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 10 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
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,593 3,899 5,650
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.19% 13.35% 12.84%
As % of the Vendors category 28.33% 28.21% 30.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,773 2,630 3,751
10th Percentile £206 £212 £189
25th Percentile £371 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £580 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £673 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £464
% change year-on-year - -2.96% +0.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 382 207 435
10th Percentile £13.51 £14.33 £11.06
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.84 £12.86
Median hourly rate £20.09 £22.27 £15.42
Median % change year-on-year -9.79% +44.42% -31.33%
75th Percentile £28.17 £30.63 £23.82
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.35 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £20.75 £15.00
% change year-on-year -4.05% +38.33% -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 19,740 13,819 18,755
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 43.03% 47.30% 42.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,650 8,733 11,718
10th Percentile £313 £293 £258
25th Percentile £413 £406 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £515
Median % change year-on-year -2.53% -0.39% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £626
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.56% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 982 513 1,061
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.22 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £14.41
Median hourly rate £27.94 £28.00 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% +24.44% -46.17%
75th Percentile £59.75 £60.00 £57.33
90th Percentile £78.70 £80.08 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.38 £25.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +1.52% +16.28% -43.42%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 4,909 £492 +3.58% 3,243
UK excluding London 0 2,921 £450 - 2,912
London -2 2,141 £513 +2.50% 867
Work from Home -1 1,392 £500 - 1,234
North of England 0 798 £447 +5.18% 701
South East -3 652 £480 -4.00% 876
Midlands -5 500 £447 +5.18% 451
North West -1 443 £416 -7.67% 370
East of England 0 350 £400 -7.25% 304
West Midlands -7 347 £463 +8.82% 243
South West -2 331 £485 +2.11% 336
Yorkshire +10 327 £455 +13.63% 237
Scotland +3 196 £425 +3.91% 170
East Midlands +1 148 £377 -11.35% 207
Wales +2 98 £310 +8.77% 102
North East -17 34 £450 +28.57% 104
Northern Ireland +4 23 £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
1 616 (11.01%) SharePoint
2 416 (7.44%) Microsoft Exchange
3 109 (1.95%) Confluence
4 29 (0.52%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.38%) Apache
6 21 (0.38%) CMS
7 19 (0.34%) Skype for Business
8 17 (0.30%) HCL Notes
9 16 (0.29%) SAS
10 10 (0.18%) IIS
10 10 (0.18%) Mendix
11 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.089%) Camunda
12 5 (0.089%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.072%) Drupal
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
14 3 (0.054%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 595 (10.64%) Microsoft Office
2 527 (9.42%) Microsoft Excel
3 230 (4.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 131 (2.34%) Microsoft Project
5 100 (1.79%) MS Visio
6 78 (1.39%) Spreadsheet
7 15 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 10 (0.18%) Trello
9 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
9 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.089%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
11 4 (0.072%) InDesign
12 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
13 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
13 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 200 (3.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 54 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 22 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 16 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 14 (0.25%) Maximo
6 13 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 12 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
8 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
9 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 8 (0.14%) Sage X3
10 8 (0.14%) Shopify
11 7 (0.13%) SystmOne
12 6 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
12 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
12 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
13 5 (0.089%) Primavera
Cloud Services
1 2,303 (41.18%) Azure
2 1,439 (25.73%) Microsoft 365
3 937 (16.75%) Power Platform
4 720 (12.87%) Entra ID
5 467 (8.35%) AWS
6 462 (8.26%) Dynamics 365
