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 8 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
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,445 4,773 4,898
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.65% 14.44% 12.94%
As % of the Vendors category 32.80% 30.25% 29.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,664 3,113 3,013
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.06% -3.00%
75th Percentile £589 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £440 £447
% change year-on-year +3.47% -1.62% -0.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 641 377 261
10th Percentile £13.31 £13.75 £14.65
25th Percentile £14.45 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.00 £20.29
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% +8.45% -11.80%
75th Percentile £29.07 £31.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £66.66 £63.54 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.64 £20.90 £17.00
% change year-on-year -15.59% +22.93% -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 22,701 15,776 16,848
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.62% 47.73% 44.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,715 9,693 9,927
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 1,385 805 604
10th Percentile £13.84 £14.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.25 £17.79 £16.00
Median hourly rate £24.19 £25.00 £32.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.24% -21.88% -26.01%
75th Percentile £57.00 £39.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.18 £21.28 £30.00
% change year-on-year +8.93% -29.07% -29.41%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 6,463 £493 +3.68% 9,243
UK excluding London 0 3,995 £455 +3.47% 6,503
London +1 2,786 £525 +5.00% 3,553
Work from Home +4 1,882 £500 - 3,707
South East +1 1,077 £475 +5.56% 1,765
North of England -5 987 £467 +7.11% 1,578
Midlands -1 689 £440 +6.02% 1,041
North West -1 579 £474 +8.34% 786
West Midlands -1 472 £428 -2.84% 585
South West -1 443 £500 +11.11% 660
Scotland +5 374 £450 - 453
Yorkshire -4 357 £461 +3.89% 562
East of England 0 314 £345 -34.29% 655
East Midlands +1 212 £446 +19.00% 457
Wales +1 112 £394 +29.63% 216
North East -21 56 £425 +23.26% 243
Northern Ireland -1 34 £312 -10.86% 232
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
1 894 (12.01%) SharePoint
2 399 (5.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 158 (2.12%) Confluence
4 38 (0.51%) Apache
5 33 (0.44%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 26 (0.35%) CMS
8 24 (0.32%) 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 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.081%) Mendix
14 6 (0.081%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.081%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.054%) Camunda
15 4 (0.054%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.054%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 837 (11.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 791 (10.62%) Microsoft Office
3 329 (4.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 202 (2.71%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 60 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.21%) 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 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.081%) 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
1 268 (3.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 92 (1.24%) 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 14 (0.19%) 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 (40.93%) Azure
2 1,880 (25.25%) Microsoft 365
3 1,294 (17.38%) Power Platform
4 1,211 (16.27%) Entra ID
5 681 (9.15%) AWS
6 641 (8.61%) Azure DevOps
7 604 (8.11%) Dynamics 365
8 465 (6.25%) Microsoft Copilot
9 445 (5.98%) Power Automate
10 400 (5.37%) PowerApps
11 320 (4.30%) Microsoft Purview
12 317 (4.26%) GitHub
13 295 (3.96%) GCP
14 271 (3.64%) OneDrive
15 240 (3.22%) SaaS
16 210 (2.82%) Serverless
17 196 (2.63%) Azure Monitor
18 179 (2.40%) Azure Data Factory
19 166 (2.23%) Azure Logic Apps
19 166 (2.23%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 414 (5.56%) DNS
