
7 453 (7.76%) Dynamics 365
8 335 (5.74%) Power Automate
9 327 (5.60%) Microsoft Purview
10 297 (5.09%) PowerApps
11 287 (4.92%) Microsoft Copilot
12 247 (4.23%) GitHub
13 238 (4.08%) OneDrive
14 217 (3.72%) SaaS
15 181 (3.10%) GCP
16 175 (3.00%) Azure Data Factory
17 165 (2.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 154 (2.64%) Serverless
19 145 (2.48%) PaaS
20 137 (2.35%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 305 (5.23%) DNS
2 272 (4.66%) Firewall
3 222 (3.80%) VPN
4 191 (3.27%) DHCP
5 151 (2.59%) WAN
6 136 (2.33%) Wi-Fi
7 129 (2.21%) TCP/IP
8 124 (2.12%) LAN
9 123 (2.11%) Network Security
10 54 (0.93%) VLAN
11 50 (0.86%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.77%) SD-WAN
13 41 (0.70%) SAN
14 36 (0.62%) SSL
15 35 (0.60%) Wireless
16 34 (0.58%) Unified Communications
17 29 (0.50%) VoIP
18 27 (0.46%) HTTP
18 27 (0.46%) Internet
19 26 (0.45%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 629 (10.78%) Power BI
2 290 (4.97%) SQL Server
3 178 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 150 (2.57%) Data Lake
5 125 (2.14%) Azure SQL Database
6 122 (2.09%) Metadata
7 121 (2.07%) PostgreSQL
8 71 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 70 (1.20%) Relational Database
10 55 (0.94%) Power Query
11 50 (0.86%) MySQL
12 48 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 46 (0.79%) NoSQL
14 42 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 42 (0.72%) Tableau
15 37 (0.63%) Delta Lake
16 34 (0.58%) Oracle Database
17 30 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 27 (0.46%) Spark SQL
19 25 (0.43%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 290 (4.97%) JIRA
2 168 (2.88%) Git
3 63 (1.08%) Jenkins
4 59 (1.01%) GitLab
5 36 (0.62%) Visual Studio
6 25 (0.43%) MSI
7 20 (0.34%) Artifactory
8 18 (0.31%) Selenium
9 17 (0.29%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.29%) ERwin
10 16 (0.27%) MLflow
11 14 (0.24%) Maven
12 13 (0.22%) Bitbucket
12 13 (0.22%) JMeter
12 13 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
13 12 (0.21%) JUnit
13 12 (0.21%) Postman
14 10 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
15 9 (0.15%) Gatling
16 8 (0.14%) WebDriver
General
1 1,913 (32.78%) Social Skills
2 1,171 (20.07%) Finance
3 632 (10.83%) Analytical Skills
4 524 (8.98%) Public Sector
5 302 (5.17%) Banking
6 244 (4.18%) Organisational Skills
7 241 (4.13%) Legal
8 151 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
9 108 (1.85%) Manufacturing
10 103 (1.76%) Retail
11 101 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 95 (1.63%) Law
13 83 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
14 79 (1.35%) Telecoms
15 78 (1.34%) Marketing
15 78 (1.34%) Military
16 66 (1.13%) Local Government
17 65 (1.11%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
19 46 (0.79%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 719 (12.32%) Architect
2 617 (10.57%) Analyst
3 526 (9.01%) Developer
4 477 (8.17%) Senior
5 375 (6.43%) Lead
6 366 (6.27%) IT Support
7 340 (5.83%) Consultant
8 279 (4.78%) Support Engineer
9 239 (4.10%) Data Engineer
10 221 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
11 207 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
12 200 (3.43%) Project Manager
13 197 (3.38%) IT Engineer
14 182 (3.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 179 (3.07%) Business Analyst
16 169 (2.90%) Administrator
17 152 (2.60%) IT Support Engineer
18 126 (2.16%) Security Engineer
19 116 (1.99%) Cloud Engineer
20 103 (1.76%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 247 (4.23%) .NET
2 192 (3.29%) REST
3 143 (2.45%) Microsoft Graph
4 114 (1.95%) OAuth
5 108 (1.85%) PySpark
6 102 (1.75%) SAML
7 100 (1.71%) JSON
8 88 (1.51%) OpenID
9 79 (1.35%) LDAP
10 78 (1.34%) Web Services
11 75 (1.29%) React
12 60 (1.03%) XML
13 59 (1.01%) Middleware
14 58 (0.99%) OAuth2
14 58 (0.99%) SailPoint
15 56 (0.96%) HTML
16 55 (0.94%) Node.js
17 54 (0.93%) RESTful
18 53 (0.91%) CSS
19 51 (0.87%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 325 (5.57%) Onboarding
2 256 (4.39%) Cloud Native
3 171 (2.93%) Product Ownership
4 135 (2.31%) Management Information System
5 114 (1.95%) Data Centre
6 112 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
7 105 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
8 102 (1.75%) Hybrid Cloud
9 92 (1.58%) Security Posture
10 90 (1.54%) AI Agents
10 90 (1.54%) PKI
11 84 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
12 78 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 74 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
13 74 (1.27%) Replication
14 68 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 67 (1.15%) Low-Code
16 54 (0.93%) Distributed Systems
17 51 (0.87%) Public Cloud
18 49 (0.84%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,250 (21.42%) Windows
