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 7 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
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,457 4,769 4,868
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.58% 14.44% 12.93%
As % of the Vendors category 32.68% 30.29% 29.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,673 3,114 2,991
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £349
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £482
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -1.45% -3.60%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £671 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £451 £440 £440
% change year-on-year +2.56% -0.06% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 639 378 261
10th Percentile £13.33 £13.75 £14.65
25th Percentile £14.50 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.25 £22.32 £20.29
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +10.01% -9.96%
75th Percentile £29.50 £31.30 £46.18
90th Percentile £66.66 £63.51 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.73 £21.00 £17.00
% change year-on-year -15.58% +23.53% -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 22,820 15,743 16,754
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.56% 47.68% 44.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,785 9,682 9,864
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 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,386 808 607
10th Percentile £13.91 £14.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.25 £17.79 £16.00
Median hourly rate £25.00 £25.11 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.44% -22.74% -23.98%
75th Percentile £57.50 £40.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.00 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +12.68% -29.00% -28.83%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 6,470 £492 +3.58% 9,170
UK excluding London 0 4,013 £451 +2.56% 6,426
London 0 2,780 £525 +5.00% 3,547
Work from Home +4 1,882 £500 - 3,711
South East 0 1,079 £475 +5.56% 1,779
North of England -5 987 £465 +6.41% 1,544
Midlands -1 692 £434 +5.79% 1,047
North West -1 580 £474 +8.28% 790
West Midlands -1 471 £425 -2.86% 593
South West -1 450 £483 +7.22% 624
Scotland +5 376 £450 - 443
Yorkshire -4 355 £460 +3.66% 535
East of England 0 316 £325 -38.10% 654
East Midlands +1 216 £443 +18.00% 453
Wales +1 112 £413 +35.80% 206
North East -19 57 £425 +23.26% 231
Northern Ireland -1 36 £312 -10.86% 218
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 4

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
1 900 (12.07%) SharePoint
2 409 (5.48%) Microsoft Exchange
3 158 (2.12%) Confluence
4 38 (0.51%) Apache
5 35 (0.47%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 27 (0.36%) CMS
8 25 (0.34%) 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%) SAS
16 4 (0.054%) ArcGIS
16 4 (0.054%) Liferay
Applications
1 837 (11.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 794 (10.65%) Microsoft Office
3 331 (4.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 204 (2.74%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 59 (0.79%) 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 (0.080%) 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
1 267 (3.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 92 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 37 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 17 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.20%) 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 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.094%) iTrent
13 7 (0.094%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
13 7 (0.094%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.094%) SAP PP
13 7 (0.094%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,047 (40.86%) Azure
2 1,893 (25.39%) Microsoft 365
3 1,298 (17.41%) Power Platform
4 1,208 (16.20%) Entra ID
5 682 (9.15%) AWS
6 642 (8.61%) Azure DevOps
7 605 (8.11%) Dynamics 365
8 465 (6.24%) Microsoft Copilot
9 444 (5.95%) Power Automate
10 398 (5.34%) PowerApps
11 322 (4.32%) Microsoft Purview
12 316 (4.24%) GitHub
13 290 (3.89%) GCP
14 272 (3.65%) OneDrive
15 241 (3.23%) SaaS
16 209 (2.80%) Serverless
17 191 (2.56%) Azure Monitor
18 181 (2.43%) Azure Data Factory
19 166 (2.23%) Copilot Studio
20 164 (2.20%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 412 (5.53%) DNS
