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 9 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
9 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 7 9
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,592 7,934 10,828
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.99% 13.68% 12.41%
As % of the Vendors category 30.47% 31.89% 31.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,677 5,724 7,578
10th Percentile £189 £200 £185
25th Percentile £338 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - +13.51%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £600
90th Percentile £700 £705 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £451 £463 £425
% change year-on-year -2.59% +8.82% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 460 233 428
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £10.77
25th Percentile £13.00 £16.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £15.00 £22.16 £18.55
Median % change year-on-year -32.31% +19.46% +6.00%
75th Percentile £24.81 £53.35 £38.13
90th Percentile £55.00 £66.00 £53.02
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 18,355 24,882 34,795
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.63% 42.90% 39.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,374 16,645 23,109
10th Percentile £263 £271 £293
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 £637
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 1,115 685 867
10th Percentile £12.13 £15.21 £12.00
25th Percentile £14.48 £18.75 £15.15
Median hourly rate £22.00 £42.50 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year -48.24% +97.67% -3.91%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £47.34
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £61.91
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £37.50 £18.70
% change year-on-year -42.77% +100.53% +1.08%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 4,808 £488 -2.50% 4,706
UK excluding London -1 2,865 £451 -2.59% 3,668
London +2 2,190 £500 -6.98% 1,292
Work from Home -1 1,723 £500 -3.85% 2,075
South East 0 799 £465 -2.11% 816
North of England +4 655 £438 -7.89% 925
South West +2 504 £500 -4.76% 484
North West +2 392 £450 -5.26% 492
Midlands -3 340 £400 -5.88% 735
Scotland +4 299 £350 -15.42% 244
West Midlands -3 229 £400 -11.11% 457
Yorkshire +2 226 £380 -20.00% 327
East of England -2 213 £440 +3.41% 392
East Midlands -4 104 £400 +11.11% 278
Wales +1 79 £515 -1.90% 112
North East +11 39 £415 +74.74% 111
Northern Ireland +3 29 £550 +197.30% 64

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
1 604 (10.80%) SharePoint
2 407 (7.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 114 (2.04%) Confluence
4 68 (1.22%) CMS
5 40 (0.72%) IIS
5 40 (0.72%) SharePoint Server
6 35 (0.63%) Skype for Business
7 28 (0.50%) Apache Spark
8 21 (0.38%) Apache
9 17 (0.30%) Drupal
9 17 (0.30%) WordPress
10 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 11 (0.20%) Sitecore CMS
11 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
11 10 (0.18%) Tomcat
12 9 (0.16%) SharePoint 2013
13 8 (0.14%) Anypoint
13 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
14 7 (0.13%) IBM Notes
15 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 979 (17.51%) Microsoft Office
2 684 (12.23%) Microsoft Excel
3 330 (5.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 150 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
5 123 (2.20%) MS Visio
6 102 (1.82%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.32%) 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%) Camtasia
15 3 (0.054%) InfoPath
16 2 (0.036%) AutoCAD
16 2 (0.036%) FileZilla
16 2 (0.036%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 170 (3.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 48 (0.86%) Dynamics AX
3 27 (0.48%) Dynamics GP
4 18 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 17 (0.30%) Shopify
6 16 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
6 16 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.23%) Magento
8 12 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
8 12 (0.21%) Primavera
8 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.20%) Endur
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 Assets
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,881 (33.64%) Azure
2 1,242 (22.21%) Microsoft 365
3 691 (12.36%) Power Platform
4 429 (7.67%) Dynamics 365
5 413 (7.39%) Entra ID
6 407 (7.28%) Azure DevOps
7 350 (6.26%) AWS
8 252 (4.51%) PowerApps
9 237 (4.24%) Power Automate
10 161 (2.88%) PaaS
11 152 (2.72%) SaaS
