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 30 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
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 8 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,392 4,542 5,133
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.07% 13.84% 12.88%
As % of the Vendors category 29.20% 29.31% 29.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,193 2,907 3,365
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 £582 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 384 369 374
10th Percentile £13.70 £13.95 £11.74
25th Percentile £16.50 £16.00 £14.27
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.50 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +38.63% -27.96%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £33.75
90th Percentile £72.80 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year +3.68% +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 21,889 15,498 17,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.32% 47.23% 43.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,607 9,498 10,855
10th Percentile £313 £280 £280
25th Percentile £413 £400 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year +0.60% -3.85% -0.95%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £706 £732
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £476 £500
% change year-on-year +4.99% -4.75% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,101 774 891
10th Percentile £15.81 £14.66 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.02 £15.62
Median hourly rate £35.00 £25.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.17% -8.55% -34.21%
75th Percentile £65.25 £50.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.99 £22.32 £25.30
% change year-on-year +52.32% -11.80% -27.19%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -1 5,569 £490 +3.16% 3,805
UK excluding London -1 3,396 £450 +3.45% 3,207
London -2 2,450 £505 +1.00% 1,176
Work from Home +3 1,659 £500 - 1,476
South East -1 865 £475 +1.20% 992
North of England -5 848 £467 +6.75% 797
Midlands -2 586 £448 +19.33% 532
North West -1 489 £450 +2.27% 404
South West -1 423 £470 +8.05% 346
West Midlands -4 416 £450 +18.03% 285
Yorkshire -5 336 £478 +6.11% 275
Scotland +7 313 £450 - 129
East of England -1 258 £375 -25.00% 356
East Midlands +2 162 £407 +14.58% 247
Wales 0 104 £391 +41.78% 96
Northern Ireland -3 31 £350 -6.04% 51
North East -42 29 £450 +32.35% 136
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
1 740 (11.58%) SharePoint
2 393 (6.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 139 (2.17%) Confluence
4 40 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.55%) Apache
6 27 (0.42%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 17 (0.27%) CMS
9 16 (0.25%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
11 11 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
12 10 (0.16%) SAS
13 8 (0.13%) nginx
14 6 (0.094%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.094%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.078%) Camunda
15 5 (0.078%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.078%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.078%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 597 (9.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 576 (9.01%) Microsoft Office
3 247 (3.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 162 (2.53%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.67%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.094%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) AutoCAD
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) InDesign
12 2 (0.031%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.031%) Navisworks
12 2 (0.031%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 229 (3.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 29 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.33%) NetSuite
4 21 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.27%) Dynamics NAV
6 15 (0.23%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.19%) Primavera
9 9 (0.14%) Magento
9 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
10 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
11 7 (0.11%) iTrent
11 7 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.11%) SAP MM
11 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 6 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
12 6 (0.094%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,690 (42.08%) Azure
2 1,610 (25.19%) Microsoft 365
3 1,103 (17.26%) Power Platform
4 940 (14.71%) Entra ID
5 571 (8.93%) AWS
6 531 (8.31%) Azure DevOps
7 530 (8.29%) Dynamics 365
8 389 (6.09%) Power Automate
9 354 (5.54%) PowerApps
