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 3 March 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
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,328 4,004 5,765
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.77% 13.41% 12.94%
As % of the Vendors category 28.73% 28.77% 29.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,593 2,622 3,885
10th Percentile £205 £206 £190
25th Percentile £363 £348 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £498
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -4.52% -0.50%
75th Percentile £584 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £439 £450
% change year-on-year +2.62% -2.56% -2.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 379 171 412
10th Percentile £13.56 £15.44 £11.52
25th Percentile £16.25 £18.17 £13.69
Median hourly rate £19.91 £24.00 £16.28
Median % change year-on-year -17.04% +47.42% -22.51%
75th Percentile £27.38 £33.75 £33.94
90th Percentile £63.90 £63.25 £51.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.10 £22.50 £16.06
% change year-on-year -15.12% +40.10% -19.70%

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 18,543 13,917 19,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 44.45% 46.61% 43.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,886 8,519 12,055
10th Percentile £306 £284 £256
25th Percentile £413 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £514
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +1.17% -2.47%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £626
90th Percentile £700 £713 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -0.50% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 928 434 985
10th Percentile £15.24 £15.62 £12.74
25th Percentile £18.21 £21.25 £15.10
Median hourly rate £24.28 £30.00 £25.25
Median % change year-on-year -19.08% +18.81% -27.86%
75th Percentile £58.75 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £74.68 £81.98 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.63 £27.43 £25.00
% change year-on-year -17.48% +9.70% -23.08%

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 3 March 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 3 March 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 3 March 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 4,669 £490 +3.16% 3,620
UK excluding London 0 2,869 £450 +2.62% 3,381
London -3 1,960 £513 +2.50% 816
Work from Home -1 1,344 £500 - 1,260
North of England 0 751 £425 -5.56% 784
South East 0 645 £475 -3.85% 1,031
Midlands -6 493 £450 +5.88% 525
North West -1 427 £415 -7.78% 387
East of England +1 357 £400 -8.57% 381
South West 0 356 £525 +11.11% 370
West Midlands -8 338 £475 +9.39% 233
Yorkshire +1 292 £450 +9.09% 279
Scotland -1 191 £453 +18.30% 194
East Midlands 0 153 £401 +0.25% 281
Wales +3 95 £310 -24.85% 137
North East -13 38 £450 +25.00% 133
Northern Ireland +1 24 £450 +38.46% 40
Channel Islands +3 1 - - 2

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 (11.37%) SharePoint
2 426 (8.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 113 (2.12%) Confluence
4 42 (0.79%) Skype for Business
5 25 (0.47%) CMS
6 21 (0.39%) Apache
7 20 (0.38%) Apache Spark
8 18 (0.34%) Apache Airflow
9 16 (0.30%) HCL Notes
10 15 (0.28%) IIS
11 11 (0.21%) SAS
12 9 (0.17%) Mendix
13 8 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
13 8 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.11%) Mattermost
16 5 (0.094%) iPlanet
16 5 (0.094%) Oracle Application Server
16 5 (0.094%) WebSphere
Applications
1 626 (11.75%) Microsoft Office
2 514 (9.65%) Microsoft Excel
