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 19 March 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
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +1 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,418 3,921 5,736
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.50% 13.39% 12.91%
As % of the Vendors category 28.63% 28.36% 30.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,634 2,621 3,839
10th Percentile £209 £208 £190
25th Percentile £370 £348 £329
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £584 £583 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 381 183 430
10th Percentile £13.39 £14.99 £11.05
25th Percentile £16.25 £17.18 £13.20
Median hourly rate £19.91 £23.59 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -15.60% +46.89% -24.46%
75th Percentile £25.47 £33.75 £26.47
90th Percentile £63.75 £61.35 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.10 £22.05 £16.00
% change year-on-year -13.36% +37.78% -20.00%

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 18,925 13,826 19,087
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 43.66% 47.21% 42.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,108 8,647 11,912
10th Percentile £310 £290 £258
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £514
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +0.19% -2.47%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £712 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 968 460 1,026
10th Percentile £15.29 £15.60 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £25.15 £29.00 £24.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.28% +18.37% -30.99%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.78 £83.16 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £23.50 £27.43 £22.94
% change year-on-year -14.31% +19.58% -29.97%

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 19 March 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 19 March 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 19 March 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 4,747 £494 +3.89% 3,173
UK excluding London +1 2,859 £450 +2.86% 2,911
London -1 2,038 £510 +2.00% 832
Work from Home -1 1,351 £500 +1.42% 1,151
North of England -3 756 £436 +2.59% 698
South East -1 647 £480 -4.00% 885
Midlands -5 489 £450 +8.63% 439
North West -1 433 £420 -6.67% 354
East of England +1 356 £400 - 289
West Midlands -8 342 £475 +11.76% 229
South West -1 340 £525 +10.53% 325
Yorkshire +6 296 £450 +16.13% 249
Scotland 0 186 £455 +21.33% 193
East Midlands -1 142 £400 -1.23% 209
Wales +1 99 £310 +3.33% 108
North East -16 33 £463 +32.14% 107
Northern Ireland -2 21 £450 +38.46% 31
Channel Islands +3 1 - -

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
1 608 (11.22%) SharePoint
2 421 (7.77%) Microsoft Exchange
3 113 (2.09%) Confluence
4 30 (0.55%) Skype for Business
5 23 (0.42%) Apache Spark
5 23 (0.42%) CMS
6 20 (0.37%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.35%) Apache
8 17 (0.31%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.26%) SAS
10 11 (0.20%) IIS
11 10 (0.18%) Mendix
12 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 6 (0.11%) SharePoint Server
14 5 (0.092%) Oracle Application Server
15 4 (0.074%) Camunda
15 4 (0.074%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.074%) Exchange Server 2013
15 4 (0.074%) Jupyter
16 3 (0.055%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 608 (11.22%) Microsoft Office
2 511 (9.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 225 (4.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 128 (2.36%) Microsoft Project
5 103 (1.90%) MS Visio
6 77 (1.42%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.26%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Trello
10 7 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
11 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
11 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
12 5 (0.092%) PTC Creo
13 4 (0.074%) Adobe XD
13 4 (0.074%) InDesign
14 3 (0.055%) Photoshop
14 3 (0.055%) Sketch
14 3 (0.055%) SOLIDWORKS
15 2 (0.037%) Adobe After Effects
15 2 (0.037%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 192 (3.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 51 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 19 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 18 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.26%) Aladdin
5 14 (0.26%) Maximo
6 13 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
7 12 (0.22%) Loan IQ
7 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 9 (0.17%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.15%) Sage X3
10 8 (0.15%) Shopify
10 8 (0.15%) Teamcenter
11 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.13%) SystmOne
