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 July 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 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 6
Rank change year-on-year -2 +1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 842 552 734
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 12.81% 16.21% 13.66%
As % of the Vendors category 29.75% 30.20% 28.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 548 364 481
10th Percentile £203 £200 £200
25th Percentile £360 £261 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - +3.26%
75th Percentile £583 £578 £588
90th Percentile £675 £623 £675
England median daily rate £494 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +3.95% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 43 56
10th Percentile £13.13 £14.00 £11.71
25th Percentile £18.00 £14.20 £12.47
Median hourly rate £32.50 £16.36 £29.75
Median % change year-on-year +98.66% -45.01% +58.67%
75th Percentile £77.50 £32.05 £58.49
90th Percentile £110.75 £81.15 £61.33
England median hourly rate £22.64 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year +0.02% +39.43% -24.51%

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 2,830 1,828 2,541
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 43.04% 53.67% 47.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,820 1,194 1,520
10th Percentile £281 £211 £260
25th Percentile £425 £375 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £518
Median % change year-on-year +3.65% -3.48% +3.60%
75th Percentile £605 £600 £613
90th Percentile £694 £650 £700
England median daily rate £510 £510 £520
% change year-on-year - -1.92% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 203 119 159
10th Percentile £16.10 £14.20 £13.80
25th Percentile £26.81 £15.25 £20.75
Median hourly rate £55.00 £19.91 £55.08
Median % change year-on-year +176.24% -63.85% +22.39%
75th Percentile £85.00 £42.36 £61.30
90th Percentile £88.00 £75.20 £70.00
England median hourly rate £35.50 £25.15 £26.03
% change year-on-year +41.15% -3.38% -30.59%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 0 447 £500 +11.11% 255
Berkshire 0 244 £500 +3.09% 120
Hampshire -8 173 £520 -3.44% 110
Surrey +6 122 £453 +81.00% 83
Buckinghamshire -4 111 £512 +10.70% 76
Oxfordshire -1 92 £410 +64.00% 62
West Sussex -5 52 £460 +109.09% 37
Kent -2 27 £275 -18.22% 58
East Sussex +2 9 £298 -53.33% 27
Home Counties +1 4 - -
Middlesex - 2 - - 17
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 82 (9.74%) SharePoint
2 75 (8.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (1.19%) Confluence
4 2 (0.24%) OpenStack
5 1 (0.12%) Apache
5 1 (0.12%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.12%) ArcGIS
5 1 (0.12%) IIS
5 1 (0.12%) MS Project Server
5 1 (0.12%) nginx
5 1 (0.12%) SharePoint 2010
5 1 (0.12%) SharePoint 2013
5 1 (0.12%) Smallworld
5 1 (0.12%) Tomcat
Applications
1 102 (12.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 88 (10.45%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (4.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 40 (4.75%) Microsoft Project
5 14 (1.66%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.24%) SOLIDWORKS
7 1 (0.12%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.12%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.12%) Autodesk Inventor
7 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.12%) InDesign
7 1 (0.12%) MicroStation
7 1 (0.12%) Photoshop
7 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.12%) Trello
Business Applications
1 15 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.59%) NEC Housing
3 5 (0.59%) SAP PSCD
4 4 (0.48%) SAP Business One
5 3 (0.36%) Primavera
5 3 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.12%) iTrent
6 1 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 342 (40.62%) Azure
2 208 (24.70%) Microsoft 365
3 172 (20.43%) Entra ID
4 88 (10.45%) Power Platform
5 85 (10.10%) AWS
6 46 (5.46%) Dynamics 365
7 43 (5.11%) Azure DevOps
8 36 (4.28%) OneDrive
9 31 (3.68%) SaaS
10 27 (3.21%) Power Automate
11 26 (3.09%) Azure Monitor
11 26 (3.09%) GCP
12 24 (2.85%) Microsoft Purview
13 22 (2.61%) Azure Logic Apps
14 21 (2.49%) IaaS
15 16 (1.90%) PowerApps
16 15 (1.78%) Azure Sentinel
17 11 (1.31%) Azure Functions
17 11 (1.31%) Serverless
