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 16 August 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
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,758 4,625 5,020
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.59% 13.98% 12.95%
As % of the Vendors category 30.14% 29.58% 29.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,402 2,957 3,274
10th Percentile £213 £209 £200
25th Percentile £375 £343 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £585 £600
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 440 376 358
10th Percentile £13.62 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.81 £16.00 £14.48
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.89% +37.49% -27.87%
75th Percentile £37.50 £30.63 £42.50
90th Percentile £70.67 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.68 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -2.86% +24.80% -14.58%

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 22,423 15,637 16,983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.76% 47.26% 43.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,895 9,559 10,605
10th Percentile £313 £277 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £610 £613 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +4.41% -4.23% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,146 809 839
10th Percentile £14.58 £14.62 £13.68
25th Percentile £18.00 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -10.18% -30.71%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.50 £61.52
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.60 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.71 £21.39 £27.50
% change year-on-year +48.26% -22.22% -17.22%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 16 August 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 5,907 £490 +3.16% 4,994
UK excluding London -1 3,601 £450 +2.97% 3,950
London 0 2,574 £515 +3.00% 1,767
Work from Home +4 1,765 £500 - 1,947
South East 0 941 £475 +1.06% 1,179
North of England -4 920 £450 +3.57% 963
Midlands -2 624 £448 +15.86% 634
North West +1 543 £450 +2.92% 515
South West +1 447 £470 +8.05% 437
West Midlands -4 426 £448 +11.88% 363
Yorkshire -5 348 £474 +8.91% 330
Scotland +7 322 £450 - 201
East of England -1 248 £388 -22.50% 399
East Midlands +2 188 £425 +20.74% 271
Wales 0 100 £419 +41.95% 129
North East -37 33 £375 +12.78% 136
Northern Ireland -4 31 £369 +2.08% 104
Channel Islands 0 1 £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
1 789 (11.68%) SharePoint
2 407 (6.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 147 (2.18%) Confluence
4 40 (0.59%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.58%) Apache
6 29 (0.43%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.33%) IIS
8 21 (0.31%) Skype for Business
9 20 (0.30%) CMS
10 19 (0.28%) HCL Notes
11 13 (0.19%) Oracle Workflow
12 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.15%) SAS
14 9 (0.13%) nginx
15 6 (0.089%) Apache Superset
15 6 (0.089%) Exchange Server 2010
15 6 (0.089%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.089%) Mendix
15 6 (0.089%) SharePoint 2013
15 6 (0.089%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 662 (9.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 643 (9.51%) Microsoft Office
3 278 (4.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 176 (2.60%) Microsoft Project
5 109 (1.61%) MS Visio
6 43 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.38%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.089%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.089%) Revit
12 4 (0.059%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.059%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.030%) Adobe Captivate
14 2 (0.030%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 234 (3.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 76 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 23 (0.34%) Oracle Payables
5 22 (0.33%) Dynamics NAV
6 21 (0.31%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
9 10 (0.15%) Magento
10 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.12%) Sage X3
12 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.10%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.089%) Dynamics GP
13 6 (0.089%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,835 (41.95%) Azure
2 1,720 (25.45%) Microsoft 365
3 1,181 (17.48%) Power Platform
4 1,023 (15.14%) Entra ID
5 607 (8.98%) AWS
6 578 (8.55%) Azure DevOps
7 567 (8.39%) Dynamics 365
8 406 (6.01%) Power Automate
9 378 (5.59%) Microsoft Copilot
10 366 (5.42%) PowerApps
11 306 (4.53%) Microsoft Purview
12 288 (4.26%) GitHub
13 254 (3.76%) OneDrive