2 315 (5.40%) Windows 10
3 302 (5.17%) Windows Server
4 253 (4.34%) Linux
5 120 (2.06%) Mac OS
6 110 (1.88%) Android
7 109 (1.87%) Apple iOS
8 42 (0.72%) Windows 7
9 39 (0.67%) Unix
10 38 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 36 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
12 30 (0.51%) VMS
12 30 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.24%) Ubuntu
14 14 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
15 11 (0.19%) CentOS
16 9 (0.15%) Solaris
17 8 (0.14%) SUSE
18 6 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 989 (16.95%) Problem-Solving
2 936 (16.04%) DevOps
3 854 (14.63%) Agile
4 836 (14.32%) Migration
5 771 (13.21%) CI/CD
6 657 (11.26%) Stakeholder Management
7 649 (11.12%) Business Intelligence
8 629 (10.78%) Analytics
9 621 (10.64%) AI
10 545 (9.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 540 (9.25%) Continuous Improvement
12 502 (8.60%) ITIL
13 440 (7.54%) Data Modelling
14 434 (7.44%) Customer Service
15 422 (7.23%) Roadmaps
16 390 (6.68%) Cybersecurity
17 375 (6.43%) Decision-Making
18 361 (6.19%) Infrastructure as Code
19 342 (5.86%) Validation
20 337 (5.77%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 752 (12.89%) SQL
2 653 (11.19%) PowerShell
3 601 (10.30%) Python
4 266 (4.56%) C#
5 207 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 181 (3.10%) Java
7 143 (2.45%) Bicep
8 101 (1.73%) T-SQL
9 82 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 80 (1.37%) Kusto Query Language
11 73 (1.25%) TypeScript
12 66 (1.13%) Bash
13 35 (0.60%) VBA
14 29 (0.50%) C++
14 29 (0.50%) VB
15 26 (0.45%) PL/SQL
16 18 (0.31%) Scala
16 18 (0.31%) VBScript
17 14 (0.24%) Shell Script
18 13 (0.22%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,107 (18.97%) Security Cleared
2 863 (14.79%) SC Cleared
3 556 (9.53%) Degree
4 280 (4.80%) Microsoft Certification
5 194 (3.32%) Azure Certification
6 183 (3.14%) DV Cleared
7 117 (2.00%) Computer Science Degree
8 112 (1.92%) CISSP
9 105 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
10 86 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
11 62 (1.06%) CISM
12 57 (0.98%) PMP
13 53 (0.91%) AWS Certification
13 53 (0.91%) PMI Certification
14 49 (0.84%) Master's Degree
15 43 (0.74%) MCSE
16 41 (0.70%) DBS Check
17 37 (0.63%) CCNP
17 37 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 306 (5.24%) Data Quality
2 227 (3.89%) GDPR
3 188 (3.22%) QA
4 166 (2.84%) SLA
5 156 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 130 (2.23%) NIST
7 107 (1.83%) PMO
8 81 (1.39%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.99%) NCSC
11 39 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.58%) GRC
13 31 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 31 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 21 (0.36%) NIST 800
14 21 (0.36%) WCAG
15 19 (0.33%) SOC 2
16 17 (0.29%) MiFID
17 15 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
18 13 (0.22%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,113 (19.07%) Active Directory
2 217 (3.72%) Docker
3 191 (3.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 105 (1.80%) Hyper-V
5 91 (1.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 78 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
8 56 (0.96%) vSphere
9 34 (0.58%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.36%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.33%) Firmware
11 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
12 7 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.10%) IAG
13 6 (0.10%) RACF
14 5 (0.086%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.069%) Snort
15 4 (0.069%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.069%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 476 (8.16%) Microsoft Intune
2 360 (6.17%) Terraform
3 246 (4.22%) Kubernetes
4 204 (3.50%) SCCM
5 131 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
6 126 (2.16%) Ansible
7 80 (1.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 52 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
9 49 (0.84%) vCenter Server
10 34 (0.58%) Grafana
11 31 (0.53%) FortiGate
12 29 (0.50%) Prometheus
13 24 (0.41%) SCOM
14 20 (0.34%) Puppet
15 16 (0.27%) AirWatch
15 16 (0.27%) WSUS
16 14 (0.24%) QRadar
17 13 (0.22%) vMotion
18 11 (0.19%) HAProxy
19 10 (0.17%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 340 (5.83%) ServiceNow
2 259 (4.44%) VMware
3 238 (4.08%) Oracle
4 237 (4.06%) SAP
5 214 (3.67%) Databricks
6 192 (3.29%) Cisco
7 170 (2.91%) Google
8 118 (2.02%) Salesforce
9 104 (1.78%) Citrix
10 90 (1.54%) Splunk
11 79 (1.35%) OpenAI
12 74 (1.27%) Apple
13 71 (1.22%) Foundry
14 67 (1.15%) CrowdStrike
15 61 (1.05%) Okta
16 56 (0.96%) CyberArk
17 46 (0.79%) HP
18 45 (0.77%) Adobe
18 45 (0.77%) Red Hat
19 43 (0.74%) Zscaler