Microsoft Office Contract Job Trends

Microsoft Office
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Microsoft Office skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 26 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 126 88 60
Rank change year-on-year -38 -28 +24
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Office 914 812 1,475
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.08% 2.79% 3.33%
As % of the Applications category 31.44% 34.51% 41.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 504 511 822
10th Percentile £163 £155 £140
25th Percentile £213 £208 £185
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £356 £325 £263
Median % change year-on-year +9.62% +23.81% -30.00%
75th Percentile £535 £525 £488
90th Percentile £690 £600 £619
UK excluding London median daily rate £350 £275 £225
% change year-on-year +27.47% +22.04% -30.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 145 79 316
10th Percentile £12.39 £14.13 £11.00
25th Percentile £13.72 £15.62 £12.61
Median hourly rate £17.50 £18.77 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year -6.74% +16.84% -28.34%
75th Percentile £25.77 £24.43 £24.33
90th Percentile £62.88 £33.80 £48.72
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.05 £18.36 £15.63
% change year-on-year -7.12% +17.49% -21.88%

All Software Application Skills
UK

Microsoft Office falls under the Software Applications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring software application skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for software application skills 2,907 2,353 3,548
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 6.61% 8.10% 8.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,702 1,440 1,847
10th Percentile £213 £188 £158
25th Percentile £336 £263 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £406 £400
Median % change year-on-year +10.84% +1.50% -5.88%
75th Percentile £551 £538 £538
90th Percentile £650 £638 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £425 £375 £350
% change year-on-year +13.33% +7.14% -12.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 235 621
10th Percentile £12.97 £14.73 £11.50
25th Percentile £15.81 £16.12 £14.00
Median hourly rate £19.91 £26.34 £18.93
Median % change year-on-year -24.40% +39.12% -45.91%
75th Percentile £29.50 £45.65 £42.64
90th Percentile £60.00 £75.75 £57.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.07 £26.50 £17.72
% change year-on-year -28.04% +49.55% -46.30%

Microsoft Office
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Microsoft Office relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Microsoft Office job vacancy trend in the UK

Microsoft Office
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Microsoft Office.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft Office over the 6 months to 26 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft Office in the UK

Microsoft Office
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Microsoft Office.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft Office over the 6 months to 26 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft Office in the UK

Microsoft Office
Top 17 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 Office within the UK over the 6 months to 26 March 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 -40 819 £400 +23.08% 589
UK excluding London -21 656 £350 +27.47% 523
London -61 216 £413 -2.94% 148
Work from Home -69 187 £375 -6.25% 213
South East -5 170 £439 +21.03% 163
North of England -38 158 £290 +18.37% 139
South West -17 102 £713 +137.50% 58
North West -19 96 £313 +25.00% 76
Midlands -43 83 £313 -9.73% 82
East of England -2 82 £205 -34.40% 50
West Midlands -53 55 £322 -24.24% 54
Yorkshire -46 53 £290 +18.37% 48
Wales +6 28 £246 -28.36% 18
East Midlands -22 28 £224 +12.00% 28
Scotland -26 24 £290 +38.10% 25
Northern Ireland -3 12 £350 +118.75% 5
North East -13 9 £175 -10.26% 21

