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 17 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
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,814 4,082 5,628
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.55% 13.75% 12.91%
As % of the Vendors category 28.39% 28.88% 30.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,855 2,632 3,654
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £337 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £460
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.61% +2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 297 487
10th Percentile £13.62 £14.20 £11.10
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.29
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.00 £15.97
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +25.23% -36.12%
75th Percentile £35.15 £30.63 £25.25
90th Percentile £65.00 £62.05 £59.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +9.64% +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 20,477 14,135 18,402
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.69% 47.62% 42.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,867 8,698 11,416
10th Percentile £313 £280 £270
25th Percentile £413 £401 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,051 649 1,149
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.84 £12.13
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £14.50
Median hourly rate £33.98 £25.30 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +34.31% +6.30% -44.65%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.95 £59.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £69.72 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.00 £23.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +39.13% +2.22% -43.75%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 5,081 £494 +4.00% 4,712
UK excluding London -1 3,060 £450 +5.88% 4,882
London -3 2,250 £510 -0.97% 952
Work from Home 0 1,480 £500 - 3,428
North of England -4 791 £452 +6.35% 1,044
South East -2 719 £475 +4.40% 1,253
Midlands -5 516 £450 +12.50% 697
North West -3 413 £447 +5.18% 523
South West -1 378 £473 +11.18% 494
West Midlands -8 364 £450 +12.50% 344
Yorkshire -4 357 £475 +13.43% 347
East of England 0 296 £375 -25.00% 612
Scotland +2 258 £451 +4.77% 402
East Midlands 0 145 £424 +11.58% 353
Wales +2 99 £370 +29.82% 249
Northern Ireland 0 26 £350 +7.69% 244
North East -38 25 £450 +32.35% 183
Channel Islands -1 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
1 632 (10.87%) SharePoint
2 388 (6.67%) Microsoft Exchange
3 117 (2.01%) Confluence
4 37 (0.64%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.50%) Apache
6 26 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.29%) CMS
7 17 (0.29%) HCL Notes
7 17 (0.29%) IIS
8 14 (0.24%) SAS
8 14 (0.24%) Skype for Business
9 8 (0.14%) Mendix
10 6 (0.10%) Camunda
10 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.086%) nginx
11 5 (0.086%) OpenEdge
11 5 (0.086%) SharePoint 2013
12 4 (0.069%) Exchange Server 2013
12 4 (0.069%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 546 (9.39%) Microsoft Office
2 517 (8.89%) Microsoft Excel
3 225 (3.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 120 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
5 90 (1.55%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.086%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.086%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.086%) Trello
11 3 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.052%) InDesign
11 3 (0.052%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
12 2 (0.034%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.034%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.034%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.034%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 200 (3.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
4 20 (0.34%) 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 10 (0.17%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.17%) Sage X3
10 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.14%) Maximo
11 8 (0.14%) Primavera
11 8 (0.14%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
13 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
13 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,464 (42.38%) Azure
2 1,492 (25.66%) Microsoft 365
3 997 (17.15%) Power Platform
4 801 (13.78%) Entra ID
5 490 (8.43%) AWS
6 456 (7.84%) Azure DevOps
7 455 (7.83%) Dynamics 365
8 337 (5.80%) Power Automate
9 327 (5.62%) Microsoft Purview
10 300 (5.16%) PowerApps
11 280 (4.82%) Microsoft Copilot
12 246 (4.23%) GitHub
13 235 (4.04%) OneDrive
14 212 (3.65%) SaaS