10 344 (5.38%) Microsoft Copilot
11 291 (4.55%) Microsoft Purview
12 265 (4.15%) GitHub
13 243 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 231 (3.61%) SaaS
15 211 (3.30%) GCP
16 168 (2.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 166 (2.60%) Azure Data Factory
18 152 (2.38%) Serverless
19 150 (2.35%) PaaS
20 145 (2.27%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 345 (5.40%) DNS
2 322 (5.04%) Firewall
3 255 (3.99%) VPN
4 211 (3.30%) DHCP
5 178 (2.78%) TCP/IP
6 147 (2.30%) WAN
7 143 (2.24%) Network Security
7 143 (2.24%) Wi-Fi
8 137 (2.14%) LAN
9 70 (1.10%) VLAN
10 50 (0.78%) Wireless
11 44 (0.69%) SAN
12 41 (0.64%) MPLS
13 38 (0.59%) SSL
14 37 (0.58%) Unified Communications
15 31 (0.48%) VoIP
16 30 (0.47%) Internet
16 30 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 27 (0.42%) BGP
17 27 (0.42%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 698 (10.92%) Power BI
2 368 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 190 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
4 132 (2.07%) Data Lake
5 131 (2.05%) PostgreSQL
6 127 (1.99%) Azure SQL Database
7 124 (1.94%) Metadata
8 72 (1.13%) Relational Database
8 72 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 63 (0.99%) MySQL
9 63 (0.99%) Power Query
10 49 (0.77%) NoSQL
11 47 (0.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 44 (0.69%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.67%) Star Schema
14 38 (0.59%) Tableau
15 34 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 30 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 25 (0.39%) Big Data
18 24 (0.38%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 315 (4.93%) JIRA
2 193 (3.02%) Git
3 88 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 62 (0.97%) GitLab
5 53 (0.83%) Visual Studio
6 32 (0.50%) MSI
7 27 (0.42%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
9 16 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
10 15 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 13 (0.20%) Artifactory
11 13 (0.20%) MLflow
12 12 (0.19%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.19%) ERwin
12 12 (0.19%) JUnit
12 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.17%) Cypress.io
13 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 10 (0.16%) Chocolatey
General
1 2,157 (33.75%) Social Skills
2 1,298 (20.31%) Finance
3 779 (12.19%) Analytical Skills
4 611 (9.56%) Public Sector
5 316 (4.94%) Banking
6 283 (4.43%) Organisational Skills
7 219 (3.43%) Legal
8 173 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 143 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 128 (2.00%) Manufacturing
11 124 (1.94%) Retail
12 110 (1.72%) Telecoms
13 103 (1.61%) Law
14 98 (1.53%) Marketing
15 87 (1.36%) Military
16 85 (1.33%) Local Government
17 71 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
17 71 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
18 62 (0.97%) Investment Banking
19 48 (0.75%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 734 (11.48%) Architect
2 668 (10.45%) Analyst
3 613 (9.59%) Developer
4 570 (8.92%) Senior
5 454 (7.10%) Lead
6 401 (6.27%) IT Support
7 389 (6.09%) Consultant
8 351 (5.49%) Support Engineer
9 251 (3.93%) IT Engineer
10 247 (3.86%) Data Engineer
11 234 (3.66%) Solutions Architect
12 229 (3.58%) Azure Engineer
13 221 (3.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 214 (3.35%) Project Manager
15 199 (3.11%) IT Support Engineer
16 184 (2.88%) Administrator
17 180 (2.82%) Business Analyst
18 153 (2.39%) Cloud Engineer
19 124 (1.94%) Security Engineer
20 109 (1.71%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 300 (4.69%) .NET
2 242 (3.79%) REST
3 126 (1.97%) Microsoft Graph
4 124 (1.94%) JSON
5 113 (1.77%) OAuth
6 105 (1.64%) PySpark
7 94 (1.47%) OpenID
8 93 (1.45%) SAML
9 91 (1.42%) XML
10 87 (1.36%) Web Services
11 86 (1.35%) .NET Framework
12 80 (1.25%) React
13 73 (1.14%) RESTful
14 67 (1.05%) HTML
15 65 (1.02%) SOAP
16 64 (1.00%) ARM Templates
16 64 (1.00%) OAuth2
17 63 (0.99%) LDAP
18 61 (0.95%) Middleware
18 61 (0.95%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 424 (6.63%) Onboarding
2 300 (4.69%) Cloud Native
3 182 (2.85%) Product Ownership
4 181 (2.83%) Management Information System
5 152 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
6 134 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
7 126 (1.97%) Hybrid Cloud
8 122 (1.91%) AI Agents
8 122 (1.91%) PKI
9 121 (1.89%) Data Centre
10 116 (1.81%) Security Posture
11 91 (1.42%) Data Structures
12 87 (1.36%) Self-Motivation
13 80 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
14 79 (1.24%) Virtual Team
15 73 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 69 (1.08%) Driving Licence
17 66 (1.03%) Distributed Systems
