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 20 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
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,850 4,087 5,665
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.55% 13.69% 12.91%
As % of the Vendors category 28.39% 28.77% 30.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,875 2,633 3,679
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £337 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £463
% change year-on-year +5.88% -8.11% +2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 299 494
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.73 £13.31
Median hourly rate £21.13 £20.00 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.63% +25.00% -33.33%
75th Percentile £35.45 £31.00 £25.25
90th Percentile £65.00 £63.28 £59.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.71 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +9.76% +25.80% -25.00%

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 20,609 14,207 18,590
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.69% 47.58% 42.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,933 8,743 11,537
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £517
Median % change year-on-year - -3.29% -1.52%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £626
90th Percentile £700 £715 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,054 652 1,163
10th Percentile £15.52 £14.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £14.50
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.23 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +34.75% +5.99% -44.65%
75th Percentile £60.75 £53.95 £58.70
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.23 £23.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +40.11% +2.22% -43.15%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 0 5,116 £500 +5.26% 2,752
UK excluding London -1 3,087 £450 +5.88% 2,600
London -3 2,257 £510 - 744
Work from Home -1 1,490 £500 - 1,190
North of England -4 792 £450 +5.88% 578
South East -2 730 £475 +3.26% 820
Midlands -4 521 £450 +16.13% 405
North West -3 417 £447 +5.18% 326
South West -1 387 £475 +11.76% 283
West Midlands -8 367 £450 +12.50% 206
Yorkshire -2 354 £475 +10.14% 179
East of England 0 295 £375 -23.37% 285
Scotland +1 259 £451 +4.77% 107
East Midlands 0 147 £425 +16.52% 199
Wales +3 99 £370 +37.04% 79
Northern Ireland +1 27 £350 +7.69% 136
North East -39 25 £450 +32.35% 84
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14%

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
1 635 (10.85%) SharePoint
2 382 (6.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 119 (2.03%) Confluence
4 37 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.50%) Apache
6 27 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.29%) IIS
8 16 (0.27%) CMS
8 16 (0.27%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.24%) SAS
9 14 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 7 (0.12%) Mendix
11 6 (0.10%) Camunda
11 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
11 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
12 5 (0.085%) OpenEdge
12 5 (0.085%) SharePoint 2013
13 4 (0.068%) Appian
13 4 (0.068%) ArcGIS
13 4 (0.068%) Tomcat
Applications
1 545 (9.32%) Microsoft Office
2 526 (8.99%) Microsoft Excel
3 228 (3.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 123 (2.10%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (1.50%) MS Visio
6 40 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.085%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.085%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.085%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.068%) Trello
11 3 (0.051%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.034%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.034%) InDesign
12 2 (0.034%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.034%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.034%) Photoshop
12 2 (0.034%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 198 (3.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 70 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 22 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.32%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.26%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
11 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
12 9 (0.15%) Primavera
12 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
12 9 (0.15%) SAP MM
13 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.14%) Maximo
14 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
15 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
15 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
15 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,470 (42.22%) Azure
2 1,480 (25.30%) Microsoft 365
3 1,000 (17.09%) Power Platform
