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 April 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 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 7
Rank change year-on-year +3 -4 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,547 3,913 5,623
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.01% 13.30% 12.86%
As % of the Vendors category 28.19% 28.07% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,736 2,630 3,711
10th Percentile £206 £210 £189
25th Percentile £375 £350 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £463
% change year-on-year +2.86% -5.41% +0.54%
Number of hourly rates quoted 374 221 449
10th Percentile £13.40 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.28 £15.62 £12.86
Median hourly rate £20.09 £21.46 £15.14
Median % change year-on-year -6.38% +41.74% -32.71%
75th Percentile £28.85 £30.63 £23.82
90th Percentile £65.00 £61.25 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.91 £19.00 £15.00
% change year-on-year +4.79% +26.67% -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 19,679 13,941 18,557
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.61% 47.38% 42.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,593 8,779 11,559
10th Percentile £313 £295 £258
25th Percentile £413 £406 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £517
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -0.87% -1.52%
75th Percentile £600 £615 £630
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.60% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 982 536 1,075
10th Percentile £15.03 £14.99 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £14.36
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.97 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.28% +24.29% -47.06%
75th Percentile £60.00 £59.48 £56.91
90th Percentile £78.73 £77.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.11 £24.66 £21.46
% change year-on-year +5.86% +14.91% -44.26%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 4,868 £492 +3.58% 3,020
UK excluding London 0 2,899 £450 +2.86% 2,692
London -2 2,125 £510 +2.00% 809
Work from Home -2 1,358 £500 - 1,112
North of England 0 793 £450 +5.88% 645
South East -3 641 £478 -2.85% 806
Midlands -4 504 £450 +12.04% 394
North West -2 433 £423 -5.48% 334
West Midlands -5 354 £456 +13.83% 217
South West -1 338 £470 - 297
East of England 0 337 £400 -9.86% 335
Yorkshire +4 333 £454 +13.50% 212
Scotland +3 199 £450 +9.22% 155
East Midlands -1 144 £394 -5.69% 176
Wales +3 93 £309 -11.79% 102
North East -18 33 £463 +32.14% 110
Northern Ireland +5 22 £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
1 606 (10.92%) SharePoint
2 405 (7.30%) Microsoft Exchange
3 105 (1.89%) Confluence
4 31 (0.56%) Apache Spark
5 24 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
6 23 (0.41%) Apache
7 22 (0.40%) CMS
8 17 (0.31%) HCL Notes
9 16 (0.29%) SAS
9 16 (0.29%) Skype for Business
10 10 (0.18%) IIS
10 10 (0.18%) Mendix
11 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
12 5 (0.090%) Camunda
12 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
13 4 (0.072%) Appian
13 4 (0.072%) Drupal
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2010
13 4 (0.072%) Exchange Server 2013
13 4 (0.072%) Jupyter
Applications
1 585 (10.55%) Microsoft Office
2 520 (9.37%) Microsoft Excel
3 234 (4.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 126 (2.27%) Microsoft Project
5 98 (1.77%) MS Visio
6 74 (1.33%) Spreadsheet
7 14 (0.25%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.22%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Trello
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.072%) InDesign
13 3 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
13 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
13 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.054%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
14 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 204 (3.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 54 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 16 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.23%) Maximo
6 13 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 11 (0.20%) Loan IQ
7 11 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
7 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
8 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 8 (0.14%) Sage X3
9 8 (0.14%) Shopify
10 7 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
11 6 (0.11%) Advent Geneva
11 6 (0.11%) Oracle Payables
11 6 (0.11%) SAP MM
11 6 (0.11%) SystmOne
12 5 (0.090%) SAP Business One
12 5 (0.090%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,294 (41.36%) Azure
2 1,438 (25.92%) Microsoft 365
3 932 (16.80%) Power Platform
