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 18 June 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
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,824 4,078 5,664
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.56% 13.70% 12.91%
As % of the Vendors category 28.34% 28.79% 30.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,854 2,629 3,676
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £461
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.86% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 371 299 493
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.31
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.00 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +25.00% -36.00%
75th Percentile £35.08 £30.81 £25.25
90th Percentile £65.00 £63.28 £59.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +9.64% +25.80% -25.00%

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 20,549 14,166 18,528
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.77% 47.59% 42.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,890 8,715 11,489
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £401 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,053 653 1,156
10th Percentile £15.37 £14.87 £12.19
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £14.50
Median hourly rate £33.98 £25.15 £23.90
Median % change year-on-year +35.11% +5.23% -44.90%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.95 £58.90
90th Percentile £80.04 £69.47 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £23.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +39.13% +2.22% -43.75%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 5,090 £494 +3.89% 3,239
UK excluding London -1 3,067 £450 +5.88% 2,863
London -2 2,253 £510 - 970
Work from Home 0 1,484 £500 - 1,338
North of England -4 792 £450 +5.88% 639
South East -1 721 £475 +4.40% 857
Midlands -4 517 £450 +15.09% 444
North West -3 415 £447 +5.18% 371
South West -2 379 £470 +7.43% 340
West Midlands -9 362 £450 +12.50% 232
Yorkshire -3 355 £475 +8.57% 188
East of England 0 296 £375 -25.00% 305
Scotland +4 259 £457 +6.16% 130
East Midlands 0 148 £425 +14.42% 212
Wales +3 99 £370 +40.44% 92
Northern Ireland +1 27 £350 +7.69% 140
North East -39 26 £450 +32.35% 90
Channel Islands -1 2 £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
1 637 (10.94%) SharePoint
2 386 (6.63%) Microsoft Exchange
3 116 (1.99%) Confluence
4 37 (0.64%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.50%) Apache
6 27 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.29%) HCL Notes
7 17 (0.29%) IIS
8 16 (0.27%) CMS
9 14 (0.24%) SAS
9 14 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 8 (0.14%) Mendix
11 6 (0.10%) Camunda
11 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
12 5 (0.086%) OpenEdge
12 5 (0.086%) SharePoint 2013
13 4 (0.069%) Appian
13 4 (0.069%) nginx
13 4 (0.069%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 546 (9.38%) Microsoft Office
2 520 (8.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 226 (3.88%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 120 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
5 89 (1.53%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.086%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.086%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.086%) Trello
11 3 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.052%) InDesign
11 3 (0.052%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.034%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.034%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.034%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.034%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 199 (3.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 20 (0.34%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.26%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.17%) Sage X3
10 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.14%) Maximo
11 8 (0.14%) Primavera
11 8 (0.14%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
13 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
13 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,465 (42.32%) Azure
2 1,493 (25.64%) Microsoft 365
3 1,000 (17.17%) Power Platform
4 806 (13.84%) Entra ID
5 492 (8.45%) AWS
6 460 (7.90%) Azure DevOps
7 456 (7.83%) Dynamics 365
8 338 (5.80%) Power Automate
9 328 (5.63%) Microsoft Purview
10 300 (5.15%) PowerApps
11 284 (4.88%) Microsoft Copilot
12 248 (4.26%) GitHub
13 236 (4.05%) OneDrive
14 214 (3.67%) SaaS
15 179 (3.07%) Azure Data Factory
15 179 (3.07%) GCP
