Microsoft Contracts

Microsoft
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for knowledge and experience of Microsoft products and/or services. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited Microsoft over the 6 months to 18 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 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
18 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 7 10
Rank change year-on-year 0 +3 +2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,623 8,239 11,108
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.86% 13.55% 12.36%
As % of the Vendors category 30.15% 31.57% 31.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,711 5,957 7,731
10th Percentile £189 £200 £185
25th Percentile £325 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £499
Median % change year-on-year - +0.20% +16.05%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £704 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £460 £425
% change year-on-year +0.54% +8.24% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 449 243 436
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £10.77
25th Percentile £12.86 £16.25 £13.97
Median hourly rate £15.14 £22.50 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.71% +21.62% +5.11%
75th Percentile £23.82 £52.74 £35.14
90th Percentile £51.25 £66.00 £49.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.00 £19.00 £16.50
% change year-on-year -21.05% +15.15% -5.71%

All Vendors
UK

Microsoft is in the Vendor Products and Services category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 18,651 26,095 35,716
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.67% 42.91% 39.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,597 17,438 23,735
10th Percentile £258 £270 £283
25th Percentile £402 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - +10.53%
75th Percentile £630 £650 £625
90th Percentile £738 £743 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £463
% change year-on-year - +8.11% +8.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,094 725 902
10th Percentile £12.13 £15.16 £11.50
25th Percentile £14.48 £18.70 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.08 £40.59 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -45.61% +93.29% -6.67%
75th Percentile £56.25 £65.00 £44.69
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.45 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £37.50 £18.53
% change year-on-year -42.77% +102.43% -2.50%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Microsoft as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Microsoft.

Daily rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 18 April 2024.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Microsoft.

Hourly rate trend for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft over the 6 months to 18 April 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the UK

Microsoft
Top 17 Contract 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 18 April 2024. 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 0 4,831 £488 -2.50% 4,460
UK excluding London 0 2,907 £463 +0.54% 3,489
London +3 2,171 £500 -6.98% 1,277
Work from Home 0 1,781 £500 -2.91% 1,887
South East -1 819 £465 -2.11% 842
North of England +5 683 £425 -10.53% 901
South West +1 489 £500 -4.76% 432
North West +3 408 £450 -5.26% 496
Midlands -3 334 £425 -4.49% 637
Scotland +3 299 £420 +5.00% 248
Yorkshire +3 231 £366 -22.89% 291
West Midlands -4 231 £438 -5.41% 379
East of England -3 223 £475 +5.56% 356
East Midlands -7 96 £400 +6.67% 257
Wales +1 82 £515 +8.42% 121
North East +21 45 £195 -17.89% 128
Northern Ireland +1 28 £550 +120.00% 76

