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 23 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
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,294 4,695 4,918
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.30% 14.36% 13.05%
As % of the Vendors category 31.83% 30.21% 29.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,626 3,044 3,060
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £371 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.79% -4.09% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 585 380 272
10th Percentile £13.35 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.67 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.32 £17.56
Median % change year-on-year -17.10% +27.11% -22.08%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.10 £46.18
90th Percentile £66.66 £65.00 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.99 £21.00 £16.23
% change year-on-year -14.36% +29.39% -22.71%

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 22,914 15,542 16,732
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.77% 47.53% 44.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,985 9,534 10,004
10th Percentile £311 £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 £616 £613 £625
90th Percentile £706 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,302 796 645
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.72 £14.50
25th Percentile £16.53 £17.59 £15.62
Median hourly rate £26.00 £25.15 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.38% -20.16% -28.21%
75th Percentile £60.25 £43.38 £64.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.75 £21.18 £30.00
% change year-on-year +21.61% -29.42% -29.41%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 6,314 £490 +3.87% 8,359
UK excluding London +1 3,931 £450 +2.86% 6,136
London 0 2,717 £520 +3.95% 3,073
Work from Home +4 1,847 £500 - 3,355
South East 0 1,026 £475 +5.56% 1,613
North of England -5 975 £466 +6.88% 1,506
Midlands 0 683 £425 +3.66% 1,016
North West -1 571 £470 +7.37% 774
West Midlands -2 467 £425 -2.86% 568
South West -1 455 £473 +11.18% 639
Scotland +6 386 £450 - 455
Yorkshire -6 357 £475 +7.04% 541
East of England 0 293 £345 -34.29% 614
East Midlands +2 210 £425 +16.52% 449
Wales +1 111 £394 +29.63% 186
North East -20 52 £438 +28.75% 208
Northern Ireland -1 37 £342 -2.29% 195
Channel Islands -4 4 £525 -27.59% 2

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
1 879 (12.05%) SharePoint
2 409 (5.61%) Microsoft Exchange
3 149 (2.04%) Confluence
4 39 (0.53%) Apache
5 38 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
6 27 (0.37%) CMS
7 26 (0.36%) IIS
8 23 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
10 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
11 14 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.15%) nginx
13 8 (0.11%) SAS
14 6 (0.082%) Apache Superset
14 6 (0.082%) Mendix
14 6 (0.082%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.082%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.082%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.069%) Camunda
Applications
1 786 (10.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 760 (10.42%) Microsoft Office
3 324 (4.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 192 (2.63%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.52%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.21%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.14%) Revit
12 5 (0.069%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.069%) Photoshop
13 4 (0.055%) Trello
14 3 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.041%) Final Cut Pro
15 2 (0.027%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
15 2 (0.027%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 265 (3.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 87 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 35 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 23 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
9 13 (0.18%) Primavera
10 11 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.15%) Integrated Workplace Management System
10 11 (0.15%) Magento
11 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
12 8 (0.11%) iTrent
12 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.096%) SAP CRM
13 7 (0.096%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.096%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.082%) Oracle ERP
14 6 (0.082%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 2,996 (41.07%) Azure
2 1,863 (25.54%) Microsoft 365
3 1,283 (17.59%) Power Platform
4 1,151 (15.78%) Entra ID
5 663 (9.09%) AWS
6 615 (8.43%) Azure DevOps
7 610 (8.36%) Dynamics 365
8 448 (6.14%) Microsoft Copilot
9 435 (5.96%) Power Automate
10 389 (5.33%) PowerApps
11 313 (4.29%) Microsoft Purview
