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 8 June 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
8 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,724 3,976 5,617
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.57% 13.59% 12.92%
As % of the Vendors category 28.43% 28.53% 30.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,794 2,571 3,659
10th Percentile £213 £210 £190
25th Percentile £375 £337 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £584 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £451
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.66% +0.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 284 478
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.78 £13.20
Median hourly rate £20.43 £20.00 £15.58
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% +28.41% -32.87%
75th Percentile £32.63 £30.63 £25.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.06 £56.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.09 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +6.47% +25.80% -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 20,133 13,938 18,388
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.68% 47.62% 42.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,678 8,588 11,451
10th Percentile £313 £280 £267
25th Percentile £413 £404 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £515
Median % change year-on-year -0.15% -2.77% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +3.40% -3.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,029 618 1,134
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.69 £17.37 £14.48
Median hourly rate £32.50 £26.45 £23.22
Median % change year-on-year +22.87% +13.93% -45.38%
75th Percentile £59.75 £55.19 £58.24
90th Percentile £78.51 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.15 £22.94 £21.75
% change year-on-year +31.44% +5.46% -45.01%

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 8 June 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 8 June 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 8 June 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 5,015 £500 +5.26% 3,526
UK excluding London -1 2,976 £450 +5.88% 2,940
London -2 2,243 £513 -2.38% 1,057
Work from Home -1 1,434 £500 - 1,736
North of England -3 774 £450 +5.88% 699
South East -1 691 £475 +3.54% 884
Midlands -5 504 £450 +12.50% 452
North West -3 400 £436 +2.59% 399
South West -2 357 £450 +4.35% 349
Yorkshire -2 354 £475 +15.15% 211
West Midlands -8 352 £450 +12.50% 255
East of England 0 307 £375 -25.00% 325
Scotland +4 243 £450 +2.45% 149
East Midlands 0 145 £407 +7.04% 198
Wales +1 99 £370 +23.33% 83
Northern Ireland 0 23 £450 +38.46% 70
North East -36 22 £450 +32.35% 92
Channel Islands -2 2 £550 +84.87%

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
1 607 (10.60%) SharePoint
2 384 (6.71%) Microsoft Exchange
3 107 (1.87%) Confluence
4 41 (0.72%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.51%) Apache
6 26 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.35%) CMS
7 20 (0.35%) HCL Notes
8 15 (0.26%) IIS
8 15 (0.26%) Skype for Business
9 14 (0.24%) SAS
10 10 (0.17%) Mendix
11 6 (0.10%) Camunda
11 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
12 5 (0.087%) Appian
12 5 (0.087%) nginx
12 5 (0.087%) OpenEdge
13 4 (0.070%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.070%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 533 (9.31%) Microsoft Office
2 500 (8.74%) Microsoft Excel
3 217 (3.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 114 (1.99%) Microsoft Project
5 87 (1.52%) MS Visio
6 47 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.087%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.087%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.087%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.087%) Trello
10 3 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.052%) InDesign
10 3 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.035%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.035%) InfoPath
11 2 (0.035%) MicroStation
11 2 (0.035%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.035%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 202 (3.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.31%) NetSuite
5 15 (0.26%) Aladdin
5 15 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
6 13 (0.23%) Dynamics NAV
6 13 (0.23%) Teamcenter
7 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.17%) Sage X3
9 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 9 (0.16%) Maximo
11 8 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
12 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
12 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.10%) Primavera
12 6 (0.10%) SAP MM
