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 11 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
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 7
Rank change year-on-year +2 -3 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,740 4,008 5,623
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.50% 13.65% 12.89%
As % of the Vendors category 28.30% 28.65% 30.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,806 2,590 3,656
10th Percentile £213 £213 £191
25th Percentile £375 £340 £344
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.68% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £586 £583 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £425 £459
% change year-on-year +5.88% -7.41% +2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 368 286 479
10th Percentile £13.64 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £16.46 £15.67 £13.22
Median hourly rate £20.69 £20.00 £15.65
Median % change year-on-year +3.46% +27.80% -34.79%
75th Percentile £33.75 £30.63 £25.00
90th Percentile £65.00 £60.94 £56.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £20.35 £18.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year +7.84% +25.80% -25.00%

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 20,281 13,989 18,443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 40.65% 47.63% 42.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 12,754 8,611 11,465
10th Percentile £313 £280 £269
25th Percentile £413 £404 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £501 £515
Median % change year-on-year -0.20% -2.72% -1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £500
% change year-on-year +4.06% -3.90% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,038 624 1,139
10th Percentile £15.29 £14.84 £12.13
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.34 £14.49
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.50 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.45% +8.51% -45.35%
75th Percentile £60.00 £55.00 £58.49
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.90 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.49 £22.94 £22.00
% change year-on-year +32.93% +4.26% -45.00%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 5,025 £498 +4.74% 2,968
UK excluding London -1 3,012 £450 +5.88% 2,600
London -3 2,237 £510 -2.53% 826
Work from Home -1 1,451 £500 - 1,377
North of England -3 779 £450 +5.88% 625
South East -1 708 £475 +1.35% 809
Midlands -6 510 £450 +13.07% 417
North West -3 405 £445 +4.71% 361
South West -2 363 £469 +7.20% 309
West Midlands -6 356 £450 +12.50% 227
Yorkshire -3 354 £475 +15.15% 184
East of England 0 300 £375 -25.00% 291
Scotland +2 251 £450 +3.39% 103
East Midlands 0 147 £415 +9.21% 191
Wales +1 97 £370 +23.33% 66
Northern Ireland +3 27 £400 +23.08% 54
North East -37 22 £450 +32.35% 83
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
1 617 (10.75%) SharePoint
2 384 (6.69%) Microsoft Exchange
3 111 (1.93%) Confluence
4 40 (0.70%) Apache Spark
5 29 (0.51%) Apache
6 26 (0.45%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.31%) CMS
8 17 (0.30%) HCL Notes
9 16 (0.28%) IIS
10 15 (0.26%) Skype for Business
11 14 (0.24%) SAS
12 8 (0.14%) Mendix
13 6 (0.10%) Camunda
13 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
13 6 (0.10%) Oracle Workflow
14 5 (0.087%) Appian
14 5 (0.087%) nginx
14 5 (0.087%) OpenEdge
14 5 (0.087%) SharePoint 2013
15 4 (0.070%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 536 (9.34%) Microsoft Office
2 504 (8.78%) Microsoft Excel
