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 28 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
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,878 4,619 5,062
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.80% 14.12% 13.05%
As % of the Vendors category 30.65% 29.92% 29.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,439 2,956 3,239
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £474 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.96% -2.87% -2.50%
75th Percentile £586 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £671 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 471 377 329
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £15.25 £16.02 £14.42
Median hourly rate £19.50 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -12.61% +37.49% -26.23%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.00 £36.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.33 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.57% +24.80% -16.77%

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 22,439 15,440 16,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.74% 47.20% 43.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,832 9,435 10,465
10th Percentile £313 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £611 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,162 795 772
10th Percentile £14.36 £14.66 £13.02
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.96 £25.15 £27.86
Median % change year-on-year +19.13% -9.73% -35.21%
75th Percentile £65.00 £45.14 £61.60
90th Percentile £82.95 £67.80 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.13 £21.24 £26.00
% change year-on-year +32.42% -18.31% -34.67%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -2 5,964 £488 +2.63% 6,928
UK excluding London 0 3,653 £450 +3.45% 5,225
London 0 2,614 £513 +2.50% 2,801
Work from Home +3 1,803 £500 - 2,901
South East +2 947 £475 +2.98% 1,368
North of England -5 924 £450 +4.23% 1,251
Midlands -1 636 £444 +10.94% 851
North West -1 552 £450 +2.97% 639
South West +1 446 £470 +17.50% 639
West Midlands -1 432 £446 +8.45% 483
Scotland +7 351 £450 +1.12% 352
Yorkshire -6 341 £462 +6.21% 431
East of England -1 246 £363 -30.95% 521
East Midlands +2 195 £425 +19.72% 367
Wales -1 104 £413 +37.50% 160
North East -37 35 £375 +10.29% 209
Northern Ireland -3 32 £350 - 174
Channel Islands 0 4 £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
1 805 (11.70%) SharePoint
2 401 (5.83%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.17%) Confluence
4 38 (0.55%) Apache
5 36 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 30 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.33%) CMS
7 23 (0.33%) Skype for Business
8 21 (0.31%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.16%) SAS
11 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.15%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) Apache Superset
14 6 (0.087%) Camunda
14 6 (0.087%) Mendix
14 6 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.087%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.073%) OpenStack
Applications
1 693 (10.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 681 (9.90%) Microsoft Office
3 293 (4.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 189 (2.75%) Microsoft Project
5 110 (1.60%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.15%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.12%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.10%) Navisworks
11 7 (0.10%) Revit
12 4 (0.058%) Trello
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
13 3 (0.044%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.029%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 248 (3.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.45%) 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
7 13 (0.19%) Primavera
8 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
11 8 (0.12%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
13 6 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,901 (42.18%) Azure
2 1,755 (25.52%) Microsoft 365
3 1,207 (17.55%) Power Platform
4 1,060 (15.41%) Entra ID
5 642 (9.33%) AWS
6 614 (8.93%) Azure DevOps
7 594 (8.64%) Dynamics 365
8 409 (5.95%) Power Automate
9 381 (5.54%) Microsoft Copilot
10 367 (5.34%) PowerApps
11 304 (4.42%) Microsoft Purview
12 300 (4.36%) GitHub
13 259 (3.77%) OneDrive
14 246 (3.58%) SaaS
15 240 (3.49%) GCP
16 193 (2.81%) Azure Data Factory
17 178 (2.59%) Serverless
18 171 (2.49%) Azure Monitor
19 162 (2.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 159 (2.31%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 384 (5.58%) DNS
