Microsoft Contract Job Trends in the East Midlands

Microsoft
England > East Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the East Midlands 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 25 May 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
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 5
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 148 75 105
As % of all contract jobs in the East Midlands 13.30% 12.93% 13.39%
As % of the Vendors category 29.37% 30.61% 33.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 102 57 64
10th Percentile £131 £194 £156
25th Percentile £213 £250 £188
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £401 £410 £400
Median % change year-on-year -2.32% +2.50% +6.67%
75th Percentile £500 £525 £556
90th Percentile £575 £550 £638
England median daily rate £497 £479 £485
% change year-on-year +3.71% -1.29% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 4 19
10th Percentile £12.94 £16.08 £12.74
25th Percentile £13.25 £17.56 £12.75
Median hourly rate £16.50 £18.88 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.62% +34.88% -30.00%
75th Percentile £23.90 £20.38 £15.51
90th Percentile £26.60 £21.95 £26.50
England median hourly rate £20.35 £18.85 £15.00
% change year-on-year +7.96% +25.67% -29.78%

All Vendors
East Midlands

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 the East Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 504 245 317
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East Midlands 45.28% 42.24% 40.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 302 175 197
10th Percentile £191 £250 £166
25th Percentile £359 £349 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £450
Median % change year-on-year - - -1.10%
75th Percentile £575 £545 £600
90th Percentile £638 £630 £638
England median daily rate £503 £525 £515
% change year-on-year -4.29% +1.94% -3.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 16 26
10th Percentile £13.25 - £10.90
25th Percentile £15.25 £13.81 £12.39
Median hourly rate £17.87 £18.36 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -2.64% +31.11% -33.92%
75th Percentile £24.49 £19.24 £14.35
90th Percentile £74.00 £27.38 £26.50
England median hourly rate £32.50 £25.50 £22.50
% change year-on-year +27.45% +13.33% -43.11%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in the East Midlands

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in the East Midlands

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in the East Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East Midlands citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the East Midlands citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in the East Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in the East Midlands over the 6 months to 25 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the East Midlands

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in the East Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East Midlands citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the East Midlands citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in the East Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in the East Midlands over the 6 months to 25 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the East Midlands

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in the East Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the East Midlands region over the 6 months to 25 May 2026. 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
Nottinghamshire +5 58 £270 -46.00% 45
Northamptonshire +4 35 £424 -5.09% 28
Leicestershire -3 26 £131 -47.53% 32
Derbyshire -7 16 £425 +19.72% 30
Lincolnshire -10 6 £475 +163.89% 28
Microsoft
England

