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 27 August 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
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,865 4,621 5,053
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.79% 14.11% 13.02%
As % of the Vendors category 30.63% 29.87% 29.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,426 2,957 3,231
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £471 £488
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -3.48% -2.40%
75th Percentile £585 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £435 £450
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 466 381 328
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.75 £11.71
25th Percentile £15.27 £16.02 £14.47
Median hourly rate £19.50 £22.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -11.36% +35.55% -27.87%
75th Percentile £33.75 £31.00 £36.32
90th Percentile £70.24 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.33 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.57% +24.80% -16.77%

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 22,410 15,468 16,983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.74% 47.22% 43.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,815 9,456 10,461
10th Percentile £313 £275 £285
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £523
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.31% -0.48%
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,156 806 773
10th Percentile £14.36 £14.59 £13.22
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.29 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.44% -10.18% -36.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £46.30 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.13 £67.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.28 £26.08
% change year-on-year +31.58% -18.40% -34.48%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 5,955 £488 +2.63% 3,012
UK excluding London 0 3,655 £450 +3.45% 2,603
London 0 2,606 £513 +2.50% 789
Work from Home +4 1,795 £500 - 1,134
South East +2 946 £475 +3.26% 598
North of England -5 926 £450 +4.05% 636
Midlands -1 634 £443 +10.63% 490
North West 0 551 £450 +2.97% 324
South West +1 447 £470 +17.50% 400
West Midlands -1 433 £447 +9.02% 278
Scotland +7 351 £450 +1.12% 130
Yorkshire -5 344 £461 +5.67% 241
East of England -1 247 £375 -28.57% 280
East Midlands +2 192 £425 +19.72% 211
Wales -1 105 £413 +37.50% 94
North East -38 35 £375 +10.29% 87
Northern Ireland -3 32 £350 - 56
Channel Islands 0 4 £525 -27.59% 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
1 806 (11.74%) SharePoint
2 405 (5.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.16%) Confluence
4 37 (0.54%) Apache
5 36 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 30 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) CMS
7 23 (0.34%) IIS
7 23 (0.34%) Skype for Business
8 18 (0.26%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
10 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
11 11 (0.16%) SAS
12 10 (0.15%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) Apache Superset
13 7 (0.10%) Camunda
14 6 (0.087%) Mendix
14 6 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
14 6 (0.087%) ThingWorx
15 5 (0.073%) OpenStack
Applications
1 691 (10.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 678 (9.88%) Microsoft Office
3 290 (4.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 187 (2.72%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.59%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.36%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.15%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.12%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.10%) Navisworks
11 7 (0.10%) Revit
12 4 (0.058%) Trello
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
13 3 (0.044%) Photoshop
14 2 (0.029%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 249 (3.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
8 12 (0.17%) Primavera
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.087%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
14 5 (0.073%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,892 (42.13%) Azure
2 1,751 (25.51%) Microsoft 365
3 1,199 (17.47%) Power Platform
4 1,055 (15.37%) Entra ID
5 633 (9.22%) AWS
6 614 (8.94%) Azure DevOps
7 596 (8.68%) Dynamics 365
8 410 (5.97%) Power Automate
9 382 (5.56%) Microsoft Copilot
10 367 (5.35%) PowerApps
11 300 (4.37%) Microsoft Purview
12 299 (4.36%) GitHub
13 259 (3.77%) OneDrive
14 244 (3.55%) SaaS
15 239 (3.48%) GCP
16 191 (2.78%) Azure Data Factory
17 178 (2.59%) Serverless
18 172 (2.51%) Azure Monitor
