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 23 May 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
23 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 6 9
Rank change year-on-year -1 +3 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,519 7,718 10,957
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.98% 13.65% 12.51%
As % of the Vendors category 30.60% 31.63% 31.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,634 5,556 7,697
10th Percentile £189 £200 £185
25th Percentile £331 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - +11.11%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £425
% change year-on-year - +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 468 225 441
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £10.77
25th Percentile £13.00 £16.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £15.00 £22.50 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +21.62% +6.83%
75th Percentile £24.81 £53.75 £36.50
90th Percentile £55.00 £66.00 £52.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.00 £19.00 £16.50
% change year-on-year -21.05% +15.15% -5.31%

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 18,037 24,401 35,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.41% 43.14% 40.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,245 16,321 23,401
10th Percentile £263 £273 £300
25th Percentile £403 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - +10.53%
75th Percentile £625 £647 £638
90th Percentile £738 £743 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £470
% change year-on-year - +6.38% +8.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,123 664 885
10th Percentile £12.13 £15.06 £12.11
25th Percentile £14.48 £18.74 £15.25
Median hourly rate £21.50 £41.98 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.78% +95.24% +2.38%
75th Percentile £56.49 £65.00 £47.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £37.50 £19.00
% change year-on-year -42.77% +97.37% +2.70%

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 23 May 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 23 May 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 23 May 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 4,766 £485 -3.10% 5,446
UK excluding London 0 2,843 £450 - 4,365
London +3 2,163 £500 -9.09% 1,689
Work from Home 0 1,697 £500 -4.76% 2,365
South East -1 799 £465 +3.33% 1,241
North of England +4 646 £450 -5.26% 1,061
South West +1 490 £500 -4.76% 502
North West +2 390 £450 -5.26% 576
Midlands -3 343 £400 -5.88% 777
Scotland +2 288 £350 -13.85% 263
West Midlands -2 229 £400 -11.11% 478
East of England 0 222 £428 +0.59% 455
Yorkshire +2 218 £425 -10.53% 356
East Midlands -4 106 £400 +6.67% 291
Wales 0 73 £513 -2.38% 117
North East +9 40 £378 +45.38% 137
Northern Ireland +4 35 £575 +223.94% 71

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
1 598 (10.84%) SharePoint
2 391 (7.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 110 (1.99%) Confluence
4 71 (1.29%) CMS
5 37 (0.67%) Apache Spark
6 36 (0.65%) IIS
7 35 (0.63%) SharePoint Server
8 33 (0.60%) Skype for Business
9 23 (0.42%) Apache
10 16 (0.29%) Drupal
10 16 (0.29%) WordPress
11 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 11 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
12 10 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
13 9 (0.16%) SharePoint 2013
13 9 (0.16%) Tomcat
14 8 (0.14%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
15 5 (0.091%) IBM Notes
Applications
1 952 (17.25%) Microsoft Office
