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 23 June 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
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,888 4,103 5,634
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.59% 13.69% 12.91%
As % of the Vendors category 28.46% 28.80% 30.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,897 2,644 3,658
10th Percentile £213 £213 £193
25th Percentile £375 £338 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £671 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £460
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.61% +2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 369 303 498
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.20 £11.13
25th Percentile £16.50 £15.84 £13.34
Median hourly rate £21.25 £20.80 £16.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.19% +29.97% -33.33%
75th Percentile £35.53 £31.00 £25.30
90th Percentile £65.00 £63.37 £59.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.88 £18.87 £15.34
% change year-on-year +10.63% +23.01% -23.30%

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 20,692 14,246 18,519
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.75% 47.54% 42.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,970 8,765 11,497
10th Percentile £313 £281 £270
25th Percentile £413 £403 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £518
Median % change year-on-year - -3.38% -1.43%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £715 £735
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,065 661 1,168
10th Percentile £15.64 £14.84 £12.25
25th Percentile £19.00 £17.30 £14.50
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.50 £24.05
Median % change year-on-year +33.29% +6.03% -43.18%
75th Percentile £60.75 £53.75 £59.50
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.75 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.75 £23.00 £22.56
% change year-on-year +38.04% +1.95% -39.84%

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 23 June 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 23 June 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 23 June 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 5,145 £498 +4.74% 2,930
UK excluding London -1 3,107 £450 +5.88% 2,689
London -3 2,268 £510 -0.24% 806
Work from Home -1 1,495 £500 - 1,174
North of England -4 794 £450 +5.88% 621
South East -2 736 £475 +1.50% 836
Midlands -5 522 £450 +16.13% 438
North West -3 416 £447 +5.18% 336
South West -1 390 £485 +14.12% 298
West Midlands -7 369 £450 +13.07% 218
Yorkshire -3 357 £475 +10.14% 206
East of England 0 297 £375 -25.00% 309
Scotland +2 264 £469 +9.01% 125
East Midlands 0 146 £425 +13.33% 220
Wales +1 99 £370 +29.82% 79
Northern Ireland +2 28 £350 +7.69% 77
North East -40 25 £450 +32.35% 93
Channel Islands 0 2 £550 -24.14%

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
1 638 (10.84%) SharePoint
2 386 (6.56%) Microsoft Exchange
3 124 (2.11%) Confluence
4 37 (0.63%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.49%) Apache
6 27 (0.46%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (0.29%) IIS
8 16 (0.27%) CMS
8 16 (0.27%) HCL Notes
9 14 (0.24%) Skype for Business
10 13 (0.22%) SAS
11 7 (0.12%) Mendix
12 6 (0.10%) Camunda
12 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
12 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
13 5 (0.085%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.085%) SharePoint 2013
14 4 (0.068%) Appian
14 4 (0.068%) ThingWorx
14 4 (0.068%) Tomcat
Applications
1 550 (9.34%) Microsoft Office
2 535 (9.09%) Microsoft Excel
3 235 (3.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 125 (2.12%) Microsoft Project
5 93 (1.58%) MS Visio
6 39 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.24%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 6 (0.10%) Adobe Illustrator
10 5 (0.085%) Acrobat
10 5 (0.085%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.068%) Trello
12 3 (0.051%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.051%) Photoshop
12 3 (0.051%) SOLIDWORKS
13 2 (0.034%) AutoCAD
13 2 (0.034%) Final Cut Pro
13 2 (0.034%) InDesign
13 2 (0.034%) InfoPath
13 2 (0.034%) MicroStation
Business Applications
1 201 (3.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (1.24%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 19 (0.32%) NetSuite
5 18 (0.31%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.25%) Aladdin
6 15 (0.25%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.22%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 9 (0.15%) Primavera
11 9 (0.15%) Sage X3
11 9 (0.15%) SAP MM
12 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
13 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
13 7 (0.12%) Maximo
14 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