19 164 (2.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 159 (2.32%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 385 (5.61%) DNS
2 342 (4.98%) Firewall
3 281 (4.09%) VPN
4 252 (3.67%) DHCP
5 188 (2.74%) TCP/IP
6 173 (2.52%) WAN
7 166 (2.42%) Network Security
8 152 (2.21%) LAN
9 144 (2.10%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (1.06%) VLAN
11 57 (0.83%) Wireless
12 47 (0.68%) SAN
13 40 (0.58%) MPLS
14 37 (0.54%) Skype
15 35 (0.51%) SSL
16 33 (0.48%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.47%) Internet
17 32 (0.47%) Unified Communications
18 31 (0.45%) BGP
19 28 (0.41%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 755 (11.00%) Power BI
2 393 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 187 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (2.13%) Metadata
5 139 (2.02%) Data Lake
6 133 (1.94%) Azure SQL Database
7 128 (1.86%) PostgreSQL
8 75 (1.09%) Relational Database
9 67 (0.98%) Power Query
10 66 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 60 (0.87%) MySQL
12 54 (0.79%) NoSQL
13 47 (0.68%) Oracle Database
14 42 (0.61%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 42 (0.61%) Star Schema
15 38 (0.55%) Tableau
16 35 (0.51%) Delta Lake
17 28 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 27 (0.39%) MongoDB
19 22 (0.32%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 329 (4.79%) JIRA
2 213 (3.10%) Git
3 95 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.05%) GitLab
5 50 (0.73%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.64%) MSI
7 37 (0.54%) Selenium
8 20 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Claude Code
10 16 (0.23%) MLflow
10 16 (0.23%) WebDriver
11 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
11 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
12 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.17%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.16%) Artifactory
14 11 (0.16%) ERwin
14 11 (0.16%) Maven
14 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,434 (35.46%) Social Skills
2 1,391 (20.26%) Finance
3 872 (12.70%) Analytical Skills
4 636 (9.26%) Public Sector
5 371 (5.40%) Organisational Skills
6 329 (4.79%) Banking
7 222 (3.23%) Legal
8 194 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
9 166 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 156 (2.27%) Manufacturing
11 142 (2.07%) Retail
12 124 (1.81%) Telecoms
13 106 (1.54%) Law
14 104 (1.51%) Marketing
15 94 (1.37%) Local Government
16 86 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
17 77 (1.12%) Military
18 69 (1.01%) Aerospace
19 64 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
20 62 (0.90%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 809 (11.78%) Architect
2 702 (10.23%) Analyst
3 616 (8.97%) Developer
4 592 (8.62%) Senior
5 486 (7.08%) Lead
6 444 (6.47%) Consultant
7 425 (6.19%) IT Support
8 412 (6.00%) Support Engineer
9 282 (4.11%) IT Engineer
10 260 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
11 246 (3.58%) Azure Engineer
11 246 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 242 (3.53%) Data Engineer
13 236 (3.44%) Administrator
14 226 (3.29%) IT Support Engineer
15 219 (3.19%) Project Manager
16 180 (2.62%) Business Analyst
17 170 (2.48%) Cloud Engineer
18 130 (1.89%) DevOps Engineer
19 128 (1.86%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 504 (7.34%) Terraform
2 340 (4.95%) .NET
3 267 (3.89%) REST
4 127 (1.85%) JSON
5 125 (1.82%) OAuth
6 109 (1.59%) PySpark
7 108 (1.57%) Microsoft Graph
8 103 (1.50%) SAML
9 101 (1.47%) XML
10 94 (1.37%) OpenID
11 92 (1.34%) .NET Framework
12 86 (1.25%) React
13 84 (1.22%) Web Services
14 83 (1.21%) ARM Templates
15 78 (1.14%) LDAP
16 74 (1.08%) RESTful
17 70 (1.02%) HTML
18 69 (1.01%) OAuth2
18 69 (1.01%) SOAP
19 67 (0.98%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 515 (7.50%) Onboarding
2 313 (4.56%) Cloud Native
3 230 (3.35%) Management Information System
4 196 (2.86%) Product Ownership
5 195 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
6 151 (2.20%) Hybrid Cloud
7 141 (2.05%) PKI
8 139 (2.02%) Data Centre
9 136 (1.98%) AI Agents
10 135 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
11 120 (1.75%) Security Posture
12 91 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
12 91 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 90 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
14 80 (1.17%) Low-Code
15 75 (1.09%) CMDB
15 75 (1.09%) Driving Licence
16 72 (1.05%) Virtual Team
17 66 (0.96%) Distributed Systems
17 66 (0.96%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,465 (21.34%) Windows
2 435 (6.34%) Windows Server
3 368 (5.36%) Windows 10
4 331 (4.82%) Linux
5 140 (2.04%) Mac OS
6 120 (1.75%) Android
7 112 (1.63%) Apple iOS
