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 13 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
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,636 4,580 5,034
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.44% 13.91% 12.93%
As % of the Vendors category 29.88% 29.42% 29.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,326 2,934 3,282
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £344 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.05% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £586 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £436 £450
% change year-on-year +3.21% -3.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 428 375 355
10th Percentile £13.59 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.99 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.31 £30.63 £43.90
90th Percentile £70.31 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.05 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -1.04% +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 22,208 15,570 17,043
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.62% 47.27% 43.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,745 9,527 10,624
10th Percentile £313 £278 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £607 £613 £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 1,140 801 840
10th Percentile £14.80 £14.54 £13.68
25th Percentile £18.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -13.28% -28.95%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.12 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.63 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.23 £21.29 £28.00
% change year-on-year +51.36% -23.96% -18.84%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 5,796 £490 +3.16% 6,643
UK excluding London -1 3,538 £450 +3.21% 4,857
London -2 2,531 £513 +2.50% 2,748
Work from Home +3 1,740 £500 - 2,885
South East 0 911 £475 +1.13% 1,337
North of England -4 901 £450 +4.41% 1,196
Midlands -2 617 £448 +16.23% 763
North West +1 529 £450 +2.86% 655
South West +1 440 £470 +10.59% 540
West Midlands -4 422 £448 +11.88% 459
Yorkshire -5 344 £475 +12.43% 372
Scotland +7 321 £450 - 333
East of England -1 247 £375 -25.00% 462
East Midlands +2 185 £425 +20.74% 304
Wales +1 102 £413 +39.83% 157
North East -39 32 £450 +35.34% 187
Northern Ireland -3 31 £369 +2.08% 165
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 1

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
1 773 (11.65%) SharePoint
2 400 (6.03%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.25%) Confluence
4 40 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.59%) Apache
6 29 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) IIS
8 21 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 19 (0.29%) CMS
10 18 (0.27%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
12 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.15%) SAS
14 9 (0.14%) nginx
15 6 (0.090%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.090%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.090%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.090%) Mendix
15 6 (0.090%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.090%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 645 (9.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 629 (9.48%) Microsoft Office
3 271 (4.08%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 172 (2.59%) Microsoft Project
5 108 (1.63%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.11%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.090%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.090%) Revit
12 4 (0.060%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.060%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.060%) Trello
13 3 (0.045%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.045%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.045%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.030%) Adobe Captivate
14 2 (0.030%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 237 (3.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 23 (0.35%) Oracle Payables
5 22 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
6 20 (0.30%) 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 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.12%) Sage X3
12 7 (0.11%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.11%) iTrent
12 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.11%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.090%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.090%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,781 (41.91%) Azure
2 1,685 (25.39%) Microsoft 365
3 1,163 (17.53%) Power Platform
4 1,004 (15.13%) Entra ID
5 591 (8.91%) AWS
6 572 (8.62%) Azure DevOps
7 558 (8.41%) Dynamics 365
