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 2 May 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
2 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,619 3,904 5,657
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.88% 13.31% 13.00%
As % of the Vendors category 28.33% 28.01% 30.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,783 2,601 3,708
10th Percentile £211 £210 £189
25th Percentile £375 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £581 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £436 £460
% change year-on-year +3.15% -5.16% -0.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 242 465
10th Percentile £13.64 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.35 £15.44 £13.00
Median hourly rate £20.09 £19.90 £15.42
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% +29.05% -34.38%
75th Percentile £28.88 £29.07 £25.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £59.13 £53.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £18.51 £15.00
% change year-on-year +7.56% +23.40% -21.05%

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 19,836 13,936 18,461
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.93% 47.52% 42.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,657 8,733 11,440
10th Percentile £313 £290 £263
25th Percentile £413 £408 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £517
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -0.43% -1.48%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £627
90th Percentile £704 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 994 562 1,096
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.86 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.87 £14.48
Median hourly rate £30.88 £26.45 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.73% +17.56% -48.86%
75th Percentile £60.00 £56.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £24.18 £21.50
% change year-on-year +13.73% +12.47% -45.71%

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 2 May 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 2 May 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 2 May 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 4,935 £493 +3.68% 3,061
UK excluding London 0 2,922 £450 +3.15% 2,605
London -2 2,176 £513 +2.50% 900
Work from Home -1 1,405 £500 - 1,222
North of England +1 788 £450 +6.67% 617
South East -1 667 £479 -3.09% 791
Midlands -5 507 £450 +12.50% 438
North West -2 427 £416 -4.91% 318
West Midlands -5 348 £450 +12.50% 265
Yorkshire 0 336 £455 +13.75% 213
East of England 0 330 £400 -8.57% 308
South West -1 329 £450 -4.26% 272
Scotland +3 203 £450 +8.43% 140
East Midlands -1 153 £400 -5.88% 173
Wales +3 95 £310 +3.33% 77
North East -23 30 £450 +28.57% 95
Northern Ireland +2 23 £450 +38.46% 31
Channel Islands -2 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
1 602 (10.71%) SharePoint
2 390 (6.94%) Microsoft Exchange
3 104 (1.85%) Confluence
4 37 (0.66%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache
6 22 (0.39%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.36%) CMS
7 20 (0.36%) HCL Notes
8 15 (0.27%) SAS
9 14 (0.25%) Skype for Business
10 13 (0.23%) IIS
11 12 (0.21%) Mendix
12 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
12 6 (0.11%) Camunda
13 5 (0.089%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.089%) Oracle Workflow
14 4 (0.071%) Appian
14 4 (0.071%) Drupal
14 4 (0.071%) Exchange Server 2010
14 4 (0.071%) MS Project Server
Applications
1 582 (10.36%) Microsoft Office
2 519 (9.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 233 (4.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 127 (2.26%) Microsoft Project
5 92 (1.64%) MS Visio
6 72 (1.28%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 8 (0.14%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.089%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.071%) InDesign
13 3 (0.053%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.053%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.053%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.053%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
14 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 201 (3.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 61 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.34%) Dynamics NAV
5 14 (0.25%) Aladdin
5 14 (0.25%) NetSuite
6 12 (0.21%) Maximo
6 12 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
7 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 9 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
10 8 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
11 7 (0.12%) Shopify
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Receivables
12 6 (0.11%) Primavera
13 5 (0.089%) assyst