Microsoft Office
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
1 114 (12.47%) SharePoint
2 87 (9.52%) Confluence
3 68 (7.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (0.98%) Skype for Business
5 7 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.55%) CMS
7 3 (0.33%) HCL Notes
8 1 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 321 (35.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 189 (20.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 89 (9.74%) Microsoft Project
4 73 (7.99%) MS Visio
5 11 (1.20%) Spreadsheet
6 6 (0.66%) Trello
7 5 (0.55%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 3 (0.33%) Adobe Captivate
8 3 (0.33%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.11%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.11%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.11%) SOLIDWORKS
9 1 (0.11%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 18 (1.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 17 (1.86%) Remedy ITSM
3 12 (1.31%) Primavera
4 6 (0.66%) Veritas eDiscovery
5 5 (0.55%) Shopify
6 4 (0.44%) Oracle Financials
6 4 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
7 3 (0.33%) Aladdin
7 3 (0.33%) Fidessa
7 3 (0.33%) Maximo
7 3 (0.33%) SAP MM
7 3 (0.33%) SimCorp Dimension
8 2 (0.22%) IntelliMatch
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
8 2 (0.22%) Oracle Payables
8 2 (0.22%) Teamcenter
9 1 (0.11%) assyst
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
9 1 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 188 (20.57%) Microsoft 365
2 90 (9.85%) Azure
3 45 (4.92%) Power Platform
4 34 (3.72%) Google Workspace
5 31 (3.39%) AWS
6 13 (1.42%) Azure DevOps
7 12 (1.31%) Entra ID
7 12 (1.31%) SaaS
8 10 (1.09%) GCP
8 10 (1.09%) OneDrive
9 8 (0.88%) GitHub
10 7 (0.77%) Amazon SageMaker
10 7 (0.77%) Dagster
10 7 (0.77%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (0.77%) Google Analytics
10 7 (0.77%) Google Tag Manager
10 7 (0.77%) Lucidchart
11 5 (0.55%) Dynamics 365
11 5 (0.55%) Figma
11 5 (0.55%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 46 (5.03%) Wireless
2 40 (4.38%) VPN
3 39 (4.27%) Firewall
3 39 (4.27%) Wi-Fi
4 38 (4.16%) TCP/IP
5 33 (3.61%) LAN
6 31 (3.39%) Skype
7 28 (3.06%) WAN
8 26 (2.84%) DNS
9 22 (2.41%) Network Security
10 20 (2.19%) DHCP
11 15 (1.64%) Ethernet
12 11 (1.20%) MPLS
13 10 (1.09%) Cisco IOS
13 10 (1.09%) Internet
13 10 (1.09%) VLAN
14 6 (0.66%) BGP
15 5 (0.55%) NetScaler
15 5 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
15 5 (0.55%) TACACS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 42 (4.60%) Power BI
2 14 (1.53%) SQL Server
3 6 (0.66%) Oracle Database
3 6 (0.66%) Relational Database
3 6 (0.66%) Tableau
4 5 (0.55%) BigQuery
4 5 (0.55%) Electronic Patient Records
4 5 (0.55%) Looker
4 5 (0.55%) Oracle Reports
5 4 (0.44%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (0.44%) EDMS
5 4 (0.44%) RDBMS
5 4 (0.44%) SQLPlus
6 3 (0.33%) MySQL
6 3 (0.33%) Power Query
7 2 (0.22%) Data Warehouse
7 2 (0.22%) DB2
7 2 (0.22%) GIS
7 2 (0.22%) MongoDB
7 2 (0.22%) Spotfire
Development Applications
1 107 (11.71%) JIRA
2 13 (1.42%) Burp Suite
2 13 (1.42%) Metasploit
3 8 (0.88%) Git
3 8 (0.88%) MLflow
3 8 (0.88%) Toad
4 5 (0.55%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.44%) Subversion
6 3 (0.33%) Android Studio
6 3 (0.33%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.22%) JMeter
7 2 (0.22%) PVCS
