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 1 September 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
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,901 4,644 5,051
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.86% 14.18% 13.08%
As % of the Vendors category 30.78% 30.06% 29.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,444 2,982 3,209
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £340 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.69% -2.62% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £438 £450
% change year-on-year +2.86% -2.78% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 484 373 311
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.00 £12.38
25th Percentile £15.25 £16.02 £14.84
Median hourly rate £19.50 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -12.61% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £34.05 £31.00 £36.64
90th Percentile £70.16 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.24 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -5.01% +24.80% -17.82%

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 22,420 15,451 16,993
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.79% 47.18% 44.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,807 9,462 10,397
10th Percentile £313 £275 £287
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,170 786 740
10th Percentile £14.35 £14.67 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £29.07 £25.15 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.59% -13.28% -31.76%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.75 £62.51
90th Percentile £81.36 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £21.28 £27.50
% change year-on-year +31.58% -22.62% -30.90%

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 1 September 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 1 September 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 1 September 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 -2 5,977 £489 +2.95% 6,987
UK excluding London 0 3,664 £450 +2.86% 5,232
London 0 2,622 £513 +2.50% 2,883
Work from Home +4 1,800 £500 - 2,927
South East +2 953 £475 +1.50% 1,351
North of England -6 925 £450 +3.57% 1,220
Midlands -1 637 £441 +10.31% 830
North West -2 555 £450 +2.97% 644
South West +1 442 £470 +13.94% 627
West Midlands -3 431 £445 +5.95% 485
Scotland +8 355 £449 +0.22% 374
Yorkshire -6 338 £461 +3.02% 398
East of England -1 248 £350 -33.33% 515
East Midlands +2 197 £425 +19.72% 344
Wales -1 104 £413 +37.50% 155
North East -36 36 £388 +13.97% 202
Northern Ireland -3 32 £350 - 244
Channel Islands -1 4 £525 -27.59% 3

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
1 812 (11.77%) SharePoint
2 392 (5.68%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.14%) Confluence
4 38 (0.55%) Apache
5 36 (0.52%) Apache Spark
6 28 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.35%) CMS
8 22 (0.32%) Skype for Business
9 21 (0.30%) IIS
10 18 (0.26%) HCL Notes
11 15 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.16%) SAS
12 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.14%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.10%) Mendix
15 6 (0.087%) Camunda
15 6 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.087%) ThingWorx
16 5 (0.072%) Jupyter
Applications
1 692 (10.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 682 (9.88%) Microsoft Office
3 298 (4.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 190 (2.75%) Microsoft Project
5 112 (1.62%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.14%) AutoCAD
10 8 (0.12%) ProjectWise
11 7 (0.10%) Navisworks
11 7 (0.10%) Revit
12 4 (0.058%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.058%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.058%) Trello
13 3 (0.043%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.043%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.043%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.029%) Acrobat
14 2 (0.029%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 254 (3.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 75 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 31 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
4 26 (0.38%) Dynamics NAV
5 23 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.19%) Primavera
9 12 (0.17%) Dynamics AX
10 11 (0.16%) Magento
11 9 (0.13%) Aladdin
12 8 (0.12%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 8 (0.12%) SAP MM
13 7 (0.10%) iTrent
13 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
13 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,902 (42.05%) Azure
2 1,762 (25.53%) Microsoft 365
3 1,219 (17.66%) Power Platform
4 1,062 (15.39%) Entra ID
5 650 (9.42%) AWS
6 613 (8.88%) Azure DevOps