15 181 (3.11%) GCP
16 178 (3.06%) Azure Data Factory
17 167 (2.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 153 (2.63%) Serverless
19 144 (2.48%) PaaS
20 135 (2.32%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 304 (5.23%) DNS
2 267 (4.59%) Firewall
3 217 (3.73%) VPN
4 190 (3.27%) DHCP
5 149 (2.56%) WAN
6 134 (2.30%) Wi-Fi
7 127 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 122 (2.10%) LAN
9 120 (2.06%) Network Security
10 52 (0.89%) VLAN
11 49 (0.84%) Kerberos
12 46 (0.79%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.67%) SAN
14 35 (0.60%) SSL
14 35 (0.60%) Wireless
15 31 (0.53%) Unified Communications
16 29 (0.50%) VoIP
17 27 (0.46%) HTTP
18 26 (0.45%) Skype
19 25 (0.43%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 627 (10.78%) Power BI
2 291 (5.01%) SQL Server
3 178 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (2.63%) Data Lake
5 124 (2.13%) Azure SQL Database
6 119 (2.05%) Metadata
7 117 (2.01%) PostgreSQL
8 74 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 67 (1.15%) Relational Database
10 56 (0.96%) Power Query
11 48 (0.83%) MySQL
11 48 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 46 (0.79%) NoSQL
13 43 (0.74%) Tableau
14 42 (0.72%) Star Schema
15 40 (0.69%) Delta Lake
16 35 (0.60%) Oracle Database
17 30 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 29 (0.50%) Spark SQL
19 24 (0.41%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 287 (4.94%) JIRA
2 169 (2.91%) Git
3 62 (1.07%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.98%) GitLab
5 35 (0.60%) Visual Studio
6 24 (0.41%) MSI
7 21 (0.36%) Artifactory
8 18 (0.31%) Selenium
9 17 (0.29%) Eclipse
10 16 (0.28%) ERwin
10 16 (0.28%) MLflow
11 14 (0.24%) Maven
12 13 (0.22%) JMeter
12 13 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
13 12 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.21%) Postman
14 10 (0.17%) JUnit
14 10 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
15 9 (0.15%) Gatling
16 8 (0.14%) WebDriver
General
1 1,899 (32.66%) Social Skills
2 1,166 (20.06%) Finance
3 632 (10.87%) Analytical Skills
4 521 (8.96%) Public Sector
5 301 (5.18%) Banking
6 246 (4.23%) Legal
7 244 (4.20%) Organisational Skills
8 155 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
9 108 (1.86%) Manufacturing
10 102 (1.75%) Retail
11 99 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 96 (1.65%) Law
13 83 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
14 80 (1.38%) Marketing
15 78 (1.34%) Telecoms
16 72 (1.24%) Military
17 66 (1.14%) Local Government
18 65 (1.12%) Investment Banking
19 59 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
20 47 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 721 (12.40%) Architect
2 622 (10.70%) Analyst
3 523 (9.00%) Developer
4 478 (8.22%) Senior
5 377 (6.48%) Lead
6 367 (6.31%) IT Support
7 339 (5.83%) Consultant
8 278 (4.78%) Support Engineer
9 239 (4.11%) Data Engineer
10 220 (3.78%) Solutions Architect
11 204 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
12 202 (3.47%) Project Manager
13 196 (3.37%) IT Engineer
14 185 (3.18%) Business Analyst
15 176 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 171 (2.94%) Administrator
17 153 (2.63%) IT Support Engineer
18 122 (2.10%) Security Engineer
19 114 (1.96%) Cloud Engineer
20 105 (1.81%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 246 (4.23%) .NET
2 187 (3.22%) REST
3 141 (2.43%) Microsoft Graph
4 111 (1.91%) OAuth
5 109 (1.87%) PySpark
6 101 (1.74%) SAML
7 98 (1.69%) JSON
8 85 (1.46%) OpenID
9 77 (1.32%) LDAP
10 76 (1.31%) Web Services
11 75 (1.29%) React
12 59 (1.01%) Middleware
12 59 (1.01%) XML
13 57 (0.98%) SailPoint
14 55 (0.95%) HTML
14 55 (0.95%) Node.js
14 55 (0.95%) OAuth2
15 53 (0.91%) CSS
16 52 (0.89%) RESTful
17 51 (0.88%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 322 (5.54%) Onboarding
2 250 (4.30%) Cloud Native
3 173 (2.98%) Product Ownership
4 132 (2.27%) Management Information System
5 115 (1.98%) Data Centre
6 110 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
7 101 (1.74%) Enterprise Software
8 99 (1.70%) Hybrid Cloud
9 91 (1.57%) Security Posture
10 89 (1.53%) AI Agents
11 88 (1.51%) PKI
12 82 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
13 78 (1.34%) Data Structures
14 76 (1.31%) Replication
15 75 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
16 69 (1.19%) Low-Code
17 67 (1.15%) Virtual Team
18 50 (0.86%) Public Cloud
19 49 (0.84%) Distributed Systems
19 49 (0.84%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,250 (21.50%) Windows
2 319 (5.49%) Windows 10
3 305 (5.25%) Windows Server
4 254 (4.37%) Linux
5 120 (2.06%) Mac OS
6 112 (1.93%) Apple iOS
7 111 (1.91%) Android
