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 4 October 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
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 7,383 4,774 4,930
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.51% 14.38% 12.98%
As % of the Vendors category 32.51% 30.19% 29.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,629 3,112 3,036
10th Percentile £213 £206 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £349
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.06% -3.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £448
% change year-on-year +2.74% -2.29% -0.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 628 382 266
10th Percentile £13.32 £13.75 £14.21
25th Percentile £14.50 £16.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.25 £22.32 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.22% +11.58% -11.23%
75th Percentile £30.00 £31.30 £46.18
90th Percentile £66.91 £63.72 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.86 £21.00 £17.00
% change year-on-year -14.98% +23.53% -22.73%

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 22,710 15,814 16,910
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.57% 47.65% 44.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,738 9,719 9,989
10th Percentile £310 £278 £285
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £619 £613 £625
90th Percentile £710 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +3.09% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,370 820 620
10th Percentile £13.87 £14.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £16.35 £17.79 £16.00
Median hourly rate £25.34 £25.15 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% -22.62% -25.29%
75th Percentile £57.50 £40.88 £64.63
90th Percentile £77.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.19 £21.35 £30.00
% change year-on-year +13.33% -28.85% -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 4 October 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 4 October 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 4 October 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 6,404 £490 +3.16% 9,540
UK excluding London 0 3,966 £450 +2.74% 7,156
London +1 2,760 £525 +5.00% 3,657
Work from Home +4 1,853 £500 - 4,460
South East +1 1,065 £475 +5.56% 1,803
North of England -5 979 £466 +6.88% 1,628
Midlands -1 684 £428 +4.27% 1,113
North West -1 574 £473 +8.11% 825
West Midlands -1 468 £425 -2.58% 618
South West -1 446 £475 +5.56% 690
Scotland +5 378 £450 - 702
Yorkshire -4 355 £461 +5.37% 566
East of England 0 305 £325 -38.10% 710
East Midlands +1 210 £438 +16.67% 495
Wales 0 109 £413 +35.80% 349
North East -18 55 £425 +23.26% 260
Northern Ireland -2 35 £312 -10.86% 275
Channel Islands -3 4 £525 -27.59% 6

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
1 896 (12.14%) SharePoint
2 405 (5.49%) Microsoft Exchange
3 156 (2.11%) Confluence
4 37 (0.50%) Apache
5 34 (0.46%) Apache Spark
6 29 (0.39%) IIS
7 27 (0.37%) CMS
8 25 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 23 (0.31%) Skype for Business
10 18 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 17 (0.23%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
13 10 (0.14%) nginx
14 6 (0.081%) Exchange Server 2010
14 6 (0.081%) Mendix
14 6 (0.081%) OpenStack
14 6 (0.081%) SharePoint 2013
15 5 (0.068%) SAS
16 4 (0.054%) Exchange Server 2013
16 4 (0.054%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 825 (11.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 785 (10.63%) Microsoft Office
3 329 (4.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 201 (2.72%) Microsoft Project
5 114 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 54 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.33%) Chatbot
8 18 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 15 (0.20%) AutoCAD
10 11 (0.15%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.15%) ProjectWise
11 10 (0.14%) Revit
12 6 (0.081%) Adobe Illustrator
12 6 (0.081%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.041%) 1Password
13 3 (0.041%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.041%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.041%) Trello
14 2 (0.027%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.027%) Productboard
Business Applications
1 269 (3.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 91 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 36 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 28 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 21 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 18 (0.24%) NetSuite
7 17 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
8 15 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
9 13 (0.18%) Primavera
10 12 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.15%) Magento
12 10 (0.14%) Aladdin
12 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
13 8 (0.11%) iTrent
13 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
14 7 (0.095%) Oracle ERP
14 7 (0.095%) Salesforce CRM