8 63 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 43 (0.63%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
13 35 (0.51%) Ubuntu
14 34 (0.50%) VMS
15 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
16 20 (0.29%) CentOS
17 13 (0.19%) Solaris
18 12 (0.17%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,251 (18.22%) Problem-Solving
2 1,162 (16.93%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,101 (16.04%) DevOps
4 1,055 (15.37%) Agile
5 983 (14.32%) Migration
6 898 (13.08%) CI/CD
7 837 (12.19%) Continuous Improvement
8 791 (11.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 780 (11.36%) AI
10 755 (11.00%) Business Intelligence
11 716 (10.43%) Analytics
12 681 (9.92%) ITIL
13 622 (9.06%) Customer Service
14 526 (7.66%) Cybersecurity
15 524 (7.63%) Infrastructure as Code
16 501 (7.30%) Data Modelling
17 497 (7.24%) Roadmaps
18 470 (6.85%) Project Delivery
19 448 (6.53%) Decision-Making
20 447 (6.51%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 857 (12.48%) SQL
2 748 (10.90%) PowerShell
3 704 (10.25%) Python
4 328 (4.78%) C#
5 246 (3.58%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.87%) Bicep
7 184 (2.68%) Java
8 160 (2.33%) Bash
9 107 (1.56%) T-SQL
10 104 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 95 (1.38%) TypeScript
12 74 (1.08%) Kusto Query Language
13 35 (0.51%) VBA
14 30 (0.44%) VB
15 27 (0.39%) VBScript
16 23 (0.34%) X++
17 22 (0.32%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) C++
19 19 (0.28%) R
20 16 (0.23%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,483 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 1,105 (16.10%) SC Cleared
3 628 (9.15%) Degree
4 350 (5.10%) Microsoft Certification
5 289 (4.21%) DV Cleared
6 251 (3.66%) Azure Certification
7 169 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
8 130 (1.89%) CISSP
9 127 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
10 119 (1.73%) Computer Science Degree
11 95 (1.38%) PMP
12 88 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.05%) AWS Certification
14 71 (1.03%) CISM
15 56 (0.82%) A+ Certification
16 55 (0.80%) CCNP
16 55 (0.80%) DBS Check
17 50 (0.73%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 48 (0.70%) CCNA
18 48 (0.70%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (5.65%) Data Quality
2 240 (3.50%) QA
3 232 (3.38%) GDPR
4 201 (2.93%) SLA
5 193 (2.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 179 (2.61%) PMO
7 169 (2.46%) NIST
8 114 (1.66%) Accessibility
9 87 (1.27%) NCSC
10 84 (1.22%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.77%) GRC
12 41 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 39 (0.57%) WCAG
14 36 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 31 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 21 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 20 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 15 (0.22%) P3O
19 14 (0.20%) NIST 800
20 12 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,316 (19.17%) Active Directory
2 253 (3.69%) Docker
3 250 (3.64%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (2.02%) Hyper-V
5 120 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 97 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (0.92%) vSphere
8 57 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.52%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.28%) VMware NSX
12 15 (0.22%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) IAG
14 7 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.073%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.073%) XenApp
16 4 (0.058%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 546 (7.95%) Microsoft Intune
2 334 (4.87%) Kubernetes
3 271 (3.95%) SCCM
4 171 (2.49%) Ansible
5 123 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
6 59 (0.86%) Grafana
7 57 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 51 (0.74%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.61%) SCOM
10 39 (0.57%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 26 (0.38%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 21 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 21 (0.31%) Puppet
16 16 (0.23%) Failover Clustering
17 14 (0.20%) Argo
18 13 (0.19%) Avamar
19 12 (0.17%) CASB
Vendors
1 512 (7.46%) ServiceNow
2 331 (4.82%) VMware
3 327 (4.76%) Oracle
4 272 (3.96%) SAP
5 239 (3.48%) Databricks
6 237 (3.45%) Google
7 228 (3.32%) Cisco
8 118 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 116 (1.69%) Splunk
10 109 (1.59%) Apple
11 91 (1.33%) Citrix
12 90 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 79 (1.15%) OpenAI
14 78 (1.14%) Okta
15 74 (1.08%) BeyondTrust
16 73 (1.06%) Foundry
17 69 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
18 66 (0.96%) Red Hat
19 56 (0.82%) Zscaler
20 53 (0.77%) Adobe