13 5 (0.087%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,433 (42.51%) Azure
2 1,470 (25.68%) Microsoft 365
3 966 (16.88%) Power Platform
4 774 (13.52%) Entra ID
5 473 (8.26%) AWS
6 454 (7.93%) Azure DevOps
7 448 (7.83%) Dynamics 365
8 324 (5.66%) Power Automate
9 311 (5.43%) Microsoft Purview
10 284 (4.96%) PowerApps
11 267 (4.66%) Microsoft Copilot
12 248 (4.33%) GitHub
13 226 (3.95%) OneDrive
14 209 (3.65%) SaaS
15 180 (3.14%) Azure Data Factory
16 179 (3.13%) GCP
17 169 (2.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 149 (2.60%) Serverless
19 147 (2.57%) PaaS
20 137 (2.39%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 296 (5.17%) DNS
2 267 (4.66%) Firewall
3 218 (3.81%) VPN
4 187 (3.27%) DHCP
5 138 (2.41%) Wi-Fi
6 137 (2.39%) WAN
7 121 (2.11%) LAN
7 121 (2.11%) TCP/IP
8 118 (2.06%) Network Security
9 55 (0.96%) VLAN
10 52 (0.91%) Kerberos
11 47 (0.82%) SD-WAN
12 37 (0.65%) SAN
13 36 (0.63%) Wireless
14 31 (0.54%) SSL
15 30 (0.52%) Unified Communications
16 29 (0.51%) HTTP
17 28 (0.49%) Skype
18 27 (0.47%) VoIP
19 25 (0.44%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 592 (10.34%) Power BI
2 275 (4.80%) SQL Server
3 169 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (2.55%) Data Lake
5 119 (2.08%) Azure SQL Database
6 116 (2.03%) Metadata
7 105 (1.83%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 67 (1.17%) Relational Database
10 49 (0.86%) Power Query
11 47 (0.82%) NoSQL
12 45 (0.79%) MySQL
12 45 (0.79%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 43 (0.75%) Tableau
14 40 (0.70%) Delta Lake
14 40 (0.70%) Star Schema
15 35 (0.61%) Oracle Database
16 30 (0.52%) Spark SQL
17 28 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 26 (0.45%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 275 (4.80%) JIRA
2 164 (2.87%) Git
3 63 (1.10%) Jenkins
4 59 (1.03%) GitLab
5 34 (0.59%) Visual Studio
6 25 (0.44%) Artifactory
7 19 (0.33%) Eclipse
7 19 (0.33%) MSI
8 16 (0.28%) ERwin
9 15 (0.26%) MLflow
10 14 (0.24%) Selenium
10 14 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
11 13 (0.23%) JMeter
12 12 (0.21%) Maven
12 12 (0.21%) Postman
13 10 (0.17%) Bitbucket
13 10 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
14 9 (0.16%) Gatling
15 8 (0.14%) Browser DevTools
15 8 (0.14%) InstallShield
General
1 1,874 (32.74%) Social Skills
2 1,135 (19.83%) Finance
3 622 (10.87%) Analytical Skills
4 505 (8.82%) Public Sector
5 299 (5.22%) Banking
6 249 (4.35%) Legal
7 235 (4.11%) Organisational Skills
8 144 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 99 (1.73%) Law
9 99 (1.73%) Manufacturing
9 99 (1.73%) Retail
10 84 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
11 81 (1.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 77 (1.35%) Marketing
12 77 (1.35%) Telecoms
13 71 (1.24%) Military
14 70 (1.22%) Local Government
15 63 (1.10%) Investment Banking
16 56 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
17 46 (0.80%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 710 (12.40%) Architect
2 617 (10.78%) Analyst
3 509 (8.89%) Developer
4 473 (8.26%) Senior
5 374 (6.53%) IT Support
6 362 (6.32%) Lead
7 326 (5.70%) Consultant
8 273 (4.77%) Support Engineer
9 231 (4.04%) Data Engineer
10 206 (3.60%) Solutions Architect
11 204 (3.56%) Azure Engineer
12 195 (3.41%) Project Manager
13 188 (3.28%) IT Engineer
14 182 (3.18%) Business Analyst
15 180 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 168 (2.94%) Administrator
17 145 (2.53%) IT Support Engineer
18 123 (2.15%) Security Engineer
19 110 (1.92%) DevOps Engineer
20 106 (1.85%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (4.37%) .NET
2 185 (3.23%) REST
3 137 (2.39%) Microsoft Graph
4 111 (1.94%) OAuth
5 106 (1.85%) PySpark
6 100 (1.75%) SAML
7 94 (1.64%) JSON
8 84 (1.47%) OpenID
9 83 (1.45%) React
10 77 (1.35%) LDAP
11 76 (1.33%) Web Services
12 62 (1.08%) Middleware
13 57 (1.00%) Node.js
14 55 (0.96%) XML
15 54 (0.94%) SailPoint
16 53 (0.93%) HTML
17 52 (0.91%) ARM Templates
17 52 (0.91%) OAuth2
18 51 (0.89%) CSS
19 49 (0.86%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 309 (5.40%) Onboarding
2 239 (4.18%) Cloud Native
3 167 (2.92%) Product Ownership
4 129 (2.25%) Management Information System
5 108 (1.89%) Data Centre
6 102 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
6 102 (1.78%) Legacy Systems
7 98 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
8 93 (1.62%) Security Posture
9 85 (1.48%) AI Agents
9 85 (1.48%) PKI
10 82 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
11 75 (1.31%) Replication
12 70 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
13 68 (1.19%) Data Structures
14 67 (1.17%) Low-Code
15 63 (1.10%) Virtual Team
16 49 (0.86%) Public Cloud
17 47 (0.82%) Clustering
