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 21 February 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 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 3
Rank change year-on-year -1 -3 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 651 495 891
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 13.52% 15.66% 16.16%
As % of the Vendors category 28.27% 31.09% 32.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 463 332 624
10th Percentile £204 £210 £180
25th Percentile £278 £363 £215
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £479 £463
Median % change year-on-year -0.78% +3.51% -2.63%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £575
90th Percentile £650 £650 £675
England median daily rate £485 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.11% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 17 61
10th Percentile £12.44 £14.23 £12.00
25th Percentile £12.97 £18.20 £14.00
Median hourly rate £17.50 £22.50 £23.22
Median % change year-on-year -22.22% -3.08% +16.08%
75th Percentile £21.69 £28.42 £56.40
90th Percentile £68.63 £57.62 £61.60
England median hourly rate £19.91 £23.80 £17.72
% change year-on-year -16.34% +34.31% -15.62%

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 2,303 1,592 2,738
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 47.82% 50.38% 49.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,638 1,027 1,711
10th Percentile £263 £250 £205
25th Percentile £412 £408 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% +3.00% -1.96%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £600
90th Percentile £688 £675 £688
England median daily rate £501 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.67% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 154 55 157
10th Percentile £12.50 £18.32 £13.05
25th Percentile £16.28 £23.84 £18.58
Median hourly rate £25.72 £27.76 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.35% -41.56% +5.56%
75th Percentile £66.88 £62.50 £63.00
90th Percentile £88.00 £73.50 £76.53
England median hourly rate £23.83 £30.89 £27.76
% change year-on-year -22.87% +11.29% -18.46%

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 21 February 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 21 February 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 21 February 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 0 331 £475 -3.85% 272
Berkshire 0 219 £490 -2.00% 113
Hampshire -3 144 £550 +10.00% 131
Surrey +9 80 £425 +41.67% 75
Buckinghamshire -2 75 £475 +10.47% 92
Oxfordshire -1 37 £275 +10.00% 70
West Sussex -6 34 £364 -16.13% 57
Kent 0 29 £425 -25.24% 54
East Sussex +5 19 £600 +11.63% 33
Sussex +2 11 £463 -7.50% 11
Home Counties +1 3 - -
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 65 (9.98%) SharePoint
2 52 (7.99%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.54%) Confluence
4 5 (0.77%) Skype for Business
5 4 (0.61%) Mattermost
6 3 (0.46%) MS Project Server
7 2 (0.31%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.31%) GeoServer
7 2 (0.31%) Smallworld
8 1 (0.15%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.15%) BizTalk Server
8 1 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2010
8 1 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 116 (17.82%) Microsoft Office
2 76 (11.67%) Microsoft Excel
3 28 (4.30%) Microsoft Project
4 26 (3.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 8 (1.23%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.31%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.46%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.15%) iTrent
4 1 (0.15%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.15%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.15%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.15%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.15%) Sage 50
4 1 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.15%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 206 (31.64%) Azure
2 161 (24.73%) Microsoft 365
3 97 (14.90%) Entra ID
4 68 (10.45%) AWS
5 66 (10.14%) Power Platform
6 35 (5.38%) OneDrive
7 31 (4.76%) Dynamics 365
8 29 (4.45%) SaaS
9 28 (4.30%) Microsoft Purview
10 27 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
11 26 (3.99%) Power Automate
12 24 (3.69%) PowerApps
13 19 (2.92%) GitHub