12 131 (2.34%) OneDrive
13 121 (2.16%) IaaS
14 106 (1.90%) GCP
15 97 (1.73%) Azure Data Factory
16 95 (1.70%) Serverless
17 94 (1.68%) Azure Sentinel
18 92 (1.65%) Azure Monitor
18 92 (1.65%) GitHub
19 81 (1.45%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 335 (5.99%) Firewall
2 292 (5.22%) DNS
3 196 (3.51%) DHCP
4 179 (3.20%) VPN
5 147 (2.63%) LAN
6 121 (2.16%) TCP/IP
7 119 (2.13%) SAN
8 118 (2.11%) WAN
9 88 (1.57%) Wireless
10 83 (1.48%) Wi-Fi
11 72 (1.29%) Network Security
12 60 (1.07%) VoIP
13 44 (0.79%) Skype
13 44 (0.79%) VLAN
14 42 (0.75%) BGP
14 42 (0.75%) Remote Desktop
15 38 (0.68%) NAS
16 37 (0.66%) Intranet
17 34 (0.61%) Internet
18 33 (0.59%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 533 (9.53%) SQL Server
2 449 (8.03%) Power BI
3 156 (2.79%) Data Warehouse
4 120 (2.15%) Data Lake
5 94 (1.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 82 (1.47%) Azure SQL Database
7 79 (1.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 77 (1.38%) Relational Database
9 75 (1.34%) PostgreSQL
10 66 (1.18%) MySQL
10 66 (1.18%) NoSQL
11 52 (0.93%) Tableau
12 44 (0.79%) Big Data
13 34 (0.61%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 31 (0.55%) Metadata
15 29 (0.52%) Oracle Reports
16 25 (0.45%) Elasticsearch
16 25 (0.45%) MongoDB
17 23 (0.41%) Amazon RDS
18 22 (0.39%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 271 (4.85%) JIRA
2 146 (2.61%) Git
3 73 (1.31%) Visual Studio
4 63 (1.13%) Jenkins
5 56 (1.00%) GitLab
6 40 (0.72%) Postman
7 37 (0.66%) SpecFlow
8 35 (0.63%) Selenium
9 26 (0.46%) TeamCity
10 21 (0.38%) Maven
10 21 (0.38%) MSI
11 20 (0.36%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 18 (0.32%) Team Foundation Server
13 17 (0.30%) Cypress.io
14 16 (0.29%) SonarQube
14 16 (0.29%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.25%) Bitbucket
16 13 (0.23%) Subversion
17 12 (0.21%) Cucumber
17 12 (0.21%) Eclipse
General
1 1,974 (35.30%) Social Skills
2 1,032 (18.45%) Finance
3 680 (12.16%) Analytical Skills
4 564 (10.09%) Public Sector
5 260 (4.65%) Banking
6 210 (3.76%) Marketing
7 208 (3.72%) Organisational Skills
8 191 (3.42%) Legal
9 187 (3.34%) Telecoms
10 186 (3.33%) Presentation Skills
11 158 (2.83%) Manufacturing
12 149 (2.66%) Retail
13 71 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
14 67 (1.20%) Local Government
15 64 (1.14%) Electronics
16 61 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
16 61 (1.09%) Law
17 58 (1.04%) Back Office
17 58 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
18 53 (0.95%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 755 (13.50%) Analyst
2 608 (10.87%) Developer
3 565 (10.10%) Architect
4 452 (8.08%) Senior
5 369 (6.60%) Consultant
6 281 (5.03%) Lead
7 277 (4.95%) Support Engineer
8 225 (4.02%) Project Manager
9 204 (3.65%) IT Support
10 198 (3.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 189 (3.38%) Administrator
12 179 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
13 154 (2.75%) Service Analyst
14 148 (2.65%) Azure Engineer
15 134 (2.40%) IT Engineer
15 134 (2.40%) Senior Developer
16 128 (2.29%) Desktop Support
17 124 (2.22%) Service Desk Analyst
18 121 (2.16%) Support Analyst
19 120 (2.15%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 361 (6.46%) .NET
2 177 (3.17%) XML
3 119 (2.13%) .NET Framework
4 112 (2.00%) .NET Core
5 106 (1.90%) HTML
6 104 (1.86%) CSS
7 96 (1.72%) Web Services
8 91 (1.63%) React
9 87 (1.56%) JSON
10 86 (1.54%) REST
11 66 (1.18%) AngularJS
12 59 (1.06%) ASP.NET
13 54 (0.97%) ARM Templates
14 43 (0.77%) Kafka
15 42 (0.75%) Middleware
15 42 (0.75%) OAuth
16 41 (0.73%) SAML
17 38 (0.68%) Node.js
18 36 (0.64%) RESTful
19 35 (0.63%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 268 (4.79%) Management Information System
2 154 (2.75%) Product Ownership
3 148 (2.65%) PKI
4 129 (2.31%) Data Centre
5 124 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
6 94 (1.68%) Cyber Threat
7 93 (1.66%) Data Structures
8 86 (1.54%) Onboarding
9 75 (1.34%) Security Posture
10 73 (1.31%) Driving Licence
10 73 (1.31%) NHS
11 70 (1.25%) Cyber Kill Chain
12 69 (1.23%) Cyber Defence
13 60 (1.07%) Cloud Native
13 60 (1.07%) Public Cloud
14 58 (1.04%) Video Conferencing
15 51 (0.91%) Clustering
16 49 (0.88%) Private Cloud
17 45 (0.80%) Data Protection Act
18 43 (0.77%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 1,475 (26.38%) Windows
2 521 (9.32%) Windows 10
3 472 (8.44%) Windows Server
4 364 (6.51%) Linux
5 134 (2.40%) Windows 7
6 130 (2.32%) Windows Server 2012
7 124 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