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the East Midlands 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 20 (13.51%) SharePoint
2 18 (12.16%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (3.38%) Confluence
4 3 (2.03%) Apache Superset
5 1 (0.68%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 1 (0.68%) CMS
5 1 (0.68%) Exchange Server 2010
5 1 (0.68%) SAS
5 1 (0.68%) Tomcat
Applications
1 21 (14.19%) Microsoft Office
2 19 (12.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (6.08%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (4.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (1.35%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.68%) FrameMaker
Business Applications
1 5 (3.38%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (2.03%) SAP CRM
3 2 (1.35%) Maximo
4 1 (0.68%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 46 (31.08%) Azure
2 41 (27.70%) Microsoft 365
3 24 (16.22%) Entra ID
4 16 (10.81%) Power Platform
5 11 (7.43%) AWS
6 7 (4.73%) GCP
6 7 (4.73%) PowerApps
7 6 (4.05%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (3.38%) Azure AKS
8 5 (3.38%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
9 4 (2.70%) Power Automate
9 4 (2.70%) Serverless
10 3 (2.03%) Algolia
10 3 (2.03%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 3 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (2.03%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 3 (2.03%) Azure Functions
10 3 (2.03%) Azure Service Bus
10 3 (2.03%) Dynamics 365
10 3 (2.03%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 7 (4.73%) Network Security
2 6 (4.05%) VLAN
3 5 (3.38%) Firewall
4 3 (2.03%) DNS
4 3 (2.03%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (1.35%) DHCP
5 2 (1.35%) VPN
6 1 (0.68%) SAN
6 1 (0.68%) Unified Communications
6 1 (0.68%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (6.08%) Power BI
2 7 (4.73%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (4.05%) SQL Server
4 5 (3.38%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (2.70%) Relational Database
5 4 (2.70%) Tableau
6 3 (2.03%) Metabase
6 3 (2.03%) Parquet
7 2 (1.35%) MongoDB
7 2 (1.35%) Power Query
8 1 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.68%) Big Data
8 1 (0.68%) Metadata
8 1 (0.68%) MySQL
8 1 (0.68%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.68%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (0.68%) VLDB
Development Applications
1 5 (3.38%) JIRA
2 3 (2.03%) Git
3 2 (1.35%) GitLab
General
1 50 (33.78%) Social Skills
2 19 (12.84%) Analytical Skills
3 16 (10.81%) Finance
4 13 (8.78%) Law
5 7 (4.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 7 (4.73%) Organisational Skills
5 7 (4.73%) Retail
6 5 (3.38%) Banking
7 3 (2.03%) Public Sector
8 2 (1.35%) Billing
8 2 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.35%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.68%) Aerospace
9 1 (0.68%) Agriculture
9 1 (0.68%) Corporate Banking
9 1 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
9 1 (0.68%) Marketing
9 1 (0.68%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 29 (19.59%) Analyst
2 19 (12.84%) Desktop Support
3 18 (12.16%) Architect
4 16 (10.81%) Developer
5 14 (9.46%) Administrator
5 14 (9.46%) Senior
6 10 (6.76%) IT Support
6 10 (6.76%) Service Analyst
6 10 (6.76%) Service Desk Analyst
6 10 (6.76%) Support Engineer
7 8 (5.41%) Lead
8 7 (4.73%) .NET Developer
8 7 (4.73%) Data Analyst
8 7 (4.73%) Desktop Engineer
8 7 (4.73%) Desktop Support Engineer
8 7 (4.73%) Desktop Support Technician
8 7 (4.73%) Desktop Technician
8 7 (4.73%) Solutions Architect
8 7 (4.73%) Support Technician
8 7 (4.73%) Systems Administrator
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (6.08%) .NET
1 9 (6.08%) REST
2 7 (4.73%) Node.js
3 4 (2.70%) React
4 3 (2.03%) Middleware
4 3 (2.03%) OAuth
4 3 (2.03%) OAuth2
4 3 (2.03%) OpenID
4 3 (2.03%) Plotly
4 3 (2.03%) SAML
5 2 (1.35%) Kafka
5 2 (1.35%) Lightning Web Components
5 2 (1.35%) SOAP
6 1 (0.68%) Express.js
6 1 (0.68%) J2EE
6 1 (0.68%) OSGi
6 1 (0.68%) PySpark
6 1 (0.68%) RabbitMQ
6 1 (0.68%) Web Services
6 1 (0.68%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (10.14%) Smartphone
