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 29 April 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
29 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 7 7 9
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 +3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 5,648 8,119 10,997
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.96% 13.60% 12.39%
As % of the Vendors category 30.40% 31.72% 31.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,710 5,868 7,691
10th Percentile £189 £200 £185
25th Percentile £325 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - +14.29%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £600
90th Percentile £700 £703 £694
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £463 £425
% change year-on-year -0.54% +8.82% +6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 457 229 430
10th Percentile £11.07 £13.29 £10.77
25th Percentile £13.00 £16.50 £13.50
Median hourly rate £15.42 £23.50 £18.55
Median % change year-on-year -34.38% +26.68% +6.46%
75th Percentile £25.00 £54.00 £37.50
90th Percentile £53.30 £66.00 £51.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £15.00 £19.50 £16.50
% change year-on-year -23.08% +18.18% -4.54%

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 18,582 25,595 35,375
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 42.62% 42.88% 39.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,513 17,161 23,519
10th Percentile £263 £273 £290
25th Percentile £404 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £517 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% - +10.53%
75th Percentile £627 £650 £631
90th Percentile £738 £743 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £465
% change year-on-year - +7.64% +9.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,102 690 889
10th Percentile £12.13 £15.25 £11.50
25th Percentile £14.48 £19.06 £15.00
Median hourly rate £22.15 £43.81 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year -49.43% +108.60% -6.33%
75th Percentile £57.33 £65.00 £46.71
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.08 £60.92
UK excluding London median hourly rate £21.46 £38.50 £18.55
% change year-on-year -44.26% +107.55% +0.27%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 4,859 £488 -2.50% 4,718
UK excluding London 0 2,917 £460 -0.54% 3,666
London +4 2,196 £500 -6.98% 1,383
Work from Home 0 1,752 £500 -3.85% 2,119
South East -1 821 £465 -0.75% 857
North of England +5 680 £425 -10.53% 896
South West +2 508 £500 -4.76% 454
North West +3 409 £450 -5.26% 503
Midlands -4 333 £425 -4.23% 705
Scotland +4 304 £400 - 275
Yorkshire +2 228 £378 -20.53% 283
West Midlands -5 226 £425 -6.85% 439
East of England -3 212 £426 +0.29% 403
East Midlands -5 100 £391 +4.27% 264
Wales +1 82 £515 +3.00% 129
North East +17 44 £213 -10.53% 118
Northern Ireland +2 29 £550 +175.00% 72

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
1 612 (10.84%) SharePoint
2 417 (7.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 115 (2.04%) Confluence
4 66 (1.17%) CMS
5 52 (0.92%) IIS
6 39 (0.69%) SharePoint Server
7 38 (0.67%) Skype for Business
8 32 (0.57%) Apache
9 25 (0.44%) Apache Spark
10 22 (0.39%) Tomcat
11 17 (0.30%) WordPress
12 16 (0.28%) Drupal
13 11 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 11 (0.19%) Sitecore CMS
14 10 (0.18%) Exchange Server 2010
15 8 (0.14%) Anypoint
15 8 (0.14%) Exchange Server 2007
15 8 (0.14%) IBM Notes
15 8 (0.14%) SharePoint 2013
16 6 (0.11%) SAS
Applications
1 1,009 (17.86%) Microsoft Office
