Microsoft Contract Job Trends in the South East

Microsoft
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East 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 14 May 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
14 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 6 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 666 459 795
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 11.31% 15.43% 14.50%
As % of the Vendors category 27.01% 29.31% 30.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 465 309 530
10th Percentile £203 £206 £190
25th Percentile £363 £325 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £480 £465
Median % change year-on-year -0.52% +3.23% -0.01%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £669 £623 £675
England median daily rate £499 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.00% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 31 72
10th Percentile £12.29 - £11.71
25th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £11.95
Median hourly rate £30.75 £15.00 £20.25
Median % change year-on-year +105.00% -25.93% +0.07%
75th Percentile £53.75 £24.38 £50.94
90th Percentile £89.40 £32.05 £61.48
England median hourly rate £20.35 £18.51 £15.00
% change year-on-year +9.94% +23.40% -28.59%

All Vendors
South East

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 in the South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 2,466 1,566 2,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 41.87% 52.66% 46.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,700 1,047 1,570
10th Percentile £300 £225 £213
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £508 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% +1.50% -
75th Percentile £610 £603 £600
90th Percentile £700 £675 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £520
% change year-on-year -4.76% +0.96% -2.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 87 182
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.00
25th Percentile £26.17 £16.95 £16.81
Median hourly rate £47.54 £24.66 £48.75
Median % change year-on-year +92.78% -49.42% +8.33%
75th Percentile £85.63 £59.44 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £72.25 £66.82
England median hourly rate £32.50 £26.45 £22.50
% change year-on-year +22.87% +17.56% -43.11%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in the South East

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in the South East over the 6 months to 14 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the South East

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South East

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in the South East over the 6 months to 14 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the South East

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the South East region over the 6 months to 14 May 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
Thames Valley 0 346 £490 +2.89% 259
Berkshire -7 165 £500 +4.71% 118
Hampshire -9 132 £538 +7.50% 128
Buckinghamshire -5 112 £500 -9.09% 86
Surrey +11 96 £450 -10.00% 81
Oxfordshire 0 69 £415 +66.00% 62
West Sussex -2 43 £475 +26.67% 30
Kent -2 29 £284 +8.10% 47
East Sussex -3 10 £538 -2.27% 16
Home Counties +2 4 - - 1
Sussex -4 1 - - 2
Microsoft
England