8 398 (6.00%) Power Automate
9 367 (5.53%) Microsoft Copilot
10 359 (5.41%) PowerApps
11 300 (4.52%) Microsoft Purview
12 287 (4.32%) GitHub
13 252 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 234 (3.53%) SaaS
15 225 (3.39%) GCP
16 181 (2.73%) Azure Data Factory
17 159 (2.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 158 (2.38%) Serverless
19 156 (2.35%) Azure Monitor
20 155 (2.34%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 368 (5.55%) DNS
2 337 (5.08%) Firewall
3 275 (4.14%) VPN
4 233 (3.51%) DHCP
5 184 (2.77%) TCP/IP
6 161 (2.43%) WAN
7 152 (2.29%) Network Security
8 145 (2.19%) LAN
9 144 (2.17%) Wi-Fi
10 77 (1.16%) VLAN
11 53 (0.80%) Wireless
12 48 (0.72%) SAN
13 43 (0.65%) MPLS
14 35 (0.53%) Unified Communications
15 34 (0.51%) SSL
16 33 (0.50%) Skype
17 31 (0.47%) SD-WAN
18 30 (0.45%) Internet
19 28 (0.42%) BGP
19 28 (0.42%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 728 (10.97%) Power BI
2 375 (5.65%) SQL Server
3 188 (2.83%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.03%) Data Lake
5 134 (2.02%) PostgreSQL
6 132 (1.99%) Metadata
7 131 (1.97%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.10%) Relational Database
9 70 (1.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 69 (1.04%) Power Query
11 66 (0.99%) MySQL
12 57 (0.86%) NoSQL
13 45 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.65%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 41 (0.62%) Star Schema
16 34 (0.51%) Delta Lake
16 34 (0.51%) Tableau
17 26 (0.39%) MongoDB
18 25 (0.38%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 24 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 322 (4.85%) JIRA
2 193 (2.91%) Git
3 93 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 70 (1.05%) GitLab
5 59 (0.89%) Visual Studio
6 39 (0.59%) MSI
7 33 (0.50%) Selenium
8 19 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.26%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.26%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
11 14 (0.21%) Claude Code
12 13 (0.20%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.20%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.18%) MLflow
13 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.17%) ERwin
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
General
1 2,299 (34.64%) Social Skills
2 1,337 (20.15%) Finance
3 840 (12.66%) Analytical Skills
4 626 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 326 (4.91%) Banking
6 325 (4.90%) Organisational Skills
7 228 (3.44%) Legal
8 185 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
9 152 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 142 (2.14%) Manufacturing
11 135 (2.03%) Retail
12 116 (1.75%) Telecoms
13 106 (1.60%) Law
14 101 (1.52%) Marketing
15 92 (1.39%) Local Government
16 83 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.21%) Military
18 65 (0.98%) Investment Banking
18 65 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
19 59 (0.89%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 758 (11.42%) Architect
2 683 (10.29%) Analyst
3 608 (9.16%) Developer
4 579 (8.73%) Senior
5 467 (7.04%) Lead
6 408 (6.15%) Consultant
6 408 (6.15%) IT Support
7 380 (5.73%) Support Engineer
8 261 (3.93%) IT Engineer
9 251 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
10 244 (3.68%) Data Engineer
11 240 (3.62%) Azure Engineer
12 238 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 219 (3.30%) Project Manager
14 216 (3.25%) Administrator
15 208 (3.13%) IT Support Engineer
16 186 (2.80%) Business Analyst
17 167 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
18 128 (1.93%) Security Engineer
19 116 (1.75%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (4.75%) .NET
2 255 (3.84%) REST
3 128 (1.93%) JSON
4 115 (1.73%) OAuth
5 109 (1.64%) Microsoft Graph
6 105 (1.58%) PySpark
7 97 (1.46%) XML
8 95 (1.43%) SAML
9 91 (1.37%) OpenID
10 89 (1.34%) .NET Framework
11 84 (1.27%) Web Services
12 77 (1.16%) React
13 74 (1.12%) ARM Templates
14 70 (1.05%) RESTful
15 68 (1.02%) LDAP
15 68 (1.02%) OAuth2
16 66 (0.99%) HTML
17 65 (0.98%) SOAP
18 63 (0.95%) SailPoint
19 61 (0.92%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 465 (7.01%) Onboarding
2 310 (4.67%) Cloud Native
3 210 (3.16%) Management Information System
4 186 (2.80%) Product Ownership
5 173 (2.61%) Enterprise Software
6 145 (2.19%) Hybrid Cloud
7 138 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
8 131 (1.97%) PKI
9 126 (1.90%) AI Agents
9 126 (1.90%) Data Centre
10 123 (1.85%) Security Posture
11 92 (1.39%) Data Structures
12 90 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
14 79 (1.19%) Virtual Team
15 76 (1.15%) Low-Code
16 72 (1.08%) Driving Licence
17 68 (1.02%) CMDB
18 66 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
19 62 (0.93%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,404 (21.16%) Windows
