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 April 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 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,597 3,904 5,601
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.91% 13.30% 12.94%
As % of the Vendors category 28.26% 28.02% 30.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,768 2,612 3,683
10th Percentile £210 £210 £189
25th Percentile £375 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £579 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £463
% change year-on-year +2.86% -5.41% -0.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 237 454
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.62 £12.99
Median hourly rate £20.09 £20.75 £15.30
Median % change year-on-year -3.18% +35.67% -34.96%
75th Percentile £28.88 £30.40 £24.94
90th Percentile £63.75 £60.95 £52.78
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £18.81 £15.00
% change year-on-year +5.86% +25.38% -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 19,808 13,932 18,355
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.16% 47.46% 42.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,656 8,764 11,391
10th Percentile £313 £290 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £518
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -0.48% -1.43%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £627
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 999 558 1,077
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.99 £12.00
25th Percentile £18.75 £18.13 £14.36
Median hourly rate £30.50 £27.13 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.44% +20.56% -48.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £57.50 £57.33
90th Percentile £78.90 £75.38 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £24.19 £21.46
% change year-on-year +11.62% +12.72% -46.35%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 4,913 £492 +3.58% 2,889
UK excluding London 0 2,908 £450 +2.86% 2,551
London 0 2,163 £513 +2.50% 889
Work from Home -2 1,391 £500 - 1,624
North of England 0 795 £450 +5.88% 603
South East -2 648 £480 -2.69% 794
Midlands -3 504 £450 +12.50% 400
North West -2 434 £416 -6.73% 329
West Midlands -4 347 £456 +14.06% 240
Yorkshire +3 335 £455 +13.63% 185
South West -1 333 £450 -2.96% 263
East of England 0 330 £400 -11.11% 301
Scotland +3 203 £450 +7.20% 113
East Midlands 0 151 £400 -5.88% 158
Wales +3 93 £310 +3.33% 107
North East -23 31 £450 +28.57% 97
Northern Ireland +2 22 £450 +38.46% 56
Channel Islands -1 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
1 600 (10.72%) SharePoint
2 396 (7.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 105 (1.88%) Confluence
4 34 (0.61%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache
6 23 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.38%) CMS
8 19 (0.34%) HCL Notes
9 16 (0.29%) SAS
10 14 (0.25%) Skype for Business
11 13 (0.23%) IIS
12 12 (0.21%) Mendix
13 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
14 5 (0.089%) Camunda
14 5 (0.089%) Oracle Workflow
15 4 (0.071%) Appian
15 4 (0.071%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.071%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.071%) Jupyter
15 4 (0.071%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 593 (10.59%) Microsoft Office
2 525 (9.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 236 (4.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 125 (2.23%) Microsoft Project
5 89 (1.59%) MS Visio
6 72 (1.29%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.089%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.071%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
14 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 204 (3.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 57 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 18 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
6 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.23%) Maximo
6 13 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
7 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
10 8 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.13%) Shopify
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
12 6 (0.11%) Primavera
13 5 (0.089%) SAP Business One
13 5 (0.089%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 2,340 (41.81%) Azure
2 1,435 (25.64%) Microsoft 365
3 948 (16.94%) Power Platform
4 713 (12.74%) Entra ID
5 470 (8.40%) Dynamics 365
6 461 (8.24%) AWS
7 448 (8.00%) Azure DevOps
8 337 (6.02%) Power Automate
9 302 (5.40%) PowerApps
10 292 (5.22%) Microsoft Purview