7 455 (8.14%) Azure DevOps
8 349 (6.24%) Power Automate
9 315 (5.63%) PowerApps
10 280 (5.01%) Microsoft Purview
11 267 (4.77%) GitHub
12 218 (3.90%) Microsoft Copilot
13 210 (3.75%) OneDrive
14 197 (3.52%) Azure Data Factory
15 188 (3.36%) SaaS
16 181 (3.24%) Serverless
17 168 (3.00%) GCP
18 165 (2.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 151 (2.70%) PaaS
20 147 (2.63%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 308 (5.51%) Firewall
2 300 (5.36%) DNS
3 211 (3.77%) VPN
4 173 (3.09%) DHCP
5 148 (2.65%) Wi-Fi
6 137 (2.45%) WAN
7 124 (2.22%) Network Security
8 120 (2.15%) LAN
9 113 (2.02%) TCP/IP
10 59 (1.05%) VLAN
11 54 (0.97%) Kerberos
12 44 (0.79%) SD-WAN
13 40 (0.72%) Skype
14 38 (0.68%) Wireless
15 35 (0.63%) SAN
15 35 (0.63%) SSL
15 35 (0.63%) Unified Communications
16 29 (0.52%) HTTP
17 27 (0.48%) MPLS
18 23 (0.41%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 585 (10.46%) Power BI
2 281 (5.02%) SQL Server
3 182 (3.25%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (2.77%) Data Lake
5 121 (2.16%) Azure SQL Database
6 111 (1.98%) Metadata
7 103 (1.84%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.29%) Relational Database
9 71 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 55 (0.98%) Oracle Database
11 53 (0.95%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 49 (0.88%) NoSQL
12 49 (0.88%) Tableau
13 47 (0.84%) MySQL
14 41 (0.73%) Power Query
15 40 (0.72%) Delta Lake
16 37 (0.66%) Star Schema
17 27 (0.48%) Spark SQL
18 26 (0.46%) Snowflake Schema
19 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 252 (4.51%) JIRA
2 177 (3.16%) Git
3 70 (1.25%) GitLab
4 66 (1.18%) Jenkins
5 25 (0.45%) Artifactory
6 24 (0.43%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.39%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.32%) MSI
8 18 (0.32%) Postman
9 17 (0.30%) Selenium
10 16 (0.29%) MLflow
11 15 (0.27%) JMeter
12 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.23%) JUnit
12 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
13 11 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 11 (0.20%) Maven
14 10 (0.18%) Android Studio
14 10 (0.18%) SpecFlow
15 9 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,985 (35.49%) Social Skills
2 1,120 (20.03%) Finance
3 653 (11.68%) Analytical Skills
4 539 (9.64%) Public Sector
5 296 (5.29%) Banking
6 253 (4.52%) Legal
6 253 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
7 157 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
8 119 (2.13%) Manufacturing
9 109 (1.95%) Presentation Skills
10 100 (1.79%) Marketing
11 94 (1.68%) Law
12 92 (1.64%) Telecoms
13 85 (1.52%) Retail
14 82 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 63 (1.13%) Local Government
15 63 (1.13%) Military
16 61 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
17 54 (0.97%) Investment Banking
18 42 (0.75%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 691 (12.35%) Architect
2 625 (11.17%) Analyst
3 531 (9.49%) Developer
4 444 (7.94%) Senior
5 372 (6.65%) IT Support
6 325 (5.81%) Lead
7 292 (5.22%) Consultant
8 276 (4.93%) Support Engineer
9 211 (3.77%) Data Engineer
10 206 (3.68%) Azure Engineer
11 202 (3.61%) Solutions Architect
12 199 (3.56%) IT Engineer
13 180 (3.22%) Project Manager
14 176 (3.15%) Administrator
15 175 (3.13%) Business Analyst
16 167 (2.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 151 (2.70%) IT Support Engineer
18 113 (2.02%) Security Engineer
19 112 (2.00%) DevOps Engineer
20 103 (1.84%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (4.70%) .NET
2 182 (3.25%) REST
3 133 (2.38%) Microsoft Graph
4 119 (2.13%) OAuth
5 102 (1.82%) SAML
6 94 (1.68%) PySpark
7 93 (1.66%) React
8 82 (1.47%) OpenID
9 71 (1.27%) JSON
10 66 (1.18%) LDAP
11 64 (1.14%) Middleware
12 63 (1.13%) Web Services
13 61 (1.09%) HTML
14 60 (1.07%) ARM Templates
15 58 (1.04%) OAuth2
15 58 (1.04%) RESTful
16 57 (1.02%) AngularJS
17 53 (0.95%) CSS
17 53 (0.95%) Node.js
18 51 (0.91%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 281 (5.02%) Onboarding
2 225 (4.02%) Cloud Native
3 192 (3.43%) Product Ownership
4 127 (2.27%) Management Information System
5 111 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
6 100 (1.79%) Data Centre
7 91 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
8 87 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
9 86 (1.54%) PKI
10 83 (1.48%) Security Posture
11 81 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
12 75 (1.34%) AI Agents
13 74 (1.32%) Replication
14 67 (1.20%) Data Structures
14 67 (1.20%) Low-Code
15 64 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
16 59 (1.05%) NHS
17 58 (1.04%) Driving Licence
18 56 (1.00%) Virtual Team
19 46 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,235 (22.08%) Windows
2 342 (6.11%) Windows 10
3 283 (5.06%) Windows Server
4 279 (4.99%) Linux
5 102 (1.82%) Android