3 226 (4.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 126 (2.36%) Microsoft Project
5 105 (1.97%) MS Visio
6 76 (1.43%) Spreadsheet
7 11 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.21%) Trello
8 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.13%) Adobe Captivate
10 6 (0.11%) Acrobat
10 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
11 5 (0.094%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.075%) Adobe XD
12 4 (0.075%) InDesign
13 3 (0.056%) Photoshop
13 3 (0.056%) Sketch
13 3 (0.056%) SOLIDWORKS
14 2 (0.038%) Adobe After Effects
14 2 (0.038%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 188 (3.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 51 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
4 17 (0.32%) Dynamics NAV
5 15 (0.28%) Dynamics AX
6 14 (0.26%) Aladdin
6 14 (0.26%) Maximo
7 12 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.21%) Loan IQ
9 10 (0.19%) NetSuite
9 10 (0.19%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 9 (0.17%) Teamcenter
11 8 (0.15%) Sage X3
12 7 (0.13%) Advent Geneva
12 7 (0.13%) Shopify
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.11%) SystmOne
14 5 (0.094%) Primavera
14 5 (0.094%) Salesforce CRM
14 5 (0.094%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,125 (39.88%) Azure
2 1,361 (25.54%) Microsoft 365
3 857 (16.08%) Power Platform
4 676 (12.69%) Entra ID
5 450 (8.45%) AWS
6 398 (7.47%) Dynamics 365
7 397 (7.45%) Azure DevOps
8 338 (6.34%) Power Automate
9 301 (5.65%) PowerApps
10 274 (5.14%) Microsoft Purview
11 228 (4.28%) GitHub
12 214 (4.02%) OneDrive
13 190 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
13 190 (3.57%) Serverless
14 188 (3.53%) Microsoft Copilot
15 180 (3.38%) SaaS
16 173 (3.25%) GCP
17 151 (2.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 137 (2.57%) Azure Logic Apps
19 136 (2.55%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 303 (5.69%) DNS
2 288 (5.41%) Firewall
3 198 (3.72%) VPN
4 185 (3.47%) DHCP
5 140 (2.63%) Wi-Fi
6 127 (2.38%) TCP/IP
7 122 (2.29%) WAN
8 106 (1.99%) LAN
9 104 (1.95%) Network Security
10 69 (1.30%) Skype
11 63 (1.18%) Kerberos
12 56 (1.05%) VLAN
13 46 (0.86%) Unified Communications
14 43 (0.81%) Wireless
15 34 (0.64%) SD-WAN
16 32 (0.60%) HTTP
17 30 (0.56%) SSL
18 29 (0.54%) Internet
19 28 (0.53%) MPLS
19 28 (0.53%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 528 (9.91%) Power BI
2 249 (4.67%) SQL Server
3 163 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 142 (2.67%) Data Lake
5 105 (1.97%) PostgreSQL
6 103 (1.93%) Metadata
7 101 (1.90%) Azure SQL Database
8 76 (1.43%) Relational Database
9 64 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 57 (1.07%) Oracle Database
11 52 (0.98%) MySQL
12 51 (0.96%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.83%) NoSQL
14 40 (0.75%) Power Query
15 39 (0.73%) Tableau
16 29 (0.54%) Delta Lake
17 27 (0.51%) Oracle Reports
17 27 (0.51%) Star Schema
18 23 (0.43%) Spark SQL
19 22 (0.41%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 242 (4.54%) JIRA
2 165 (3.10%) Git
3 77 (1.45%) GitLab
4 74 (1.39%) Jenkins
5 30 (0.56%) Eclipse
6 25 (0.47%) Visual Studio
7 22 (0.41%) MSI
8 20 (0.38%) Postman
9 19 (0.36%) Artifactory
10 16 (0.30%) Android Studio
10 16 (0.30%) JMeter
11 15 (0.28%) Selenium
12 14 (0.26%) Browser DevTools
12 14 (0.26%) Sonatype Nexus
13 13 (0.24%) Cucumber
13 13 (0.24%) Xcode
14 11 (0.21%) Bitbucket
14 11 (0.21%) JUnit
14 11 (0.21%) MLflow
15 9 (0.17%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,053 (38.53%) Social Skills
2 1,033 (19.39%) Finance
3 670 (12.58%) Analytical Skills
4 521 (9.78%) Public Sector
5 258 (4.84%) Banking