14 244 (3.61%) SaaS
15 231 (3.42%) GCP
16 186 (2.75%) Azure Data Factory
17 162 (2.40%) Serverless
18 161 (2.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
19 158 (2.34%) Azure Monitor
20 156 (2.31%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 379 (5.61%) DNS
2 344 (5.09%) Firewall
3 280 (4.14%) VPN
4 241 (3.57%) DHCP
5 188 (2.78%) TCP/IP
6 167 (2.47%) WAN
7 155 (2.29%) Network Security
8 149 (2.20%) LAN
9 148 (2.19%) Wi-Fi
10 77 (1.14%) VLAN
11 55 (0.81%) Wireless
12 50 (0.74%) SAN
13 43 (0.64%) MPLS
14 37 (0.55%) SSL
15 34 (0.50%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.49%) SD-WAN
16 33 (0.49%) Skype
17 30 (0.44%) Internet
18 29 (0.43%) BGP
19 27 (0.40%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 740 (10.95%) Power BI
2 384 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 190 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
4 136 (2.01%) Data Lake
5 135 (2.00%) Azure SQL Database
5 135 (2.00%) PostgreSQL
6 134 (1.98%) Metadata
7 74 (1.09%) Relational Database
8 70 (1.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 69 (1.02%) Power Query
10 66 (0.98%) MySQL
11 58 (0.86%) NoSQL
12 46 (0.68%) Oracle Database
13 43 (0.64%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 42 (0.62%) Star Schema
15 35 (0.52%) Tableau
16 34 (0.50%) Delta Lake
17 26 (0.38%) MongoDB
18 25 (0.37%) SQL Server Analysis Services
19 24 (0.36%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 322 (4.76%) JIRA
2 198 (2.93%) Git
3 95 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 72 (1.07%) GitLab
5 59 (0.87%) Visual Studio
6 40 (0.59%) MSI
7 36 (0.53%) Selenium
8 19 (0.28%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
11 13 (0.19%) Cypress.io
12 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
12 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
12 12 (0.18%) MLflow
12 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 11 (0.16%) ERwin
13 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,352 (34.80%) Social Skills
2 1,370 (20.27%) Finance
3 855 (12.65%) Analytical Skills
4 628 (9.29%) Public Sector
5 331 (4.90%) Organisational Skills
6 329 (4.87%) Banking
7 231 (3.42%) Legal
8 192 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
9 162 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 146 (2.16%) Manufacturing
11 136 (2.01%) Retail
12 121 (1.79%) Telecoms
13 107 (1.58%) Law
14 101 (1.49%) Marketing
15 93 (1.38%) Local Government
16 85 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.18%) Military
18 68 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
19 63 (0.93%) Investment Banking
20 62 (0.92%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 791 (11.70%) Architect
2 694 (10.27%) Analyst
3 619 (9.16%) Developer
4 588 (8.70%) Senior
5 475 (7.03%) Lead
6 420 (6.21%) Consultant
7 417 (6.17%) IT Support
8 390 (5.77%) Support Engineer
9 273 (4.04%) IT Engineer
10 254 (3.76%) Solutions Architect
11 246 (3.64%) Data Engineer
12 243 (3.60%) Azure Engineer
12 243 (3.60%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 219 (3.24%) Project Manager
14 217 (3.21%) Administrator
15 216 (3.20%) IT Support Engineer
16 188 (2.78%) Business Analyst
17 170 (2.52%) Cloud Engineer
18 128 (1.89%) Security Engineer
19 116 (1.72%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (4.74%) .NET
2 258 (3.82%) REST
3 130 (1.92%) JSON
4 120 (1.78%) OAuth
5 109 (1.61%) Microsoft Graph
5 109 (1.61%) PySpark
6 101 (1.49%) SAML
7 99 (1.46%) XML
8 92 (1.36%) OpenID
9 89 (1.32%) .NET Framework
10 87 (1.29%) Web Services
11 80 (1.18%) React
12 74 (1.09%) ARM Templates
13 72 (1.07%) LDAP
14 70 (1.04%) HTML
14 70 (1.04%) RESTful
15 68 (1.01%) OAuth2
16 67 (0.99%) SOAP
17 66 (0.98%) SailPoint
18 64 (0.95%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 485 (7.18%) Onboarding
2 319 (4.72%) Cloud Native
3 219 (3.24%) Management Information System
4 191 (2.83%) Product Ownership
5 187 (2.77%) Enterprise Software
6 150 (2.22%) Hybrid Cloud
7 138 (2.04%) Legacy Systems
8 135 (2.00%) PKI
9 134 (1.98%) Data Centre
10 125 (1.85%) AI Agents
10 125 (1.85%) Security Posture
11 90 (1.33%) Data Structures
12 89 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
13 86 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
14 80 (1.18%) Virtual Team
15 79 (1.17%) Low-Code
16 74 (1.09%) Driving Licence
17 70 (1.04%) CMDB
18 67 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
19 64 (0.95%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,436 (21.25%) Windows
2 410 (6.07%) Windows Server
3 353 (5.22%) Windows 10
4 325 (4.81%) Linux
5 137 (2.03%) Mac OS
6 127 (1.88%) Android
7 117 (1.73%) Apple iOS
8 60 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.67%) Unix
