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 21 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
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 6,798 4,614 5,024
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.69% 14.08% 12.91%
As % of the Vendors category 30.39% 29.75% 29.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,408 2,951 3,247
10th Percentile £213 £208 £200
25th Percentile £375 £338 £351
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +2.74% -4.14% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £675 £669 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £437 £450
% change year-on-year +2.97% -2.89% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 452 379 343
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.75 £11.79
25th Percentile £15.69 £16.01 £14.48
Median hourly rate £20.69 £22.32 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% +37.49% -26.23%
75th Percentile £37.15 £30.63 £36.64
90th Percentile £69.69 £63.40 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.41 £20.26 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.17% +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 22,372 15,511 17,004
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 41.77% 47.32% 43.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,838 9,480 10,542
10th Percentile £313 £275 £290
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £523
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -4.31% -0.48%
75th Percentile £610 £612 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,143 812 808
10th Percentile £14.51 £14.69 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.30 £15.62
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £27.86
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -9.73% -31.21%
75th Percentile £65.00 £47.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £83.00 £67.50 £70.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £21.24 £26.56
% change year-on-year +41.24% -20.04% -24.11%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 5,922 £490 +3.16% 4,184
UK excluding London 0 3,624 £450 +2.97% 3,747
London 0 2,582 £515 +3.00% 1,106
Work from Home +4 1,769 £500 - 1,433
South East +2 940 £475 +1.50% 1,128
North of England -3 930 £450 +3.45% 873
Midlands -2 622 £441 +10.31% 668
North West +1 551 £450 +2.86% 437
South West +1 452 £470 +17.50% 434
West Midlands -3 424 £445 +10.56% 372
Yorkshire -5 348 £460 +5.14% 317
Scotland +8 334 £450 - 163
East of England -1 249 £375 -25.00% 409
East Midlands +1 189 £425 +19.72% 295
Wales -1 101 £413 +38.66% 129
North East -33 35 £375 +12.78% 139
Northern Ireland -4 30 £369 -1.01% 41
Channel Islands 0 3 £525 -27.59%

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
1 799 (11.75%) SharePoint
2 402 (5.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 148 (2.18%) Confluence
4 38 (0.56%) Apache Spark
5 37 (0.54%) Apache
6 30 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.34%) IIS
8 22 (0.32%) CMS
9 21 (0.31%) Skype for Business
10 19 (0.28%) HCL Notes
11 14 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
12 12 (0.18%) SharePoint Server
13 10 (0.15%) SAS
14 9 (0.13%) nginx
15 7 (0.10%) Camunda
16 6 (0.088%) Apache Superset
16 6 (0.088%) Mendix
16 6 (0.088%) SharePoint 2013
16 6 (0.088%) ThingWorx
17 5 (0.074%) OpenStack
Applications
1 667 (9.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 660 (9.71%) Microsoft Office
3 283 (4.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 182 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 111 (1.63%) MS Visio
6 42 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.37%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.18%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.13%) AutoCAD
10 7 (0.10%) ProjectWise
11 6 (0.088%) Navisworks
11 6 (0.088%) Revit
12 4 (0.059%) Adobe Illustrator
12 4 (0.059%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 3 (0.044%) Acrobat
13 3 (0.044%) Adobe Premiere
13 3 (0.044%) Final Cut Pro
13 3 (0.044%) MicroStation
14 2 (0.029%) InfoPath
Business Applications
1 241 (3.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 30 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.35%) Dynamics NAV
5 22 (0.32%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.29%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.19%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
8 12 (0.18%) Primavera
9 11 (0.16%) Magento
10 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
10 10 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
11 8 (0.12%) SAP CRM
12 7 (0.10%) Integrated Workplace Management System
12 7 (0.10%) iTrent
12 7 (0.10%) SAP PSCD
13 6 (0.088%) Oracle ERP
13 6 (0.088%) SAP MM
13 6 (0.088%) Teamcenter
14 5 (0.074%) Dynamics GP
Cloud Services
1 2,851 (41.94%) Azure