6 253 (4.75%) Organisational Skills
7 229 (4.30%) Legal
8 167 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
9 121 (2.27%) Manufacturing
10 118 (2.21%) Presentation Skills
11 101 (1.90%) Marketing
12 91 (1.71%) Telecoms
13 72 (1.35%) Retail
14 71 (1.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 61 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
16 55 (1.03%) Military
17 50 (0.94%) Law
18 46 (0.86%) Investment Banking
19 42 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
20 38 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 647 (12.14%) Analyst
2 611 (11.47%) Architect
3 504 (9.46%) Developer
4 415 (7.79%) Senior
5 359 (6.74%) IT Support
6 292 (5.48%) Support Engineer
7 288 (5.41%) Consultant
8 264 (4.95%) Lead
9 186 (3.49%) Solutions Architect
10 184 (3.45%) IT Engineer
11 181 (3.40%) Data Engineer
12 178 (3.34%) Azure Engineer
13 170 (3.19%) Business Analyst
14 165 (3.10%) Administrator
15 164 (3.08%) Project Manager
16 160 (3.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 141 (2.65%) IT Support Engineer
18 126 (2.36%) Support Analyst
19 115 (2.16%) Security Engineer
20 102 (1.91%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 252 (4.73%) .NET
2 165 (3.10%) REST
3 128 (2.40%) OAuth
4 113 (2.12%) Microsoft Graph
5 111 (2.08%) SAML
6 102 (1.91%) React
7 92 (1.73%) OpenID
8 78 (1.46%) PySpark
9 76 (1.43%) LDAP
10 74 (1.39%) AngularJS
10 74 (1.39%) RESTful
11 73 (1.37%) HTML
12 71 (1.33%) JSON
13 65 (1.22%) CSS
14 61 (1.14%) ARM Templates
15 58 (1.09%) Middleware
16 56 (1.05%) Node.js
17 54 (1.01%) OAuth2
17 54 (1.01%) Web Services
18 43 (0.81%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 292 (5.48%) Onboarding
2 206 (3.87%) Cloud Native
3 162 (3.04%) Product Ownership
4 135 (2.53%) Management Information System
5 112 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
6 94 (1.76%) Data Centre
7 91 (1.71%) Security Posture
8 89 (1.67%) PKI
9 84 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
10 82 (1.54%) Hybrid Cloud
11 75 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
11 75 (1.41%) Replication
12 71 (1.33%) Low-Code
13 64 (1.20%) Driving Licence
14 60 (1.13%) AI Agents
15 59 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
16 57 (1.07%) Data Structures
16 57 (1.07%) Virtual Team
17 56 (1.05%) NHS
18 55 (1.03%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 1,244 (23.35%) Windows
2 363 (6.81%) Windows 10
3 298 (5.59%) Linux
4 271 (5.09%) Windows Server
5 106 (1.99%) Mac OS
6 103 (1.93%) Android
7 97 (1.82%) Apple iOS
8 63 (1.18%) Unix
9 46 (0.86%) Windows 7
10 42 (0.79%) Windows Server 2016
11 37 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 22 (0.41%) VMS
13 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2012
13 21 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
14 20 (0.38%) Windows Server 2003
15 8 (0.15%) AIX
15 8 (0.15%) CentOS
15 8 (0.15%) Ubuntu
16 5 (0.094%) Windows 8
16 5 (0.094%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,031 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
2 873 (16.39%) Agile
3 798 (14.98%) DevOps
4 708 (13.29%) Migration
5 679 (12.74%) CI/CD
6 625 (11.73%) Business Intelligence
7 581 (10.90%) Analytics
8 541 (10.15%) Stakeholder Management
9 458 (8.60%) Continuous Improvement
10 456 (8.56%) AI
11 452 (8.48%) Customer Service
12 439 (8.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 435 (8.16%) ITIL
14 369 (6.93%) Cybersecurity
15 346 (6.49%) Data Modelling
16 312 (5.86%) Project Management
16 312 (5.86%) Roadmaps
17 302 (5.67%) Change Management
18 294 (5.52%) Project Delivery
19 290 (5.44%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 683 (12.82%) SQL