16 167 (2.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 154 (2.64%) Serverless
18 144 (2.47%) PaaS
19 137 (2.35%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 305 (5.24%) DNS
2 270 (4.64%) Firewall
3 219 (3.76%) VPN
4 190 (3.26%) DHCP
5 149 (2.56%) WAN
6 135 (2.32%) Wi-Fi
7 127 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 123 (2.11%) LAN
9 122 (2.09%) Network Security
10 54 (0.93%) VLAN
11 49 (0.84%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.77%) SD-WAN
13 41 (0.70%) SAN
14 36 (0.62%) SSL
15 35 (0.60%) Wireless
16 32 (0.55%) Unified Communications
17 29 (0.50%) VoIP
18 27 (0.46%) HTTP
19 26 (0.45%) Internet
19 26 (0.45%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 633 (10.87%) Power BI
2 292 (5.01%) SQL Server
3 178 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (2.63%) Data Lake
5 125 (2.15%) Azure SQL Database
6 121 (2.08%) PostgreSQL
7 120 (2.06%) Metadata
8 74 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 69 (1.18%) Relational Database
10 56 (0.96%) Power Query
11 50 (0.86%) MySQL
12 48 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 46 (0.79%) NoSQL
14 42 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 42 (0.72%) Tableau
15 40 (0.69%) Delta Lake
16 35 (0.60%) Oracle Database
17 30 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 29 (0.50%) Spark SQL
19 25 (0.43%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 287 (4.93%) JIRA
2 168 (2.88%) Git
3 62 (1.06%) Jenkins
4 58 (1.00%) GitLab
5 35 (0.60%) Visual Studio
6 24 (0.41%) MSI
7 21 (0.36%) Artifactory
8 18 (0.31%) Selenium
9 17 (0.29%) Eclipse
10 16 (0.27%) ERwin
10 16 (0.27%) MLflow
11 14 (0.24%) Maven
12 13 (0.22%) Bitbucket
12 13 (0.22%) JMeter
12 13 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
13 12 (0.21%) Postman
14 10 (0.17%) JUnit
14 10 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
15 9 (0.15%) Gatling
16 8 (0.14%) WebDriver
General
1 1,908 (32.76%) Social Skills
2 1,170 (20.09%) Finance
3 630 (10.82%) Analytical Skills
4 524 (9.00%) Public Sector
5 301 (5.17%) Banking
6 243 (4.17%) Organisational Skills
7 242 (4.16%) Legal
8 154 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
9 109 (1.87%) Manufacturing
10 103 (1.77%) Retail
11 100 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 96 (1.65%) Law
13 83 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
14 78 (1.34%) Marketing
14 78 (1.34%) Telecoms
15 77 (1.32%) Military
16 67 (1.15%) Local Government
17 64 (1.10%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
19 47 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 723 (12.41%) Architect
2 621 (10.66%) Analyst
3 525 (9.01%) Developer
4 477 (8.19%) Senior
5 372 (6.39%) Lead
6 368 (6.32%) IT Support
7 339 (5.82%) Consultant
8 278 (4.77%) Support Engineer
9 240 (4.12%) Data Engineer
10 220 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
11 205 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
12 200 (3.43%) Project Manager
13 196 (3.37%) IT Engineer
14 183 (3.14%) Business Analyst
15 180 (3.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 170 (2.92%) Administrator
17 152 (2.61%) IT Support Engineer
18 125 (2.15%) Security Engineer
19 116 (1.99%) Cloud Engineer
20 106 (1.82%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (4.21%) .NET
2 191 (3.28%) REST
3 142 (2.44%) Microsoft Graph
4 113 (1.94%) OAuth
5 109 (1.87%) PySpark
6 101 (1.73%) SAML
7 99 (1.70%) JSON
8 87 (1.49%) OpenID
9 77 (1.32%) LDAP
9 77 (1.32%) Web Services
10 76 (1.30%) React
11 60 (1.03%) XML
12 59 (1.01%) Middleware
13 57 (0.98%) OAuth2
13 57 (0.98%) SailPoint
14 55 (0.94%) HTML
14 55 (0.94%) Node.js
15 53 (0.91%) CSS
15 53 (0.91%) RESTful
16 51 (0.88%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 322 (5.53%) Onboarding
2 254 (4.36%) Cloud Native
3 169 (2.90%) Product Ownership
4 133 (2.28%) Management Information System
5 114 (1.96%) Data Centre
6 111 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
7 103 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
8 101 (1.73%) Hybrid Cloud
9 91 (1.56%) Security Posture
10 90 (1.55%) AI Agents
11 88 (1.51%) PKI
12 83 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
13 78 (1.34%) Data Structures
14 74 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 74 (1.27%) Replication
15 69 (1.18%) Low-Code
15 69 (1.18%) Virtual Team
16 51 (0.88%) Distributed Systems
17 50 (0.86%) Public Cloud
18 49 (0.84%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,247 (21.41%) Windows
2 316 (5.43%) Windows 10
3 303 (5.20%) Windows Server
4 251 (4.31%) Linux
5 119 (2.04%) Mac OS
6 110 (1.89%) Android
6 110 (1.89%) Apple iOS
7 43 (0.74%) Windows 7
