Microsoft Contracts in Cheshire

Microsoft
North West > Cheshire

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Cheshire 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 22 July 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
22 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 3 2
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 +6
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 90 82 92
As % of all contract jobs advertised in Cheshire 15.41% 15.86% 19.29%
As % of the Vendors category 30.00% 34.75% 37.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 62 46 48
10th Percentile £230 £158 £251
25th Percentile £350 £288 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £434 £489 £450
Median % change year-on-year -11.35% +8.67% +5.88%
75th Percentile £472 £610 £564
90th Percentile £549 £638 £586
North West median daily rate £434 £450 £475
% change year-on-year -3.56% -5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 10 6
10th Percentile - £10.98 £13.85
25th Percentile - £11.75 £17.23
Median hourly rate £12.82 £15.64 £19.75
Median % change year-on-year -18.04% -20.80% +93.63%
75th Percentile - £17.72 £22.40
90th Percentile £22.16 £17.73 £22.53
North West median hourly rate £22.63 £16.06 £19.75
% change year-on-year +40.91% -18.68% +23.44%

All Vendors
Cheshire

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 Cheshire.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 300 236 245
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Cheshire 51.37% 45.65% 51.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 220 156 138
10th Percentile £313 £273 £275
25th Percentile £358 £398 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £510 £491
Median % change year-on-year -11.76% +3.82% +3.42%
75th Percentile £520 £586 £575
90th Percentile £638 £634 £593
North West median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 11 14
10th Percentile - £11.00 £12.08
25th Percentile £12.82 £12.50 £17.23
Median hourly rate £47.50 £17.29 £22.47
Median % change year-on-year +174.80% -23.08% +84.63%
75th Percentile £50.00 £17.72 £34.50
90th Percentile £82.20 £17.78 £35.75
North West median hourly rate £28.75 £16.06 £26.50
% change year-on-year +79.02% -39.40% +28.86%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in Cheshire

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

Job vacancy trend for Microsoft in Cheshire

Microsoft
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in Cheshire

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Microsoft in Cheshire.

Daily rate trend for Microsoft in Cheshire

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in Cheshire over the 6 months to 22 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in Cheshire

Microsoft
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in Cheshire

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Microsoft in Cheshire.

Hourly rate trend for Microsoft in Cheshire

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in Cheshire

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in Cheshire over the 6 months to 22 July 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in Cheshire

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in Cheshire

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the Cheshire region over the 6 months to 22 July 2025. 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
Knutsford 0 31 £438 -17.30% 6
Warrington 0 22 £325 +96.97% 38
Chester +3 11 - - 23
Crewe 0 6 £381 -35.38% 11
Wilmslow 0 2 £200 -46.67% 3
Northwich -3 2 £400 - 1
Alderley Edge - 2 - - 7
Macclesfield -3 1 £400 +40.60% 7
Microsoft
North West