13 5 (0.089%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,354 (41.89%) Azure
2 1,453 (25.86%) Microsoft 365
3 949 (16.89%) Power Platform
4 714 (12.71%) Entra ID
5 465 (8.28%) Dynamics 365
6 457 (8.13%) AWS
7 438 (7.79%) Azure DevOps
8 331 (5.89%) Power Automate
9 297 (5.29%) PowerApps
10 292 (5.20%) Microsoft Purview
11 258 (4.59%) GitHub
12 235 (4.18%) Microsoft Copilot
13 206 (3.67%) OneDrive
14 199 (3.54%) Azure Data Factory
15 192 (3.42%) SaaS
16 177 (3.15%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 170 (3.03%) Serverless
18 169 (3.01%) GCP
19 150 (2.67%) PaaS
20 137 (2.44%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 295 (5.25%) Firewall
2 290 (5.16%) DNS
3 209 (3.72%) VPN
4 168 (2.99%) DHCP
5 141 (2.51%) Wi-Fi
6 136 (2.42%) WAN
7 119 (2.12%) Network Security
8 115 (2.05%) LAN
9 103 (1.83%) TCP/IP
10 57 (1.01%) Kerberos
11 54 (0.96%) VLAN
12 44 (0.78%) SD-WAN
13 35 (0.62%) SAN
13 35 (0.62%) SSL
13 35 (0.62%) Wireless
14 33 (0.59%) Skype
15 29 (0.52%) HTTP
16 26 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 25 (0.44%) MPLS
18 24 (0.43%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 578 (10.29%) Power BI
2 269 (4.79%) SQL Server
3 176 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
4 159 (2.83%) Data Lake
5 124 (2.21%) Azure SQL Database
6 116 (2.06%) Metadata
7 104 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
8 72 (1.28%) Relational Database
9 68 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 49 (0.87%) Oracle Database
11 47 (0.84%) NoSQL
12 46 (0.82%) Power Query
13 45 (0.80%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 45 (0.80%) Tableau
14 42 (0.75%) MySQL
15 41 (0.73%) Delta Lake
16 39 (0.69%) Star Schema
17 29 (0.52%) Spark SQL
18 27 (0.48%) Snowflake Schema
19 25 (0.44%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 252 (4.48%) JIRA
2 169 (3.01%) Git
3 65 (1.16%) Jenkins
4 62 (1.10%) GitLab
5 26 (0.46%) Artifactory
6 24 (0.43%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.39%) MSI
8 21 (0.37%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.30%) Selenium
10 16 (0.28%) JMeter
10 16 (0.28%) Postman
11 15 (0.27%) MLflow
12 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
13 12 (0.21%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.21%) ERwin
13 12 (0.21%) Maven
14 11 (0.20%) Cucumber
14 11 (0.20%) JUnit
15 10 (0.18%) Gatling
15 10 (0.18%) InstallShield
General
1 1,919 (34.15%) Social Skills
2 1,114 (19.83%) Finance
3 645 (11.48%) Analytical Skills
4 533 (9.49%) Public Sector
5 290 (5.16%) Banking
6 253 (4.50%) Legal
7 252 (4.48%) Organisational Skills
8 149 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
9 110 (1.96%) Manufacturing
10 102 (1.82%) Presentation Skills
11 95 (1.69%) Law
12 92 (1.64%) Marketing
13 89 (1.58%) Telecoms
14 81 (1.44%) Retail
15 78 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 74 (1.32%) Military
17 64 (1.14%) Local Government
18 56 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
19 53 (0.94%) Investment Banking
20 43 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 700 (12.46%) Architect
2 605 (10.77%) Analyst
3 530 (9.43%) Developer
4 470 (8.36%) Senior
5 368 (6.55%) IT Support
6 333 (5.93%) Lead
7 287 (5.11%) Consultant
8 257 (4.57%) Support Engineer
9 222 (3.95%) Data Engineer
10 210 (3.74%) Azure Engineer
11 191 (3.40%) Project Manager
11 191 (3.40%) Solutions Architect
12 185 (3.29%) IT Engineer
13 179 (3.19%) Business Analyst
14 173 (3.08%) Administrator
15 169 (3.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 138 (2.46%) IT Support Engineer
17 113 (2.01%) Security Engineer
18 111 (1.98%) DevOps Engineer
19 103 (1.83%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (4.54%) .NET
2 170 (3.03%) REST
3 129 (2.30%) Microsoft Graph
4 115 (2.05%) OAuth
5 101 (1.80%) PySpark
5 101 (1.80%) SAML
6 86 (1.53%) JSON
7 83 (1.48%) OpenID
8 82 (1.46%) React
9 75 (1.33%) LDAP
10 68 (1.21%) Web Services
11 64 (1.14%) Middleware
12 56 (1.00%) AngularJS
13 55 (0.98%) HTML
14 54 (0.96%) OAuth2
15 51 (0.91%) ARM Templates
15 51 (0.91%) Kafka
15 51 (0.91%) Node.js
16 49 (0.87%) CSS
17 47 (0.84%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 291 (5.18%) Onboarding
2 226 (4.02%) Cloud Native
3 188 (3.35%) Product Ownership
4 128 (2.28%) Management Information System
5 107 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
6 97 (1.73%) Data Centre
7 91 (1.62%) Legacy Systems
8 89 (1.58%) Hybrid Cloud
9 88 (1.57%) AI Agents
9 88 (1.57%) Self-Motivation
10 83 (1.48%) PKI
10 83 (1.48%) Security Posture
11 74 (1.32%) Low-Code
12 73 (1.30%) Replication
13 71 (1.26%) Data Structures
14 67 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
15 60 (1.07%) Virtual Team
16 54 (0.96%) Driving Licence
17 50 (0.89%) NHS
