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 8 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
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,613 4,553 5,036
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.34% 13.84% 12.93%
As % of the Vendors category 29.67% 29.27% 29.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,320 2,917 3,287
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £585 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 421 370 362
10th Percentile £13.65 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £16.00 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -31.96%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £41.56
90th Percentile £70.59 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year +2.15% +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 22,292 15,553 16,992
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.59% 47.28% 43.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,788 9,509 10,625
10th Percentile £313 £278 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £606 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.44% -4.25% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,154 790 849
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.53 £13.69
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £33.98 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.11% -10.18% -33.01%
75th Percentile £65.00 £49.69 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.51 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £21.70 £27.50
% change year-on-year +49.80% -21.11% -20.29%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 5,781 £490 +3.16% 4,987
UK excluding London -1 3,520 £450 +2.86% 4,014
London -1 2,538 £510 +2.00% 1,664
Work from Home +3 1,718 £500 - 1,850
South East -1 910 £475 +0.53% 1,213
North of England -4 879 £450 +2.97% 974
Midlands -2 614 £448 +15.48% 636
North West 0 509 £450 +2.80% 503
South West 0 437 £470 +8.05% 456
West Midlands -4 426 £450 +12.50% 353
Yorkshire -5 342 £475 +8.57% 353
Scotland +8 321 £450 - 210
East of England -1 256 £375 -25.00% 418
East Midlands +3 179 £425 +20.60% 283
Wales +1 101 £413 +39.83% 134
Northern Ireland -1 32 £369 +2.08% 66
North East -40 32 £450 +35.34% 137
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
1 774 (11.70%) SharePoint
2 402 (6.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 145 (2.19%) Confluence
4 39 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 38 (0.57%) Apache
6 31 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) IIS
8 19 (0.29%) CMS
9 18 (0.27%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 12 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.15%) SAS
14 9 (0.14%) nginx
15 6 (0.091%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.091%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.091%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.091%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.091%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.076%) Mendix
Applications
1 636 (9.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 610 (9.22%) Microsoft Office
3 266 (4.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 171 (2.59%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.65%) MS Visio
6 45 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.11%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.091%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.091%) Revit
12 4 (0.060%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.060%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.045%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.045%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.045%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.045%) MicroStation
13 3 (0.045%) Trello
14 2 (0.030%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 239 (3.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 20 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
4 20 (0.30%) NetSuite
4 20 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
5 14 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
6 13 (0.20%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
7 12 (0.18%) Primavera
8 10 (0.15%) Magento
9 9 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
9 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 7 (0.11%) iTrent
10 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.11%) SAP CRM
10 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
10 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.091%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 6 (0.091%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,792 (42.22%) Azure
2 1,685 (25.48%) Microsoft 365
3 1,158 (17.51%) Power Platform
4 1,001 (15.14%) Entra ID
5 583 (8.82%) AWS
6 557 (8.42%) Dynamics 365
7 556 (8.41%) Azure DevOps
