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 July 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 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,353 4,554 5,513
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.99% 13.90% 13.11%
As % of the Vendors category 29.06% 29.23% 30.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,165 2,927 3,602
10th Percentile £216 £213 £200
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £586 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £689
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £431 £450
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.22% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 375 354 429
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.00 £11.66
25th Percentile £16.60 £15.84 £14.16
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.41 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +38.06% -27.87%
75th Percentile £35.38 £31.00 £27.00
90th Percentile £70.14 £63.40 £62.51
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.00 £20.26 £16.06
% change year-on-year +3.68% +26.12% -15.47%

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 21,859 15,579 18,207
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.27% 47.53% 43.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,588 9,535 11,421
10th Percentile £313 £281 £275
25th Percentile £413 £403 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £731
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.66% -4.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,095 761 1,023
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.75 £12.76
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.50
Median hourly rate £34.85 £25.15 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.57% -3.27% -36.65%
75th Percentile £65.00 £50.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £84.50 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.50 £25.00
% change year-on-year +44.44% -10.00% -22.60%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 5,506 £495 +4.21% 2,813
UK excluding London -1 3,379 £450 +4.41% 2,461
London -2 2,411 £511 +2.20% 817
Work from Home +3 1,643 £500 - 1,032
South East -2 831 £475 - 806
North of England -5 831 £466 +9.59% 610
Midlands -2 591 £447 +16.17% 382
North West -2 468 £450 +4.41% 313
West Midlands -3 415 £450 +12.50% 203
South West -1 412 £475 +8.57% 264
Yorkshire -5 341 £488 +11.43% 216
Scotland +6 318 £450 - 115
East of England 0 285 £375 -25.00% 272
East Midlands +2 168 £413 +12.40% 179
Wales 0 113 £413 +39.83% 76
Northern Ireland +1 33 £350 -6.04% 24
North East -37 28 £450 +32.35% 95
Channel Islands 0 1 £550 -24.14% 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
1 699 (11.00%) SharePoint
2 389 (6.12%) Microsoft Exchange
3 138 (2.17%) Confluence
4 38 (0.60%) Apache Spark
5 34 (0.54%) Apache
6 30 (0.47%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 17 (0.27%) CMS
9 13 (0.20%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.20%) Skype for Business
10 11 (0.17%) SAS
11 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
12 9 (0.14%) nginx
13 6 (0.094%) Camunda
13 6 (0.094%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.079%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.079%) OpenStack
14 5 (0.079%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.063%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.063%) Tomcat
Applications
1 586 (9.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 575 (9.05%) Microsoft Office
3 253 (3.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 158 (2.49%) Microsoft Project
5 107 (1.68%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.39%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 7 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
10 4 (0.063%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.047%) Adobe Premiere
11 3 (0.047%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.047%) Final Cut Pro
11 3 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.047%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) InDesign
12 2 (0.031%) MicroStation
12 2 (0.031%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.031%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 234 (3.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
5 18 (0.28%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.27%) Aladdin
7 16 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.19%) Primavera
10 10 (0.16%) Teamcenter
11 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
11 9 (0.14%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.13%) Magento
13 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
13 7 (0.11%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
13 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.094%) iTrent
