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 1 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
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 3 5 8
Rank change year-on-year +2 +3 -7
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 166 127 94
As % of all contract jobs in the East Midlands 14.24% 16.56% 12.02%
As % of the Vendors category 35.02% 39.56% 28.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 96 85 60
10th Percentile £131 £164 £160
25th Percentile £233 £250 £269
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £407 £352 £391
Median % change year-on-year +15.55% -9.86% +8.47%
75th Percentile £525 £437 £503
90th Percentile £600 £525 £646
England median daily rate £490 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 14 13
10th Percentile £13.08 £16.96 -
25th Percentile £13.25 £19.63 £12.75
Median hourly rate £17.97 £25.15 £14.27
Median % change year-on-year -28.55% +76.24% +8.43%
75th Percentile £25.75 - £16.63
90th Percentile £33.75 - £19.70
England median hourly rate £23.54 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year +4.02% +39.43% -26.23%

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 474 321 334
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East Midlands 40.65% 41.85% 42.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 254 210 219
10th Percentile £200 £200 £223
25th Percentile £363 £313 £359
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £420 £488
Median % change year-on-year +19.05% -13.85% +2.63%
75th Percentile £600 £534 £588
90th Percentile £656 £638 £638
England median daily rate £510 £510 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 32 16
10th Percentile £13.33 £13.81 £12.49
25th Percentile £15.25 £17.74 £12.75
Median hourly rate £17.87 £19.75 £13.91
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +42.04% -38.20%
75th Percentile £27.68 £25.15 £17.09
90th Percentile £74.00 - £31.33
England median hourly rate £35.52 £25.15 £28.00
% change year-on-year +41.21% -10.18% -29.20%

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 1 August 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 1 August 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 1 August 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 0 47 £455 +10.98% 66
Northamptonshire +4 36 £375 -8.54% 69
Leicestershire -1 29 £275 +10.00% 49
Derbyshire -2 26 £450 +125.00% 52
Lincolnshire -4 20 £315 - 37
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 16 (9.64%) Microsoft Exchange
1 16 (9.64%) SharePoint
2 3 (1.81%) Apache Superset
2 3 (1.81%) Confluence
3 1 (0.60%) CMS
3 1 (0.60%) Exchange Server 2010
3 1 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (0.60%) SAS
3 1 (0.60%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (14.46%) Microsoft Office
2 18 (10.84%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (3.01%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (2.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.60%) FrameMaker
6 1 (0.60%) Trello
Business Applications
1 5 (3.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (1.81%) SAP CRM
3 2 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.60%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.60%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 60 (36.14%) Azure
2 38 (22.89%) Microsoft 365
3 23 (13.86%) Entra ID
4 21 (12.65%) Power Platform
5 11 (6.63%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (4.82%) Azure AKS
7 7 (4.22%) AWS
8 6 (3.61%) Dynamics 365
8 6 (3.61%) Microsoft Copilot
9 5 (3.01%) Azure Service Bus
9 5 (3.01%) Power Automate
9 5 (3.01%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
10 4 (2.41%) Azure Data Factory
10 4 (2.41%) GCP
10 4 (2.41%) GitHub
10 4 (2.41%) OCI
10 4 (2.41%) Serverless
11 3 (1.81%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 3 (1.81%) Azure Monitor
11 3 (1.81%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 8 (4.82%) DNS
1 8 (4.82%) Network Security
2 7 (4.22%) DHCP
2 7 (4.22%) Firewall
3 6 (3.61%) LAN
3 6 (3.61%) VLAN
3 6 (3.61%) WAN
4 4 (2.41%) TCP/IP
5 2 (1.20%) SAN
6 1 (0.60%) Ethernet
6 1 (0.60%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.60%) Unified Communications
6 1 (0.60%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (9.04%) Power BI
2 11 (6.63%) SQL Server
3 8 (4.82%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (3.61%) Azure SQL Database
5 4 (2.41%) Relational Database
6 3 (1.81%) Metabase
6 3 (1.81%) Parquet
7 2 (1.20%) Data Lake
7 2 (1.20%) MongoDB
7 2 (1.20%) Star Schema
8 1 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
8 1 (0.60%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.60%) Big Data
8 1 (0.60%) Data Warehouse
8 1 (0.60%) Metadata
8 1 (0.60%) MySQL
8 1 (0.60%) RDBMS
8 1 (0.60%) Snowflake Schema
8 1 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (0.60%) VLDB
Development Applications
1 5 (3.01%) JIRA
2 2 (1.20%) Git
2 2 (1.20%) GitLab
3 1 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
General
1 63 (37.95%) Social Skills
2 23 (13.86%) Analytical Skills
3 15 (9.04%) Organisational Skills
4 13 (7.83%) Finance
5 12 (7.23%) Public Sector
6 11 (6.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (6.02%) Manufacturing
8 7 (4.22%) Law
9 6 (3.61%) Retail
10 4 (2.41%) