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 13 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
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,275 4,512 5,616
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.91% 13.81% 13.14%
As % of the Vendors category 28.91% 29.05% 30.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,113 2,896 3,664
10th Percentile £213 £213 £195
25th Percentile £375 £350 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -2.96% -2.10%
75th Percentile £588 £584 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £697
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £430 £450
% change year-on-year +4.65% -4.44% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 379 342 481
10th Percentile £13.60 £14.20 £11.50
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £14.00
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.41 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.28% +38.06% -27.87%
75th Percentile £35.22 £31.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £67.70 £63.40 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.69 £20.26 £16.06
% change year-on-year +2.16% +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 21,707 15,531 18,485
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.20% 47.52% 43.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,493 9,513 11,510
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.44% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,110 741 1,118
10th Percentile £15.99 £14.75 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.25 £17.30 £15.00
Median hourly rate £34.61 £25.15 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.62% +0.60% -38.27%
75th Percentile £63.94 £53.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £68.00 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £22.63 £24.31
% change year-on-year +43.61% -6.91% -21.58%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 5,449 £493 +3.68% 3,503
UK excluding London -1 3,337 £450 +4.65% 2,953
London -2 2,394 £510 -0.49% 1,132
Work from Home +2 1,620 £500 - 1,480
North of England -4 844 £466 +9.59% 723
South East -2 796 £475 - 928
Midlands -2 579 £448 +19.33% 457
North West -2 465 £450 +5.26% 357
South West 0 407 £475 +11.76% 337
West Midlands -3 405 £450 +18.03% 245
Yorkshire -3 358 £488 +11.43% 249
Scotland +6 302 £450 +2.39% 141
East of England 0 290 £350 -30.00% 294
East Midlands +2 166 £418 +12.53% 211
Wales +2 117 £370 +23.33% 79
Northern Ireland +1 33 £350 -6.04% 78
North East -37 27 £450 +32.35% 132
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14% 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
1 676 (10.77%) SharePoint
2 399 (6.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 136 (2.17%) Confluence
4 37 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 35 (0.56%) Apache
6 30 (0.48%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.33%) IIS
8 19 (0.30%) CMS
9 15 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 14 (0.22%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) SAS
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Workflow
13 6 (0.096%) Camunda
13 6 (0.096%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.080%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.080%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.064%) Exchange Server 2010
15 4 (0.064%) nginx
15 4 (0.064%) OpenStack
15 4 (0.064%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 583 (9.29%) Microsoft Office
2 580 (9.24%) Microsoft Excel
3 247 (3.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 145 (2.31%) Microsoft Project
5 113 (1.80%) MS Visio
6 41 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.096%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
11 3 (0.048%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.048%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.048%) Photoshop
11 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 3 (0.048%) Trello
12 2 (0.032%) Adobe Premiere
12 2 (0.032%) Final Cut Pro
12 2 (0.032%) InDesign
12 2 (0.032%) InfoPath
12 2 (0.032%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 221 (3.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 77 (1.23%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.30%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.25%) Aladdin
7 15 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
8 13 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 13 (0.21%) Teamcenter
9 12 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
10 10 (0.16%) Primavera
11 9 (0.14%) Sage X3
11 9 (0.14%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.13%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
13 7 (0.11%) Magento
13 7 (0.11%) Salesforce CRM
