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 28 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
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,281 4,720 4,992
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.39% 14.38% 13.07%
As % of the Vendors category 32.17% 30.26% 29.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,590 3,072 3,070
10th Percentile £213 £205 £200
25th Percentile £370 £338 £346
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £474 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.90% -2.82% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £668 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 594 383 275
10th Percentile £13.34 £13.75 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.59 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.50 £22.00 £18.13
Median % change year-on-year -15.91% +21.35% -21.17%
75th Percentile £30.00 £31.20 £45.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £64.35 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.86 £20.80 £16.23
% change year-on-year -14.14% +28.13% -25.38%

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 22,633 15,596 17,004
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.61% 47.53% 44.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,770 9,609 10,048
10th Percentile £310 £275 £287
25th Percentile £413 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £618 £613 £625
90th Percentile £705 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,319 808 642
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.75 £14.51
25th Percentile £16.44 £17.67 £15.65
Median hourly rate £25.75 £25.15 £31.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.39% -19.52% -28.75%
75th Percentile £57.50 £42.68 £64.25
90th Percentile £77.65 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £21.30 £30.00
% change year-on-year +17.37% -29.00% -30.23%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 6,315 £490 +3.16% 7,170
UK excluding London 0 3,928 £450 +2.86% 5,101
London 0 2,706 £520 +4.00% 2,631
Work from Home +3 1,828 £500 - 2,888
South East 0 1,051 £475 +5.56% 1,215
North of England -5 965 £471 +7.78% 1,279
Midlands 0 678 £438 +6.71% 866
North West -1 566 £473 +8.05% 659
West Midlands -2 461 £430 -2.27% 496
South West -1 454 £470 +5.92% 527
Scotland +5 375 £450 - 380
Yorkshire -5 351 £474 +5.87% 443
East of England 0 293 £325 -38.10% 509
East Midlands +2 211 £438 +20.69% 370
Wales +2 110 £394 +29.63% 172
North East -23 53 £425 +25.07% 189
Northern Ireland 0 37 £342 -2.29% 235
Channel Islands -2 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
1 885 (12.15%) SharePoint
2 403 (5.53%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.03%) Confluence
4 38 (0.52%) Apache
5 37 (0.51%) Apache Spark
6 27 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
7 26 (0.36%) 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 13 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
12 10 (0.14%) nginx
13 7 (0.096%) SAS
14 6 (0.082%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.082%) Mendix
14 6 (0.082%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.082%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.069%) Apache Superset
15 5 (0.069%) Camunda
Applications
1 799 (10.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 769 (10.56%) Microsoft Office
3 319 (4.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 193 (2.65%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.50%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 17 (0.23%) 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%) 1Password
14 3 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
14 3 (0.041%) Final Cut Pro
15 2 (0.027%) Acrobat
15 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 266 (3.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 89 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
3 37 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
6 19 (0.26%) NetSuite
7 15 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.18%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.15%) Integrated Workplace Management System
9 11 (0.15%) Magento
10 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.11%) iTrent
11 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
12 7 (0.096%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.096%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.082%) Maximo
13 6 (0.082%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.082%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,971 (40.80%) Azure
2 1,868 (25.66%) Microsoft 365
3 1,274 (17.50%) Power Platform
4 1,153 (15.84%) Entra ID
5 662 (9.09%) AWS
6 609 (8.36%) Azure DevOps
7 602 (8.27%) Dynamics 365
8 453 (6.22%) Microsoft Copilot
9 440 (6.04%) Power Automate
