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 20 July 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
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,315 4,557 5,474
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.96% 13.89% 13.11%
As % of the Vendors category 29.04% 29.23% 30.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,135 2,927 3,583
10th Percentile £213 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £689
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £431 £450
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 356 429
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.13 £22.41 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.72% +38.06% -27.87%
75th Percentile £35.45 £31.00 £27.50
90th Percentile £70.26 £63.40 £62.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.13
% change year-on-year +3.68% +25.61% -15.13%

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 21,745 15,591 18,093
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.20% 47.53% 43.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,504 9,536 11,354
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £403 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,091 765 1,013
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.75 £12.82
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.50
Median hourly rate £34.87 £25.15 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.65% -3.27% -37.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.98 £22.41 £25.00
% change year-on-year +51.65% -10.37% -22.24%

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 20 July 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 20 July 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 20 July 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 0 5,473 £495 +4.21% 2,790
UK excluding London -1 3,362 £450 +4.41% 2,438
London -2 2,395 £513 +2.45% 809
Work from Home +3 1,631 £500 - 1,029
South East -1 830 £475 - 800
North of England -5 827 £465 +9.41% 602
Midlands -2 587 £447 +16.10% 377
North West -2 466 £450 +4.41% 305
West Midlands -3 413 £450 +12.50% 200
South West -1 412 £475 +8.57% 268
Yorkshire -5 339 £488 +11.43% 214
Scotland +6 317 £450 - 114
East of England 0 278 £375 -25.00% 268
East Midlands +2 166 £401 +9.26% 177
Wales 0 112 £413 +39.83% 73
Northern Ireland +1 33 £350 -6.04% 22
North East -37 28 £450 +32.35% 97
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 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
1 701 (11.10%) SharePoint
2 386 (6.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 138 (2.19%) Confluence
4 38 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.55%) Apache
6 30 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 17 (0.27%) CMS
9 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
10 12 (0.19%) Skype for Business
11 11 (0.17%) SAS
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 9 (0.14%) nginx
14 6 (0.095%) Camunda
14 6 (0.095%) Jupyter
15 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
15 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
15 5 (0.079%) SharePoint 2013
16 4 (0.063%) Liferay
16 4 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 589 (9.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 571 (9.04%) Microsoft Office
3 253 (4.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 158 (2.50%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.69%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.40%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.048%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.048%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.048%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) InDesign
12 2 (0.032%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.032%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 230 (3.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.29%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.19%) Primavera
9 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
9 9 (0.14%) SAP MM
9 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
10 8 (0.13%) Magento
11 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
11 7 (0.11%) Loan IQ
11 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
11 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
12 6 (0.095%) iTrent
12 6 (0.095%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,625 (41.57%) Azure
2 1,546 (24.48%) Microsoft 365
3 1,067 (16.90%) Power Platform
4 915 (14.49%) Entra ID
5 572 (9.06%) AWS
6 508 (8.04%) Dynamics 365
7 502 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
8 363 (5.75%) Power Automate
9 328 (5.19%) Microsoft Copilot
