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 13 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
13 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 7 9
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,536 7,966 10,944
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.95% 13.70% 12.41%
As % of the Vendors category 30.39% 31.86% 31.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,640 5,740 7,653
10th Percentile £189 £200 £185
25th Percentile £335 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £499
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% +0.20% +11.51%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £713 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £451 £462 £425
% change year-on-year -2.53% +8.75% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 459 236 441
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £10.77
25th Percentile £13.00 £16.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £15.00 £22.46 £18.55
Median % change year-on-year -33.20% +21.05% +6.00%
75th Percentile £24.88 £53.45 £37.50
90th Percentile £55.00 £66.00 £53.75
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 18,214 25,004 35,230
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.60% 42.99% 39.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,278 16,721 23,426
10th Percentile £263 £270 £297
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 £643 £638
90th Percentile £738 £743 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £465
% change year-on-year - +7.53% +9.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,112 686 897
10th Percentile £12.13 £15.23 £12.05
25th Percentile £14.48 £18.77 £15.25
Median hourly rate £22.00 £42.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.24% +97.67% -4.10%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £47.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £63.10
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 13 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 13 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 13 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 4,775 £488 -2.50% 4,933
UK excluding London -1 2,834 £451 -2.53% 3,824
London +3 2,174 £500 -7.75% 1,381
Work from Home -1 1,694 £500 -4.76% 2,222
South East -1 795 £465 -0.01% 853
North of England +4 647 £450 -5.26% 978
South West +1 503 £500 -4.76% 497
North West +3 391 £450 -5.26% 527
Midlands -3 335 £400 -5.88% 764
Scotland +4 291 £350 -15.97% 249
West Midlands -4 224 £410 -8.89% 474
Yorkshire +2 220 £410 -13.68% 329
East of England -2 214 £434 +2.00% 398
East Midlands -4 104 £400 +11.11% 291
Wales 0 74 £513 -2.38% 124
North East +10 38 £378 +59.16% 128
Northern Ireland +5 28 £550 +223.53% 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 (10.80%) SharePoint
2 407 (7.35%) Microsoft Exchange
3 115 (2.08%) Confluence
4 69 (1.25%) CMS
5 40 (0.72%) SharePoint Server
6 36 (0.65%) IIS
7 35 (0.63%) Skype for Business
8 30 (0.54%) Apache Spark
9 21 (0.38%) Apache
10 17 (0.31%) Drupal
11 16 (0.29%) WordPress
12 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
13 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
14 9 (0.16%) SharePoint 2013
14 9 (0.16%) Tomcat
15 8 (0.14%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
16 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
16 6 (0.11%) IBM Notes
Applications
1 961 (17.36%) Microsoft Office
2 675 (12.19%) Microsoft Excel
3 326 (5.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 150 (2.71%) Microsoft Project
5 122 (2.20%) MS Visio
6 102 (1.84%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.33%) Acrobat
8 16 (0.29%) Chatbot
9 14 (0.25%) 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%) AutoCAD
16 2 (0.036%) FileZilla
16 2 (0.036%) SPSS
17 1 (0.018%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 170 (3.07%) Dynamics CRM
2 48 (0.87%) Dynamics AX
3 27 (0.49%) Dynamics GP
4 18 (0.33%) Teamcenter
5 17 (0.31%) Shopify
6 16 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
6 16 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.23%) Magento
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
8 12 (0.22%) Primavera
9 11 (0.20%) Endur
9 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
11 8 (0.14%) DELMIA
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
11 8 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
12 7 (0.13%) Dynamics NAV
12 7 (0.13%) NetSuite
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,870 (33.78%) Azure
2 1,229 (22.20%) Microsoft 365
3 683 (12.34%) Power Platform
4 426 (7.70%) Dynamics 365
5 409 (7.39%) Azure DevOps
6 408 (7.37%) Entra ID
