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 14 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
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,617 4,807 4,868
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.78% 14.49% 12.99%
As % of the Vendors category 33.03% 30.36% 29.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,778 3,139 3,007
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 £440
% change year-on-year +3.47% -0.06% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 655 379 249
10th Percentile £13.25 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £14.48 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.00 £22.32 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.34% -0.82% -2.17%
75th Percentile £29.07 £31.00 £46.18
90th Percentile £66.08 £63.90 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.64 £21.00 £18.38
% change year-on-year -16.00% +14.29% -16.48%

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 23,064 15,831 16,711
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.73% 47.72% 44.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,915 9,761 9,817
10th Percentile £310 £275 £288
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £619 £613 £625
90th Percentile £711 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £488 £500
% change year-on-year +2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,434 800 581
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.84 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.25 £17.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £24.61 £25.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.56% -24.24% -25.34%
75th Percentile £56.86 £38.42 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.42 £21.30 £30.71
% change year-on-year +9.93% -30.63% -29.82%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 6,608 £492 +3.66% 6,013
UK excluding London 0 4,079 £455 +3.47% 3,913
London +2 2,857 £520 +4.00% 2,481
Work from Home +3 1,926 £500 - 2,751
South East +1 1,102 £475 +5.56% 975
North of England -5 1,009 £460 +5.26% 1,028
Midlands -1 698 £425 +3.03% 603
North West -2 588 £465 +6.29% 511
West Midlands -1 477 £425 -3.95% 339
South West -1 448 £500 +11.11% 392
Scotland +5 387 £450 - 315
Yorkshire -3 369 £460 +2.51% 370
East of England 0 324 £345 -31.00% 363
East Midlands +1 217 £440 +17.33% 264
Wales 0 112 £413 +34.15% 138
North East -19 57 £426 +23.33% 158
Northern Ireland -2 35 £312 -10.86% 153
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 7

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
1 924 (12.13%) SharePoint
2 407 (5.34%) Microsoft Exchange
3 164 (2.15%) Confluence
4 39 (0.51%) Apache
5 34 (0.45%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.38%) IIS
7 27 (0.35%) CMS
8 23 (0.30%) Apache Airflow
8 23 (0.30%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
10 17 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.13%) nginx
13 6 (0.079%) Exchange Server 2010
13 6 (0.079%) Mendix
13 6 (0.079%) OpenStack
13 6 (0.079%) SharePoint 2013
14 5 (0.066%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.053%) Camunda
15 4 (0.053%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 860 (11.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 799 (10.49%) Microsoft Office
3 340 (4.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 211 (2.77%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 65 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.32%) 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 7 (0.092%) Adobe Illustrator
12 7 (0.092%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.053%) SOLIDWORKS
14 3 (0.039%) 1Password
14 3 (0.039%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.039%) Final Cut Pro
14 3 (0.039%) Productboard
14 3 (0.039%) Trello
Business Applications
1 272 (3.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 93 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
3 38 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
4 29 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.22%) Integrated Workplace Management System
6 17 (0.22%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.18%) Primavera
8 13 (0.17%) Aladdin
9 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.14%) Magento
11 10 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
12 9 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
12 9 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.11%) SAP PP
14 7 (0.092%) iTrent
14 7 (0.092%) Oracle ERP
14 7 (0.092%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.092%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,121 (40.97%) Azure
2 1,932 (25.36%) Microsoft 365
3 1,320 (17.33%) Power Platform
4 1,236 (16.23%) Entra ID
5 695 (9.12%) AWS