4 707 (12.75%) Entra ID
5 461 (8.31%) Dynamics 365
6 458 (8.26%) AWS
7 447 (8.06%) Azure DevOps
8 338 (6.09%) Power Automate
9 303 (5.46%) PowerApps
10 281 (5.07%) Microsoft Purview
11 265 (4.78%) GitHub
12 219 (3.95%) Microsoft Copilot
13 203 (3.66%) Azure Data Factory
14 202 (3.64%) OneDrive
15 191 (3.44%) SaaS
16 176 (3.17%) Serverless
17 170 (3.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 163 (2.94%) GCP
19 149 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
20 146 (2.63%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 305 (5.50%) Firewall
2 301 (5.43%) DNS
3 211 (3.80%) VPN
4 173 (3.12%) DHCP
5 144 (2.60%) Wi-Fi
6 140 (2.52%) WAN
7 120 (2.16%) Network Security
8 119 (2.15%) LAN
9 110 (1.98%) TCP/IP
10 60 (1.08%) VLAN
11 54 (0.97%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.81%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.70%) Wireless
14 37 (0.67%) Skype
15 36 (0.65%) SSL
16 35 (0.63%) Unified Communications
17 34 (0.61%) SAN
18 30 (0.54%) HTTP
19 25 (0.45%) MPLS
20 24 (0.43%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 581 (10.47%) Power BI
2 280 (5.05%) SQL Server
3 179 (3.23%) Data Warehouse
4 154 (2.78%) Data Lake
5 122 (2.20%) Azure SQL Database
6 110 (1.98%) Metadata
7 106 (1.91%) PostgreSQL
8 74 (1.33%) Relational Database
9 72 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 51 (0.92%) Oracle Database
10 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 49 (0.88%) NoSQL
11 49 (0.88%) Tableau
12 47 (0.85%) MySQL
13 42 (0.76%) Power Query
14 41 (0.74%) Delta Lake
15 40 (0.72%) Star Schema
16 29 (0.52%) Snowflake Schema
17 27 (0.49%) Spark SQL
18 25 (0.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 254 (4.58%) JIRA
2 174 (3.14%) Git
3 67 (1.21%) GitLab
3 67 (1.21%) Jenkins
4 26 (0.47%) Artifactory
5 25 (0.45%) Visual Studio
6 21 (0.38%) Eclipse
7 18 (0.32%) MSI
7 18 (0.32%) Postman
7 18 (0.32%) Selenium
8 16 (0.29%) MLflow
9 15 (0.27%) JMeter
10 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
10 13 (0.23%) JUnit
10 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
11 12 (0.22%) Bitbucket
11 12 (0.22%) Maven
12 11 (0.20%) ERwin
13 10 (0.18%) Gatling
13 10 (0.18%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,937 (34.92%) Social Skills
2 1,108 (19.97%) Finance
3 641 (11.56%) Analytical Skills
4 526 (9.48%) Public Sector
5 292 (5.26%) Banking
6 252 (4.54%) Legal
7 251 (4.52%) Organisational Skills
8 163 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
9 114 (2.06%) Manufacturing
10 105 (1.89%) Presentation Skills
11 95 (1.71%) Marketing
12 93 (1.68%) Law
13 89 (1.60%) Telecoms
14 83 (1.50%) Retail
15 82 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 68 (1.23%) Military
17 64 (1.15%) Local Government
18 58 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
19 55 (0.99%) Investment Banking
20 38 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 684 (12.33%) Architect
2 596 (10.74%) Analyst
3 533 (9.61%) Developer
4 446 (8.04%) Senior
5 376 (6.78%) IT Support
6 329 (5.93%) Lead
7 278 (5.01%) Consultant
8 262 (4.72%) Support Engineer
9 209 (3.77%) Data Engineer
10 206 (3.71%) Azure Engineer
11 195 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
12 192 (3.46%) IT Engineer
13 181 (3.26%) Project Manager
14 177 (3.19%) Administrator
15 174 (3.14%) Business Analyst
16 163 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 144 (2.60%) IT Support Engineer
18 117 (2.11%) DevOps Engineer
19 113 (2.04%) Security Engineer
20 100 (1.80%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (4.65%) .NET
2 176 (3.17%) REST
3 132 (2.38%) Microsoft Graph
4 120 (2.16%) OAuth
5 104 (1.87%) SAML
6 98 (1.77%) PySpark
7 89 (1.60%) React
8 82 (1.48%) OpenID
9 80 (1.44%) JSON
10 68 (1.23%) LDAP
11 64 (1.15%) Middleware
12 62 (1.12%) Web Services
13 60 (1.08%) OAuth2
14 57 (1.03%) ARM Templates
15 56 (1.01%) HTML
16 55 (0.99%) RESTful
17 54 (0.97%) AngularJS
18 51 (0.92%) Node.js
19 50 (0.90%) .NET Framework
19 50 (0.90%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 282 (5.08%) Onboarding
2 220 (3.97%) Cloud Native
3 193 (3.48%) Product Ownership
4 127 (2.29%) Management Information System
5 108 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
6 102 (1.84%) Data Centre
7 88 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
8 87 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
9 84 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
10 82 (1.48%) Security Posture
11 81 (1.46%) PKI
12 77 (1.39%) AI Agents
13 72 (1.30%) Replication
14 69 (1.24%) Low-Code
15 67 (1.21%) Data Structures
16 63 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
17 57 (1.03%) Driving Licence
17 57 (1.03%) Virtual Team
18 51 (0.92%) NHS
19 47 (0.85%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 1,220 (21.99%) Windows
