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 17 July 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
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,309 4,518 5,524
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.98% 13.89% 13.09%
As % of the Vendors category 29.02% 29.22% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,135 2,897 3,602
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £489
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.76% -2.30%
75th Percentile £588 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £690
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £431 £450
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 352 437
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.00 £11.50
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £14.13
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +38.63% -27.87%
75th Percentile £35.53 £31.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £70.18 £63.40 £62.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.06
% change year-on-year +3.68% +26.12% -15.47%

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 21,743 15,464 18,209
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.29% 47.54% 43.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,516 9,461 11,390
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £403 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,096 756 1,049
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.75 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.24 £15.10
Median hourly rate £34.91 £25.15 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.79% -3.27% -35.80%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.67 £61.30
90th Percentile £84.38 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year +51.04% -10.00% -19.35%

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 17 July 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 17 July 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 17 July 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 0 5,468 £497 +4.59% 2,795
UK excluding London -1 3,351 £450 +4.41% 2,440
London -2 2,399 £513 +1.59% 807
Work from Home +3 1,635 £500 - 1,033
North of England -5 829 £466 +9.59% 605
South East -2 820 £475 - 786
Midlands -2 580 £447 +15.73% 384
North West -3 467 £450 +4.41% 314
South West -1 410 £475 +8.88% 268
West Midlands -4 406 £450 +13.64% 205
Yorkshire -5 341 £488 +9.86% 209
Scotland +6 314 £450 - 117
East of England 0 287 £375 -25.00% 273
East Midlands +2 166 £413 +10.00% 179
Wales +1 113 £413 +49.48% 69
Northern Ireland +1 33 £350 -6.04% 21
North East -40 27 £450 +32.35% 95
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 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
1 688 (10.91%) SharePoint
2 389 (6.17%) Microsoft Exchange
3 135 (2.14%) Confluence
4 38 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 34 (0.54%) Apache
6 30 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 17 (0.27%) CMS
9 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.21%) Skype for Business
10 11 (0.17%) SAS
11 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 8 (0.13%) nginx
13 6 (0.095%) Camunda
13 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
14 5 (0.079%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.063%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 583 (9.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 575 (9.11%) Microsoft Office
3 251 (3.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 156 (2.47%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.66%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.095%) Adobe Illustrator
10 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.048%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.048%) PTC Creo
10 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
10 3 (0.048%) Trello
11 2 (0.032%) Acrobat
11 2 (0.032%) Adobe Premiere
11 2 (0.032%) Final Cut Pro
11 2 (0.032%) InDesign
11 2 (0.032%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 232 (3.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.30%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.19%) Primavera
9 11 (0.17%) Teamcenter
10 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 9 (0.14%) SAP MM
11 8 (0.13%) Magento
12 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 7 (0.11%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
12 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.095%) iTrent
13 6 (0.095%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,626 (41.62%) Azure
2 1,544 (24.47%) Microsoft 365
3 1,069 (16.94%) Power Platform
4 907 (14.38%) Entra ID
5 569 (9.02%) AWS
6 506 (8.02%) Azure DevOps
7 504 (7.99%) Dynamics 365