2 9 (6.08%) Cloud Native
3 8 (5.41%) Product Ownership
4 6 (4.05%) Management Information System
5 4 (2.70%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
6 3 (2.03%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.35%) Data Structures
7 2 (1.35%) PMI
8 1 (0.68%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.68%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.68%) Device Driver
8 1 (0.68%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.68%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.68%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.68%) NHS
8 1 (0.68%) Replication
8 1 (0.68%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 51 (34.46%) Windows
2 28 (18.92%) Windows 10
3 9 (6.08%) Apple iOS
4 4 (2.70%) Linux
4 4 (2.70%) Windows 7
4 4 (2.70%) Windows 8
4 4 (2.70%) Windows Server
5 2 (1.35%) CentOS
5 2 (1.35%) Mac OS
5 2 (1.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.68%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (0.68%) MVS
6 1 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.68%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (27.70%) Problem-Solving
2 29 (19.59%) Customer Service
3 26 (17.57%) CI/CD
3 26 (17.57%) Stakeholder Management
4 24 (16.22%) Continuous Improvement
5 20 (13.51%) Migration
6 19 (12.84%) DevOps
7 15 (10.14%) Infrastructure as Code
8 12 (8.11%) Agile
8 12 (8.11%) Asset Management
8 12 (8.11%) Project Delivery
9 11 (7.43%) Change Management
9 11 (7.43%) Decision-Making
10 10 (6.76%) Analytics
10 10 (6.76%) CRM
10 10 (6.76%) Performance Tuning
11 9 (6.08%) BCP
11 9 (6.08%) Business Intelligence
11 9 (6.08%) Collaborative Working
11 9 (6.08%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 13 (8.78%) C#
1 13 (8.78%) SQL
2 12 (8.11%) PowerShell
3 8 (5.41%) JavaScript
4 7 (4.73%) Python
5 5 (3.38%) Bicep
6 4 (2.70%) Kusto Query Language
7 3 (2.03%) MATLAB
7 3 (2.03%) Rust
8 2 (1.35%) Apex Code
8 2 (1.35%) Bash
8 2 (1.35%) R
8 2 (1.35%) SOQL
8 2 (1.35%) TypeScript
8 2 (1.35%) VBA
9 1 (0.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 1 (0.68%) Java
9 1 (0.68%) JCL
9 1 (0.68%) REXX
9 1 (0.68%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 10 (6.76%) Degree
2 5 (3.38%) Microsoft Certification
3 4 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (2.03%) Computer Science Degree
4 3 (2.03%) Security Cleared
5 2 (1.35%) Azure Certification
5 2 (1.35%) Master's Degree
5 2 (1.35%) PMI Certification
5 2 (1.35%) PMP
5 2 (1.35%) SC Cleared
6 1 (0.68%) AAT
6 1 (0.68%) ACCA
6 1 (0.68%) CIMA
6 1 (0.68%) IIBA
6 1 (0.68%) MBA
6 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Certified Professional
6 1 (0.68%) Network+ Certification
6 1 (0.68%) Oracle Certification
6 1 (0.68%) SAFe Agilist
6 1 (0.68%) VCAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (4.73%) GDPR
2 5 (3.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.70%) PCI DSS
4 3 (2.03%) GRC
4 3 (2.03%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
4 3 (2.03%) NIST
4 3 (2.03%) PMO
4 3 (2.03%) QA
4 3 (2.03%) SLA
4 3 (2.03%) SOC 2
5 1 (0.68%) Basel III
5 1 (0.68%) Data Quality
System Software
1 45 (30.41%) Active Directory
2 4 (2.70%) Docker
2 4 (2.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (1.35%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.68%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.68%) Firmware
4 1 (0.68%) Job Entry Subsystem
4 1 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.68%) VMware NSX
4 1 (0.68%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 24 (16.22%) SCCM
2 19 (12.84%) Microsoft Intune
3 15 (10.14%) Terraform
4 5 (3.38%) Kubernetes
5 4 (2.70%) Ansible
5 4 (2.70%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.68%) Control-M
Vendors
1 9 (6.08%) SAP
2 7 (4.73%) Salesforce
3 6 (4.05%) HP
4 5 (3.38%) Oracle
5 4 (2.70%) Google
5 4 (2.70%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.70%) Splunk
5 4 (2.70%) VMware
6 3 (2.03%) Citrix
6 3 (2.03%) Databricks
6 3 (2.03%) MuleSoft
7 2 (1.35%) Adobe
7 2 (1.35%) NetApp
8 1 (0.68%) Apple
8 1 (0.68%) BMC
8 1 (0.68%) Dell
8 1 (0.68%) Intel
8 1 (0.68%) NEC
8 1 (0.68%) Remedy
8 1 (0.68%) Sage