Microsoft
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 618 (10.99%) SharePoint
2 408 (7.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 114 (2.03%) Confluence
4 64 (1.14%) CMS
5 55 (0.98%) IIS
6 40 (0.71%) SharePoint Server
6 40 (0.71%) Skype for Business
7 33 (0.59%) Apache
8 24 (0.43%) Apache Spark
9 22 (0.39%) Tomcat
10 17 (0.30%) WordPress
11 16 (0.28%) Drupal
12 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
13 8 (0.14%) Anypoint
13 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2010
13 8 (0.14%) IBM Notes
13 8 (0.14%) SharePoint 2013
14 7 (0.12%) SAS
15 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 1,021 (18.16%) Microsoft Office
2 685 (12.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 312 (5.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 139 (2.47%) Microsoft Project
5 127 (2.26%) MS Visio
6 93 (1.65%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.32%) Acrobat
8 15 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.20%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.18%) CATIA
11 9 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
13 7 (0.12%) InDesign
14 6 (0.11%) Chatbot
14 6 (0.11%) Trello
15 3 (0.053%) Camtasia
16 2 (0.036%) AutoCAD
16 2 (0.036%) FileZilla
16 2 (0.036%) Siemens NX
16 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 170 (3.02%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.84%) Dynamics AX
3 27 (0.48%) Dynamics GP
4 18 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
5 17 (0.30%) Shopify
6 16 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 16 (0.28%) Teamcenter
7 12 (0.21%) Magento
7 12 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
8 11 (0.20%) Primavera
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
11 8 (0.14%) DELMIA
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
12 7 (0.12%) Endur
13 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,906 (33.90%) Azure
2 1,292 (22.98%) Microsoft 365
3 681 (12.11%) Power Platform
4 418 (7.43%) Dynamics 365
5 412 (7.33%) Entra ID
6 385 (6.85%) Azure DevOps
7 349 (6.21%) AWS
8 250 (4.45%) PowerApps
9 243 (4.32%) Power Automate
10 164 (2.92%) SaaS
11 163 (2.90%) PaaS
12 135 (2.40%) OneDrive
13 119 (2.12%) IaaS
14 107 (1.90%) Azure Data Factory
15 95 (1.69%) GCP
15 95 (1.69%) GitHub
16 93 (1.65%) Azure Sentinel
17 92 (1.64%) Azure Monitor
17 92 (1.64%) Serverless
18 73 (1.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 353 (6.28%) Firewall
2 292 (5.19%) DNS
3 191 (3.40%) DHCP
3 191 (3.40%) VPN
4 151 (2.69%) LAN
5 134 (2.38%) TCP/IP
6 119 (2.12%) WAN
7 116 (2.06%) SAN
8 92 (1.64%) Wireless
9 85 (1.51%) Network Security
10 77 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
11 54 (0.96%) Skype
12 53 (0.94%) VoIP
13 48 (0.85%) VLAN
14 45 (0.80%) BGP
15 44 (0.78%) HTTP
16 40 (0.71%) Remote Desktop
17 38 (0.68%) NAS
18 36 (0.64%) Intranet
19 35 (0.62%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 516 (9.18%) SQL Server
2 436 (7.75%) Power BI
3 152 (2.70%) Data Warehouse
4 128 (2.28%) Data Lake
5 99 (1.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 88 (1.57%) Azure SQL Database
7 83 (1.48%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 78 (1.39%) PostgreSQL
9 74 (1.32%) MySQL
10 73 (1.30%) Relational Database
11 64 (1.14%) NoSQL
12 53 (0.94%) Tableau
13 37 (0.66%) Big Data
13 37 (0.66%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 32 (0.57%) Metadata
15 30 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
16 24 (0.43%) Elasticsearch
16 24 (0.43%) MongoDB
16 24 (0.43%) RDBMS
17 22 (0.39%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 268 (4.77%) JIRA
2 150 (2.67%) Git
3 73 (1.30%) Jenkins
4 66 (1.17%) Visual Studio
5 56 (1.00%) GitLab
6 43 (0.76%) Selenium
7 31 (0.55%) SpecFlow
8 30 (0.53%) TeamCity