8 363 (5.75%) Power Automate
9 328 (5.20%) Microsoft Copilot
10 327 (5.18%) PowerApps
11 307 (4.87%) Microsoft Purview
12 259 (4.11%) GitHub
13 236 (3.74%) SaaS
14 228 (3.61%) OneDrive
15 211 (3.34%) GCP
16 164 (2.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 158 (2.50%) Azure Data Factory
18 150 (2.38%) PaaS
19 145 (2.30%) Serverless
20 143 (2.27%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 342 (5.42%) DNS
2 295 (4.68%) Firewall
3 235 (3.72%) VPN
4 206 (3.27%) DHCP
5 168 (2.66%) TCP/IP
6 146 (2.31%) WAN
6 146 (2.31%) Wi-Fi
7 137 (2.17%) LAN
8 131 (2.08%) Network Security
9 58 (0.92%) VLAN
10 45 (0.71%) SAN
11 43 (0.68%) Wireless
12 42 (0.67%) Kerberos
13 39 (0.62%) MPLS
13 39 (0.62%) SSL
14 36 (0.57%) Unified Communications
15 32 (0.51%) VoIP
16 31 (0.49%) Internet
16 31 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.41%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 681 (10.79%) Power BI
2 351 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 185 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 139 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (2.00%) Metadata
6 125 (1.98%) Data Lake
7 118 (1.87%) Azure SQL Database
8 74 (1.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 73 (1.16%) Relational Database
10 62 (0.98%) MySQL
11 59 (0.94%) Power Query
12 52 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.70%) NoSQL
13 44 (0.70%) Star Schema
14 42 (0.67%) Oracle Database
15 37 (0.59%) Tableau
16 33 (0.52%) Delta Lake
16 33 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 26 (0.41%) Big Data
18 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 320 (5.07%) JIRA
2 190 (3.01%) Git
3 84 (1.33%) Jenkins
4 56 (0.89%) GitLab
5 43 (0.68%) Visual Studio
6 31 (0.49%) MSI
7 26 (0.41%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) Artifactory
10 15 (0.24%) ERwin
10 15 (0.24%) Postman
11 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
11 13 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.21%) WebDriver
12 12 (0.19%) JUnit
12 12 (0.19%) Maven
13 11 (0.17%) Cypress.io
13 11 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,095 (33.21%) Social Skills
2 1,249 (19.80%) Finance
3 746 (11.82%) Analytical Skills
4 603 (9.56%) Public Sector
5 312 (4.95%) Banking
6 266 (4.22%) Organisational Skills
7 227 (3.60%) Legal
8 171 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 129 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 127 (2.01%) Manufacturing
11 112 (1.78%) Retail
12 102 (1.62%) Telecoms
13 101 (1.60%) Law
14 94 (1.49%) Marketing
15 83 (1.32%) Military
16 80 (1.27%) Presentation Skills
17 75 (1.19%) Local Government
18 70 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
19 62 (0.98%) Investment Banking
20 46 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 739 (11.71%) Architect
2 675 (10.70%) Analyst
3 597 (9.46%) Developer
4 528 (8.37%) Senior
5 443 (7.02%) Lead
6 389 (6.17%) IT Support
7 385 (6.10%) Consultant
8 330 (5.23%) Support Engineer
9 241 (3.82%) Data Engineer
10 236 (3.74%) IT Engineer
11 232 (3.68%) Solutions Architect
12 219 (3.47%) Project Manager
13 217 (3.44%) Azure Engineer
14 201 (3.19%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 188 (2.98%) IT Support Engineer
16 184 (2.92%) Administrator
17 178 (2.82%) Business Analyst
18 143 (2.27%) Cloud Engineer
19 120 (1.90%) Security Engineer
20 111 (1.76%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (4.66%) .NET
2 228 (3.61%) REST
3 131 (2.08%) Microsoft Graph
4 119 (1.89%) JSON
5 115 (1.82%) OAuth
6 100 (1.59%) PySpark
7 93 (1.47%) SAML
8 90 (1.43%) OpenID
9 89 (1.41%) Web Services
10 81 (1.28%) LDAP
10 81 (1.28%) React
10 81 (1.28%) XML
11 75 (1.19%) .NET Framework
12 65 (1.03%) SailPoint
13 64 (1.01%) HTML
14 63 (1.00%) Node.js
14 63 (1.00%) RESTful
15 61 (0.97%) OAuth2
16 60 (0.95%) Middleware
17 59 (0.94%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 385 (6.10%) Onboarding
2 302 (4.79%) Cloud Native
3 184 (2.92%) Product Ownership
4 165 (2.62%) Management Information System
5 134 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
6 133 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
7 125 (1.98%) Data Centre
8 121 (1.92%) AI Agents
9 119 (1.89%) PKI
10 114 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
11 109 (1.73%) Security Posture
12 95 (1.51%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
14 82 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 82 (1.30%) Virtual Team
15 77 (1.22%) Replication
16 70 (1.11%) Low-Code
17 67 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
18 58 (0.92%) Driving Licence
19 54 (0.86%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,323 (20.97%) Windows
2 337 (5.34%) Windows Server
3 322 (5.10%) Windows 10