2 1,743 (25.64%) Microsoft 365
3 1,184 (17.42%) Power Platform
4 1,026 (15.09%) Entra ID
5 615 (9.05%) AWS
6 597 (8.78%) Azure DevOps
7 580 (8.53%) Dynamics 365
8 402 (5.91%) Power Automate
9 378 (5.56%) Microsoft Copilot
10 367 (5.40%) PowerApps
11 306 (4.50%) Microsoft Purview
12 293 (4.31%) GitHub
13 252 (3.71%) OneDrive
14 243 (3.57%) SaaS
15 237 (3.49%) GCP
16 188 (2.77%) Azure Data Factory
17 171 (2.52%) Serverless
18 167 (2.46%) Azure Monitor
19 166 (2.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
20 152 (2.24%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 379 (5.58%) DNS
2 344 (5.06%) Firewall
3 282 (4.15%) VPN
4 246 (3.62%) DHCP
5 192 (2.82%) TCP/IP
6 172 (2.53%) WAN
7 158 (2.32%) Network Security
8 155 (2.28%) LAN
9 145 (2.13%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.10%) VLAN
11 57 (0.84%) Wireless
12 49 (0.72%) SAN
13 41 (0.60%) MPLS
14 36 (0.53%) SSL
15 34 (0.50%) Skype
15 34 (0.50%) Unified Communications
16 33 (0.49%) SD-WAN
17 32 (0.47%) BGP
18 31 (0.46%) Internet
19 28 (0.41%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 743 (10.93%) Power BI
2 389 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 187 (2.75%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (2.06%) Metadata
5 137 (2.02%) Data Lake
6 133 (1.96%) Azure SQL Database
6 133 (1.96%) PostgreSQL
7 76 (1.12%) Relational Database
8 68 (1.00%) Power Query
8 68 (1.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 61 (0.90%) MySQL
10 57 (0.84%) NoSQL
11 46 (0.68%) Oracle Database
12 42 (0.62%) Star Schema
13 41 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 37 (0.54%) Tableau
15 33 (0.49%) Delta Lake
16 28 (0.41%) MongoDB
17 27 (0.40%) Amazon RDS
18 24 (0.35%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 324 (4.77%) JIRA
2 205 (3.02%) Git
3 96 (1.41%) Jenkins
4 74 (1.09%) GitLab
5 60 (0.88%) Visual Studio
6 41 (0.60%) MSI
7 39 (0.57%) Selenium
8 20 (0.29%) Postman
9 17 (0.25%) Eclipse
9 17 (0.25%) WebDriver
10 15 (0.22%) Claude Code
10 15 (0.22%) Cypress.io
10 15 (0.22%) Team Foundation Server
11 14 (0.21%) MLflow
12 13 (0.19%) Cucumber
13 12 (0.18%) Artifactory
13 12 (0.18%) Bitbucket
13 12 (0.18%) Sonatype Nexus
13 12 (0.18%) Visual Studio Code
14 11 (0.16%) Maven
General
1 2,388 (35.13%) Social Skills
2 1,375 (20.23%) Finance
3 870 (12.80%) Analytical Skills
4 629 (9.25%) Public Sector
5 348 (5.12%) Organisational Skills
6 333 (4.90%) Banking
7 226 (3.32%) Legal
8 192 (2.82%) Documentation Skills
9 163 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 150 (2.21%) Manufacturing
11 141 (2.07%) Retail
12 122 (1.79%) Telecoms
13 109 (1.60%) Law
14 104 (1.53%) Marketing
15 92 (1.35%) Local Government
16 88 (1.29%) Influencing Skills
17 80 (1.18%) Military
18 71 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
19 68 (1.00%) Aerospace
20 63 (0.93%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 792 (11.65%) Architect
2 686 (10.09%) Analyst
3 617 (9.08%) Developer
4 586 (8.62%) Senior
5 486 (7.15%) Lead
6 423 (6.22%) Consultant
7 419 (6.16%) IT Support
8 402 (5.91%) Support Engineer
9 273 (4.02%) IT Engineer
10 254 (3.74%) Solutions Architect
11 246 (3.62%) Azure Engineer
11 246 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 239 (3.52%) Data Engineer
13 219 (3.22%) IT Support Engineer
13 219 (3.22%) Project Manager
14 218 (3.21%) Administrator
15 182 (2.68%) Business Analyst
16 172 (2.53%) Cloud Engineer
17 131 (1.93%) Security Engineer
18 126 (1.85%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 503 (7.40%) Terraform
2 332 (4.88%) .NET
3 265 (3.90%) REST
4 129 (1.90%) JSON
5 122 (1.79%) OAuth
6 110 (1.62%) PySpark
7 106 (1.56%) Microsoft Graph
8 102 (1.50%) SAML
8 102 (1.50%) XML
9 93 (1.37%) OpenID
10 90 (1.32%) .NET Framework
10 90 (1.32%) Web Services
11 83 (1.22%) React
12 80 (1.18%) ARM Templates
13 76 (1.12%) LDAP
14 73 (1.07%) RESTful
15 69 (1.02%) HTML
15 69 (1.02%) OAuth2
15 69 (1.02%) SOAP
16 67 (0.99%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 496 (7.30%) Onboarding
2 318 (4.68%) Cloud Native
3 220 (3.24%) Management Information System
4 197 (2.90%) Product Ownership
5 191 (2.81%) Enterprise Software
6 147 (2.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 141 (2.07%) Data Centre
8 138 (2.03%) PKI
9 135 (1.99%) Legacy Systems
10 126 (1.85%) AI Agents
11 125 (1.84%) Security Posture
12 92 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
13 90 (1.32%) Self-Motivation
14 88 (1.29%) Data Structures
15 78 (1.15%) Low-Code
16 76 (1.12%) Driving Licence
16 76 (1.12%) Virtual Team
17 72 (1.06%) CMDB
18 65 (0.96%) Distributed Systems
18 65 (0.96%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 1,460 (21.48%) Windows
2 426 (6.27%) Windows Server
3 361 (5.31%) Windows 10
4 334 (4.91%) Linux
5 138 (2.03%) Mac OS
6 123 (1.81%) Android
7 117 (1.72%) Apple iOS