13 7 (0.11%) SAP PSCD
14 6 (0.096%) Dynamics GP
14 6 (0.096%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,618 (41.72%) Azure
2 1,549 (24.69%) Microsoft 365
3 1,063 (16.94%) Power Platform
4 892 (14.22%) Entra ID
5 562 (8.96%) AWS
6 501 (7.98%) Azure DevOps
7 487 (7.76%) Dynamics 365
8 355 (5.66%) Power Automate
9 326 (5.20%) PowerApps
10 322 (5.13%) Microsoft Copilot
11 310 (4.94%) Microsoft Purview
12 254 (4.05%) GitHub
13 236 (3.76%) OneDrive
14 230 (3.67%) SaaS
15 206 (3.28%) GCP
16 162 (2.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 158 (2.52%) Azure Data Factory
18 150 (2.39%) Serverless
19 148 (2.36%) Azure Logic Apps
20 146 (2.33%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 348 (5.55%) DNS
2 295 (4.70%) Firewall
3 241 (3.84%) VPN
4 207 (3.30%) DHCP
5 161 (2.57%) TCP/IP
6 157 (2.50%) WAN
7 145 (2.31%) Wi-Fi
8 142 (2.26%) LAN
9 131 (2.09%) Network Security
10 58 (0.92%) VLAN
11 46 (0.73%) Kerberos
12 45 (0.72%) SAN
13 43 (0.69%) Wireless
14 42 (0.67%) SSL
15 39 (0.62%) SD-WAN
16 38 (0.61%) MPLS
17 35 (0.56%) Unified Communications
18 31 (0.49%) Internet
18 31 (0.49%) VoIP
19 29 (0.46%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 678 (10.80%) Power BI
2 340 (5.42%) SQL Server
3 179 (2.85%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (2.23%) PostgreSQL
5 126 (2.01%) Metadata
6 122 (1.94%) Data Lake
7 121 (1.93%) Azure SQL Database
8 73 (1.16%) Relational Database
9 69 (1.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 64 (1.02%) MySQL
11 58 (0.92%) Power Query
12 51 (0.81%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 44 (0.70%) Star Schema
14 43 (0.69%) NoSQL
15 40 (0.64%) Oracle Database
15 40 (0.64%) Tableau
16 33 (0.53%) Delta Lake
17 32 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
18 26 (0.41%) Big Data
19 25 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 322 (5.13%) JIRA
2 186 (2.96%) Git
3 78 (1.24%) Jenkins
4 55 (0.88%) GitLab
5 40 (0.64%) Visual Studio
6 30 (0.48%) MSI
7 20 (0.32%) Selenium
8 17 (0.27%) Artifactory
8 17 (0.27%) Eclipse
8 17 (0.27%) ERwin
9 16 (0.25%) MLflow
10 15 (0.24%) JUnit
11 14 (0.22%) Maven
11 14 (0.22%) Postman
12 13 (0.21%) Bitbucket
12 13 (0.21%) Team Foundation Server
13 12 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
14 11 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
14 11 (0.18%) WebDriver
15 10 (0.16%) Cypress.io
General
1 2,072 (33.02%) Social Skills
2 1,254 (19.98%) Finance
3 726 (11.57%) Analytical Skills
4 592 (9.43%) Public Sector
5 313 (4.99%) Banking
6 273 (4.35%) Organisational Skills
7 246 (3.92%) Legal
8 172 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
9 124 (1.98%) Manufacturing
10 123 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 113 (1.80%) Retail
12 103 (1.64%) Law
13 100 (1.59%) Telecoms
14 89 (1.42%) Marketing
15 86 (1.37%) Military
16 81 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
17 73 (1.16%) Local Government
18 65 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
18 65 (1.04%) Investment Banking
19 46 (0.73%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 760 (12.11%) Architect
2 672 (10.71%) Analyst
3 584 (9.31%) Developer
4 518 (8.25%) Senior
5 429 (6.84%) Lead
6 393 (6.26%) IT Support
7 381 (6.07%) Consultant
8 321 (5.12%) Support Engineer
9 242 (3.86%) Solutions Architect
10 236 (3.76%) Data Engineer
11 232 (3.70%) IT Engineer
12 221 (3.52%) Project Manager
13 214 (3.41%) Azure Engineer
14 199 (3.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 185 (2.95%) Administrator
16 184 (2.93%) IT Support Engineer
17 180 (2.87%) Business Analyst
18 138 (2.20%) Cloud Engineer
19 118 (1.88%) Security Engineer
20 111 (1.77%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 281 (4.48%) .NET
2 224 (3.57%) REST
3 135 (2.15%) Microsoft Graph
4 120 (1.91%) OAuth
5 115 (1.83%) JSON
6 102 (1.63%) PySpark
7 101 (1.61%) SAML
8 90 (1.43%) OpenID
9 85 (1.35%) Web Services
10 80 (1.27%) LDAP
10 80 (1.27%) React
11 74 (1.18%) XML
12 64 (1.02%) .NET Framework
13 63 (1.00%) RESTful
14 62 (0.99%) Node.js
14 62 (0.99%) SailPoint
15 61 (0.97%) OAuth2
16 60 (0.96%) HTML
17 58 (0.92%) Middleware
18 57 (0.91%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 371 (5.91%) Onboarding
2 298 (4.75%) Cloud Native
3 174 (2.77%) Product Ownership
4 164 (2.61%) Management Information System
5 135 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
6 128 (2.04%) Data Centre
7 125 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
8 113 (1.80%) AI Agents
9 111 (1.77%) Hybrid Cloud
9 111 (1.77%) PKI
10 104 (1.66%) Security Posture
11 90 (1.43%) Data Structures
12 89 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
13 81 (1.29%) Virtual Team
14 80 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 80 (1.27%) Replication
