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 16 June 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
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,783 4,072 5,629
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.52% 13.75% 12.92%
As % of the Vendors category 28.31% 28.87% 30.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,825 2,629 3,657
10th Percentile £213 £212 £195
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £461
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.86% +2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 370 295 487
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.10
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.29
Median hourly rate £21.00 £20.00 £15.97
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +25.23% -36.12%
75th Percentile £35.15 £30.63 £25.25
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.00 £59.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +9.64% +25.80% -25.00%

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 20,424 14,104 18,400
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.68% 47.61% 42.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,835 8,673 11,415
10th Percentile £313 £280 £270
25th Percentile £413 £401 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £515
Median % change year-on-year - -2.91% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,048 645 1,150
10th Percentile £15.36 £14.84 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.35 £14.50
Median hourly rate £33.98 £25.50 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +33.25% +7.14% -44.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £53.95 £59.30
90th Percentile £79.65 £69.29 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.25 £23.00 £22.50
% change year-on-year +35.87% +2.22% -43.15%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 5,056 £495 +4.21% 3,485
UK excluding London -1 3,034 £450 +5.88% 2,898
London -3 2,248 £510 -1.45% 1,078
Work from Home -1 1,468 £500 - 1,446
North of England -4 786 £454 +6.82% 679
South East -2 714 £475 +4.40% 883
Midlands -5 509 £450 +12.50% 456
North West -3 412 £445 +4.71% 387
South West -2 371 £470 +10.59% 364
West Midlands -9 360 £450 +12.50% 243
Yorkshire -3 353 £475 +15.15% 207
East of England 0 297 £375 -25.00% 317
Scotland +3 255 £450 +4.71% 129
East Midlands 0 142 £424 +11.51% 214
Wales +2 98 £370 +23.33% 81
Northern Ireland +2 27 £350 +7.69% 75
North East -42 23 £450 +32.35% 90
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 +84.87%

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
1 624 (10.79%) SharePoint
2 386 (6.67%) Microsoft Exchange
3 114 (1.97%) Confluence
4 37 (0.64%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.50%) Apache
6 26 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.29%) CMS
7 17 (0.29%) HCL Notes
7 17 (0.29%) IIS
8 14 (0.24%) SAS
8 14 (0.24%) Skype for Business
9 8 (0.14%) Mendix
10 6 (0.10%) Camunda
10 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
10 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
11 5 (0.086%) nginx
11 5 (0.086%) OpenEdge
11 5 (0.086%) SharePoint 2013
12 4 (0.069%) Appian
12 4 (0.069%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 537 (9.29%) Microsoft Office
2 513 (8.87%) Microsoft Excel
3 222 (3.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 119 (2.06%) Microsoft Project
5 88 (1.52%) MS Visio
6 44 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.086%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.086%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.086%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.086%) Trello
10 3 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.052%) InDesign
10 3 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.035%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.035%) InfoPath
11 2 (0.035%) MicroStation
11 2 (0.035%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.035%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 203 (3.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
4 21 (0.36%) NetSuite
5 16 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.26%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.22%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.17%) Sage X3
10 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.14%) Maximo
11 8 (0.14%) Primavera
11 8 (0.14%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
13 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
13 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,455 (42.45%) Azure
2 1,475 (25.51%) Microsoft 365
3 994 (17.19%) Power Platform
4 794 (13.73%) Entra ID
5 488 (8.44%) AWS
6 455 (7.87%) Dynamics 365
7 454 (7.85%) Azure DevOps
8 333 (5.76%) Power Automate
9 320 (5.53%) Microsoft Purview
10 296 (5.12%) PowerApps