11 266 (4.75%) GitHub
12 230 (4.11%) Microsoft Copilot
13 201 (3.59%) Azure Data Factory
14 200 (3.57%) OneDrive
15 187 (3.34%) SaaS
16 175 (3.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 174 (3.11%) Serverless
18 167 (2.98%) GCP
19 146 (2.61%) PaaS
20 144 (2.57%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 295 (5.27%) Firewall
2 289 (5.16%) DNS
3 212 (3.79%) VPN
4 168 (3.00%) DHCP
5 143 (2.55%) Wi-Fi
6 138 (2.47%) WAN
7 121 (2.16%) Network Security
8 118 (2.11%) LAN
9 104 (1.86%) TCP/IP
10 55 (0.98%) Kerberos
10 55 (0.98%) VLAN
11 44 (0.79%) SD-WAN
12 37 (0.66%) SSL
13 36 (0.64%) Skype
14 35 (0.63%) SAN
14 35 (0.63%) Wireless
15 31 (0.55%) HTTP
16 27 (0.48%) Unified Communications
17 24 (0.43%) IPsec
17 24 (0.43%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 587 (10.49%) Power BI
2 272 (4.86%) SQL Server
3 179 (3.20%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (2.77%) Data Lake
5 123 (2.20%) Azure SQL Database
6 112 (2.00%) Metadata
7 106 (1.89%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 71 (1.27%) Relational Database
10 51 (0.91%) Oracle Database
11 49 (0.88%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 48 (0.86%) Tableau
13 47 (0.84%) NoSQL
14 44 (0.79%) MySQL
15 43 (0.77%) Power Query
16 41 (0.73%) Delta Lake
17 40 (0.71%) Star Schema
18 29 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
19 27 (0.48%) Spark SQL
20 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 256 (4.57%) JIRA
2 172 (3.07%) Git
3 67 (1.20%) Jenkins
4 66 (1.18%) GitLab
5 26 (0.46%) Artifactory
5 26 (0.46%) Visual Studio
6 23 (0.41%) MSI
7 20 (0.36%) Eclipse
8 19 (0.34%) Selenium
9 18 (0.32%) Postman
10 16 (0.29%) JMeter
10 16 (0.29%) MLflow
11 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
12 12 (0.21%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.21%) JUnit
12 12 (0.21%) Maven
13 11 (0.20%) ERwin
14 10 (0.18%) Gatling
14 10 (0.18%) InstallShield
General
1 1,913 (34.18%) Social Skills
2 1,111 (19.85%) Finance
3 647 (11.56%) Analytical Skills
4 535 (9.56%) Public Sector
5 295 (5.27%) Banking
6 253 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
7 248 (4.43%) Legal
8 152 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
9 114 (2.04%) Manufacturing
10 101 (1.80%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (1.72%) Marketing
12 92 (1.64%) Law
13 88 (1.57%) Telecoms
14 85 (1.52%) Retail
15 75 (1.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 73 (1.30%) Military
17 64 (1.14%) Local Government
18 56 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
19 53 (0.95%) Investment Banking
20 40 (0.71%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 694 (12.40%) Architect
2 597 (10.67%) Analyst
3 535 (9.56%) Developer
4 462 (8.25%) Senior
5 368 (6.57%) IT Support
6 332 (5.93%) Lead
7 285 (5.09%) Consultant
8 253 (4.52%) Support Engineer
9 216 (3.86%) Data Engineer
10 212 (3.79%) Azure Engineer
11 191 (3.41%) Solutions Architect
12 182 (3.25%) IT Engineer
12 182 (3.25%) Project Manager
13 179 (3.20%) Administrator
14 176 (3.14%) Business Analyst
15 168 (3.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 134 (2.39%) IT Support Engineer
17 116 (2.07%) DevOps Engineer
18 113 (2.02%) Security Engineer
19 101 (1.80%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 259 (4.63%) .NET
2 177 (3.16%) REST
3 134 (2.39%) Microsoft Graph
4 114 (2.04%) OAuth
5 102 (1.82%) SAML
6 100 (1.79%) PySpark
7 86 (1.54%) JSON
8 83 (1.48%) React
9 81 (1.45%) OpenID
10 76 (1.36%) LDAP
11 68 (1.21%) Web Services
12 64 (1.14%) Middleware
13 56 (1.00%) HTML
14 55 (0.98%) OAuth2
15 54 (0.96%) ARM Templates
16 53 (0.95%) AngularJS
17 50 (0.89%) .NET Framework
17 50 (0.89%) Kafka
17 50 (0.89%) Node.js
17 50 (0.89%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 279 (4.98%) Onboarding
2 222 (3.97%) Cloud Native
3 187 (3.34%) Product Ownership
4 130 (2.32%) Management Information System
5 106 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
6 96 (1.72%) Data Centre
7 90 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
8 89 (1.59%) Hybrid Cloud
9 88 (1.57%) Legacy Systems
10 86 (1.54%) Security Posture
11 84 (1.50%) AI Agents
12 82 (1.47%) PKI
13 74 (1.32%) Low-Code
13 74 (1.32%) Replication
14 72 (1.29%) Data Structures
15 65 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
16 56 (1.00%) Virtual Team
17 53 (0.95%) Driving Licence
18 51 (0.91%) NHS
19 45 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,212 (21.65%) Windows
2 323 (5.77%) Windows 10
3 280 (5.00%) Windows Server
4 271 (4.84%) Linux
5 106 (1.89%) Android
6 96 (1.72%) Apple iOS