7 2 (0.22%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.22%) Tricentis qTest
8 1 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.11%) ClearCase
8 1 (0.11%) GitLab
8 1 (0.11%) SoapUI
8 1 (0.11%) TestDirector
General
1 551 (60.28%) Social Skills
2 251 (27.46%) Finance
3 199 (21.77%) Analytical Skills
4 124 (13.57%) Organisational Skills
5 105 (11.49%) Public Sector
6 73 (7.99%) Banking
7 51 (5.58%) Legal
8 49 (5.36%) Manufacturing
9 48 (5.25%) Marketing
10 46 (5.03%) Telecoms
11 41 (4.49%) Military
11 41 (4.49%) Presentation Skills
12 31 (3.39%) Electronics
13 27 (2.95%) Influencing Skills
14 26 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
14 26 (2.84%) Pharmaceutical
15 25 (2.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 15 (1.64%) Investment Banking
17 14 (1.53%) Retail
18 11 (1.20%) Law
Job Titles
1 168 (18.38%) Analyst
2 81 (8.86%) IT Support
3 56 (6.13%) Business Analyst
4 50 (5.47%) Architect
5 48 (5.25%) Administrator
6 44 (4.81%) 2nd Line Support
7 43 (4.70%) Support Engineer
8 39 (4.27%) Support Officer
9 37 (4.05%) Desktop Support
9 37 (4.05%) Senior
10 35 (3.83%) Lead
11 32 (3.50%) Support Analyst
12 30 (3.28%) Service Architect
13 28 (3.06%) Project Manager
14 26 (2.84%) Project Officer
15 25 (2.74%) Service Analyst
16 24 (2.63%) IT Engineer
16 24 (2.63%) Project Support Officer
17 23 (2.52%) Coordinator
18 21 (2.30%) PMO Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (0.88%) Web Services
2 7 (0.77%) NumPy
2 7 (0.77%) Pandas
2 7 (0.77%) scikit-learn
2 7 (0.77%) Seaborn
2 7 (0.77%) SOAP
3 6 (0.66%) REST
4 5 (0.55%) XML
5 4 (0.44%) .NET
5 4 (0.44%) FHIR
5 4 (0.44%) NETCONF
5 4 (0.44%) OpenConfig
5 4 (0.44%) RESTCONF
5 4 (0.44%) YANG
6 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Graph
6 3 (0.33%) Oracle Fusion
7 2 (0.22%) ADO
7 2 (0.22%) HTML
7 2 (0.22%) JDO
7 2 (0.22%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 52 (5.69%) Onboarding
2 51 (5.58%) Self-Motivation
3 49 (5.36%) Management Information System
4 41 (4.49%) Product Ownership
5 37 (4.05%) Data Centre
6 26 (2.84%) Driving Licence
7 17 (1.86%) Data Protection Act
7 17 (1.86%) NHS
8 16 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
8 16 (1.75%) Industry 4.0
8 16 (1.75%) Robotics
9 15 (1.64%) PMI
10 14 (1.53%) Mobile App
10 14 (1.53%) Security Posture
11 13 (1.42%) Insider Threat
12 11 (1.20%) Analytical Mindset
13 9 (0.98%) Social Media
13 9 (0.98%) Virtual Team
14 8 (0.88%) Client/Server
14 8 (0.88%) e-Learning
Operating Systems
1 222 (24.29%) Windows
2 94 (10.28%) Windows 10
3 65 (7.11%) Android
4 47 (5.14%) Linux
5 41 (4.49%) Mac OS
6 24 (2.63%) Apple iOS
7 19 (2.08%) Windows Server
8 14 (1.53%) Windows 7
9 10 (1.09%) Windows Server 2016
10 9 (0.98%) Unix
11 8 (0.88%) Ubuntu
12 6 (0.66%) Windows Server 2019
13 4 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 4 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.33%) AIX
14 3 (0.33%) CentOS
15 2 (0.22%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 222 (24.29%) Problem-Solving
2 158 (17.29%) Agile
3 145 (15.86%) Project Management
4 140 (15.32%) Customer Service
5 115 (12.58%) Stakeholder Management
6 112 (12.25%) Continuous Improvement
7 107 (11.71%) ITIL
8 100 (10.94%) Project Delivery
9 86 (9.41%) Service Management
10 84 (9.19%) PRINCE2
11 76 (8.32%) Change Management
12 72 (7.88%) Decision-Making
13 69 (7.55%) Business Intelligence
14 68 (7.44%) Analytical Thinking
15 67 (7.33%) Time Management
