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 3 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
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,520 3,877 5,674
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.30% 13.33% 12.85%
As % of the Vendors category 28.41% 28.30% 30.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,721 2,619 3,781
10th Percentile £205 £210 £189
25th Percentile £368 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £576 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £663 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £461
% change year-on-year - -2.44% +0.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 378 196 426
10th Percentile £13.35 £14.84 £11.03
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.84 £12.86
Median hourly rate £20.00 £22.50 £15.46
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% +45.54% -31.01%
75th Percentile £27.50 £30.64 £23.82
90th Percentile £64.13 £61.38 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £21.23 £15.00
% change year-on-year -6.22% +41.53% -21.05%

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 19,432 13,698 18,841
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 43.31% 47.11% 42.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,476 8,655 11,765
10th Percentile £313 £294 £258
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% - -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £625
90th Percentile £700 £712 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.59% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 963 485 1,043
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.25 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £19.75 £14.45
Median hourly rate £27.00 £28.60 £22.58
Median % change year-on-year -5.59% +26.66% -43.55%
75th Percentile £59.46 £61.25 £56.37
90th Percentile £78.65 £80.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £26.81 £21.50
% change year-on-year -6.76% +24.71% -38.67%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 4,848 £492 +3.58% 3,243
UK excluding London 0 2,892 £450 - 2,912
London -1 2,103 £505 +1.00% 867
Work from Home -2 1,379 £500 - 1,234
North of England 0 788 £443 +4.24% 701
South East -2 644 £483 -3.50% 876
Midlands -5 499 £450 +5.88% 451
North West -2 439 £415 -7.89% 370
East of England +1 351 £400 - 304
West Midlands -8 350 £475 +11.76% 243
South West -1 331 £495 +4.21% 336
Yorkshire +8 323 £450 +12.50% 237
Scotland +2 193 £425 +6.25% 170
East Midlands -1 144 £379 -10.94% 207
Wales +2 95 £310 -11.43% 102
North East -16 32 £450 +28.57% 104
Northern Ireland +2 22 £450 +38.46% 39
Channel Islands -2 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
1 620 (11.23%) SharePoint
2 408 (7.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 112 (2.03%) Confluence
4 27 (0.49%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (0.42%) CMS
6 22 (0.40%) Skype for Business
7 21 (0.38%) Apache
8 17 (0.31%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 11 (0.20%) IIS
11 10 (0.18%) Mendix
12 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.091%) Camunda
13 5 (0.091%) Oracle Workflow
14 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
14 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
14 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
14 4 (0.072%) SharePoint Server
15 3 (0.054%) nginx
Applications
1 589 (10.67%) Microsoft Office
2 519 (9.40%) Microsoft Excel
3 229 (4.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 126 (2.28%) Microsoft Project
5 102 (1.85%) MS Visio
6 80 (1.45%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Trello
9 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.091%) Adobe Captivate
11 5 (0.091%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.054%) Sketch
13 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) AutoCAD
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 192 (3.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 53 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.31%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 14 (0.25%) Maximo
6 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
6 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
8 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 8 (0.14%) Sage X3
9 8 (0.14%) Shopify
10 7 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.13%) SystmOne
11 6 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
11 6 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 6 (0.11%) Primavera
11 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,272 (41.16%) Azure
2 1,417 (25.67%) Microsoft 365
3 920 (16.67%) Power Platform
4 706 (12.79%) Entra ID
5 461 (8.35%) AWS
6 453 (8.21%) Dynamics 365
7 446 (8.08%) Azure DevOps
8 346 (6.27%) Power Automate
9 311 (5.63%) PowerApps