12 296 (4.06%) GitHub
13 272 (3.73%) OneDrive
14 271 (3.72%) GCP
15 245 (3.36%) SaaS
16 203 (2.78%) Serverless
17 185 (2.54%) Azure Data Factory
18 181 (2.48%) Azure Monitor
19 163 (2.23%) Azure Logic Apps
20 160 (2.19%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 409 (5.61%) DNS
2 345 (4.73%) Firewall
3 299 (4.10%) VPN
4 272 (3.73%) DHCP
5 205 (2.81%) TCP/IP
6 169 (2.32%) Network Security
7 162 (2.22%) WAN
8 146 (2.00%) LAN
9 138 (1.89%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.01%) VLAN
11 72 (0.99%) Wireless
12 51 (0.70%) SAN
13 43 (0.59%) SSL
14 40 (0.55%) Skype
15 38 (0.52%) MPLS
16 35 (0.48%) Unified Communications
17 32 (0.44%) BGP
17 32 (0.44%) Kerberos
18 31 (0.43%) Internet
19 28 (0.38%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 777 (10.65%) Power BI
2 402 (5.51%) SQL Server
3 173 (2.37%) Data Warehouse
4 164 (2.25%) Metadata
5 148 (2.03%) Data Lake
6 125 (1.71%) PostgreSQL
7 113 (1.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 89 (1.22%) Power Query
9 79 (1.08%) Relational Database
10 71 (0.97%) MySQL
11 65 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 49 (0.67%) NoSQL
13 46 (0.63%) Oracle Database
14 43 (0.59%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 41 (0.56%) Star Schema
16 37 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 35 (0.48%) Tableau
18 31 (0.43%) MongoDB
19 30 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
20 23 (0.32%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 337 (4.62%) JIRA
2 242 (3.32%) Git
3 89 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.00%) GitLab
5 59 (0.81%) Visual Studio
6 47 (0.64%) MSI
7 38 (0.52%) Selenium
8 25 (0.34%) Postman
9 23 (0.32%) Claude Code
10 18 (0.25%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.22%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
13 15 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
14 12 (0.16%) MLflow
14 12 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
14 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 11 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
16 10 (0.14%) Bitbucket
16 10 (0.14%) ERwin
General
1 2,722 (37.32%) Social Skills
2 1,437 (19.70%) Finance
3 948 (13.00%) Analytical Skills
4 649 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 444 (6.09%) Organisational Skills
6 322 (4.41%) Banking
7 229 (3.14%) Legal
8 210 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
9 200 (2.74%) Manufacturing
10 184 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 159 (2.18%) Retail
12 126 (1.73%) Telecoms
13 109 (1.49%) Marketing
14 103 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
15 95 (1.30%) Military
16 92 (1.26%) Aerospace
17 90 (1.23%) Law
18 89 (1.22%) Local Government
19 69 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
20 57 (0.78%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 844 (11.57%) Architect
2 726 (9.95%) Analyst
3 642 (8.80%) Developer
4 627 (8.60%) Senior
5 485 (6.65%) Lead
6 463 (6.35%) Consultant
7 451 (6.18%) IT Support
8 429 (5.88%) Support Engineer
9 318 (4.36%) Administrator
10 290 (3.98%) IT Engineer
11 286 (3.92%) Solutions Architect
12 253 (3.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 252 (3.45%) Azure Engineer
14 245 (3.36%) Data Engineer
15 240 (3.29%) IT Support Engineer
16 224 (3.07%) Project Manager
17 191 (2.62%) Business Analyst
18 184 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
19 140 (1.92%) DevOps Engineer
20 136 (1.86%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 545 (7.47%) Terraform
2 343 (4.70%) .NET
3 284 (3.89%) REST
4 143 (1.96%) OAuth
5 141 (1.93%) JSON
6 112 (1.54%) SAML
7 111 (1.52%) XML
8 108 (1.48%) PySpark
9 107 (1.47%) OpenID
10 103 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
11 95 (1.30%) ARM Templates
12 92 (1.26%) React
13 90 (1.23%) Web Services
14 85 (1.17%) .NET Framework
15 82 (1.12%) LDAP
16 79 (1.08%) OAuth2
17 76 (1.04%) HTML
18 75 (1.03%) RESTful
18 75 (1.03%) SailPoint
19 68 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 586 (8.03%) Onboarding
2 321 (4.40%) Cloud Native
3 293 (4.02%) Management Information System
4 219 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
5 205 (2.81%) Product Ownership
6 161 (2.21%) AI Agents
6 161 (2.21%) Hybrid Cloud
7 158 (2.17%) PKI
8 153 (2.10%) Data Centre
9 139 (1.91%) Security Posture
10 137 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
11 97 (1.33%) Data Structures
11 97 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
12 96 (1.32%) CMDB
13 95 (1.30%) Driving Licence
14 91 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
15 85 (1.17%) Low-Code
16 79 (1.08%) Virtual Team
17 77 (1.06%) Replication
18 76 (1.04%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,549 (21.24%) Windows
2 471 (6.46%) Windows Server
3 386 (5.29%) Windows 10