8 43 (0.74%) Windows 7
9 39 (0.67%) Unix
10 38 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 37 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
12 30 (0.52%) VMS
12 30 (0.52%) 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 8 (0.14%) Solaris
16 8 (0.14%) SUSE
17 6 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 988 (16.99%) Problem-Solving
2 930 (16.00%) DevOps
3 848 (14.59%) Agile
4 837 (14.40%) Migration
5 762 (13.11%) CI/CD
6 654 (11.25%) Stakeholder Management
7 652 (11.21%) Business Intelligence
8 623 (10.72%) Analytics
9 613 (10.54%) AI
10 537 (9.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 536 (9.22%) Continuous Improvement
12 497 (8.55%) ITIL
13 438 (7.53%) Data Modelling
14 428 (7.36%) Customer Service
15 415 (7.14%) Roadmaps
16 383 (6.59%) Cybersecurity
17 372 (6.40%) Decision-Making
18 354 (6.09%) Infrastructure as Code
19 346 (5.95%) Validation
20 339 (5.83%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 747 (12.85%) SQL
2 651 (11.20%) PowerShell
3 592 (10.18%) Python
4 269 (4.63%) C#
5 202 (3.47%) JavaScript
6 175 (3.01%) Java
7 143 (2.46%) Bicep
8 104 (1.79%) T-SQL
9 83 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 78 (1.34%) Kusto Query Language
11 71 (1.22%) TypeScript
12 66 (1.14%) Bash
13 35 (0.60%) VBA
14 29 (0.50%) VB
15 28 (0.48%) C++
16 25 (0.43%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.31%) Scala
18 16 (0.28%) VBScript
19 14 (0.24%) Shell Script
20 12 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,107 (19.04%) Security Cleared
2 867 (14.91%) SC Cleared
3 552 (9.49%) Degree
4 282 (4.85%) Microsoft Certification
5 194 (3.34%) Azure Certification
6 181 (3.11%) DV Cleared
7 115 (1.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 108 (1.86%) CISSP
9 101 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
10 84 (1.44%) Cisco Certification
11 60 (1.03%) CISM
12 58 (1.00%) PMP
13 54 (0.93%) PMI Certification
14 53 (0.91%) AWS Certification
15 50 (0.86%) Master's Degree
16 44 (0.76%) MCSE
17 41 (0.71%) DBS Check
18 37 (0.64%) CCNP
19 36 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
20 34 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 304 (5.23%) Data Quality
2 229 (3.94%) GDPR
3 184 (3.16%) QA
4 164 (2.82%) SLA
5 152 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 127 (2.18%) NIST
7 108 (1.86%) PMO
8 80 (1.38%) Accessibility
9 77 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (1.00%) NCSC
11 39 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.58%) GRC
13 31 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 29 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 22 (0.38%) WCAG
16 21 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 19 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.29%) MiFID
19 14 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
20 13 (0.22%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,107 (19.04%) Active Directory
2 214 (3.68%) Docker
3 191 (3.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.84%) Hyper-V
5 91 (1.57%) Virtual Desktop
6 80 (1.38%) Virtual Machines
7 64 (1.10%) VMware ESXi
8 56 (0.96%) vSphere
9 33 (0.57%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.36%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.33%) Firmware
11 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
12 7 (0.12%) NFS
13 6 (0.10%) IAG
13 6 (0.10%) RACF
14 5 (0.086%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.069%) Snort
15 4 (0.069%) Terminal Services
15 4 (0.069%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 472 (8.12%) Microsoft Intune
2 356 (6.12%) Terraform
3 242 (4.16%) Kubernetes
4 205 (3.53%) SCCM
5 128 (2.20%) Ansible
5 128 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
6 79 (1.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 53 (0.91%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.88%) vCenter Server
9 34 (0.58%) Grafana
10 31 (0.53%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.50%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.41%) SCOM
13 20 (0.34%) Puppet
14 16 (0.28%) WSUS
15 15 (0.26%) AirWatch
16 14 (0.24%) QRadar
17 13 (0.22%) vMotion
18 12 (0.21%) HAProxy
19 10 (0.17%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 340 (5.85%) ServiceNow
2 260 (4.47%) VMware
3 240 (4.13%) SAP
4 234 (4.02%) Oracle
5 219 (3.77%) Databricks
6 191 (3.29%) Cisco
7 171 (2.94%) Google
8 118 (2.03%) Salesforce
9 105 (1.81%) Citrix
10 89 (1.53%) Splunk
11 79 (1.36%) OpenAI
12 73 (1.26%) Apple
13 71 (1.22%) Foundry
14 62 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
15 60 (1.03%) Okta
16 54 (0.93%) CyberArk
17 47 (0.81%) HP
18 45 (0.77%) Adobe
18 45 (0.77%) Red Hat
19 42 (0.72%) Zscaler