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 May 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 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,576 3,868 5,524
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.52% 13.43% 12.97%
As % of the Vendors category 28.13% 28.13% 30.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,724 2,534 3,639
10th Percentile £213 £208 £189
25th Percentile £375 £341 £335
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £583 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £450
% change year-on-year +5.88% -5.56% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 360 248 468
10th Percentile £13.65 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.39 £13.00
Median hourly rate £20.09 £18.85 £15.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.58% +25.67% -33.96%
75th Percentile £29.50 £29.07 £24.81
90th Percentile £63.75 £58.10 £55.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.09 £18.51 £15.00
% change year-on-year +8.54% +23.40% -21.05%

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 19,824 13,751 17,998
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.95% 47.75% 42.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,524 8,565 11,242
10th Percentile £313 £281 £263
25th Percentile £413 £406 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% - -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £492 £500
% change year-on-year - -1.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,015 565 1,105
10th Percentile £15.25 £14.84 £12.01
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.30 £14.48
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.50 £22.30
Median % change year-on-year +27.45% +14.35% -47.84%
75th Percentile £58.75 £56.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.40 £70.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £29.50 £22.50 £21.46
% change year-on-year +31.11% +4.85% -45.81%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 4,883 £497 +3.71% 3,051
UK excluding London -1 2,908 £450 +5.88% 2,628
London -3 2,156 £515 +0.49% 913
Work from Home -1 1,391 £500 - 1,356
North of England -3 757 £450 +8.70% 651
South East -2 672 £475 +2.15% 806
Midlands -3 505 £447 +11.75% 398
North West -2 389 £433 +1.76% 351
West Midlands -6 350 £450 +12.50% 230
Yorkshire -3 348 £475 +15.03% 217
South West -2 342 £450 -0.88% 271
East of England 0 314 £375 -25.00% 265
Scotland +6 226 £450 +5.88% 138
East Midlands +1 148 £401 -2.32% 167
Wales 0 93 £335 +17.54% 80
North East -31 25 £450 +35.34% 89
Northern Ireland -3 19 £450 +38.46% 72
Channel Islands -2 2 £550 +84.87%

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
1 598 (10.72%) SharePoint
2 367 (6.58%) Microsoft Exchange
3 103 (1.85%) Confluence
4 36 (0.65%) Apache Spark
5 27 (0.48%) Apache
6 25 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.41%) HCL Notes
8 19 (0.34%) CMS
9 14 (0.25%) IIS
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.23%) Skype for Business
11 12 (0.22%) Mendix
12 6 (0.11%) Camunda
12 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.090%) ArcGIS
13 5 (0.090%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.090%) Oracle Workflow
14 4 (0.072%) Drupal
14 4 (0.072%) MS Project Server
14 4 (0.072%) nginx
Applications
1 549 (9.85%) Microsoft Office
2 479 (8.59%) Microsoft Excel
3 210 (3.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 117 (2.10%) Microsoft Project
5 90 (1.61%) MS Visio
6 51 (0.91%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.20%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.11%) Adobe Illustrator
9 6 (0.11%) Trello
10 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.072%) InDesign
11 4 (0.072%) SOLIDWORKS
12 3 (0.054%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.054%) AutoCAD
12 3 (0.054%) Photoshop
13 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
13 2 (0.036%) InfoPath
13 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 198 (3.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 22 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
4 16 (0.29%) Dynamics NAV
4 16 (0.29%) NetSuite
5 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
6 13 (0.23%) Teamcenter
7 12 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 11 (0.20%) Oracle EBS
9 10 (0.18%) Maximo
9 10 (0.18%) Sage X3
9 10 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
11 8 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
12 6 (0.11%) Dynamics GP
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
12 6 (0.11%) Primavera
12 6 (0.11%) Shopify
13 5 (0.090%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,364 (42.40%) Azure