2 685 (12.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 328 (5.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 148 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 118 (2.14%) MS Visio
6 105 (1.90%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.33%) Acrobat
8 16 (0.29%) Chatbot
9 15 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 11 (0.20%) Photoshop
11 9 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
11 9 (0.16%) CATIA
12 8 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
13 7 (0.13%) InDesign
14 6 (0.11%) Trello
15 3 (0.054%) InfoPath
16 2 (0.036%) Adobe After Effects
16 2 (0.036%) AutoCAD
16 2 (0.036%) FileZilla
16 2 (0.036%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 172 (3.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.85%) Dynamics AX
3 24 (0.43%) Dynamics GP
4 18 (0.33%) Shopify
4 18 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 15 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
5 15 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 13 (0.24%) Magento
6 13 (0.24%) Primavera
7 12 (0.22%) Endur
7 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 8 (0.14%) DELMIA
10 8 (0.14%) Dynamics NAV
10 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
11 7 (0.13%) NetSuite
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
12 6 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,863 (33.76%) Azure
2 1,219 (22.09%) Microsoft 365
3 698 (12.65%) Power Platform
4 439 (7.95%) Dynamics 365
5 413 (7.48%) Azure DevOps
6 401 (7.27%) Entra ID
7 349 (6.32%) AWS
8 261 (4.73%) PowerApps
9 246 (4.46%) Power Automate
10 161 (2.92%) PaaS
11 149 (2.70%) SaaS
12 136 (2.46%) OneDrive
13 120 (2.17%) IaaS
14 108 (1.96%) GCP
15 101 (1.83%) Serverless
16 97 (1.76%) Azure Data Factory
16 97 (1.76%) Azure Monitor
17 95 (1.72%) GitHub
18 87 (1.58%) Azure Sentinel
19 86 (1.56%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 325 (5.89%) Firewall
2 279 (5.06%) DNS
3 188 (3.41%) DHCP
4 177 (3.21%) VPN
5 136 (2.46%) LAN
6 112 (2.03%) WAN
7 111 (2.01%) SAN
8 108 (1.96%) TCP/IP
9 87 (1.58%) Wireless
10 83 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
11 64 (1.16%) Network Security
12 59 (1.07%) VoIP
13 43 (0.78%) Skype
14 41 (0.74%) VLAN
15 39 (0.71%) Remote Desktop
16 38 (0.69%) Internet
17 37 (0.67%) BGP
17 37 (0.67%) Intranet
17 37 (0.67%) NAS
18 30 (0.54%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 543 (9.84%) SQL Server
2 453 (8.21%) Power BI
3 150 (2.72%) Data Warehouse
4 125 (2.26%) Data Lake
5 93 (1.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 83 (1.50%) Azure SQL Database
7 79 (1.43%) Relational Database
7 79 (1.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 73 (1.32%) PostgreSQL
9 72 (1.30%) NoSQL
10 64 (1.16%) MySQL
11 53 (0.96%) Big Data
12 48 (0.87%) Tableau
13 33 (0.60%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 32 (0.58%) Oracle Reports
15 30 (0.54%) Metadata
16 29 (0.53%) Amazon RDS
17 27 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
18 24 (0.43%) MongoDB
18 24 (0.43%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 262 (4.75%) JIRA
2 152 (2.75%) Git
3 79 (1.43%) Visual Studio
4 70 (1.27%) Jenkins
5 57 (1.03%) GitLab
6 47 (0.85%) Postman
7 37 (0.67%) Selenium
8 36 (0.65%) SpecFlow
9 25 (0.45%) MSI
9 25 (0.45%) TeamCity
10 22 (0.40%) Maven
11 20 (0.36%) Cypress.io
11 20 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 18 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
12 18 (0.33%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.25%) Cucumber
15 13 (0.24%) Bitbucket
15 13 (0.24%) Subversion