8 39 (0.67%) Unix
9 38 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 36 (0.62%) Windows Server 2016
11 30 (0.52%) VMS
11 30 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.24%) Ubuntu
13 14 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
14 11 (0.19%) CentOS
15 9 (0.15%) Solaris
16 8 (0.14%) SUSE
17 6 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 988 (16.96%) Problem-Solving
2 937 (16.09%) DevOps
3 846 (14.53%) Agile
4 837 (14.37%) Migration
5 770 (13.22%) CI/CD
6 656 (11.26%) Stakeholder Management
7 654 (11.23%) Business Intelligence
8 628 (10.78%) Analytics
9 617 (10.59%) AI
10 540 (9.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 537 (9.22%) Continuous Improvement
12 499 (8.57%) ITIL
13 440 (7.55%) Data Modelling
14 432 (7.42%) Customer Service
15 419 (7.19%) Roadmaps
16 387 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
17 374 (6.42%) Decision-Making
18 359 (6.16%) Infrastructure as Code
19 341 (5.86%) Validation
20 338 (5.80%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 751 (12.89%) SQL
2 653 (11.21%) PowerShell
3 598 (10.27%) Python
4 267 (4.58%) C#
5 205 (3.52%) JavaScript
6 178 (3.06%) Java
7 144 (2.47%) Bicep
8 104 (1.79%) T-SQL
9 83 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 79 (1.36%) Kusto Query Language
11 71 (1.22%) TypeScript
12 66 (1.13%) Bash
13 35 (0.60%) VBA
14 29 (0.50%) VB
15 28 (0.48%) C++
16 25 (0.43%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.31%) Scala
17 18 (0.31%) VBScript
18 14 (0.24%) Shell Script
19 13 (0.22%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,107 (19.01%) Security Cleared
2 864 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 554 (9.51%) Degree
4 282 (4.84%) Microsoft Certification
5 195 (3.35%) Azure Certification
6 181 (3.11%) DV Cleared
7 115 (1.97%) Computer Science Degree
8 110 (1.89%) CISSP
9 104 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
10 85 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
11 61 (1.05%) CISM
12 57 (0.98%) PMP
13 53 (0.91%) AWS Certification
13 53 (0.91%) PMI Certification
14 49 (0.84%) Master's Degree
15 42 (0.72%) MCSE
16 41 (0.70%) DBS Check
17 37 (0.64%) CCNP
17 37 (0.64%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 306 (5.25%) Data Quality
2 230 (3.95%) GDPR
3 183 (3.14%) QA
4 165 (2.83%) SLA
5 155 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 129 (2.21%) NIST
7 108 (1.85%) PMO
8 80 (1.37%) Accessibility
8 80 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
9 58 (1.00%) NCSC
10 39 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 34 (0.58%) GRC
12 31 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 31 (0.53%) PCI DSS
13 21 (0.36%) NIST 800
13 21 (0.36%) WCAG
14 19 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 17 (0.29%) MiFID
16 14 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
17 13 (0.22%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,110 (19.06%) Active Directory
2 215 (3.69%) Docker
3 191 (3.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 105 (1.80%) Hyper-V
5 92 (1.58%) Virtual Desktop
6 78 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
8 56 (0.96%) vSphere
9 34 (0.58%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.36%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.33%) Firmware
11 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
12 7 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.10%) IAG
13 6 (0.10%) RACF
14 5 (0.086%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.069%) Snort
15 4 (0.069%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.069%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 476 (8.17%) Microsoft Intune
2 360 (6.18%) Terraform
3 244 (4.19%) Kubernetes
4 203 (3.49%) SCCM
5 129 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
6 126 (2.16%) Ansible
7 79 (1.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 51 (0.88%) Jamf Pro
9 49 (0.84%) vCenter Server
10 34 (0.58%) Grafana
11 30 (0.52%) FortiGate
12 29 (0.50%) Prometheus
13 24 (0.41%) SCOM
14 20 (0.34%) Puppet
15 16 (0.27%) WSUS
16 15 (0.26%) AirWatch
17 14 (0.24%) QRadar
18 13 (0.22%) vMotion
19 11 (0.19%) HAProxy
20 10 (0.17%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 340 (5.84%) ServiceNow
2 259 (4.45%) VMware
3 240 (4.12%) SAP
4 237 (4.07%) Oracle
5 219 (3.76%) Databricks
6 190 (3.26%) Cisco
7 169 (2.90%) Google
8 118 (2.03%) Salesforce
9 105 (1.80%) Citrix
10 90 (1.55%) Splunk
11 78 (1.34%) OpenAI
12 74 (1.27%) Apple
13 71 (1.22%) Foundry
14 65 (1.12%) CrowdStrike
15 60 (1.03%) Okta
16 55 (0.94%) CyberArk
17 47 (0.81%) HP
18 45 (0.77%) Red Hat
19 44 (0.76%) Adobe
20 42 (0.72%) Zscaler