8 65 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 45 (0.66%) Unix
10 41 (0.60%) Windows 7
10 41 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
11 38 (0.56%) Windows Server 2016
12 34 (0.50%) VMS
13 33 (0.49%) Ubuntu
14 23 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
15 21 (0.31%) CentOS
16 14 (0.21%) Solaris
17 12 (0.18%) SUSE
18 9 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
19 8 (0.12%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,227 (18.05%) Problem-Solving
2 1,098 (16.15%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,087 (15.99%) DevOps
4 1,053 (15.49%) Agile
5 953 (14.02%) Migration
6 899 (13.22%) CI/CD
7 806 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
8 776 (11.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 774 (11.39%) AI
10 746 (10.97%) Business Intelligence
11 707 (10.40%) Analytics
12 672 (9.89%) ITIL
13 595 (8.75%) Customer Service
14 517 (7.61%) Infrastructure as Code
15 508 (7.47%) Cybersecurity
16 498 (7.33%) Data Modelling
17 495 (7.28%) Roadmaps
18 463 (6.81%) Project Delivery
19 445 (6.55%) Decision-Making
20 437 (6.43%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 856 (12.59%) SQL
2 745 (10.96%) PowerShell
3 692 (10.18%) Python
4 333 (4.90%) C#
5 250 (3.68%) JavaScript
6 194 (2.85%) Bicep
7 186 (2.74%) Java
8 157 (2.31%) Bash
9 105 (1.54%) T-SQL
10 104 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 91 (1.34%) TypeScript
12 70 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
13 36 (0.53%) VBA
14 31 (0.46%) VB
15 30 (0.44%) C++
16 27 (0.40%) VBScript
17 23 (0.34%) PL/SQL
18 21 (0.31%) X++
19 17 (0.25%) R
20 15 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,463 (21.52%) Security Cleared
2 1,094 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 636 (9.36%) Degree
4 353 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 287 (4.22%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.59%) Azure Certification
7 165 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
8 131 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
9 128 (1.88%) CISSP
10 120 (1.77%) Computer Science Degree
11 94 (1.38%) PMP
12 87 (1.28%) PMI Certification
13 72 (1.06%) AWS Certification
14 71 (1.04%) CISM
15 58 (0.85%) CCNP
16 55 (0.81%) A+ Certification
16 55 (0.81%) DBS Check
17 49 (0.72%) CCNA
18 48 (0.71%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
18 48 (0.71%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (5.63%) Data Quality
2 238 (3.50%) QA
3 224 (3.30%) GDPR
4 207 (3.05%) SLA
5 192 (2.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 175 (2.57%) PMO
7 166 (2.44%) NIST
8 109 (1.60%) Accessibility
9 87 (1.28%) NCSC
10 79 (1.16%) Cyber Essentials
11 52 (0.76%) GRC
12 36 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 36 (0.53%) WCAG
13 35 (0.51%) PCI DSS
14 31 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 20 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
16 17 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 16 (0.24%) P3O
18 14 (0.21%) NIST 800
19 13 (0.19%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,310 (19.27%) Active Directory
2 252 (3.71%) Docker
2 252 (3.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 139 (2.04%) Hyper-V
4 117 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
5 95 (1.40%) Virtual Machines
6 64 (0.94%) vSphere
7 57 (0.84%) VMware ESXi
8 36 (0.53%) BitLocker
9 22 (0.32%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
11 20 (0.29%) Firmware
12 8 (0.12%) IAG
12 8 (0.12%) NFS
12 8 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 8 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 7 (0.10%) zsh
14 5 (0.074%) Citrix Hypervisor
14 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
14 5 (0.074%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 551 (8.11%) Microsoft Intune
2 329 (4.84%) Kubernetes
3 267 (3.93%) SCCM
4 173 (2.54%) Ansible
5 121 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
6 60 (0.88%) Grafana
7 57 (0.84%) Jamf Pro
8 52 (0.76%) vCenter Server
9 41 (0.60%) SCOM
10 40 (0.59%) Prometheus
11 38 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 24 (0.35%) QRadar
12 24 (0.35%) WSUS
13 22 (0.32%) FortiGate
13 22 (0.32%) Puppet
14 21 (0.31%) Progress Chef
15 17 (0.25%) Failover Clustering
16 15 (0.22%) Argo
17 13 (0.19%) Avamar
17 13 (0.19%) CASB
Vendors
1 504 (7.41%) ServiceNow
2 337 (4.96%) VMware
3 320 (4.71%) Oracle
4 270 (3.97%) SAP
5 237 (3.49%) Google
6 235 (3.46%) Databricks
7 225 (3.31%) Cisco
8 118 (1.74%) Salesforce
9 112 (1.65%) Splunk
10 107 (1.57%) Apple
11 98 (1.44%) Citrix
12 89 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 78 (1.15%) Okta
14 76 (1.12%) Foundry
15 75 (1.10%) OpenAI
16 72 (1.06%) BeyondTrust
17 68 (1.00%) CrowdStrike
18 67 (0.99%) Red Hat
19 56 (0.82%) Zscaler
20 52 (0.76%) Meraki