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 22 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
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,861 4,620 5,021
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.75% 14.08% 12.93%
As % of the Vendors category 30.50% 29.78% 29.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,447 2,961 3,242
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -3.16% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 461 377 343
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.50 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £20.69 £22.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.95% +35.55% -26.23%
75th Percentile £37.12 £30.63 £36.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.38 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.34% +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 22,493 15,516 16,953
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.79% 47.29% 43.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,912 9,487 10,506
10th Percentile £313 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £522
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.26% -0.52%
75th Percentile £610 £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 1,155 807 800
10th Percentile £14.45 £14.67 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.60 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £30.27 £25.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.36% -8.55% -33.73%
75th Percentile £65.00 £46.30 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.15 £67.70 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.96 £21.24 £26.02
% change year-on-year +41.05% -18.35% -25.67%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 5,967 £490 +3.16% 6,050
UK excluding London 0 3,651 £450 +2.97% 4,875
London 0 2,606 £515 +3.00% 2,187
Work from Home +4 1,782 £500 - 2,437
South East +2 944 £475 +2.10% 1,291
North of England -3 935 £450 +2.97% 1,169
Midlands -1 630 £443 +10.63% 812
North West +1 556 £450 +2.74% 593
South West +1 454 £470 +15.69% 597
West Midlands -3 429 £446 +10.81% 476
Yorkshire -5 348 £460 +5.14% 398
Scotland +6 341 £450 - 308
East of England -1 251 £375 -25.82% 494
East Midlands +2 192 £425 +19.72% 335
Wales -1 101 £413 +38.66% 155
North East -37 35 £375 +12.78% 201
Northern Ireland -4 30 £369 -1.01% 151
Channel Islands 0 3 £525 -27.59% 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
1 807 (11.76%) SharePoint
2 407 (5.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 150 (2.19%) Confluence
4 38 (0.55%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.54%) Apache
6 30 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) IIS
7 23 (0.34%) Skype for Business
8 22 (0.32%) CMS
9 19 (0.28%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
11 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
12 11 (0.16%) SAS
13 9 (0.13%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Camunda
15 6 (0.087%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.087%) Mendix
15 6 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.087%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.073%) OpenStack
Applications
1 675 (9.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 667 (9.72%) Microsoft Office
3 287 (4.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 185 (2.70%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.62%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.087%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.087%) Revit
12 4 (0.058%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.058%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.058%) Trello
13 3 (0.044%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.029%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 244 (3.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.17%) Primavera
9 11 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.087%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.087%) SAP MM
13 6 (0.087%) Teamcenter
14 5 (0.073%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,874 (41.89%) Azure
2 1,761 (25.67%) Microsoft 365
3 1,202 (17.52%) Power Platform
4 1,037 (15.11%) Entra ID
5 621 (9.05%) AWS
6 605 (8.82%) Azure DevOps
7 587 (8.56%) Dynamics 365
8 408 (5.95%) Power Automate
9 384 (5.60%) Microsoft Copilot
10 370 (5.39%) PowerApps
11 310 (4.52%) Microsoft Purview
12 294 (4.29%) GitHub
13 257 (3.75%) OneDrive
14 244 (3.56%) SaaS
15 237 (3.45%) GCP
16 190 (2.77%) Azure Data Factory
17 173 (2.52%) Azure Monitor
18 172 (2.51%) Serverless
19 168 (2.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 156 (2.27%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 382 (5.57%) DNS
