Microsoft Contracts

Microsoft
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for knowledge and experience of Microsoft products and/or services. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Microsoft over the 6 months to 7 December 2023 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 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
7 Dec 2023
Same period 2022 Same period 2021
Rank 7 11 10
Rank change year-on-year +4 -1 +2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,967 9,487 10,247
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 13.29% 12.36% 11.44%
As % of the Vendors category 29.30% 29.74% 28.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,128 6,622 6,996
10th Percentile £198 £190 £168
25th Percentile £325 £356 £332
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £465
Median % change year-on-year - +7.53% +9.41%
75th Percentile £619 £612 £575
90th Percentile £700 £700 £660
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £400
% change year-on-year - +12.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 324 502
10th Percentile £14.16 £12.00 £10.86
25th Percentile £16.40 £15.10 £13.28
Median hourly rate £23.00 £20.00 £17.11
Median % change year-on-year +15.00% +16.87% -0.80%
75th Percentile £46.18 £50.63 £25.50
90th Percentile £60.00 £65.75 £51.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.00 £18.75 £16.13
% change year-on-year +17.33% +16.28% -2.27%

All Vendors
UK

Microsoft is in the Vendor Products and Services category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 20,363 31,898 35,442
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 45.37% 41.55% 39.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,960 21,158 23,178
10th Percentile £252 £288 £265
25th Percentile £405 £419 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% +7.50% +7.53%
75th Percentile £638 £645 £600
90th Percentile £725 £750 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £495 £450
% change year-on-year +1.01% +10.00% +5.88%
Number of hourly rates quoted 693 793 1,001
10th Percentile £15.34 £13.33 £11.50
25th Percentile £19.06 £16.54 £14.25
Median hourly rate £43.84 £25.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.36% +28.21% -19.17%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.23 £42.75
90th Percentile £76.53 £70.00 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.80 £22.00 £18.00
% change year-on-year +90.00% +22.22% -15.86%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Microsoft as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Microsoft.

Daily rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Microsoft.

Hourly rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 7 December 2023.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Top 18 Contract 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 7 December 2023. 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 +3 5,133 £500 - 5,045
UK excluding London -1 2,955 £450 - 3,904
London +4 2,410 £525 -3.23% 1,402
Work from Home +5 2,161 £500 - 2,424
South East +1 837 £475 +2.59% 1,052
North of England +3 676 £425 - 970
Midlands +1 408 £425 -3.95% 732
South West -3 397 £525 +6.33% 460
North West +1 393 £400 -5.88% 513
Scotland +3 309 £425 - 224
West Midlands +2 300 £425 -5.56% 483
Yorkshire +2 254 £450 +12.50% 335
East of England 0 241 £500 +11.11% 392
East Midlands -1 102 £450 +12.50% 245
Wales -1 78 £335 -21.18% 128
North East +11 27 £183 -63.50% 137
Northern Ireland +2 27 £230 -42.50% 60
Channel Islands -1 2 £288 -19.16%

Microsoft
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 594 (9.95%) SharePoint
2 164 (2.75%) MS Exchange
3 147 (2.46%) Confluence