18 59 (0.92%) Replication
19 56 (0.88%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,356 (21.21%) Windows
2 365 (5.71%) Windows Server
3 331 (5.18%) Windows 10
4 300 (4.69%) Linux
5 131 (2.05%) Mac OS
6 120 (1.88%) Android
7 108 (1.69%) Apple iOS
8 57 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.69%) Unix
10 36 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
10 36 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 34 (0.53%) Windows 7
12 32 (0.50%) VMS
13 26 (0.41%) Ubuntu
14 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
15 13 (0.20%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2003
18 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,120 (17.52%) Problem-Solving
2 1,016 (15.89%) DevOps
3 979 (15.32%) Agile
4 897 (14.03%) Migration
5 885 (13.85%) Stakeholder Management
6 836 (13.08%) CI/CD
7 731 (11.44%) AI
8 712 (11.14%) Business Intelligence
8 712 (11.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 709 (11.09%) Continuous Improvement
10 678 (10.61%) Analytics
11 607 (9.50%) ITIL
12 523 (8.18%) Customer Service
13 474 (7.42%) Data Modelling
14 457 (7.15%) Roadmaps
15 455 (7.12%) Cybersecurity
16 447 (6.99%) Infrastructure as Code
17 421 (6.59%) Decision-Making
18 412 (6.45%) Project Delivery
19 410 (6.41%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 809 (12.66%) SQL
2 677 (10.59%) PowerShell
3 650 (10.17%) Python
4 317 (4.96%) C#
5 238 (3.72%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.05%) Java
7 177 (2.77%) Bicep
8 124 (1.94%) Bash
9 117 (1.83%) T-SQL
10 96 (1.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.35%) TypeScript
12 72 (1.13%) Kusto Query Language
13 40 (0.63%) VBA
14 29 (0.45%) C++
15 27 (0.42%) PL/SQL
16 26 (0.41%) VB
17 20 (0.31%) X++
18 17 (0.27%) VBScript
19 16 (0.25%) R
19 16 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,308 (20.46%) Security Cleared
2 992 (15.52%) SC Cleared
3 619 (9.68%) Degree
4 331 (5.18%) Microsoft Certification
5 249 (3.90%) DV Cleared
6 231 (3.61%) Azure Certification
7 150 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
8 122 (1.91%) CISSP
9 121 (1.89%) Cisco Certification
10 120 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
11 90 (1.41%) PMP
12 83 (1.30%) PMI Certification
13 68 (1.06%) AWS Certification
13 68 (1.06%) CISM
14 52 (0.81%) CCNP
15 49 (0.77%) DBS Check
15 49 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 46 (0.72%) CCNA
17 45 (0.70%) A+ Certification
18 40 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 341 (5.33%) Data Quality
2 222 (3.47%) QA
3 220 (3.44%) GDPR
4 189 (2.96%) SLA
5 174 (2.72%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 151 (2.36%) PMO
7 149 (2.33%) NIST
8 103 (1.61%) Accessibility
9 79 (1.24%) Cyber Essentials
10 77 (1.20%) NCSC
11 42 (0.66%) GRC
12 34 (0.53%) WCAG
13 33 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 30 (0.47%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 15 (0.23%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.23%) SOC 2
18 14 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
18 14 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,226 (19.18%) Active Directory
2 232 (3.63%) Docker
3 217 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 117 (1.83%) Hyper-V
5 96 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 92 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 58 (0.91%) vSphere
8 56 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.31%) Firmware
11 20 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 8 (0.13%) NFS
12 8 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 5 (0.078%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.063%) RACF
15 4 (0.063%) zsh
16 3 (0.047%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 520 (8.14%) Microsoft Intune
2 450 (7.04%) Terraform
3 293 (4.58%) Kubernetes
4 232 (3.63%) SCCM
5 154 (2.41%) Ansible
6 115 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.81%) vCenter Server
9 49 (0.77%) Grafana
10 36 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 35 (0.55%) SCOM
12 33 (0.52%) Prometheus
13 23 (0.36%) Puppet
14 21 (0.33%) QRadar
15 19 (0.30%) WSUS
16 18 (0.28%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.27%) Progress Chef
18 15 (0.23%) Argo
19 13 (0.20%) Avamar
20 12 (0.19%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 451 (7.06%) ServiceNow
2 304 (4.76%) Oracle
2 304 (4.76%) VMware
3 260 (4.07%) SAP
4 225 (3.52%) Databricks
5 210 (3.29%) Cisco
6 206 (3.22%) Google
7 121 (1.89%) Salesforce
8 106 (1.66%) Citrix
9 98 (1.53%) Splunk
10 92 (1.44%) Apple
11 80 (1.25%) Foundry
12 78 (1.22%) CyberArk
13 76 (1.19%) OpenAI
14 69 (1.08%) Okta
15 68 (1.06%) CrowdStrike
16 60 (0.94%) Red Hat
17 56 (0.88%) BeyondTrust
18 54 (0.84%) Zscaler
19 48 (0.75%) Meraki