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 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
18 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 7 9
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,533 7,774 10,965
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.99% 13.65% 12.53%
As % of the Vendors category 30.57% 31.73% 31.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,636 5,604 7,689
10th Percentile £189 £200 £185
25th Percentile £334 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £499
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% +0.20% +11.51%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £456 £450 £425
% change year-on-year +1.28% +5.88% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 463 227 440
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £10.77
25th Percentile £13.00 £16.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £15.00 £22.41 £18.55
Median % change year-on-year -33.07% +20.81% +6.46%
75th Percentile £24.59 £53.55 £38.13
90th Percentile £55.00 £66.00 £52.81
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 18,101 24,501 35,163
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.51% 43.03% 40.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,253 16,404 23,407
10th Percentile £263 £270 £300
25th Percentile £405 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.90% - +10.53%
75th Percentile £630 £645 £638
90th Percentile £738 £742 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £465
% change year-on-year - +7.53% +8.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,116 662 881
10th Percentile £12.07 £15.02 £12.04
25th Percentile £14.48 £18.64 £15.25
Median hourly rate £21.50 £40.55 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -46.97% +88.58% -
75th Percentile £57.33 £65.00 £47.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £64.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £33.00 £18.75
% change year-on-year -34.97% +76.00% +1.35%

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 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 18 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 18 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 4,777 £488 -2.50% 5,007
UK excluding London 0 2,848 £456 +1.28% 3,957
London +3 2,168 £500 -8.26% 1,427
Work from Home 0 1,691 £500 -4.76% 2,341
South East +1 800 £465 +2.19% 959
North of England +4 644 £450 -5.26% 1,016
South West +1 500 £500 -4.76% 488
North West +3 391 £450 -5.26% 524
Midlands -3 340 £400 -5.88% 790
Scotland +4 295 £350 -15.97% 236
West Midlands -3 228 £420 -6.67% 502
East of England -2 218 £428 +0.59% 395
Yorkshire +1 216 £425 -10.53% 361
East Midlands -4 105 £400 +6.67% 289
Wales 0 73 £513 -2.38% 124
North East +7 39 £431 +65.77% 140
Northern Ireland +5 31 £575 +210.81% 67

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
1 593 (10.72%) SharePoint
2 393 (7.10%) Microsoft Exchange
3 116 (2.10%) Confluence
4 71 (1.28%) CMS
5 40 (0.72%) SharePoint Server
6 37 (0.67%) IIS
7 36 (0.65%) Apache Spark
8 34 (0.61%) 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 6 (0.11%) IBM Notes
Applications
1 951 (17.19%) Microsoft Office
2 682 (12.33%) Microsoft Excel
3 329 (5.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 152 (2.75%) Microsoft Project
5 121 (2.19%) MS Visio
6 102 (1.84%) 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 (3.11%) Dynamics CRM
2 48 (0.87%) Dynamics AX
3 27 (0.49%) Dynamics GP
4 18 (0.33%) Shopify
4 18 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 15 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 14 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
7 13 (0.23%) Magento
7 13 (0.23%) Primavera
8 12 (0.22%) Endur
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
9 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
11 9 (0.16%) Dynamics NAV
12 8 (0.14%) DELMIA
12 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
13 7 (0.13%) NetSuite
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,870 (33.80%) Azure
2 1,209 (21.85%) Microsoft 365
3 694 (12.54%) Power Platform
4 437 (7.90%) Dynamics 365
5 415 (7.50%) Azure DevOps
6 409 (7.39%) Entra ID
7 352 (6.36%) AWS
8 255 (4.61%) PowerApps
9 238 (4.30%) Power Automate
10 161 (2.91%) PaaS
11 151 (2.73%) SaaS
12 128 (2.31%) OneDrive
13 118 (2.13%) IaaS
14 110 (1.99%) GCP
15 101 (1.83%) Serverless
16 98 (1.77%) Azure Data Factory
17 96 (1.74%) GitHub
18 95 (1.72%) Azure Monitor
19 88 (1.59%) Azure Sentinel