9 26 (0.46%) Postman
10 20 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 20 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
11 17 (0.30%) Maven
11 17 (0.30%) MSI
12 15 (0.27%) Subversion
12 15 (0.27%) WebDriver
13 14 (0.25%) Bitbucket
13 14 (0.25%) SonarQube
14 13 (0.23%) Cypress.io
14 13 (0.23%) NUnit
14 13 (0.23%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 1,980 (35.21%) Social Skills
2 1,019 (18.12%) Finance
3 684 (12.16%) Analytical Skills
4 571 (10.15%) Public Sector
5 256 (4.55%) Banking
6 219 (3.89%) Organisational Skills
7 215 (3.82%) Marketing
8 211 (3.75%) Telecoms
9 209 (3.72%) Legal
10 177 (3.15%) Presentation Skills
11 169 (3.01%) Manufacturing
12 137 (2.44%) Retail
13 71 (1.26%) Electronics
14 70 (1.24%) Documentation Skills
15 67 (1.19%) Law
15 67 (1.19%) Local Government
16 64 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
17 58 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 55 (0.98%) Financial Institution
19 47 (0.84%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 766 (13.62%) Analyst
2 589 (10.47%) Developer
3 572 (10.17%) Architect
4 437 (7.77%) Senior
5 357 (6.35%) Consultant
6 296 (5.26%) Support Engineer
7 276 (4.91%) Lead
8 223 (3.97%) Project Manager
9 219 (3.89%) IT Support
10 211 (3.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 190 (3.38%) Administrator
12 176 (3.13%) Solutions Architect
13 162 (2.88%) Service Analyst
14 154 (2.74%) Azure Engineer
15 148 (2.63%) IT Engineer
16 134 (2.38%) Service Desk Analyst
17 127 (2.26%) 2nd Line Support
18 125 (2.22%) Support Analyst
19 124 (2.21%) Desktop Support
20 115 (2.05%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 327 (5.82%) .NET
2 140 (2.49%) XML
3 112 (1.99%) .NET Framework
4 102 (1.81%) .NET Core
5 90 (1.60%) JSON
6 89 (1.58%) CSS
6 89 (1.58%) REST
7 82 (1.46%) HTML
8 76 (1.35%) Web Services
9 70 (1.24%) React
10 64 (1.14%) AngularJS
11 54 (0.96%) ARM Templates
12 51 (0.91%) SAML
13 50 (0.89%) OAuth
14 47 (0.84%) ASP.NET
14 47 (0.84%) LDAP
15 42 (0.75%) Kafka
16 39 (0.69%) OpenID
17 37 (0.66%) Elastic Stack
17 37 (0.66%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 299 (5.32%) Management Information System
2 142 (2.53%) PKI
2 142 (2.53%) Product Ownership
3 126 (2.24%) Data Centre
4 123 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
5 88 (1.57%) Data Structures
6 82 (1.46%) Driving Licence
6 82 (1.46%) NHS
7 79 (1.40%) Onboarding
8 77 (1.37%) Cyber Threat
9 71 (1.26%) Security Posture
10 64 (1.14%) Video Conferencing
11 63 (1.12%) Cloud Native
12 61 (1.08%) Public Cloud
13 59 (1.05%) Cyber Kill Chain
14 58 (1.03%) Clustering
14 58 (1.03%) Cyber Defence
15 57 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
16 50 (0.89%) Private Cloud
17 43 (0.76%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 1,517 (26.98%) Windows
2 543 (9.66%) Windows 10
3 470 (8.36%) Windows Server
4 378 (6.72%) Linux
5 140 (2.49%) Windows 7
6 136 (2.42%) Windows Server 2012
7 125 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
8 122 (2.17%) Windows Server 2016
9 88 (1.57%) Apple iOS
10 73 (1.30%) Mac OS
11 69 (1.23%) Android
12 57 (1.01%) Unix
13 40 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 36 (0.64%) Ubuntu
15 30 (0.53%) Windows Server 2008
16 28 (0.50%) Mac OS X
17 22 (0.39%) Windows NT
18 20 (0.36%) Debian
19 18 (0.32%) VMS
20 17 (0.30%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,030 (18.32%) Problem-Solving
2 940 (16.72%) Agile
3 715 (12.72%) DevOps
4 612 (10.88%) Customer Service
5 593 (10.55%) ITIL
6 550 (9.78%) Business Intelligence
7 549 (9.76%) Migration
8 495 (8.80%) Project Management
9 362 (6.44%) Analytics
10 349 (6.21%) Cybersecurity
11 320 (5.69%) CI/CD
12 316 (5.62%) Stakeholder Management
13 304 (5.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 283 (5.03%) Change Management
