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 21 August 2026, 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
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 4 6 5
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 -3
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 120 80 94
As % of all contract jobs in Birmingham 13.44% 13.99% 13.37%
As % of the Vendors category 29.70% 30.42% 27.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 85 65 68
10th Percentile £228 £150 £190
25th Percentile £375 £263 £227
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £388 £435
Median % change year-on-year +16.13% -10.92% +2.35%
75th Percentile £588 £488 £500
90th Percentile £683 £600 £632
West Midlands median daily rate £445 £403 £415
% change year-on-year +10.56% -3.01% +2.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 6
10th Percentile - £21.89 £13.63
25th Percentile - £27.72 £16.89
Median hourly rate £19.34 £38.38 £40.56
Median % change year-on-year -49.60% -5.39% +119.26%
75th Percentile - £49.97 £55.94
90th Percentile - £56.36 £56.25
West Midlands median hourly rate £19.41 £30.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year -35.30% -20.00% +102.70%

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 404 263 343
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham 45.24% 45.98% 48.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 242 182 258
10th Percentile £313 £150 £259
25th Percentile £400 £300 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £636
90th Percentile £638 £613 £750
West Midlands median daily rate £465 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.11% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 10
10th Percentile £15.43 £18.15 £13.93
25th Percentile - £18.38 £17.42
Median hourly rate £19.34 £24.40 £31.81
Median % change year-on-year -20.74% -23.30% +36.83%
75th Percentile £51.25 £37.87 £52.63
90th Percentile - £51.52 £56.25
West Midlands median hourly rate £25.30 £30.00 £28.81
% change year-on-year -15.68% +4.12% +28.06%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in Birmingham

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Microsoft relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham.

Microsoft job vacancy trend 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 21 August 2026.