Microsoft
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in Cheshire 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 12 (13.33%) SharePoint
2 9 (10.00%) Skype for Business
3 8 (8.89%) Mattermost
4 6 (6.67%) Microsoft Exchange
5 5 (5.56%) Confluence
5 5 (5.56%) JBoss
6 4 (4.44%) Tomcat
7 2 (2.22%) Apache
7 2 (2.22%) IIS
8 1 (1.11%) nginx
8 1 (1.11%) WebLogic
8 1 (1.11%) WebSphere
Applications
1 10 (11.11%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (1.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 5 (5.56%) assyst
2 1 (1.11%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 26 (28.89%) Azure
2 25 (27.78%) Microsoft 365
3 11 (12.22%) AWS
4 9 (10.00%) Power Platform
5 8 (8.89%) Entra ID
5 8 (8.89%) SaaS
6 7 (7.78%) Microsoft Purview
7 6 (6.67%) OneDrive
8 5 (5.56%) Azure DevOps
9 4 (4.44%) Power Automate
9 4 (4.44%) PowerApps
9 4 (4.44%) Serverless
10 3 (3.33%) Dynamics 365
10 3 (3.33%) OpenShift
11 2 (2.22%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (2.22%) GitHub
12 1 (1.11%) AWS CloudFormation
12 1 (1.11%) Azure Logic Apps
12 1 (1.11%) npm
12 1 (1.11%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 10 (11.11%) Skype
2 9 (10.00%) WebEx
3 8 (8.89%) Softphone
3 8 (8.89%) Unified Communications
4 7 (7.78%) Firewall
5 5 (5.56%) DHCP
6 3 (3.33%) DNS
7 2 (2.22%) DMZ
7 2 (2.22%) NetScaler
8 1 (1.11%) SSL
8 1 (1.11%) VPN
8 1 (1.11%) WAAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (8.89%) Power BI
2 2 (2.22%) DB2
2 2 (2.22%) Relational Database
2 2 (2.22%) SQL Server
3 1 (1.11%) Elasticsearch
3 1 (1.11%) Oracle Database
3 1 (1.11%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 11 (12.22%) Git
2 9 (10.00%) JIRA
3 7 (7.78%) Jenkins
4 5 (5.56%) GitLab
5 4 (4.44%) JUnit
6 3 (3.33%) SonarQube
6 3 (3.33%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (2.22%) Cucumber
7 2 (2.22%) Gradle
7 2 (2.22%) Hudson
7 2 (2.22%) Maven
8 1 (1.11%) Bitbucket
8 1 (1.11%) CA Release Automation
8 1 (1.11%) Cypress.io
8 1 (1.11%) Gerrit
8 1 (1.11%) Grunt
8 1 (1.11%) MSI
8 1 (1.11%) Selenium
8 1 (1.11%) Subversion
8 1 (1.11%) TeamCity
General
1 42 (46.67%) Social Skills
2 28 (31.11%) Finance
3 12 (13.33%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (11.11%) Banking
5 4 (4.44%) Public Sector
6 3 (3.33%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (3.33%) Japanese Language
6 3 (3.33%) Organisational Skills
6 3 (3.33%) Presentation Skills
6 3 (3.33%) Publishing
7 2 (2.22%) Automotive
7 2 (2.22%) Manufacturing
7 2 (2.22%) Marketing
7 2 (2.22%) Retail
8 1 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.11%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 1 (1.11%) Investment Banking
8 1 (1.11%) Legal
8 1 (1.11%) Military
Job Titles
1 18 (20.00%) Analyst
2 13 (14.44%) Support Engineer
3 12 (13.33%) Developer
4 11 (12.22%) Architect
5 8 (8.89%) Messaging Engineer
5 8 (8.89%) Messaging Support
5 8 (8.89%) Messaging Support Engineer
5 8 (8.89%) Operations Engineer
5 8 (8.89%) Operations Support Engineer
6 7 (7.78%) Messaging Analyst
6 7 (7.78%) Messaging Support Analyst
6 7 (7.78%) Operational Support Analyst
6 7 (7.78%) Operations Analyst
6 7 (7.78%) Operations Support Analyst
6 7 (7.78%) Support Analyst
7 5 (5.56%) 1st Line Support
7 5 (5.56%) Data Analyst
7 5 (5.56%) IT Support
8 4 (4.44%) Business Analyst
8 4 (4.44%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 8 (8.89%) XMPP
2 7 (7.78%) REST
3 6 (6.67%) Spring Boot
4 5 (5.56%) RESTful
4 5 (5.56%) Spring
5 4 (4.44%) CSS
5 4 (4.44%) HTML
5 4 (4.44%) React
5 4 (4.44%) SOAP
6 3 (3.33%) Kafka
6 3 (3.33%) Lightning Web Components
