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 15 October 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
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,660 4,812 4,894
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.85% 14.49% 13.00%
As % of the Vendors category 33.19% 30.36% 29.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,799 3,143 3,029
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £482
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -1.45% -3.60%
75th Percentile £590 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £455 £440 £439
% change year-on-year +3.53% +0.17% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 667 383 247
10th Percentile £13.25 £13.75 £15.00
25th Percentile £14.41 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.18% -2.22% -2.17%
75th Percentile £29.07 £31.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £65.22 £63.68 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.57 £20.90 £19.18
% change year-on-year -15.92% +8.95% -12.82%

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 23,078 15,851 16,790
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.74% 47.74% 44.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,920 9,777 9,878
10th Percentile £310 £275 £286
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £620 £613 £625
90th Percentile £712 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,446 804 580
10th Percentile £13.68 £14.84 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.03 £17.87 £16.85
Median hourly rate £24.19 £24.81 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% -24.82% -24.83%
75th Percentile £56.00 £38.06 £65.00
90th Percentile £76.88 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.18 £21.30 £31.00
% change year-on-year +8.83% -31.29% -29.14%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 6,642 £492 +3.63% 2,157
UK excluding London 0 4,093 £455 +3.53% 1,905
London +2 2,877 £523 +4.50% 538
Work from Home +3 1,934 £500 - 937
South East +1 1,109 £475 +5.56% 523
North of England -5 1,010 £460 +5.26% 497
Midlands -1 704 £425 +2.72% 305
North West -2 587 £464 +6.00% 228
West Midlands -1 479 £425 -4.92% 172
South West -1 445 £500 +11.11% 260
Scotland +5 390 £450 - 101
Yorkshire -3 372 £462 +2.95% 193
East of England 0 324 £345 -31.00% 178
East Midlands +1 221 £443 +18.00% 133
Wales -1 112 £413 +34.15% 75
North East -16 56 £426 +23.33% 87
Northern Ireland -2 35 £312 -10.86% 20
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 4

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
1 925 (12.08%) SharePoint
2 409 (5.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 164 (2.14%) Confluence
4 39 (0.51%) Apache
5 35 (0.46%) Apache Spark
6 31 (0.40%) IIS
7 26 (0.34%) CMS
8 23 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 23 (0.30%) Skype for Business
9 19 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
10 17 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.13%) nginx
13 6 (0.078%) Exchange Server 2010
13 6 (0.078%) Mendix
13 6 (0.078%) OpenStack
13 6 (0.078%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.065%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.052%) Liferay
15 4 (0.052%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 871 (11.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 811 (10.59%) Microsoft Office
3 343 (4.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 212 (2.77%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 69 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.14%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.14%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.13%) Revit
12 8 (0.10%) Photoshop
13 7 (0.091%) Adobe Illustrator
14 4 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
15 3 (0.039%) 1Password
15 3 (0.039%) Adobe Premiere
15 3 (0.039%) Final Cut Pro
15 3 (0.039%) Productboard
15 3 (0.039%) Trello
Business Applications
1 273 (3.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 93 (1.21%) SAP S/4HANA
3 38 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
4 29 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.22%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 17 (0.22%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.18%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.18%) Primavera
8 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.14%) Magento
10 10 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
10 10 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
11 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
12 8 (0.10%) SAP PP
13 7 (0.091%) iTrent
13 7 (0.091%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.091%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.091%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,138 (40.97%) Azure
2 1,936 (25.27%) Microsoft 365
