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 1 June 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
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 7 9
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,582 7,696 10,952
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.96% 13.73% 12.50%
As % of the Vendors category 30.54% 31.62% 31.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,638 5,550 7,735
10th Percentile £190 £200 £186
25th Percentile £338 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - +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 474 221 430
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £11.25
25th Percentile £13.05 £16.13 £13.50
Median hourly rate £15.34 £22.90 £18.25
Median % change year-on-year -33.03% +25.48% +7.35%
75th Percentile £25.00 £53.75 £35.00
90th Percentile £56.25 £66.00 £52.64
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.00 £19.00 £16.50
% change year-on-year -21.05% +15.15% -2.94%

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 18,277 24,339 35,329
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.45% 43.42% 40.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,373 16,241 23,612
10th Percentile £263 £265 £300
25th Percentile £405 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% - +9.38%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £738 £738 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% +8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,141 647 855
10th Percentile £12.13 £15.00 £12.25
25th Percentile £14.48 £18.97 £15.25
Median hourly rate £22.50 £42.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -47.06% +97.67% +4.88%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £47.98
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £63.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £37.50 £19.50
% change year-on-year -42.77% +92.31% +8.33%

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 1 June 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 1 June 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 1 June 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 4,837 £488 -2.50% 4,671
UK excluding London 0 2,903 £450 - 3,614
London +3 2,172 £500 -9.09% 1,232
Work from Home 0 1,710 £500 -4.76% 1,962
South East 0 817 £465 +3.33% 837
North of England +3 657 £450 -5.26% 983
South West +1 512 £500 -4.76% 437
North West +2 401 £450 -5.26% 550
Midlands -3 356 £400 -5.88% 705
Scotland +3 288 £350 -13.85% 243
West Midlands -3 236 £400 -8.57% 447
East of England -1 227 £426 +0.29% 365
Yorkshire +1 217 £425 -10.53% 333
East Midlands -3 113 £400 +6.67% 258
Wales 0 74 £513 -2.38% 104
North East +9 41 £378 +45.38% 112
Northern Ireland +3 35 £575 +223.94% 59

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
1 601 (10.77%) SharePoint
2 397 (7.11%) Microsoft Exchange
3 106 (1.90%) Confluence
4 71 (1.27%) CMS
5 39 (0.70%) Apache Spark
5 39 (0.70%) IIS
6 35 (0.63%) SharePoint Server
7 29 (0.52%) Skype for Business
8 24 (0.43%) Apache
9 16 (0.29%) Drupal
10 15 (0.27%) 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%) Anypoint
14 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
15 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.13%) SharePoint 2013
15 7 (0.13%) Tomcat
Applications
1 939 (16.82%) Microsoft Office
2 677 (12.13%) Microsoft Excel
3 324 (5.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 142 (2.54%) Microsoft Project