2 325 (5.86%) Windows 10
3 289 (5.21%) Windows Server
4 278 (5.01%) Linux
5 102 (1.84%) Android
6 96 (1.73%) Apple iOS
7 94 (1.69%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 42 (0.76%) Windows Server 2016
10 41 (0.74%) Windows 7
11 40 (0.72%) Unix
12 28 (0.50%) VMS
13 25 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
14 23 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
15 17 (0.31%) Windows Server 2003
16 10 (0.18%) CentOS
17 9 (0.16%) Ubuntu
18 7 (0.13%) AIX
19 5 (0.090%) Solaris
20 4 (0.072%) CatOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 979 (17.65%) Problem-Solving
2 880 (15.86%) Agile
3 872 (15.72%) DevOps
4 777 (14.01%) Migration
5 753 (13.57%) CI/CD
6 653 (11.77%) Business Intelligence
7 611 (11.01%) Analytics
8 531 (9.57%) AI
9 525 (9.46%) Stakeholder Management
10 509 (9.18%) Continuous Improvement
11 467 (8.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 455 (8.20%) Customer Service
13 425 (7.66%) ITIL
14 398 (7.18%) Data Modelling
15 364 (6.56%) Cybersecurity
16 353 (6.36%) Roadmaps
17 333 (6.00%) Infrastructure as Code
18 315 (5.68%) Project Management
19 307 (5.53%) Decision-Making
20 300 (5.41%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 733 (13.21%) SQL
2 647 (11.66%) PowerShell
3 633 (11.41%) Python
4 286 (5.16%) C#
5 216 (3.89%) JavaScript
6 178 (3.21%) Java
7 125 (2.25%) Bicep
8 100 (1.80%) Kusto Query Language
9 97 (1.75%) Bash
10 83 (1.50%) T-SQL
11 81 (1.46%) TypeScript
12 69 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 36 (0.65%) PL/SQL
14 30 (0.54%) VBA
15 27 (0.49%) C++
16 22 (0.40%) VB
17 19 (0.34%) Perl
17 19 (0.34%) Scala
18 18 (0.32%) R
18 18 (0.32%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,075 (19.38%) Security Cleared
2 823 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 561 (10.11%) Degree
4 288 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 206 (3.71%) DV Cleared
6 186 (3.35%) Azure Certification
7 131 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
8 98 (1.77%) CISSP
9 97 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
10 70 (1.26%) PMI Certification
11 69 (1.24%) Cisco Certification
12 62 (1.12%) PMP
13 58 (1.05%) Master's Degree
14 51 (0.92%) CISM
15 40 (0.72%) AWS Certification
16 38 (0.69%) MCSE
17 33 (0.59%) ITIL Certification
18 32 (0.58%) CCNP
18 32 (0.58%) DBS Check
19 29 (0.52%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 258 (4.65%) Data Quality
2 233 (4.20%) GDPR
3 175 (3.15%) QA
4 153 (2.76%) SLA
5 130 (2.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 111 (2.00%) PMO
7 104 (1.87%) NIST
8 72 (1.30%) Accessibility
9 59 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
10 46 (0.83%) NCSC
11 37 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 31 (0.56%) GRC
13 27 (0.49%) PCI DSS
14 19 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 19 (0.34%) MiFID
15 17 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 15 (0.27%) WCAG
17 13 (0.23%) FINRA
18 11 (0.20%) GxP
19 10 (0.18%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,090 (19.65%) Active Directory
2 238 (4.29%) Docker
3 183 (3.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 92 (1.66%) Hyper-V
5 67 (1.21%) Virtual Machines
6 59 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
7 45 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (0.58%) vSphere
9 26 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.38%) VMware NSX
11 17 (0.31%) Firmware
12 12 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.13%) RACF
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.090%) IAG
15 5 (0.090%) Snort
16 4 (0.072%) KVM
16 4 (0.072%) NFS
16 4 (0.072%) Squid
16 4 (0.072%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 435 (7.84%) Microsoft Intune
2 364 (6.56%) Terraform
3 270 (4.87%) Kubernetes
4 207 (3.73%) SCCM
5 132 (2.38%) Single Sign-On
6 120 (2.16%) Ansible
7 94 (1.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (0.78%) Grafana
8 43 (0.78%) Jamf Pro
9 37 (0.67%) vCenter Server
10 33 (0.59%) Prometheus
11 23 (0.41%) FortiGate
12 22 (0.40%) SCOM
13 21 (0.38%) Puppet
14 18 (0.32%) WSUS
15 15 (0.27%) AirWatch
16 13 (0.23%) CASB
17 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
18 11 (0.20%) HAProxy
19 10 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 264 (4.76%) VMware
2 258 (4.65%) ServiceNow
3 220 (3.97%) Databricks
4 208 (3.75%) SAP
5 202 (3.64%) Oracle
6 181 (3.26%) Cisco
7 164 (2.96%) Google
8 130 (2.34%) Citrix
9 95 (1.71%) OpenAI
10 94 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 92 (1.66%) Splunk
12 76 (1.37%) Foundry
13 68 (1.23%) Apple
14 54 (0.97%) CrowdStrike
15 48 (0.87%) Palo Alto
16 47 (0.85%) HP
17 46 (0.83%) Adobe
17 46 (0.83%) Red Hat
18 40 (0.72%) Informatica
19 39 (0.70%) CyberArk