16 12 (0.22%) Eclipse
General
1 1,961 (35.53%) Social Skills
2 1,011 (18.32%) Finance
3 684 (12.39%) Analytical Skills
4 557 (10.09%) Public Sector
5 255 (4.62%) Banking
6 206 (3.73%) Marketing
7 189 (3.42%) Organisational Skills
8 187 (3.39%) Telecoms
9 180 (3.26%) Legal
10 176 (3.19%) Presentation Skills
11 148 (2.68%) Manufacturing
12 147 (2.66%) Retail
13 69 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
14 60 (1.09%) Electronics
14 60 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
14 60 (1.09%) Local Government
15 58 (1.05%) Back Office
15 58 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 52 (0.94%) Law
17 48 (0.87%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 747 (13.54%) Analyst
2 614 (11.13%) Developer
3 559 (10.13%) Architect
4 452 (8.19%) Senior
5 375 (6.79%) Consultant
6 274 (4.96%) Lead
7 268 (4.86%) Support Engineer
8 214 (3.88%) Project Manager
9 204 (3.70%) IT Support
10 190 (3.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 188 (3.41%) Administrator
12 185 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
13 146 (2.65%) Service Analyst
14 145 (2.63%) Azure Engineer
15 137 (2.48%) IT Engineer
16 128 (2.32%) Senior Developer
17 123 (2.23%) Desktop Support
17 123 (2.23%) Support Analyst
18 120 (2.17%) 2nd Line Support
19 118 (2.14%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 362 (6.56%) .NET
2 178 (3.23%) XML
3 124 (2.25%) .NET Framework
4 112 (2.03%) HTML
5 110 (1.99%) .NET Core
6 109 (1.97%) CSS
7 101 (1.83%) Web Services
8 98 (1.78%) React
9 85 (1.54%) REST
10 84 (1.52%) JSON
11 71 (1.29%) AngularJS
12 60 (1.09%) ASP.NET
13 55 (1.00%) ARM Templates
13 55 (1.00%) Kafka
14 45 (0.82%) Middleware
15 39 (0.71%) OAuth
16 38 (0.69%) SAML
17 37 (0.67%) Node.js
17 37 (0.67%) Spring
18 35 (0.63%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 265 (4.80%) Management Information System
2 156 (2.83%) Product Ownership
3 142 (2.57%) PKI
4 125 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
5 120 (2.17%) Data Centre
6 97 (1.76%) Data Structures
7 91 (1.65%) Cyber Threat
8 82 (1.49%) Onboarding
9 73 (1.32%) Security Posture
10 68 (1.23%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 68 (1.23%) NHS
11 67 (1.21%) Cyber Defence
12 63 (1.14%) Driving Licence
13 60 (1.09%) Cloud Native
14 57 (1.03%) Video Conferencing
15 54 (0.98%) Public Cloud
16 48 (0.87%) Clustering
17 45 (0.82%) Data Protection Act
18 44 (0.80%) iPhone
19 42 (0.76%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1,451 (26.29%) Windows
2 506 (9.17%) Windows 10
3 467 (8.46%) Windows Server
4 359 (6.50%) Linux
5 131 (2.37%) Windows Server 2012
6 127 (2.30%) Windows 7
7 124 (2.25%) Windows Server 2016
8 120 (2.17%) Windows Server 2019
9 85 (1.54%) Apple iOS
10 74 (1.34%) Android
11 67 (1.21%) Mac OS
12 62 (1.12%) Unix
13 38 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 32 (0.58%) Ubuntu
15 26 (0.47%) Mac OS X
16 24 (0.43%) Windows Server 2008
17 21 (0.38%) VMS
17 21 (0.38%) Windows XP
18 18 (0.33%) Windows NT
19 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 998 (18.08%) Problem-Solving
2 980 (17.76%) Agile
3 744 (13.48%) DevOps
4 614 (11.13%) Customer Service
5 566 (10.26%) ITIL
6 547 (9.91%) Migration
7 534 (9.68%) Business Intelligence
8 519 (9.40%) Project Management
9 363 (6.58%) Analytics
10 355 (6.43%) CI/CD
11 346 (6.27%) Cybersecurity
12 330 (5.98%) Stakeholder Management
13 286 (5.18%) Change Management
14 280 (5.07%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 274 (4.96%) Project Delivery
16 266 (4.82%) CRM
17 259 (4.69%) Service Delivery