2 343 (4.99%) Firewall
3 284 (4.13%) VPN
4 254 (3.69%) DHCP
5 190 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 173 (2.52%) WAN
7 166 (2.41%) Network Security
8 152 (2.21%) LAN
9 143 (2.08%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.08%) VLAN
11 57 (0.83%) Wireless
12 47 (0.68%) SAN
13 39 (0.57%) MPLS
14 37 (0.54%) Skype
15 35 (0.51%) SSL
16 33 (0.48%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.47%) Internet
17 32 (0.47%) Unified Communications
18 31 (0.45%) BGP
19 28 (0.41%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 762 (11.08%) Power BI
2 393 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 186 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
4 150 (2.18%) Metadata
5 140 (2.04%) Data Lake
6 133 (1.93%) Azure SQL Database
7 126 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
8 74 (1.08%) Relational Database
9 72 (1.05%) Power Query
10 66 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 60 (0.87%) MySQL
12 53 (0.77%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 45 (0.65%) Star Schema
15 43 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 39 (0.57%) Delta Lake
16 39 (0.57%) Tableau
17 28 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 26 (0.38%) MongoDB
19 22 (0.32%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 330 (4.80%) JIRA
2 219 (3.18%) Git
3 96 (1.40%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.06%) GitLab
5 50 (0.73%) Visual Studio
6 43 (0.63%) MSI
7 38 (0.55%) Selenium
8 19 (0.28%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Claude Code
10 16 (0.23%) MLflow
10 16 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.17%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.16%) Artifactory
14 11 (0.16%) ERwin
14 11 (0.16%) Maven
14 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,453 (35.66%) Social Skills
2 1,398 (20.33%) Finance
3 876 (12.74%) Analytical Skills
4 638 (9.28%) Public Sector
5 374 (5.44%) Organisational Skills
6 330 (4.80%) Banking
7 221 (3.21%) Legal
8 194 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 159 (2.31%) Manufacturing
11 143 (2.08%) Retail
12 124 (1.80%) Telecoms
13 106 (1.54%) Law
14 104 (1.51%) Marketing
15 94 (1.37%) Local Government
16 87 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
17 77 (1.12%) Military
18 72 (1.05%) Aerospace
19 64 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
20 62 (0.90%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 812 (11.81%) Architect
2 705 (10.25%) Analyst
3 610 (8.87%) Developer
4 603 (8.77%) Senior
5 489 (7.11%) Lead
6 445 (6.47%) Consultant
7 426 (6.19%) IT Support
8 414 (6.02%) Support Engineer
9 283 (4.11%) IT Engineer
10 262 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
11 250 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 246 (3.58%) Data Engineer
13 245 (3.56%) Azure Engineer
14 235 (3.42%) Administrator
15 228 (3.31%) IT Support Engineer
16 220 (3.20%) Project Manager
17 181 (2.63%) Business Analyst
18 171 (2.49%) Cloud Engineer
19 131 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
20 128 (1.86%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 511 (7.43%) Terraform
2 341 (4.96%) .NET
3 266 (3.87%) REST
4 127 (1.85%) JSON
5 126 (1.83%) OAuth
6 114 (1.66%) PySpark
7 107 (1.56%) Microsoft Graph
8 103 (1.50%) SAML
9 101 (1.47%) XML
10 94 (1.37%) OpenID
11 92 (1.34%) .NET Framework
12 86 (1.25%) React
13 85 (1.24%) ARM Templates
14 83 (1.21%) Web Services
15 78 (1.13%) LDAP
16 74 (1.08%) RESTful
17 69 (1.00%) HTML
17 69 (1.00%) OAuth2
18 68 (0.99%) SOAP
19 67 (0.97%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 516 (7.50%) Onboarding
2 314 (4.57%) Cloud Native
3 235 (3.42%) Management Information System
4 195 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
5 193 (2.81%) Product Ownership
6 155 (2.25%) Hybrid Cloud
7 141 (2.05%) PKI
8 140 (2.04%) Data Centre
9 138 (2.01%) AI Agents
10 134 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
11 121 (1.76%) Security Posture
12 91 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
13 90 (1.31%) Data Structures
14 89 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
15 81 (1.18%) Low-Code
16 77 (1.12%) CMDB
17 75 (1.09%) Driving Licence
18 73 (1.06%) Virtual Team
19 67 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
20 65 (0.95%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1,468 (21.34%) Windows
2 436 (6.34%) Windows Server
3 369 (5.36%) Windows 10
4 330 (4.80%) Linux
5 142 (2.06%) Mac OS
6 119 (1.73%) Android
7 111 (1.61%) Apple iOS
8 63 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.63%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 37 (0.54%) Windows Server 2016