10 388 (5.33%) PowerApps
11 311 (4.27%) Microsoft Purview
12 291 (4.00%) GitHub
13 275 (3.78%) GCP
14 268 (3.68%) OneDrive
15 242 (3.32%) SaaS
16 202 (2.77%) Serverless
17 178 (2.44%) Azure Monitor
18 172 (2.36%) Azure Data Factory
19 161 (2.21%) Azure Logic Apps
20 160 (2.20%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 405 (5.56%) DNS
2 343 (4.71%) Firewall
3 302 (4.15%) VPN
4 274 (3.76%) DHCP
5 204 (2.80%) TCP/IP
6 168 (2.31%) Network Security
7 159 (2.18%) WAN
8 145 (1.99%) LAN
9 136 (1.87%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (1.00%) VLAN
11 71 (0.98%) Wireless
12 52 (0.71%) SAN
13 41 (0.56%) SSL
14 40 (0.55%) Skype
15 37 (0.51%) MPLS
15 37 (0.51%) Unified Communications
16 32 (0.44%) BGP
17 31 (0.43%) Kerberos
18 30 (0.41%) Internet
19 29 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 765 (10.51%) Power BI
2 398 (5.47%) SQL Server
3 166 (2.28%) Data Warehouse
4 159 (2.18%) Metadata
5 145 (1.99%) Data Lake
6 126 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
7 108 (1.48%) Azure SQL Database
8 89 (1.22%) Power Query
9 80 (1.10%) Relational Database
10 71 (0.98%) MySQL
11 67 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 49 (0.67%) NoSQL
13 45 (0.62%) Oracle Database
14 41 (0.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 40 (0.55%) Star Schema
16 36 (0.49%) Delta Lake
17 32 (0.44%) Tableau
18 30 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 30 (0.41%) MongoDB
19 28 (0.38%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 332 (4.56%) JIRA
2 243 (3.34%) Git
3 89 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 72 (0.99%) GitLab
5 57 (0.78%) Visual Studio
6 49 (0.67%) MSI
7 37 (0.51%) Selenium
8 25 (0.34%) Postman
9 23 (0.32%) Claude Code
10 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.23%) Team Foundation Server
11 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.22%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.21%) Eclipse
14 12 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
14 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 11 (0.15%) Subversion
16 10 (0.14%) ERwin
16 10 (0.14%) MLflow
17 9 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,735 (37.56%) Social Skills
2 1,420 (19.50%) Finance
3 957 (13.14%) Analytical Skills
4 645 (8.86%) Public Sector
5 449 (6.17%) Organisational Skills
6 312 (4.29%) Banking
7 228 (3.13%) Legal
8 208 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
8 208 (2.86%) Manufacturing
9 186 (2.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 159 (2.18%) Retail
11 120 (1.65%) Telecoms
12 112 (1.54%) Marketing
13 100 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
14 94 (1.29%) Military
15 92 (1.26%) Aerospace
16 90 (1.24%) Local Government
17 81 (1.11%) Law
18 72 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
19 55 (0.76%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 828 (11.37%) Architect
2 706 (9.70%) Analyst
3 642 (8.82%) Developer
4 619 (8.50%) Senior
5 474 (6.51%) Lead
6 464 (6.37%) Consultant
7 447 (6.14%) IT Support
8 439 (6.03%) Support Engineer
9 332 (4.56%) Administrator
10 295 (4.05%) IT Engineer
11 284 (3.90%) Solutions Architect
12 259 (3.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 254 (3.49%) Azure Engineer
14 244 (3.35%) IT Support Engineer
15 243 (3.34%) Data Engineer
16 223 (3.06%) Project Manager
17 189 (2.60%) Business Analyst
18 188 (2.58%) Cloud Engineer
19 140 (1.92%) DevOps Engineer
19 140 (1.92%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 543 (7.46%) Terraform
2 338 (4.64%) .NET
3 289 (3.97%) REST
4 144 (1.98%) JSON
5 137 (1.88%) OAuth
6 115 (1.58%) XML
7 109 (1.50%) SAML
8 104 (1.43%) OpenID
8 104 (1.43%) PySpark
9 103 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
10 96 (1.32%) ARM Templates
11 91 (1.25%) Web Services
12 90 (1.24%) React
13 88 (1.21%) .NET Framework
14 82 (1.13%) LDAP
15 80 (1.10%) RESTful
16 77 (1.06%) HTML
16 77 (1.06%) OAuth2
17 76 (1.04%) SailPoint
18 67 (0.92%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 593 (8.14%) Onboarding
2 320 (4.40%) Cloud Native
3 301 (4.13%) Management Information System
4 223 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
5 198 (2.72%) Product Ownership
6 165 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
7 161 (2.21%) AI Agents
8 156 (2.14%) Data Centre
8 156 (2.14%) PKI
9 140 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
9 140 (1.92%) Security Posture
10 100 (1.37%) Self-Motivation
11 98 (1.35%) Driving Licence
12 96 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 95 (1.30%) CMDB
14 90 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
15 83 (1.14%) Low-Code
16 79 (1.09%) Virtual Team
17 76 (1.04%) Replication
18 74 (1.02%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 1,556 (21.37%) Windows