20 83 (1.50%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 328 (5.93%) Firewall
2 281 (5.08%) DNS
3 186 (3.36%) DHCP
4 178 (3.22%) VPN
5 138 (2.49%) LAN
6 114 (2.06%) WAN
7 110 (1.99%) SAN
8 109 (1.97%) TCP/IP
9 87 (1.57%) Wireless
10 81 (1.46%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.17%) Network Security
12 59 (1.07%) VoIP
13 45 (0.81%) Skype
14 42 (0.76%) BGP
14 42 (0.76%) VLAN
15 40 (0.72%) Remote Desktop
16 38 (0.69%) Internet
16 38 (0.69%) Intranet
17 37 (0.67%) NAS
18 31 (0.56%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 538 (9.72%) SQL Server
2 452 (8.17%) Power BI
3 153 (2.77%) Data Warehouse
4 126 (2.28%) Data Lake
5 96 (1.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 80 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
6 80 (1.45%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 77 (1.39%) Relational Database
8 74 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
9 67 (1.21%) NoSQL
10 62 (1.12%) MySQL
11 52 (0.94%) Big Data
12 49 (0.89%) Tableau
13 34 (0.61%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 32 (0.58%) Oracle Reports
15 30 (0.54%) Metadata
16 29 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
17 27 (0.49%) Elasticsearch
18 25 (0.45%) MongoDB
19 22 (0.40%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 272 (4.92%) JIRA
2 155 (2.80%) Git
3 78 (1.41%) Visual Studio
4 70 (1.27%) Jenkins
5 58 (1.05%) GitLab
6 45 (0.81%) Postman
7 37 (0.67%) Selenium
7 37 (0.67%) SpecFlow
8 25 (0.45%) TeamCity
9 22 (0.40%) Maven
9 22 (0.40%) MSI
10 20 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 19 (0.34%) Cypress.io
12 18 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
12 18 (0.33%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.25%) Bitbucket
15 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
15 13 (0.23%) Subversion
16 12 (0.22%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 1,966 (35.53%) Social Skills
2 1,026 (18.54%) Finance
3 683 (12.34%) Analytical Skills
4 558 (10.08%) Public Sector
5 257 (4.64%) Banking
6 206 (3.72%) Marketing
7 198 (3.58%) Organisational Skills
8 187 (3.38%) Telecoms
9 184 (3.33%) Legal
10 180 (3.25%) Presentation Skills
11 150 (2.71%) Manufacturing
12 149 (2.69%) Retail
13 70 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
14 61 (1.10%) Back Office
14 61 (1.10%) Electronics
14 61 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
15 58 (1.05%) Local Government
16 57 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
17 55 (0.99%) Law
18 49 (0.89%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 761 (13.75%) Analyst
2 610 (11.02%) Developer
3 560 (10.12%) Architect
4 450 (8.13%) Senior
5 371 (6.71%) Consultant
6 274 (4.95%) Lead
7 270 (4.88%) Support Engineer
8 216 (3.90%) Project Manager
9 202 (3.65%) IT Support
10 193 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 189 (3.42%) Administrator
12 187 (3.38%) Solutions Architect
13 153 (2.77%) Service Analyst
14 148 (2.67%) Azure Engineer
15 133 (2.40%) IT Engineer
16 131 (2.37%) Senior Developer
17 125 (2.26%) Desktop Support
18 124 (2.24%) Service Desk Analyst
19 123 (2.22%) Support Analyst
20 117 (2.11%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 369 (6.67%) .NET
2 176 (3.18%) XML
3 124 (2.24%) .NET Framework
4 112 (2.02%) .NET Core
4 112 (2.02%) HTML
5 108 (1.95%) CSS
6 98 (1.77%) Web Services
7 96 (1.74%) React
8 84 (1.52%) JSON
8 84 (1.52%) REST
9 70 (1.27%) AngularJS
10 60 (1.08%) ASP.NET
11 56 (1.01%) ARM Templates
12 50 (0.90%) Kafka
13 45 (0.81%) Middleware
14 39 (0.70%) OAuth
14 39 (0.70%) SAML
15 37 (0.67%) Node.js
16 36 (0.65%) RESTful
17 34 (0.61%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 269 (4.86%) Management Information System
2 152 (2.75%) Product Ownership
3 148 (2.67%) PKI
4 124 (2.24%) Self-Motivation
5 121 (2.19%) Data Centre
6 96 (1.74%) Cyber Threat
7 94 (1.70%) Data Structures
8 82 (1.48%) Onboarding
9 76 (1.37%) Security Posture
10 70 (1.27%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 70 (1.27%) NHS
11 69 (1.25%) Cyber Defence
12 68 (1.23%) Driving Licence
13 60 (1.08%) Cloud Native
14 58 (1.05%) Video Conferencing
15 55 (0.99%) Public Cloud
16 48 (0.87%) Clustering
16 48 (0.87%) Private Cloud
17 44 (0.80%) iPhone
18 43 (0.78%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 1,452 (26.24%) Windows
2 510 (9.22%) Windows 10
3 467 (8.44%) Windows Server
4 360 (6.51%) Linux
5 131 (2.37%) Windows Server 2012
6 128 (2.31%) Windows 7