13 35 (0.51%) Ubuntu
14 34 (0.49%) VMS
15 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
16 20 (0.29%) CentOS
17 13 (0.19%) Solaris
18 12 (0.17%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,254 (18.23%) Problem-Solving
2 1,173 (17.05%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,100 (15.99%) DevOps
4 1,060 (15.41%) Agile
5 985 (14.32%) Migration
6 903 (13.13%) CI/CD
7 842 (12.24%) Continuous Improvement
8 793 (11.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 785 (11.41%) AI
10 763 (11.09%) Business Intelligence
11 720 (10.47%) Analytics
12 688 (10.00%) ITIL
13 622 (9.04%) Customer Service
14 533 (7.75%) Cybersecurity
14 533 (7.75%) Infrastructure as Code
15 501 (7.28%) Roadmaps
16 500 (7.27%) Data Modelling
17 473 (6.88%) Project Delivery
18 452 (6.57%) Decision-Making
19 451 (6.56%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 863 (12.55%) SQL
2 755 (10.98%) PowerShell
3 711 (10.34%) Python
4 328 (4.77%) C#
5 245 (3.56%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.89%) Bicep
7 181 (2.63%) Java
8 165 (2.40%) Bash
9 108 (1.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 104 (1.51%) T-SQL
11 94 (1.37%) TypeScript
12 73 (1.06%) Kusto Query Language
13 34 (0.49%) VBA
14 30 (0.44%) VB
15 27 (0.39%) VBScript
16 23 (0.33%) X++
17 20 (0.29%) C++
17 20 (0.29%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.28%) R
19 16 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,493 (21.71%) Security Cleared
2 1,119 (16.27%) SC Cleared
3 635 (9.23%) Degree
4 355 (5.16%) Microsoft Certification
5 287 (4.17%) DV Cleared
6 253 (3.68%) Azure Certification
7 168 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
8 132 (1.92%) CISSP
9 129 (1.88%) Cisco Certification
10 122 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.40%) PMP
12 89 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 75 (1.09%) AWS Certification
14 72 (1.05%) CISM
15 57 (0.83%) DBS Check
16 56 (0.81%) A+ Certification
17 55 (0.80%) CCNP
18 51 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
19 48 (0.70%) CCNA
19 48 (0.70%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 391 (5.68%) Data Quality
2 240 (3.49%) QA
3 232 (3.37%) GDPR
4 205 (2.98%) SLA
5 193 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 180 (2.62%) PMO
7 169 (2.46%) NIST
8 114 (1.66%) Accessibility
9 89 (1.29%) NCSC
10 84 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
11 52 (0.76%) GRC
12 41 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 39 (0.57%) WCAG
14 37 (0.54%) PCI DSS
15 32 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 21 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 21 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.22%) P3O
18 14 (0.20%) NIST 800
19 12 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,318 (19.16%) Active Directory
2 258 (3.75%) Docker
2 258 (3.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 144 (2.09%) Hyper-V
4 120 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
5 97 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
6 63 (0.92%) vSphere
7 58 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
8 36 (0.52%) BitLocker
9 22 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
10 19 (0.28%) VMware NSX
11 16 (0.23%) Firmware
12 8 (0.12%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.10%) IAG
13 7 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.10%) zsh
14 5 (0.073%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.073%) XenApp
15 4 (0.058%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 548 (7.97%) Microsoft Intune
2 341 (4.96%) Kubernetes
3 275 (4.00%) SCCM
4 175 (2.54%) Ansible
5 124 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (0.89%) Grafana
7 57 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.74%) vCenter Server
9 46 (0.67%) SCOM
10 40 (0.58%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 26 (0.38%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 21 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.31%) Puppet
16 17 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
17 15 (0.22%) Argo
18 13 (0.19%) Avamar
18 13 (0.19%) WMI
Vendors
1 517 (7.52%) ServiceNow
2 338 (4.91%) VMware
3 326 (4.74%) Oracle
4 274 (3.98%) SAP
5 245 (3.56%) Databricks
6 236 (3.43%) Google
7 228 (3.31%) Cisco
8 119 (1.73%) Salesforce
9 117 (1.70%) Splunk
10 109 (1.58%) Apple
11 90 (1.31%) CyberArk
12 87 (1.26%) Citrix
13 79 (1.15%) OpenAI
14 78 (1.13%) Okta
15 74 (1.08%) BeyondTrust
16 73 (1.06%) Foundry
17 70 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
18 67 (0.97%) Red Hat
19 54 (0.79%) Zscaler
20 52 (0.76%) Adobe