2 699 (12.38%) Microsoft Excel
3 326 (5.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 152 (2.69%) Microsoft Project
5 128 (2.27%) MS Visio
6 103 (1.82%) Spreadsheet
7 18 (0.32%) Acrobat
8 14 (0.25%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.19%) Photoshop
10 10 (0.18%) CATIA
11 9 (0.16%) Adobe Illustrator
12 8 (0.14%) Adobe Premiere
13 7 (0.12%) Chatbot
13 7 (0.12%) InDesign
14 6 (0.11%) Trello
15 3 (0.053%) Camtasia
16 2 (0.035%) AutoCAD
16 2 (0.035%) FileZilla
16 2 (0.035%) Siemens NX
16 2 (0.035%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 165 (2.92%) Dynamics CRM
2 47 (0.83%) Dynamics AX
3 27 (0.48%) Dynamics GP
4 18 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 18 (0.32%) Teamcenter
5 17 (0.30%) Shopify
6 16 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 12 (0.21%) Magento
7 12 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
7 12 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
8 11 (0.19%) Primavera
9 10 (0.18%) Endur
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle Payables
10 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
11 8 (0.14%) DELMIA
11 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
12 7 (0.12%) Dynamics NAV
13 6 (0.11%) NetSuite
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,909 (33.80%) Azure
2 1,285 (22.75%) Microsoft 365
3 687 (12.16%) Power Platform
4 417 (7.38%) Entra ID
5 416 (7.37%) Dynamics 365
6 400 (7.08%) Azure DevOps
7 341 (6.04%) AWS
8 246 (4.36%) PowerApps
9 233 (4.13%) Power Automate
10 164 (2.90%) PaaS
11 162 (2.87%) SaaS
12 138 (2.44%) OneDrive
13 122 (2.16%) IaaS
14 102 (1.81%) Azure Data Factory
15 97 (1.72%) GitHub
16 96 (1.70%) GCP
17 95 (1.68%) Azure Sentinel
17 95 (1.68%) Serverless
18 91 (1.61%) Azure Monitor
19 74 (1.31%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 349 (6.18%) Firewall
2 300 (5.31%) DNS
3 195 (3.45%) DHCP
4 188 (3.33%) VPN
5 154 (2.73%) LAN
6 132 (2.34%) TCP/IP
7 121 (2.14%) WAN
8 118 (2.09%) SAN
9 91 (1.61%) Wireless
10 80 (1.42%) Network Security
10 80 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
11 50 (0.89%) VoIP
12 48 (0.85%) Skype
13 47 (0.83%) HTTP
14 46 (0.81%) VLAN
15 42 (0.74%) BGP
16 40 (0.71%) Remote Desktop
17 39 (0.69%) NAS
18 38 (0.67%) Internet
19 34 (0.60%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 518 (9.17%) SQL Server
2 441 (7.81%) Power BI
3 155 (2.74%) Data Warehouse
4 125 (2.21%) Data Lake
5 94 (1.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 82 (1.45%) Azure SQL Database
7 78 (1.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 77 (1.36%) PostgreSQL
9 66 (1.17%) MySQL
9 66 (1.17%) Relational Database
10 65 (1.15%) NoSQL
11 52 (0.92%) Tableau
12 42 (0.74%) Big Data
13 34 (0.60%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 32 (0.57%) Metadata
15 30 (0.53%) Oracle Reports
16 25 (0.44%) Elasticsearch
17 24 (0.42%) MongoDB
18 21 (0.37%) Amazon RDS
18 21 (0.37%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 286 (5.06%) JIRA
2 151 (2.67%) Git
3 68 (1.20%) Jenkins
3 68 (1.20%) Visual Studio
4 56 (0.99%) GitLab
5 40 (0.71%) Selenium
6 38 (0.67%) SpecFlow
7 36 (0.64%) Postman
8 27 (0.48%) TeamCity
9 21 (0.37%) MSI
10 20 (0.35%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 19 (0.34%) Maven
12 18 (0.32%) Team Foundation Server
13 16 (0.28%) Cypress.io
13 16 (0.28%) WebDriver
14 15 (0.27%) SonarQube
15 14 (0.25%) Bitbucket
15 14 (0.25%) Visual Studio Team System
16 12 (0.21%) Subversion
17 10 (0.18%) Cucumber
General
1 2,001 (35.43%) Social Skills
2 1,030 (18.24%) Finance