10 281 (5.09%) Microsoft Purview
11 266 (4.82%) GitHub
12 211 (3.82%) Microsoft Copilot
13 210 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 197 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
15 189 (3.42%) SaaS
16 180 (3.26%) Serverless
17 166 (3.01%) GCP
18 161 (2.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 156 (2.83%) PaaS
20 149 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 305 (5.53%) Firewall
2 297 (5.38%) DNS
3 212 (3.84%) VPN
4 172 (3.12%) DHCP
5 148 (2.68%) Wi-Fi
6 137 (2.48%) WAN
7 121 (2.19%) Network Security
8 120 (2.17%) LAN
9 115 (2.08%) TCP/IP
10 57 (1.03%) VLAN
11 54 (0.98%) Kerberos
12 44 (0.80%) Skype
13 43 (0.78%) SD-WAN
14 39 (0.71%) Wireless
15 35 (0.63%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.60%) SSL
17 32 (0.58%) SAN
18 29 (0.53%) MPLS
19 28 (0.51%) HTTP
20 23 (0.42%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 567 (10.27%) Power BI
2 279 (5.05%) SQL Server
3 177 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (2.81%) Data Lake
5 121 (2.19%) Azure SQL Database
6 113 (2.05%) Metadata
7 104 (1.88%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.30%) Relational Database
8 72 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 55 (1.00%) Oracle Database
10 53 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 48 (0.87%) NoSQL
12 47 (0.85%) MySQL
13 44 (0.80%) Tableau
14 41 (0.74%) Power Query
15 38 (0.69%) Delta Lake
16 37 (0.67%) Star Schema
17 26 (0.47%) Snowflake Schema
17 26 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 24 (0.43%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 253 (4.58%) JIRA
2 174 (3.15%) Git
3 71 (1.29%) GitLab
4 70 (1.27%) Jenkins
5 24 (0.43%) Visual Studio
6 23 (0.42%) Artifactory
6 23 (0.42%) Eclipse
7 18 (0.33%) MSI
7 18 (0.33%) Postman
8 17 (0.31%) Selenium
9 16 (0.29%) MLflow
10 15 (0.27%) JMeter
11 13 (0.24%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.24%) JUnit
12 12 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
13 11 (0.20%) Android Studio
13 11 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 11 (0.20%) Maven
14 10 (0.18%) SpecFlow
15 9 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,984 (35.94%) Social Skills
2 1,107 (20.05%) Finance
3 651 (11.79%) Analytical Skills
4 539 (9.76%) Public Sector
5 294 (5.33%) Banking
6 254 (4.60%) Organisational Skills
7 248 (4.49%) Legal
8 157 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
9 119 (2.16%) Manufacturing
10 110 (1.99%) Presentation Skills
11 100 (1.81%) Marketing
12 93 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 88 (1.59%) Law
14 80 (1.45%) Retail
15 77 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 60 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
16 60 (1.09%) Local Government
17 59 (1.07%) Military
18 53 (0.96%) Investment Banking
19 40 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 672 (12.17%) Architect
2 624 (11.30%) Analyst
3 528 (9.57%) Developer
4 438 (7.93%) Senior
5 379 (6.87%) IT Support
6 321 (5.82%) Lead
7 287 (5.20%) Consultant
8 277 (5.02%) Support Engineer
9 204 (3.70%) Data Engineer
9 204 (3.70%) IT Engineer
10 201 (3.64%) Solutions Architect
11 194 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
12 176 (3.19%) Administrator
13 174 (3.15%) Business Analyst
14 168 (3.04%) Project Manager
15 164 (2.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 155 (2.81%) IT Support Engineer
17 113 (2.05%) Security Engineer
18 107 (1.94%) DevOps Engineer
19 105 (1.90%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (4.67%) .NET
2 183 (3.32%) REST
3 130 (2.36%) Microsoft Graph
4 122 (2.21%) OAuth
5 103 (1.87%) SAML
6 96 (1.74%) React
7 90 (1.63%) PySpark
8 84 (1.52%) OpenID
9 71 (1.29%) JSON
10 66 (1.20%) LDAP
11 65 (1.18%) Middleware
12 64 (1.16%) RESTful
13 62 (1.12%) ARM Templates
13 62 (1.12%) Web Services
14 61 (1.11%) HTML
15 59 (1.07%) AngularJS
16 58 (1.05%) OAuth2
17 55 (1.00%) CSS
18 52 (0.94%) Node.js
19 50 (0.91%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 282 (5.11%) Onboarding
2 224 (4.06%) Cloud Native
3 186 (3.37%) Product Ownership
4 129 (2.34%) Management Information System
5 114 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
6 94 (1.70%) Data Centre
7 90 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
8 89 (1.61%) PKI
9 86 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
10 84 (1.52%) Security Posture
11 73 (1.32%) AI Agents
11 73 (1.32%) Legacy Systems
12 72 (1.30%) Replication
13 66 (1.20%) Data Structures
13 66 (1.20%) Low-Code
14 63 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
15 58 (1.05%) Driving Licence
16 57 (1.03%) NHS
17 56 (1.01%) Virtual Team
18 44 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,236 (22.39%) Windows
2 345 (6.25%) Windows 10
3 281 (5.09%) Windows Server
4 280 (5.07%) Linux