9 328 (5.19%) PowerApps
10 310 (4.91%) Microsoft Purview
11 259 (4.10%) GitHub
12 236 (3.74%) SaaS
13 231 (3.66%) OneDrive
14 212 (3.36%) GCP
15 162 (2.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 158 (2.50%) Azure Data Factory
17 150 (2.38%) PaaS
18 148 (2.34%) Serverless
19 143 (2.26%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 341 (5.40%) DNS
2 299 (4.73%) Firewall
3 241 (3.82%) VPN
4 207 (3.28%) DHCP
5 175 (2.77%) TCP/IP
6 145 (2.30%) WAN
7 144 (2.28%) Wi-Fi
8 136 (2.15%) LAN
9 133 (2.11%) Network Security
10 57 (0.90%) VLAN
11 44 (0.70%) SAN
11 44 (0.70%) Wireless
12 40 (0.63%) SSL
13 39 (0.62%) MPLS
14 38 (0.60%) Kerberos
15 36 (0.57%) Unified Communications
16 32 (0.51%) VoIP
17 31 (0.49%) SD-WAN
18 30 (0.48%) Internet
19 26 (0.41%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 684 (10.83%) Power BI
2 355 (5.62%) SQL Server
3 185 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 139 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (2.00%) Data Lake
5 126 (2.00%) Metadata
6 118 (1.87%) Azure SQL Database
7 73 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 72 (1.14%) Relational Database
9 63 (1.00%) MySQL
10 58 (0.92%) Power Query
11 52 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 44 (0.70%) NoSQL
12 44 (0.70%) Oracle Database
13 41 (0.65%) Star Schema
14 37 (0.59%) Tableau
15 33 (0.52%) Delta Lake
15 33 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
16 26 (0.41%) Big Data
17 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 319 (5.05%) JIRA
2 190 (3.01%) Git
3 84 (1.33%) Jenkins
4 56 (0.89%) GitLab
5 45 (0.71%) Visual Studio
6 31 (0.49%) MSI
7 27 (0.43%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) MLflow
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
10 15 (0.24%) Artifactory
10 15 (0.24%) ERwin
11 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
12 13 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
13 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
14 11 (0.17%) JUnit
14 11 (0.17%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,095 (33.17%) Social Skills
2 1,258 (19.92%) Finance
3 746 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
4 608 (9.63%) Public Sector
5 312 (4.94%) Banking
6 268 (4.24%) Organisational Skills
7 229 (3.63%) Legal
8 172 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
9 133 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 124 (1.96%) Manufacturing
11 114 (1.81%) Retail
12 104 (1.65%) Telecoms
13 103 (1.63%) Law
14 98 (1.55%) Marketing
15 85 (1.35%) Military
16 79 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
17 77 (1.22%) Local Government
18 70 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
19 62 (0.98%) Investment Banking
20 46 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 744 (11.78%) Architect
2 673 (10.66%) Analyst
3 593 (9.39%) Developer
4 534 (8.46%) Senior
5 442 (7.00%) Lead
6 389 (6.16%) IT Support
7 385 (6.10%) Consultant
8 331 (5.24%) Support Engineer
9 238 (3.77%) Data Engineer
10 235 (3.72%) IT Engineer
11 232 (3.67%) Solutions Architect
12 220 (3.48%) Azure Engineer
12 220 (3.48%) Project Manager
13 207 (3.28%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 188 (2.98%) IT Support Engineer
15 185 (2.93%) Administrator
16 177 (2.80%) Business Analyst
17 147 (2.33%) Cloud Engineer
18 121 (1.92%) Security Engineer
19 111 (1.76%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (4.64%) .NET
2 226 (3.58%) REST
3 130 (2.06%) Microsoft Graph
4 120 (1.90%) JSON
5 109 (1.73%) OAuth
6 100 (1.58%) PySpark
7 89 (1.41%) OpenID
7 89 (1.41%) SAML
8 88 (1.39%) Web Services
9 85 (1.35%) XML
10 80 (1.27%) React
11 78 (1.24%) LDAP
12 77 (1.22%) .NET Framework
13 65 (1.03%) SailPoint
14 64 (1.01%) HTML
14 64 (1.01%) RESTful
15 62 (0.98%) OAuth2
16 61 (0.97%) Node.js
17 60 (0.95%) SOAP
18 59 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 392 (6.21%) Onboarding
2 303 (4.80%) Cloud Native
3 187 (2.96%) Product Ownership
4 169 (2.68%) Management Information System
5 133 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
6 132 (2.09%) Enterprise Software
7 126 (2.00%) Data Centre
8 121 (1.92%) Hybrid Cloud
8 121 (1.92%) PKI
9 119 (1.88%) AI Agents
10 108 (1.71%) Security Posture
11 93 (1.47%) Data Structures
12 91 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
13 82 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 81 (1.28%) Virtual Team
15 72 (1.14%) Replication
16 70 (1.11%) Low-Code
17 67 (1.06%) Distributed Systems
18 60 (0.95%) Driving Licence
19 55 (0.87%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,320 (20.90%) Windows
2 338 (5.35%) Windows Server
3 320 (5.07%) Windows 10
4 294 (4.66%) Linux