2 349 (4.68%) Firewall
3 308 (4.13%) VPN
4 273 (3.66%) DHCP
5 205 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 176 (2.36%) Network Security
7 159 (2.13%) WAN
8 147 (1.97%) LAN
9 137 (1.84%) Wi-Fi
10 72 (0.97%) VLAN
10 72 (0.97%) Wireless
11 51 (0.68%) SAN
12 44 (0.59%) SSL
13 40 (0.54%) Skype
14 37 (0.50%) Kerberos
14 37 (0.50%) MPLS
15 34 (0.46%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.44%) Internet
17 32 (0.43%) BGP
17 32 (0.43%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 778 (10.43%) Power BI
2 418 (5.61%) SQL Server
3 171 (2.29%) Data Warehouse
4 165 (2.21%) Metadata
5 149 (2.00%) Data Lake
6 132 (1.77%) PostgreSQL
7 122 (1.64%) Azure SQL Database
8 87 (1.17%) Power Query
9 84 (1.13%) Relational Database
10 75 (1.01%) MySQL
11 69 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 54 (0.72%) NoSQL
13 51 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.58%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.54%) Star Schema
16 39 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
17 36 (0.48%) Delta Lake
18 35 (0.47%) MongoDB
19 31 (0.42%) BigQuery
20 30 (0.40%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 346 (4.64%) JIRA
2 259 (3.47%) Git
3 91 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 71 (0.95%) GitLab
5 59 (0.79%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.68%) MSI
7 37 (0.50%) Selenium
8 27 (0.36%) Postman
9 26 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 20 (0.27%) 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 2,781 (37.29%) Social Skills
2 1,462 (19.61%) Finance
3 963 (12.91%) Analytical Skills
4 673 (9.03%) Public Sector
5 479 (6.42%) Organisational Skills
6 317 (4.25%) Banking
7 235 (3.15%) Legal
8 230 (3.08%) Manufacturing
9 213 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
10 187 (2.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 165 (2.21%) Retail
12 123 (1.65%) Telecoms
13 117 (1.57%) Marketing
14 104 (1.39%) Aerospace
15 101 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
16 95 (1.27%) Military
17 92 (1.23%) Local Government
18 80 (1.07%) Law
19 76 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
20 57 (0.76%) Billing
Job Titles
1 839 (11.25%) Architect
2 720 (9.66%) Analyst
3 653 (8.76%) Senior
4 651 (8.73%) Developer
5 489 (6.56%) Lead
6 485 (6.50%) Consultant
7 446 (5.98%) IT Support
8 437 (5.86%) Support Engineer
9 361 (4.84%) Administrator
10 298 (4.00%) IT Engineer
11 288 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
12 262 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
13 259 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 247 (3.31%) IT Support Engineer
15 244 (3.27%) Data Engineer
16 228 (3.06%) Project Manager
17 197 (2.64%) Business Analyst
18 189 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
19 147 (1.97%) Security Engineer
20 140 (1.88%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 554 (7.43%) Terraform
2 346 (4.64%) .NET
3 312 (4.18%) REST
4 150 (2.01%) OAuth
5 148 (1.98%) JSON
6 118 (1.58%) XML
7 114 (1.53%) SAML
8 112 (1.50%) OpenID
9 106 (1.42%) Microsoft Graph
9 106 (1.42%) PySpark
10 104 (1.39%) ARM Templates
11 94 (1.26%) React
12 92 (1.23%) Web Services
13 90 (1.21%) .NET Framework
14 86 (1.15%) LDAP
15 83 (1.11%) OAuth2
16 82 (1.10%) RESTful
17 81 (1.09%) SailPoint
18 80 (1.07%) HTML
19 69 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 607 (8.14%) Onboarding
2 327 (4.39%) Management Information System
3 325 (4.36%) Cloud Native
4 250 (3.35%) Enterprise Software
5 207 (2.78%) Product Ownership
6 175 (2.35%) AI Agents
7 169 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
8 167 (2.24%) PKI
9 160 (2.15%) Data Centre
10 147 (1.97%) Security Posture
11 145 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
12 102 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.31%) CMDB
14 97 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
15 96 (1.29%) Driving Licence
16 91 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
17 86 (1.15%) Low-Code
18 80 (1.07%) Replication
19 78 (1.05%) NHS
19 78 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,578 (21.16%) Windows
2 491 (6.58%) Windows Server
3 396 (5.31%) Windows 10
4 358 (4.80%) Linux
5 157 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 135 (1.81%) Android
7 131 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.64%) Unix
10 40 (0.54%) Windows 7