7 348 (6.29%) AWS
8 248 (4.48%) PowerApps
9 235 (4.24%) Power Automate
10 160 (2.89%) PaaS
11 153 (2.76%) SaaS
12 127 (2.29%) OneDrive
13 121 (2.19%) IaaS
14 105 (1.90%) GCP
15 98 (1.77%) Azure Data Factory
16 96 (1.73%) Serverless
17 94 (1.70%) Azure Sentinel
18 92 (1.66%) Azure Monitor
18 92 (1.66%) GitHub
19 80 (1.45%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 334 (6.03%) Firewall
2 290 (5.24%) DNS
3 195 (3.52%) DHCP
4 179 (3.23%) VPN
5 141 (2.55%) LAN
6 115 (2.08%) TCP/IP
7 112 (2.02%) SAN
7 112 (2.02%) WAN
8 89 (1.61%) Wireless
9 82 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
10 72 (1.30%) Network Security
11 60 (1.08%) VoIP
12 45 (0.81%) Skype
13 44 (0.79%) Remote Desktop
13 44 (0.79%) VLAN
14 42 (0.76%) BGP
15 38 (0.69%) NAS
16 37 (0.67%) Intranet
17 35 (0.63%) Internet
18 32 (0.58%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 532 (9.61%) SQL Server
2 442 (7.98%) Power BI
3 154 (2.78%) Data Warehouse
4 120 (2.17%) Data Lake
5 94 (1.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 80 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
7 79 (1.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 77 (1.39%) Relational Database
9 74 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
10 66 (1.19%) NoSQL
11 63 (1.14%) MySQL
12 51 (0.92%) Tableau
13 46 (0.83%) Big Data
14 34 (0.61%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 30 (0.54%) Metadata
16 29 (0.52%) Oracle Reports
17 25 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
17 25 (0.45%) MongoDB
18 24 (0.43%) Amazon RDS
19 22 (0.40%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 274 (4.95%) JIRA
2 146 (2.64%) Git
3 75 (1.35%) Visual Studio
4 65 (1.17%) Jenkins
5 56 (1.01%) GitLab
6 41 (0.74%) Postman
7 37 (0.67%) Selenium
7 37 (0.67%) SpecFlow
8 28 (0.51%) TeamCity
9 22 (0.40%) MSI
10 21 (0.38%) Maven
11 20 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 18 (0.33%) Team Foundation Server
12 18 (0.33%) WebDriver
13 17 (0.31%) Cypress.io
14 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.25%) Bitbucket
16 13 (0.23%) Cucumber
16 13 (0.23%) Subversion
17 12 (0.22%) Eclipse
General
1 1,971 (35.60%) Social Skills
2 1,031 (18.62%) Finance
3 679 (12.27%) Analytical Skills
4 557 (10.06%) Public Sector
5 261 (4.71%) Banking
6 209 (3.78%) Marketing
7 205 (3.70%) Organisational Skills
8 190 (3.43%) Legal
9 186 (3.36%) Telecoms
10 184 (3.32%) Presentation Skills
11 153 (2.76%) Manufacturing
12 149 (2.69%) Retail
13 71 (1.28%) Documentation Skills
14 64 (1.16%) Electronics
14 64 (1.16%) Local Government
15 61 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
16 59 (1.07%) Back Office
16 59 (1.07%) Law
17 58 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 50 (0.90%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 755 (13.64%) Analyst
2 597 (10.78%) Developer
3 563 (10.17%) Architect
4 451 (8.15%) Senior
5 366 (6.61%) Consultant
6 276 (4.99%) Lead
7 273 (4.93%) Support Engineer
8 220 (3.97%) Project Manager
9 203 (3.67%) IT Support
10 193 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 187 (3.38%) Administrator
12 180 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
13 152 (2.75%) Service Analyst
14 145 (2.62%) Azure Engineer
15 132 (2.38%) IT Engineer
16 131 (2.37%) Senior Developer
17 127 (2.29%) Desktop Support
18 123 (2.22%) Service Desk Analyst
19 119 (2.15%) 2nd Line Support
19 119 (2.15%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 360 (6.50%) .NET
2 174 (3.14%) XML
3 119 (2.15%) .NET Framework
4 112 (2.02%) .NET Core
5 108 (1.95%) HTML
6 105 (1.90%) CSS
7 96 (1.73%) Web Services
8 92 (1.66%) React
9 86 (1.55%) REST
10 85 (1.54%) JSON
11 67 (1.21%) AngularJS
12 59 (1.07%) ASP.NET
13 54 (0.98%) ARM Templates
14 44 (0.79%) Kafka
15 42 (0.76%) Middleware
16 40 (0.72%) OAuth
17 39 (0.70%) SAML
18 38 (0.69%) Node.js
19 36 (0.65%) RESTful
20 34 (0.61%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 268 (4.84%) Management Information System
2 154 (2.78%) Product Ownership
3 148 (2.67%) PKI
4 126 (2.28%) Data Centre
5 125 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
6 94 (1.70%) Cyber Threat
7 93 (1.68%) Data Structures
8 85 (1.54%) Onboarding
9 74 (1.34%) Security Posture
10 73 (1.32%) Driving Licence
11 72 (1.30%) NHS
12 70 (1.26%) Cyber Kill Chain
13 69 (1.25%) Cyber Defence
14 60 (1.08%) Cloud Native
15 58 (1.05%) Public Cloud
15 58 (1.05%) Video Conferencing
16 51 (0.92%) Clustering
17 49 (0.89%) Private Cloud
18 44 (0.79%) Data Protection Act
19 43 (0.78%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 1,461 (26.39%) Windows
2 520 (9.39%) Windows 10
3 467 (8.44%) Windows Server