2 346 (5.04%) Firewall
3 283 (4.12%) VPN
4 247 (3.60%) DHCP
5 192 (2.80%) TCP/IP
6 172 (2.51%) WAN
7 159 (2.32%) Network Security
8 154 (2.24%) LAN
9 146 (2.13%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.09%) VLAN
11 57 (0.83%) Wireless
12 49 (0.71%) SAN
13 41 (0.60%) MPLS
14 36 (0.52%) Skype
14 36 (0.52%) SSL
15 35 (0.51%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.48%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.47%) BGP
18 31 (0.45%) Internet
19 28 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 755 (11.00%) Power BI
2 391 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 190 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
4 143 (2.08%) Metadata
5 138 (2.01%) Data Lake
6 135 (1.97%) Azure SQL Database
7 133 (1.94%) PostgreSQL
8 76 (1.11%) Relational Database
9 68 (0.99%) Power Query
9 68 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 61 (0.89%) MySQL
11 57 (0.83%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.69%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 43 (0.63%) Star Schema
14 37 (0.54%) Tableau
15 33 (0.48%) Delta Lake
16 29 (0.42%) MongoDB
17 27 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 330 (4.81%) JIRA
2 210 (3.06%) Git
3 96 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 74 (1.08%) GitLab
5 60 (0.87%) Visual Studio
6 41 (0.60%) MSI
7 39 (0.57%) Selenium
8 20 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 15 (0.22%) MLflow
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
12 12 (0.17%) Artifactory
12 12 (0.17%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
12 12 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
13 11 (0.16%) ERwin
General
1 2,411 (35.14%) Social Skills
2 1,384 (20.17%) Finance
3 872 (12.71%) Analytical Skills
4 632 (9.21%) Public Sector
5 350 (5.10%) Organisational Skills
6 338 (4.93%) Banking
7 230 (3.35%) Legal
8 195 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
9 165 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 151 (2.20%) Manufacturing
11 143 (2.08%) Retail
12 122 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 110 (1.60%) Law
14 105 (1.53%) Marketing
15 92 (1.34%) Local Government
16 89 (1.30%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.17%) Military
18 72 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
19 68 (0.99%) Aerospace
20 64 (0.93%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 802 (11.69%) Architect
2 692 (10.09%) Analyst
3 623 (9.08%) Developer
4 590 (8.60%) Senior
5 488 (7.11%) Lead
6 428 (6.24%) Consultant
7 420 (6.12%) IT Support
8 404 (5.89%) Support Engineer
9 274 (3.99%) IT Engineer
10 256 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
11 247 (3.60%) Azure Engineer
11 247 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 240 (3.50%) Data Engineer
13 224 (3.26%) Project Manager
14 222 (3.24%) Administrator
15 220 (3.21%) IT Support Engineer
16 184 (2.68%) Business Analyst
17 173 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
18 131 (1.91%) Security Engineer
19 130 (1.89%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 509 (7.42%) Terraform
2 337 (4.91%) .NET
3 267 (3.89%) REST
4 129 (1.88%) JSON
5 124 (1.81%) OAuth
6 112 (1.63%) PySpark
7 108 (1.57%) Microsoft Graph
8 102 (1.49%) SAML
8 102 (1.49%) XML
9 94 (1.37%) OpenID
10 91 (1.33%) .NET Framework
10 91 (1.33%) Web Services
11 85 (1.24%) React
12 82 (1.20%) ARM Templates
13 77 (1.12%) LDAP
14 74 (1.08%) RESTful
15 71 (1.03%) HTML
16 70 (1.02%) OAuth2
17 69 (1.01%) SOAP
18 67 (0.98%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 506 (7.38%) Onboarding
2 318 (4.63%) Cloud Native
3 225 (3.28%) Management Information System
4 199 (2.90%) Product Ownership
5 191 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
6 147 (2.14%) Hybrid Cloud
7 142 (2.07%) PKI
8 141 (2.06%) Data Centre
9 135 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
10 129 (1.88%) AI Agents
11 125 (1.82%) Security Posture
12 92 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
14 89 (1.30%) Data Structures
15 79 (1.15%) Low-Code
16 77 (1.12%) Driving Licence
17 76 (1.11%) Virtual Team
18 72 (1.05%) CMDB
19 65 (0.95%) Replication
19 65 (0.95%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,471 (21.44%) Windows
2 430 (6.27%) Windows Server
3 361 (5.26%) Windows 10
4 340 (4.96%) Linux
5 138 (2.01%) Mac OS
6 121 (1.76%) Android
7 116 (1.69%) Apple iOS
8 66 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.66%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
10 41 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