5 102 (1.85%) Android
6 98 (1.78%) Mac OS
7 96 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 43 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
9 42 (0.76%) Unix
10 41 (0.74%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 27 (0.49%) VMS
13 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
14 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
14 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
15 10 (0.18%) CentOS
16 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
17 8 (0.14%) AIX
18 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
18 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 978 (17.72%) Problem-Solving
2 878 (15.91%) Agile
3 855 (15.49%) DevOps
4 768 (13.91%) Migration
5 734 (13.30%) CI/CD
6 648 (11.74%) Business Intelligence
7 620 (11.23%) Analytics
8 533 (9.66%) Stakeholder Management
9 522 (9.46%) AI
10 506 (9.17%) Continuous Improvement
11 462 (8.37%) Customer Service
12 461 (8.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 426 (7.72%) ITIL
14 391 (7.08%) Data Modelling
15 384 (6.96%) Cybersecurity
16 335 (6.07%) Roadmaps
17 324 (5.87%) Infrastructure as Code
18 304 (5.51%) Project Management
19 295 (5.34%) Change Management
19 295 (5.34%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 731 (13.24%) SQL
2 668 (12.10%) PowerShell
3 627 (11.36%) Python
4 289 (5.24%) C#
5 224 (4.06%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.15%) Java
7 125 (2.26%) Bicep
8 109 (1.97%) Kusto Query Language
9 97 (1.76%) Bash
10 85 (1.54%) TypeScript
11 78 (1.41%) T-SQL
12 69 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 37 (0.67%) PL/SQL
14 31 (0.56%) VBA
15 28 (0.51%) C++
16 23 (0.42%) VB
17 22 (0.40%) Perl
18 18 (0.33%) Shell Script
19 17 (0.31%) R
20 15 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,075 (19.47%) Security Cleared
2 819 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 554 (10.04%) Degree
4 296 (5.36%) Microsoft Certification
5 215 (3.89%) DV Cleared
6 182 (3.30%) Azure Certification
7 131 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
8 100 (1.81%) CISSP
9 99 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
10 67 (1.21%) PMI Certification
11 65 (1.18%) Cisco Certification
12 60 (1.09%) PMP
13 59 (1.07%) Master's Degree
14 57 (1.03%) CISM
15 41 (0.74%) AWS Certification
15 41 (0.74%) MCSE
16 37 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
17 34 (0.62%) DBS Check
18 31 (0.56%) CCNP
19 30 (0.54%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 247 (4.47%) Data Quality
2 237 (4.29%) GDPR
3 168 (3.04%) QA
4 157 (2.84%) SLA
5 138 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 116 (2.10%) PMO
7 105 (1.90%) NIST
8 70 (1.27%) Accessibility
9 63 (1.14%) Cyber Essentials
10 47 (0.85%) NCSC
11 38 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 30 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 27 (0.49%) GRC
14 24 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 19 (0.34%) MiFID
16 18 (0.33%) WCAG
17 15 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 13 (0.24%) FINRA
18 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
19 12 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,089 (19.73%) Active Directory
2 224 (4.06%) Docker
3 174 (3.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (1.59%) Hyper-V
5 63 (1.14%) Virtual Machines
6 55 (1.00%) Virtual Desktop
7 37 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
8 30 (0.54%) vSphere
9 25 (0.45%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.31%) Firmware
12 12 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
13 6 (0.11%) Snort
14 5 (0.091%) IAG
15 4 (0.072%) KVM
15 4 (0.072%) NFS
15 4 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.054%) Squid
Systems Management
1 434 (7.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 355 (6.43%) Terraform
3 270 (4.89%) Kubernetes
4 212 (3.84%) SCCM
5 141 (2.55%) Single Sign-On
6 116 (2.10%) Ansible
7 98 (1.78%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 45 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (0.74%) Grafana
10 32 (0.58%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 22 (0.40%) SCOM
14 19 (0.34%) Puppet
15 16 (0.29%) WSUS
16 15 (0.27%) AirWatch
16 15 (0.27%) CASB
17 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
18 11 (0.20%) Nessus
18 11 (0.20%) WMI
Vendors
1 258 (4.67%) ServiceNow
2 254 (4.60%) VMware
3 213 (3.86%) Databricks
4 205 (3.71%) Oracle
5 203 (3.68%) SAP
6 180 (3.26%) Cisco
7 167 (3.03%) Google
8 134 (2.43%) Citrix
9 102 (1.85%) Splunk
10 95 (1.72%) OpenAI
11 91 (1.65%) Salesforce
12 78 (1.41%) Foundry
13 66 (1.20%) Apple
14 57 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
15 50 (0.91%) Palo Alto
16 49 (0.89%) HP
17 47 (0.85%) Red Hat
18 41 (0.74%) Okta
19 40 (0.72%) Adobe
20 39 (0.71%) Informatica