Microsoft Contract Job Trends in Birmingham

Microsoft
West Midlands > Birmingham

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Birmingham requiring knowledge or experience of Microsoft products and/or services. It includes a benchmarking guide to contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Microsoft over the 6 months leading up to 15 September 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two 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
15 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 4 4 4
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 89 99 137
As % of all contract jobs advertised in Birmingham 15.08% 13.94% 16.00%
As % of the Vendors category 30.17% 27.20% 31.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 73 73 102
10th Percentile £122 £190 £200
25th Percentile £263 £206 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £396 £450 £425
Median % change year-on-year -12.00% +5.88% -5.56%
75th Percentile £511 £525 £538
90th Percentile £610 £573 £686
West Midlands median daily rate £425 £425 £400
% change year-on-year - +6.25% -8.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 6
10th Percentile £21.89 £14.26 £14.75
25th Percentile £27.72 £18.50 £17.31
Median hourly rate £38.38 £26.13 £19.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.89% +37.50% +18.75%
75th Percentile £49.97 £40.84 £22.75
90th Percentile £56.36 £49.34 £23.88
West Midlands median hourly rate £31.94 £30.56 £21.25
% change year-on-year +4.51% +43.82% +41.67%

All Vendors
Birmingham

Microsoft falls under the Vendor Products and Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring knowledge or experience of all vendor products and services in Birmingham.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 295 364 442
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham 50.00% 51.27% 51.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 198 262 273
10th Percentile £157 £206 £261
25th Percentile £313 £380 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -6.00% +5.26% +5.56%
75th Percentile £573 £628 £600
90th Percentile £633 £750 £688
West Midlands median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 7 8
10th Percentile £20.46 £13.71 £15.65
25th Percentile £24.15 £19.61 £17.94
Median hourly rate £30.29 £26.13 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.94% +24.40% +10.53%
75th Percentile £45.46 £50.25 £31.44
90th Percentile £54.56 £57.00 £58.25
West Midlands median hourly rate £30.00 £31.50 £22.75
% change year-on-year -4.76% +38.46% +37.88%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in Birmingham

Job postings citing Microsoft as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in Birmingham.

Job vacancy trend for Microsoft in Birmingham

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in Birmingham

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in Birmingham over the 6 months to 15 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in Birmingham

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Birmingham citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in Birmingham

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in Birmingham over the 6 months to 15 September 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in Birmingham