3 1,322 (17.26%) Power Platform
4 1,246 (16.27%) Entra ID
5 698 (9.11%) AWS
6 666 (8.69%) Azure DevOps
7 621 (8.11%) Dynamics 365
8 485 (6.33%) Microsoft Copilot
9 454 (5.93%) Power Automate
10 411 (5.37%) PowerApps
11 337 (4.40%) Microsoft Purview
12 329 (4.30%) GitHub
13 307 (4.01%) GCP
14 280 (3.66%) OneDrive
15 250 (3.26%) SaaS
16 215 (2.81%) Serverless
17 202 (2.64%) Azure Monitor
18 182 (2.38%) Azure Data Factory
19 178 (2.32%) Azure Logic Apps
19 178 (2.32%) Copilot Studio
Communications & Networking
1 429 (5.60%) DNS
2 358 (4.67%) Firewall
3 313 (4.09%) VPN
4 277 (3.62%) DHCP
5 210 (2.74%) TCP/IP
6 176 (2.30%) Network Security
7 161 (2.10%) WAN
8 149 (1.95%) LAN
9 134 (1.75%) Wi-Fi
10 78 (1.02%) VLAN
11 75 (0.98%) Wireless
12 50 (0.65%) SAN
13 46 (0.60%) SSL
14 41 (0.54%) Kerberos
15 40 (0.52%) Internet
15 40 (0.52%) Skype
16 38 (0.50%) MPLS
17 37 (0.48%) BGP
18 34 (0.44%) VoIP
19 33 (0.43%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 783 (10.22%) Power BI
2 422 (5.51%) SQL Server
3 180 (2.35%) Data Warehouse
4 171 (2.23%) Metadata
5 152 (1.98%) Data Lake
6 135 (1.76%) PostgreSQL
7 127 (1.66%) Azure SQL Database
8 92 (1.20%) Power Query
9 87 (1.14%) Relational Database
10 73 (0.95%) MySQL
10 73 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 56 (0.73%) NoSQL
12 54 (0.70%) Oracle Database
13 40 (0.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 40 (0.52%) Star Schema
14 38 (0.50%) Amazon RDS
15 37 (0.48%) Delta Lake
15 37 (0.48%) MongoDB
16 32 (0.42%) BigQuery
17 31 (0.40%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 357 (4.66%) JIRA
2 259 (3.38%) Git
3 92 (1.20%) Jenkins
4 70 (0.91%) GitLab
5 60 (0.78%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.67%) MSI
7 38 (0.50%) Selenium
8 30 (0.39%) Postman
9 27 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 21 (0.27%) Cypress.io
11 19 (0.25%) Cucumber
11 19 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
12 17 (0.22%) WebDriver
13 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
14 14 (0.18%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 13 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
16 12 (0.16%) Subversion
17 11 (0.14%) MLflow
18 10 (0.13%) JUnit
18 10 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,883 (37.64%) Social Skills
2 1,527 (19.93%) Finance
3 994 (12.98%) Analytical Skills
4 704 (9.19%) Public Sector
5 499 (6.51%) Organisational Skills
6 333 (4.35%) Banking
7 259 (3.38%) Legal
8 242 (3.16%) Manufacturing
9 228 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
10 189 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 166 (2.17%) Retail
12 129 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 123 (1.61%) Marketing
14 107 (1.40%) Aerospace
15 106 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
16 97 (1.27%) Local Government
17 94 (1.23%) Military
18 80 (1.04%) Law
18 80 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
19 58 (0.76%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 854 (11.15%) Architect
2 739 (9.65%) Analyst
3 666 (8.69%) Senior
4 660 (8.62%) Developer
5 513 (6.70%) Lead
6 504 (6.58%) Consultant
7 449 (5.86%) IT Support
8 440 (5.74%) Support Engineer
9 385 (5.03%) Administrator
10 300 (3.92%) Solutions Architect
11 299 (3.90%) IT Engineer
12 272 (3.55%) Azure Engineer
13 266 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 249 (3.25%) Data Engineer
15 248 (3.24%) IT Support Engineer
16 232 (3.03%) Project Manager
17 202 (2.64%) Business Analyst
18 199 (2.60%) Cloud Engineer
19 149 (1.95%) Security Engineer
20 138 (1.80%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 583 (7.61%) Terraform
2 353 (4.61%) .NET
3 334 (4.36%) REST
4 167 (2.18%) OAuth
5 152 (1.98%) JSON
6 128 (1.67%) OpenID
7 126 (1.64%) SAML
8 120 (1.57%) XML
9 109 (1.42%) ARM Templates
10 106 (1.38%) Microsoft Graph
11 104 (1.36%) PySpark
12 101 (1.32%) React
13 95 (1.24%) LDAP
14 94 (1.23%) Web Services
15 91 (1.19%) OAuth2
16 85 (1.11%) .NET Framework
17 84 (1.10%) RESTful
17 84 (1.10%) SailPoint
18 82 (1.07%) HTML
19 75 (0.98%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 632 (8.25%) Onboarding
2 345 (4.50%) Management Information System
3 336 (4.39%) Cloud Native
4 264 (3.45%) Enterprise Software
5 219 (2.86%) Product Ownership
6 186 (2.43%) AI Agents
7 173 (2.26%) Hybrid Cloud
8 172 (2.25%) PKI
9 161 (2.10%) Data Centre
10 149 (1.95%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
12 109 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 102 (1.33%) CMDB
13 102 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
14 100 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
15 98 (1.28%) Driving Licence
16 87 (1.14%) Low-Code
17 84 (1.10%) Replication
18 83 (1.08%) Virtual Team
19 82 (1.07%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,597 (20.85%) Windows
2 493 (6.44%) Windows Server
3 405 (5.29%) Windows 10
4 361 (4.71%) Linux
5 162 (2.11%) macOS
6 136 (1.78%) Android
7 135 (1.76%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 49 (0.64%) Unix
10 43 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 40 (0.52%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.47%) Windows 7
12 36 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
13 32 (0.42%) VMS
14 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
15 21 (0.27%) CentOS
16 20 (0.26%) Solaris
17 11 (0.14%) SUSE
18 8 (0.10%) AIX
19 7 (0.091%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,532 (20.00%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,435 (18.73%) Problem-Solving
3 1,177 (15.37%) DevOps
4 1,145 (14.95%) Agile
5 1,042 (13.60%) Migration
6 1,009 (13.17%) CI/CD
7 983 (12.83%) Continuous Improvement
8 936 (12.22%) AI
9 864 (11.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 809 (10.56%) Business Intelligence
11 784 (10.23%) Analytics
12 753 (9.83%) ITIL
13 727 (9.49%) Customer Service
14 652 (8.51%) Cybersecurity
15 624 (8.15%) Infrastructure as Code
16 601 (7.85%) Roadmaps
17 544 (7.10%) Project Delivery
18 532 (6.95%) Data Modelling
19 521 (6.80%) Decision-Making
20 516 (6.74%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 912 (11.91%) SQL
2 893 (11.66%) PowerShell
3 796 (10.39%) Python
4 380 (4.96%) C#
5 305 (3.98%) JavaScript
6 240 (3.13%) Bicep
7 195 (2.55%) Bash
8 164 (2.14%) Java
9 141 (1.84%) TypeScript
10 115 (1.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 106 (1.38%) T-SQL
12 84 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.42%) VB
14 31 (0.40%) VBA
15 28 (0.37%) C++
16 25 (0.33%) VBScript
17 22 (0.29%) X++
18 21 (0.27%) PL/SQL
19 18 (0.23%) R
20 16 (0.21%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,656 (21.62%) Security Cleared
2 1,223 (15.97%) SC Cleared
3 626 (8.17%) Degree
4 376 (4.91%) Microsoft Certification
5 331 (4.32%) DV Cleared
6 283 (3.69%) Azure Certification
7 211 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.88%) CISSP
9 124 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
10 116 (1.51%) Computer Science Degree
11 103 (1.34%) PMP
12 100 (1.31%) PMI Certification
13 83 (1.08%) AWS Certification
14 80 (1.04%) CISM
15 69 (0.90%) DBS Check
16 57 (0.74%) A+ Certification
16 57 (0.74%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 52 (0.68%) CCNP
18 47 (0.61%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 45 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 484 (6.32%) Data Quality
2 263 (3.43%) QA
3 241 (3.15%) GDPR
4 226 (2.95%) SLA
5 222 (2.90%) PMO
6 219 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 194 (2.53%) NIST
8 135 (1.76%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
10 88 (1.15%) NCSC
11 66 (0.86%) GRC
12 48 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 48 (0.63%) WCAG
13 45 (0.59%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 25 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
16 24 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
16 24 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 17 (0.22%) ISO 19650
18 16 (0.21%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,408 (18.38%) Active Directory
2 281 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
3 253 (3.30%) Docker
4 150 (1.96%) Hyper-V
5 139 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
6 122 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
7 80 (1.04%) vSphere
8 59 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
11 20 (0.26%) Firmware
12 18 (0.23%) VMware NSX
13 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 7 (0.091%) IAG
15 7 (0.091%) zsh
16 6 (0.078%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.078%) NFS
16 6 (0.078%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.078%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 608 (7.94%) Microsoft Intune
2 346 (4.52%) Kubernetes
3 317 (4.14%) SCCM
4 178 (2.32%) Ansible
5 159 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
6 68 (0.89%) Grafana
7 60 (0.78%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.70%) SCOM
9 46 (0.60%) vCenter Server
10 35 (0.46%) Prometheus
11 32 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 31 (0.40%) QRadar
13 28 (0.37%) WSUS
14 27 (0.35%) Progress Chef
15 22 (0.29%) Failover Clustering
16 21 (0.27%) Argo
17 20 (0.26%) FortiGate
17 20 (0.26%) Puppet
18 17 (0.22%) WMI
19 14 (0.18%) Avamar
Vendors
1 558 (7.28%) ServiceNow
2 362 (4.73%) Oracle
2 362 (4.73%) VMware
3 323 (4.22%) SAP
4 308 (4.02%) Google
5 271 (3.54%) Databricks
6 246 (3.21%) Cisco
7 144 (1.88%) Salesforce
8 135 (1.76%) Splunk
9 117 (1.53%) Apple
10 115 (1.50%) CyberArk
11 108 (1.41%) OpenAI
12 107 (1.40%) Citrix
13 101 (1.32%) Okta
14 97 (1.27%) BeyondTrust
15 92 (1.20%) Foundry
16 85 (1.11%) CrowdStrike
17 69 (0.90%) Red Hat
18 65 (0.85%) IBM
19 58 (0.76%) Zscaler