4 807 (13.79%) Entra ID
5 506 (8.65%) AWS
6 465 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
7 452 (7.73%) Dynamics 365
8 334 (5.71%) Power Automate
9 325 (5.56%) Microsoft Purview
10 297 (5.08%) PowerApps
11 288 (4.92%) Microsoft Copilot
12 247 (4.22%) GitHub
13 237 (4.05%) OneDrive
14 219 (3.74%) SaaS
15 183 (3.13%) GCP
16 176 (3.01%) Azure Data Factory
17 167 (2.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 154 (2.63%) Serverless
19 145 (2.48%) PaaS
20 137 (2.34%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 304 (5.20%) DNS
2 274 (4.68%) Firewall
3 222 (3.79%) VPN
4 187 (3.20%) DHCP
5 156 (2.67%) WAN
6 138 (2.36%) Wi-Fi
7 135 (2.31%) TCP/IP
8 129 (2.21%) LAN
9 126 (2.15%) Network Security
10 56 (0.96%) VLAN
11 50 (0.85%) Kerberos
12 48 (0.82%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.67%) SAN
14 36 (0.62%) Wireless
15 35 (0.60%) SSL
16 34 (0.58%) Unified Communications
17 29 (0.50%) Internet
17 29 (0.50%) VoIP
18 27 (0.46%) HTTP
19 26 (0.44%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 632 (10.80%) Power BI
2 294 (5.03%) SQL Server
3 180 (3.08%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (2.58%) Data Lake
5 125 (2.14%) Azure SQL Database
6 124 (2.12%) Metadata
7 123 (2.10%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.23%) Relational Database
9 71 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 56 (0.96%) Power Query
11 51 (0.87%) MySQL
12 48 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 46 (0.79%) NoSQL
14 42 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 42 (0.72%) Tableau
15 37 (0.63%) Delta Lake
16 34 (0.58%) Oracle Database
17 30 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 27 (0.46%) Spark SQL
19 25 (0.43%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 292 (4.99%) JIRA
2 169 (2.89%) Git
3 65 (1.11%) Jenkins
4 61 (1.04%) GitLab
5 37 (0.63%) Visual Studio
6 25 (0.43%) MSI
7 20 (0.34%) Artifactory
8 18 (0.31%) Selenium
9 17 (0.29%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.29%) ERwin
10 16 (0.27%) MLflow
11 14 (0.24%) Maven
12 13 (0.22%) Bitbucket
12 13 (0.22%) JMeter
12 13 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
13 12 (0.21%) JUnit
13 12 (0.21%) Postman
14 10 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
15 9 (0.15%) Gatling
16 8 (0.14%) WebDriver
General
1 1,919 (32.80%) Social Skills
2 1,179 (20.15%) Finance
3 632 (10.80%) Analytical Skills
4 526 (8.99%) Public Sector
5 302 (5.16%) Banking
6 242 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
7 237 (4.05%) Legal
8 152 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
9 109 (1.86%) Manufacturing
10 103 (1.76%) Retail
11 101 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 96 (1.64%) Law
13 84 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
14 80 (1.37%) Telecoms
15 79 (1.35%) Military
16 76 (1.30%) Marketing
17 66 (1.13%) Local Government
18 65 (1.11%) Investment Banking
19 61 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
20 47 (0.80%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 733 (12.53%) Architect
2 615 (10.51%) Analyst
3 528 (9.03%) Developer
4 479 (8.19%) Senior
5 381 (6.51%) Lead
6 365 (6.24%) IT Support
7 341 (5.83%) Consultant
8 278 (4.75%) Support Engineer
9 238 (4.07%) Data Engineer
10 223 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
11 204 (3.49%) Azure Engineer
12 200 (3.42%) Project Manager
13 198 (3.38%) IT Engineer
14 180 (3.08%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 177 (3.03%) Business Analyst
16 169 (2.89%) Administrator
17 153 (2.62%) IT Support Engineer
18 124 (2.12%) Security Engineer
19 114 (1.95%) Cloud Engineer
20 102 (1.74%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (4.26%) .NET
2 193 (3.30%) REST
3 141 (2.41%) Microsoft Graph
4 114 (1.95%) OAuth
5 108 (1.85%) PySpark
6 102 (1.74%) JSON
7 101 (1.73%) SAML
8 87 (1.49%) OpenID
9 80 (1.37%) LDAP
10 78 (1.33%) Web Services
11 76 (1.30%) React
12 60 (1.03%) XML
13 59 (1.01%) Middleware
13 59 (1.01%) SailPoint
14 58 (0.99%) OAuth2
15 55 (0.94%) HTML
15 55 (0.94%) Node.js
16 54 (0.92%) RESTful
17 52 (0.89%) .NET Framework
17 52 (0.89%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 323 (5.52%) Onboarding
2 260 (4.44%) Cloud Native
3 171 (2.92%) Product Ownership
4 136 (2.32%) Management Information System
5 114 (1.95%) Data Centre
6 113 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
7 106 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
7 106 (1.81%) Hybrid Cloud
8 95 (1.62%) Security Posture
9 91 (1.56%) PKI
10 90 (1.54%) AI Agents
11 87 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
12 80 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 75 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
14 74 (1.26%) Replication
15 68 (1.16%) Virtual Team
16 67 (1.15%) Low-Code
17 55 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
