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 15 September 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
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,171 4,649 4,996
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.18% 14.32% 13.10%
As % of the Vendors category 31.53% 30.40% 29.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,592 2,999 3,132
10th Percentile £213 £206 £200
25th Percentile £372 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £670 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 555 379 284
10th Percentile £13.35 £13.95 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.82 £16.50 £15.15
Median hourly rate £19.00 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.86% +31.26% -24.44%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.40 £44.16
90th Percentile £67.16 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £20.80 £16.23
% change year-on-year -11.04% +28.13% -18.85%

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 22,747 15,293 16,860
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.80% 47.12% 44.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,964 9,367 10,148
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £612 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,253 777 684
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.60 £14.26
25th Percentile £16.72 £17.44 £15.62
Median hourly rate £26.90 £25.15 £30.21
Median % change year-on-year +6.96% -16.74% -30.36%
75th Percentile £62.00 £43.25 £63.75
90th Percentile £79.75 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.14 £21.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +24.48% -30.00% -25.60%

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 15 September 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 6,214 £488 +2.63% 8,861
UK excluding London 0 3,847 £450 +3.45% 6,179
London 0 2,695 £515 +3.00% 3,811
Work from Home +4 1,832 £500 - 3,719
South East 0 997 £475 +5.56% 1,588
North of England -5 962 £460 +6.36% 1,514
Midlands 0 664 £428 +6.88% 995
North West -2 565 £450 +2.97% 784
South West -1 458 £470 +10.59% 648
West Midlands -3 451 £430 +1.18% 585
Scotland +6 375 £450 - 481
Yorkshire -6 353 £475 +8.88% 520
East of England 0 277 £348 -33.81% 600
East Midlands +3 206 £425 +17.65% 409
Wales +2 108 £413 +37.50% 173
North East -26 48 £426 +25.15% 235
Northern Ireland -1 37 £350 - 269
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
1 871 (12.15%) SharePoint
2 404 (5.63%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.08%) Confluence
4 38 (0.53%) Apache
5 37 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 31 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 28 (0.39%) CMS
8 24 (0.33%) IIS
9 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
10 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
10 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
13 9 (0.13%) SAS
14 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.084%) Mendix
15 6 (0.084%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.084%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.070%) Exchange Server 2010
16 5 (0.070%) OpenStack
Applications
1 753 (10.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 741 (10.33%) Microsoft Office
3 313 (4.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 195 (2.72%) Microsoft Project
5 113 (1.58%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 29 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 15 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 10 (0.14%) Navisworks
10 10 (0.14%) ProjectWise
11 9 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.070%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.070%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.070%) Trello
13 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
14 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.028%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 260 (3.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 82 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 27 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.17%) Primavera
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.14%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
12 8 (0.11%) iTrent
12 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.098%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.098%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.098%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.084%) Maximo
14 6 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,962 (41.31%) Azure
2 1,829 (25.51%) Microsoft 365
3 1,278 (17.82%) Power Platform
4 1,101 (15.35%) Entra ID
5 665 (9.27%) AWS
6 609 (8.49%) Azure DevOps
7 607 (8.46%) Dynamics 365
8 438 (6.11%) Power Automate
9 428 (5.97%) Microsoft Copilot