10 40 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 34 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
13 32 (0.43%) VMS
14 22 (0.30%) CentOS
15 21 (0.28%) Solaris
15 21 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
16 12 (0.16%) SUSE
17 8 (0.11%) AIX
18 7 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,453 (19.49%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,405 (18.84%) Problem-Solving
3 1,142 (15.31%) DevOps
4 1,111 (14.90%) Agile
5 1,016 (13.62%) Migration
6 978 (13.12%) CI/CD
7 952 (12.77%) Continuous Improvement
8 899 (12.06%) AI
9 839 (11.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 796 (10.67%) Business Intelligence
11 759 (10.18%) Analytics
12 737 (9.88%) ITIL
13 698 (9.36%) Customer Service
14 623 (8.35%) Cybersecurity
15 596 (7.99%) Infrastructure as Code
16 587 (7.87%) Roadmaps
17 524 (7.03%) Project Delivery
18 517 (6.93%) Data Modelling
19 516 (6.92%) Decision-Making
20 494 (6.62%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 892 (11.96%) SQL
2 862 (11.56%) PowerShell
3 766 (10.27%) Python
4 365 (4.89%) C#
5 285 (3.82%) JavaScript
6 223 (2.99%) Bicep
7 190 (2.55%) Bash
8 158 (2.12%) Java
9 122 (1.64%) TypeScript
10 112 (1.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 111 (1.49%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.43%) VB
14 30 (0.40%) VBA
15 27 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.34%) VBScript
17 23 (0.31%) X++
18 20 (0.27%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.25%) R
20 16 (0.21%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,614 (21.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,195 (16.03%) SC Cleared
3 617 (8.27%) Degree
4 376 (5.04%) Microsoft Certification
5 322 (4.32%) DV Cleared
6 281 (3.77%) Azure Certification
7 199 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 147 (1.97%) CISSP
9 126 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
10 110 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
11 99 (1.33%) PMP
12 95 (1.27%) PMI Certification
13 83 (1.11%) AWS Certification
14 79 (1.06%) CISM
15 67 (0.90%) DBS Check
16 58 (0.78%) A+ Certification
16 58 (0.78%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 54 (0.72%) CCNP
18 47 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 44 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 464 (6.22%) Data Quality
2 257 (3.45%) QA
3 241 (3.23%) GDPR
4 221 (2.96%) SLA
5 216 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 214 (2.87%) PMO
7 190 (2.55%) NIST
8 131 (1.76%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
10 88 (1.18%) NCSC
11 66 (0.89%) 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 25 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
17 22 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
19 17 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 1,385 (18.57%) Active Directory
2 283 (3.80%) VMware Infrastructure
3 251 (3.37%) Docker
4 150 (2.01%) Hyper-V
5 139 (1.86%) Virtual Desktop
6 121 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
7 79 (1.06%) vSphere
8 64 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.48%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.24%) 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
1 600 (8.05%) Microsoft Intune
2 337 (4.52%) Kubernetes
3 301 (4.04%) SCCM
4 173 (2.32%) Ansible
5 149 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
6 67 (0.90%) Grafana
7 58 (0.78%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.72%) SCOM
9 49 (0.66%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 33 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 31 (0.42%) QRadar
13 28 (0.38%) Progress Chef
14 27 (0.36%) WSUS
15 22 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
15 22 (0.30%) Puppet
16 21 (0.28%) Argo
17 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
18 17 (0.23%) WMI
19 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 551 (7.39%) ServiceNow
2 364 (4.88%) VMware
3 344 (4.61%) Oracle
4 310 (4.16%) SAP
5 289 (3.88%) Google
6 258 (3.46%) Databricks
7 245 (3.29%) Cisco
8 134 (1.80%) Salesforce
9 132 (1.77%) Splunk
10 117 (1.57%) Apple
11 110 (1.48%) CyberArk
12 101 (1.35%) Citrix
13 98 (1.31%) OpenAI
14 96 (1.29%) Okta
15 90 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
16 82 (1.10%) Foundry
17 78 (1.05%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.89%) Red Hat
19 63 (0.84%) IBM
20 59 (0.79%) Zscaler