7 121 (2.19%) Windows Server 2016
8 119 (2.15%) Windows Server 2019
9 87 (1.57%) Apple iOS
10 77 (1.39%) Android
11 70 (1.27%) Mac OS
12 59 (1.07%) Unix
13 37 (0.67%) 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%) Windows XP
18 20 (0.36%) VMS
19 19 (0.34%) Windows NT
20 14 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 996 (18.00%) Problem-Solving
2 977 (17.66%) Agile
3 745 (13.46%) DevOps
4 616 (11.13%) Customer Service
5 575 (10.39%) ITIL
6 545 (9.85%) Migration
7 530 (9.58%) Business Intelligence
8 515 (9.31%) Project Management
9 364 (6.58%) Analytics
10 358 (6.47%) CI/CD
11 354 (6.40%) Cybersecurity
12 327 (5.91%) Stakeholder Management
13 282 (5.10%) Infrastructure Engineering
13 282 (5.10%) Project Delivery
14 278 (5.02%) Change Management
15 267 (4.83%) CRM
16 266 (4.81%) Service Delivery
17 257 (4.64%) Data Modelling
18 255 (4.61%) Scrum
19 245 (4.43%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 665 (12.02%) SQL
2 592 (10.70%) PowerShell
3 437 (7.90%) C#
4 301 (5.44%) Python
5 183 (3.31%) JavaScript
6 152 (2.75%) Java
7 104 (1.88%) Bicep
8 77 (1.39%) T-SQL
9 69 (1.25%) TypeScript
10 51 (0.92%) Bash
11 38 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
12 35 (0.63%) C++
13 33 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 32 (0.58%) C
15 31 (0.56%) VB
16 28 (0.51%) PL/SQL
16 28 (0.51%) Shell Script
17 27 (0.49%) PHP
17 27 (0.49%) VBScript
18 16 (0.29%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,127 (20.37%) Security Cleared
2 742 (13.41%) Degree
3 672 (12.15%) SC Cleared
4 476 (8.60%) DV Cleared
5 322 (5.82%) Microsoft Certification
6 164 (2.96%) Computer Science Degree
7 135 (2.44%) Azure Certification
8 88 (1.59%) CISSP
9 79 (1.43%) Cisco Certification
10 77 (1.39%) BPSS Clearance
11 74 (1.34%) MCSE
12 69 (1.25%) Master's Degree
13 65 (1.17%) CCNA
14 60 (1.08%) PMI Certification
14 60 (1.08%) PMP
15 59 (1.07%) APMP
16 53 (0.96%) A+ Certification
16 53 (0.96%) ITIL Certification
17 52 (0.94%) MCSA
18 49 (0.89%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 245 (4.43%) SLA
2 216 (3.90%) QA
3 143 (2.58%) PMO
4 112 (2.02%) NIST
5 97 (1.75%) GDPR
6 87 (1.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 69 (1.25%) Accessibility
8 64 (1.16%) Data Quality
9 59 (1.07%) NIST 800
10 49 (0.89%) Disclosure Scotland
11 39 (0.70%) Government Security Classifications
12 32 (0.58%) PCI DSS
13 31 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials
14 22 (0.40%) WCAG
15 21 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 19 (0.34%) NCSC
17 16 (0.29%) JSP 440
18 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
19 13 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 13 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 1,162 (21.00%) Active Directory
2 261 (4.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 125 (2.26%) Hyper-V
4 108 (1.95%) Docker
5 84 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
6 68 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
7 63 (1.14%) vSphere
8 60 (1.08%) Virtual Desktop
9 54 (0.98%) Firmware
10 35 (0.63%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.34%) BitLocker
12 18 (0.33%) XenApp
13 14 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 14 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
13 14 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
13 14 (0.25%) XenDesktop
14 11 (0.20%) Terminal Services
15 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 8 (0.14%) VMware Server
17 6 (0.11%) KVM
Systems Management
1 372 (6.72%) SCCM
2 309 (5.58%) Microsoft Intune
3 167 (3.02%) Kubernetes
4 163 (2.95%) Terraform
5 100 (1.81%) WSUS
6 91 (1.64%) SCOM
7 82 (1.48%) Single Sign-On
8 76 (1.37%) Ansible
9 56 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
10 54 (0.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 54 (0.98%) vCenter Server
11 34 (0.61%) Grafana
11 34 (0.61%) Prometheus
12 25 (0.45%) Puppet
13 24 (0.43%) OPNET
14 21 (0.38%) EMC NetWorker
15 20 (0.36%) Nessus
15 20 (0.36%) Sysprep
16 18 (0.33%) NetBackup
17 17 (0.31%) Kibana
Vendors
1 403 (7.28%) VMware
2 315 (5.69%) Oracle
3 260 (4.70%) SAP
4 209 (3.78%) ServiceNow
5 193 (3.49%) Cisco
6 162 (2.93%) Google
7 156 (2.82%) Citrix
8 129 (2.33%) Salesforce
9 121 (2.19%) Apple
10 102 (1.84%) HP
11 95 (1.72%) Dell
12 92 (1.66%) Adobe
13 84 (1.52%) Databricks
14 83 (1.50%) Splunk
15 82 (1.48%) Atlassian
16 67 (1.21%) Veeam
17 52 (0.94%) Palo Alto
18 48 (0.87%) Red Hat
19 47 (0.85%) CyberArk
20 45 (0.81%) Qualys