15 276 (4.91%) Project Delivery
16 267 (4.75%) Data Modelling
17 255 (4.53%) CRM
17 255 (4.53%) Decision-Making
17 255 (4.53%) Service Delivery
18 248 (4.41%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 674 (11.99%) SQL
2 579 (10.30%) PowerShell
3 382 (6.79%) C#
4 311 (5.53%) Python
5 158 (2.81%) JavaScript
6 149 (2.65%) Java
7 84 (1.49%) T-SQL
8 83 (1.48%) Bicep
9 56 (1.00%) Bash
10 51 (0.91%) TypeScript
11 42 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
12 36 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 34 (0.60%) PHP
14 32 (0.57%) PL/SQL
15 31 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 29 (0.52%) C
17 26 (0.46%) C++
18 25 (0.44%) VB
19 22 (0.39%) VBScript
20 17 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,123 (19.97%) Security Cleared
2 764 (13.59%) Degree
3 675 (12.00%) SC Cleared
4 476 (8.47%) DV Cleared
5 303 (5.39%) Microsoft Certification
6 166 (2.95%) Computer Science Degree
7 141 (2.51%) Azure Certification
8 106 (1.89%) CISSP
9 91 (1.62%) Cisco Certification
10 76 (1.35%) BPSS Clearance
11 71 (1.26%) CCNA
12 67 (1.19%) MCSE
13 62 (1.10%) PMP
14 59 (1.05%) PMI Certification
15 57 (1.01%) Master's Degree
16 54 (0.96%) CISM
17 53 (0.94%) ITIL Certification
18 52 (0.92%) A+ Certification
19 50 (0.89%) CCNP
20 47 (0.84%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 255 (4.53%) SLA
2 210 (3.73%) QA
3 133 (2.37%) PMO
4 111 (1.97%) NIST
5 88 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 79 (1.40%) GDPR
7 69 (1.23%) Data Quality
8 63 (1.12%) Accessibility
9 56 (1.00%) NIST 800
10 46 (0.82%) Disclosure Scotland
11 39 (0.69%) Government Security Classifications
12 30 (0.53%) Cyber Essentials
13 25 (0.44%) NCSC
14 23 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 22 (0.39%) PCI DSS
16 19 (0.34%) WCAG
17 16 (0.28%) JSP 440
18 12 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 12 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 20000
18 12 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 1,165 (20.72%) Active Directory
2 282 (5.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 140 (2.49%) Hyper-V
4 107 (1.90%) Docker
5 77 (1.37%) VMware ESXi
6 76 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
7 62 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
8 60 (1.07%) Firmware
9 59 (1.05%) vSphere
10 34 (0.60%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.34%) XenApp
12 16 (0.28%) XenDesktop
13 15 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
14 14 (0.25%) BitLocker
14 14 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
15 13 (0.23%) Terminal Services
16 12 (0.21%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 10 (0.18%) KVM
17 10 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
18 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 370 (6.58%) SCCM
2 336 (5.98%) Microsoft Intune
3 174 (3.09%) Terraform
4 161 (2.86%) Kubernetes
5 94 (1.67%) Ansible
6 93 (1.65%) WSUS
7 78 (1.39%) SCOM
8 71 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
9 56 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 56 (1.00%) vCenter Server
10 52 (0.92%) Jamf Pro
11 40 (0.71%) Grafana
12 37 (0.66%) Prometheus
13 26 (0.46%) Puppet
14 23 (0.41%) OPNET
15 22 (0.39%) Nagios
15 22 (0.39%) Sysprep
16 20 (0.36%) EMC NetWorker
16 20 (0.36%) Microsoft Clustering
17 16 (0.28%) Nessus
Vendors
1 433 (7.70%) VMware
2 302 (5.37%) Oracle
3 272 (4.84%) SAP
4 217 (3.86%) ServiceNow
5 182 (3.24%) Cisco
6 177 (3.15%) Citrix
7 159 (2.83%) Google
8 127 (2.26%) Salesforce
9 116 (2.06%) Apple
10 109 (1.94%) HP
11 91 (1.62%) Adobe
12 89 (1.58%) Atlassian
12 89 (1.58%) Databricks
13 88 (1.57%) Splunk
14 80 (1.42%) Dell
15 68 (1.21%) Red Hat
16 64 (1.14%) Veeam
17 51 (0.91%) Palo Alto
18 48 (0.85%) IBM
19 43 (0.76%) Qualys