14 7 (0.095%) SAP CRM
14 7 (0.095%) SAP PP
14 7 (0.095%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 3,008 (40.74%) Azure
2 1,874 (25.38%) Microsoft 365
3 1,285 (17.40%) Power Platform
4 1,178 (15.96%) Entra ID
5 674 (9.13%) AWS
6 628 (8.51%) Azure DevOps
7 608 (8.24%) Dynamics 365
8 464 (6.28%) Microsoft Copilot
9 442 (5.99%) Power Automate
10 394 (5.34%) PowerApps
11 319 (4.32%) Microsoft Purview
12 307 (4.16%) GitHub
13 289 (3.91%) GCP
14 272 (3.68%) OneDrive
15 236 (3.20%) SaaS
16 203 (2.75%) Serverless
17 182 (2.47%) Azure Monitor
18 177 (2.40%) Azure Data Factory
19 167 (2.26%) Copilot Studio
20 163 (2.21%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 409 (5.54%) DNS
2 342 (4.63%) Firewall
3 300 (4.06%) VPN
4 270 (3.66%) DHCP
5 203 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 171 (2.32%) Network Security
7 156 (2.11%) WAN
8 144 (1.95%) LAN
9 136 (1.84%) Wi-Fi
10 72 (0.98%) VLAN
11 70 (0.95%) Wireless
12 51 (0.69%) SAN
13 43 (0.58%) SSL
14 40 (0.54%) Skype
15 37 (0.50%) Kerberos
15 37 (0.50%) MPLS
16 34 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 32 (0.43%) BGP
17 32 (0.43%) VoIP
18 31 (0.42%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 774 (10.48%) Power BI
2 412 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 170 (2.30%) Data Warehouse
4 160 (2.17%) Metadata
5 145 (1.96%) Data Lake
6 128 (1.73%) PostgreSQL
7 115 (1.56%) Azure SQL Database
8 86 (1.16%) Power Query
9 82 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 74 (1.00%) MySQL
11 66 (0.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 52 (0.70%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.64%) Oracle Database
14 40 (0.54%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 40 (0.54%) Star Schema
15 36 (0.49%) Delta Lake
16 35 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
17 34 (0.46%) MongoDB
18 31 (0.42%) Tableau
19 30 (0.41%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 342 (4.63%) JIRA
2 255 (3.45%) Git
3 90 (1.22%) Jenkins
4 70 (0.95%) GitLab
5 58 (0.79%) Visual Studio
6 50 (0.68%) MSI
7 36 (0.49%) Selenium
8 26 (0.35%) Claude Code
8 26 (0.35%) Postman
9 19 (0.26%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.26%) Team Foundation Server
10 17 (0.23%) Cucumber
10 17 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.20%) Eclipse
12 13 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 12 (0.16%) Subversion
14 10 (0.14%) ERwin
14 10 (0.14%) MLflow
15 9 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,763 (37.42%) Social Skills
2 1,454 (19.69%) Finance
3 959 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 653 (8.84%) Public Sector
5 472 (6.39%) Organisational Skills
6 313 (4.24%) Banking
7 235 (3.18%) Legal
8 224 (3.03%) Manufacturing
9 210 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
10 186 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 165 (2.23%) Retail
12 124 (1.68%) Telecoms
13 116 (1.57%) Marketing
14 100 (1.35%) Aerospace
14 100 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
15 92 (1.25%) Local Government
16 89 (1.21%) Military
17 78 (1.06%) Law
18 75 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
19 56 (0.76%) Billing
Job Titles
1 826 (11.19%) Architect
2 722 (9.78%) Analyst
3 648 (8.78%) Developer
4 635 (8.60%) Senior
5 485 (6.57%) Lead
6 474 (6.42%) Consultant
7 442 (5.99%) IT Support
8 436 (5.91%) Support Engineer
9 355 (4.81%) Administrator
10 292 (3.96%) IT Engineer
11 284 (3.85%) Solutions Architect
12 259 (3.51%) Azure Engineer
13 257 (3.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 243 (3.29%) Data Engineer
14 243 (3.29%) IT Support Engineer
15 227 (3.07%) Project Manager
16 196 (2.65%) Business Analyst
17 187 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
18 146 (1.98%) Security Engineer
19 141 (1.91%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 545 (7.38%) Terraform
2 341 (4.62%) .NET
3 302 (4.09%) REST
4 146 (1.98%) JSON
5 144 (1.95%) OAuth
6 119 (1.61%) XML
7 110 (1.49%) SAML
8 107 (1.45%) OpenID
9 105 (1.42%) PySpark
10 104 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
11 100 (1.35%) ARM Templates
12 94 (1.27%) React
13 92 (1.25%) Web Services
14 90 (1.22%) .NET Framework
15 83 (1.12%) LDAP
16 82 (1.11%) RESTful
17 80 (1.08%) HTML
18 79 (1.07%) SailPoint
19 78 (1.06%) OAuth2
20 69 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 606 (8.21%) Onboarding
2 320 (4.33%) Cloud Native
3 316 (4.28%) Management Information System
4 237 (3.21%) Enterprise Software
5 203 (2.75%) Product Ownership
6 176 (2.38%) AI Agents
7 164 (2.22%) Hybrid Cloud
8 163 (2.21%) PKI
9 156 (2.11%) Data Centre
10 146 (1.98%) Security Posture
11 142 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
12 100 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 97 (1.31%) Driving Licence
13 97 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
14 94 (1.27%) CMDB
15 88 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
16 85 (1.15%) Low-Code
17 79 (1.07%) Replication
18 78 (1.06%) NHS