10 384 (5.35%) PowerApps
11 312 (4.35%) Microsoft Purview
12 299 (4.17%) GitHub
13 274 (3.82%) OneDrive
14 258 (3.60%) GCP
15 247 (3.44%) SaaS
16 195 (2.72%) Serverless
17 187 (2.61%) Azure Data Factory
18 172 (2.40%) Azure Monitor
19 165 (2.30%) Azure Logic Apps
20 157 (2.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 393 (5.48%) DNS
2 337 (4.70%) Firewall
3 290 (4.04%) VPN
4 263 (3.67%) DHCP
5 206 (2.87%) TCP/IP
6 164 (2.29%) WAN
7 162 (2.26%) Network Security
8 145 (2.02%) LAN
9 142 (1.98%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.05%) VLAN
11 65 (0.91%) Wireless
12 48 (0.67%) SAN
13 41 (0.57%) SSL
14 39 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.52%) MPLS
16 32 (0.45%) Unified Communications
17 30 (0.42%) BGP
17 30 (0.42%) Internet
18 29 (0.40%) Kerberos
18 29 (0.40%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 786 (10.96%) Power BI
2 418 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 179 (2.50%) Data Warehouse
4 157 (2.19%) Metadata
5 150 (2.09%) Data Lake
6 133 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
7 118 (1.65%) Azure SQL Database
8 85 (1.19%) Power Query
9 78 (1.09%) Relational Database
10 70 (0.98%) MySQL
11 67 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.67%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.66%) Oracle Database
14 45 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 44 (0.61%) Star Schema
16 38 (0.53%) Tableau
17 37 (0.52%) Delta Lake
18 30 (0.42%) MongoDB
19 29 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
20 21 (0.29%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 341 (4.76%) JIRA
2 236 (3.29%) Git
3 96 (1.34%) Jenkins
4 71 (0.99%) GitLab
5 59 (0.82%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.61%) MSI
7 36 (0.50%) Selenium
8 22 (0.31%) Claude Code
8 22 (0.31%) Postman
9 17 (0.24%) Cypress.io
10 16 (0.22%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
11 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
12 14 (0.20%) MLflow
13 13 (0.18%) Cucumber
14 12 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 12 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
15 11 (0.15%) Bitbucket
15 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
16 10 (0.14%) Artifactory
General
1 2,639 (36.80%) Social Skills
2 1,429 (19.93%) Finance
3 924 (12.89%) Analytical Skills
4 635 (8.86%) Public Sector
5 421 (5.87%) Organisational Skills
6 319 (4.45%) Banking
7 230 (3.21%) Legal
8 202 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
9 182 (2.54%) Manufacturing
10 175 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 154 (2.15%) Retail
12 124 (1.73%) Telecoms
13 110 (1.53%) Marketing
14 99 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
14 99 (1.38%) Law
15 92 (1.28%) Military
16 87 (1.21%) Local Government
17 85 (1.19%) Aerospace
18 68 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
19 59 (0.82%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 834 (11.63%) Architect
2 722 (10.07%) Analyst
3 632 (8.81%) Developer
4 626 (8.73%) Senior
5 490 (6.83%) Lead
6 461 (6.43%) Consultant
7 449 (6.26%) IT Support
8 431 (6.01%) Support Engineer
9 294 (4.10%) IT Engineer
10 292 (4.07%) Administrator
11 277 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
12 253 (3.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 246 (3.43%) Data Engineer
14 243 (3.39%) Azure Engineer
15 241 (3.36%) IT Support Engineer
16 234 (3.26%) Project Manager
17 186 (2.59%) Business Analyst
18 179 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
19 139 (1.94%) DevOps Engineer
20 133 (1.85%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 530 (7.39%) Terraform
2 343 (4.78%) .NET
3 272 (3.79%) REST
4 139 (1.94%) JSON
5 132 (1.84%) OAuth
6 111 (1.55%) XML
7 110 (1.53%) PySpark
8 105 (1.46%) SAML
9 101 (1.41%) OpenID
10 99 (1.38%) Microsoft Graph
11 93 (1.30%) ARM Templates
12 90 (1.26%) React
13 87 (1.21%) Web Services
14 85 (1.19%) .NET Framework
15 78 (1.09%) LDAP
16 74 (1.03%) OAuth2
17 73 (1.02%) SailPoint
18 72 (1.00%) RESTful
19 70 (0.98%) HTML
20 64 (0.89%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 563 (7.85%) Onboarding
2 307 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 277 (3.86%) Management Information System
4 214 (2.98%) Product Ownership
5 213 (2.97%) Enterprise Software
6 158 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 151 (2.11%) PKI
8 150 (2.09%) AI Agents
9 146 (2.04%) Data Centre
10 133 (1.85%) Security Posture
11 131 (1.83%) Legacy Systems
12 94 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
12 94 (1.31%) Data Structures
13 91 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
14 86 (1.20%) CMDB
15 82 (1.14%) Driving Licence
16 80 (1.12%) Virtual Team
17 79 (1.10%) Low-Code
18 71 (0.99%) Replication
19 69 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,531 (21.35%) Windows