14 6 (0.10%) NEC Housing
14 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,476 (42.05%) Azure
2 1,482 (25.17%) Microsoft 365
3 1,016 (17.26%) Power Platform
4 809 (13.74%) Entra ID
5 513 (8.71%) AWS
6 468 (7.95%) Azure DevOps
7 457 (7.76%) Dynamics 365
8 338 (5.74%) Power Automate
9 327 (5.55%) Microsoft Purview
10 303 (5.15%) PowerApps
11 294 (4.99%) Microsoft Copilot
12 247 (4.19%) GitHub
13 239 (4.06%) OneDrive
14 219 (3.72%) SaaS
15 187 (3.18%) GCP
16 176 (2.99%) Azure Data Factory
17 169 (2.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 155 (2.63%) Serverless
19 140 (2.38%) Azure Logic Apps
20 139 (2.36%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 309 (5.25%) DNS
2 277 (4.70%) Firewall
3 220 (3.74%) VPN
4 190 (3.23%) DHCP
5 156 (2.65%) WAN
6 142 (2.41%) TCP/IP
7 139 (2.36%) Wi-Fi
8 130 (2.21%) LAN
9 126 (2.14%) Network Security
10 56 (0.95%) VLAN
11 49 (0.83%) Kerberos
12 47 (0.80%) SD-WAN
13 39 (0.66%) SAN
14 37 (0.63%) Wireless
15 34 (0.58%) SSL
15 34 (0.58%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.51%) VoIP
17 29 (0.49%) Internet
18 27 (0.46%) HTTP
19 25 (0.42%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 643 (10.92%) Power BI
2 300 (5.10%) SQL Server
3 180 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 152 (2.58%) Data Lake
5 126 (2.14%) Azure SQL Database
5 126 (2.14%) Metadata
6 123 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
7 73 (1.24%) Relational Database
8 72 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 56 (0.95%) Power Query
10 52 (0.88%) MySQL
11 48 (0.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 46 (0.78%) NoSQL
13 42 (0.71%) Star Schema
13 42 (0.71%) Tableau
14 38 (0.65%) Delta Lake
15 36 (0.61%) Oracle Database
16 30 (0.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 27 (0.46%) Spark SQL
18 25 (0.42%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 299 (5.08%) JIRA
2 172 (2.92%) Git
3 65 (1.10%) Jenkins
4 61 (1.04%) GitLab
5 37 (0.63%) Visual Studio
6 25 (0.42%) MSI
7 19 (0.32%) Artifactory
8 18 (0.31%) Selenium
9 17 (0.29%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.29%) ERwin
10 16 (0.27%) MLflow
11 14 (0.24%) Maven
12 13 (0.22%) Bitbucket
12 13 (0.22%) JMeter
12 13 (0.22%) Visual Studio Code
13 12 (0.20%) JUnit
13 12 (0.20%) Postman
13 12 (0.20%) Team Foundation Server
14 9 (0.15%) Gatling
15 8 (0.14%) InstallShield
General
1 1,930 (32.78%) Social Skills
2 1,187 (20.16%) Finance
3 644 (10.94%) Analytical Skills
4 532 (9.04%) Public Sector
5 306 (5.20%) Banking
6 244 (4.14%) Organisational Skills
7 238 (4.04%) Legal
8 156 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
9 113 (1.92%) Manufacturing
10 102 (1.73%) Retail
11 101 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 95 (1.61%) Law
13 84 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
14 82 (1.39%) Telecoms
15 81 (1.38%) Military
16 78 (1.32%) Marketing
17 67 (1.14%) Local Government
18 64 (1.09%) Investment Banking
19 61 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
20 47 (0.80%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 736 (12.50%) Architect
2 618 (10.50%) Analyst
3 531 (9.02%) Developer
4 483 (8.20%) Senior
5 389 (6.61%) Lead
6 364 (6.18%) IT Support
7 347 (5.89%) Consultant
8 279 (4.74%) Support Engineer
9 239 (4.06%) Data Engineer
10 223 (3.79%) Solutions Architect
11 203 (3.45%) Project Manager
12 202 (3.43%) Azure Engineer
13 201 (3.41%) IT Engineer
14 179 (3.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 176 (2.99%) Business Analyst
16 171 (2.90%) Administrator
17 155 (2.63%) IT Support Engineer
18 123 (2.09%) Security Engineer
19 114 (1.94%) Cloud Engineer
20 100 (1.70%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 255 (4.33%) .NET
2 194 (3.29%) REST
3 140 (2.38%) Microsoft Graph
4 114 (1.94%) OAuth
5 109 (1.85%) PySpark
6 103 (1.75%) JSON
7 100 (1.70%) SAML
8 86 (1.46%) OpenID
9 80 (1.36%) LDAP
10 77 (1.31%) Web Services
11 76 (1.29%) React
12 60 (1.02%) XML
13 58 (0.99%) Middleware
14 57 (0.97%) OAuth2
15 56 (0.95%) HTML
16 55 (0.93%) RESTful
16 55 (0.93%) SailPoint
17 54 (0.92%) Node.js
18 53 (0.90%) .NET Framework
18 53 (0.90%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 331 (5.62%) Onboarding
2 261 (4.43%) Cloud Native
3 174 (2.96%) Product Ownership
4 141 (2.39%) Management Information System
5 116 (1.97%) Data Centre
5 116 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
6 107 (1.82%) Hybrid Cloud
7 106 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
8 95 (1.61%) Security Posture
9 92 (1.56%) PKI
10 90 (1.53%) AI Agents
11 89 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
12 84 (1.43%) Data Structures
13 74 (1.26%) Data Protection Act
13 74 (1.26%) Replication
14 70 (1.19%) Virtual Team
15 69 (1.17%) Low-Code
16 56 (0.95%) Distributed Systems
17 52 (0.88%) Public Cloud