18 51 (0.87%) Public Cloud
19 50 (0.85%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,247 (21.32%) Windows
2 317 (5.42%) Windows 10
3 302 (5.16%) Windows Server
4 255 (4.36%) Linux
5 120 (2.05%) Mac OS
6 111 (1.90%) Android
6 111 (1.90%) Apple iOS
7 42 (0.72%) Windows 7
8 39 (0.67%) Unix
9 38 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 35 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
11 30 (0.51%) VMS
12 29 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
14 14 (0.24%) Ubuntu
14 14 (0.24%) Windows Server 2003
15 11 (0.19%) CentOS
16 9 (0.15%) Solaris
17 8 (0.14%) SUSE
18 6 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 997 (17.04%) Problem-Solving
2 938 (16.03%) DevOps
3 863 (14.75%) Agile
4 832 (14.22%) Migration
5 777 (13.28%) CI/CD
6 664 (11.35%) Stakeholder Management
7 650 (11.11%) Business Intelligence
8 631 (10.79%) Analytics
9 626 (10.70%) AI
10 554 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
11 549 (9.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 501 (8.56%) ITIL
13 440 (7.52%) Data Modelling
14 434 (7.42%) Customer Service
15 425 (7.26%) Roadmaps
16 393 (6.72%) Cybersecurity
17 379 (6.48%) Decision-Making
18 363 (6.21%) Infrastructure as Code
19 345 (5.90%) Validation
20 337 (5.76%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 758 (12.96%) SQL
2 653 (11.16%) PowerShell
3 605 (10.34%) Python
4 265 (4.53%) C#
5 207 (3.54%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.11%) Java
7 144 (2.46%) Bicep
8 101 (1.73%) T-SQL
9 82 (1.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 79 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
11 74 (1.26%) TypeScript
12 68 (1.16%) Bash
13 35 (0.60%) VBA
14 30 (0.51%) C++
15 29 (0.50%) VB
16 26 (0.44%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.31%) VBScript
18 17 (0.29%) Scala
19 14 (0.24%) Shell Script
20 13 (0.22%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,116 (19.08%) Security Cleared
2 866 (14.80%) SC Cleared
3 560 (9.57%) Degree
4 282 (4.82%) Microsoft Certification
5 194 (3.32%) Azure Certification
5 194 (3.32%) DV Cleared
6 118 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 114 (1.95%) CISSP
8 105 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
9 89 (1.52%) Cisco Certification
10 63 (1.08%) CISM
11 57 (0.97%) PMP
12 53 (0.91%) AWS Certification
12 53 (0.91%) PMI Certification
13 50 (0.85%) Master's Degree
14 44 (0.75%) MCSE
15 40 (0.68%) DBS Check
16 39 (0.67%) CCNP
17 37 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 306 (5.23%) Data Quality
2 226 (3.86%) GDPR
3 190 (3.25%) QA
4 163 (2.79%) SLA
5 156 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 133 (2.27%) NIST
7 109 (1.86%) PMO
8 81 (1.38%) Accessibility
9 80 (1.37%) Cyber Essentials
10 61 (1.04%) NCSC
11 39 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.58%) GRC
13 31 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 31 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 21 (0.36%) NIST 800
14 21 (0.36%) WCAG
15 17 (0.29%) MiFID
15 17 (0.29%) SOC 2
16 15 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
17 13 (0.22%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,106 (18.91%) Active Directory
2 218 (3.73%) Docker
3 192 (3.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 104 (1.78%) Hyper-V
5 92 (1.57%) Virtual Desktop
6 78 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
8 54 (0.92%) vSphere
9 34 (0.58%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 21 (0.36%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.32%) Firmware
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.10%) IAG
14 6 (0.10%) RACF
15 5 (0.085%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.068%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.068%) Snort
16 4 (0.068%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.068%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 474 (8.10%) Microsoft Intune
2 363 (6.21%) Terraform
3 249 (4.26%) Kubernetes
4 206 (3.52%) SCCM
5 129 (2.21%) Single Sign-On
6 127 (2.17%) Ansible
7 80 (1.37%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 52 (0.89%) Jamf Pro
9 49 (0.84%) vCenter Server
10 34 (0.58%) Grafana
11 32 (0.55%) FortiGate
12 29 (0.50%) Prometheus
13 24 (0.41%) SCOM
14 20 (0.34%) Puppet
15 16 (0.27%) AirWatch
15 16 (0.27%) WSUS
16 15 (0.26%) QRadar
17 13 (0.22%) vMotion
18 11 (0.19%) HAProxy
19 10 (0.17%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 340 (5.81%) ServiceNow
2 262 (4.48%) VMware
3 240 (4.10%) Oracle
4 236 (4.03%) SAP
5 216 (3.69%) Databricks
6 197 (3.37%) Cisco
7 170 (2.91%) Google
8 117 (2.00%) Salesforce
9 102 (1.74%) Citrix
10 91 (1.56%) Splunk
11 80 (1.37%) OpenAI
12 77 (1.32%) Apple
13 72 (1.23%) Foundry
14 67 (1.15%) CrowdStrike
15 61 (1.04%) Okta
16 57 (0.97%) CyberArk
17 47 (0.80%) HP
18 45 (0.77%) Palo Alto
18 45 (0.77%) Red Hat
19 43 (0.74%) Zscaler