8 408 (6.17%) Power Automate
9 369 (5.58%) PowerApps
10 360 (5.44%) Microsoft Copilot
11 302 (4.57%) Microsoft Purview
12 284 (4.29%) GitHub
13 252 (3.81%) OneDrive
14 232 (3.51%) SaaS
15 222 (3.36%) GCP
16 177 (2.68%) Azure Data Factory
17 169 (2.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 154 (2.33%) Azure Monitor
19 152 (2.30%) Serverless
20 147 (2.22%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 365 (5.52%) DNS
2 337 (5.10%) Firewall
3 272 (4.11%) VPN
4 223 (3.37%) DHCP
5 186 (2.81%) TCP/IP
6 151 (2.28%) WAN
7 148 (2.24%) Network Security
8 141 (2.13%) Wi-Fi
9 137 (2.07%) LAN
10 71 (1.07%) VLAN
11 51 (0.77%) Wireless
12 47 (0.71%) SAN
13 42 (0.64%) MPLS
14 35 (0.53%) SSL
15 34 (0.51%) Unified Communications
16 31 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 29 (0.44%) Internet
18 28 (0.42%) VoIP
19 27 (0.41%) BGP
20 26 (0.39%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 723 (10.93%) Power BI
2 378 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 196 (2.96%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.04%) Data Lake
5 132 (2.00%) Metadata
5 132 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
6 131 (1.98%) Azure SQL Database
7 76 (1.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 71 (1.07%) Relational Database
9 68 (1.03%) Power Query
10 63 (0.95%) MySQL
11 54 (0.82%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.71%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.65%) Star Schema
15 36 (0.54%) Delta Lake
16 35 (0.53%) Tableau
17 28 (0.42%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 24 (0.36%) Big Data
18 24 (0.36%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 322 (4.87%) JIRA
2 201 (3.04%) Git
3 90 (1.36%) Jenkins
4 71 (1.07%) GitLab
5 57 (0.86%) Visual Studio
6 38 (0.57%) MSI
7 31 (0.47%) Selenium
8 19 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.26%) Eclipse
10 16 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
10 16 (0.24%) WebDriver
11 14 (0.21%) MLflow
12 13 (0.20%) Claude Code
12 13 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.18%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.18%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.18%) ERwin
13 12 (0.18%) JUnit
General
1 2,274 (34.39%) Social Skills
2 1,337 (20.22%) Finance
3 836 (12.64%) Analytical Skills
4 627 (9.48%) Public Sector
5 324 (4.90%) Banking
6 315 (4.76%) Organisational Skills
7 231 (3.49%) Legal
8 178 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
9 152 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 140 (2.12%) Manufacturing
11 134 (2.03%) Retail
12 115 (1.74%) Telecoms
13 104 (1.57%) Marketing
14 103 (1.56%) Law
15 92 (1.39%) Local Government
16 85 (1.29%) Military
17 78 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
18 68 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
19 63 (0.95%) Investment Banking
20 58 (0.88%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 754 (11.40%) Architect
2 681 (10.30%) Analyst
3 622 (9.41%) Developer
4 576 (8.71%) Senior
5 466 (7.05%) Lead
6 419 (6.34%) IT Support
7 406 (6.14%) Consultant
8 377 (5.70%) Support Engineer
9 265 (4.01%) IT Engineer
10 253 (3.83%) Data Engineer
11 251 (3.80%) Solutions Architect
12 232 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
12 232 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 220 (3.33%) Project Manager
14 212 (3.21%) IT Support Engineer
15 211 (3.19%) Administrator
16 184 (2.78%) Business Analyst
17 164 (2.48%) Cloud Engineer
18 128 (1.94%) Security Engineer
19 111 (1.68%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (4.75%) .NET
2 257 (3.89%) REST
3 129 (1.95%) JSON
4 117 (1.77%) OAuth
5 114 (1.72%) Microsoft Graph
6 111 (1.68%) PySpark
7 98 (1.48%) XML
8 95 (1.44%) SAML
9 94 (1.42%) OpenID
10 90 (1.36%) .NET Framework
11 83 (1.26%) Web Services
12 78 (1.18%) React
13 73 (1.10%) RESTful
14 72 (1.09%) HTML
15 68 (1.03%) LDAP
15 68 (1.03%) OAuth2
16 67 (1.01%) ARM Templates
17 64 (0.97%) SailPoint
17 64 (0.97%) SOAP
18 62 (0.94%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 453 (6.85%) Onboarding
2 309 (4.67%) Cloud Native
3 202 (3.05%) Management Information System
4 185 (2.80%) Product Ownership
5 168 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
6 142 (2.15%) Hybrid Cloud
7 140 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
8 128 (1.94%) PKI
9 127 (1.92%) AI Agents
10 124 (1.88%) Security Posture
11 122 (1.84%) Data Centre
12 93 (1.41%) Data Structures
13 92 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
14 84 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
15 79 (1.19%) Virtual Team
16 76 (1.15%) Low-Code
17 70 (1.06%) Driving Licence
18 66 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
19 61 (0.92%) Analytical Mindset
19 61 (0.92%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 1,410 (21.32%) Windows
2 398 (6.02%) Windows Server