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
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Birmingham by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 17 (14.17%) SharePoint
2 12 (10.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 3 (2.50%) Apache Spark
3 3 (2.50%) SAS
4 2 (1.67%) Apache
4 2 (1.67%) CloudStack
5 1 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 6 (5.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (2.50%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (2.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (1.67%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.83%) AutoCAD
4 1 (0.83%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.83%) Navisworks
4 1 (0.83%) ProjectWise
4 1 (0.83%) Revit
Business Applications
1 2 (1.67%) Remedy ITSM
2 1 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.83%) Integrated Workplace Management System
2 1 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 52 (43.33%) Azure
2 39 (32.50%) Microsoft 365
3 28 (23.33%) Entra ID
4 17 (14.17%) Power Platform
5 14 (11.67%) OneDrive
6 13 (10.83%) Dynamics 365
7 12 (10.00%) AWS
8 10 (8.33%) Azure DevOps
9 8 (6.67%) Microsoft Purview
10 6 (5.00%) Azure Sentinel
11 5 (4.17%) Azure Data Factory
11 5 (4.17%) Power Automate
12 3 (2.50%) Azure AKS
12 3 (2.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 3 (2.50%) IaaS
13 2 (1.67%) Amazon S3
13 2 (1.67%) Amazon SageMaker
13 2 (1.67%) GCP
13 2 (1.67%) OpenShift
13 2 (1.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 13 (10.83%) DNS
2 12 (10.00%) DHCP
3 10 (8.33%) VPN
4 7 (5.83%) TCP/IP
5 5 (4.17%) Firewall
6 4 (3.33%) SAN
7 3 (2.50%) NAS
8 2 (1.67%) Network Security
8 2 (1.67%) Remote Desktop
8 2 (1.67%) Structured Cabling
8 2 (1.67%) VLAN
9 1 (0.83%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.83%) Fibre Channel
9 1 (0.83%) iSCSI
9 1 (0.83%) LAN
9 1 (0.83%) Unified Communications
9 1 (0.83%) VoIP
9 1 (0.83%) WAN
9 1 (0.83%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 12 (10.00%) Power BI
2 5 (4.17%) Data Lake
2 5 (4.17%) Data Warehouse
3 4 (3.33%) SQL Server
4 3 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
4 3 (2.50%) Metadata
5 2 (1.67%) Amazon Redshift
5 2 (1.67%) Data Vault
5 2 (1.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
6 1 (0.83%) Base SAS
6 1 (0.83%) Data Mining
6 1 (0.83%) Hadoop
6 1 (0.83%) Parquet
6 1 (0.83%) PowerPivot
6 1 (0.83%) Relational Database
6 1 (0.83%) SAS Enterprise Guide
6 1 (0.83%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 2 (1.67%) Git
1 2 (1.67%) Jenkins
1 2 (1.67%) JIRA
2 1 (0.83%) Maven
2 1 (0.83%) SonarQube
2 1 (0.83%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 25 (20.83%) Finance
2 24 (20.00%) Social Skills
3 10 (8.33%) Banking
4 9 (7.50%) Analytical Skills
5 8 (6.67%) Legal
6 6 (5.00%) Public Sector
7 4 (3.33%) Retail
8 3 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.67%) Investment Banking
9 2 (1.67%) Marketing
9 2 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
9 2 (1.67%) Publishing
10 1 (0.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (0.83%) Law
10 1 (0.83%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.83%) Military
Job Titles
1 15 (12.50%) Analyst
2 13 (10.83%) Architect
3 12 (10.00%) Consultant
4 11 (9.17%) Data Engineer
4 11 (9.17%) Lead
5 9 (7.50%) Azure Engineer
6 7 (5.83%) IT Support
6 7 (5.83%) Security Consultant
6 7 (5.83%) Solutions Architect
6 7 (5.83%) Support Engineer
7 6 (5.00%) Developer
7 6 (5.00%) Microsoft Consultant
7 6 (5.00%) Senior
8 5 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
8 5 (4.17%) IT Engineer
8 5 (4.17%) Security Engineer
8 5 (4.17%) Support Analyst
9 4 (3.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 4 (3.33%) Service Desk Analyst
9 4 (3.33%) Team Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (10.00%) Terraform
2 4 (3.33%) JSON
3 3 (2.50%) Microsoft Graph
4 2 (1.67%) .NET
4 2 (1.67%) ADO
4 2 (1.67%) Elastic Stack
4 2 (1.67%) PySpark
4 2 (1.67%) REST
4 2 (1.67%) SailPoint
4 2 (1.67%) YAML
5 1 (0.83%) Apache Avro
5 1 (0.83%) ARM Templates
5 1 (0.83%) ASP.NET
5 1 (0.83%) JSON Schema
5 1 (0.83%) Kafka
5 1 (0.83%) Loki
5 1 (0.83%) Node.js
5 1 (0.83%) OpenTelemetry
5 1 (0.83%) Protocol Buffers
5 1 (0.83%) SLSA
Miscellaneous
1 10 (8.33%) Onboarding
2 7 (5.83%) Hybrid Cloud
2 7 (5.83%) Management Information System
3 5 (4.17%) Security Operations Centre
3 5 (4.17%) Security Posture
4 4 (3.33%) iPhone
4 4 (3.33%) Mobile App
4 4 (3.33%) Public Cloud
5 3 (2.50%) Cloud Native
5 3 (2.50%) Data Centre
6 2 (1.67%) Cyber Threat
6 2 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.67%) Replication
7 1 (0.83%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.83%) CMDB
7 1 (0.83%) Driving Licence
7 1 (0.83%) Enterprise Storage
7 1 (0.83%) PKI
7 1 (0.83%) Video Conferencing
7 1 (0.83%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 30 (25.00%) Windows
2 11 (9.17%) Windows 10
3 6 (5.00%) Mac OS
3 6 (5.00%) Windows Server
4 2 (1.67%) Apple iOS
4 2 (1.67%) Linux
4 2 (1.67%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.83%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (18.33%) DevOps
2 20 (16.67%) ITSM
3 17 (14.17%) Migration
3 17 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
4 13 (10.83%) CI/CD
4 13 (10.83%) Customer Service
5 11 (9.17%) Agile
5 11 (9.17%) ITIL
5 11 (9.17%) Service Management
6 10 (8.33%) Continuous Improvement
6 10 (8.33%) Data Modelling
6 10 (8.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 10 (8.33%) Mentoring
6 10 (8.33%) Roadmaps
7 9 (7.50%) AI
7 9 (7.50%) Project Delivery
7 9 (7.50%) SDLC
7 9 (7.50%) Security Operations
7 9 (7.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 9 (7.50%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 14 (11.67%) Python
2 12 (10.00%) SQL
3 7 (5.83%) PowerShell
4 5 (4.17%) Kusto Query Language
5 4 (3.33%) Bicep
6 3 (2.50%) Bash
6 3 (2.50%) JavaScript
7 2 (1.67%) C#
7 2 (1.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 2 (1.67%) Scala
8 1 (0.83%) Groovy
8 1 (0.83%) Java
8 1 (0.83%) VBA
Qualifications
1 9 (7.50%) Degree
2 8 (6.67%) CISSP
3 7 (5.83%) Security Cleared
4 5 (4.17%) CISM
4 5 (4.17%) Microsoft Certification
4 5 (4.17%) SC Cleared
5 4 (3.33%) AWS Certification
6 3 (2.50%) A+ Certification
6 3 (2.50%) Network+ Certification
7 2 (1.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.67%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.67%) CCNP
7 2 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
7 2 (1.67%) ITIL Certification
7 2 (1.67%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
8 1 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.83%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.83%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.83%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (6.67%) NIST
2 5 (4.17%) GDPR
2 5 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 5 (4.17%) SLA
3 4 (3.33%) PCI DSS
3 4 (3.33%) QA
4 3 (2.50%) GRC
4 3 (2.50%) PMO
5 2 (1.67%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.83%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.83%) Basel III
6 1 (0.83%) ISO 19650
6 1 (0.83%) NCSC
6 1 (0.83%) P3O
System Software
1 26 (21.67%) Active Directory
2 4 (3.33%) Hyper-V
2 4 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (2.50%) Docker
3 3 (2.50%) Virtual Desktop
4 2 (1.67%) vSphere
5 1 (0.83%) Firmware
5 1 (0.83%) NFS
Systems Management
1 23 (19.17%) Microsoft Intune
2 6 (5.00%) Kubernetes
2 6 (5.00%) SCCM
3 4 (3.33%) Ansible
3 4 (3.33%) Grafana
3 4 (3.33%) Jamf Pro
4 3 (2.50%) Prometheus
4 3 (2.50%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (1.67%) Check_MK
6 1 (0.83%) Argo
Vendors
1 18 (15.00%) ServiceNow
2 5 (4.17%) Cisco
2 5 (4.17%) Splunk
3 4 (3.33%) Apple
3 4 (3.33%) Databricks
3 4 (3.33%) Okta
3 4 (3.33%) Samsung
3 4 (3.33%) VMware
4 3 (2.50%) Veeam
5 2 (1.67%) BeyondTrust
5 2 (1.67%) Citrix
5 2 (1.67%) Commvault
5 2 (1.67%) CrowdStrike
5 2 (1.67%) CyberArk
5 2 (1.67%) Fortinet
5 2 (1.67%) Informatica
5 2 (1.67%) Palo Alto
5 2 (1.67%) Remedy
5 2 (1.67%) Ribbon
6 1 (0.83%) New Relic