11 280 (4.84%) Microsoft Copilot
12 247 (4.27%) GitHub
13 233 (4.03%) OneDrive
14 212 (3.67%) SaaS
15 181 (3.13%) Azure Data Factory
16 180 (3.11%) GCP
17 168 (2.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 153 (2.65%) Serverless
19 144 (2.49%) PaaS
20 134 (2.32%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 302 (5.22%) DNS
2 264 (4.57%) Firewall
3 217 (3.75%) VPN
4 188 (3.25%) DHCP
5 148 (2.56%) WAN
6 135 (2.33%) Wi-Fi
7 126 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 123 (2.13%) LAN
9 119 (2.06%) Network Security
10 54 (0.93%) VLAN
11 49 (0.85%) Kerberos
12 46 (0.80%) SD-WAN
13 37 (0.64%) SAN
14 35 (0.61%) SSL
14 35 (0.61%) Wireless
15 31 (0.54%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.52%) VoIP
17 28 (0.48%) HTTP
18 26 (0.45%) Internet
18 26 (0.45%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 624 (10.79%) Power BI
2 287 (4.96%) SQL Server
3 178 (3.08%) Data Warehouse
4 157 (2.71%) Data Lake
5 122 (2.11%) Azure SQL Database
6 121 (2.09%) Metadata
7 113 (1.95%) PostgreSQL
8 74 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 68 (1.18%) Relational Database
10 56 (0.97%) Power Query
11 48 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 46 (0.80%) MySQL
12 46 (0.80%) NoSQL
13 43 (0.74%) Tableau
14 41 (0.71%) Delta Lake
14 41 (0.71%) Star Schema
15 35 (0.61%) Oracle Database
16 30 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 29 (0.50%) Spark SQL
18 25 (0.43%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 284 (4.91%) JIRA
2 168 (2.91%) Git
3 62 (1.07%) Jenkins
4 57 (0.99%) GitLab
5 35 (0.61%) Visual Studio
6 23 (0.40%) Artifactory
7 22 (0.38%) MSI
8 18 (0.31%) Eclipse
8 18 (0.31%) Selenium
9 16 (0.28%) ERwin
9 16 (0.28%) MLflow
10 14 (0.24%) Maven
11 13 (0.22%) JMeter
11 13 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
12 12 (0.21%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.21%) Postman
13 10 (0.17%) JUnit
13 10 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
14 9 (0.16%) Gatling
15 8 (0.14%) WebDriver
General
1 1,883 (32.56%) Social Skills
2 1,161 (20.08%) Finance
3 631 (10.91%) Analytical Skills
4 518 (8.96%) Public Sector
5 300 (5.19%) Banking
6 246 (4.25%) Legal
7 237 (4.10%) Organisational Skills
8 153 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
9 104 (1.80%) Manufacturing
10 102 (1.76%) Retail
11 98 (1.69%) Law
12 97 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 83 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
14 78 (1.35%) Marketing
14 78 (1.35%) Telecoms
15 69 (1.19%) Military
16 66 (1.14%) Local Government
17 64 (1.11%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
19 47 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 715 (12.36%) Architect
2 622 (10.76%) Analyst
3 521 (9.01%) Developer
4 477 (8.25%) Senior
5 373 (6.45%) Lead
6 368 (6.36%) IT Support
7 335 (5.79%) Consultant
8 276 (4.77%) Support Engineer
9 239 (4.13%) Data Engineer
10 216 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
11 204 (3.53%) Azure Engineer
12 200 (3.46%) Project Manager
13 196 (3.39%) IT Engineer
14 184 (3.18%) Business Analyst
15 175 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 167 (2.89%) Administrator
17 152 (2.63%) IT Support Engineer
18 122 (2.11%) Security Engineer
19 112 (1.94%) Cloud Engineer
20 105 (1.82%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 245 (4.24%) .NET
2 185 (3.20%) REST
3 141 (2.44%) Microsoft Graph
4 110 (1.90%) OAuth
5 108 (1.87%) PySpark
6 100 (1.73%) SAML
7 99 (1.71%) JSON
8 84 (1.45%) OpenID
9 76 (1.31%) LDAP
9 76 (1.31%) React
9 76 (1.31%) Web Services
10 59 (1.02%) Middleware
10 59 (1.02%) XML
11 56 (0.97%) SailPoint
12 55 (0.95%) Node.js
12 55 (0.95%) OAuth2
13 54 (0.93%) HTML
14 52 (0.90%) CSS
15 51 (0.88%) ARM Templates
16 49 (0.85%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 320 (5.53%) Onboarding
2 247 (4.27%) Cloud Native
3 170 (2.94%) Product Ownership
4 132 (2.28%) Management Information System
5 113 (1.95%) Data Centre
6 107 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
7 100 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
8 99 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
9 90 (1.56%) Security Posture
10 89 (1.54%) AI Agents
11 87 (1.50%) PKI
12 82 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
13 79 (1.37%) Data Structures
14 78 (1.35%) Replication
15 74 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
16 69 (1.19%) Low-Code
17 66 (1.14%) Virtual Team
18 50 (0.86%) Public Cloud
19 49 (0.85%) Distributed Systems
19 49 (0.85%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,244 (21.51%) Windows
2 318 (5.50%) Windows 10
3 303 (5.24%) Windows Server
4 254 (4.39%) Linux
5 120 (2.08%) Mac OS
6 112 (1.94%) Apple iOS
7 111 (1.92%) Android
8 43 (0.74%) Windows 7
9 40 (0.69%) Unix