7 605 (8.77%) Dynamics 365
8 415 (6.01%) Power Automate
9 391 (5.67%) Microsoft Copilot
10 374 (5.42%) PowerApps
11 304 (4.41%) Microsoft Purview
12 299 (4.33%) GitHub
13 262 (3.80%) OneDrive
14 243 (3.52%) SaaS
15 239 (3.46%) GCP
16 186 (2.70%) Azure Data Factory
17 185 (2.68%) Serverless
18 168 (2.43%) Azure Monitor
19 167 (2.42%) Azure Logic Apps
20 158 (2.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 385 (5.58%) DNS
2 341 (4.94%) Firewall
3 283 (4.10%) VPN
4 255 (3.70%) DHCP
5 190 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 171 (2.48%) WAN
7 156 (2.26%) Network Security
8 151 (2.19%) LAN
9 145 (2.10%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.07%) VLAN
11 58 (0.84%) Wireless
12 48 (0.70%) SAN
13 39 (0.57%) MPLS
14 38 (0.55%) SSL
15 36 (0.52%) Skype
16 32 (0.46%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.46%) Unified Communications
17 31 (0.45%) BGP
17 31 (0.45%) Internet
18 28 (0.41%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 767 (11.11%) Power BI
2 398 (5.77%) SQL Server
3 179 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
4 148 (2.14%) Metadata
5 142 (2.06%) Data Lake
6 125 (1.81%) Azure SQL Database
6 125 (1.81%) PostgreSQL
7 75 (1.09%) Relational Database
8 72 (1.04%) Power Query
9 70 (1.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 65 (0.94%) MySQL
11 53 (0.77%) NoSQL
12 48 (0.70%) Oracle Database
13 45 (0.65%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 42 (0.61%) Star Schema
15 40 (0.58%) Delta Lake
16 36 (0.52%) Tableau
17 28 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 26 (0.38%) MongoDB
19 22 (0.32%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 329 (4.77%) JIRA
2 221 (3.20%) Git
3 95 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 73 (1.06%) GitLab
5 50 (0.72%) Visual Studio
6 44 (0.64%) MSI
7 38 (0.55%) Selenium
8 19 (0.28%) Postman
9 18 (0.26%) Claude Code
10 17 (0.25%) MLflow
11 16 (0.23%) WebDriver
12 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
13 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
14 12 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
15 11 (0.16%) Artifactory
15 11 (0.16%) Bitbucket
15 11 (0.16%) Maven
15 11 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
15 11 (0.16%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,468 (35.76%) Social Skills
2 1,401 (20.30%) Finance
3 891 (12.91%) Analytical Skills
4 634 (9.19%) Public Sector
5 378 (5.48%) Organisational Skills
6 327 (4.74%) Banking
7 220 (3.19%) Legal
8 196 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
9 164 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 161 (2.33%) Manufacturing
11 142 (2.06%) Retail
12 124 (1.80%) Telecoms
13 105 (1.52%) Marketing
14 104 (1.51%) Law
15 93 (1.35%) Local Government
16 88 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
17 84 (1.22%) Military
18 73 (1.06%) Aerospace
19 61 (0.88%) Investment Banking
20 60 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 809 (11.72%) Architect
2 711 (10.30%) Analyst
3 607 (8.80%) Developer
4 605 (8.77%) Senior
5 483 (7.00%) Lead
6 450 (6.52%) Consultant
7 431 (6.25%) IT Support
8 418 (6.06%) Support Engineer
9 288 (4.17%) IT Engineer
10 263 (3.81%) Solutions Architect
11 249 (3.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 247 (3.58%) Azure Engineer
13 242 (3.51%) Data Engineer
14 237 (3.43%) Administrator
15 234 (3.39%) IT Support Engineer
16 221 (3.20%) Project Manager
17 183 (2.65%) Business Analyst
18 173 (2.51%) Cloud Engineer
19 131 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
20 128 (1.85%) Security Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 513 (7.43%) Terraform
2 340 (4.93%) .NET
3 262 (3.80%) REST
4 129 (1.87%) JSON
5 126 (1.83%) OAuth
6 114 (1.65%) PySpark
7 104 (1.51%) XML
8 102 (1.48%) Microsoft Graph
9 101 (1.46%) SAML
10 94 (1.36%) OpenID
11 86 (1.25%) .NET Framework
12 85 (1.23%) React
13 84 (1.22%) ARM Templates
14 78 (1.13%) LDAP
15 76 (1.10%) RESTful
16 74 (1.07%) Web Services
17 71 (1.03%) HTML
18 69 (1.00%) OAuth2
19 67 (0.97%) SailPoint
20 66 (0.96%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 528 (7.65%) Onboarding
2 313 (4.54%) Cloud Native
3 239 (3.46%) Management Information System
4 200 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
5 194 (2.81%) Product Ownership
6 154 (2.23%) Hybrid Cloud
7 145 (2.10%) AI Agents
8 144 (2.09%) PKI
9 140 (2.03%) Data Centre
10 131 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
11 121 (1.75%) Security Posture
12 90 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
13 89 (1.29%) Data Structures
14 87 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
15 84 (1.22%) Low-Code
16 79 (1.14%) CMDB
17 77 (1.12%) Driving Licence
18 72 (1.04%) Virtual Team
19 69 (1.00%) Replication