Microsoft
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Birmingham 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 13 (14.61%) SharePoint
2 6 (6.74%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (3.37%) IIS
4 2 (2.25%) Apache
4 2 (2.25%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 1 (1.12%) Apache Pig
5 1 (1.12%) Confluence
Applications
1 13 (14.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (13.48%) Microsoft Office
3 6 (6.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (4.49%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (3.37%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (2.25%) Trello
7 1 (1.12%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 1 (1.12%) Moqups
Business Applications
1 1 (1.12%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 26 (29.21%) Azure
2 24 (26.97%) Microsoft 365
3 11 (12.36%) Entra ID
3 11 (12.36%) Power Platform
4 9 (10.11%) Dynamics 365
5 6 (6.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 6 (6.74%) OneDrive
6 5 (5.62%) AWS
6 5 (5.62%) Azure Data Factory
6 5 (5.62%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (5.62%) GCP
6 5 (5.62%) SaaS
7 3 (3.37%) Power Automate
7 3 (3.37%) PowerApps
8 2 (2.25%) Azure Sentinel
8 2 (2.25%) Azure Storage
8 2 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
8 2 (2.25%) Microsoft Purview
8 2 (2.25%) Serverless
8 2 (2.25%) ShareGate
Communications & Networking
1 8 (8.99%) DHCP
1 8 (8.99%) DNS
1 8 (8.99%) TCP/IP
2 5 (5.62%) Firewall
2 5 (5.62%) VPN
3 3 (3.37%) VoIP
3 3 (3.37%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (2.25%) Network Security
4 2 (2.25%) Remote Desktop
4 2 (2.25%) Wireshark
5 1 (1.12%) Internet
5 1 (1.12%) SD-WAN
5 1 (1.12%) SSH
5 1 (1.12%) WAN
5 1 (1.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (8.99%) Power BI
2 6 (6.74%) Data Mining
3 5 (5.62%) NoSQL
4 4 (4.49%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (3.37%) Hadoop
5 3 (3.37%) Metadata
5 3 (3.37%) SQL Server
6 2 (2.25%) Apache Hive
6 2 (2.25%) Big Data
6 2 (2.25%) Data Lake
6 2 (2.25%) Elasticsearch
6 2 (2.25%) Tableau
7 1 (1.12%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.12%) Delta Lake
7 1 (1.12%) HBase
7 1 (1.12%) OLTP
7 1 (1.12%) Parquet
7 1 (1.12%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 5 (5.62%) JIRA
2 2 (2.25%) Jenkins
2 2 (2.25%) Liquibase
3 1 (1.12%) Git
3 1 (1.12%) GitLab
3 1 (1.12%) Jaeger
3 1 (1.12%) LoadRunner
3 1 (1.12%) MLflow
3 1 (1.12%) SonarQube
3 1 (1.12%) Sonatype Nexus
3 1 (1.12%) Visual Studio
3 1 (1.12%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 41 (46.07%) Social Skills
2 15 (16.85%) Analytical Skills
3 9 (10.11%) Finance
3 9 (10.11%) Organisational Skills
4 8 (8.99%) Public Sector
5 6 (6.74%) Legal
6 4 (4.49%) Presentation Skills
7 3 (3.37%) Banking
8 2 (2.25%) Advertising
8 2 (2.25%) Manufacturing
9 1 (1.12%) Automotive
9 1 (1.12%) Billing
9 1 (1.12%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.12%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 21 (23.60%) Analyst
2 10 (11.24%) Architect
3 8 (8.99%) Support Analyst
3 8 (8.99%) Support Officer
4 7 (7.87%) 1st Line Support
4 7 (7.87%) IT Analyst
4 7 (7.87%) Project Manager
5 6 (6.74%) 2nd Line Support
5 6 (6.74%) Developer
5 6 (6.74%) IT Support
6 5 (5.62%) Business Architect
6 5 (5.62%) IT Support Analyst
6 5 (5.62%) Service Analyst
6 5 (5.62%) Service Desk Analyst
7 4 (4.49%) 2nd Line Support Analyst
7 4 (4.49%) Senior
7 4 (4.49%) Technical Manager
7 4 (4.49%) Technical Project Manager
8 3 (3.37%) 1st/2nd Line Support Analyst
8 3 (3.37%) Dynamics 365 Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (5.62%) .NET
2 4 (4.49%) Middleware
3 3 (3.37%) Elastic Stack
3 3 (3.37%) HTML
4 2 (2.25%) OpenTelemetry
4 2 (2.25%) REST
4 2 (2.25%) RESTful
4 2 (2.25%) Web Services
5 1 (1.12%) Blazor