14 6 (0.094%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 2,647 (41.67%) Azure
2 1,548 (24.37%) Microsoft 365
3 1,080 (17.00%) Power Platform
4 915 (14.40%) Entra ID
5 572 (9.00%) AWS
6 513 (8.07%) Dynamics 365
7 510 (8.03%) Azure DevOps
8 371 (5.84%) Power Automate
9 331 (5.21%) PowerApps
10 329 (5.18%) Microsoft Copilot
11 310 (4.88%) Microsoft Purview
12 260 (4.09%) GitHub
13 237 (3.73%) SaaS
14 230 (3.62%) OneDrive
15 212 (3.34%) GCP
16 163 (2.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 158 (2.49%) Azure Data Factory
18 151 (2.38%) PaaS
19 148 (2.33%) Serverless
20 143 (2.25%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 345 (5.43%) DNS
2 300 (4.72%) Firewall
3 241 (3.79%) VPN
4 208 (3.27%) DHCP
5 175 (2.75%) TCP/IP
6 147 (2.31%) WAN
7 146 (2.30%) Wi-Fi
8 138 (2.17%) LAN
9 133 (2.09%) Network Security
10 58 (0.91%) VLAN
11 45 (0.71%) SAN
12 43 (0.68%) Wireless
13 39 (0.61%) Kerberos
13 39 (0.61%) MPLS
13 39 (0.61%) SSL
14 36 (0.57%) Unified Communications
15 32 (0.50%) VoIP
16 31 (0.49%) Internet
16 31 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 26 (0.41%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 690 (10.86%) Power BI
2 356 (5.60%) SQL Server
3 186 (2.93%) Data Warehouse
4 139 (2.19%) PostgreSQL
5 127 (2.00%) Metadata
6 126 (1.98%) Data Lake
7 118 (1.86%) Azure SQL Database
8 74 (1.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 73 (1.15%) Relational Database
10 62 (0.98%) MySQL
11 59 (0.93%) Power Query
12 52 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.69%) NoSQL
13 44 (0.69%) Oracle Database
13 44 (0.69%) Star Schema
14 37 (0.58%) Tableau
15 33 (0.52%) Delta Lake
15 33 (0.52%) SQL Server Analysis Services
16 26 (0.41%) Big Data
17 25 (0.39%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 323 (5.08%) JIRA
2 194 (3.05%) Git
3 84 (1.32%) Jenkins
4 56 (0.88%) GitLab
5 45 (0.71%) Visual Studio
6 31 (0.49%) MSI
7 27 (0.42%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.25%) MLflow
9 16 (0.25%) Postman
10 15 (0.24%) Artifactory
10 15 (0.24%) ERwin
10 15 (0.24%) Team Foundation Server
11 14 (0.22%) WebDriver
12 13 (0.20%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.19%) Cypress.io
13 12 (0.19%) JUnit
13 12 (0.19%) Maven
14 11 (0.17%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.17%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 2,102 (33.09%) Social Skills
2 1,261 (19.85%) Finance
3 750 (11.81%) Analytical Skills
4 611 (9.62%) Public Sector
5 313 (4.93%) Banking
6 269 (4.23%) Organisational Skills
7 230 (3.62%) Legal
8 172 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
9 132 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 126 (1.98%) Manufacturing
11 113 (1.78%) Retail
12 103 (1.62%) Law
12 103 (1.62%) Telecoms
13 98 (1.54%) Marketing
14 85 (1.34%) Military
15 80 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
16 77 (1.21%) Local Government
17 71 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
18 62 (0.98%) Investment Banking
19 46 (0.72%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 743 (11.70%) Architect
2 678 (10.67%) Analyst
3 605 (9.52%) Developer
4 534 (8.41%) Senior
5 443 (6.97%) Lead
6 390 (6.14%) IT Support
7 388 (6.11%) Consultant
8 333 (5.24%) Support Engineer
9 242 (3.81%) Data Engineer
10 236 (3.71%) IT Engineer
11 232 (3.65%) Solutions Architect
12 222 (3.49%) Project Manager
13 221 (3.48%) Azure Engineer
14 207 (3.26%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 189 (2.97%) IT Support Engineer
16 185 (2.91%) Administrator
17 179 (2.82%) Business Analyst
18 147 (2.31%) Cloud Engineer
19 121 (1.90%) Security Engineer
20 111 (1.75%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 297 (4.67%) .NET
2 230 (3.62%) REST
3 131 (2.06%) Microsoft Graph
4 120 (1.89%) JSON
5 112 (1.76%) OAuth
6 100 (1.57%) PySpark
7 91 (1.43%) OpenID
8 90 (1.42%) SAML
9 89 (1.40%) Web Services
10 86 (1.35%) XML
11 82 (1.29%) React
12 79 (1.24%) LDAP
13 77 (1.21%) .NET Framework
14 65 (1.02%) RESTful
14 65 (1.02%) SailPoint
15 64 (1.01%) HTML
16 63 (0.99%) Node.js
17 62 (0.98%) OAuth2
18 61 (0.96%) SOAP
19 59 (0.93%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 394 (6.20%) Onboarding
2 305 (4.80%) Cloud Native
3 187 (2.94%) Product Ownership
4 169 (2.66%) Management Information System
5 134 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
6 132 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
7 125 (1.97%) Data Centre
8 121 (1.90%) AI Agents
8 121 (1.90%) Hybrid Cloud
9 120 (1.89%) PKI
10 110 (1.73%) Security Posture
11 95 (1.50%) Data Structures
12 92 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
13 82 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
13 82 (1.29%) Virtual Team
14 74 (1.16%) Replication
15 70 (1.10%) Low-Code
16 68 (1.07%) Distributed Systems
17 60 (0.94%) Driving Licence
18 55 (0.87%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,326 (20.87%) Windows