12 6 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
12 6 (0.11%) Primavera
13 5 (0.092%) SAP MM
13 5 (0.092%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,206 (40.72%) Azure
2 1,392 (25.69%) Microsoft 365
3 900 (16.61%) Power Platform
4 698 (12.88%) Entra ID
5 451 (8.32%) AWS
6 439 (8.10%) Azure DevOps
7 434 (8.01%) Dynamics 365
8 348 (6.42%) Power Automate
9 314 (5.80%) PowerApps
10 286 (5.28%) Microsoft Purview
11 256 (4.72%) GitHub
12 210 (3.88%) OneDrive
13 201 (3.71%) Microsoft Copilot
14 189 (3.49%) Azure Data Factory
15 188 (3.47%) Serverless
16 185 (3.41%) SaaS
17 168 (3.10%) GCP
18 158 (2.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 155 (2.86%) PaaS
20 145 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 306 (5.65%) Firewall
2 295 (5.44%) DNS
3 204 (3.77%) VPN
4 177 (3.27%) DHCP
5 152 (2.81%) Wi-Fi
6 140 (2.58%) WAN
7 122 (2.25%) LAN
8 120 (2.21%) Network Security
9 118 (2.18%) TCP/IP
10 57 (1.05%) Kerberos
11 55 (1.02%) Skype
12 53 (0.98%) VLAN
13 43 (0.79%) Wireless
14 40 (0.74%) SD-WAN
15 34 (0.63%) Unified Communications
16 31 (0.57%) SSL
17 30 (0.55%) HTTP
17 30 (0.55%) Internet
18 29 (0.54%) MPLS
18 29 (0.54%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (10.26%) Power BI
2 257 (4.74%) SQL Server
3 174 (3.21%) Data Warehouse
4 145 (2.68%) Data Lake
5 116 (2.14%) Azure SQL Database
6 101 (1.86%) Metadata
7 97 (1.79%) PostgreSQL
8 71 (1.31%) Relational Database
9 69 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 56 (1.03%) Oracle Database
11 50 (0.92%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 49 (0.90%) NoSQL
13 48 (0.89%) MySQL
14 42 (0.78%) Power Query
14 42 (0.78%) Tableau
15 36 (0.66%) Star Schema
16 35 (0.65%) Delta Lake
17 25 (0.46%) Oracle Reports
18 23 (0.42%) Spark SQL
18 23 (0.42%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 247 (4.56%) JIRA
2 173 (3.19%) Git
3 71 (1.31%) GitLab
4 70 (1.29%) Jenkins
5 25 (0.46%) Eclipse
6 22 (0.41%) Visual Studio
7 20 (0.37%) Artifactory
7 20 (0.37%) MSI
7 20 (0.37%) Postman
8 17 (0.31%) JMeter
8 17 (0.31%) Selenium
9 16 (0.30%) MLflow
10 13 (0.24%) Android Studio
10 13 (0.24%) Cucumber
10 13 (0.24%) JUnit
11 12 (0.22%) Bitbucket
12 10 (0.18%) Browser DevTools
12 10 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
12 10 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
12 10 (0.18%) Xcode
General
1 2,000 (36.91%) Social Skills
2 1,058 (19.53%) Finance
3 673 (12.42%) Analytical Skills
4 543 (10.02%) Public Sector
5 270 (4.98%) Banking
6 255 (4.71%) Organisational Skills
7 251 (4.63%) Legal
8 161 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
9 120 (2.21%) Manufacturing
10 116 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
11 96 (1.77%) Marketing
12 86 (1.59%) Telecoms
13 75 (1.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 74 (1.37%) Retail
15 65 (1.20%) Law
16 57 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
17 55 (1.02%) Military
18 51 (0.94%) Local Government
19 45 (0.83%) Investment Banking
20 40 (0.74%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 644 (11.89%) Architect
2 614 (11.33%) Analyst
3 520 (9.60%) Developer
4 432 (7.97%) Senior
5 357 (6.59%) IT Support
6 303 (5.59%) Lead
7 293 (5.41%) Consultant
8 280 (5.17%) Support Engineer
9 196 (3.62%) Data Engineer
10 191 (3.53%) Solutions Architect
11 189 (3.49%) Azure Engineer
12 188 (3.47%) IT Engineer
13 172 (3.17%) Administrator
13 172 (3.17%) Project Manager
14 170 (3.14%) Business Analyst
15 168 (3.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 142 (2.62%) IT Support Engineer
17 123 (2.27%) Security Engineer
18 105 (1.94%) Support Analyst
19 102 (1.88%) Microsoft Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 250 (4.61%) .NET
2 186 (3.43%) REST
3 131 (2.42%) Microsoft Graph
4 123 (2.27%) OAuth
5 106 (1.96%) SAML
6 93 (1.72%) React
7 86 (1.59%) OpenID
8 83 (1.53%) PySpark
9 72 (1.33%) RESTful
10 69 (1.27%) JSON
11 64 (1.18%) AngularJS
11 64 (1.18%) HTML
11 64 (1.18%) LDAP
12 63 (1.16%) Middleware
13 60 (1.11%) ARM Templates
14 59 (1.09%) Web Services
15 58 (1.07%) CSS
16 56 (1.03%) OAuth2
17 52 (0.96%) Node.js
18 47 (0.87%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 284 (5.24%) Onboarding
2 219 (4.04%) Cloud Native
3 176 (3.25%) Product Ownership
4 137 (2.53%) Management Information System
5 112 (2.07%) Enterprise Software
6 97 (1.79%) Data Centre
7 90 (1.66%) PKI
7 90 (1.66%) Security Posture
8 89 (1.64%) Hybrid Cloud
9 84 (1.55%) Self-Motivation
10 77 (1.42%) Legacy Systems
11 70 (1.29%) Low-Code
11 70 (1.29%) Replication
12 68 (1.26%) AI Agents
13 64 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
13 64 (1.18%) Data Structures
14 60 (1.11%) Driving Licence
15 58 (1.07%) Virtual Team
16 54 (1.00%) NHS
17 52 (0.96%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,224 (22.59%) Windows