2 1,421 (25.48%) Microsoft 365
3 952 (17.07%) Power Platform
4 734 (13.16%) Entra ID
5 461 (8.27%) Dynamics 365
6 448 (8.03%) AWS
7 437 (7.84%) Azure DevOps
8 326 (5.85%) Power Automate
9 295 (5.29%) PowerApps
10 293 (5.25%) Microsoft Purview
11 245 (4.39%) GitHub
11 245 (4.39%) Microsoft Copilot
12 217 (3.89%) OneDrive
13 198 (3.55%) SaaS
14 186 (3.34%) Azure Data Factory
15 174 (3.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 166 (2.98%) GCP
17 157 (2.82%) Serverless
18 144 (2.58%) PaaS
19 135 (2.42%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 280 (5.02%) DNS
2 259 (4.64%) Firewall
3 207 (3.71%) VPN
4 172 (3.08%) DHCP
5 133 (2.39%) Wi-Fi
6 132 (2.37%) WAN
7 115 (2.06%) LAN
8 111 (1.99%) Network Security
9 103 (1.85%) TCP/IP
10 55 (0.99%) Kerberos
11 53 (0.95%) VLAN
12 45 (0.81%) SD-WAN
13 38 (0.68%) SAN
14 35 (0.63%) Wireless
15 34 (0.61%) SSL
16 29 (0.52%) HTTP
17 28 (0.50%) Skype
17 28 (0.50%) Unified Communications
18 24 (0.43%) IPsec
19 23 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 573 (10.28%) Power BI
2 265 (4.75%) SQL Server
3 171 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 151 (2.71%) Data Lake
5 118 (2.12%) Azure SQL Database
6 112 (2.01%) Metadata
7 96 (1.72%) PostgreSQL
8 67 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 65 (1.17%) Relational Database
10 49 (0.88%) Power Query
11 45 (0.81%) NoSQL
11 45 (0.81%) Tableau
12 43 (0.77%) MySQL
12 43 (0.77%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 40 (0.72%) Delta Lake
13 40 (0.72%) Star Schema
14 36 (0.65%) Oracle Database
15 30 (0.54%) Spark SQL
16 26 (0.47%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 25 (0.45%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 256 (4.59%) JIRA
2 167 (2.99%) Git
3 64 (1.15%) Jenkins
4 61 (1.09%) GitLab
5 33 (0.59%) Visual Studio
6 24 (0.43%) Artifactory
7 20 (0.36%) MSI
8 19 (0.34%) Eclipse
9 15 (0.27%) MLflow
10 14 (0.25%) ERwin
10 14 (0.25%) JMeter
10 14 (0.25%) Selenium
10 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Code
11 12 (0.22%) Bitbucket
11 12 (0.22%) Maven
11 12 (0.22%) Postman
12 10 (0.18%) Team Foundation Server
13 9 (0.16%) Android Studio
13 9 (0.16%) Browser DevTools
13 9 (0.16%) Gatling
General
1 1,805 (32.37%) Social Skills
2 1,104 (19.80%) Finance
3 621 (11.14%) Analytical Skills
4 494 (8.86%) Public Sector
5 293 (5.25%) Banking
6 245 (4.39%) Legal
7 239 (4.29%) Organisational Skills
8 137 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 98 (1.76%) Manufacturing
10 94 (1.69%) Law
11 91 (1.63%) Retail
12 87 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
13 81 (1.45%) Telecoms
14 79 (1.42%) Marketing
15 73 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 69 (1.24%) Local Government
17 68 (1.22%) Military
18 56 (1.00%) Investment Banking
19 54 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
20 47 (0.84%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 691 (12.39%) Architect
2 597 (10.71%) Analyst
3 509 (9.13%) Developer
4 465 (8.34%) Senior
5 364 (6.53%) IT Support
6 345 (6.19%) Lead
7 310 (5.56%) Consultant
8 260 (4.66%) Support Engineer
9 226 (4.05%) Data Engineer
10 203 (3.64%) Azure Engineer
11 193 (3.46%) Project Manager
12 192 (3.44%) Solutions Architect
13 181 (3.25%) IT Engineer
14 177 (3.17%) Business Analyst
15 169 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 162 (2.91%) Administrator
17 136 (2.44%) IT Support Engineer
18 117 (2.10%) Security Engineer
19 103 (1.85%) DevOps Engineer
20 102 (1.83%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 243 (4.36%) .NET
2 167 (2.99%) REST
3 134 (2.40%) Microsoft Graph
4 107 (1.92%) OAuth
5 103 (1.85%) PySpark
6 98 (1.76%) SAML
7 87 (1.56%) JSON
8 81 (1.45%) React
9 80 (1.43%) OpenID
10 79 (1.42%) LDAP
11 68 (1.22%) Web Services
12 64 (1.15%) Middleware
13 55 (0.99%) HTML
14 54 (0.97%) XML
15 53 (0.95%) Node.js
16 51 (0.91%) OAuth2
16 51 (0.91%) SailPoint
17 49 (0.88%) CSS
18 48 (0.86%) AngularJS
18 48 (0.86%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 301 (5.40%) Onboarding
2 222 (3.98%) Cloud Native
3 169 (3.03%) Product Ownership
4 125 (2.24%) Management Information System
5 103 (1.85%) Data Centre
6 101 (1.81%) Enterprise Software
7 91 (1.63%) Hybrid Cloud
8 90 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
9 88 (1.58%) Security Posture
10 86 (1.54%) AI Agents
11 77 (1.38%) Replication
11 77 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
12 72 (1.29%) PKI
13 71 (1.27%) Low-Code
14 69 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
14 69 (1.24%) Data Structures
15 61 (1.09%) Virtual Team
16 46 (0.82%) Driving Licence
16 46 (0.82%) NHS
16 46 (0.82%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,201 (21.54%) Windows