5 119 (2.13%) MS Visio
6 104 (1.86%) Spreadsheet
7 19 (0.34%) 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 7 (0.13%) Adobe Premiere
12 7 (0.13%) InDesign
13 6 (0.11%) Trello
14 3 (0.054%) InfoPath
15 2 (0.036%) AutoCAD
15 2 (0.036%) FileZilla
15 2 (0.036%) SPSS
16 1 (0.018%) Autodesk Inventor
Business Applications
1 172 (3.08%) Dynamics CRM
2 46 (0.82%) Dynamics AX
3 24 (0.43%) Dynamics GP
4 18 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 18 (0.32%) Shopify
4 18 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 15 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 13 (0.23%) Magento
6 13 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
6 13 (0.23%) Primavera
7 12 (0.21%) Endur
8 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 9 (0.16%) NetSuite
10 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
11 8 (0.14%) DELMIA
12 7 (0.13%) Dynamics NAV
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,883 (33.73%) Azure
2 1,227 (21.98%) Microsoft 365
3 704 (12.61%) Power Platform
4 454 (8.13%) Dynamics 365
5 417 (7.47%) Entra ID
6 415 (7.43%) Azure DevOps
7 364 (6.52%) AWS
8 270 (4.84%) PowerApps
9 250 (4.48%) Power Automate
10 160 (2.87%) PaaS
11 145 (2.60%) SaaS
12 134 (2.40%) OneDrive
13 120 (2.15%) IaaS
14 111 (1.99%) GCP
15 99 (1.77%) Serverless
16 98 (1.76%) Azure Monitor
17 93 (1.67%) GitHub
18 92 (1.65%) Azure Data Factory
19 87 (1.56%) Azure Sentinel
20 84 (1.50%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 326 (5.84%) Firewall
2 277 (4.96%) DNS
3 190 (3.40%) DHCP
4 179 (3.21%) VPN
5 133 (2.38%) LAN
6 112 (2.01%) WAN
7 111 (1.99%) SAN
8 105 (1.88%) TCP/IP
9 90 (1.61%) Wireless
10 81 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
11 64 (1.15%) Network Security
12 62 (1.11%) VoIP
13 44 (0.79%) VLAN
14 40 (0.72%) Skype
15 38 (0.68%) Internet
15 38 (0.68%) Intranet
15 38 (0.68%) Remote Desktop
16 37 (0.66%) BGP
16 37 (0.66%) NAS
17 26 (0.47%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 543 (9.73%) SQL Server
2 457 (8.19%) Power BI
3 151 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
4 127 (2.28%) Data Lake
5 92 (1.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 83 (1.49%) Relational Database
7 81 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
8 80 (1.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 73 (1.31%) PostgreSQL
10 71 (1.27%) NoSQL
11 65 (1.16%) MySQL
12 54 (0.97%) Big Data
13 45 (0.81%) Tableau
14 34 (0.61%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 31 (0.56%) Oracle Reports
16 30 (0.54%) Amazon RDS
16 30 (0.54%) Metadata
17 27 (0.48%) Elasticsearch
18 25 (0.45%) RDBMS
19 24 (0.43%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 261 (4.68%) JIRA
2 157 (2.81%) Git
3 79 (1.42%) Visual Studio
4 70 (1.25%) Jenkins
5 56 (1.00%) GitLab
6 51 (0.91%) Postman
7 37 (0.66%) Selenium
8 36 (0.64%) SpecFlow
9 30 (0.54%) MSI
10 24 (0.43%) TeamCity
11 21 (0.38%) Maven
12 20 (0.36%) Cypress.io
13 19 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 18 (0.32%) Team Foundation Server
14 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.27%) SonarQube
16 14 (0.25%) Bitbucket
17 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
17 13 (0.23%) JMeter
17 13 (0.23%) Subversion
General
1 1,965 (35.20%) Social Skills
2 1,022 (18.31%) Finance
3 695 (12.45%) Analytical Skills
4 564 (10.10%) Public Sector
5 255 (4.57%) Banking
6 204 (3.65%) Marketing
7 190 (3.40%) Telecoms
