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 17 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
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,745 4,627 5,010
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.61% 13.98% 12.93%
As % of the Vendors category 30.20% 29.58% 29.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,389 2,960 3,269
10th Percentile £213 £210 £200
25th Percentile £375 £343 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 445 376 355
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.81 £16.00 £14.52
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £42.50
90th Percentile £70.55 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.50 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.73% +24.80% -14.58%

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 22,333 15,640 16,964
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.74% 47.25% 43.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,840 9,561 10,600
10th Percentile £313 £278 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.23% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,148 809 830
10th Percentile £14.56 £14.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.99 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.36 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.68% -10.18% -30.86%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.60 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.27 £21.39 £27.50
% change year-on-year +41.51% -22.22% -17.22%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -1 5,899 £490 +3.16% 5,728
UK excluding London -1 3,592 £450 +2.97% 4,506
London 0 2,572 £515 +3.00% 2,139
Work from Home +4 1,764 £500 - 2,424
South East +1 943 £475 +0.53% 1,234
North of England -4 920 £450 +3.57% 1,117
Midlands -2 618 £445 +15.21% 746
North West +1 542 £450 +2.92% 594
South West +1 447 £470 +8.05% 491
West Midlands -4 419 £447 +11.75% 445
Yorkshire -5 349 £473 +8.62% 356
Scotland +6 320 £450 - 297
East of England -1 246 £400 -20.00% 445
East Midlands +2 190 £425 +20.74% 300
Wales 0 100 £419 +41.95% 147
North East -39 33 £375 +12.78% 187
Northern Ireland -4 30 £369 +2.08% 129
Channel Islands 0 1 £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
1 790 (11.71%) SharePoint
2 405 (6.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 147 (2.18%) Confluence
4 40 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.58%) Apache
6 29 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) IIS
8 21 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.30%) CMS
10 19 (0.28%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.15%) SAS
14 9 (0.13%) nginx
15 6 (0.089%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.089%) Mendix
15 6 (0.089%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.089%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.074%) Camunda
Applications
1 667 (9.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 647 (9.59%) Microsoft Office
3 280 (4.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 176 (2.61%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.62%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.089%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.089%) Revit
12 4 (0.059%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.059%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.030%) Adobe Captivate
14 2 (0.030%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 232 (3.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 23 (0.34%) Oracle Payables
5 22 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
6 21 (0.31%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
9 10 (0.15%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 7 (0.10%) iTrent
11 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.10%) Sage X3
11 7 (0.10%) SAP CRM
11 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
12 6 (0.089%) Dynamics GP
12 6 (0.089%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,827 (41.91%) Azure
2 1,719 (25.49%) Microsoft 365
3 1,179 (17.48%) Power Platform
4 1,025 (15.20%) Entra ID
5 605 (8.97%) AWS
6 577 (8.55%) Azure DevOps
7 566 (8.39%) Dynamics 365
8 405 (6.00%) Power Automate
9 376 (5.57%) Microsoft Copilot
10 365 (5.41%) PowerApps
11 305 (4.52%) Microsoft Purview
12 286 (4.24%) GitHub
13 256 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 242 (3.59%) SaaS
15 231 (3.42%) GCP
16 185 (2.74%) Azure Data Factory
17 162 (2.40%) Serverless
18 159 (2.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 158 (2.34%) Azure Monitor