18 10 (1.19%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 89 (10.57%) DNS
2 59 (7.01%) DHCP
3 49 (5.82%) Firewall
4 43 (5.11%) Wi-Fi
5 39 (4.63%) VPN
6 38 (4.51%) TCP/IP
7 32 (3.80%) LAN
8 25 (2.97%) WAN
9 16 (1.90%) Network Security
10 15 (1.78%) MPLS
10 15 (1.78%) SD-WAN
11 14 (1.66%) VLAN
12 12 (1.43%) Kerberos
13 11 (1.31%) BGP
13 11 (1.31%) Unified Communications
14 9 (1.07%) DNSSEC
15 8 (0.95%) IPsec
15 8 (0.95%) Wireless
16 7 (0.83%) Internet
16 7 (0.83%) OSPF
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (7.84%) Power BI
2 33 (3.92%) SQL Server
3 13 (1.54%) MySQL
4 12 (1.43%) PostgreSQL
5 10 (1.19%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (0.95%) Oracle Database
7 7 (0.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 6 (0.71%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (0.71%) Metadata
9 5 (0.59%) Relational Database
9 5 (0.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.36%) Data Lake
10 3 (0.36%) Data Mining
10 3 (0.36%) MS Access
10 3 (0.36%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 2 (0.24%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.24%) BusinessObjects
11 2 (0.24%) Geospatial Data
11 2 (0.24%) Oracle Reports
12 1 (0.12%) Ataccama
Development Applications
1 26 (3.09%) JIRA
2 10 (1.19%) Git
3 5 (0.59%) MSI
4 4 (0.48%) Sonatype Nexus
5 3 (0.36%) Android Studio
5 3 (0.36%) Browser DevTools
5 3 (0.36%) Eclipse
5 3 (0.36%) Robot Framework
5 3 (0.36%) Xcode
6 2 (0.24%) Jenkins
6 2 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.12%) ERwin
7 1 (0.12%) GitLab
7 1 (0.12%) JUnit
7 1 (0.12%) MLflow
7 1 (0.12%) NUnit
7 1 (0.12%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 270 (32.07%) Social Skills
2 101 (12.00%) Analytical Skills
3 85 (10.10%) Public Sector
4 80 (9.50%) Finance
5 51 (6.06%) Organisational Skills
6 31 (3.68%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (3.44%) Legal
8 26 (3.09%) Aerospace
9 24 (2.85%) Telecoms
10 17 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (2.02%) Marketing
10 17 (2.02%) Military
11 10 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
12 9 (1.07%) Manufacturing
13 8 (0.95%) Retail
14 7 (0.83%) Billing
14 7 (0.83%) French Language
15 6 (0.71%) Aviation
15 6 (0.71%) Local Government
16 5 (0.59%) Arabic Language
Job Titles
1 88 (10.45%) IT Support
2 85 (10.10%) Analyst
2 85 (10.10%) Architect
3 67 (7.96%) Senior
4 60 (7.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 52 (6.18%) Consultant
6 51 (6.06%) Support Engineer
7 50 (5.94%) IT Engineer
8 47 (5.58%) Lead
9 41 (4.87%) IT Support Engineer
10 34 (4.04%) Azure Engineer
10 34 (4.04%) Cloud Engineer
11 33 (3.92%) Developer
12 30 (3.56%) IT Analyst
13 28 (3.33%) Project Manager
14 27 (3.21%) Administrator
14 27 (3.21%) Support Analyst
15 26 (3.09%) Solutions Architect
16 23 (2.73%) IT Support Analyst
16 23 (2.73%) Microsoft Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (3.92%) LDAP
2 32 (3.80%) OAuth
3 30 (3.56%) OpenID
3 30 (3.56%) SAML
4 26 (3.09%) .NET
5 22 (2.61%) OAuth2
6 20 (2.38%) Web Services
7 18 (2.14%) Microsoft Graph
7 18 (2.14%) SailPoint
8 17 (2.02%) REST
9 12 (1.43%) ARM Templates
10 11 (1.31%) JSON
11 8 (0.95%) React
11 8 (0.95%) XML
12 7 (0.83%) AngularJS
12 7 (0.83%) CSS
12 7 (0.83%) Middleware
12 7 (0.83%) PySpark
12 7 (0.83%) SOAP
12 7 (0.83%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 71 (8.43%) Onboarding
2 35 (4.16%) Hybrid Cloud
3 32 (3.80%) Data Centre
4 31 (3.68%) Cloud Native
4 31 (3.68%) PKI
5 27 (3.21%) Product Ownership
6 21 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 20 (2.38%) Public Cloud
8 19 (2.26%) Operational Technology
9 16 (1.90%) Replication
9 16 (1.90%) Security Posture
10 15 (1.78%) Enterprise Software
11 14 (1.66%) Management Information System
12 13 (1.54%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 12 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (1.19%) Cyber Defence
14 10 (1.19%) Data Structures
15 9 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
15 9 (1.07%) Private Cloud
16 8 (0.95%) Cloud Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 239 (28.38%) Windows
2 79 (9.38%) Windows Server
3 68 (8.08%) Linux
4 33 (3.92%) Windows 10
5 25 (2.97%) Mac OS
6 22 (2.61%) Apple iOS
7 15 (1.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (1.78%) Unix