10 37 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 37 (0.64%) Windows Server 2016
11 30 (0.52%) VMS
11 30 (0.52%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
13 15 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
14 14 (0.24%) Ubuntu
15 11 (0.19%) CentOS
16 8 (0.14%) SUSE
17 6 (0.10%) AIX
18 5 (0.086%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 977 (16.89%) Problem-Solving
2 928 (16.05%) DevOps
3 841 (14.54%) Agile
4 835 (14.44%) Migration
5 760 (13.14%) CI/CD
6 651 (11.26%) Business Intelligence
7 643 (11.12%) Stakeholder Management
8 621 (10.74%) Analytics
9 609 (10.53%) AI
10 532 (9.20%) Continuous Improvement
10 532 (9.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 494 (8.54%) ITIL
12 436 (7.54%) Data Modelling
13 425 (7.35%) Customer Service
14 406 (7.02%) Roadmaps
15 380 (6.57%) Cybersecurity
16 366 (6.33%) Decision-Making
17 352 (6.09%) Infrastructure as Code
18 346 (5.98%) Validation
19 340 (5.88%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 741 (12.81%) SQL
2 651 (11.26%) PowerShell
3 591 (10.22%) Python
4 269 (4.65%) C#
5 203 (3.51%) JavaScript
6 176 (3.04%) Java
7 139 (2.40%) Bicep
8 105 (1.82%) T-SQL
9 82 (1.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 78 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
11 69 (1.19%) TypeScript
12 65 (1.12%) Bash
13 35 (0.61%) VBA
14 29 (0.50%) VB
15 28 (0.48%) C++
16 26 (0.45%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.31%) Scala
18 16 (0.28%) VBScript
19 14 (0.24%) Shell Script
20 12 (0.21%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,095 (18.93%) Security Cleared
2 858 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 550 (9.51%) Degree
4 281 (4.86%) Microsoft Certification
5 194 (3.35%) Azure Certification
6 177 (3.06%) DV Cleared
7 115 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 108 (1.87%) CISSP
9 99 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
10 86 (1.49%) Cisco Certification
11 60 (1.04%) CISM
12 59 (1.02%) PMP
13 55 (0.95%) PMI Certification
14 53 (0.92%) AWS Certification
15 49 (0.85%) Master's Degree
16 45 (0.78%) MCSE
17 40 (0.69%) DBS Check
18 39 (0.67%) CCNP
19 36 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
20 35 (0.61%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 304 (5.26%) Data Quality
2 229 (3.96%) GDPR
3 184 (3.18%) QA
4 163 (2.82%) SLA
5 151 (2.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 127 (2.20%) NIST
7 110 (1.90%) PMO
8 80 (1.38%) Accessibility
9 77 (1.33%) Cyber Essentials
10 55 (0.95%) NCSC
11 37 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.59%) GRC
13 31 (0.54%) PCI DSS
14 29 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 21 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 21 (0.36%) WCAG
16 19 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 17 (0.29%) MiFID
18 13 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
18 13 (0.22%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,098 (18.99%) Active Directory
2 212 (3.67%) Docker
3 191 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 106 (1.83%) Hyper-V
5 90 (1.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 82 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
7 66 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (1.00%) vSphere
9 33 (0.57%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.36%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
12 18 (0.31%) Firmware
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.10%) IAG
14 6 (0.10%) RACF
15 5 (0.086%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.069%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.069%) Snort
16 4 (0.069%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.069%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 468 (8.09%) Microsoft Intune
2 354 (6.12%) Terraform
3 240 (4.15%) Kubernetes
4 203 (3.51%) SCCM
5 130 (2.25%) Ansible
6 127 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
7 78 (1.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 53 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
8 53 (0.92%) vCenter Server
9 34 (0.59%) Grafana
10 31 (0.54%) FortiGate
11 29 (0.50%) Prometheus
12 24 (0.42%) SCOM
13 20 (0.35%) Puppet
14 15 (0.26%) AirWatch
14 15 (0.26%) WSUS
15 14 (0.24%) QRadar
16 13 (0.22%) vMotion
17 12 (0.21%) HAProxy
18 10 (0.17%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 340 (5.88%) ServiceNow
2 260 (4.50%) VMware
3 236 (4.08%) SAP
4 230 (3.98%) Oracle
5 219 (3.79%) Databricks
6 193 (3.34%) Cisco
7 171 (2.96%) Google
8 116 (2.01%) Salesforce
9 105 (1.82%) Citrix
10 90 (1.56%) Splunk
11 79 (1.37%) OpenAI
12 73 (1.26%) Apple
13 72 (1.25%) Foundry
14 61 (1.05%) CrowdStrike
15 59 (1.02%) Okta
16 54 (0.93%) CyberArk
17 47 (0.81%) HP
18 45 (0.78%) Adobe
19 44 (0.76%) Red Hat
20 42 (0.73%) Zscaler