2 458 (6.39%) Windows Server
3 376 (5.24%) Windows 10
4 344 (4.80%) Linux
5 150 (2.09%) Mac OS
6 132 (1.84%) Android
7 125 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.67%) Unix
10 42 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.53%) Ubuntu
13 35 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
14 31 (0.43%) VMS
15 22 (0.31%) CentOS
16 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.28%) Solaris
18 12 (0.17%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.098%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,346 (18.77%) Problem-Solving
2 1,313 (18.31%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,107 (15.44%) DevOps
4 1,098 (15.31%) Agile
5 988 (13.78%) Migration
6 942 (13.14%) CI/CD
7 904 (12.61%) Continuous Improvement
8 849 (11.84%) AI
9 821 (11.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 791 (11.03%) Business Intelligence
11 744 (10.38%) Analytics
12 699 (9.75%) ITIL
13 672 (9.37%) Customer Service
14 566 (7.89%) Cybersecurity
15 564 (7.87%) Infrastructure as Code
16 540 (7.53%) Roadmaps
17 519 (7.24%) Data Modelling
18 491 (6.85%) Project Delivery
19 480 (6.69%) Decision-Making
20 463 (6.46%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 866 (12.08%) SQL
2 795 (11.09%) PowerShell
3 732 (10.21%) Python
4 351 (4.89%) C#
5 264 (3.68%) JavaScript
6 207 (2.89%) Bicep
7 172 (2.40%) Java
8 169 (2.36%) Bash
9 113 (1.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 110 (1.53%) T-SQL
11 107 (1.49%) TypeScript
12 71 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.43%) VBA
14 29 (0.40%) VB
15 27 (0.38%) C++
16 25 (0.35%) VBScript
17 23 (0.32%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.32%) X++
18 19 (0.26%) R
19 16 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,550 (21.61%) Security Cleared
2 1,157 (16.13%) SC Cleared
3 641 (8.94%) Degree
4 377 (5.26%) Microsoft Certification
5 297 (4.14%) DV Cleared
6 271 (3.78%) Azure Certification
7 186 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
8 140 (1.95%) CISSP
9 131 (1.83%) Cisco Certification
10 117 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
11 97 (1.35%) PMP
12 89 (1.24%) PMI Certification
13 76 (1.06%) CISM
14 73 (1.02%) AWS Certification
15 60 (0.84%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 58 (0.81%) A+ Certification
18 56 (0.78%) CCNP
19 47 (0.66%) CCNA
20 46 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (6.05%) Data Quality
2 248 (3.46%) QA
3 234 (3.26%) GDPR
4 203 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 201 (2.80%) SLA
6 200 (2.79%) PMO
7 177 (2.47%) NIST
8 121 (1.69%) Accessibility
9 91 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
10 89 (1.24%) NCSC
11 59 (0.82%) GRC
12 46 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 45 (0.63%) WCAG
14 37 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 30 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 22 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.22%) P3O
20 15 (0.21%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,336 (18.63%) Active Directory
2 267 (3.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 256 (3.57%) Docker
4 144 (2.01%) Hyper-V
5 128 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
6 104 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
7 68 (0.95%) vSphere
8 62 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 18 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.24%) VMware NSX
12 14 (0.20%) Firmware
13 9 (0.13%) IAG
13 9 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
15 7 (0.098%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.098%) zsh
16 6 (0.084%) XenApp
17 5 (0.070%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 5 (0.070%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 571 (7.96%) Microsoft Intune
2 339 (4.73%) Kubernetes
3 294 (4.10%) SCCM
4 169 (2.36%) Ansible
5 139 (1.94%) Single Sign-On
6 62 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
7 61 (0.85%) Grafana
8 54 (0.75%) SCOM
9 49 (0.68%) vCenter Server
10 38 (0.53%) Prometheus
11 36 (0.50%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.39%) QRadar
12 28 (0.39%) WSUS
13 22 (0.31%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.26%) Puppet
16 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
17 16 (0.22%) Argo
18 15 (0.21%) WMI
19 14 (0.20%) CASB
Vendors
1 540 (7.53%) ServiceNow
2 347 (4.84%) Oracle
3 346 (4.82%) VMware
4 289 (4.03%) SAP
5 251 (3.50%) Google
6 247 (3.44%) Databricks
7 240 (3.35%) Cisco
8 129 (1.80%) Salesforce
9 127 (1.77%) Splunk
10 110 (1.53%) Apple
11 100 (1.39%) CyberArk
12 92 (1.28%) Citrix
13 88 (1.23%) Okta
14 84 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
15 83 (1.16%) OpenAI
16 80 (1.12%) Foundry
17 75 (1.05%) CrowdStrike
18 67 (0.93%) Red Hat
19 55 (0.77%) Adobe
20 54 (0.75%) Zscaler