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 25 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
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,842 4,615 5,054
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.75% 14.10% 13.01%
As % of the Vendors category 30.58% 29.85% 29.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,415 2,951 3,239
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £473 £489
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% -3.37% -2.20%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £436 £450
% change year-on-year +3.21% -3.11% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 467 377 333
10th Percentile £13.48 £13.75 £11.73
25th Percentile £15.41 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £19.50 £22.00 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -11.36% +35.55% -27.87%
75th Percentile £34.35 £30.63 £36.00
90th Percentile £70.09 £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 22,372 15,460 16,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.71% 47.22% 43.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,803 9,448 10,476
10th Percentile £313 £275 £286
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £611 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £728
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,160 806 783
10th Percentile £14.36 £14.67 £13.30
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.73 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.21% -10.18% -36.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £46.30 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.03 £67.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.24 £26.13
% change year-on-year +31.83% -18.70% -34.03%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 5,942 £488 +2.63% 4,137
UK excluding London 0 3,650 £450 +3.21% 3,774
London 0 2,588 £515 +3.00% 1,120
Work from Home +4 1,784 £500 - 1,526
South East +2 948 £475 +2.70% 1,082
North of England -3 930 £450 +3.51% 876
Midlands -1 628 £441 +10.31% 647
North West 0 555 £450 +2.86% 426
South West +1 450 £470 +17.50% 510
West Midlands -2 426 £447 +11.06% 358
Scotland +7 346 £449 +0.79% 172
Yorkshire -5 344 £460 +5.14% 324
East of England -1 249 £375 -27.61% 411
East Midlands +2 193 £425 +20.74% 289
Wales 0 103 £413 +37.50% 119
North East -35 35 £375 +10.29% 149
Northern Ireland -4 30 £369 -1.01% 56
Channel Islands 0 3 £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
1 800 (11.69%) SharePoint
2 402 (5.88%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.16%) Confluence
4 38 (0.56%) Apache Spark
5 36 (0.53%) Apache
6 30 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) IIS
8 22 (0.32%) CMS
8 22 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 18 (0.26%) HCL Notes
10 14 (0.20%) Oracle Workflow
11 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
12 11 (0.16%) SAS
13 10 (0.15%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Camunda
15 6 (0.088%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.088%) Mendix
15 6 (0.088%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.088%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.073%) Jupyter
Applications
1 689 (10.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 674 (9.85%) Microsoft Office
3 293 (4.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 184 (2.69%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.62%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.088%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.088%) 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
1 246 (3.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 25 (0.37%) 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 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.16%) Dynamics AX
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) SAP MM
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.088%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.088%) Teamcenter
14 5 (0.073%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,871 (41.96%) Azure
2 1,748 (25.55%) Microsoft 365
3 1,190 (17.39%) Power Platform
4 1,043 (15.24%) Entra ID
5 625 (9.13%) AWS
6 604 (8.83%) Azure DevOps
7 590 (8.62%) Dynamics 365
8 407 (5.95%) Power Automate
9 381 (5.57%) Microsoft Copilot
10 368 (5.38%) PowerApps
11 299 (4.37%) Microsoft Purview
12 293 (4.28%) GitHub
13 255 (3.73%) OneDrive
14 246 (3.60%) SaaS
15 239 (3.49%) GCP
16 186 (2.72%) Azure Data Factory
17 171 (2.50%) Azure Monitor