2 673 (12.63%) PowerShell
3 624 (11.71%) Python
4 274 (5.14%) C#
5 232 (4.35%) JavaScript
6 148 (2.78%) Java
7 115 (2.16%) Bicep
8 108 (2.03%) Bash
9 103 (1.93%) Kusto Query Language
10 87 (1.63%) TypeScript
11 72 (1.35%) T-SQL
12 65 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 35 (0.66%) PL/SQL
14 32 (0.60%) C++
15 29 (0.54%) Perl
16 26 (0.49%) VB
16 26 (0.49%) VBA
17 23 (0.43%) Shell Script
18 17 (0.32%) Go
19 16 (0.30%) R
Qualifications
1 1,057 (19.84%) Security Cleared
2 793 (14.88%) SC Cleared
3 550 (10.32%) Degree
4 322 (6.04%) Microsoft Certification
5 218 (4.09%) DV Cleared
6 187 (3.51%) Azure Certification
7 122 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
8 111 (2.08%) CISSP
9 93 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
10 62 (1.16%) CISM
11 58 (1.09%) Cisco Certification
11 58 (1.09%) Master's Degree
12 55 (1.03%) PMI Certification
13 48 (0.90%) PMP
14 46 (0.86%) MCSE
15 44 (0.83%) AWS Certification
15 44 (0.83%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 42 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
17 35 (0.66%) A+ Certification
18 33 (0.62%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 239 (4.49%) GDPR
2 213 (4.00%) Data Quality
3 155 (2.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 155 (2.91%) QA
4 154 (2.89%) SLA
5 118 (2.21%) PMO
6 117 (2.20%) NIST
7 75 (1.41%) Accessibility
8 55 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
9 36 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 34 (0.64%) NCSC
11 26 (0.49%) PCI DSS
12 22 (0.41%) GRC
12 22 (0.41%) WCAG
13 21 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 19 (0.36%) EU AI Act
15 17 (0.32%) MiFID
16 15 (0.28%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.28%) SOC 2
17 13 (0.24%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,093 (20.51%) Active Directory
2 213 (4.00%) Docker
3 173 (3.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 75 (1.41%) Hyper-V
5 69 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
6 49 (0.92%) Virtual Desktop
7 39 (0.73%) vSphere
8 34 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 21 (0.39%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.36%) BitLocker
11 14 (0.26%) Firmware
12 9 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.13%) Snort
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) RACF
15 5 (0.094%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 5 (0.094%) Tivoli Directory Server
15 5 (0.094%) Virtual Servers
16 4 (0.075%) KVM
16 4 (0.075%) Squid
Systems Management
1 430 (8.07%) Microsoft Intune
2 323 (6.06%) Terraform
3 260 (4.88%) SCCM
4 249 (4.67%) Kubernetes
5 154 (2.89%) Single Sign-On
6 106 (1.99%) Ansible
7 105 (1.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 43 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
9 41 (0.77%) Grafana
10 36 (0.68%) Prometheus
10 36 (0.68%) vCenter Server
11 33 (0.62%) SCOM
12 24 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 19 (0.36%) WSUS
14 16 (0.30%) Puppet
15 14 (0.26%) AirWatch
15 14 (0.26%) Nessus
15 14 (0.26%) Progress Chef
15 14 (0.26%) WMI
16 12 (0.23%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 269 (5.05%) ServiceNow
2 261 (4.90%) VMware
3 198 (3.72%) SAP
4 193 (3.62%) Oracle
5 188 (3.53%) Cisco
6 187 (3.51%) Databricks
7 153 (2.87%) Google
8 137 (2.57%) Citrix
9 127 (2.38%) Splunk
10 85 (1.60%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.58%) OpenAI
12 70 (1.31%) Apple
13 65 (1.22%) Foundry
14 62 (1.16%) CrowdStrike
15 57 (1.07%) Palo Alto
16 54 (1.01%) HP
17 45 (0.84%) Okta
18 43 (0.81%) Remedy
19 41 (0.77%) CyberArk
20 39 (0.73%) IBM