2 404 (6.09%) Windows Server
3 338 (5.09%) Windows 10
4 313 (4.72%) Linux
5 133 (2.00%) Mac OS
6 122 (1.84%) Android
7 112 (1.69%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.65%) Unix
10 41 (0.62%) Windows 7
11 38 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 34 (0.51%) Windows Server 2016
13 31 (0.47%) VMS
14 26 (0.39%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.21%) CentOS
17 12 (0.18%) Solaris
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
19 6 (0.090%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,191 (17.95%) Problem-Solving
2 1,057 (15.93%) DevOps
3 1,015 (15.30%) Agile
4 999 (15.05%) Stakeholder Management
5 943 (14.21%) Migration
6 864 (13.02%) CI/CD
7 776 (11.69%) Continuous Improvement
8 759 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 757 (11.41%) AI
10 734 (11.06%) Business Intelligence
11 689 (10.38%) Analytics
12 645 (9.72%) ITIL
13 565 (8.51%) Customer Service
14 496 (7.47%) Infrastructure as Code
15 488 (7.35%) Cybersecurity
16 485 (7.31%) Data Modelling
17 477 (7.19%) Roadmaps
18 445 (6.71%) Project Delivery
19 429 (6.46%) Decision-Making
20 426 (6.42%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 832 (12.54%) SQL
2 724 (10.91%) PowerShell
3 678 (10.22%) Python
4 324 (4.88%) C#
5 243 (3.66%) JavaScript
6 188 (2.83%) Bicep
7 183 (2.76%) Java
8 143 (2.15%) Bash
9 109 (1.64%) T-SQL
10 104 (1.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 85 (1.28%) TypeScript
12 68 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
13 37 (0.56%) VBA
14 31 (0.47%) VB
15 30 (0.45%) C++
16 26 (0.39%) VBScript
17 25 (0.38%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.32%) X++
19 17 (0.26%) Scala
20 16 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,398 (21.07%) Security Cleared
2 1,059 (15.96%) SC Cleared
3 632 (9.52%) Degree
4 349 (5.26%) Microsoft Certification
5 262 (3.95%) DV Cleared
6 239 (3.60%) Azure Certification
7 160 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
8 126 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
9 125 (1.88%) CISSP
10 117 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
11 92 (1.39%) PMP
12 85 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 68 (1.02%) AWS Certification
13 68 (1.02%) CISM
14 57 (0.86%) CCNP
15 50 (0.75%) A+ Certification
15 50 (0.75%) DBS Check
16 48 (0.72%) CCNA
16 48 (0.72%) Master's Degree
17 41 (0.62%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 367 (5.53%) Data Quality
2 225 (3.39%) GDPR
3 224 (3.38%) QA
4 195 (2.94%) SLA
5 185 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 166 (2.50%) PMO
7 161 (2.43%) NIST
8 108 (1.63%) Accessibility
9 82 (1.24%) NCSC
10 77 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
11 46 (0.69%) GRC
12 38 (0.57%) WCAG
13 34 (0.51%) PCI DSS
14 33 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 32 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 19 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
17 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.23%) P3O
18 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,264 (19.05%) Active Directory
2 242 (3.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 240 (3.62%) Docker
4 130 (1.96%) Hyper-V
5 106 (1.60%) Virtual Desktop
6 95 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (0.92%) vSphere
8 58 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.54%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.27%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 7 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.11%) zsh
15 5 (0.075%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.075%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.045%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 534 (8.05%) Microsoft Intune
2 488 (7.35%) Terraform
3 316 (4.76%) Kubernetes
4 248 (3.74%) SCCM
5 164 (2.47%) Ansible
6 117 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
7 58 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.81%) Grafana
9 52 (0.78%) vCenter Server
10 40 (0.60%) SCOM
11 36 (0.54%) Prometheus
12 34 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.38%) WSUS
14 21 (0.32%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.32%) Puppet
14 21 (0.32%) QRadar
15 19 (0.29%) Progress Chef
16 15 (0.23%) Argo
16 15 (0.23%) Failover Clustering
17 13 (0.20%) Avamar
Vendors
1 490 (7.38%) ServiceNow
2 331 (4.99%) VMware
3 314 (4.73%) Oracle
4 263 (3.96%) SAP
5 227 (3.42%) Databricks
5 227 (3.42%) Google
6 219 (3.30%) Cisco
7 117 (1.76%) Salesforce
8 105 (1.58%) Splunk
9 103 (1.55%) Citrix
10 96 (1.45%) Apple
11 85 (1.28%) CyberArk
12 79 (1.19%) Foundry
13 78 (1.18%) Okta
14 75 (1.13%) OpenAI
15 69 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
16 66 (0.99%) BeyondTrust
17 64 (0.96%) Red Hat
18 56 (0.84%) Zscaler
19 52 (0.78%) Meraki