17 171 (2.50%) Serverless
18 162 (2.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 156 (2.28%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 382 (5.58%) DNS
2 343 (5.01%) Firewall
3 284 (4.15%) VPN
4 249 (3.64%) DHCP
5 189 (2.76%) TCP/IP
6 172 (2.51%) WAN
7 163 (2.38%) Network Security
8 153 (2.24%) LAN
9 144 (2.10%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.08%) VLAN
11 56 (0.82%) Wireless
12 47 (0.69%) SAN
13 41 (0.60%) MPLS
14 36 (0.53%) Skype
14 36 (0.53%) SSL
15 33 (0.48%) BGP
15 33 (0.48%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.47%) Internet
16 32 (0.47%) Unified Communications
17 28 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 749 (10.95%) Power BI
2 382 (5.58%) SQL Server
3 184 (2.69%) Data Warehouse
4 142 (2.08%) Metadata
5 137 (2.00%) Data Lake
6 133 (1.94%) Azure SQL Database
7 128 (1.87%) PostgreSQL
8 75 (1.10%) Relational Database
9 66 (0.96%) Power Query
9 66 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 58 (0.85%) MySQL
11 57 (0.83%) NoSQL
12 46 (0.67%) Oracle Database
13 42 (0.61%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 42 (0.61%) Star Schema
14 38 (0.56%) Tableau
15 34 (0.50%) Delta Lake
16 29 (0.42%) MongoDB
17 28 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 328 (4.79%) JIRA
2 208 (3.04%) Git
3 97 (1.42%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.07%) GitLab
5 52 (0.76%) Visual Studio
6 42 (0.61%) MSI
7 38 (0.56%) Selenium
8 20 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 15 (0.22%) MLflow
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
12 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
12 12 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
13 11 (0.16%) Artifactory
13 11 (0.16%) ERwin
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,417 (35.33%) Social Skills
2 1,388 (20.29%) Finance
3 871 (12.73%) Analytical Skills
4 625 (9.13%) Public Sector
5 365 (5.33%) Organisational Skills
6 338 (4.94%) Banking
7 225 (3.29%) Legal
8 193 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 153 (2.24%) Manufacturing
11 142 (2.08%) Retail
12 122 (1.78%) Telecoms
13 106 (1.55%) Law
14 104 (1.52%) Marketing
15 93 (1.36%) Local Government
16 86 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
17 75 (1.10%) Military
18 70 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
19 68 (0.99%) Aerospace
20 64 (0.94%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 807 (11.79%) Architect
2 697 (10.19%) Analyst
3 618 (9.03%) Developer
4 587 (8.58%) Senior
5 483 (7.06%) Lead
6 438 (6.40%) Consultant
7 424 (6.20%) IT Support
8 407 (5.95%) Support Engineer
9 279 (4.08%) IT Engineer
10 260 (3.80%) Solutions Architect
11 245 (3.58%) Azure Engineer
12 244 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 240 (3.51%) Data Engineer
14 231 (3.38%) Administrator
15 223 (3.26%) IT Support Engineer
16 218 (3.19%) Project Manager
17 181 (2.65%) Business Analyst
18 171 (2.50%) Cloud Engineer
19 130 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
20 129 (1.89%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 501 (7.32%) Terraform
2 338 (4.94%) .NET
3 266 (3.89%) REST
4 128 (1.87%) JSON
5 124 (1.81%) OAuth
6 111 (1.62%) PySpark
7 106 (1.55%) Microsoft Graph
8 103 (1.51%) SAML
9 101 (1.48%) XML
10 94 (1.37%) OpenID
11 91 (1.33%) .NET Framework
12 86 (1.26%) Web Services
13 85 (1.24%) React
14 82 (1.20%) ARM Templates
15 77 (1.13%) LDAP
16 74 (1.08%) RESTful
17 70 (1.02%) HTML
17 70 (1.02%) OAuth2
18 69 (1.01%) SOAP
19 68 (0.99%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 508 (7.42%) Onboarding
2 313 (4.57%) Cloud Native
3 226 (3.30%) Management Information System
4 196 (2.86%) Product Ownership
5 192 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
6 148 (2.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 142 (2.08%) Data Centre
8 140 (2.05%) PKI
9 132 (1.93%) Legacy Systems
10 130 (1.90%) AI Agents
11 122 (1.78%) Security Posture
12 93 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
13 91 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
14 89 (1.30%) Data Structures
15 81 (1.18%) Low-Code
16 76 (1.11%) Driving Licence
17 75 (1.10%) CMDB
18 72 (1.05%) Virtual Team
19 65 (0.95%) Video Conferencing
20 64 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 1,466 (21.43%) Windows
2 429 (6.27%) Windows Server
3 370 (5.41%) Windows 10
4 328 (4.79%) Linux
5 139 (2.03%) Mac OS
6 121 (1.77%) Android
7 114 (1.67%) Apple iOS