4 69 (1.16%) IIS
5 53 (0.89%) Skype for Business
6 45 (0.75%) Apache
7 44 (0.74%) CMS
8 22 (0.37%) nginx
8 22 (0.37%) Tomcat
9 17 (0.28%) SAS
10 16 (0.27%) Apache Spark
11 14 (0.23%) MS Project Server
11 14 (0.23%) WebSphere
12 11 (0.18%) Apache Airflow
12 11 (0.18%) IBM Notes
13 9 (0.15%) SharePoint 2013
14 8 (0.13%) Content Management Server
14 8 (0.13%) OpenStack
14 8 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 1,064 (17.83%) Microsoft Office
2 607 (10.17%) Microsoft Excel
3 275 (4.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 203 (3.40%) Microsoft Project
5 155 (2.60%) MS Visio
6 37 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 13 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 8 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.12%) Trello
10 5 (0.084%) AutoCAD
11 4 (0.067%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.067%) Adobe Premiere
11 4 (0.067%) Camtasia
11 4 (0.067%) Sketch
11 4 (0.067%) SPSS
12 3 (0.050%) InDesign
12 3 (0.050%) Revit
12 3 (0.050%) Siemens NX
13 2 (0.034%) Adobe Illustrator
13 2 (0.034%) InCopy
Business Applications
1 184 (3.08%) Dynamics CRM
2 57 (0.96%) Dynamics AX
3 26 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 22 (0.37%) NetSuite
5 21 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
6 19 (0.32%) Dynamics NAV
7 15 (0.25%) assyst
8 14 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 14 (0.23%) SAP HCM
9 11 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
10 7 (0.12%) Dynamics GP
10 7 (0.12%) Loan IQ
10 7 (0.12%) SAP GTS
10 7 (0.12%) SAP Payroll
10 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
11 6 (0.10%) SAP Oil and Gas
12 5 (0.084%) iTrent
12 5 (0.084%) Oracle Payroll
12 5 (0.084%) Salesforce CRM
12 5 (0.084%) SAP PLM
Cloud Services
1 2,130 (35.70%) Azure
2 1,474 (24.70%) Microsoft 365
3 639 (10.71%) Power Platform
4 469 (7.86%) Dynamics 365
5 462 (7.74%) AWS
6 417 (6.99%) Entra ID
7 337 (5.65%) Azure DevOps
8 240 (4.02%) PowerApps
9 199 (3.34%) Power Automate
10 196 (3.28%) SaaS
11 171 (2.87%) OneDrive
12 145 (2.43%) IaaS
13 143 (2.40%) GCP
14 136 (2.28%) Azure Data Factory
15 133 (2.23%) PaaS
16 130 (2.18%) GitHub
17 94 (1.58%) Azure Monitor
18 90 (1.51%) Serverless
19 89 (1.49%) Cloud Computing
20 88 (1.47%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 408 (6.84%) Firewall
2 361 (6.05%) DNS
3 244 (4.09%) VPN
4 229 (3.84%) DHCP
5 219 (3.67%) WAN
6 213 (3.57%) LAN
7 175 (2.93%) TCP/IP
8 148 (2.48%) Network Security
9 118 (1.98%) Wireless
10 117 (1.96%) SAN
11 89 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
12 73 (1.22%) Skype
13 70 (1.17%) VLAN
14 61 (1.02%) Internet
14 61 (1.02%) VoIP
15 50 (0.84%) HTTP
15 50 (0.84%) Remote Desktop
16 46 (0.77%) Unified Communications
17 37 (0.62%) SD-WAN
18 34 (0.57%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 500 (8.38%) SQL Server
2 452 (7.57%) Power BI
3 142 (2.38%) Data Warehouse
4 124 (2.08%) Data Lake
5 113 (1.89%) Azure SQL Database
6 101 (1.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 73 (1.22%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 63 (1.06%) Relational Database
9 60 (1.01%) PostgreSQL
10 58 (0.97%) NoSQL
11 57 (0.96%) MySQL
12 54 (0.90%) Tableau
13 48 (0.80%) Big Data
14 44 (0.74%) Metadata
15 41 (0.69%) MongoDB
16 37 (0.62%) Oracle Database
17 31 (0.52%) Power Query
18 28 (0.47%) GIS
18 28 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 24 (0.40%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 289 (4.84%) JIRA
2 170 (2.85%) Git
3 99 (1.66%) Jenkins
4 79 (1.32%) GitLab
5 69 (1.16%) Visual Studio
6 38 (0.64%) Selenium
7 37 (0.62%) Team Foundation Server
8 32 (0.54%) TeamCity