16 58 (6.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 57 (6.24%) Waterfall
18 56 (6.13%) AI
19 55 (6.02%) Critical Thinking
20 53 (5.80%) Acceptance Criteria
Programming Languages
1 62 (6.78%) SQL
2 36 (3.94%) PowerShell
3 27 (2.95%) Python
4 17 (1.86%) VB
5 10 (1.09%) PHP
6 9 (0.98%) VBScript
7 8 (0.88%) PL/SQL
8 7 (0.77%) JavaScript
9 6 (0.66%) Java
10 5 (0.55%) Perl
10 5 (0.55%) VBA
11 4 (0.44%) C
11 4 (0.44%) R
12 3 (0.33%) C++
12 3 (0.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 3 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
12 3 (0.33%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.33%) T-SQL
13 1 (0.11%) Google Apps Script
13 1 (0.11%) Korn
Qualifications
1 313 (34.25%) Degree
2 244 (26.70%) Security Cleared
3 192 (21.01%) SC Cleared
4 58 (6.35%) DV Cleared
5 31 (3.39%) PMI Certification
6 30 (3.28%) TOGAF Certification
7 28 (3.06%) PMP
8 19 (2.08%) Microsoft Certification
9 17 (1.86%) APMP
10 16 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
10 16 (1.75%) CTC Cleared
11 14 (1.53%) Computer Science Degree
11 14 (1.53%) ITIL Certification
12 13 (1.42%) CHECK Team Member
13 12 (1.31%) CBAP
13 12 (1.31%) Cisco Certification
13 12 (1.31%) Master's Degree
13 12 (1.31%) MCSE
13 12 (1.31%) Postgraduate
14 11 (1.20%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 99 (10.83%) PMO
2 41 (4.49%) QA
3 32 (3.50%) SLA
4 26 (2.84%) Data Quality
5 25 (2.74%) GDPR
6 19 (2.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 16 (1.75%) PCI DSS
8 14 (1.53%) Accessibility
9 8 (0.88%) P3O
10 7 (0.77%) ISO 9001
11 5 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials
11 5 (0.55%) MiFID
12 4 (0.44%) NIST
13 3 (0.33%) Disclosure Scotland
13 3 (0.33%) ECSS
13 3 (0.33%) HL7
13 3 (0.33%) ISO 20022
14 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
14 2 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 101 (11.05%) Active Directory
2 11 (1.20%) Docker
3 10 (1.09%) BitLocker
3 10 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (0.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 5 (0.55%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
5 5 (0.55%) XenApp
5 5 (0.55%) XenDesktop
6 1 (0.11%) Citrix Presentation Server
6 1 (0.11%) Firmware
6 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 1 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
6 1 (0.11%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.11%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 40 (4.38%) SCCM
2 30 (3.28%) OPNET
3 24 (2.63%) Microsoft Intune
4 13 (1.42%) Nmap
5 11 (1.20%) Ansible
6 8 (0.88%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 7 (0.77%) HP Quality Center
8 5 (0.55%) Kubernetes
8 5 (0.55%) SCOM
8 5 (0.55%) SCVMM
8 5 (0.55%) TeamSite
9 4 (0.44%) HP ALM
9 4 (0.44%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.44%) WSUS
10 3 (0.33%) Cisco Prime
10 3 (0.33%) PaperCut
10 3 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.33%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
10 3 (0.33%) Terraform
11 1 (0.11%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 596 (65.21%) Microsoft
2 76 (8.32%) SAP
3 74 (8.10%) ServiceNow
4 60 (6.56%) Cisco
4 60 (6.56%) Remedy
5 48 (5.25%) HP
6 46 (5.03%) Apple
7 44 (4.81%) Atlassian
8 37 (4.05%) Google
9 28 (3.06%) Dell
10 27 (2.95%) Oracle
11 24 (2.63%) Citrix
12 15 (1.64%) MobileIron
12 15 (1.64%) Siemens
13 14 (1.53%) VMware
14 12 (1.31%) Adobe
15 9 (0.98%) Planview
15 9 (0.98%) Salesforce
16 6 (0.66%) Ariba
17 5 (0.55%) Juniper