6 3 (3.33%) Web Services
7 2 (2.22%) .NET
7 2 (2.22%) CSS3
7 2 (2.22%) HTML5
7 2 (2.22%) jQuery
7 2 (2.22%) JSON
7 2 (2.22%) RAML
7 2 (2.22%) SailPoint
7 2 (2.22%) WSDL
Miscellaneous
1 11 (12.22%) Management Information System
2 4 (4.44%) Enterprise Software
2 4 (4.44%) Product Ownership
3 2 (2.22%) Cloud Native
3 2 (2.22%) Data Centre
3 2 (2.22%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.11%) Cyber Threat
4 1 (1.11%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.11%) PKI
4 1 (1.11%) PMI
4 1 (1.11%) Private Cloud
4 1 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 22 (24.44%) Windows
2 13 (14.44%) Linux
3 9 (10.00%) Windows Server
4 5 (5.56%) Windows 10
5 2 (2.22%) Android
5 2 (2.22%) Apple iOS
5 2 (2.22%) Unix
5 2 (2.22%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (2.22%) Windows Server 2016
5 2 (2.22%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (28.89%) Problem-Solving
2 25 (27.78%) ITIL
3 22 (24.44%) Agile
4 17 (18.89%) DevOps
5 15 (16.67%) ITSM
6 13 (14.44%) Service Management
7 12 (13.33%) Migration
8 11 (12.22%) CI/CD
8 11 (12.22%) Problem Management
9 10 (11.11%) Stakeholder Management
10 8 (8.89%) B2B
10 8 (8.89%) Mentoring
10 8 (8.89%) Performance Optimisation
10 8 (8.89%) Procure-to-Pay
11 7 (7.78%) Customer Service
11 7 (7.78%) Data Loss Prevention
11 7 (7.78%) Project Delivery
11 7 (7.78%) Scrum
11 7 (7.78%) Technical Architecture
12 6 (6.67%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 29 (32.22%) PowerShell
2 12 (13.33%) SQL
3 10 (11.11%) Java
4 4 (4.44%) JavaScript
4 4 (4.44%) Python
5 2 (2.22%) Apex Code
5 2 (2.22%) Bash
5 2 (2.22%) Shell Script
6 1 (1.11%) C#
6 1 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
6 1 (1.11%) Perl
6 1 (1.11%) Ruby
6 1 (1.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 12 (13.33%) Degree
1 12 (13.33%) Security Cleared
2 11 (12.22%) ITIL Certification
2 11 (12.22%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.56%) Microsoft Certification
4 2 (2.22%) Azure Certification
4 2 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.11%) A+ Certification
5 1 (1.11%) CBAP
5 1 (1.11%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (3.33%) GDPR
1 3 (3.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
2 2 (2.22%) Accessibility
2 2 (2.22%) Data Quality
2 2 (2.22%) QA
2 2 (2.22%) SLA
3 1 (1.11%) HIPAA
3 1 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (1.11%) NIST
System Software
1 29 (32.22%) Active Directory
2 3 (3.33%) Docker
3 2 (2.22%) Hyper-V
3 2 (2.22%) Virtual Desktop
3 2 (2.22%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (2.22%) VMware ESXi
3 2 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 8 (8.89%) SCOM
2 6 (6.67%) Single Sign-On
3 4 (4.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 3 (3.33%) Dell DRAC
4 3 (3.33%) Kubernetes
4 3 (3.33%) Progress Chef
4 3 (3.33%) SCCM
5 2 (2.22%) Jamf Pro
5 2 (2.22%) Microsoft Clustering
5 2 (2.22%) NetApp OnCommand
5 2 (2.22%) vCenter Server
5 2 (2.22%) vMotion
5 2 (2.22%) WSUS
6 1 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 1 (1.11%) Ansible
6 1 (1.11%) Docker Swarm
6 1 (1.11%) Kibana
6 1 (1.11%) Terraform
Vendors
1 14 (15.56%) ServiceNow
2 9 (10.00%) Cisco
2 9 (10.00%) Red Hat
2 9 (10.00%) Splunk
3 5 (5.56%) Dell
3 5 (5.56%) Oracle
4 3 (3.33%) Citrix
4 3 (3.33%) Remedy
4 3 (3.33%) Salesforce
5 2 (2.22%) CyberArk
5 2 (2.22%) VMware
6 1 (1.11%) AppDynamics
6 1 (1.11%) Apple
6 1 (1.11%) Cloudera
6 1 (1.11%) CrowdStrike
6 1 (1.11%) IBM
6 1 (1.11%) Logitech
6 1 (1.11%) LogRhythm
6 1 (1.11%) Okta
6 1 (1.11%) Perforce