14 16 (2.46%) Google Workspace
15 15 (2.30%) Serverless
16 14 (2.15%) Azure Functions
16 14 (2.15%) Sauce Labs
17 13 (2.00%) GCP
17 13 (2.00%) IaaS
17 13 (2.00%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 61 (9.37%) DNS
2 47 (7.22%) DHCP
3 36 (5.53%) Firewall
4 29 (4.45%) Wi-Fi
5 22 (3.38%) TCP/IP
6 19 (2.92%) VPN
7 16 (2.46%) Wireless
8 15 (2.30%) VLAN
9 14 (2.15%) Unified Communications
10 13 (2.00%) Kerberos
11 9 (1.38%) 4G
11 9 (1.38%) Network Security
12 8 (1.23%) VSAN
12 8 (1.23%) WebEx
13 7 (1.08%) SAN
14 6 (0.92%) LAN
14 6 (0.92%) SSL
15 5 (0.77%) BGP
15 5 (0.77%) VoIP
15 5 (0.77%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 49 (7.53%) Power BI
2 40 (6.14%) SQL Server
3 23 (3.53%) Relational Database
4 19 (2.92%) MySQL
5 17 (2.61%) Azure SQL Database
6 12 (1.84%) Oracle Database
7 10 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
7 10 (1.54%) Metadata
7 10 (1.54%) PostgreSQL
8 7 (1.08%) BusinessObjects Business Intelligence
8 7 (1.08%) Data Lake
8 7 (1.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 7 (1.08%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 6 (0.92%) RDBMS
10 5 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
11 4 (0.61%) MongoDB
11 4 (0.61%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.46%) GIS
12 3 (0.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 3 (0.46%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 17 (2.61%) Android Studio
2 14 (2.15%) Browser DevTools
2 14 (2.15%) Eclipse
2 14 (2.15%) Git
2 14 (2.15%) JIRA
2 14 (2.15%) Xcode
3 9 (1.38%) Jenkins
4 5 (0.77%) JUnit
5 4 (0.61%) Gradle
6 3 (0.46%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.46%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.46%) Maven
6 3 (0.46%) MSI
6 3 (0.46%) Sonatype Nexus
6 3 (0.46%) Subversion
7 2 (0.31%) JMeter
7 2 (0.31%) Oracle APEX
7 2 (0.31%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.15%) Fiddler
8 1 (0.15%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 233 (35.79%) Social Skills
2 91 (13.98%) Finance
3 75 (11.52%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (9.52%) Organisational Skills
5 56 (8.60%) Public Sector
6 16 (2.46%) Manufacturing
7 13 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (1.69%) Legal
8 11 (1.69%) Military
8 11 (1.69%) Retail
9 9 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (1.23%) Telecoms
11 7 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.08%) Marketing
12 6 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.77%) Billing
14 4 (0.61%) Banking
14 4 (0.61%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.46%) Aviation
15 3 (0.46%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 101 (15.51%) Architect
2 74 (11.37%) Support Engineer
3 67 (10.29%) Analyst
4 62 (9.52%) IT Support
5 48 (7.37%) Senior
6 45 (6.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 35 (5.38%) IT Engineer
8 31 (4.76%) Developer
9 30 (4.61%) IT Support Engineer
10 24 (3.69%) Solutions Architect
11 22 (3.38%) Consultant
12 21 (3.23%) Infrastructure Support
12 21 (3.23%) Lead
13 20 (3.07%) Administrator
13 20 (3.07%) Infrastructure Architect
13 20 (3.07%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
14 19 (2.92%) Support Officer
15 17 (2.61%) Support Analyst
16 16 (2.46%) Technical Support
17 15 (2.30%) Technical Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (3.38%) .NET
2 18 (2.76%) React
3 17 (2.61%) CSS
4 16 (2.46%) GraphQL
5 14 (2.15%) Ajax
5 14 (2.15%) AngularJS
5 14 (2.15%) LDAP
6 12 (1.84%) REST
7 11 (1.69%) ARM Templates
8 8 (1.23%) OAuth
9 7 (1.08%) ADO
9 7 (1.08%) OpenID
9 7 (1.08%) SAML
10 6 (0.92%) Spring
11 5 (0.77%) PySpark
12 4 (0.61%) .NET Core
12 4 (0.61%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.61%) OAuth2
12 4 (0.61%) SailPoint
12 4 (0.61%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 35 (5.38%) Onboarding
2 34 (5.22%) PKI
3 29 (4.45%) Analytical Mindset
4 19 (2.92%) Product Ownership
4 19 (2.92%) Replication
5 18 (2.76%) Enterprise Software
5 18 (2.76%) Mobile App
6 14 (2.15%) Driving Licence
6 14 (2.15%) Legacy Systems
6 14 (2.15%) Self-Motivation
7 13 (2.00%) Cloud Native
7 13 (2.00%) Management Information System
7 13 (2.00%) Operational Technology
8 12 (1.84%) Fat Client
8 12 (1.84%) Thin Client
9 11 (1.69%) Video Conferencing
10 8 (1.23%) Data Centre