5 134 (2.12%) Mac OS
6 116 (1.84%) Android
7 110 (1.74%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.70%) Unix
10 38 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
11 35 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
12 32 (0.51%) Windows 7
13 31 (0.49%) VMS
14 22 (0.35%) Ubuntu
15 20 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
16 12 (0.19%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
19 6 (0.095%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,078 (17.07%) Problem-Solving
2 997 (15.79%) DevOps
3 958 (15.17%) Agile
4 885 (14.01%) Migration
5 827 (13.10%) Stakeholder Management
6 815 (12.91%) CI/CD
7 712 (11.27%) AI
8 696 (11.02%) Business Intelligence
9 669 (10.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 658 (10.42%) Continuous Improvement
11 651 (10.31%) Analytics
12 576 (9.12%) ITIL
13 490 (7.76%) Customer Service
14 472 (7.47%) Data Modelling
15 452 (7.16%) Roadmaps
16 435 (6.89%) Cybersecurity
17 432 (6.84%) Infrastructure as Code
18 410 (6.49%) Decision-Making
19 395 (6.25%) Project Delivery
19 395 (6.25%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 799 (12.65%) SQL
2 680 (10.77%) PowerShell
3 649 (10.28%) Python
4 305 (4.83%) C#
5 230 (3.64%) JavaScript
6 203 (3.21%) Java
7 164 (2.60%) Bicep
8 112 (1.77%) T-SQL
9 111 (1.76%) Bash
10 90 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.36%) TypeScript
12 74 (1.17%) Kusto Query Language
13 40 (0.63%) VBA
14 35 (0.55%) C++
15 28 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 25 (0.40%) VB
17 16 (0.25%) R
17 16 (0.25%) Scala
17 16 (0.25%) Shell Script
17 16 (0.25%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,284 (20.33%) Security Cleared
2 974 (15.42%) SC Cleared
3 614 (9.72%) Degree
4 322 (5.10%) Microsoft Certification
5 241 (3.82%) DV Cleared
6 218 (3.45%) Azure Certification
7 139 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
8 120 (1.90%) CISSP
9 119 (1.88%) Computer Science Degree
10 118 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
11 79 (1.25%) PMP
12 72 (1.14%) PMI Certification
13 66 (1.05%) CISM
14 64 (1.01%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.87%) Master's Degree
16 50 (0.79%) CCNP
17 46 (0.73%) DBS Check
18 45 (0.71%) CCNA
19 43 (0.68%) MCSE
20 40 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 331 (5.24%) Data Quality
2 222 (3.52%) GDPR
3 215 (3.40%) QA
4 178 (2.82%) SLA
5 167 (2.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 143 (2.26%) PMO
7 142 (2.25%) NIST
8 102 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 82 (1.30%) Cyber Essentials
10 74 (1.17%) NCSC
11 43 (0.68%) GRC
12 35 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 31 (0.49%) WCAG
14 30 (0.48%) PCI DSS
15 26 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 16 (0.25%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
18 13 (0.21%) GxP
System Software
1 1,208 (19.13%) Active Directory
2 232 (3.67%) Docker
3 211 (3.34%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.69%) Hyper-V
5 93 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 91 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (0.97%) vSphere
8 59 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.44%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.35%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.29%) Firmware
13 8 (0.13%) NFS
14 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 7 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.079%) RACF
15 5 (0.079%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.063%) Snort
16 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 494 (7.82%) Microsoft Intune
2 430 (6.81%) Terraform
3 290 (4.59%) Kubernetes
4 220 (3.48%) SCCM
5 150 (2.38%) Ansible
6 125 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
7 64 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
8 55 (0.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 55 (0.87%) vCenter Server
9 49 (0.78%) Grafana
10 38 (0.60%) Prometheus
11 35 (0.55%) SCOM
12 23 (0.36%) Puppet
13 20 (0.32%) QRadar
14 18 (0.29%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.29%) WSUS
15 14 (0.22%) Progress Chef
16 12 (0.19%) Argo
16 12 (0.19%) Avamar
17 11 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 420 (6.65%) ServiceNow
2 298 (4.72%) Oracle
3 290 (4.59%) VMware
4 254 (4.02%) SAP
5 211 (3.34%) Databricks
6 203 (3.21%) Cisco
6 203 (3.21%) Google
7 126 (2.00%) Salesforce
8 109 (1.73%) Citrix
9 97 (1.54%) Splunk
10 95 (1.50%) Apple
11 80 (1.27%) Foundry
12 77 (1.22%) OpenAI
13 75 (1.19%) Okta
14 72 (1.14%) CyberArk
15 68 (1.08%) CrowdStrike
16 59 (0.93%) Red Hat
17 54 (0.86%) BeyondTrust
18 47 (0.74%) Zscaler
19 46 (0.73%) Adobe