8 123 (2.20%) Windows Server 2016
9 87 (1.56%) Apple iOS
10 76 (1.36%) Android
11 69 (1.23%) Mac OS
12 61 (1.09%) Unix
13 38 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 37 (0.66%) Ubuntu
15 27 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
16 26 (0.46%) Mac OS X
17 21 (0.38%) Windows XP
18 20 (0.36%) VMS
18 20 (0.36%) Windows NT
19 19 (0.34%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,012 (18.10%) Problem-Solving
2 985 (17.61%) Agile
3 733 (13.11%) DevOps
4 620 (11.09%) Customer Service
5 582 (10.41%) ITIL
6 552 (9.87%) Migration
7 532 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
8 525 (9.39%) Project Management
9 368 (6.58%) Analytics
10 355 (6.35%) Cybersecurity
11 351 (6.28%) CI/CD
12 330 (5.90%) Stakeholder Management
13 290 (5.19%) Project Delivery
14 287 (5.13%) Infrastructure Engineering
15 285 (5.10%) Change Management
16 269 (4.81%) Service Delivery
17 264 (4.72%) CRM
18 262 (4.69%) Data Modelling
19 259 (4.63%) Scrum
20 245 (4.38%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 649 (11.61%) SQL
2 601 (10.75%) PowerShell
3 427 (7.64%) C#
4 309 (5.53%) Python
5 182 (3.25%) JavaScript
6 146 (2.61%) Java
7 102 (1.82%) Bicep
8 76 (1.36%) T-SQL
9 66 (1.18%) TypeScript
10 55 (0.98%) Bash
11 38 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
12 35 (0.63%) C++
13 33 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 31 (0.55%) PHP
15 30 (0.54%) C
16 29 (0.52%) VB
17 28 (0.50%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.48%) PL/SQL
19 24 (0.43%) VBScript
20 16 (0.29%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,137 (20.33%) Security Cleared
2 764 (13.66%) Degree
3 680 (12.16%) SC Cleared
4 481 (8.60%) DV Cleared
5 318 (5.69%) Microsoft Certification
6 168 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
7 139 (2.49%) Azure Certification
8 98 (1.75%) CISSP
9 86 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
10 80 (1.43%) BPSS Clearance
11 72 (1.29%) Master's Degree
12 68 (1.22%) CCNA
12 68 (1.22%) MCSE
13 60 (1.07%) PMI Certification
14 59 (1.06%) APMP
14 59 (1.06%) PMP
15 52 (0.93%) A+ Certification
15 52 (0.93%) CCNP
15 52 (0.93%) ITIL Certification
16 49 (0.88%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 253 (4.52%) SLA
2 212 (3.79%) QA
3 143 (2.56%) PMO
4 118 (2.11%) NIST
5 97 (1.73%) GDPR
6 90 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 66 (1.18%) Data Quality
8 65 (1.16%) Accessibility
9 59 (1.06%) NIST 800
10 49 (0.88%) Disclosure Scotland
11 39 (0.70%) Government Security Classifications
12 33 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials
13 31 (0.55%) PCI DSS
14 22 (0.39%) NCSC
14 22 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 19 (0.34%) WCAG
16 16 (0.29%) JSP 440
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
18 14 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 13 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 1,179 (21.08%) Active Directory
2 264 (4.72%) VMware Infrastructure
3 129 (2.31%) Hyper-V
4 110 (1.97%) Docker
5 84 (1.50%) Virtual Machines
6 78 (1.39%) VMware ESXi
7 62 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
8 61 (1.09%) vSphere
9 55 (0.98%) Firmware
10 34 (0.61%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.34%) XenApp
12 18 (0.32%) BitLocker
13 17 (0.30%) Microsoft App-V
14 16 (0.29%) XenDesktop
15 14 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
16 12 (0.21%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 12 (0.21%) Terminal Services
17 10 (0.18%) KVM
18 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
19 8 (0.14%) VMware Server
Systems Management
1 368 (6.58%) SCCM
2 321 (5.74%) Microsoft Intune
3 166 (2.97%) Kubernetes
4 162 (2.90%) Terraform
5 96 (1.72%) WSUS
6 85 (1.52%) SCOM
7 79 (1.41%) Ansible
8 78 (1.39%) Single Sign-On
9 60 (1.07%) vCenter Server
10 57 (1.02%) Jamf Pro
11 55 (0.98%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 36 (0.64%) Grafana
13 34 (0.61%) Prometheus
14 24 (0.43%) OPNET
14 24 (0.43%) Puppet
15 23 (0.41%) EMC NetWorker
16 21 (0.38%) Sysprep
17 20 (0.36%) Nessus
18 18 (0.32%) NetBackup
19 16 (0.29%) Kibana
Vendors
1 415 (7.42%) VMware
2 313 (5.60%) Oracle
3 263 (4.70%) SAP
4 210 (3.76%) ServiceNow
5 194 (3.47%) Cisco
6 164 (2.93%) Citrix
7 155 (2.77%) Google
8 129 (2.31%) Salesforce
9 119 (2.13%) Apple
10 108 (1.93%) HP
11 96 (1.72%) Dell
12 90 (1.61%) Adobe
13 87 (1.56%) Databricks
14 86 (1.54%) Atlassian
15 85 (1.52%) Splunk
16 66 (1.18%) Veeam
17 55 (0.98%) Red Hat
18 52 (0.93%) Palo Alto
19 47 (0.84%) CyberArk
20 45 (0.80%) Qualys