2 343 (6.33%) Windows 10
3 286 (5.28%) Linux
4 283 (5.22%) Windows Server
5 99 (1.83%) Android
6 98 (1.81%) Mac OS
7 90 (1.66%) Apple iOS
8 53 (0.98%) Unix
9 44 (0.81%) Windows 7
9 44 (0.81%) Windows Server 2016
10 40 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 25 (0.46%) VMS
12 22 (0.41%) Windows Server 2003
12 22 (0.41%) Windows Server 2012
13 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) CentOS
15 8 (0.15%) AIX
15 8 (0.15%) Ubuntu
16 5 (0.092%) Windows 8
16 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 993 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
2 877 (16.19%) Agile
3 833 (15.37%) DevOps
4 738 (13.62%) Migration
5 701 (12.94%) CI/CD
6 644 (11.89%) Business Intelligence
7 611 (11.28%) Analytics
8 537 (9.91%) Stakeholder Management
9 499 (9.21%) AI
10 489 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
11 451 (8.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 436 (8.05%) Customer Service
13 417 (7.70%) ITIL
14 386 (7.12%) Cybersecurity
15 364 (6.72%) Data Modelling
16 324 (5.98%) Roadmaps
17 305 (5.63%) Infrastructure as Code
18 303 (5.59%) Change Management
19 302 (5.57%) Project Delivery
19 302 (5.57%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 709 (13.09%) SQL
2 675 (12.46%) PowerShell
3 632 (11.66%) Python
4 274 (5.06%) C#
5 217 (4.01%) JavaScript
6 160 (2.95%) Java
7 122 (2.25%) Bicep
8 109 (2.01%) Kusto Query Language
9 101 (1.86%) Bash
10 80 (1.48%) TypeScript
11 75 (1.38%) T-SQL
12 70 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 35 (0.65%) PL/SQL
14 27 (0.50%) C++
15 26 (0.48%) VBA
16 25 (0.46%) Perl
17 23 (0.42%) VB
18 19 (0.35%) Shell Script
19 18 (0.33%) R
20 16 (0.30%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,083 (19.99%) Security Cleared
2 820 (15.13%) SC Cleared
3 554 (10.23%) Degree
4 311 (5.74%) Microsoft Certification
5 219 (4.04%) DV Cleared
6 187 (3.45%) Azure Certification
7 128 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
8 109 (2.01%) CISSP
9 98 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
10 66 (1.22%) Cisco Certification
11 63 (1.16%) CISM
12 61 (1.13%) Master's Degree
12 61 (1.13%) PMI Certification
13 54 (1.00%) PMP
14 44 (0.81%) MCSE
15 43 (0.79%) AWS Certification
16 40 (0.74%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 37 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
18 32 (0.59%) DBS Check
19 31 (0.57%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 239 (4.41%) GDPR
2 230 (4.25%) Data Quality
3 165 (3.05%) QA
4 156 (2.88%) SLA
5 143 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 118 (2.18%) PMO
7 114 (2.10%) NIST
8 79 (1.46%) Accessibility
9 60 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
10 43 (0.79%) NCSC
11 38 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 29 (0.54%) PCI DSS
13 24 (0.44%) GRC
14 23 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 22 (0.41%) WCAG
16 18 (0.33%) MiFID
17 16 (0.30%) EU AI Act
18 14 (0.26%) SOC 2
19 13 (0.24%) FINRA
19 13 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,077 (19.88%) Active Directory
2 212 (3.91%) Docker
3 175 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 85 (1.57%) Hyper-V
5 67 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
6 53 (0.98%) Virtual Desktop
7 35 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
8 34 (0.63%) vSphere
9 22 (0.41%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.37%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.31%) Firmware
12 12 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
13 6 (0.11%) Snort
14 5 (0.092%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.074%) KVM
15 4 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.055%) DFS Replication
16 3 (0.055%) Sendmail
16 3 (0.055%) Squid
Systems Management
1 425 (7.84%) Microsoft Intune
2 339 (6.26%) Terraform
3 250 (4.61%) Kubernetes
4 231 (4.26%) SCCM
5 144 (2.66%) Single Sign-On
6 113 (2.09%) Ansible
7 102 (1.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 44 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (0.76%) Grafana
10 35 (0.65%) Prometheus
10 35 (0.65%) vCenter Server
11 24 (0.44%) FortiGate
12 21 (0.39%) SCOM
13 18 (0.33%) Puppet
14 16 (0.30%) CASB
14 16 (0.30%) WSUS
15 14 (0.26%) AirWatch
16 13 (0.24%) WMI
17 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
18 11 (0.20%) Nessus
Vendors
1 256 (4.72%) VMware
2 254 (4.69%) ServiceNow
3 201 (3.71%) Databricks
4 195 (3.60%) Oracle
4 195 (3.60%) SAP
5 178 (3.29%) Cisco
6 153 (2.82%) Google
7 134 (2.47%) Citrix
8 100 (1.85%) Splunk
9 92 (1.70%) OpenAI
10 86 (1.59%) Salesforce
11 74 (1.37%) Foundry
12 67 (1.24%) Apple
13 59 (1.09%) CrowdStrike
14 57 (1.05%) Palo Alto
15 53 (0.98%) HP
16 42 (0.78%) Red Hat
17 41 (0.76%) Adobe
17 41 (0.76%) Okta
18 35 (0.65%) CyberArk