17 47 (0.82%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,255 (21.93%) Windows
2 328 (5.73%) Windows 10
3 305 (5.33%) Windows Server
4 262 (4.58%) Linux
5 120 (2.10%) Mac OS
6 112 (1.96%) Apple iOS
7 109 (1.90%) Android
8 44 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 44 (0.77%) Windows 7
9 40 (0.70%) Unix
9 40 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
10 32 (0.56%) VMS
11 31 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
13 16 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
14 14 (0.24%) Ubuntu
15 11 (0.19%) CentOS
16 6 (0.10%) AIX
17 5 (0.087%) Solaris
17 5 (0.087%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 968 (16.91%) Problem-Solving
2 920 (16.07%) DevOps
3 837 (14.62%) Agile
4 809 (14.13%) Migration
5 756 (13.21%) CI/CD
6 621 (10.85%) Business Intelligence
7 608 (10.62%) Stakeholder Management
8 605 (10.57%) Analytics
9 588 (10.27%) AI
10 523 (9.14%) Continuous Improvement
11 504 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 490 (8.56%) ITIL
13 437 (7.63%) Customer Service
14 425 (7.42%) Data Modelling
15 402 (7.02%) Roadmaps
16 381 (6.66%) Cybersecurity
17 347 (6.06%) Decision-Making
18 337 (5.89%) Infrastructure as Code
19 333 (5.82%) Project Delivery
20 329 (5.75%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 724 (12.65%) SQL
2 667 (11.65%) PowerShell
3 582 (10.17%) Python
4 264 (4.61%) C#
5 202 (3.53%) JavaScript
6 186 (3.25%) Java
7 133 (2.32%) Bicep
8 97 (1.69%) T-SQL
9 84 (1.47%) Kusto Query Language
10 75 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 69 (1.21%) Bash
12 67 (1.17%) TypeScript
13 34 (0.59%) VBA
14 30 (0.52%) VB
15 27 (0.47%) C++
16 26 (0.45%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.31%) Scala
18 16 (0.28%) VBScript
19 15 (0.26%) Shell Script
20 11 (0.19%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,090 (19.04%) Security Cleared
2 852 (14.88%) SC Cleared
3 546 (9.54%) Degree
4 269 (4.70%) Microsoft Certification
5 186 (3.25%) Azure Certification
6 177 (3.09%) DV Cleared
7 122 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
8 111 (1.94%) CISSP
9 94 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
10 84 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
11 61 (1.07%) CISM
12 56 (0.98%) PMP
13 53 (0.93%) PMI Certification
14 51 (0.89%) Master's Degree
15 45 (0.79%) MCSE
16 43 (0.75%) AWS Certification
17 40 (0.70%) DBS Check
18 37 (0.65%) CCNP
19 35 (0.61%) MCSA
20 33 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 291 (5.08%) Data Quality
2 231 (4.04%) GDPR
3 183 (3.20%) QA
4 168 (2.94%) SLA
5 152 (2.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 127 (2.22%) NIST
7 104 (1.82%) PMO
8 76 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
9 75 (1.31%) Accessibility
10 53 (0.93%) NCSC
11 37 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 36 (0.63%) GRC
13 29 (0.51%) PCI DSS
14 28 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 22 (0.38%) NIST 800
16 19 (0.33%) MiFID
17 18 (0.31%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.28%) WCAG
19 13 (0.23%) FINRA
20 12 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 1,098 (19.18%) Active Directory
2 214 (3.74%) Docker
3 198 (3.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.87%) Hyper-V
5 80 (1.40%) Virtual Desktop
6 76 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (1.10%) VMware ESXi
8 56 (0.98%) vSphere
9 33 (0.58%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
12 18 (0.31%) Firmware
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.10%) IAG
14 6 (0.10%) RACF
15 5 (0.087%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.070%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.070%) Snort
16 4 (0.070%) XenDesktop
17 3 (0.052%) Squid
Systems Management
1 466 (8.14%) Microsoft Intune
2 343 (5.99%) Terraform
3 243 (4.25%) Kubernetes
4 208 (3.63%) SCCM
5 125 (2.18%) Ansible
5 125 (2.18%) Single Sign-On
6 79 (1.38%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 54 (0.94%) vCenter Server
8 50 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
9 33 (0.58%) Grafana
10 30 (0.52%) Prometheus
11 24 (0.42%) FortiGate
11 24 (0.42%) SCOM
12 18 (0.31%) Puppet
13 15 (0.26%) AirWatch
13 15 (0.26%) QRadar
13 15 (0.26%) WSUS
14 13 (0.23%) vMotion
15 12 (0.21%) HAProxy
15 12 (0.21%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 317 (5.54%) ServiceNow
2 268 (4.68%) VMware
3 222 (3.88%) Databricks
4 221 (3.86%) Oracle
4 221 (3.86%) SAP
5 192 (3.35%) Cisco
6 168 (2.94%) Google
7 114 (1.99%) Citrix
8 113 (1.97%) Salesforce
9 94 (1.64%) Splunk
10 78 (1.36%) OpenAI
11 75 (1.31%) Apple
12 71 (1.24%) Foundry
13 61 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
14 57 (1.00%) Okta
15 54 (0.94%) CyberArk
16 51 (0.89%) HP
17 46 (0.80%) Adobe
18 44 (0.77%) Dell
19 41 (0.72%) Red Hat