20 65 (0.94%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,480 (21.45%) Windows
2 443 (6.42%) Windows Server
3 365 (5.29%) Windows 10
4 327 (4.74%) Linux
5 143 (2.07%) Mac OS
6 120 (1.74%) Android
7 113 (1.64%) Apple iOS
8 62 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.64%) Unix
10 41 (0.59%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.52%) Windows Server 2016
13 35 (0.51%) Ubuntu
14 32 (0.46%) VMS
15 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
16 19 (0.28%) CentOS
17 14 (0.20%) Solaris
18 12 (0.17%) SUSE
19 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
20 7 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,267 (18.36%) Problem-Solving
2 1,197 (17.35%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,095 (15.87%) DevOps
4 1,065 (15.43%) Agile
5 985 (14.27%) Migration
6 909 (13.17%) CI/CD
7 855 (12.39%) Continuous Improvement
8 799 (11.58%) AI
9 794 (11.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 768 (11.13%) Business Intelligence
11 716 (10.38%) Analytics
12 685 (9.93%) ITIL
13 625 (9.06%) Customer Service
14 537 (7.78%) Infrastructure as Code
15 534 (7.74%) Cybersecurity
16 503 (7.29%) Data Modelling
17 501 (7.26%) Roadmaps
18 473 (6.85%) Project Delivery
19 455 (6.59%) Decision-Making
20 453 (6.56%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 863 (12.51%) SQL
2 751 (10.88%) PowerShell
3 714 (10.35%) Python
4 330 (4.78%) C#
5 248 (3.59%) JavaScript
6 199 (2.88%) Bicep
7 181 (2.62%) Java
8 167 (2.42%) Bash
9 108 (1.56%) T-SQL
10 106 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 97 (1.41%) TypeScript
12 67 (0.97%) Kusto Query Language
13 32 (0.46%) VBA
14 30 (0.43%) VB
15 27 (0.39%) VBScript
16 23 (0.33%) X++
17 20 (0.29%) C++
17 20 (0.29%) PL/SQL
18 19 (0.28%) R
19 17 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,493 (21.63%) Security Cleared
2 1,115 (16.16%) SC Cleared
3 632 (9.16%) Degree
4 362 (5.25%) Microsoft Certification
5 283 (4.10%) DV Cleared
6 254 (3.68%) Azure Certification
7 169 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
8 132 (1.91%) CISSP
9 129 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
10 122 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
11 96 (1.39%) PMP
12 89 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 74 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 72 (1.04%) CISM
15 59 (0.85%) DBS Check
16 57 (0.83%) A+ Certification
16 57 (0.83%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 56 (0.81%) CCNP
18 48 (0.70%) CCNA
19 46 (0.67%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 397 (5.75%) Data Quality
2 242 (3.51%) QA
3 224 (3.25%) GDPR
4 203 (2.94%) SLA
5 195 (2.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 183 (2.65%) PMO
7 170 (2.46%) NIST
8 114 (1.65%) Accessibility
9 86 (1.25%) Cyber Essentials
10 85 (1.23%) NCSC
11 53 (0.77%) GRC
12 42 (0.61%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 39 (0.57%) WCAG
14 36 (0.52%) PCI DSS
15 32 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 21 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
16 21 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.23%) GMP
18 15 (0.22%) P3O
19 14 (0.20%) NIST 800
System Software
1 1,311 (19.00%) Active Directory
2 256 (3.71%) Docker
3 254 (3.68%) VMware Infrastructure
4 145 (2.10%) Hyper-V
5 120 (1.74%) Virtual Desktop
6 99 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (0.90%) vSphere
8 58 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.51%) BitLocker
10 21 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
11 18 (0.26%) VMware NSX
12 16 (0.23%) 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 (0.072%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.072%) XenApp
16 4 (0.058%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 550 (7.97%) Microsoft Intune
2 338 (4.90%) Kubernetes
3 278 (4.03%) SCCM
4 171 (2.48%) Ansible
5 124 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
6 61 (0.88%) Grafana
7 57 (0.83%) Jamf Pro
8 50 (0.72%) SCOM
9 47 (0.68%) vCenter Server
10 40 (0.58%) Prometheus
11 37 (0.54%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 27 (0.39%) WSUS
13 24 (0.35%) QRadar
14 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 21 (0.30%) Progress Chef
16 20 (0.29%) Puppet
17 18 (0.26%) Failover Clustering
18 15 (0.22%) Argo
19 14 (0.20%) WMI
20 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 522 (7.56%) ServiceNow
2 334 (4.84%) VMware
3 333 (4.83%) Oracle
4 274 (3.97%) SAP
5 244 (3.54%) Databricks
6 236 (3.42%) Google
7 229 (3.32%) Cisco
8 127 (1.84%) Salesforce
9 118 (1.71%) Splunk
10 111 (1.61%) Apple
11 91 (1.32%) CyberArk
12 86 (1.25%) Citrix
13 82 (1.19%) OpenAI
14 79 (1.14%) Okta
15 75 (1.09%) Foundry
16 74 (1.07%) BeyondTrust
17 71 (1.03%) CrowdStrike
18 67 (0.97%) Red Hat
19 53 (0.77%) Adobe
20 52 (0.75%) Zscaler