3 691 (12.23%) Analytical Skills
4 572 (10.13%) Public Sector
5 259 (4.59%) Banking
6 215 (3.81%) Organisational Skills
7 211 (3.74%) Marketing
8 204 (3.61%) Legal
9 203 (3.59%) Telecoms
10 195 (3.45%) Presentation Skills
11 166 (2.94%) Manufacturing
12 138 (2.44%) Retail
13 72 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
14 71 (1.26%) Electronics
15 68 (1.20%) Law
16 67 (1.19%) Local Government
17 62 (1.10%) Influencing Skills
18 57 (1.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
19 56 (0.99%) Back Office
20 55 (0.97%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 772 (13.67%) Analyst
2 595 (10.53%) Developer
3 559 (9.90%) Architect
4 447 (7.91%) Senior
5 372 (6.59%) Consultant
6 285 (5.05%) Support Engineer
7 284 (5.03%) Lead
8 223 (3.95%) Project Manager
9 215 (3.81%) IT Support
10 205 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 186 (3.29%) Administrator
12 171 (3.03%) Solutions Architect
13 161 (2.85%) Service Analyst
14 152 (2.69%) Azure Engineer
15 141 (2.50%) IT Engineer
16 131 (2.32%) Service Desk Analyst
17 127 (2.25%) 2nd Line Support
18 124 (2.20%) Desktop Support
19 123 (2.18%) Senior Developer
19 123 (2.18%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 341 (6.04%) .NET
2 161 (2.85%) XML
3 117 (2.07%) .NET Framework
4 107 (1.89%) .NET Core
5 97 (1.72%) CSS
6 91 (1.61%) HTML
7 88 (1.56%) JSON
7 88 (1.56%) REST
8 79 (1.40%) Web Services
9 78 (1.38%) React
10 66 (1.17%) AngularJS
11 53 (0.94%) ARM Templates
12 51 (0.90%) ASP.NET
13 45 (0.80%) OAuth
14 44 (0.78%) SAML
15 41 (0.73%) Kafka
16 39 (0.69%) LDAP
16 39 (0.69%) Node.js
17 36 (0.64%) OpenID
18 34 (0.60%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 291 (5.15%) Management Information System
2 151 (2.67%) Product Ownership
3 147 (2.60%) PKI
4 130 (2.30%) Data Centre
5 125 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
6 88 (1.56%) Data Structures
7 86 (1.52%) Cyber Threat
8 79 (1.40%) Onboarding
9 78 (1.38%) Driving Licence
9 78 (1.38%) Security Posture
10 76 (1.35%) NHS
11 66 (1.17%) Cyber Kill Chain
12 65 (1.15%) Cyber Defence
13 64 (1.13%) Cloud Native
14 63 (1.12%) Video Conferencing
15 58 (1.03%) Public Cloud
16 57 (1.01%) Data Protection Act
17 53 (0.94%) Clustering
18 49 (0.87%) Private Cloud
19 44 (0.78%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 1,507 (26.68%) Windows
2 545 (9.65%) Windows 10
3 464 (8.22%) Windows Server
4 370 (6.55%) Linux
5 137 (2.43%) Windows 7
6 132 (2.34%) Windows Server 2012
7 126 (2.23%) Windows Server 2019
8 121 (2.14%) Windows Server 2016
9 89 (1.58%) Apple iOS
10 75 (1.33%) Android
11 73 (1.29%) Mac OS
12 59 (1.04%) Unix
13 40 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 37 (0.66%) Ubuntu
15 27 (0.48%) Mac OS X
15 27 (0.48%) Windows Server 2008
16 21 (0.37%) Windows NT
17 20 (0.35%) Debian
17 20 (0.35%) Windows XP
18 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,030 (18.24%) Problem-Solving
2 985 (17.44%) Agile
3 721 (12.77%) DevOps
4 615 (10.89%) Customer Service
5 599 (10.61%) ITIL
6 556 (9.84%) Migration
7 537 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
8 517 (9.15%) Project Management
9 363 (6.43%) Analytics
10 361 (6.39%) Cybersecurity
11 347 (6.14%) CI/CD
12 327 (5.79%) Stakeholder Management
13 296 (5.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
14 294 (5.21%) Project Delivery
15 288 (5.10%) Change Management
16 264 (4.67%) Service Delivery
17 263 (4.66%) Data Modelling
18 259 (4.59%) Scrum
19 251 (4.44%) CRM
20 248 (4.39%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 650 (11.51%) SQL