8 12 (1.43%) Android
9 7 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.71%) Windows 7
11 5 (0.59%) CentOS
11 5 (0.59%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.59%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.12%) OpenVMS
13 1 (0.12%) VMS
13 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 156 (18.53%) Problem-Solving
2 111 (13.18%) ITIL
3 104 (12.35%) Agile
4 101 (12.00%) Customer Service
5 96 (11.40%) Stakeholder Management
6 89 (10.57%) DevOps
7 83 (9.86%) Cybersecurity
7 83 (9.86%) ITSM
8 82 (9.74%) CI/CD
9 81 (9.62%) Migration
10 77 (9.14%) Continuous Improvement
10 77 (9.14%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 75 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 71 (8.43%) Analytics
13 70 (8.31%) Business Intelligence
13 70 (8.31%) Decision-Making
14 67 (7.96%) Project Delivery
15 62 (7.36%) Project Management
16 57 (6.77%) AI
17 56 (6.65%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 144 (17.10%) PowerShell
2 75 (8.91%) Python
3 69 (8.19%) SQL
4 33 (3.92%) Bash
5 28 (3.33%) T-SQL
6 22 (2.61%) Bicep
7 16 (1.90%) C#
8 14 (1.66%) JavaScript
9 13 (1.54%) Java
10 12 (1.43%) Kusto Query Language
11 9 (1.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 7 (0.83%) X++
13 4 (0.48%) ABAP
14 3 (0.36%) Perl
14 3 (0.36%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.24%) Korn
15 2 (0.24%) VBA
16 1 (0.12%) Google Apps Script
16 1 (0.12%) Groovy
16 1 (0.12%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 306 (36.34%) Security Cleared
2 214 (25.42%) SC Cleared
3 119 (14.13%) Degree
4 97 (11.52%) DV Cleared
5 48 (5.70%) Microsoft Certification
6 35 (4.16%) Azure Certification
7 19 (2.26%) Cisco Certification
8 16 (1.90%) AWS Certification
9 14 (1.66%) PMI Certification
9 14 (1.66%) PMP
10 13 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
10 13 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
10 13 (1.54%) DBS Check
11 9 (1.07%) CCNP
11 9 (1.07%) MCSA
11 9 (1.07%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 9 (1.07%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 8 (0.95%) CISSP
12 8 (0.95%) MCSE
13 7 (0.83%) CCIE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (4.63%) NIST
2 35 (4.16%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 30 (3.56%) GDPR
4 29 (3.44%) NCSC
5 26 (3.09%) Data Quality
5 26 (3.09%) SLA
6 25 (2.97%) PMO
7 20 (2.38%) QA
8 19 (2.26%) Cyber Essentials
9 6 (0.71%) ISO 31000
10 5 (0.59%) GRC
11 4 (0.48%) Accessibility
11 4 (0.48%) NIST 800
11 4 (0.48%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 42001
12 3 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 2 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
14 1 (0.12%) GxP
14 1 (0.12%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 235 (27.91%) Active Directory
2 76 (9.03%) VMware Infrastructure
3 31 (3.68%) Hyper-V
4 21 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.14%) vSphere
6 14 (1.66%) Virtual Desktop
6 14 (1.66%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (1.54%) VMware NSX
8 8 (0.95%) Docker
9 5 (0.59%) Firmware
10 3 (0.36%) OpenAM
11 2 (0.24%) UAG
12 1 (0.12%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.12%) Dovecot
12 1 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.12%) Postfix
12 1 (0.12%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 75 (8.91%) Microsoft Intune
2 59 (7.01%) Terraform
3 35 (4.16%) SCCM
4 25 (2.97%) Active Directory Federation Services
5 24 (2.85%) Ansible
6 21 (2.49%) SCOM
7 20 (2.38%) Kubernetes
8 19 (2.26%) vCenter Server
9 14 (1.66%) Single Sign-On
10 12 (1.43%) Avamar
10 12 (1.43%) Jamf Pro
11 6 (0.71%) QRadar
12 5 (0.59%) FortiGate
12 5 (0.59%) Progress Chef
12 5 (0.59%) Puppet
13 4 (0.48%) Clonezilla
13 4 (0.48%) WMI
14 3 (0.36%) SCSM
15 2 (0.24%) vMotion
15 2 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 94 (11.16%) VMware
2 54 (6.41%) ServiceNow
3 43 (5.11%) Cisco
4 38 (4.51%) SAP
5 27 (3.21%) Google
6 22 (2.61%) Meraki
7 19 (2.26%) Dell
7 19 (2.26%) Oracle
8 15 (1.78%) SolarWinds
9 14 (1.66%) Avaya
10 13 (1.54%) Mitel
11 12 (1.43%) Citrix
11 12 (1.43%) F5
11 12 (1.43%) Thales
12 11 (1.31%) Databricks
12 11 (1.31%) Fortinet
13 10 (1.19%) Juniper
13 10 (1.19%) Palo Alto
14 9 (1.07%) Infoblox
14 9 (1.07%) Splunk