19 77 (1.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1,559 (21.12%) Windows
2 487 (6.60%) Windows Server
3 387 (5.24%) Windows 10
4 351 (4.75%) Linux
5 155 (2.10%) Mac OS
6 133 (1.80%) Android
7 128 (1.73%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 48 (0.65%) Unix
10 41 (0.56%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.53%) Ubuntu
12 38 (0.51%) Windows Server 2019
13 33 (0.45%) VMS
14 32 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
15 22 (0.30%) CentOS
16 21 (0.28%) Solaris
16 21 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
17 12 (0.16%) SUSE
18 8 (0.11%) AIX
19 7 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,426 (19.31%) Stakeholder Management
2 1,398 (18.94%) Problem-Solving
3 1,118 (15.14%) DevOps
4 1,104 (14.95%) Agile
5 995 (13.48%) Migration
6 965 (13.07%) CI/CD
7 934 (12.65%) Continuous Improvement
8 892 (12.08%) AI
9 837 (11.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 791 (10.71%) Business Intelligence
11 748 (10.13%) Analytics
12 722 (9.78%) ITIL
13 690 (9.35%) Customer Service
14 601 (8.14%) Cybersecurity
15 585 (7.92%) Infrastructure as Code
16 570 (7.72%) Roadmaps
17 519 (7.03%) Project Delivery
18 515 (6.98%) Decision-Making
19 513 (6.95%) Data Modelling
20 487 (6.60%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 879 (11.91%) SQL
2 842 (11.40%) PowerShell
3 756 (10.24%) Python
4 361 (4.89%) C#
5 283 (3.83%) JavaScript
6 214 (2.90%) Bicep
7 186 (2.52%) Bash
8 157 (2.13%) Java
9 120 (1.63%) TypeScript
10 111 (1.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 109 (1.48%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 31 (0.42%) VB
14 29 (0.39%) VBA
15 27 (0.37%) C++
16 25 (0.34%) VBScript
17 23 (0.31%) X++
18 20 (0.27%) PL/SQL
19 19 (0.26%) R
20 16 (0.22%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 1,582 (21.43%) Security Cleared
2 1,169 (15.83%) SC Cleared
3 614 (8.32%) Degree
4 375 (5.08%) Microsoft Certification
5 316 (4.28%) DV Cleared
6 273 (3.70%) Azure Certification
7 193 (2.61%) BPSS Clearance
8 144 (1.95%) CISSP
9 125 (1.69%) Cisco Certification
10 107 (1.45%) Computer Science Degree
11 99 (1.34%) PMP
12 95 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 78 (1.06%) AWS Certification
13 78 (1.06%) CISM
14 66 (0.89%) DBS Check
15 59 (0.80%) A+ Certification
16 57 (0.77%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 53 (0.72%) CCNP
18 47 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 44 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 460 (6.23%) Data Quality
2 251 (3.40%) QA
3 238 (3.22%) GDPR
4 220 (2.98%) SLA
5 211 (2.86%) PMO
6 210 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 187 (2.53%) NIST
8 129 (1.75%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.19%) Cyber Essentials
10 86 (1.16%) NCSC
11 64 (0.87%) GRC
12 48 (0.65%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 46 (0.62%) WCAG
14 43 (0.58%) PCI DSS
15 28 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 25 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
17 22 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.27%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.23%) ISO 19650
19 17 (0.23%) P3O
System Software
1 1,370 (18.56%) Active Directory
2 283 (3.83%) VMware Infrastructure
3 250 (3.39%) Docker
4 151 (2.05%) Hyper-V
5 136 (1.84%) Virtual Desktop
6 118 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
7 79 (1.07%) vSphere
8 65 (0.88%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.43%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 17 (0.23%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.22%) Firmware
13 15 (0.20%) Virtual Servers
14 11 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 7 (0.095%) IAG
15 7 (0.095%) zsh
16 6 (0.081%) ISA Server
16 6 (0.081%) NFS
16 6 (0.081%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.081%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 589 (7.98%) Microsoft Intune
2 334 (4.52%) Kubernetes
3 295 (4.00%) SCCM
4 169 (2.29%) Ansible
5 148 (2.00%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (0.83%) Grafana
7 58 (0.79%) Jamf Pro
8 55 (0.74%) SCOM
9 49 (0.66%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.50%) Prometheus
11 33 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 32 (0.43%) QRadar
13 27 (0.37%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.37%) WSUS
14 22 (0.30%) Failover Clustering
15 21 (0.28%) Argo
15 21 (0.28%) Puppet
16 20 (0.27%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.23%) WMI
18 14 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 551 (7.46%) ServiceNow
2 362 (4.90%) VMware
3 343 (4.65%) Oracle
4 309 (4.19%) SAP
5 286 (3.87%) Google
6 256 (3.47%) Databricks
7 243 (3.29%) Cisco
8 135 (1.83%) Splunk
9 134 (1.81%) Salesforce
10 115 (1.56%) Apple
11 110 (1.49%) CyberArk
12 98 (1.33%) Citrix
13 95 (1.29%) Okta
13 95 (1.29%) OpenAI
14 89 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
15 79 (1.07%) Foundry
16 76 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
17 66 (0.89%) Red Hat
18 61 (0.83%) IBM
19 60 (0.81%) Adobe