6 660 (8.66%) Azure DevOps
7 619 (8.13%) Dynamics 365
8 481 (6.31%) Microsoft Copilot
9 453 (5.95%) Power Automate
10 410 (5.38%) PowerApps
11 334 (4.38%) Microsoft Purview
12 326 (4.28%) GitHub
13 304 (3.99%) GCP
14 279 (3.66%) OneDrive
15 248 (3.26%) SaaS
16 211 (2.77%) Serverless
17 201 (2.64%) Azure Monitor
18 180 (2.36%) Azure Data Factory
19 176 (2.31%) Copilot Studio
20 173 (2.27%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 425 (5.58%) DNS
2 354 (4.65%) Firewall
3 312 (4.10%) VPN
4 276 (3.62%) DHCP
5 211 (2.77%) TCP/IP
6 173 (2.27%) Network Security
7 160 (2.10%) WAN
8 147 (1.93%) LAN
9 133 (1.75%) Wi-Fi
10 76 (1.00%) VLAN
11 75 (0.98%) Wireless
12 50 (0.66%) SAN
13 44 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.53%) Internet
14 40 (0.53%) Kerberos
14 40 (0.53%) Skype
15 38 (0.50%) MPLS
16 37 (0.49%) BGP
17 34 (0.45%) VoIP
18 33 (0.43%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 786 (10.32%) Power BI
2 421 (5.53%) SQL Server
3 179 (2.35%) Data Warehouse
4 172 (2.26%) Metadata
5 150 (1.97%) Data Lake
6 136 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
7 127 (1.67%) Azure SQL Database
8 93 (1.22%) Power Query
9 84 (1.10%) Relational Database
10 74 (0.97%) MySQL
11 73 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 56 (0.74%) NoSQL
13 54 (0.71%) Oracle Database
14 41 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 41 (0.54%) Star Schema
15 39 (0.51%) Amazon RDS
16 36 (0.47%) Delta Lake
16 36 (0.47%) MongoDB
17 32 (0.42%) BigQuery
18 31 (0.41%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 357 (4.69%) JIRA
2 260 (3.41%) Git
3 92 (1.21%) Jenkins
4 70 (0.92%) GitLab
5 61 (0.80%) Visual Studio
6 51 (0.67%) MSI
7 38 (0.50%) Selenium
8 29 (0.38%) Postman
9 28 (0.37%) Claude Code
10 21 (0.28%) Cypress.io
11 19 (0.25%) Team Foundation Server
12 18 (0.24%) Cucumber
13 17 (0.22%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
15 13 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
15 13 (0.17%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
16 12 (0.16%) Subversion
17 10 (0.13%) ERwin
17 10 (0.13%) JUnit
17 10 (0.13%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,858 (37.52%) Social Skills
2 1,515 (19.89%) Finance
3 997 (13.09%) Analytical Skills
4 700 (9.19%) Public Sector
5 489 (6.42%) Organisational Skills
6 332 (4.36%) Banking
7 254 (3.33%) Legal
8 237 (3.11%) Manufacturing
9 226 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
10 187 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 163 (2.14%) Retail
12 128 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 120 (1.58%) Marketing
14 105 (1.38%) Aerospace
15 104 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
16 96 (1.26%) Local Government
17 92 (1.21%) Military
18 80 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
19 76 (1.00%) Law
20 58 (0.76%) Billing
Job Titles
1 849 (11.15%) Architect
2 738 (9.69%) Analyst
3 663 (8.70%) Senior
4 661 (8.68%) Developer
5 511 (6.71%) Lead
6 505 (6.63%) Consultant
7 448 (5.88%) IT Support
8 439 (5.76%) Support Engineer
9 376 (4.94%) Administrator
10 298 (3.91%) IT Engineer
11 295 (3.87%) Solutions Architect
12 271 (3.56%) Azure Engineer
13 267 (3.51%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 247 (3.24%) Data Engineer
14 247 (3.24%) IT Support Engineer
15 227 (2.98%) Project Manager
16 201 (2.64%) Business Analyst
17 197 (2.59%) Cloud Engineer
18 148 (1.94%) Security Engineer
19 138 (1.81%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 578 (7.59%) Terraform
2 352 (4.62%) .NET
3 326 (4.28%) REST
4 163 (2.14%) OAuth
5 149 (1.96%) JSON
6 125 (1.64%) OpenID
7 123 (1.61%) SAML
8 119 (1.56%) XML
9 109 (1.43%) ARM Templates
10 106 (1.39%) Microsoft Graph
11 105 (1.38%) PySpark
12 99 (1.30%) React
13 94 (1.23%) LDAP
13 94 (1.23%) Web Services
14 90 (1.18%) OAuth2
15 87 (1.14%) .NET Framework
16 85 (1.12%) RESTful
17 83 (1.09%) SailPoint
18 82 (1.08%) HTML
19 73 (0.96%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 628 (8.24%) Onboarding
2 341 (4.48%) Management Information System
3 329 (4.32%) Cloud Native
4 261 (3.43%) Enterprise Software
5 218 (2.86%) Product Ownership
6 185 (2.43%) AI Agents
7 173 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
8 168 (2.21%) PKI
9 160 (2.10%) Data Centre
10 151 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.86%) Legacy Systems
12 107 (1.40%) Data Structures
13 101 (1.33%) CMDB
14 100 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
15 98 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
16 97 (1.27%) Driving Licence
17 89 (1.17%) Low-Code
18 83 (1.09%) Replication
18 83 (1.09%) Virtual Team
19 81 (1.06%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,593 (20.91%) Windows
2 493 (6.47%) Windows Server
3 402 (5.28%) Windows 10
4 363 (4.77%) Linux