18 258 (4.67%) Data Modelling
18 258 (4.67%) Scrum
19 244 (4.42%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 662 (11.99%) SQL
2 603 (10.93%) PowerShell
3 432 (7.83%) C#
4 303 (5.49%) Python
5 186 (3.37%) JavaScript
6 152 (2.75%) Java
7 106 (1.92%) Bicep
8 77 (1.40%) T-SQL
9 70 (1.27%) TypeScript
10 50 (0.91%) Bash
11 39 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
12 37 (0.67%) VB
13 36 (0.65%) C++
14 33 (0.60%) C
14 33 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 30 (0.54%) Shell Script
16 29 (0.53%) VBScript
17 28 (0.51%) PHP
17 28 (0.51%) PL/SQL
18 16 (0.29%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,110 (20.11%) Security Cleared
2 748 (13.55%) Degree
3 666 (12.07%) SC Cleared
4 457 (8.28%) DV Cleared
5 313 (5.67%) Microsoft Certification
6 165 (2.99%) Computer Science Degree
7 138 (2.50%) Azure Certification
8 87 (1.58%) CISSP
9 80 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
10 76 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
11 74 (1.34%) MCSE
12 72 (1.30%) Master's Degree
13 66 (1.20%) CCNA
14 61 (1.11%) PMI Certification
14 61 (1.11%) PMP
15 59 (1.07%) APMP
16 53 (0.96%) A+ Certification
16 53 (0.96%) MCSA
17 49 (0.89%) CCNP
17 49 (0.89%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 237 (4.29%) SLA
2 218 (3.95%) QA
3 138 (2.50%) PMO
4 108 (1.96%) NIST
5 98 (1.78%) GDPR
6 85 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 70 (1.27%) Accessibility
8 65 (1.18%) Data Quality
9 57 (1.03%) NIST 800
10 48 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
11 34 (0.62%) Government Security Classifications
12 33 (0.60%) PCI DSS
13 30 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
14 22 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 22 (0.40%) WCAG
15 16 (0.29%) HIPAA
15 16 (0.29%) NCSC
16 13 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
17 12 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 10 (0.18%) JSP 440
System Software
1 1,159 (21.00%) Active Directory
2 269 (4.87%) VMware Infrastructure
3 129 (2.34%) Hyper-V
4 104 (1.88%) Docker
5 87 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
6 66 (1.20%) VMware ESXi
6 66 (1.20%) vSphere
7 65 (1.18%) Virtual Desktop
8 52 (0.94%) Firmware
9 34 (0.62%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.36%) XenApp
11 19 (0.34%) Microsoft App-V
12 18 (0.33%) BitLocker
13 16 (0.29%) XenDesktop
14 15 (0.27%) Virtual Servers
15 14 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 11 (0.20%) Terminal Services
17 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 8 (0.14%) VMware Server
19 6 (0.11%) KVM
Systems Management
1 371 (6.72%) SCCM
2 319 (5.78%) Microsoft Intune
3 173 (3.13%) Kubernetes
4 162 (2.94%) Terraform
5 99 (1.79%) WSUS
6 87 (1.58%) SCOM
7 78 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
8 75 (1.36%) Ansible
9 53 (0.96%) Jamf Pro
9 53 (0.96%) vCenter Server
10 51 (0.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 36 (0.65%) Grafana
12 34 (0.62%) Prometheus
13 25 (0.45%) Puppet
14 20 (0.36%) EMC NetWorker
15 19 (0.34%) Nessus
15 19 (0.34%) Sysprep
16 18 (0.33%) NetBackup
16 18 (0.33%) OPNET
17 17 (0.31%) Kibana
Vendors
1 405 (7.34%) VMware
2 308 (5.58%) Oracle
3 258 (4.67%) SAP
4 203 (3.68%) ServiceNow
5 195 (3.53%) Cisco
6 163 (2.95%) Google
7 157 (2.84%) Citrix
8 126 (2.28%) Salesforce
9 119 (2.16%) Apple
10 96 (1.74%) HP
11 95 (1.72%) Dell
12 91 (1.65%) Adobe
13 82 (1.49%) Databricks
14 79 (1.43%) Splunk
15 72 (1.30%) Atlassian
16 66 (1.20%) Veeam
17 52 (0.94%) Palo Alto
18 49 (0.89%) Red Hat
19 47 (0.85%) CyberArk
20 46 (0.83%) Qualys