2 598 (10.59%) PowerShell
3 407 (7.21%) C#
4 312 (5.52%) Python
5 169 (2.99%) JavaScript
6 148 (2.62%) Java
7 91 (1.61%) Bicep
8 79 (1.40%) T-SQL
9 59 (1.04%) TypeScript
10 54 (0.96%) Bash
11 45 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
12 36 (0.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 33 (0.58%) PHP
14 30 (0.53%) C++
14 30 (0.53%) Shell Script
15 29 (0.51%) C
15 29 (0.51%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.48%) VB
17 23 (0.41%) VBScript
18 16 (0.28%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,140 (20.18%) Security Cleared
2 772 (13.67%) Degree
3 681 (12.06%) SC Cleared
4 490 (8.68%) DV Cleared
5 306 (5.42%) Microsoft Certification
6 166 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
7 136 (2.41%) Azure Certification
8 106 (1.88%) CISSP
9 87 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
10 78 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
11 68 (1.20%) CCNA
11 68 (1.20%) MCSE
12 61 (1.08%) PMI Certification
13 60 (1.06%) PMP
14 59 (1.04%) Master's Degree
15 55 (0.97%) ITIL Certification
16 54 (0.96%) A+ Certification
17 53 (0.94%) CISM
18 50 (0.89%) APMP
18 50 (0.89%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 260 (4.60%) SLA
2 209 (3.70%) QA
3 147 (2.60%) PMO
4 112 (1.98%) NIST
5 91 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 84 (1.49%) GDPR
7 70 (1.24%) Data Quality
8 64 (1.13%) Accessibility
9 57 (1.01%) NIST 800
10 49 (0.87%) Disclosure Scotland
11 39 (0.69%) Government Security Classifications
12 32 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials
13 25 (0.44%) NCSC
14 23 (0.41%) PCI DSS
14 23 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 19 (0.34%) WCAG
16 16 (0.28%) JSP 440
17 13 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 13 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
18 11 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 20000
System Software
1 1,181 (20.91%) Active Directory
2 273 (4.83%) VMware Infrastructure
3 132 (2.34%) Hyper-V
4 108 (1.91%) Docker
5 81 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
6 79 (1.40%) VMware ESXi
7 60 (1.06%) Virtual Desktop
8 59 (1.04%) vSphere
9 57 (1.01%) Firmware
10 30 (0.53%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.35%) XenApp
12 18 (0.32%) Microsoft App-V
13 16 (0.28%) BitLocker
13 16 (0.28%) XenDesktop
14 14 (0.25%) Virtual Servers
15 13 (0.23%) Terminal Services
16 11 (0.19%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 10 (0.18%) KVM
17 10 (0.18%) VMware Workstation
18 9 (0.16%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 383 (6.78%) SCCM
2 339 (6.00%) Microsoft Intune
3 169 (2.99%) Terraform
4 162 (2.87%) Kubernetes
5 101 (1.79%) WSUS
6 85 (1.50%) SCOM
7 82 (1.45%) Ansible
8 72 (1.27%) Single Sign-On
9 58 (1.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 58 (1.03%) vCenter Server
10 55 (0.97%) Jamf Pro
11 34 (0.60%) Grafana
12 32 (0.57%) Prometheus
13 25 (0.44%) Puppet
14 23 (0.41%) OPNET
15 22 (0.39%) EMC NetWorker
16 21 (0.37%) Sysprep
17 19 (0.34%) Nessus
18 17 (0.30%) NetBackup
19 16 (0.28%) WMI
Vendors
1 428 (7.58%) VMware
2 309 (5.47%) Oracle
3 271 (4.80%) SAP
4 213 (3.77%) ServiceNow
5 180 (3.19%) Cisco
6 176 (3.12%) Citrix
7 153 (2.71%) Google
8 134 (2.37%) Salesforce
9 117 (2.07%) Apple
10 108 (1.91%) HP
11 91 (1.61%) Adobe
12 90 (1.59%) Databricks
12 90 (1.59%) Splunk
13 88 (1.56%) Atlassian
14 87 (1.54%) Dell
15 68 (1.20%) Red Hat
16 65 (1.15%) Veeam
17 53 (0.94%) Palo Alto
18 47 (0.83%) IBM
19 46 (0.81%) Qualys