5 162 (2.13%) macOS
6 137 (1.80%) Android
7 135 (1.77%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 49 (0.64%) Unix
10 43 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
11 40 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 36 (0.47%) Windows 7
12 36 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
13 33 (0.43%) VMS
14 22 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
15 21 (0.28%) CentOS
16 20 (0.26%) Solaris
17 11 (0.14%) SUSE
18 8 (0.11%) AIX
19 7 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,521 (19.97%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,437 (18.87%) Problem-Solving
3 1,169 (15.35%) DevOps
4 1,141 (14.98%) Agile
5 1,034 (13.57%) Migration
6 999 (13.12%) CI/CD
7 976 (12.81%) Continuous Improvement
8 926 (12.16%) AI
9 865 (11.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 810 (10.63%) Business Intelligence
11 772 (10.14%) Analytics
12 752 (9.87%) ITIL
13 720 (9.45%) Customer Service
14 643 (8.44%) Cybersecurity
15 621 (8.15%) Infrastructure as Code
16 600 (7.88%) Roadmaps
17 540 (7.09%) Project Delivery
18 534 (7.01%) Data Modelling
19 521 (6.84%) Decision-Making
20 512 (6.72%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 909 (11.93%) SQL
2 891 (11.70%) PowerShell
3 790 (10.37%) Python
4 376 (4.94%) C#
5 298 (3.91%) JavaScript
6 238 (3.12%) Bicep
7 195 (2.56%) Bash
8 164 (2.15%) Java
9 135 (1.77%) TypeScript
10 117 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 108 (1.42%) T-SQL
12 82 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.42%) VB
14 31 (0.41%) VBA
15 28 (0.37%) C++
16 25 (0.33%) VBScript
17 22 (0.29%) X++
18 21 (0.28%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.25%) R
20 16 (0.21%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,646 (21.61%) Security Cleared
2 1,212 (15.91%) SC Cleared
3 623 (8.18%) Degree
4 376 (4.94%) Microsoft Certification
5 331 (4.35%) DV Cleared
6 278 (3.65%) Azure Certification
7 209 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.89%) CISSP
9 125 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
10 113 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
11 102 (1.34%) PMP
12 99 (1.30%) PMI Certification
13 83 (1.09%) AWS Certification
14 80 (1.05%) CISM
15 68 (0.89%) DBS Check
16 57 (0.75%) A+ Certification
16 57 (0.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 53 (0.70%) CCNP
18 47 (0.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
19 45 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 479 (6.29%) Data Quality
2 260 (3.41%) QA
3 242 (3.18%) GDPR
4 226 (2.97%) SLA
5 222 (2.91%) PMO
6 218 (2.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 191 (2.51%) NIST
8 134 (1.76%) Accessibility
9 90 (1.18%) Cyber Essentials
10 88 (1.16%) NCSC
11 66 (0.87%) GRC
12 48 (0.63%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 48 (0.63%) WCAG
13 43 (0.56%) PCI DSS
14 27 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 25 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
16 24 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
16 24 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 17 (0.22%) ISO 19650
17 17 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,401 (18.39%) Active Directory
2 282 (3.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 250 (3.28%) Docker
4 150 (1.97%) Hyper-V
5 139 (1.82%) Virtual Desktop
6 122 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
7 80 (1.05%) 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 17 (0.22%) VMware NSX
13 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 7 (0.092%) IAG
15 7 (0.092%) zsh
16 6 (0.079%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.079%) NFS
16 6 (0.079%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.079%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 607 (7.97%) Microsoft Intune
2 344 (4.52%) Kubernetes
3 314 (4.12%) SCCM
4 178 (2.34%) Ansible
5 156 (2.05%) Single Sign-On
6 68 (0.89%) Grafana
7 60 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.71%) SCOM
9 46 (0.60%) vCenter Server
10 35 (0.46%) Prometheus
11 31 (0.41%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 31 (0.41%) QRadar
12 27 (0.35%) Progress Chef
12 27 (0.35%) WSUS
13 22 (0.29%) Failover Clustering
14 21 (0.28%) Argo
15 20 (0.26%) FortiGate
15 20 (0.26%) Puppet
16 17 (0.22%) WMI
17 14 (0.18%) Avamar
Vendors
1 554 (7.27%) ServiceNow
2 362 (4.75%) Oracle
2 362 (4.75%) VMware
3 321 (4.21%) SAP
4 305 (4.00%) Google
5 268 (3.52%) Databricks
6 245 (3.22%) Cisco
7 140 (1.84%) Salesforce
8 133 (1.75%) Splunk
9 117 (1.54%) Apple
10 112 (1.47%) CyberArk
11 106 (1.39%) Citrix
11 106 (1.39%) OpenAI
12 101 (1.33%) Okta
13 96 (1.26%) BeyondTrust
14 91 (1.19%) Foundry
15 84 (1.10%) CrowdStrike
16 68 (0.89%) Red Hat
17 64 (0.84%) IBM
18 59 (0.77%) Zscaler