20 156 (2.31%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 377 (5.59%) DNS
2 343 (5.09%) Firewall
3 279 (4.14%) VPN
4 240 (3.56%) DHCP
5 189 (2.80%) TCP/IP
6 167 (2.48%) WAN
7 152 (2.25%) Network Security
8 149 (2.21%) LAN
9 146 (2.16%) Wi-Fi
10 76 (1.13%) VLAN
11 55 (0.82%) Wireless
12 49 (0.73%) SAN
13 43 (0.64%) MPLS
14 37 (0.55%) SSL
15 34 (0.50%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.49%) SD-WAN
16 33 (0.49%) Skype
17 31 (0.46%) Internet
18 29 (0.43%) BGP
19 27 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 739 (10.96%) Power BI
2 382 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 187 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.00%) Azure SQL Database
4 135 (2.00%) Metadata
5 134 (1.99%) Data Lake
5 134 (1.99%) PostgreSQL
6 74 (1.10%) Relational Database
7 70 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 68 (1.01%) Power Query
9 66 (0.98%) MySQL
10 58 (0.86%) NoSQL
11 46 (0.68%) Oracle Database
12 43 (0.64%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 42 (0.62%) Star Schema
14 35 (0.52%) Tableau
15 32 (0.47%) Delta Lake
16 25 (0.37%) MongoDB
16 25 (0.37%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 24 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 321 (4.76%) JIRA
2 197 (2.92%) Git
3 93 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.07%) GitLab
5 59 (0.87%) Visual Studio
6 40 (0.59%) MSI
7 36 (0.53%) Selenium
8 19 (0.28%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.19%) Cypress.io
12 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
12 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.18%) MLflow
12 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.16%) ERwin
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,356 (34.93%) Social Skills
2 1,374 (20.37%) Finance
3 856 (12.69%) Analytical Skills
4 626 (9.28%) Public Sector
5 338 (5.01%) Organisational Skills
6 327 (4.85%) Banking
7 229 (3.40%) Legal
8 192 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
9 161 (2.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 144 (2.13%) Manufacturing
11 137 (2.03%) Retail
12 120 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 103 (1.53%) Law
14 101 (1.50%) Marketing
15 93 (1.38%) Local Government
16 84 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.19%) Military
18 70 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
19 63 (0.93%) Investment Banking
20 62 (0.92%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 786 (11.65%) Architect
2 685 (10.16%) Analyst
3 617 (9.15%) Developer
4 584 (8.66%) Senior
5 477 (7.07%) Lead
6 421 (6.24%) IT Support
7 420 (6.23%) Consultant
8 391 (5.80%) Support Engineer
9 273 (4.05%) IT Engineer
10 252 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
11 246 (3.65%) Data Engineer
12 242 (3.59%) Azure Engineer
13 241 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 222 (3.29%) Administrator
15 219 (3.25%) Project Manager
16 218 (3.23%) IT Support Engineer
17 184 (2.73%) Business Analyst
18 171 (2.54%) Cloud Engineer
19 127 (1.88%) Security Engineer
20 114 (1.69%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (4.74%) .NET
2 258 (3.83%) REST
3 130 (1.93%) JSON
4 120 (1.78%) OAuth
5 109 (1.62%) Microsoft Graph
6 107 (1.59%) PySpark
7 101 (1.50%) SAML
8 99 (1.47%) XML
9 92 (1.36%) OpenID
10 89 (1.32%) .NET Framework
11 86 (1.28%) Web Services
12 79 (1.17%) React
13 73 (1.08%) ARM Templates
14 72 (1.07%) LDAP
15 70 (1.04%) HTML
15 70 (1.04%) RESTful
16 68 (1.01%) OAuth2
17 67 (0.99%) SOAP
18 66 (0.98%) SailPoint
19 63 (0.93%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 487 (7.22%) Onboarding
2 317 (4.70%) Cloud Native
3 219 (3.25%) Management Information System
4 191 (2.83%) Product Ownership
5 185 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
6 151 (2.24%) Hybrid Cloud
7 137 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
8 135 (2.00%) PKI
9 134 (1.99%) Data Centre
10 126 (1.87%) Security Posture
11 123 (1.82%) AI Agents
12 90 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 89 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
14 87 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
15 80 (1.19%) Virtual Team
16 78 (1.16%) Low-Code
17 74 (1.10%) Driving Licence
18 71 (1.05%) CMDB
19 67 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
20 64 (0.95%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,434 (21.26%) Windows
2 410 (6.08%) Windows Server
3 354 (5.25%) Windows 10
4 323 (4.79%) Linux