3 221 (3.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 115 (2.00%) Microsoft Project
5 87 (1.52%) MS Visio
6 46 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
7 17 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 13 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 5 (0.087%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.087%) Adobe Illustrator
9 5 (0.087%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.087%) Trello
10 3 (0.052%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.052%) InDesign
10 3 (0.052%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.035%) AutoCAD
11 2 (0.035%) InfoPath
11 2 (0.035%) MicroStation
11 2 (0.035%) Photoshop
11 2 (0.035%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 201 (3.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
4 20 (0.35%) NetSuite
5 16 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 14 (0.24%) Aladdin
6 14 (0.24%) Dynamics NAV
7 13 (0.23%) Teamcenter
8 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.19%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.17%) Sage X3
10 10 (0.17%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.14%) Maximo
12 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
13 6 (0.10%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.10%) Primavera
13 6 (0.10%) SAP MM
14 5 (0.087%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,452 (42.72%) Azure
2 1,474 (25.68%) Microsoft 365
3 971 (16.92%) Power Platform
4 791 (13.78%) Entra ID
5 482 (8.40%) AWS
6 453 (7.89%) Dynamics 365
7 450 (7.84%) Azure DevOps
8 328 (5.71%) Power Automate
9 312 (5.44%) Microsoft Purview
10 289 (5.03%) PowerApps
11 268 (4.67%) Microsoft Copilot
12 244 (4.25%) GitHub
13 230 (4.01%) OneDrive
14 211 (3.68%) SaaS
15 181 (3.15%) GCP
16 180 (3.14%) Azure Data Factory
17 167 (2.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 150 (2.61%) Serverless
19 145 (2.53%) PaaS
20 135 (2.35%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 304 (5.30%) DNS
2 261 (4.55%) Firewall
3 218 (3.80%) VPN
4 192 (3.34%) DHCP
5 143 (2.49%) WAN
6 136 (2.37%) Wi-Fi
7 125 (2.18%) LAN
7 125 (2.18%) TCP/IP
8 116 (2.02%) Network Security
9 55 (0.96%) VLAN
10 53 (0.92%) Kerberos
11 47 (0.82%) SD-WAN
12 38 (0.66%) SAN
13 34 (0.59%) SSL
14 33 (0.57%) Wireless
15 31 (0.54%) Unified Communications
16 30 (0.52%) VoIP
17 28 (0.49%) HTTP
17 28 (0.49%) Skype
18 24 (0.42%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 605 (10.54%) Power BI
2 279 (4.86%) SQL Server
3 171 (2.98%) Data Warehouse
4 149 (2.60%) Data Lake
5 119 (2.07%) Azure SQL Database
6 115 (2.00%) Metadata
7 110 (1.92%) PostgreSQL
8 71 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 64 (1.11%) Relational Database
10 52 (0.91%) Power Query
11 46 (0.80%) MySQL
11 46 (0.80%) NoSQL
11 46 (0.80%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 43 (0.75%) Tableau
13 40 (0.70%) Delta Lake
13 40 (0.70%) Star Schema
14 33 (0.57%) Oracle Database
15 29 (0.51%) Spark SQL
16 28 (0.49%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 26 (0.45%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 279 (4.86%) JIRA
2 168 (2.93%) Git
3 60 (1.05%) Jenkins
4 56 (0.98%) GitLab
5 36 (0.63%) Visual Studio
6 24 (0.42%) Artifactory
7 22 (0.38%) MSI
8 18 (0.31%) Eclipse
9 16 (0.28%) ERwin
10 15 (0.26%) MLflow
11 14 (0.24%) Selenium
11 14 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
12 13 (0.23%) JMeter
13 12 (0.21%) Maven
13 12 (0.21%) Postman
14 10 (0.17%) Bitbucket
14 10 (0.17%) Team Foundation Server
15 9 (0.16%) Gatling
16 8 (0.14%) AdminStudio