8 183 (3.28%) Organisational Skills
9 179 (3.21%) Legal
10 173 (3.10%) Presentation Skills
11 151 (2.71%) Retail
12 149 (2.67%) Manufacturing
13 68 (1.22%) Documentation Skills
14 62 (1.11%) Local Government
15 59 (1.06%) Back Office
15 59 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
16 58 (1.04%) Electronics
17 57 (1.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 48 (0.86%) Financial Institution
18 48 (0.86%) Law
Job Titles
1 739 (13.24%) Analyst
2 629 (11.27%) Developer
3 569 (10.19%) Architect
4 465 (8.33%) Senior
5 386 (6.92%) Consultant
6 282 (5.05%) Lead
7 264 (4.73%) Support Engineer
8 207 (3.71%) IT Support
9 204 (3.65%) Project Manager
10 197 (3.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 194 (3.48%) Administrator
12 180 (3.22%) Solutions Architect
13 141 (2.53%) Service Analyst
14 140 (2.51%) Azure Engineer
15 134 (2.40%) IT Engineer
16 132 (2.36%) Senior Developer
17 125 (2.24%) Support Analyst
18 123 (2.20%) Desktop Support
19 119 (2.13%) 2nd Line Support
20 113 (2.02%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (6.57%) .NET
2 172 (3.08%) XML
3 128 (2.29%) .NET Framework
4 120 (2.15%) HTML
5 114 (2.04%) CSS
6 110 (1.97%) .NET Core
7 101 (1.81%) React
7 101 (1.81%) Web Services
8 83 (1.49%) REST
9 79 (1.42%) JSON
10 70 (1.25%) AngularJS
11 62 (1.11%) ASP.NET
12 57 (1.02%) Kafka
13 55 (0.99%) ARM Templates
14 46 (0.82%) Middleware
15 41 (0.73%) RESTful
16 40 (0.72%) Elastic Stack
17 39 (0.70%) Spring
18 38 (0.68%) Node.js
18 38 (0.68%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 273 (4.89%) Management Information System
2 157 (2.81%) Product Ownership
3 152 (2.72%) PKI
4 126 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
5 121 (2.17%) Data Centre
6 103 (1.85%) Cyber Threat
7 97 (1.74%) Data Structures
8 81 (1.45%) Onboarding
9 80 (1.43%) Cyber Kill Chain
10 79 (1.42%) Cyber Defence
11 75 (1.34%) Security Posture
12 66 (1.18%) NHS
13 62 (1.11%) Driving Licence
14 58 (1.04%) Public Cloud
15 57 (1.02%) Video Conferencing
16 56 (1.00%) Cloud Native
17 45 (0.81%) Data Protection Act
18 44 (0.79%) Clustering
18 44 (0.79%) Virtual Team
19 43 (0.77%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 1,460 (26.16%) Windows
2 496 (8.89%) Windows 10
3 472 (8.46%) Windows Server
4 365 (6.54%) Linux
5 133 (2.38%) Windows Server 2012
6 130 (2.33%) Windows Server 2016
7 124 (2.22%) Windows 7
7 124 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
8 88 (1.58%) Apple iOS
9 69 (1.24%) Android
10 64 (1.15%) Unix
11 63 (1.13%) Mac OS
12 40 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 30 (0.54%) Ubuntu
14 25 (0.45%) Mac OS X
15 21 (0.38%) VMS
15 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2008
15 21 (0.38%) Windows XP
16 17 (0.30%) Windows NT
17 13 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,000 (17.91%) Problem-Solving
2 981 (17.57%) Agile
3 744 (13.33%) DevOps
4 610 (10.93%) Customer Service
5 568 (10.18%) ITIL
6 549 (9.84%) Migration
7 534 (9.57%) Business Intelligence
8 509 (9.12%) Project Management
9 370 (6.63%) Analytics
10 361 (6.47%) Cybersecurity
11 352 (6.31%) CI/CD
12 328 (5.88%) Stakeholder Management
13 287 (5.14%) Change Management
14 284 (5.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 274 (4.91%) CRM
16 268 (4.80%) Project Delivery
17 258 (4.62%) Scrum
17 258 (4.62%) Service Delivery
18 251 (4.50%) Data Modelling
19 248 (4.44%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 661 (11.84%) SQL