6 97 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 96 (1.72%) Mac OS
8 46 (0.82%) Windows 7
9 43 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 41 (0.73%) Windows Server 2016
11 40 (0.72%) Unix
12 28 (0.50%) VMS
13 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
14 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
15 19 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
16 11 (0.20%) CentOS
17 9 (0.16%) AIX
17 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
18 4 (0.072%) Solaris
18 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 990 (17.70%) Problem-Solving
2 892 (15.95%) Agile
3 873 (15.61%) DevOps
4 786 (14.05%) Migration
5 753 (13.46%) CI/CD
6 666 (11.91%) Business Intelligence
7 629 (11.25%) Analytics
8 540 (9.65%) AI
9 537 (9.60%) Stakeholder Management
10 511 (9.14%) Continuous Improvement
11 468 (8.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 466 (8.33%) Customer Service
13 427 (7.63%) ITIL
14 400 (7.15%) Data Modelling
15 376 (6.72%) Cybersecurity
16 344 (6.15%) Roadmaps
17 331 (5.92%) Infrastructure as Code
18 310 (5.54%) Project Management
19 300 (5.36%) Decision-Making
20 297 (5.31%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 742 (13.27%) SQL
2 667 (11.93%) PowerShell
3 633 (11.32%) Python
4 293 (5.24%) C#
5 223 (3.99%) JavaScript
6 174 (3.11%) Java
7 128 (2.29%) Bicep
8 103 (1.84%) Kusto Query Language
9 98 (1.75%) Bash
10 85 (1.52%) TypeScript
11 81 (1.45%) T-SQL
12 70 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 37 (0.66%) PL/SQL
14 30 (0.54%) VBA
15 28 (0.50%) C++
16 23 (0.41%) VB
17 21 (0.38%) Perl
18 18 (0.32%) Shell Script
19 17 (0.30%) R
20 15 (0.27%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,091 (19.51%) Security Cleared
2 830 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 564 (10.08%) Degree
4 296 (5.29%) Microsoft Certification
5 218 (3.90%) DV Cleared
6 191 (3.41%) Azure Certification
7 129 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 100 (1.79%) CISSP
9 98 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
10 71 (1.27%) PMI Certification
11 69 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
12 62 (1.11%) PMP
13 57 (1.02%) Master's Degree
14 53 (0.95%) CISM
15 41 (0.73%) AWS Certification
16 39 (0.70%) MCSE
17 33 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
18 32 (0.57%) CCNP
18 32 (0.57%) DBS Check
19 31 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 258 (4.61%) Data Quality
2 237 (4.24%) GDPR
3 174 (3.11%) QA
4 152 (2.72%) SLA
5 138 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 114 (2.04%) PMO
7 111 (1.98%) NIST
8 71 (1.27%) Accessibility
9 59 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
10 47 (0.84%) NCSC
11 39 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 30 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 29 (0.52%) GRC
14 21 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 19 (0.34%) MiFID
16 15 (0.27%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.27%) WCAG
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
18 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
19 11 (0.20%) GxP
System Software
1 1,103 (19.72%) Active Directory
2 227 (4.06%) Docker
3 178 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (1.61%) Hyper-V
5 66 (1.18%) Virtual Machines
6 57 (1.02%) Virtual Desktop
7 43 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
8 33 (0.59%) vSphere
9 26 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 19 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.30%) Firmware
12 12 (0.21%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
14 5 (0.089%) IAG
14 5 (0.089%) Snort
15 4 (0.072%) KVM
15 4 (0.072%) NFS
15 4 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.054%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 440 (7.87%) Microsoft Intune
2 361 (6.45%) Terraform
3 268 (4.79%) Kubernetes
4 210 (3.75%) SCCM
5 138 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
6 120 (2.15%) Ansible
7 97 (1.73%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
9 42 (0.75%) Grafana
10 34 (0.61%) vCenter Server
11 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.43%) FortiGate
13 23 (0.41%) SCOM
14 21 (0.38%) Puppet
15 16 (0.29%) WSUS
16 15 (0.27%) AirWatch
16 15 (0.27%) CASB
17 12 (0.21%) ServiceCenter
18 11 (0.20%) WMI
19 10 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 265 (4.74%) ServiceNow
2 259 (4.63%) VMware
3 217 (3.88%) Databricks
4 210 (3.75%) Oracle
4 210 (3.75%) SAP
5 180 (3.22%) Cisco
6 162 (2.90%) Google
7 131 (2.34%) Citrix
8 104 (1.86%) Splunk
9 95 (1.70%) OpenAI
10 94 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.41%) Foundry
12 67 (1.20%) Apple
13 57 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
14 49 (0.88%) Red Hat
15 48 (0.86%) HP
16 47 (0.84%) Palo Alto
17 44 (0.79%) Adobe
18 40 (0.72%) Informatica
18 40 (0.72%) Okta