16 8 (0.14%) InstallShield
General
1 1,875 (32.67%) Social Skills
2 1,144 (19.93%) Finance
3 618 (10.77%) Analytical Skills
4 510 (8.89%) Public Sector
5 302 (5.26%) Banking
6 247 (4.30%) Legal
7 231 (4.02%) Organisational Skills
8 147 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
9 102 (1.78%) Manufacturing
9 102 (1.78%) Retail
10 99 (1.72%) Law
11 89 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 83 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
13 79 (1.38%) Telecoms
14 78 (1.36%) Marketing
15 71 (1.24%) Military
16 69 (1.20%) Local Government
17 65 (1.13%) Investment Banking
18 57 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
19 45 (0.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 713 (12.42%) Architect
2 618 (10.77%) Analyst
3 515 (8.97%) Developer
4 479 (8.34%) Senior
5 368 (6.41%) IT Support
6 366 (6.38%) Lead
7 324 (5.64%) Consultant
8 274 (4.77%) Support Engineer
9 237 (4.13%) Data Engineer
10 214 (3.73%) Solutions Architect
11 203 (3.54%) Azure Engineer
12 194 (3.38%) Project Manager
13 192 (3.34%) IT Engineer
14 182 (3.17%) Business Analyst
15 180 (3.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 171 (2.98%) Administrator
17 148 (2.58%) IT Support Engineer
18 121 (2.11%) Security Engineer
19 108 (1.88%) Cloud Engineer
20 107 (1.86%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 249 (4.34%) .NET
2 186 (3.24%) REST
3 141 (2.46%) Microsoft Graph
4 115 (2.00%) OAuth
5 106 (1.85%) PySpark
6 104 (1.81%) SAML
7 96 (1.67%) JSON
8 88 (1.53%) OpenID
9 80 (1.39%) LDAP
10 78 (1.36%) React
11 77 (1.34%) Web Services
12 61 (1.06%) Middleware
13 57 (0.99%) SailPoint
14 56 (0.98%) HTML
14 56 (0.98%) Node.js
14 56 (0.98%) XML
15 55 (0.96%) OAuth2
16 53 (0.92%) CSS
17 50 (0.87%) ARM Templates
17 50 (0.87%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 315 (5.49%) Onboarding
2 245 (4.27%) Cloud Native
3 172 (3.00%) Product Ownership
4 129 (2.25%) Management Information System
5 113 (1.97%) Data Centre
6 103 (1.79%) Legacy Systems
7 101 (1.76%) Hybrid Cloud
8 98 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
9 92 (1.60%) Security Posture
10 88 (1.53%) AI Agents
11 85 (1.48%) PKI
12 84 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
13 77 (1.34%) Replication
14 72 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
15 71 (1.24%) Data Structures
16 67 (1.17%) Low-Code
16 67 (1.17%) Virtual Team
17 50 (0.87%) Public Cloud
18 49 (0.85%) Operational Technology
19 48 (0.84%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 1,246 (21.71%) Windows
2 326 (5.68%) Windows 10
3 304 (5.30%) Windows Server
4 251 (4.37%) Linux
5 123 (2.14%) Mac OS
6 114 (1.99%) Apple iOS
7 111 (1.93%) Android
8 43 (0.75%) Windows 7
9 40 (0.70%) Windows Server 2016
10 39 (0.68%) Unix
11 38 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 32 (0.56%) Windows Server 2019
13 31 (0.54%) VMS
14 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2012
15 15 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
16 14 (0.24%) Ubuntu
17 11 (0.19%) CentOS
18 7 (0.12%) SUSE
19 6 (0.10%) AIX
20 5 (0.087%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 971 (16.92%) Problem-Solving
2 917 (15.98%) DevOps
3 842 (14.67%) Agile
4 822 (14.32%) Migration
5 751 (13.08%) CI/CD
6 632 (11.01%) Business Intelligence
7 625 (10.89%) Stakeholder Management
8 612 (10.66%) Analytics
9 595 (10.37%) AI
10 523 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
11 519 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 492 (8.57%) ITIL
13 432 (7.53%) Customer Service