3 343 (5.19%) Windows 10
4 317 (4.79%) Linux
5 136 (2.06%) Mac OS
6 122 (1.84%) Android
7 114 (1.72%) Apple iOS
8 60 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.68%) Unix
10 38 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
11 35 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
12 34 (0.51%) Windows 7
13 32 (0.48%) VMS
14 28 (0.42%) Ubuntu
15 23 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
16 14 (0.21%) CentOS
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 10 (0.15%) Solaris
18 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,187 (17.95%) Problem-Solving
2 1,050 (15.88%) DevOps
3 1,009 (15.26%) Agile
4 960 (14.52%) Stakeholder Management
5 936 (14.15%) Migration
6 866 (13.10%) CI/CD
7 759 (11.48%) Continuous Improvement
8 757 (11.45%) AI
9 746 (11.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 735 (11.11%) Business Intelligence
11 698 (10.55%) Analytics
12 632 (9.56%) ITIL
13 560 (8.47%) Customer Service
14 495 (7.49%) Data Modelling
15 485 (7.33%) Cybersecurity
16 483 (7.30%) Infrastructure as Code
17 478 (7.23%) Roadmaps
18 434 (6.56%) Project Delivery
19 430 (6.50%) Decision-Making
20 420 (6.35%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 840 (12.70%) SQL
2 704 (10.65%) PowerShell
3 685 (10.36%) Python
4 325 (4.91%) C#
5 249 (3.77%) JavaScript
6 186 (2.81%) Java
7 185 (2.80%) Bicep
8 141 (2.13%) Bash
9 115 (1.74%) T-SQL
10 106 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.36%) TypeScript
12 69 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 39 (0.59%) VBA
14 31 (0.47%) C++
15 25 (0.38%) PL/SQL
16 24 (0.36%) VB
17 21 (0.32%) X++
18 18 (0.27%) VBScript
19 17 (0.26%) Scala
20 16 (0.24%) R
Qualifications
1 1,380 (20.87%) Security Cleared
2 1,039 (15.71%) SC Cleared
3 641 (9.69%) Degree
4 347 (5.25%) Microsoft Certification
5 263 (3.98%) DV Cleared
6 237 (3.58%) Azure Certification
7 159 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
8 129 (1.95%) CISSP
9 125 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
10 121 (1.83%) Computer Science Degree
11 90 (1.36%) PMP
12 83 (1.26%) PMI Certification
13 69 (1.04%) CISM
14 68 (1.03%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.83%) CCNP
16 51 (0.77%) Master's Degree
17 48 (0.73%) A+ Certification
17 48 (0.73%) DBS Check
18 47 (0.71%) CCNA
19 42 (0.64%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 364 (5.50%) Data Quality
2 228 (3.45%) GDPR
3 225 (3.40%) QA
4 194 (2.93%) SLA
5 186 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 166 (2.51%) PMO
7 161 (2.43%) NIST
8 107 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 83 (1.26%) NCSC
10 81 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
11 45 (0.68%) GRC
12 38 (0.57%) WCAG
13 35 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 35 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 33 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 19 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
16 15 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
16 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 14 (0.21%) P3O
17 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,281 (19.37%) Active Directory
2 243 (3.67%) Docker
3 237 (3.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 130 (1.97%) Hyper-V
5 104 (1.57%) Virtual Desktop
6 95 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.91%) vSphere
8 59 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.41%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.29%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 7 (0.11%) zsh
15 6 (0.091%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.076%) Terminal Services
16 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
17 3 (0.045%) Snort
Systems Management
1 540 (8.17%) Microsoft Intune
2 476 (7.20%) Terraform
3 315 (4.76%) Kubernetes
4 239 (3.61%) SCCM
5 164 (2.48%) Ansible
6 117 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
7 61 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.82%) Grafana
9 53 (0.80%) vCenter Server
10 40 (0.60%) SCOM
11 36 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 36 (0.54%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.35%) Puppet
12 23 (0.35%) WSUS
13 22 (0.33%) QRadar
14 20 (0.30%) Progress Chef
15 19 (0.29%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.24%) Argo
17 14 (0.21%) CASB
17 14 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 478 (7.23%) ServiceNow
2 324 (4.90%) VMware
3 303 (4.58%) Oracle
4 257 (3.89%) SAP
5 229 (3.46%) Databricks
6 224 (3.39%) Google
7 211 (3.19%) Cisco
8 115 (1.74%) Salesforce
9 109 (1.65%) Citrix
10 105 (1.59%) Splunk
11 99 (1.50%) Apple
12 81 (1.22%) CyberArk
13 80 (1.21%) Foundry
14 76 (1.15%) OpenAI
15 75 (1.13%) Okta
16 70 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
17 62 (0.94%) BeyondTrust
17 62 (0.94%) Red Hat
18 56 (0.85%) Zscaler
19 51 (0.77%) Meraki