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 12 September 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
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,176 4,709 5,078
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.15% 14.26% 13.16%
As % of the Vendors category 31.38% 30.27% 29.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,598 3,035 3,190
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £373 £340 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £684 £671 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 549 383 284
10th Percentile £13.35 £14.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.82 £16.50 £15.15
Median hourly rate £19.00 £22.32 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.86% +31.26% -22.73%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.40 £45.00
90th Percentile £68.70 £64.75 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £20.80 £16.23
% change year-on-year -11.04% +28.13% -16.77%

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 22,867 15,556 17,055
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.91% 47.12% 44.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,033 9,517 10,292
10th Percentile £313 £276 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £626
90th Percentile £700 £700 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,255 792 694
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £14.25
25th Percentile £16.72 £17.42 £15.62
Median hourly rate £27.50 £25.15 £30.80
Median % change year-on-year +9.34% -18.33% -27.54%
75th Percentile £62.25 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.95 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.19 £21.24 £30.00
% change year-on-year +23.31% -29.20% -25.00%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 6,213 £489 +2.95% 5,998
UK excluding London -1 3,846 £450 +3.45% 4,580
London 0 2,694 £515 +3.00% 2,324
Work from Home +5 1,836 £500 - 3,215
South East 0 1,001 £475 +5.56% 1,294
North of England -5 966 £460 +6.36% 1,044
Midlands 0 656 £430 +7.50% 756
North West -2 573 £450 +2.97% 515
South West -1 461 £470 +12.24% 533
West Midlands -3 443 £430 +1.18% 423
Scotland +6 378 £450 - 314
Yorkshire -7 350 £475 +8.57% 370
East of England 0 271 £345 -34.29% 479
East Midlands +3 206 £425 +18.06% 332
Wales +2 108 £413 +37.50% 133
North East -31 47 £425 +25.07% 182
Northern Ireland -1 37 £350 - 117
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 3

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
1 869 (12.11%) SharePoint
2 409 (5.70%) Microsoft Exchange
3 151 (2.10%) Confluence
4 38 (0.53%) Apache
5 37 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 32 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 27 (0.38%) CMS
8 24 (0.33%) IIS
9 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
10 17 (0.24%) HCL Notes
10 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
13 9 (0.13%) SAS
14 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.084%) Mendix
15 6 (0.084%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.084%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.070%) Camunda
16 5 (0.070%) OpenStack
Applications
1 752 (10.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 741 (10.33%) Microsoft Office
3 313 (4.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 196 (2.73%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.59%) MS Visio
6 50 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 30 (0.42%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
10 10 (0.14%) ProjectWise
11 9 (0.13%) Navisworks
11 9 (0.13%) Revit
12 5 (0.070%) Trello
13 4 (0.056%) Adobe Illustrator
13 4 (0.056%) Photoshop
14 3 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.042%) Final Cut Pro
15 2 (0.028%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.028%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 255 (3.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 83 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
4 26 (0.36%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.28%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
9 12 (0.17%) Primavera
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.14%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.11%) Aladdin
12 8 (0.11%) iTrent
12 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.098%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.098%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.098%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.084%) Maximo
14 6 (0.084%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,969 (41.37%) Azure
2 1,825 (25.43%) Microsoft 365
3 1,281 (17.85%) Power Platform
4 1,101 (15.34%) Entra ID
5 666 (9.28%) AWS
6 614 (8.56%) Dynamics 365
7 613 (8.54%) Azure DevOps
8 436 (6.08%) Power Automate
9 426 (5.94%) Microsoft Copilot
10 386 (5.38%) PowerApps
11 307 (4.28%) Microsoft Purview
12 300 (4.18%) GitHub