9 30 (0.50%) SpecFlow
10 28 (0.47%) Octopus Deploy
11 25 (0.42%) ERwin
12 24 (0.40%) Postman
13 19 (0.32%) Maven
14 18 (0.30%) Subversion
15 16 (0.27%) Artifactory
15 16 (0.27%) Cypress.io
15 16 (0.27%) Hudson
15 16 (0.27%) MSI
15 16 (0.27%) NUnit
15 16 (0.27%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,712 (28.69%) Social Skills
2 1,070 (17.93%) Finance
3 602 (10.09%) Public Sector
4 598 (10.02%) Analytical Skills
5 289 (4.84%) Banking
6 222 (3.72%) Organisational Skills
7 221 (3.70%) Telecoms
8 198 (3.32%) Marketing
9 176 (2.95%) Legal
10 156 (2.61%) Presentation Skills
11 152 (2.55%) Manufacturing
12 105 (1.76%) Law
13 95 (1.59%) Retail
14 94 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
15 88 (1.47%) Investment Banking
16 72 (1.21%) Local Government
17 61 (1.02%) Electronics
18 60 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
19 58 (0.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
20 57 (0.96%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 817 (13.69%) Analyst
2 589 (9.87%) Developer
3 580 (9.72%) Architect
4 420 (7.04%) Senior
5 387 (6.49%) Support Engineer
6 322 (5.40%) Consultant
7 289 (4.84%) Project Manager
8 282 (4.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 274 (4.59%) Lead
10 224 (3.75%) Azure Engineer
11 200 (3.35%) Service Analyst
12 199 (3.34%) IT Support
13 192 (3.22%) Solutions Architect
14 174 (2.92%) Service Desk Analyst
15 147 (2.46%) Administrator
15 147 (2.46%) Desktop Support
16 128 (2.15%) Business Analyst
17 127 (2.13%) Support Analyst
18 120 (2.01%) IT Engineer
19 118 (1.98%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 385 (6.45%) .NET
2 135 (2.26%) HTML
3 131 (2.20%) REST
4 124 (2.08%) .NET Framework
4 124 (2.08%) JSON
5 116 (1.94%) LDAP
6 114 (1.91%) CSS
7 110 (1.84%) XML
8 96 (1.61%) .NET Core
9 91 (1.53%) Web Services
10 86 (1.44%) React
11 85 (1.42%) AngularJS
12 71 (1.19%) SAML
13 68 (1.14%) ASP.NET
14 62 (1.04%) OAuth
15 59 (0.99%) Entity Framework
16 52 (0.87%) Kafka
17 50 (0.84%) Node.js
18 47 (0.79%) OpenID
19 44 (0.74%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 279 (4.68%) Management Information System
2 184 (3.08%) Data Centre
3 179 (3.00%) Product Ownership
4 164 (2.75%) PKI
5 132 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
6 99 (1.66%) Onboarding
7 92 (1.54%) Data Protection Act
7 92 (1.54%) Driving Licence
8 86 (1.44%) NHS
9 69 (1.16%) Public Cloud
10 62 (1.04%) Video Conferencing
11 55 (0.92%) Cloud Native
12 51 (0.85%) Data Structures
13 50 (0.84%) Clustering
14 49 (0.82%) Cyber Threat
15 48 (0.80%) Hybrid Cloud
15 48 (0.80%) Virtual Team
16 46 (0.77%) Enterprise Software
17 45 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
18 44 (0.74%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 1,660 (27.82%) Windows
2 552 (9.25%) Windows 10
3 518 (8.68%) Windows Server
4 441 (7.39%) Linux
5 160 (2.68%) Windows 7
6 141 (2.36%) Windows Server 2012
7 124 (2.08%) Apple iOS
8 106 (1.78%) Unix
9 102 (1.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 101 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
11 93 (1.56%) Windows Server 2019
12 91 (1.53%) Android
13 78 (1.31%) Mac OS
14 52 (0.87%) Windows Server 2008
15 44 (0.74%) Ubuntu
16 25 (0.42%) VMS
17 23 (0.39%) Solaris
18 21 (0.35%) Mac OS X
18 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
19 18 (0.30%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 978 (16.39%) Agile
2 867 (14.53%) Problem-Solving
3 696 (11.66%) DevOps
4 647 (10.84%) ITIL
5 608 (10.19%) Migration
6 564 (9.45%) Customer Service
7 539 (9.03%) Business Intelligence
8 494 (8.28%) Project Management
9 379 (6.35%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 370 (6.20%) Analytics