2 340 (5.35%) Windows Server
3 321 (5.05%) Windows 10
4 296 (4.66%) Linux
5 133 (2.09%) Mac OS
6 116 (1.83%) Android
7 110 (1.73%) Apple iOS
8 57 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 44 (0.69%) Unix
10 38 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
11 35 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
12 33 (0.52%) Windows 7
13 32 (0.50%) VMS
14 22 (0.35%) Ubuntu
15 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 12 (0.19%) CentOS
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
17 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 9 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
19 6 (0.094%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,082 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
2 1,009 (15.88%) DevOps
3 961 (15.13%) Agile
4 889 (13.99%) Migration
5 827 (13.02%) Stakeholder Management
6 821 (12.92%) CI/CD
7 713 (11.22%) AI
8 704 (11.08%) Business Intelligence
9 674 (10.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 663 (10.44%) Continuous Improvement
11 657 (10.34%) Analytics
12 576 (9.07%) ITIL
13 488 (7.68%) Customer Service
14 475 (7.48%) Data Modelling
15 451 (7.10%) Roadmaps
16 436 (6.86%) Cybersecurity
17 431 (6.78%) Infrastructure as Code
18 410 (6.45%) Decision-Making
19 396 (6.23%) Project Delivery
19 396 (6.23%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 803 (12.64%) SQL
2 688 (10.83%) PowerShell
3 653 (10.28%) Python
4 309 (4.86%) C#
5 232 (3.65%) JavaScript
6 205 (3.23%) Java
7 164 (2.58%) Bicep
8 113 (1.78%) T-SQL
9 111 (1.75%) Bash
10 90 (1.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 88 (1.39%) TypeScript
12 75 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
13 40 (0.63%) VBA
14 35 (0.55%) C++
15 28 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 26 (0.41%) VB
17 17 (0.27%) Scala
18 16 (0.25%) R
18 16 (0.25%) VBScript
18 16 (0.25%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,297 (20.42%) Security Cleared
2 989 (15.57%) SC Cleared
3 617 (9.71%) Degree
4 322 (5.07%) Microsoft Certification
5 240 (3.78%) DV Cleared
6 219 (3.45%) Azure Certification
7 139 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
8 120 (1.89%) CISSP
9 119 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
10 118 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
11 80 (1.26%) PMP
12 72 (1.13%) PMI Certification
13 66 (1.04%) CISM
14 64 (1.01%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.87%) Master's Degree
16 50 (0.79%) CCNP
17 46 (0.72%) DBS Check
18 45 (0.71%) CCNA
19 43 (0.68%) MCSE
20 40 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 333 (5.24%) Data Quality
2 222 (3.49%) GDPR
3 217 (3.42%) QA
4 177 (2.79%) SLA
5 167 (2.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 142 (2.24%) NIST
7 141 (2.22%) PMO
8 102 (1.61%) Accessibility
9 81 (1.27%) Cyber Essentials
10 74 (1.16%) NCSC
11 42 (0.66%) GRC
12 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 31 (0.49%) WCAG
14 29 (0.46%) PCI DSS
15 27 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 16 (0.25%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
18 13 (0.20%) GMP
System Software
1 1,212 (19.08%) Active Directory
2 234 (3.68%) Docker
3 210 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.70%) Hyper-V
5 93 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
6 91 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (0.96%) vSphere
8 59 (0.93%) VMware ESXi
9 29 (0.46%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.35%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.31%) Firmware
11 20 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
13 7 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.079%) RACF
14 5 (0.079%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.063%) Snort
15 4 (0.063%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 496 (7.81%) Microsoft Intune
2 430 (6.77%) Terraform
3 289 (4.55%) Kubernetes
4 222 (3.49%) SCCM
5 151 (2.38%) Ansible
6 126 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
7 64 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
8 56 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 54 (0.85%) vCenter Server
10 49 (0.77%) Grafana
11 38 (0.60%) Prometheus
12 34 (0.54%) SCOM
13 23 (0.36%) Puppet
14 19 (0.30%) QRadar
15 18 (0.28%) FortiGate
15 18 (0.28%) WSUS
16 14 (0.22%) Progress Chef
17 12 (0.19%) Argo
18 11 (0.17%) Avamar
18 11 (0.17%) vMotion
Vendors
1 420 (6.61%) ServiceNow
2 299 (4.71%) Oracle
3 289 (4.55%) VMware
4 259 (4.08%) SAP
5 212 (3.34%) Databricks
6 203 (3.20%) Cisco
6 203 (3.20%) Google
7 126 (1.98%) Salesforce
8 108 (1.70%) Citrix
9 97 (1.53%) Splunk
10 95 (1.50%) Apple
11 80 (1.26%) Foundry
12 78 (1.23%) OpenAI
13 75 (1.18%) Okta
14 72 (1.13%) CyberArk
15 68 (1.07%) CrowdStrike
16 58 (0.91%) Red Hat
17 54 (0.85%) BeyondTrust
18 47 (0.74%) HP
18 47 (0.74%) Zscaler