2 352 (4.73%) Firewall
3 310 (4.16%) VPN
4 274 (3.68%) DHCP
5 209 (2.81%) TCP/IP
6 174 (2.34%) Network Security
7 158 (2.12%) WAN
8 145 (1.95%) LAN
9 135 (1.81%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (0.98%) VLAN
10 73 (0.98%) Wireless
11 48 (0.64%) SAN
12 43 (0.58%) SSL
13 40 (0.54%) Skype
14 39 (0.52%) Kerberos
15 38 (0.51%) MPLS
16 34 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 33 (0.44%) Internet
18 32 (0.43%) BGP
19 31 (0.42%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 775 (10.41%) Power BI
2 416 (5.59%) SQL Server
3 170 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
4 168 (2.26%) Metadata
5 146 (1.96%) Data Lake
6 131 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
7 123 (1.65%) Azure SQL Database
8 89 (1.20%) Power Query
9 83 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 74 (0.99%) MySQL
11 71 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 55 (0.74%) NoSQL
13 50 (0.67%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.56%) 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 29 (0.39%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 346 (4.65%) JIRA
2 261 (3.51%) Git
3 91 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 73 (0.98%) GitLab
5 59 (0.79%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.69%) 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 (0.26%) 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%) Artifactory
General
1 2,795 (37.54%) Social Skills
2 1,468 (19.72%) Finance
3 966 (12.98%) Analytical Skills
4 672 (9.03%) Public Sector
5 480 (6.45%) Organisational Skills
6 319 (4.28%) Banking
7 242 (3.25%) Legal
8 230 (3.09%) Manufacturing
9 212 (2.85%) Documentation Skills
10 185 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 163 (2.19%) Retail
12 125 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 117 (1.57%) Marketing
14 104 (1.40%) Aerospace
15 101 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
16 96 (1.29%) Military
17 92 (1.24%) Local Government
18 78 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
19 77 (1.03%) Law
20 57 (0.77%) Billing
Job Titles
1 836 (11.23%) Architect
2 715 (9.60%) Analyst
3 657 (8.82%) Senior
4 647 (8.69%) Developer
5 492 (6.61%) Lead
6 485 (6.51%) Consultant
7 445 (5.98%) IT Support
8 433 (5.82%) Support Engineer
9 367 (4.93%) Administrator
10 296 (3.98%) IT Engineer
11 290 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
12 263 (3.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 261 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
14 245 (3.29%) Data Engineer
14 245 (3.29%) IT Support Engineer
15 225 (3.02%) Project Manager
16 195 (2.62%) Business Analyst
17 192 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
18 146 (1.96%) Security Engineer
19 137 (1.84%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 564 (7.58%) Terraform
2 345 (4.63%) .NET
3 315 (4.23%) REST
4 156 (2.10%) OAuth
5 148 (1.99%) JSON
6 120 (1.61%) XML
7 119 (1.60%) OpenID
7 119 (1.60%) SAML
8 108 (1.45%) ARM Templates
9 105 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
9 105 (1.41%) PySpark
10 97 (1.30%) React
11 92 (1.24%) Web Services
12 90 (1.21%) LDAP
13 87 (1.17%) .NET Framework
13 87 (1.17%) OAuth2
14 82 (1.10%) RESTful
14 82 (1.10%) SailPoint
15 80 (1.07%) HTML
16 70 (0.94%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 610 (8.19%) Onboarding
2 329 (4.42%) Management Information System
3 324 (4.35%) Cloud Native
4 255 (3.43%) Enterprise Software
5 211 (2.83%) Product Ownership
6 176 (2.36%) AI Agents
7 172 (2.31%) Hybrid Cloud
8 168 (2.26%) PKI
9 158 (2.12%) Data Centre
10 147 (1.97%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
12 102 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 98 (1.32%) CMDB
13 98 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
14 96 (1.29%) Driving Licence
15 94 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
16 85 (1.14%) Low-Code
17 80 (1.07%) Replication
18 79 (1.06%) NHS
19 78 (1.05%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,570 (21.09%) Windows
2 491 (6.60%) Windows Server
3 393 (5.28%) Windows 10
4 360 (4.84%) Linux
5 158 (2.12%) Mac OS
6 133 (1.79%) Android
7 131 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.51%) Windows 7