5 138 (2.05%) Mac OS
6 129 (1.91%) Android
7 119 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 60 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.67%) Unix
10 41 (0.61%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
13 31 (0.46%) VMS
14 29 (0.43%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 17 (0.25%) CentOS
17 12 (0.18%) Solaris
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
19 6 (0.089%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,211 (17.95%) Problem-Solving
2 1,065 (15.79%) DevOps
3 1,050 (15.57%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,030 (15.27%) Agile
5 958 (14.20%) Migration
6 875 (12.97%) CI/CD
7 791 (11.73%) Continuous Improvement
8 776 (11.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 769 (11.40%) AI
10 747 (11.07%) Business Intelligence
11 694 (10.29%) Analytics
12 666 (9.87%) ITIL
13 582 (8.63%) Customer Service
14 503 (7.46%) Infrastructure as Code
15 500 (7.41%) Cybersecurity
16 497 (7.37%) Data Modelling
17 488 (7.23%) Roadmaps
18 456 (6.76%) Project Delivery
19 439 (6.51%) Decision-Making
20 433 (6.42%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 848 (12.57%) SQL
2 730 (10.82%) PowerShell
3 681 (10.10%) Python
4 325 (4.82%) C#
5 249 (3.69%) JavaScript
6 188 (2.79%) Bicep
7 186 (2.76%) Java
8 145 (2.15%) Bash
9 109 (1.62%) T-SQL
10 107 (1.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.28%) TypeScript
12 68 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
13 38 (0.56%) VBA
14 31 (0.46%) VB
15 30 (0.44%) C++
16 27 (0.40%) VBScript
17 25 (0.37%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) X++
19 17 (0.25%) R
20 16 (0.24%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,437 (21.30%) Security Cleared
2 1,081 (16.03%) SC Cleared
3 635 (9.41%) Degree
4 351 (5.20%) Microsoft Certification
5 278 (4.12%) DV Cleared
6 243 (3.60%) Azure Certification
7 160 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 129 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
9 128 (1.90%) CISSP
10 119 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
11 94 (1.39%) PMP
12 87 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 71 (1.05%) CISM
14 70 (1.04%) AWS Certification
15 56 (0.83%) CCNP
16 54 (0.80%) A+ Certification
17 50 (0.74%) DBS Check
18 48 (0.71%) CCNA
18 48 (0.71%) Master's Degree
19 47 (0.70%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 375 (5.56%) Data Quality
2 230 (3.41%) GDPR
3 229 (3.40%) QA
4 201 (2.98%) SLA
5 188 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 171 (2.54%) PMO
7 166 (2.46%) NIST
8 108 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 87 (1.29%) NCSC
10 78 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
11 51 (0.76%) GRC
12 38 (0.56%) WCAG
13 36 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 34 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 33 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.24%) P3O
18 15 (0.22%) NIST 800
19 14 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,301 (19.29%) Active Directory
2 242 (3.59%) VMware Infrastructure
3 240 (3.56%) Docker
4 133 (1.97%) Hyper-V
5 110 (1.63%) Virtual Desktop
6 98 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.89%) vSphere
8 57 (0.85%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.27%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.074%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.044%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 550 (8.15%) Microsoft Intune
2 492 (7.29%) Terraform
3 317 (4.70%) Kubernetes
4 260 (3.85%) SCCM
5 169 (2.51%) Ansible
6 118 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
8 55 (0.82%) Grafana
9 52 (0.77%) vCenter Server
10 41 (0.61%) SCOM
11 38 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 36 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.37%) WSUS
14 23 (0.34%) QRadar
15 21 (0.31%) Puppet
16 20 (0.30%) FortiGate
16 20 (0.30%) Progress Chef
17 16 (0.24%) Failover Clustering
18 15 (0.22%) Argo
19 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 507 (7.52%) ServiceNow
2 332 (4.92%) VMware
3 322 (4.77%) Oracle
4 270 (4.00%) SAP
5 234 (3.47%) Google
6 231 (3.42%) Databricks
7 222 (3.29%) Cisco
8 118 (1.75%) Salesforce
9 109 (1.62%) Splunk
10 102 (1.51%) Apple
10 102 (1.51%) Citrix
11 87 (1.29%) CyberArk
12 77 (1.14%) Foundry
13 75 (1.11%) Okta
14 73 (1.08%) OpenAI
15 68 (1.01%) BeyondTrust
16 67 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
17 64 (0.95%) Red Hat
18 55 (0.82%) Zscaler
19 53 (0.79%) Meraki