4 357 (6.45%) Linux
5 132 (2.38%) Windows 7
6 131 (2.37%) Windows Server 2012
7 124 (2.24%) Windows Server 2019
8 122 (2.20%) Windows Server 2016
9 86 (1.55%) Apple iOS
10 76 (1.37%) Android
11 69 (1.25%) Mac OS
12 60 (1.08%) Unix
13 37 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 33 (0.60%) Ubuntu
15 26 (0.47%) Mac OS X
15 26 (0.47%) Windows Server 2008
16 21 (0.38%) Windows XP
17 20 (0.36%) VMS
17 20 (0.36%) Windows NT
18 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,007 (18.19%) Problem-Solving
2 979 (17.68%) Agile
3 738 (13.33%) DevOps
4 615 (11.11%) Customer Service
5 575 (10.39%) ITIL
6 549 (9.92%) Migration
7 526 (9.50%) Business Intelligence
8 516 (9.32%) Project Management
9 366 (6.61%) Analytics
10 354 (6.39%) Cybersecurity
11 353 (6.38%) CI/CD
12 328 (5.92%) Stakeholder Management
13 283 (5.11%) Project Delivery
14 282 (5.09%) Change Management
14 282 (5.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 265 (4.79%) Service Delivery
16 263 (4.75%) CRM
17 254 (4.59%) Data Modelling
17 254 (4.59%) Scrum
18 242 (4.37%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 646 (11.67%) SQL
2 598 (10.80%) PowerShell
3 427 (7.71%) C#
4 298 (5.38%) Python
5 179 (3.23%) JavaScript
6 144 (2.60%) Java
7 100 (1.81%) Bicep
8 75 (1.35%) T-SQL
9 67 (1.21%) TypeScript
10 52 (0.94%) Bash
11 38 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
12 35 (0.63%) C++
13 34 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 30 (0.54%) C
15 28 (0.51%) PHP
15 28 (0.51%) Shell Script
15 28 (0.51%) VB
16 27 (0.49%) PL/SQL
17 24 (0.43%) VBScript
18 16 (0.29%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,127 (20.36%) Security Cleared
2 754 (13.62%) Degree
3 670 (12.10%) SC Cleared
4 477 (8.62%) DV Cleared
5 318 (5.74%) Microsoft Certification
6 166 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 140 (2.53%) Azure Certification
8 98 (1.77%) CISSP
9 83 (1.50%) Cisco Certification
10 80 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
11 70 (1.26%) Master's Degree
11 70 (1.26%) MCSE
12 64 (1.16%) CCNA
13 59 (1.07%) APMP
13 59 (1.07%) PMI Certification
13 59 (1.07%) PMP
14 52 (0.94%) A+ Certification
14 52 (0.94%) ITIL Certification
15 50 (0.90%) MCSA
16 49 (0.89%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 249 (4.50%) SLA
2 214 (3.87%) QA
3 142 (2.57%) PMO
4 117 (2.11%) NIST
5 97 (1.75%) GDPR
6 91 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 65 (1.17%) Data Quality
8 64 (1.16%) Accessibility
9 59 (1.07%) NIST 800
10 49 (0.89%) Disclosure Scotland
11 39 (0.70%) Government Security Classifications
12 32 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials
13 31 (0.56%) PCI DSS
14 22 (0.40%) NCSC
14 22 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 19 (0.34%) WCAG
16 16 (0.29%) JSP 440
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 13 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 1,169 (21.12%) Active Directory
2 263 (4.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 126 (2.28%) Hyper-V
4 110 (1.99%) Docker
5 84 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
6 72 (1.30%) VMware ESXi
7 61 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
7 61 (1.10%) vSphere
8 55 (0.99%) Firmware
9 34 (0.61%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.34%) BitLocker
11 18 (0.33%) XenApp
12 16 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
13 15 (0.27%) XenDesktop
14 14 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
15 12 (0.22%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 12 (0.22%) Terminal Services
16 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
16 9 (0.16%) KVM
17 8 (0.14%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 366 (6.61%) SCCM
2 316 (5.71%) Microsoft Intune
3 167 (3.02%) Kubernetes
4 165 (2.98%) Terraform
5 99 (1.79%) WSUS
6 84 (1.52%) SCOM
7 81 (1.46%) Ansible
8 78 (1.41%) Single Sign-On
9 59 (1.07%) vCenter Server
10 56 (1.01%) Jamf Pro
11 54 (0.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 35 (0.63%) Grafana
13 34 (0.61%) Prometheus
14 25 (0.45%) Puppet
15 24 (0.43%) OPNET
16 23 (0.42%) EMC NetWorker
17 21 (0.38%) Sysprep
18 19 (0.34%) Nessus
19 18 (0.33%) NetBackup
20 16 (0.29%) WMI
Vendors
1 407 (7.35%) VMware
2 311 (5.62%) Oracle
3 261 (4.71%) SAP
4 210 (3.79%) ServiceNow
5 192 (3.47%) Cisco
6 161 (2.91%) Citrix
7 155 (2.80%) Google
8 127 (2.29%) Salesforce
9 122 (2.20%) Apple
10 109 (1.97%) HP
11 96 (1.73%) Dell
12 90 (1.63%) Adobe
13 85 (1.54%) Databricks
13 85 (1.54%) Splunk
14 82 (1.48%) Atlassian
15 66 (1.19%) Veeam
16 51 (0.92%) Palo Alto
16 51 (0.92%) Red Hat
17 47 (0.85%) CyberArk
18 46 (0.83%) IBM