18 47 (0.84%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,217 (21.66%) Windows
2 322 (5.73%) Windows 10
3 275 (4.89%) Windows Server
4 270 (4.81%) Linux
5 103 (1.83%) Android
6 98 (1.74%) Apple iOS
7 92 (1.64%) Mac OS
8 45 (0.80%) Windows 7
9 44 (0.78%) Windows Server 2016
10 43 (0.77%) Unix
11 39 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 28 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
13 26 (0.46%) VMS
14 25 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
15 16 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
16 10 (0.18%) CentOS
17 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
18 7 (0.12%) AIX
19 5 (0.089%) Solaris
20 4 (0.071%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 972 (17.30%) Problem-Solving
2 885 (15.75%) Agile
3 883 (15.71%) DevOps
4 790 (14.06%) Migration
5 754 (13.42%) CI/CD
6 644 (11.46%) Business Intelligence
7 621 (11.05%) Analytics
8 553 (9.84%) AI
9 543 (9.66%) Stakeholder Management
10 504 (8.97%) Continuous Improvement
11 467 (8.31%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 446 (7.94%) Customer Service
13 445 (7.92%) ITIL
14 412 (7.33%) Data Modelling
15 368 (6.55%) Roadmaps
16 364 (6.48%) Cybersecurity
17 339 (6.03%) Infrastructure as Code
18 330 (5.87%) Decision-Making
19 315 (5.61%) Project Delivery
20 311 (5.53%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 729 (12.97%) SQL
2 639 (11.37%) PowerShell
3 614 (10.93%) Python
4 275 (4.89%) C#
5 203 (3.61%) JavaScript
6 180 (3.20%) Java
7 128 (2.28%) Bicep
8 90 (1.60%) Kusto Query Language
9 86 (1.53%) Bash
10 83 (1.48%) T-SQL
11 78 (1.39%) TypeScript
12 69 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 34 (0.61%) PL/SQL
14 29 (0.52%) VBA
15 28 (0.50%) C++
16 24 (0.43%) VB
17 20 (0.36%) Scala
18 19 (0.34%) R
19 16 (0.28%) Shell Script
19 16 (0.28%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,090 (19.40%) Security Cleared
2 849 (15.11%) SC Cleared
3 562 (10.00%) Degree
4 275 (4.89%) Microsoft Certification
5 196 (3.49%) DV Cleared
6 180 (3.20%) Azure Certification
7 130 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
8 98 (1.74%) CISSP
9 93 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
10 68 (1.21%) Cisco Certification
11 67 (1.19%) PMI Certification
12 62 (1.10%) PMP
13 56 (1.00%) Master's Degree
14 55 (0.98%) CISM
15 43 (0.77%) MCSE
16 36 (0.64%) AWS Certification
17 32 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
18 31 (0.55%) DBS Check
19 30 (0.53%) MCSA
20 29 (0.52%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 270 (4.81%) Data Quality
2 232 (4.13%) GDPR
3 185 (3.29%) QA
4 160 (2.85%) SLA
5 138 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 110 (1.96%) NIST
7 105 (1.87%) PMO
8 76 (1.35%) Accessibility
9 69 (1.23%) Cyber Essentials
10 48 (0.85%) NCSC
11 38 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.55%) GRC
13 28 (0.50%) PCI DSS
14 21 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 20 (0.36%) MiFID
16 17 (0.30%) NIST 800
17 15 (0.27%) WCAG
18 13 (0.23%) FINRA
19 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
20 11 (0.20%) GxP
System Software
1 1,084 (19.29%) Active Directory
2 238 (4.24%) Docker
3 191 (3.40%) VMware Infrastructure
4 97 (1.73%) Hyper-V
5 76 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
6 67 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
7 52 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
8 38 (0.68%) vSphere
9 28 (0.50%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.30%) Firmware
11 17 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
12 7 (0.12%) RACF
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.089%) IAG
14 5 (0.089%) NFS
14 5 (0.089%) Snort
15 4 (0.071%) KVM
15 4 (0.071%) Squid
15 4 (0.071%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 430 (7.65%) Microsoft Intune
2 366 (6.51%) Terraform
3 266 (4.73%) Kubernetes
4 205 (3.65%) SCCM
5 132 (2.35%) Ansible
6 121 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
7 76 (1.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (0.77%) vCenter Server
9 40 (0.71%) Jamf Pro
10 39 (0.69%) Grafana
11 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 23 (0.41%) SCOM
13 21 (0.37%) FortiGate
13 21 (0.37%) Puppet
14 17 (0.30%) WSUS
15 16 (0.28%) AirWatch
16 14 (0.25%) QRadar
17 12 (0.21%) CASB
17 12 (0.21%) ServiceCenter
18 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 263 (4.68%) ServiceNow
2 259 (4.61%) VMware
3 216 (3.84%) Databricks
3 216 (3.84%) SAP
4 203 (3.61%) Oracle
5 173 (3.08%) Cisco
6 155 (2.76%) Google
7 124 (2.21%) Citrix
8 100 (1.78%) Salesforce
9 93 (1.66%) OpenAI
10 89 (1.58%) Splunk
11 78 (1.39%) Foundry
12 66 (1.17%) Apple
13 51 (0.91%) CrowdStrike
14 47 (0.84%) HP
15 46 (0.82%) Adobe
16 45 (0.80%) Palo Alto
17 42 (0.75%) Informatica
17 42 (0.75%) Okta
18 40 (0.71%) CyberArk