10 41 (0.61%) Windows 7
11 39 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
12 36 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
13 31 (0.46%) VMS
14 29 (0.43%) Ubuntu
15 21 (0.31%) Windows Server 2012
16 17 (0.25%) CentOS
17 12 (0.18%) Solaris
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 10 (0.15%) Windows Server 2008
19 6 (0.089%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,208 (17.88%) Problem-Solving
2 1,070 (15.83%) DevOps
3 1,042 (15.42%) Stakeholder Management
4 1,034 (15.30%) Agile
5 956 (14.15%) Migration
6 877 (12.98%) CI/CD
7 795 (11.76%) Continuous Improvement
8 778 (11.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 773 (11.44%) AI
10 749 (11.08%) Business Intelligence
11 698 (10.33%) Analytics
12 668 (9.88%) ITIL
13 582 (8.61%) Customer Service
14 504 (7.46%) Cybersecurity
15 503 (7.44%) Infrastructure as Code
16 495 (7.32%) Data Modelling
17 490 (7.25%) Roadmaps
18 458 (6.78%) Project Delivery
19 438 (6.48%) Decision-Making
20 433 (6.41%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 852 (12.61%) SQL
2 735 (10.88%) PowerShell
3 688 (10.18%) Python
4 327 (4.84%) C#
5 250 (3.70%) JavaScript
6 188 (2.78%) Bicep
7 187 (2.77%) Java
8 146 (2.16%) Bash
9 110 (1.63%) T-SQL
10 108 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 87 (1.29%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.04%) Kusto Query Language
13 39 (0.58%) VBA
14 31 (0.46%) VB
15 30 (0.44%) C++
16 27 (0.40%) VBScript
17 25 (0.37%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) X++
19 17 (0.25%) R
19 17 (0.25%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,440 (21.31%) Security Cleared
2 1,083 (16.03%) SC Cleared
3 638 (9.44%) Degree
4 351 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 278 (4.11%) DV Cleared
6 245 (3.63%) Azure Certification
7 159 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
8 131 (1.94%) CISSP
9 129 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
10 121 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
11 94 (1.39%) PMP
12 87 (1.29%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.07%) CISM
14 70 (1.04%) AWS Certification
15 56 (0.83%) CCNP
16 53 (0.78%) A+ Certification
17 49 (0.73%) DBS Check
17 49 (0.73%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.71%) CCNA
18 48 (0.71%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 376 (5.56%) Data Quality
2 230 (3.40%) GDPR
3 229 (3.39%) QA
4 203 (3.00%) SLA
5 188 (2.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 171 (2.53%) PMO
7 166 (2.46%) NIST
8 108 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 87 (1.29%) NCSC
10 79 (1.17%) Cyber Essentials
11 50 (0.74%) GRC
12 38 (0.56%) WCAG
13 36 (0.53%) PCI DSS
14 34 (0.50%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 33 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 20 (0.30%) Disclosure Scotland
17 16 (0.24%) P3O
18 15 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
18 15 (0.22%) NIST 800
19 14 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,301 (19.25%) Active Directory
2 243 (3.60%) Docker
3 242 (3.58%) VMware Infrastructure
4 132 (1.95%) Hyper-V
5 110 (1.63%) Virtual Desktop
6 98 (1.45%) Virtual Machines
7 60 (0.89%) vSphere
8 57 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
10 24 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.27%) Firmware
13 8 (0.12%) IAG
13 8 (0.12%) NFS
13 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
14 7 (0.10%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.10%) zsh
15 5 (0.074%) Terminal Services
15 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
16 3 (0.044%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 550 (8.14%) Microsoft Intune
2 493 (7.30%) Terraform
3 321 (4.75%) Kubernetes
4 260 (3.85%) SCCM
5 170 (2.52%) Ansible
6 118 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (0.87%) Jamf Pro
8 55 (0.81%) Grafana
9 52 (0.77%) vCenter Server
10 41 (0.61%) SCOM
11 38 (0.56%) Prometheus
12 36 (0.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 25 (0.37%) WSUS
14 23 (0.34%) QRadar
15 21 (0.31%) Puppet
16 20 (0.30%) FortiGate
16 20 (0.30%) Progress Chef
17 16 (0.24%) Failover Clustering
18 15 (0.22%) Argo
19 13 (0.19%) Avamar
Vendors
1 507 (7.50%) ServiceNow
2 333 (4.93%) VMware
3 322 (4.76%) Oracle
4 270 (4.00%) SAP
5 234 (3.46%) Google
6 233 (3.45%) Databricks
7 222 (3.28%) Cisco
8 118 (1.75%) Salesforce
9 111 (1.64%) Splunk
10 103 (1.52%) Citrix
11 101 (1.49%) Apple
12 87 (1.29%) CyberArk
13 79 (1.17%) Okta
14 77 (1.14%) Foundry
15 74 (1.09%) OpenAI
16 68 (1.01%) BeyondTrust
16 68 (1.01%) CrowdStrike
17 64 (0.95%) Red Hat
18 56 (0.83%) Zscaler
19 53 (0.78%) Meraki