15 73 (1.16%) Low-Code
16 66 (1.05%) Distributed Systems
17 57 (0.91%) Driving Licence
18 55 (0.88%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,335 (21.27%) Windows
2 343 (5.47%) Windows Server
3 326 (5.20%) Windows 10
4 275 (4.38%) Linux
5 134 (2.14%) Mac OS
6 114 (1.82%) Android
7 107 (1.71%) Apple iOS
8 47 (0.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.72%) Unix
10 38 (0.61%) Windows Server 2016
11 37 (0.59%) Windows 7
12 34 (0.54%) Windows Server 2019
13 29 (0.46%) VMS
14 22 (0.35%) Windows Server 2012
15 19 (0.30%) Ubuntu
16 12 (0.19%) SUSE
17 11 (0.18%) CentOS
18 10 (0.16%) Solaris
18 10 (0.16%) Windows Server 2003
19 6 (0.096%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,078 (17.18%) Problem-Solving
2 994 (15.84%) DevOps
3 929 (14.80%) Agile
4 875 (13.94%) Migration
5 810 (12.91%) CI/CD
6 779 (12.41%) Stakeholder Management
7 697 (11.11%) AI
8 692 (11.03%) Business Intelligence
9 651 (10.37%) Analytics
10 645 (10.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 626 (9.98%) Continuous Improvement
12 566 (9.02%) ITIL
13 479 (7.63%) Customer Service
14 461 (7.35%) Data Modelling
15 443 (7.06%) Roadmaps
16 428 (6.82%) Cybersecurity
17 420 (6.69%) Infrastructure as Code
18 406 (6.47%) Decision-Making
19 387 (6.17%) Validation
20 383 (6.10%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 794 (12.65%) SQL
2 671 (10.69%) PowerShell
3 650 (10.36%) Python
4 289 (4.61%) C#
5 219 (3.49%) JavaScript
6 195 (3.11%) Java
7 160 (2.55%) Bicep
8 111 (1.77%) T-SQL
9 98 (1.56%) Bash
10 89 (1.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 86 (1.37%) TypeScript
12 79 (1.26%) Kusto Query Language
13 38 (0.61%) VBA
14 33 (0.53%) C++
15 29 (0.46%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.43%) VB
17 19 (0.30%) VBScript
18 17 (0.27%) Scala
19 15 (0.24%) R
20 14 (0.22%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 1,252 (19.95%) Security Cleared
2 968 (15.43%) SC Cleared
3 606 (9.66%) Degree
4 313 (4.99%) Microsoft Certification
5 222 (3.54%) DV Cleared
6 212 (3.38%) Azure Certification
7 132 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
8 125 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
9 116 (1.85%) CISSP
10 110 (1.75%) Cisco Certification
11 70 (1.12%) PMP
12 63 (1.00%) PMI Certification
13 62 (0.99%) CISM
14 58 (0.92%) AWS Certification
15 55 (0.88%) Master's Degree
16 49 (0.78%) CCNP
17 45 (0.72%) DBS Check
18 44 (0.70%) CCNA
19 43 (0.69%) MCSE
20 39 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 320 (5.10%) Data Quality
2 233 (3.71%) GDPR
3 206 (3.28%) QA
4 179 (2.85%) SLA
5 162 (2.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 138 (2.20%) NIST
7 129 (2.06%) PMO
8 95 (1.51%) Accessibility
9 81 (1.29%) Cyber Essentials
10 73 (1.16%) NCSC
11 40 (0.64%) GRC
12 35 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 34 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 31 (0.49%) PCI DSS
15 29 (0.46%) WCAG
16 19 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 17 (0.27%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
18 13 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
19 12 (0.19%) HIPAA
System Software
1 1,206 (19.22%) Active Directory
2 236 (3.76%) Docker
3 212 (3.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.77%) Hyper-V
5 94 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
7 59 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
8 58 (0.92%) vSphere
9 32 (0.51%) BitLocker
10 25 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) Firmware
11 20 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
12 9 (0.14%) NFS
13 7 (0.11%) IAG
14 5 (0.080%) RACF
14 5 (0.080%) Terminal Services
14 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
15 4 (0.064%) Oracle RAC
15 4 (0.064%) Snort
15 4 (0.064%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 493 (7.86%) Microsoft Intune
2 416 (6.63%) Terraform
3 283 (4.51%) Kubernetes
4 224 (3.57%) SCCM
5 137 (2.18%) Ansible
6 129 (2.06%) Single Sign-On
7 67 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 63 (1.00%) Jamf Pro
9 52 (0.83%) vCenter Server
10 47 (0.75%) Grafana
11 36 (0.57%) Prometheus
12 33 (0.53%) SCOM
13 22 (0.35%) FortiGate
14 19 (0.30%) Puppet
14 19 (0.30%) WSUS
15 18 (0.29%) QRadar
16 11 (0.18%) Argo
16 11 (0.18%) HAProxy
16 11 (0.18%) vMotion
16 11 (0.18%) VxRail
Vendors
1 404 (6.44%) ServiceNow
2 291 (4.64%) VMware
3 290 (4.62%) Oracle
4 257 (4.10%) SAP
5 208 (3.31%) Cisco
6 206 (3.28%) Databricks
7 195 (3.11%) Google
8 124 (1.98%) Salesforce
9 106 (1.69%) Citrix
10 100 (1.59%) Splunk
11 93 (1.48%) Apple
12 81 (1.29%) Foundry
13 79 (1.26%) OpenAI
14 75 (1.20%) Okta
15 72 (1.15%) CyberArk
16 62 (0.99%) CrowdStrike
17 49 (0.78%) HP
17 49 (0.78%) Red Hat
18 46 (0.73%) Zscaler
19 45 (0.72%) Dell