10 8 (1.23%) Security Operations Centre
11 7 (1.08%) Cyber Defence
11 7 (1.08%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 199 (30.57%) Windows
2 83 (12.75%) Linux
3 38 (5.84%) Windows 10
4 36 (5.53%) Windows Server
5 19 (2.92%) Android
6 17 (2.61%) Unix
7 15 (2.30%) Mac OS
8 10 (1.54%) Windows 7
9 6 (0.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 6 (0.92%) Windows Server 2012
9 6 (0.92%) Windows Server 2019
10 5 (0.77%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (0.61%) Ubuntu
12 2 (0.31%) Apple iOS
13 1 (0.15%) CentOS
13 1 (0.15%) Debian
13 1 (0.15%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 104 (15.98%) Problem-Solving
2 81 (12.44%) Agile
3 78 (11.98%) Customer Service
4 74 (11.37%) Cybersecurity
5 71 (10.91%) ITIL
6 62 (9.52%) Migration
7 59 (9.06%) DevOps
8 58 (8.91%) Business Intelligence
9 57 (8.76%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 56 (8.60%) Project Management
11 54 (8.29%) Stakeholder Management
12 48 (7.37%) Project Delivery
13 47 (7.22%) Continuous Improvement
14 46 (7.07%) CI/CD
15 43 (6.61%) Time Management
16 39 (5.99%) Analytics
17 35 (5.38%) Roadmaps
18 34 (5.22%) SIEM
19 33 (5.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 32 (4.92%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 93 (14.29%) PowerShell
2 74 (11.37%) Python
3 63 (9.68%) SQL
4 24 (3.69%) Java
4 24 (3.69%) JavaScript
5 18 (2.76%) Bash
6 16 (2.46%) C#
7 15 (2.30%) Perl
8 6 (0.92%) Bicep
8 6 (0.92%) T-SQL
9 4 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
9 4 (0.61%) PL/SQL
9 4 (0.61%) X++
10 3 (0.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 2 (0.31%) PHP
11 2 (0.31%) Shell Script
12 1 (0.15%) Korn
12 1 (0.15%) VB
Qualifications
1 225 (34.56%) Security Cleared
2 147 (22.58%) SC Cleared
3 64 (9.83%) DV Cleared
4 62 (9.52%) Degree
5 42 (6.45%) Microsoft Certification
6 25 (3.84%) Azure Certification
7 20 (3.07%) CISSP
8 13 (2.00%) PMI Certification
9 11 (1.69%) Network+ Certification
9 11 (1.69%) Server+ Certification
10 10 (1.54%) GIAC
10 10 (1.54%) PMP
11 9 (1.38%) CISM
11 9 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 9 (1.38%) DBS Check
12 8 (1.23%) Cisco Certification
12 8 (1.23%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 7 (1.08%) AWS Certification
13 7 (1.08%) ITIL Certification
13 7 (1.08%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (4.15%) NIST
1 27 (4.15%) PMO
2 24 (3.69%) GDPR
3 18 (2.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 18 (2.76%) SLA
4 14 (2.15%) Data Quality
5 13 (2.00%) QA
6 11 (1.69%) Cyber Essentials
7 8 (1.23%) NCSC
8 5 (0.77%) NIST 800
9 4 (0.61%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.46%) P3O
10 3 (0.46%) RMADS
11 2 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 19770
11 2 (0.31%) PCI DSS
12 1 (0.15%) COSHH
12 1 (0.15%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 27005
System Software
1 184 (28.26%) Active Directory
2 59 (9.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 28 (4.30%) Hyper-V
4 13 (2.00%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (1.69%) vSphere
6 10 (1.54%) Docker
6 10 (1.54%) VMware ESXi
7 6 (0.92%) VMware NSX
8 5 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
9 3 (0.46%) DFS Replication
10 2 (0.31%) NFS
11 1 (0.15%) BitLocker
11 1 (0.15%) Citrix Hypervisor
11 1 (0.15%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 57 (8.76%) Microsoft Intune
2 45 (6.91%) SCCM
3 22 (3.38%) Terraform
4 21 (3.23%) Single Sign-On
5 18 (2.76%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 14 (2.15%) Ansible
7 13 (2.00%) WMI
8 10 (1.54%) Jamf Pro
8 10 (1.54%) Kubernetes
9 6 (0.92%) vCenter Server
10 5 (0.77%) SCOM
11 4 (0.61%) Cisco CUCM
11 4 (0.61%) HP SiteScope
12 3 (0.46%) Grafana
12 3 (0.46%) Nessus
12 3 (0.46%) PaperCut
12 3 (0.46%) Puppet
12 3 (0.46%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.31%) FTK
13 2 (0.31%) WSUS
Vendors
1 76 (11.67%) VMware
2 50 (7.68%) ServiceNow
3 33 (5.07%) Oracle
4 30 (4.61%) Splunk
5 24 (3.69%) Cisco
5 24 (3.69%) SAP
6 17 (2.61%) Citrix
6 17 (2.61%) Databricks
7 10 (1.54%) Tenable
8 9 (1.38%) CrowdStrike
8 9 (1.38%) Thales
9 7 (1.08%) CyberArk
9 7 (1.08%) Fortinet
9 7 (1.08%) Palo Alto
9 7 (1.08%) Red Hat
10 6 (0.92%) Meraki
10 6 (0.92%) Virgin Media
11 5 (0.77%) Dell
11 5 (0.77%) F5
11 5 (0.77%) Informatica