11 355 (5.95%) CI/CD
12 334 (5.60%) Stakeholder Management
13 314 (5.26%) Roadmaps
14 308 (5.16%) Cybersecurity
15 296 (4.96%) Project Delivery
16 284 (4.76%) Data Modelling
17 270 (4.52%) Service Management
18 249 (4.17%) CRM
19 243 (4.07%) Change Management
20 242 (4.06%) Service Delivery
Programming Languages
1 800 (13.41%) SQL
2 661 (11.08%) PowerShell
3 423 (7.09%) Python
4 374 (6.27%) C#
5 235 (3.94%) JavaScript
6 185 (3.10%) Java
7 103 (1.73%) Bash
8 94 (1.58%) T-SQL
9 68 (1.14%) TypeScript
10 50 (0.84%) C++
11 38 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 38 (0.64%) Shell Script
12 37 (0.62%) PL/SQL
13 33 (0.55%) Kusto Query Language
13 33 (0.55%) R
14 32 (0.54%) Bicep
15 30 (0.50%) C
16 29 (0.49%) VBA
17 21 (0.35%) VB
18 20 (0.34%) Perl
Qualifications
1 985 (16.51%) Security Cleared
2 757 (12.69%) Degree
3 635 (10.64%) SC Cleared
4 373 (6.25%) DV Cleared
5 276 (4.63%) Microsoft Certification
6 180 (3.02%) Azure Certification
7 128 (2.15%) Computer Science Degree
8 106 (1.78%) CISSP
9 97 (1.63%) Cisco Certification
10 74 (1.24%) ITIL Certification
11 65 (1.09%) CCNA
12 59 (0.99%) MCSE
13 56 (0.94%) MCP
14 54 (0.90%) CISM
15 46 (0.77%) Master's Degree
16 45 (0.75%) DBS Check
17 43 (0.72%) BPSS Clearance
17 43 (0.72%) PMP
18 41 (0.69%) AWS Certification
18 41 (0.69%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 254 (4.26%) SLA
2 160 (2.68%) QA
3 131 (2.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 130 (2.18%) PMO
5 115 (1.93%) NIST
6 109 (1.83%) Data Quality
7 66 (1.11%) Accessibility
8 65 (1.09%) GDPR
9 45 (0.75%) Cyber Essentials
10 35 (0.59%) PCI DSS
10 35 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 29 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 27 (0.45%) Disclosure Scotland
12 27 (0.45%) JSP 440
12 27 (0.45%) NCSC
13 25 (0.42%) ISO 9001
14 21 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
15 16 (0.27%) GRC
16 14 (0.23%) ISO 22301
17 13 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 1,354 (22.69%) Active Directory
2 382 (6.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 169 (2.83%) Docker
4 144 (2.41%) Hyper-V
5 121 (2.03%) Virtual Desktop
6 97 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
7 92 (1.54%) VMware ESXi
8 81 (1.36%) vSphere
9 39 (0.65%) BitLocker
9 39 (0.65%) VMware NSX
10 37 (0.62%) Firmware
11 30 (0.50%) XenDesktop
12 23 (0.39%) XenApp
13 22 (0.37%) Microsoft App-V
14 18 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
15 16 (0.27%) OpenAM
16 14 (0.23%) Terminal Services
17 13 (0.22%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 11 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
19 8 (0.13%) KVM
Systems Management
1 381 (6.39%) Microsoft Intune
1 381 (6.39%) SCCM
2 246 (4.12%) Terraform
3 218 (3.65%) Kubernetes
4 171 (2.87%) Ansible
5 97 (1.63%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 84 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
7 72 (1.21%) SCOM
8 54 (0.90%) vCenter Server
9 53 (0.89%) WSUS
10 50 (0.84%) Prometheus
11 44 (0.74%) Grafana
12 43 (0.72%) Puppet
13 39 (0.65%) Jamf Pro
14 38 (0.64%) Progress Chef
15 24 (0.40%) Nagios
16 22 (0.37%) Microsoft Clustering
16 22 (0.37%) OPNET
17 21 (0.35%) McAfee ePO
17 21 (0.35%) vRealize
Vendors
1 545 (9.13%) VMware
2 321 (5.38%) Oracle
3 298 (4.99%) Cisco
3 298 (4.99%) SAP
4 275 (4.61%) ServiceNow
5 250 (4.19%) Citrix
6 152 (2.55%) HP
7 136 (2.28%) Apple
8 132 (2.21%) Google
9 131 (2.20%) Red Hat
10 108 (1.81%) Salesforce
11 98 (1.64%) Splunk
12 82 (1.37%) Palo Alto
13 81 (1.36%) Databricks
14 74 (1.24%) Atlassian
14 74 (1.24%) Dell
15 61 (1.02%) IBM
15 61 (1.02%) Remedy
16 59 (0.99%) McAfee
17 58 (0.97%) Adobe