13 278 (3.87%) OneDrive
14 258 (3.60%) GCP
15 242 (3.37%) SaaS
16 196 (2.73%) Serverless
17 188 (2.62%) Azure Data Factory
18 171 (2.38%) Azure Monitor
19 163 (2.27%) Azure Logic Apps
20 160 (2.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 392 (5.46%) DNS
2 341 (4.75%) Firewall
3 289 (4.03%) VPN
4 261 (3.64%) DHCP
5 199 (2.77%) TCP/IP
6 164 (2.29%) WAN
7 163 (2.27%) Network Security
8 144 (2.01%) LAN
9 140 (1.95%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.05%) VLAN
11 65 (0.91%) Wireless
12 48 (0.67%) SAN
13 41 (0.57%) SSL
14 39 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.52%) MPLS
16 32 (0.45%) Unified Communications
17 30 (0.42%) BGP
17 30 (0.42%) Kerberos
17 30 (0.42%) SD-WAN
18 29 (0.40%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 795 (11.08%) Power BI
2 415 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 178 (2.48%) Data Warehouse
4 155 (2.16%) Metadata
5 151 (2.10%) Data Lake
6 134 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
7 123 (1.71%) Azure SQL Database
8 86 (1.20%) Power Query
9 77 (1.07%) Relational Database
10 70 (0.98%) MySQL
11 67 (0.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 48 (0.67%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.65%) Oracle Database
14 45 (0.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 44 (0.61%) Star Schema
16 38 (0.53%) Delta Lake
16 38 (0.53%) Tableau
17 30 (0.42%) Amazon RDS
17 30 (0.42%) MongoDB
18 21 (0.29%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 343 (4.78%) JIRA
2 236 (3.29%) Git
3 95 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 71 (0.99%) GitLab
5 58 (0.81%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.61%) MSI
7 36 (0.50%) Selenium
8 21 (0.29%) Claude Code
9 20 (0.28%) Postman
10 17 (0.24%) Cypress.io
11 16 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 15 (0.21%) MLflow
12 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
13 14 (0.20%) Eclipse
14 13 (0.18%) Cucumber
15 12 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
16 11 (0.15%) Bitbucket
16 11 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
16 11 (0.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
17 10 (0.14%) Maven
General
1 2,622 (36.54%) Social Skills
2 1,438 (20.04%) Finance
3 927 (12.92%) Analytical Skills
4 639 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 417 (5.81%) Organisational Skills
6 331 (4.61%) Banking
7 227 (3.16%) Legal
8 201 (2.80%) Documentation Skills
9 181 (2.52%) Manufacturing
10 174 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 152 (2.12%) Retail
12 122 (1.70%) Telecoms
13 110 (1.53%) Marketing
14 103 (1.44%) Law
15 97 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
16 90 (1.25%) Military
17 89 (1.24%) Local Government
18 85 (1.18%) Aerospace
19 67 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
20 61 (0.85%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 841 (11.72%) Architect
2 721 (10.05%) Analyst
3 632 (8.81%) Developer
4 624 (8.70%) Senior
5 493 (6.87%) Lead
6 459 (6.40%) Consultant
7 451 (6.28%) IT Support
8 431 (6.01%) Support Engineer
9 295 (4.11%) IT Engineer
10 290 (4.04%) Administrator
11 272 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
12 256 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 248 (3.46%) Data Engineer
14 247 (3.44%) Azure Engineer
15 243 (3.39%) IT Support Engineer
16 235 (3.27%) Project Manager
17 185 (2.58%) Business Analyst
18 179 (2.49%) Cloud Engineer
19 140 (1.95%) DevOps Engineer
20 131 (1.83%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 533 (7.43%) Terraform
2 343 (4.78%) .NET
3 273 (3.80%) REST
4 135 (1.88%) JSON
5 131 (1.83%) OAuth
6 111 (1.55%) PySpark
7 108 (1.51%) XML
8 104 (1.45%) SAML
9 102 (1.42%) Microsoft Graph
10 100 (1.39%) OpenID
11 93 (1.30%) ARM Templates
12 90 (1.25%) React
13 85 (1.18%) Web Services
14 84 (1.17%) .NET Framework
15 78 (1.09%) LDAP
16 74 (1.03%) OAuth2
17 73 (1.02%) RESTful
18 72 (1.00%) HTML
19 71 (0.99%) SailPoint
20 66 (0.92%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 557 (7.76%) Onboarding
2 307 (4.28%) Cloud Native
3 269 (3.75%) Management Information System
4 213 (2.97%) Product Ownership
5 208 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
6 157 (2.19%) Hybrid Cloud
7 153 (2.13%) PKI
8 151 (2.10%) AI Agents
9 148 (2.06%) Data Centre
10 131 (1.83%) Security Posture
11 130 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
12 95 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 94 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
14 93 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
15 84 (1.17%) CMDB
16 83 (1.16%) Driving Licence
17 79 (1.10%) Low-Code
18 78 (1.09%) Virtual Team
19 71 (0.99%) Replication
20 69 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,533 (21.36%) Windows
2 462 (6.44%) Windows Server
3 375 (5.23%) Windows 10
4 345 (4.81%) Linux
5 148 (2.06%) Mac OS
6 132 (1.84%) Android