5 1 (1.12%) CSS
5 1 (1.12%) CSS3
5 1 (1.12%) EDI
5 1 (1.12%) Flask
5 1 (1.12%) HTML5
5 1 (1.12%) jQuery
5 1 (1.12%) Kafka
5 1 (1.12%) Microsoft Graph
5 1 (1.12%) NumPy
5 1 (1.12%) Pandas
5 1 (1.12%) Razor View Engine
Miscellaneous
1 7 (7.87%) Self-Motivation
2 4 (4.49%) Security Posture
3 3 (3.37%) Legacy Systems
3 3 (3.37%) Team-Oriented Environment
3 3 (3.37%) Video Conferencing
4 2 (2.25%) Algorithms
4 2 (2.25%) Cloud Native
4 2 (2.25%) Data Centre
4 2 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (2.25%) Product Ownership
4 2 (2.25%) Public Cloud
5 1 (1.12%) CCTV
5 1 (1.12%) Cyberattack
5 1 (1.12%) Driving Licence
5 1 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 1 (1.12%) Mainframe
5 1 (1.12%) Mobile App
5 1 (1.12%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 20 (22.47%) Windows
2 7 (7.87%) Android
2 7 (7.87%) Linux
2 7 (7.87%) Windows 10
3 2 (2.25%) Mac OS X
4 1 (1.12%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (32.58%) Problem-Solving
2 25 (28.09%) ITIL
3 17 (19.10%) Customer Service
4 16 (17.98%) Agile
5 12 (13.48%) DevOps
6 11 (12.36%) Migration
7 10 (11.24%) Analytics
8 9 (10.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 8 (8.99%) Business Intelligence
9 8 (8.99%) Change Management
9 8 (8.99%) Cybersecurity
9 8 (8.99%) Service Management
10 7 (7.87%) Project Management
10 7 (7.87%) Stakeholder Management
11 6 (6.74%) Artificial Intelligence
11 6 (6.74%) Decision-Making
11 6 (6.74%) ITSM
11 6 (6.74%) SIEM
12 5 (5.62%) Project Delivery
12 5 (5.62%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 10 (11.24%) Python
2 9 (10.11%) SQL
3 8 (8.99%) PowerShell
4 4 (4.49%) JavaScript
5 3 (3.37%) C#
5 3 (3.37%) Go
5 3 (3.37%) Shell Script
6 2 (2.25%) Java
6 2 (2.25%) Perl
6 2 (2.25%) Scala
7 1 (1.12%) Bash
7 1 (1.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (1.12%) Groovy
7 1 (1.12%) Kusto Query Language
7 1 (1.12%) Search Processing Language
7 1 (1.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 8 (8.99%) Security Cleared
2 7 (7.87%) Microsoft Certification
3 6 (6.74%) Degree
4 4 (4.49%) MCP
5 3 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (3.37%) DV Cleared
5 3 (3.37%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
5 3 (3.37%) MCDST
5 3 (3.37%) SC Cleared
6 2 (2.25%) Tableau Certification
7 1 (1.12%) CCNA
7 1 (1.12%) Cisco Certification
7 1 (1.12%) CISSP
7 1 (1.12%) GIAC
7 1 (1.12%) ISACA
7 1 (1.12%) MCSA
7 1 (1.12%) PMI Certification
7 1 (1.12%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.49%) PMO
2 3 (3.37%) Cyber Essentials
3 2 (2.25%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.25%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 2 (2.25%) NCSC
3 2 (2.25%) NIST
4 1 (1.12%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (1.12%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (1.12%) GDPR
4 1 (1.12%) ISO 22301
4 1 (1.12%) QA
System Software
1 22 (24.72%) Active Directory
2 4 (4.49%) Docker
3 2 (2.25%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (1.12%) BitLocker
4 1 (1.12%) Firmware
4 1 (1.12%) HDFS
4 1 (1.12%) Snort
4 1 (1.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 7 (7.87%) SCCM
2 6 (6.74%) Grafana
2 6 (6.74%) Kubernetes
3 4 (4.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (3.37%) Prometheus
4 3 (3.37%) QRadar
5 2 (2.25%) Ansible
5 2 (2.25%) CSIRT
5 2 (2.25%) Terraform
6 1 (1.12%) Argo
6 1 (1.12%) Hadoop YARN
6 1 (1.12%) Istio
Vendors
1 10 (11.24%) Splunk
2 7 (7.87%) Cisco
3 3 (3.37%) iManage
3 3 (3.37%) Mitel
4 2 (2.25%) F5
4 2 (2.25%) Oracle
4 2 (2.25%) SAP
4 2 (2.25%) ServiceNow
5 1 (1.12%) Adobe
5 1 (1.12%) Apple
5 1 (1.12%) Aruba
5 1 (1.12%) Atlassian
5 1 (1.12%) Cloudera
5 1 (1.12%) Cognos
5 1 (1.12%) Google
5 1 (1.12%) HP
5 1 (1.12%) IBM
5 1 (1.12%) JD Edwards
5 1 (1.12%) Juniper
5 1 (1.12%) McAfee