8 61 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 38 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
13 34 (0.50%) Ubuntu
13 34 (0.50%) VMS
14 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.28%) CentOS
16 14 (0.20%) Solaris
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.12%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,244 (18.18%) Problem-Solving
2 1,131 (16.53%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,087 (15.89%) DevOps
4 1,051 (15.36%) Agile
5 970 (14.18%) Migration
6 894 (13.07%) CI/CD
7 824 (12.04%) Continuous Improvement
8 783 (11.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 774 (11.31%) AI
10 751 (10.98%) Business Intelligence
11 713 (10.42%) Analytics
12 682 (9.97%) ITIL
13 617 (9.02%) Customer Service
14 519 (7.59%) Infrastructure as Code
15 517 (7.56%) Cybersecurity
16 493 (7.21%) Data Modelling
16 493 (7.21%) Roadmaps
17 468 (6.84%) Project Delivery
18 447 (6.53%) Decision-Making
19 445 (6.50%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 855 (12.50%) SQL
2 744 (10.87%) PowerShell
3 698 (10.20%) Python
4 329 (4.81%) C#
5 245 (3.58%) JavaScript
6 197 (2.88%) Bicep
7 183 (2.67%) Java
8 159 (2.32%) Bash
9 106 (1.55%) T-SQL
10 104 (1.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 90 (1.32%) TypeScript
12 71 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 35 (0.51%) VBA
14 31 (0.45%) VB
15 27 (0.39%) VBScript
16 23 (0.34%) C++
16 23 (0.34%) X++
17 22 (0.32%) PL/SQL
18 18 (0.26%) R
19 15 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,473 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,098 (16.05%) SC Cleared
3 625 (9.13%) Degree
4 345 (5.04%) Microsoft Certification
5 286 (4.18%) DV Cleared
6 250 (3.65%) Azure Certification
7 162 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
8 131 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
9 129 (1.89%) CISSP
10 117 (1.71%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.40%) PMP
12 88 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.05%) AWS Certification
14 71 (1.04%) CISM
15 58 (0.85%) CCNP
16 57 (0.83%) A+ Certification
17 55 (0.80%) DBS Check
18 51 (0.75%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
19 48 (0.70%) CCNA
19 48 (0.70%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (5.69%) Data Quality
2 238 (3.48%) QA
3 225 (3.29%) GDPR
4 206 (3.01%) SLA
5 194 (2.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 176 (2.57%) PMO
7 169 (2.47%) NIST
8 111 (1.62%) Accessibility
9 88 (1.29%) NCSC
10 83 (1.21%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.77%) GRC
12 40 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 36 (0.53%) PCI DSS
13 36 (0.53%) WCAG
14 31 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 21 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
16 20 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
17 15 (0.22%) P3O
18 14 (0.20%) NIST 800
19 13 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,313 (19.19%) Active Directory
2 252 (3.68%) Docker
3 250 (3.65%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (2.02%) Hyper-V
5 120 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
6 95 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
7 63 (0.92%) vSphere
8 57 (0.83%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.28%) VMware NSX
12 18 (0.26%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.073%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.073%) XenApp
15 5 (0.073%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 547 (7.99%) Microsoft Intune
2 330 (4.82%) Kubernetes
3 271 (3.96%) SCCM
4 171 (2.50%) Ansible
5 121 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
6 59 (0.86%) Grafana
7 57 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 50 (0.73%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.60%) SCOM
10 39 (0.57%) Prometheus
11 36 (0.53%) 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%) Argo
16 16 (0.23%) Failover Clustering
17 13 (0.19%) Avamar
17 13 (0.19%) CASB
Vendors
1 511 (7.47%) ServiceNow
2 332 (4.85%) VMware
3 320 (4.68%) Oracle
4 272 (3.98%) SAP
5 239 (3.49%) Google
6 237 (3.46%) Databricks
7 229 (3.35%) Cisco
8 118 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 114 (1.67%) Splunk
10 110 (1.61%) Apple
11 93 (1.36%) Citrix
12 89 (1.30%) CyberArk
13 78 (1.14%) Okta
13 78 (1.14%) OpenAI
14 74 (1.08%) Foundry
15 72 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
16 68 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
17 64 (0.94%) Red Hat
18 56 (0.82%) Zscaler
19 52 (0.76%) Meraki