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 73 (10.96%) SharePoint
2 69 (10.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 11 (1.65%) Confluence
4 3 (0.45%) ArcGIS
4 3 (0.45%) MS Project Server
4 3 (0.45%) Smallworld
5 2 (0.30%) GeoServer
6 1 (0.15%) Apache Spark
6 1 (0.15%) BizTalk Server
6 1 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2010
6 1 (0.15%) SharePoint 2010
6 1 (0.15%) SharePoint 2013
Applications
1 82 (12.31%) Microsoft Office
2 73 (10.96%) Microsoft Excel
3 33 (4.95%) Microsoft Project
4 27 (4.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (1.65%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.45%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.15%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.15%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.15%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.15%) InDesign
7 1 (0.15%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.15%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.15%) Trello
Business Applications
1 9 (1.35%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.60%) SAP Business One
3 1 (0.15%) iTrent
3 1 (0.15%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
3 1 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 258 (38.74%) Azure
2 186 (27.93%) Microsoft 365
3 119 (17.87%) Entra ID
4 85 (12.76%) Power Platform
5 60 (9.01%) AWS
6 38 (5.71%) Azure DevOps
7 32 (4.80%) Power Automate
8 30 (4.50%) Dynamics 365
9 28 (4.20%) OneDrive
10 23 (3.45%) Microsoft Purview
10 23 (3.45%) SaaS
11 22 (3.30%) PowerApps
12 19 (2.85%) IaaS
13 18 (2.70%) Microsoft Copilot
14 17 (2.55%) GitHub
14 17 (2.55%) Serverless
15 16 (2.40%) Azure Functions
16 15 (2.25%) Azure Logic Apps
17 14 (2.10%) Azure Monitor
18 13 (1.95%) Copilot Studio
Communications & Networking
1 58 (8.71%) DNS
2 43 (6.46%) DHCP
3 32 (4.80%) Firewall
3 32 (4.80%) Wi-Fi
4 21 (3.15%) VPN
5 18 (2.70%) LAN
6 15 (2.25%) WAN
7 14 (2.10%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.80%) Kerberos
9 9 (1.35%) SD-WAN
9 9 (1.35%) Unified Communications
10 8 (1.20%) MPLS
10 8 (1.20%) Network Security
11 7 (1.05%) VLAN
12 6 (0.90%) SAN
13 5 (0.75%) BGP
13 5 (0.75%) IPsec
13 5 (0.75%) SNMP
13 5 (0.75%) SSL
13 5 (0.75%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (9.46%) Power BI
2 31 (4.65%) SQL Server
3 16 (2.40%) Azure SQL Database
4 13 (1.95%) MySQL
5 10 (1.50%) Metadata
6 9 (1.35%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (1.20%) Relational Database
8 7 (1.05%) Data Lake
8 7 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
9 6 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 4 (0.60%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
10 4 (0.60%) Oracle Database
10 4 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 3 (0.45%) Amazon RDS
11 3 (0.45%) Data Mining
11 3 (0.45%) GIS
11 3 (0.45%) Star Schema
12 2 (0.30%) MS Access
12 2 (0.30%) Oracle Reports
12 2 (0.30%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 20 (3.00%) JIRA
2 11 (1.65%) Git
3 9 (1.35%) Android Studio
4 6 (0.90%) Browser DevTools
4 6 (0.90%) Eclipse
4 6 (0.90%) Xcode
5 4 (0.60%) MSI
6 3 (0.45%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.45%) Gradle
6 3 (0.45%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.45%) JUnit
6 3 (0.45%) Maven
6 3 (0.45%) Robot Framework
6 3 (0.45%) Subversion
7 2 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.15%) GitLab
8 1 (0.15%) MLflow
8 1 (0.15%) Postman
8 1 (0.15%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 187 (28.08%) Social Skills
2 69 (10.36%) Public Sector
3 67 (10.06%) Finance
4 63 (9.46%) Analytical Skills
5 46 (6.91%) Organisational Skills
6 18 (2.70%) Legal
7 17 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
8 15 (2.25%) Military
9 10 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 8 (1.20%) Retail
10 8 (1.20%) Telecoms
11 7 (1.05%) Aerospace
11 7 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (1.05%) Manufacturing
12 5 (0.75%) Marketing
12 5 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
13 4 (0.60%) Aviation
13 4 (0.60%) General Ledger
13 4 (0.60%) Local Government
13 4 (0.60%) Police
Job Titles
1 89 (13.36%) Architect
2 64 (9.61%) Analyst
3 60 (9.01%) IT Support
4 56 (8.41%) Senior
5 51 (7.66%) Support Engineer
6 49 (7.36%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 42 (6.31%) IT Engineer
8 36 (5.41%) Lead
9 34 (5.11%) IT Support Engineer
10 33 (4.95%) Consultant
11 28 (4.20%) Developer
12 25 (3.75%) Solutions Architect
13 23 (3.45%) Azure Engineer
14 18 (2.70%) Administrator
14 18 (2.70%) IT Analyst
14 18 (2.70%) Technical Architect
15 17 (2.55%) Project Manager
16 16 (2.40%) DevOps Engineer
17 15 (2.25%) Support Analyst
18 14 (2.10%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (3.60%) .NET
2 19 (2.85%) LDAP
3 15 (2.25%) OAuth
4 14 (2.10%) SAML
5 13 (1.95%) OpenID
5 13 (1.95%) REST
6 12 (1.80%) Web Services
7 11 (1.65%) SailPoint
8 10 (1.50%) OAuth2
9 9 (1.35%) ARM Templates
9 9 (1.35%) CSS
9 9 (1.35%) React
10 8 (1.20%) Microsoft Graph
11 7 (1.05%) ADO
11 7 (1.05%) XML
12 6 (0.90%) Ajax
12 6 (0.90%) AngularJS
12 6 (0.90%) GraphQL
12 6 (0.90%) JSON
12 6 (0.90%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 48 (7.21%) Onboarding