4 343 (4.70%) Linux
5 158 (2.17%) Mac OS
6 136 (1.86%) Android
7 128 (1.75%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 51 (0.70%) Unix
10 42 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
12 35 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
13 33 (0.45%) VMS
14 23 (0.32%) CentOS
15 21 (0.29%) Solaris
16 20 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.16%) SUSE
18 9 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
19 7 (0.096%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,370 (18.78%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,367 (18.74%) Problem-Solving
3 1,108 (15.19%) DevOps
4 1,088 (14.92%) Agile
5 996 (13.66%) Migration
6 961 (13.18%) CI/CD
7 913 (12.52%) Continuous Improvement
8 860 (11.79%) AI
9 832 (11.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 784 (10.75%) Business Intelligence
11 744 (10.20%) Analytics
12 722 (9.90%) ITIL
13 685 (9.39%) Customer Service
14 580 (7.95%) Infrastructure as Code
15 578 (7.92%) Cybersecurity
16 553 (7.58%) Roadmaps
17 519 (7.12%) Data Modelling
18 502 (6.88%) Project Delivery
19 499 (6.84%) Decision-Making
20 482 (6.61%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 866 (11.87%) SQL
2 820 (11.24%) PowerShell
3 745 (10.21%) Python
4 357 (4.89%) C#
5 277 (3.80%) JavaScript
6 212 (2.91%) Bicep
7 171 (2.34%) Bash
8 169 (2.32%) Java
9 114 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 113 (1.55%) TypeScript
11 107 (1.47%) T-SQL
12 74 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.43%) VBA
14 29 (0.40%) VB
15 28 (0.38%) C++
16 25 (0.34%) VBScript
17 24 (0.33%) X++
18 22 (0.30%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.26%) R
20 16 (0.22%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,565 (21.46%) Security Cleared
2 1,160 (15.90%) SC Cleared
3 635 (8.71%) Degree
4 376 (5.15%) Microsoft Certification
5 313 (4.29%) DV Cleared
6 278 (3.81%) Azure Certification
7 186 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
8 146 (2.00%) CISSP
9 129 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
10 108 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.30%) PMP
12 90 (1.23%) PMI Certification
13 77 (1.06%) AWS Certification
14 76 (1.04%) CISM
15 64 (0.88%) DBS Check
16 60 (0.82%) A+ Certification
17 59 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 55 (0.75%) CCNP
19 46 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 45 (0.62%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (6.11%) Data Quality
2 245 (3.36%) QA
3 238 (3.26%) GDPR
4 212 (2.91%) SLA
5 209 (2.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 208 (2.85%) PMO
7 179 (2.45%) NIST
8 123 (1.69%) Accessibility
9 91 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 88 (1.21%) NCSC
11 63 (0.86%) GRC
12 50 (0.69%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.63%) WCAG
14 39 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 28 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 24 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
17 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.23%) NIST 800
20 16 (0.22%) ISO 19650
System Software
1 1,363 (18.69%) Active Directory
2 273 (3.74%) VMware Infrastructure
3 254 (3.48%) Docker
4 142 (1.95%) Hyper-V
5 131 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
6 109 (1.49%) Virtual Machines
7 74 (1.01%) vSphere
8 65 (0.89%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
11 16 (0.22%) Firmware
11 16 (0.22%) VMware NSX
12 11 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 8 (0.11%) IAG
13 8 (0.11%) NFS
14 7 (0.096%) Microsoft Virtual Server
14 7 (0.096%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.096%) zsh
15 6 (0.082%) XenApp
16 5 (0.069%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 587 (8.05%) Microsoft Intune
2 342 (4.69%) Kubernetes
3 297 (4.07%) SCCM
4 169 (2.32%) Ansible
5 146 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
7 59 (0.81%) Grafana
8 57 (0.78%) SCOM
9 50 (0.69%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.51%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.51%) Prometheus
11 26 (0.36%) QRadar
11 26 (0.36%) WSUS
12 25 (0.34%) Progress Chef
13 21 (0.29%) FortiGate
14 20 (0.27%) Puppet
15 19 (0.26%) Failover Clustering
16 17 (0.23%) Argo
17 16 (0.22%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 550 (7.54%) ServiceNow
2 353 (4.84%) VMware
3 338 (4.63%) Oracle
4 293 (4.02%) SAP
5 268 (3.67%) Google
6 254 (3.48%) Databricks
7 243 (3.33%) Cisco
8 132 (1.81%) Splunk
9 127 (1.74%) Salesforce
10 116 (1.59%) Apple
11 108 (1.48%) CyberArk
12 93 (1.28%) Citrix
13 92 (1.26%) OpenAI
14 91 (1.25%) Okta
15 88 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
16 86 (1.18%) Foundry
17 76 (1.04%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.90%) Red Hat
19 57 (0.78%) IBM
19 57 (0.78%) Zscaler