13 35 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
14 32 (0.43%) VMS
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 21 (0.28%) Solaris
16 21 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.16%) SUSE
18 8 (0.11%) AIX
19 7 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,468 (19.72%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,399 (18.79%) Problem-Solving
3 1,141 (15.33%) DevOps
4 1,106 (14.86%) Agile
5 1,007 (13.53%) Migration
6 977 (13.12%) CI/CD
7 958 (12.87%) Continuous Improvement
8 902 (12.12%) AI
9 842 (11.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 795 (10.68%) Business Intelligence
11 762 (10.24%) Analytics
12 738 (9.91%) ITIL
13 696 (9.35%) Customer Service
14 629 (8.45%) Cybersecurity
15 604 (8.11%) Infrastructure as Code
16 592 (7.95%) Roadmaps
17 522 (7.01%) Project Delivery
18 520 (6.98%) Data Modelling
19 513 (6.89%) Decision-Making
20 493 (6.62%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 890 (11.95%) SQL
2 870 (11.69%) PowerShell
3 769 (10.33%) Python
4 367 (4.93%) C#
5 289 (3.88%) JavaScript
6 227 (3.05%) Bicep
7 195 (2.62%) Bash
8 159 (2.14%) Java
9 125 (1.68%) TypeScript
10 114 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 109 (1.46%) T-SQL
12 78 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.43%) VB
14 30 (0.40%) VBA
15 27 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.34%) VBScript
17 22 (0.30%) X++
18 20 (0.27%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.26%) R
20 16 (0.21%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,610 (21.63%) Security Cleared
2 1,191 (16.00%) SC Cleared
3 612 (8.22%) Degree
4 370 (4.97%) Microsoft Certification
5 320 (4.30%) DV Cleared
6 280 (3.76%) Azure Certification
7 202 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
8 147 (1.97%) CISSP
9 125 (1.68%) Cisco Certification
10 110 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
11 99 (1.33%) PMP
12 95 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 83 (1.11%) AWS Certification
14 80 (1.07%) CISM
15 68 (0.91%) DBS Check
16 57 (0.77%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 56 (0.75%) A+ Certification
18 53 (0.71%) CCNP
19 46 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 44 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (6.26%) Data Quality
2 255 (3.43%) QA
3 241 (3.24%) GDPR
4 219 (2.94%) SLA
5 216 (2.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 215 (2.89%) PMO
7 187 (2.51%) NIST
8 130 (1.75%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
10 89 (1.20%) 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 1,381 (18.55%) Active Directory
2 278 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 249 (3.34%) Docker
4 148 (1.99%) Hyper-V
5 137 (1.84%) Virtual Desktop
6 118 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
7 79 (1.06%) vSphere
8 59 (0.79%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.47%) 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 (0.081%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.081%) NFS
16 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.081%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 598 (8.03%) Microsoft Intune
2 339 (4.55%) Kubernetes
3 304 (4.08%) SCCM
4 174 (2.34%) Ansible
5 154 (2.07%) Single Sign-On
6 68 (0.91%) Grafana
7 58 (0.78%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.73%) SCOM
9 46 (0.62%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 31 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 31 (0.42%) QRadar
12 28 (0.38%) Progress Chef
13 26 (0.35%) WSUS
14 22 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
14 22 (0.30%) Puppet
15 21 (0.28%) Argo
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 550 (7.39%) ServiceNow
2 358 (4.81%) VMware
3 344 (4.62%) Oracle
4 312 (4.19%) SAP
5 294 (3.95%) Google
6 261 (3.51%) Databricks
7 242 (3.25%) Cisco
8 136 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 133 (1.79%) Splunk
10 115 (1.54%) Apple
11 113 (1.52%) CyberArk
12 101 (1.36%) Citrix
12 101 (1.36%) Okta
13 99 (1.33%) OpenAI
14 96 (1.29%) BeyondTrust
15 84 (1.13%) Foundry
16 81 (1.09%) CrowdStrike
17 65 (0.87%) Red Hat
18 63 (0.85%) IBM
19 59 (0.79%) Zscaler