18 51 (0.87%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 1,248 (21.20%) Windows
2 316 (5.37%) Windows 10
3 303 (5.15%) Windows Server
4 256 (4.35%) Linux
5 121 (2.06%) Mac OS
6 112 (1.90%) Android
7 110 (1.87%) Apple iOS
8 41 (0.70%) Windows 7
9 39 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 38 (0.65%) Unix
11 34 (0.58%) Windows Server 2016
12 31 (0.53%) VMS
13 28 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
14 20 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
15 14 (0.24%) Ubuntu
16 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
17 11 (0.19%) CentOS
18 9 (0.15%) Solaris
18 9 (0.15%) SUSE
19 6 (0.10%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,013 (17.20%) Problem-Solving
2 937 (15.91%) DevOps
3 869 (14.76%) Agile
4 834 (14.16%) Migration
5 776 (13.18%) CI/CD
6 681 (11.57%) Stakeholder Management
7 661 (11.23%) Business Intelligence
8 636 (10.80%) Analytics
9 627 (10.65%) AI
10 567 (9.63%) Continuous Improvement
11 554 (9.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 508 (8.63%) ITIL
13 442 (7.51%) Data Modelling
14 434 (7.37%) Customer Service
15 426 (7.24%) Roadmaps
16 396 (6.73%) Cybersecurity
17 383 (6.50%) Decision-Making
18 366 (6.22%) Infrastructure as Code
19 350 (5.94%) Validation
20 344 (5.84%) Project Delivery
Programming Languages
1 763 (12.96%) SQL
2 656 (11.14%) PowerShell
3 614 (10.43%) Python
4 268 (4.55%) C#
5 211 (3.58%) JavaScript
6 182 (3.09%) Java
7 146 (2.48%) Bicep
8 101 (1.72%) T-SQL
9 82 (1.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 79 (1.34%) Kusto Query Language
11 75 (1.27%) TypeScript
12 73 (1.24%) Bash
13 36 (0.61%) VBA
14 30 (0.51%) C++
15 29 (0.49%) VB
16 27 (0.46%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.31%) VBScript
18 17 (0.29%) Scala
19 14 (0.24%) Shell Script
20 13 (0.22%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,128 (19.16%) Security Cleared
2 875 (14.86%) SC Cleared
3 567 (9.63%) Degree
4 286 (4.86%) Microsoft Certification
5 196 (3.33%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.33%) DV Cleared
6 119 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 113 (1.92%) CISSP
8 108 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
9 90 (1.53%) Cisco Certification
10 62 (1.05%) CISM
11 59 (1.00%) PMP
12 55 (0.93%) PMI Certification
13 53 (0.90%) AWS Certification
14 51 (0.87%) Master's Degree
15 44 (0.75%) MCSE
16 39 (0.66%) CCNP
16 39 (0.66%) DBS Check
17 37 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
18 34 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 316 (5.37%) Data Quality
2 231 (3.92%) GDPR
3 189 (3.21%) QA
4 163 (2.77%) SLA
5 157 (2.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 133 (2.26%) NIST
7 112 (1.90%) PMO
8 82 (1.39%) Cyber Essentials
9 81 (1.38%) Accessibility
10 62 (1.05%) NCSC
11 39 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 34 (0.58%) GRC
13 32 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 31 (0.53%) PCI DSS
15 21 (0.36%) NIST 800
15 21 (0.36%) WCAG
16 17 (0.29%) MiFID
16 17 (0.29%) SOC 2
17 15 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
18 13 (0.22%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,107 (18.80%) Active Directory
2 217 (3.69%) Docker
3 192 (3.26%) VMware Infrastructure
4 104 (1.77%) Hyper-V
5 92 (1.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 78 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
7 61 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
8 54 (0.92%) vSphere
9 33 (0.56%) BitLocker
10 22 (0.37%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 19 (0.32%) Firmware
13 7 (0.12%) NFS
14 6 (0.10%) IAG
15 5 (0.085%) RACF
15 5 (0.085%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.068%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.068%) Snort
16 4 (0.068%) Terminal Services
16 4 (0.068%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 475 (8.07%) Microsoft Intune
2 370 (6.28%) Terraform
3 251 (4.26%) Kubernetes
4 203 (3.45%) SCCM
5 128 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
6 127 (2.16%) Ansible
7 76 (1.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 53 (0.90%) Jamf Pro
9 48 (0.82%) vCenter Server
10 35 (0.59%) Grafana
11 31 (0.53%) FortiGate
12 29 (0.49%) Prometheus
13 24 (0.41%) SCOM
14 19 (0.32%) Puppet
15 17 (0.29%) WSUS
16 16 (0.27%) AirWatch
17 15 (0.25%) QRadar
18 12 (0.20%) vMotion
19 11 (0.19%) HAProxy
20 10 (0.17%) ServiceCenter
Vendors
1 345 (5.86%) ServiceNow
2 263 (4.47%) VMware
3 245 (4.16%) Oracle
4 241 (4.09%) SAP
5 216 (3.67%) Databricks
6 197 (3.35%) Cisco
7 173 (2.94%) Google
8 119 (2.02%) Salesforce
9 100 (1.70%) Citrix
10 91 (1.55%) Splunk
11 80 (1.36%) OpenAI
12 79 (1.34%) Apple
13 72 (1.22%) Foundry
14 67 (1.14%) CrowdStrike
15 66 (1.12%) Okta
16 57 (0.97%) CyberArk
17 50 (0.85%) HP
18 47 (0.80%) Red Hat
19 45 (0.76%) Palo Alto
20 44 (0.75%) Zscaler