2 476 (6.54%) Windows Server
3 388 (5.33%) Windows 10
4 344 (4.72%) Linux
5 158 (2.17%) Mac OS
6 132 (1.81%) Android
7 127 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.66%) Unix
10 42 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.54%) Ubuntu
12 37 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
14 31 (0.43%) VMS
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
17 20 (0.27%) Solaris
18 12 (0.16%) SUSE
19 8 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.096%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,385 (19.02%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,381 (18.97%) Problem-Solving
3 1,098 (15.08%) DevOps
4 1,086 (14.92%) Agile
5 992 (13.62%) Migration
6 955 (13.12%) CI/CD
7 907 (12.46%) Continuous Improvement
8 862 (11.84%) AI
9 824 (11.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 775 (10.64%) Business Intelligence
11 738 (10.14%) Analytics
12 722 (9.92%) ITIL
13 685 (9.41%) Customer Service
14 579 (7.95%) Infrastructure as Code
15 578 (7.94%) Cybersecurity
16 550 (7.55%) Roadmaps
17 512 (7.03%) Project Delivery
18 506 (6.95%) Data Modelling
19 498 (6.84%) Decision-Making
20 486 (6.67%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 860 (11.81%) SQL
2 821 (11.28%) PowerShell
3 741 (10.18%) Python
4 352 (4.83%) C#
5 279 (3.83%) JavaScript
6 213 (2.93%) Bicep
7 177 (2.43%) Bash
8 160 (2.20%) Java
9 113 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 113 (1.55%) TypeScript
10 107 (1.47%) T-SQL
11 75 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
12 32 (0.44%) VBA
13 30 (0.41%) VB
14 26 (0.36%) C++
15 25 (0.34%) VBScript
16 23 (0.32%) X++
17 20 (0.27%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.26%) R
19 16 (0.22%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,576 (21.65%) Security Cleared
2 1,164 (15.99%) SC Cleared
3 622 (8.54%) Degree
4 372 (5.11%) Microsoft Certification
5 321 (4.41%) DV Cleared
6 276 (3.79%) Azure Certification
7 186 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
8 142 (1.95%) CISSP
9 126 (1.73%) Cisco Certification
10 105 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.30%) PMP
12 91 (1.25%) PMI Certification
13 77 (1.06%) AWS Certification
14 75 (1.03%) CISM
15 63 (0.87%) DBS Check
16 59 (0.81%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 58 (0.80%) A+ Certification
18 54 (0.74%) CCNP
19 46 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 44 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (6.11%) Data Quality
2 248 (3.41%) QA
3 237 (3.26%) GDPR
4 218 (2.99%) SLA
5 206 (2.83%) PMO
6 205 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 179 (2.46%) NIST
8 125 (1.72%) Accessibility
9 87 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
10 85 (1.17%) NCSC
11 63 (0.87%) GRC
12 47 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.63%) WCAG
14 41 (0.56%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 24 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
17 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 19 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.22%) ISO 19650
19 16 (0.22%) P3O
System Software
1 1,358 (18.65%) Active Directory
2 278 (3.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 250 (3.43%) Docker
4 145 (1.99%) Hyper-V
5 130 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
6 112 (1.54%) Virtual Machines
7 76 (1.04%) vSphere
8 64 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.48%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.25%) Firmware
12 16 (0.22%) VMware NSX
13 14 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 9 (0.12%) IAG
16 8 (0.11%) NFS
17 7 (0.096%) zsh
18 6 (0.082%) Oracle RAC
18 6 (0.082%) XenApp
19 5 (0.069%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 589 (8.09%) Microsoft Intune
2 338 (4.64%) Kubernetes
3 293 (4.02%) SCCM
4 168 (2.31%) Ansible
5 144 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.82%) Jamf Pro
7 58 (0.80%) Grafana
8 56 (0.77%) SCOM
9 50 (0.69%) vCenter Server
10 36 (0.49%) Prometheus
11 34 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 28 (0.38%) QRadar
13 26 (0.36%) Progress Chef
14 25 (0.34%) WSUS
15 21 (0.29%) Puppet
16 20 (0.27%) Failover Clustering
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.23%) Argo
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 551 (7.57%) ServiceNow
2 356 (4.89%) VMware
3 334 (4.59%) Oracle
4 296 (4.07%) SAP
5 273 (3.75%) Google
6 254 (3.49%) Databricks
7 245 (3.36%) Cisco
8 129 (1.77%) Salesforce
8 129 (1.77%) Splunk
9 113 (1.55%) Apple
10 108 (1.48%) CyberArk
11 93 (1.28%) Okta
12 90 (1.24%) Citrix
13 89 (1.22%) OpenAI
14 88 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
15 76 (1.04%) Foundry
16 74 (1.02%) CrowdStrike
17 67 (0.92%) Red Hat
18 59 (0.81%) IBM
18 59 (0.81%) Zscaler