7 125 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.67%) Unix
10 42 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.53%) Ubuntu
13 35 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
14 31 (0.43%) VMS
15 22 (0.31%) CentOS
16 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
17 19 (0.26%) Solaris
18 12 (0.17%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.098%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,341 (18.69%) Problem-Solving
2 1,304 (18.17%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,108 (15.44%) DevOps
4 1,099 (15.31%) Agile
5 995 (13.87%) Migration
6 941 (13.11%) CI/CD
7 901 (12.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 843 (11.75%) AI
9 819 (11.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 800 (11.15%) Business Intelligence
11 738 (10.28%) Analytics
12 703 (9.80%) ITIL
13 672 (9.36%) Customer Service
14 563 (7.85%) Infrastructure as Code
15 559 (7.79%) Cybersecurity
16 537 (7.48%) Roadmaps
17 518 (7.22%) Data Modelling
18 492 (6.86%) Project Delivery
19 481 (6.70%) Decision-Making
20 460 (6.41%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 870 (12.12%) SQL
2 793 (11.05%) PowerShell
3 733 (10.21%) Python
4 346 (4.82%) C#
5 264 (3.68%) JavaScript
6 207 (2.88%) Bicep
7 172 (2.40%) Java
8 170 (2.37%) Bash
9 114 (1.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 110 (1.53%) T-SQL
11 106 (1.48%) TypeScript
12 71 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.43%) VBA
14 29 (0.40%) VB
15 26 (0.36%) C++
16 25 (0.35%) VBScript
17 23 (0.32%) PL/SQL
17 23 (0.32%) X++
18 20 (0.28%) R
19 16 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,549 (21.59%) Security Cleared
2 1,156 (16.11%) SC Cleared
3 643 (8.96%) Degree
4 374 (5.21%) Microsoft Certification
5 298 (4.15%) DV Cleared
6 269 (3.75%) Azure Certification
7 185 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
8 140 (1.95%) CISSP
9 130 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
10 119 (1.66%) Computer Science Degree
11 99 (1.38%) PMP
12 92 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 77 (1.07%) CISM
14 73 (1.02%) AWS Certification
15 59 (0.82%) A+ Certification
15 59 (0.82%) DBS Check
15 59 (0.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 55 (0.77%) CCNP
17 46 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 46 (0.64%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (6.05%) Data Quality
2 250 (3.48%) QA
3 233 (3.25%) GDPR
4 202 (2.81%) SLA
5 200 (2.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 200 (2.79%) PMO
6 178 (2.48%) NIST
7 122 (1.70%) Accessibility
8 90 (1.25%) NCSC
9 89 (1.24%) Cyber Essentials
10 56 (0.78%) GRC
11 46 (0.64%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 44 (0.61%) WCAG
13 37 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 30 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 22 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
16 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
17 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.22%) P3O
19 15 (0.21%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,343 (18.72%) Active Directory
2 268 (3.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 261 (3.64%) Docker
4 147 (2.05%) Hyper-V
5 129 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
6 105 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
7 67 (0.93%) vSphere
8 65 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.49%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.24%) VMware NSX
12 15 (0.21%) Firmware
13 9 (0.13%) IAG
13 9 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
14 8 (0.11%) NFS
15 7 (0.098%) Oracle RAC
15 7 (0.098%) zsh
16 5 (0.070%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 5 (0.070%) Microsoft Virtual Server
16 5 (0.070%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 569 (7.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 341 (4.75%) Kubernetes
3 293 (4.08%) SCCM
4 171 (2.38%) Ansible
5 136 (1.90%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.84%) Grafana
7 59 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
8 54 (0.75%) SCOM
9 50 (0.70%) vCenter Server
10 38 (0.53%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.39%) WSUS
13 27 (0.38%) QRadar
14 22 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
16 20 (0.28%) Puppet
17 18 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
18 16 (0.22%) Argo
19 15 (0.21%) WMI
20 14 (0.20%) CASB
Vendors
1 536 (7.47%) ServiceNow
2 347 (4.84%) Oracle
2 347 (4.84%) VMware
3 290 (4.04%) SAP
4 251 (3.50%) Google
5 246 (3.43%) Databricks
6 239 (3.33%) Cisco
7 129 (1.80%) Salesforce
8 124 (1.73%) Splunk
9 109 (1.52%) Apple
10 98 (1.37%) CyberArk
11 93 (1.30%) Citrix
12 85 (1.18%) Okta
13 84 (1.17%) OpenAI
14 82 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
15 80 (1.11%) Foundry
16 75 (1.05%) CrowdStrike
17 68 (0.95%) Red Hat
18 56 (0.78%) Adobe
19 54 (0.75%) Zscaler