2 32 (4.80%) PKI
3 21 (3.15%) Product Ownership
4 19 (2.85%) Cloud Native
4 19 (2.85%) Data Centre
5 17 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
6 16 (2.40%) Hybrid Cloud
7 15 (2.25%) Operational Technology
7 15 (2.25%) Replication
8 14 (2.10%) Public Cloud
9 11 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
9 11 (1.65%) Driving Licence
9 11 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
10 10 (1.50%) Cyber Defence
11 9 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
11 9 (1.35%) Mobile App
12 8 (1.20%) Virtual Team
13 7 (1.05%) Security Posture
14 6 (0.90%) Data Structures
14 6 (0.90%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 189 (28.38%) Windows
2 64 (9.61%) Linux
3 54 (8.11%) Windows Server
4 21 (3.15%) Windows 10
5 17 (2.55%) Mac OS
6 14 (2.10%) Android
6 14 (2.10%) Unix
7 11 (1.65%) Apple iOS
8 10 (1.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 8 (1.20%) Windows 7
10 7 (1.05%) Windows Server 2019
11 6 (0.90%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.75%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.60%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.45%) CentOS
15 1 (0.15%) Debian
15 1 (0.15%) OpenVMS
15 1 (0.15%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 98 (14.71%) Problem-Solving
2 81 (12.16%) Agile
3 79 (11.86%) DevOps
4 78 (11.71%) ITIL
5 73 (10.96%) Customer Service
6 72 (10.81%) Business Intelligence
7 70 (10.51%) Migration
8 62 (9.31%) CI/CD
9 61 (9.16%) Cybersecurity
10 58 (8.71%) Stakeholder Management
11 56 (8.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 55 (8.26%) Analytics
12 55 (8.26%) Project Management
13 47 (7.06%) Decision-Making
14 46 (6.91%) Project Delivery
15 44 (6.61%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 39 (5.86%) ITSM
16 39 (5.86%) SIEM
17 38 (5.71%) User Experience
18 36 (5.41%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 98 (14.71%) PowerShell
2 67 (10.06%) Python
3 56 (8.41%) SQL
4 21 (3.15%) T-SQL
5 17 (2.55%) Bash
5 17 (2.55%) C#
6 15 (2.25%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.80%) Java
8 10 (1.50%) Bicep
9 8 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 7 (1.05%) Kusto Query Language
11 6 (0.90%) Perl
12 2 (0.30%) Korn
12 2 (0.30%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.30%) X++
13 1 (0.15%) Google Apps Script
13 1 (0.15%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.15%) Shell Script
13 1 (0.15%) VBA
Qualifications
1 233 (34.98%) Security Cleared
2 162 (24.32%) SC Cleared
3 73 (10.96%) Degree
4 70 (10.51%) DV Cleared
5 23 (3.45%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (2.10%) CISSP
7 13 (1.95%) GIAC
8 12 (1.80%) Azure Certification
9 11 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
9 11 (1.65%) Computer Science Degree
10 10 (1.50%) PMI Certification
10 10 (1.50%) PMP
11 9 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
11 9 (1.35%) CISM
12 8 (1.20%) AWS Certification
12 8 (1.20%) DBS Check
13 5 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 5 (0.75%) CIMA
13 5 (0.75%) CRISC
13 5 (0.75%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (4.95%) NIST
2 24 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 21 (3.15%) Cyber Essentials
3 21 (3.15%) PMO
4 19 (2.85%) NCSC
5 18 (2.70%) SLA
6 17 (2.55%) GDPR
7 16 (2.40%) Data Quality
8 11 (1.65%) QA
9 6 (0.90%) ISO 31000
9 6 (0.90%) NIST 800
10 5 (0.75%) Accessibility
11 3 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 3 (0.45%) PCI DSS
12 2 (0.30%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 2 (0.30%) JSP 440
13 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
13 1 (0.15%) GRC
13 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 205 (30.78%) Active Directory
2 65 (9.76%) VMware Infrastructure
3 27 (4.05%) Hyper-V
4 12 (1.80%) Docker
4 12 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
4 12 (1.80%) vSphere
5 11 (1.65%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (1.50%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (1.50%) VMware NSX
7 5 (0.75%) Firmware
8 3 (0.45%) DFS Replication
9 2 (0.30%) UAG
10 1 (0.15%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 1 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
10 1 (0.15%) Sendmail
10 1 (0.15%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 58 (8.71%) Microsoft Intune
2 32 (4.80%) Terraform
3 29 (4.35%) SCCM
4 18 (2.70%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 18 (2.70%) Single Sign-On
5 15 (2.25%) Ansible
6 12 (1.80%) Kubernetes
7 10 (1.50%) SCOM
8 9 (1.35%) Jamf Pro
9 8 (1.20%) vCenter Server
10 7 (1.05%) WMI
11 4 (0.60%) Avamar
11 4 (0.60%) QRadar
12 3 (0.45%) Nessus
12 3 (0.45%) SCSM
12 3 (0.45%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
12 3 (0.45%) WSUS
13 2 (0.30%) Grafana
13 2 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
13 2 (0.30%) Puppet
Vendors
1 78 (11.71%) VMware
2 29 (4.35%) Cisco
2 29 (4.35%) SAP
3 20 (3.00%) ServiceNow
4 16 (2.40%) Databricks
4 16 (2.40%) Meraki
5 14 (2.10%) Citrix
5 14 (2.10%) Oracle
6 12 (1.80%) Splunk
6 12 (1.80%) Thales
7 10 (1.50%) Avaya
8 9 (1.35%) Dell
8 9 (1.35%) Google
8 9 (1.35%) Mitel
9 8 (1.20%) Fortinet
10 7 (1.05%) F5
10 7 (1.05%) Red Hat
11 6 (0.90%) SolarWinds
11 6 (0.90%) Veeam
12 5 (0.75%) BT