7 94 (1.68%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
9 42 (0.75%) Windows 7
10 40 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 40 (0.71%) Unix
11 27 (0.48%) VMS
11 27 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
12 25 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2003
14 11 (0.20%) CentOS
15 10 (0.18%) Ubuntu
16 7 (0.13%) AIX
17 5 (0.089%) Solaris
18 4 (0.071%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 978 (17.47%) Problem-Solving
2 887 (15.85%) DevOps
3 886 (15.83%) Agile
4 789 (14.10%) Migration
5 755 (13.49%) CI/CD
6 656 (11.72%) Business Intelligence
7 621 (11.10%) Analytics
8 549 (9.81%) AI
9 531 (9.49%) Stakeholder Management
10 508 (9.08%) Continuous Improvement
11 462 (8.25%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 452 (8.08%) Customer Service
13 442 (7.90%) ITIL
14 409 (7.31%) Data Modelling
15 364 (6.50%) Roadmaps
16 363 (6.49%) Cybersecurity
17 338 (6.04%) Infrastructure as Code
18 326 (5.82%) Decision-Making
19 310 (5.54%) Project Management
20 306 (5.47%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 729 (13.02%) SQL
2 640 (11.43%) PowerShell
3 622 (11.11%) Python
4 279 (4.98%) C#
5 208 (3.72%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.25%) Java
7 127 (2.27%) Bicep
8 97 (1.73%) Kusto Query Language
9 88 (1.57%) Bash
10 82 (1.47%) T-SQL
11 81 (1.45%) TypeScript
12 69 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 35 (0.63%) PL/SQL
14 30 (0.54%) VBA
15 28 (0.50%) C++
16 23 (0.41%) VB
17 20 (0.36%) R
18 19 (0.34%) Scala
19 18 (0.32%) Shell Script
20 14 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,076 (19.22%) Security Cleared
2 834 (14.90%) SC Cleared
3 571 (10.20%) Degree
4 279 (4.98%) Microsoft Certification
5 197 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 185 (3.31%) Azure Certification
7 133 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
8 97 (1.73%) BPSS Clearance
9 95 (1.70%) CISSP
10 69 (1.23%) PMI Certification
11 63 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
12 62 (1.11%) PMP
13 57 (1.02%) Master's Degree
14 51 (0.91%) CISM
15 44 (0.79%) MCSE
16 40 (0.71%) AWS Certification
17 34 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
18 31 (0.55%) DBS Check
19 30 (0.54%) MCSA
20 28 (0.50%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 268 (4.79%) Data Quality
2 238 (4.25%) GDPR
3 187 (3.34%) QA
4 158 (2.82%) SLA
5 133 (2.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 108 (1.93%) NIST
6 108 (1.93%) PMO
7 73 (1.30%) Accessibility
8 59 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
9 46 (0.82%) NCSC
10 39 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 32 (0.57%) GRC
12 28 (0.50%) PCI DSS
13 19 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 19 (0.34%) MiFID
14 17 (0.30%) NIST 800
15 15 (0.27%) WCAG
16 13 (0.23%) FINRA
17 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
18 11 (0.20%) GxP
System Software
1 1,084 (19.37%) Active Directory
2 240 (4.29%) Docker
3 190 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 96 (1.72%) Hyper-V
5 76 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
6 64 (1.14%) Virtual Desktop
7 52 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (0.68%) vSphere
9 26 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.30%) Firmware
12 13 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.13%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.089%) IAG
15 5 (0.089%) NFS
15 5 (0.089%) Snort
16 4 (0.071%) KVM
16 4 (0.071%) XenApp
16 4 (0.071%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 429 (7.66%) Microsoft Intune
2 367 (6.56%) Terraform
3 268 (4.79%) Kubernetes
4 203 (3.63%) SCCM
5 131 (2.34%) Ansible
6 122 (2.18%) Single Sign-On
7 77 (1.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (0.77%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.75%) Grafana
10 38 (0.68%) Jamf Pro
11 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.41%) SCOM
13 21 (0.38%) FortiGate
13 21 (0.38%) Puppet
14 19 (0.34%) WSUS
15 16 (0.29%) AirWatch
16 12 (0.21%) CASB
16 12 (0.21%) ServiceCenter
17 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
17 11 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 259 (4.63%) VMware
2 254 (4.54%) ServiceNow
3 215 (3.84%) SAP
4 214 (3.82%) Databricks
5 204 (3.64%) Oracle
6 172 (3.07%) Cisco
7 160 (2.86%) Google
8 123 (2.20%) Citrix
9 99 (1.77%) Salesforce
10 91 (1.63%) OpenAI
11 89 (1.59%) Splunk
12 76 (1.36%) Foundry
13 66 (1.18%) Apple
14 48 (0.86%) CrowdStrike
15 47 (0.84%) HP
16 45 (0.80%) Adobe
16 45 (0.80%) Palo Alto
17 41 (0.73%) Informatica
17 41 (0.73%) Okta
18 40 (0.71%) Red Hat