2 611 (10.95%) PowerShell
3 430 (7.70%) C#
4 302 (5.41%) Python
5 187 (3.35%) JavaScript
6 158 (2.83%) Java
7 109 (1.95%) Bicep
8 78 (1.40%) T-SQL
9 73 (1.31%) TypeScript
10 49 (0.88%) Bash
11 40 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
12 39 (0.70%) VB
13 38 (0.68%) C++
14 35 (0.63%) C
15 32 (0.57%) VBScript
16 31 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 29 (0.52%) PHP
17 29 (0.52%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.48%) PL/SQL
19 16 (0.29%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,150 (20.60%) Security Cleared
2 744 (13.33%) Degree
3 691 (12.38%) SC Cleared
4 464 (8.31%) DV Cleared
5 321 (5.75%) Microsoft Certification
6 163 (2.92%) Computer Science Degree
7 140 (2.51%) Azure Certification
8 87 (1.56%) CISSP
9 81 (1.45%) Cisco Certification
10 79 (1.42%) BPSS Clearance
11 74 (1.33%) MCSE
12 72 (1.29%) Master's Degree
13 66 (1.18%) CCNA
14 61 (1.09%) PMI Certification
14 61 (1.09%) PMP
15 54 (0.97%) APMP
15 54 (0.97%) MCSA
16 52 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
17 50 (0.90%) A+ Certification
17 50 (0.90%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 233 (4.17%) SLA
2 214 (3.83%) QA
3 132 (2.36%) PMO
4 120 (2.15%) NIST
5 95 (1.70%) GDPR
6 85 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 73 (1.31%) Accessibility
8 70 (1.25%) NIST 800
9 65 (1.16%) Data Quality
10 47 (0.84%) Disclosure Scotland
11 35 (0.63%) PCI DSS
12 33 (0.59%) Government Security Classifications
13 30 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials
14 21 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.38%) WCAG
15 17 (0.30%) HIPAA
16 16 (0.29%) NCSC
17 13 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
18 12 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 10 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 1,180 (21.14%) Active Directory
2 280 (5.02%) VMware Infrastructure
3 131 (2.35%) Hyper-V
4 104 (1.86%) Docker
5 92 (1.65%) Virtual Machines
6 72 (1.29%) vSphere
7 70 (1.25%) Virtual Desktop
8 64 (1.15%) VMware ESXi
9 50 (0.90%) Firmware
10 37 (0.66%) VMware NSX
11 24 (0.43%) Microsoft App-V
12 20 (0.36%) XenApp
13 19 (0.34%) BitLocker
14 17 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
14 17 (0.30%) XenDesktop
15 14 (0.25%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 10 (0.18%) Terminal Services
17 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
18 8 (0.14%) VMware Server
19 6 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 380 (6.81%) SCCM
2 318 (5.70%) Microsoft Intune
3 182 (3.26%) Kubernetes
4 170 (3.05%) Terraform
5 106 (1.90%) WSUS
6 93 (1.67%) SCOM
7 80 (1.43%) Ansible
8 73 (1.31%) Single Sign-On
9 51 (0.91%) vCenter Server
10 50 (0.90%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 48 (0.86%) Jamf Pro
12 36 (0.64%) Grafana
13 33 (0.59%) Prometheus
14 26 (0.47%) Puppet
15 25 (0.45%) Kibana
16 24 (0.43%) Nessus
17 19 (0.34%) EMC NetWorker
17 19 (0.34%) logstash
17 19 (0.34%) NetBackup
18 18 (0.32%) Sysprep
Vendors
1 415 (7.43%) VMware
2 309 (5.54%) Oracle
3 250 (4.48%) SAP
4 207 (3.71%) ServiceNow
5 205 (3.67%) Cisco
6 167 (2.99%) Google
7 155 (2.78%) Citrix
8 132 (2.36%) Salesforce
9 118 (2.11%) Apple
10 96 (1.72%) Dell
11 95 (1.70%) HP
12 88 (1.58%) Adobe
13 82 (1.47%) Databricks
14 77 (1.38%) Atlassian
14 77 (1.38%) Splunk
15 65 (1.16%) Veeam
16 53 (0.95%) CyberArk
17 52 (0.93%) Palo Alto
18 51 (0.91%) Red Hat
19 50 (0.90%) Qualys