2 326 (5.85%) Windows 10
3 277 (4.97%) Windows Server
4 252 (4.52%) Linux
5 110 (1.97%) Apple iOS
6 108 (1.94%) Mac OS
7 107 (1.92%) Android
8 42 (0.75%) Windows 7
9 40 (0.72%) Windows Server 2016
10 39 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 39 (0.70%) Unix
11 31 (0.56%) VMS
12 30 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
13 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2012
14 15 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
15 12 (0.22%) Ubuntu
16 11 (0.20%) CentOS
17 5 (0.090%) AIX
18 4 (0.072%) Solaris
18 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 944 (16.93%) Problem-Solving
2 885 (15.87%) DevOps
3 837 (15.01%) Agile
4 786 (14.10%) Migration
5 742 (13.31%) CI/CD
6 618 (11.08%) Business Intelligence
7 604 (10.83%) Analytics
8 568 (10.19%) AI
9 556 (9.97%) Stakeholder Management
10 493 (8.84%) Continuous Improvement
11 466 (8.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 458 (8.21%) ITIL
13 432 (7.75%) Customer Service
14 418 (7.50%) Data Modelling
15 384 (6.89%) Roadmaps
16 357 (6.40%) Cybersecurity
17 349 (6.26%) Decision-Making
18 328 (5.88%) Infrastructure as Code
19 320 (5.74%) Project Delivery
20 314 (5.63%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 708 (12.70%) SQL
2 633 (11.35%) PowerShell
3 589 (10.56%) Python
4 256 (4.59%) C#
5 197 (3.53%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.26%) Java
7 128 (2.30%) Bicep
8 90 (1.61%) T-SQL
9 85 (1.52%) Kusto Query Language
10 75 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.31%) Bash
12 67 (1.20%) TypeScript
13 35 (0.63%) VBA
14 28 (0.50%) VB
15 27 (0.48%) C++
16 26 (0.47%) PL/SQL
17 19 (0.34%) Scala
18 18 (0.32%) R
19 14 (0.25%) Shell Script
19 14 (0.25%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 1,053 (18.88%) Security Cleared
2 825 (14.80%) SC Cleared
3 544 (9.76%) Degree
4 257 (4.61%) Microsoft Certification
5 179 (3.21%) Azure Certification
6 175 (3.14%) DV Cleared
7 122 (2.19%) Computer Science Degree
8 106 (1.90%) CISSP
9 98 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
10 80 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
11 59 (1.06%) CISM
12 55 (0.99%) PMP
13 53 (0.95%) Master's Degree
14 52 (0.93%) PMI Certification
15 40 (0.72%) MCSE
16 38 (0.68%) AWS Certification
17 36 (0.65%) DBS Check
18 35 (0.63%) CCNP
19 30 (0.54%) MCSA
20 29 (0.52%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 276 (4.95%) Data Quality
2 226 (4.05%) GDPR
3 182 (3.26%) QA
4 150 (2.69%) SLA
5 140 (2.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 119 (2.13%) NIST
7 100 (1.79%) PMO
8 73 (1.31%) Cyber Essentials
9 71 (1.27%) Accessibility
10 54 (0.97%) NCSC
11 37 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.61%) GRC
13 29 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 26 (0.47%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 22 (0.39%) NIST 800
16 20 (0.36%) MiFID
17 16 (0.29%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.23%) FINRA
18 13 (0.23%) WCAG
19 11 (0.20%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 1,062 (19.05%) Active Directory
2 210 (3.77%) Docker
3 191 (3.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (1.79%) Hyper-V
5 79 (1.42%) Virtual Desktop
6 69 (1.24%) Virtual Machines
7 57 (1.02%) VMware ESXi
8 52 (0.93%) vSphere
9 26 (0.47%) BitLocker
10 23 (0.41%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 17 (0.30%) Firmware
13 6 (0.11%) NFS
13 6 (0.11%) RACF
14 5 (0.090%) IAG
14 5 (0.090%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.090%) Snort
14 5 (0.090%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.072%) Squid
15 4 (0.072%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 442 (7.93%) Microsoft Intune
2 342 (6.13%) Terraform
3 241 (4.32%) Kubernetes
4 200 (3.59%) SCCM
5 120 (2.15%) Ansible
5 120 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
6 79 (1.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 49 (0.88%) vCenter Server
8 45 (0.81%) Jamf Pro
9 36 (0.65%) Grafana
10 31 (0.56%) Prometheus
11 23 (0.41%) FortiGate
12 20 (0.36%) SCOM
13 18 (0.32%) Puppet
14 15 (0.27%) AirWatch
15 14 (0.25%) QRadar
16 13 (0.23%) WSUS
17 12 (0.22%) HAProxy
17 12 (0.22%) ServiceCenter
18 10 (0.18%) CASB
Vendors
1 283 (5.08%) ServiceNow
2 262 (4.70%) VMware
3 216 (3.87%) Databricks
3 216 (3.87%) SAP
4 208 (3.73%) Oracle
5 187 (3.35%) Cisco
6 154 (2.76%) Google
7 108 (1.94%) Citrix
8 99 (1.78%) Salesforce
9 93 (1.67%) Splunk
10 81 (1.45%) OpenAI
11 72 (1.29%) Apple
12 67 (1.20%) Foundry
13 56 (1.00%) CrowdStrike
14 50 (0.90%) CyberArk
14 50 (0.90%) HP
15 48 (0.86%) Okta
16 46 (0.82%) Palo Alto
17 45 (0.81%) Adobe
18 40 (0.72%) Dell