4 285 (4.52%) Linux
5 133 (2.11%) Mac OS
6 116 (1.84%) Android
7 110 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 55 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.70%) Unix
10 38 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
11 35 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
12 33 (0.52%) Windows 7
13 32 (0.51%) VMS
14 22 (0.35%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
16 12 (0.19%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
19 6 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,077 (17.07%) Problem-Solving
2 998 (15.82%) DevOps
3 950 (15.06%) Agile
4 886 (14.04%) Migration
5 820 (13.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 811 (12.85%) CI/CD
7 710 (11.25%) AI
8 697 (11.05%) Business Intelligence
9 667 (10.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 656 (10.40%) Continuous Improvement
11 650 (10.30%) Analytics
12 572 (9.07%) ITIL
13 486 (7.70%) Customer Service
14 473 (7.50%) Data Modelling
15 447 (7.09%) Roadmaps
16 430 (6.82%) Cybersecurity
17 425 (6.74%) Infrastructure as Code
18 410 (6.50%) Decision-Making
19 393 (6.23%) Project Delivery
20 389 (6.17%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 799 (12.66%) SQL
2 681 (10.79%) PowerShell
3 650 (10.30%) Python
4 304 (4.82%) C#
5 227 (3.60%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.20%) Java
7 157 (2.49%) Bicep
8 112 (1.78%) T-SQL
9 104 (1.65%) Bash
10 90 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.36%) TypeScript
12 75 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
13 38 (0.60%) VBA
14 33 (0.52%) C++
15 28 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 24 (0.38%) VB
17 17 (0.27%) Scala
18 16 (0.25%) VBScript
18 16 (0.25%) X++
19 15 (0.24%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,284 (20.35%) Security Cleared
2 986 (15.63%) SC Cleared
3 611 (9.68%) Degree
4 317 (5.02%) Microsoft Certification
5 232 (3.68%) DV Cleared
6 218 (3.46%) Azure Certification
7 134 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
8 120 (1.90%) CISSP
9 119 (1.89%) Computer Science Degree
10 117 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
11 78 (1.24%) PMP
12 70 (1.11%) PMI Certification
13 66 (1.05%) CISM
14 64 (1.01%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.87%) Master's Degree
16 50 (0.79%) CCNP
17 45 (0.71%) DBS Check
18 44 (0.70%) CCNA
19 42 (0.67%) MCSE
20 40 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 330 (5.23%) Data Quality
2 222 (3.52%) GDPR
3 211 (3.34%) QA
4 176 (2.79%) SLA
5 167 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 142 (2.25%) NIST
7 140 (2.22%) PMO
8 98 (1.55%) Accessibility
9 81 (1.28%) Cyber Essentials
10 73 (1.16%) NCSC
11 42 (0.67%) GRC
12 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 30 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 30 (0.48%) WCAG
14 29 (0.46%) PCI DSS
15 19 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
16 16 (0.25%) NIST 800
16 16 (0.25%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
17 13 (0.21%) GxP
System Software
1 1,203 (19.07%) Active Directory
2 233 (3.69%) Docker
3 210 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.71%) Hyper-V
5 93 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 90 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (0.97%) vSphere
8 59 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.35%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Firmware
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.079%) RACF
14 5 (0.079%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.063%) Snort
15 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 492 (7.80%) Microsoft Intune
2 419 (6.64%) Terraform
3 286 (4.53%) Kubernetes
4 219 (3.47%) SCCM
5 147 (2.33%) Ansible
6 124 (1.97%) Single Sign-On
7 64 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
8 60 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 54 (0.86%) vCenter Server
10 49 (0.78%) Grafana
11 38 (0.60%) Prometheus
12 34 (0.54%) SCOM
13 23 (0.36%) Puppet
14 19 (0.30%) QRadar
15 18 (0.29%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.29%) WSUS
16 14 (0.22%) Progress Chef
17 11 (0.17%) HAProxy
17 11 (0.17%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
17 11 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 416 (6.59%) ServiceNow
2 295 (4.68%) Oracle
3 286 (4.53%) VMware
4 257 (4.07%) SAP
5 212 (3.36%) Databricks
6 203 (3.22%) Google
7 201 (3.19%) Cisco
8 125 (1.98%) Salesforce
9 108 (1.71%) Citrix
10 97 (1.54%) Splunk
11 94 (1.49%) Apple
12 80 (1.27%) Foundry
13 78 (1.24%) OpenAI
14 77 (1.22%) Okta
15 71 (1.13%) CyberArk
16 63 (1.00%) CrowdStrike
17 57 (0.90%) Red Hat
18 51 (0.81%) BeyondTrust
19 47 (0.74%) HP
19 47 (0.74%) Zscaler