11 39 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
12 35 (0.51%) VMS
13 33 (0.48%) Ubuntu
14 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
15 21 (0.31%) CentOS
16 14 (0.20%) Solaris
17 12 (0.17%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.12%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,241 (18.09%) Problem-Solving
2 1,114 (16.24%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,097 (15.99%) DevOps
4 1,069 (15.58%) Agile
5 964 (14.05%) Migration
6 909 (13.25%) CI/CD
7 815 (11.88%) Continuous Improvement
8 782 (11.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 780 (11.37%) AI
10 757 (11.03%) Business Intelligence
11 716 (10.44%) Analytics
12 675 (9.84%) ITIL
13 603 (8.79%) Customer Service
14 522 (7.61%) Infrastructure as Code
15 516 (7.52%) Cybersecurity
16 499 (7.27%) Roadmaps
17 498 (7.26%) Data Modelling
18 470 (6.85%) Project Delivery
19 452 (6.59%) Decision-Making
20 441 (6.43%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 865 (12.61%) SQL
2 756 (11.02%) PowerShell
3 701 (10.22%) Python
4 338 (4.93%) C#
5 251 (3.66%) JavaScript
6 200 (2.92%) Bicep
7 186 (2.71%) Java
8 161 (2.35%) Bash
9 106 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 105 (1.53%) T-SQL
11 93 (1.36%) TypeScript
12 71 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.52%) VBA
14 31 (0.45%) VB
15 30 (0.44%) C++
16 27 (0.39%) VBScript
17 23 (0.34%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.34%) X++
18 17 (0.25%) R
19 15 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,482 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 1,111 (16.19%) SC Cleared
3 639 (9.31%) Degree
4 353 (5.15%) Microsoft Certification
5 288 (4.20%) DV Cleared
6 249 (3.63%) Azure Certification
7 165 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
8 131 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
9 128 (1.87%) CISSP
10 121 (1.76%) Computer Science Degree
11 94 (1.37%) PMP
12 87 (1.27%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.05%) AWS Certification
14 71 (1.03%) CISM
15 58 (0.85%) CCNP
16 55 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 55 (0.80%) DBS Check
17 49 (0.71%) CCNA
18 48 (0.70%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 48 (0.70%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (5.64%) Data Quality
2 239 (3.48%) QA
3 225 (3.28%) GDPR
4 209 (3.05%) SLA
5 193 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 177 (2.58%) PMO
7 167 (2.43%) NIST
8 110 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.28%) NCSC
10 81 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.77%) GRC
12 38 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 36 (0.52%) WCAG
14 35 (0.51%) PCI DSS
15 31 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
17 19 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 16 (0.23%) P3O
19 14 (0.20%) NIST 800
20 13 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,319 (19.22%) Active Directory
2 256 (3.73%) Docker
3 252 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (2.04%) Hyper-V
5 119 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 95 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (0.93%) vSphere
8 57 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.52%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.32%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.29%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.073%) Citrix Hypervisor
15 5 (0.073%) XenApp
15 5 (0.073%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 552 (8.05%) Microsoft Intune
2 335 (4.88%) Kubernetes
3 267 (3.89%) SCCM
4 173 (2.52%) Ansible
5 121 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.87%) Grafana
7 57 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.76%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.60%) SCOM
10 40 (0.58%) Prometheus
11 38 (0.55%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 25 (0.36%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
14 22 (0.32%) Puppet
15 21 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 17 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
17 16 (0.23%) Argo
18 13 (0.19%) Avamar
18 13 (0.19%) CASB
Vendors
1 509 (7.42%) ServiceNow
2 338 (4.93%) VMware
3 322 (4.69%) Oracle
4 271 (3.95%) SAP
5 237 (3.45%) Databricks
5 237 (3.45%) Google
6 228 (3.32%) Cisco
7 118 (1.72%) Salesforce
8 113 (1.65%) Splunk
9 108 (1.57%) Apple
10 98 (1.43%) Citrix
11 89 (1.30%) CyberArk
12 78 (1.14%) Okta
12 78 (1.14%) OpenAI
13 77 (1.12%) Foundry
14 72 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
15 68 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
16 67 (0.98%) Red Hat
17 56 (0.82%) Zscaler
18 53 (0.77%) Adobe