14 425 (7.40%) Data Modelling
15 400 (6.97%) Roadmaps
16 381 (6.64%) Cybersecurity
17 358 (6.24%) Decision-Making
18 345 (6.01%) Infrastructure as Code
19 337 (5.87%) Project Delivery
20 331 (5.77%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 728 (12.68%) SQL
2 657 (11.45%) PowerShell
3 583 (10.16%) Python
4 271 (4.72%) C#
5 204 (3.55%) JavaScript
6 179 (3.12%) Java
7 135 (2.35%) Bicep
8 102 (1.78%) T-SQL
9 79 (1.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 77 (1.34%) Kusto Query Language
11 70 (1.22%) TypeScript
12 69 (1.20%) Bash
13 35 (0.61%) VBA
14 29 (0.51%) VB
15 27 (0.47%) C++
16 26 (0.45%) PL/SQL
17 18 (0.31%) Scala
18 16 (0.28%) VBScript
19 14 (0.24%) Shell Script
20 13 (0.23%) X++
Qualifications
1 1,087 (18.94%) Security Cleared
2 853 (14.86%) SC Cleared
3 549 (9.56%) Degree
4 280 (4.88%) Microsoft Certification
5 188 (3.28%) Azure Certification
6 172 (3.00%) DV Cleared
7 117 (2.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 107 (1.86%) CISSP
9 96 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
10 84 (1.46%) Cisco Certification
11 59 (1.03%) CISM
12 57 (0.99%) PMP
13 54 (0.94%) PMI Certification
14 50 (0.87%) Master's Degree
15 48 (0.84%) AWS Certification
16 45 (0.78%) MCSE
17 39 (0.68%) DBS Check
18 37 (0.64%) CCNP
19 35 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
19 35 (0.61%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 296 (5.16%) Data Quality
2 227 (3.95%) GDPR
3 184 (3.21%) QA
4 166 (2.89%) SLA
5 152 (2.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 128 (2.23%) NIST
7 106 (1.85%) PMO
8 78 (1.36%) Accessibility
9 76 (1.32%) Cyber Essentials
10 57 (0.99%) NCSC
11 35 (0.61%) GRC
11 35 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 29 (0.51%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 29 (0.51%) PCI DSS
13 22 (0.38%) NIST 800
14 19 (0.33%) MiFID
14 19 (0.33%) WCAG
15 18 (0.31%) SOC 2
16 13 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
16 13 (0.23%) FINRA
System Software
1 1,102 (19.20%) Active Directory
2 208 (3.62%) Docker
3 198 (3.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.90%) Hyper-V
5 87 (1.52%) Virtual Desktop
6 82 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
7 65 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
8 59 (1.03%) vSphere
9 32 (0.56%) BitLocker
10 20 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
11 19 (0.33%) VMware NSX
12 18 (0.31%) Firmware
13 8 (0.14%) NFS
14 6 (0.10%) IAG
14 6 (0.10%) RACF
15 5 (0.087%) VMware Workstation
16 4 (0.070%) Oracle RAC
16 4 (0.070%) Snort
16 4 (0.070%) XenDesktop
17 3 (0.052%) Squid
Systems Management
1 473 (8.24%) Microsoft Intune
2 347 (6.05%) Terraform
3 238 (4.15%) Kubernetes
4 209 (3.64%) SCCM
5 128 (2.23%) Single Sign-On
6 127 (2.21%) Ansible
7 80 (1.39%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 53 (0.92%) vCenter Server
9 52 (0.91%) Jamf Pro
10 32 (0.56%) Grafana
11 29 (0.51%) Prometheus
12 26 (0.45%) FortiGate
13 24 (0.42%) SCOM
14 19 (0.33%) Puppet
15 15 (0.26%) AirWatch
15 15 (0.26%) WSUS
16 14 (0.24%) QRadar
17 12 (0.21%) HAProxy
17 12 (0.21%) vMotion
18 10 (0.17%) CASB
Vendors
1 328 (5.71%) ServiceNow
2 269 (4.69%) VMware
3 232 (4.04%) SAP
4 226 (3.94%) Oracle
5 217 (3.78%) Databricks
6 193 (3.36%) Cisco
7 170 (2.96%) Google
8 116 (2.02%) Salesforce
9 110 (1.92%) Citrix
10 88 (1.53%) Splunk
11 77 (1.34%) OpenAI
12 74 (1.29%) Apple
13 72 (1.25%) Foundry
14 60 (1.05%) CrowdStrike
15 57 (0.99%) Okta
16 54 (0.94%) CyberArk
17 48 (0.84%) HP
18 45 (0.78%) Adobe
19 44 (0.77%) Red Hat
20 41 (0.71%) Dell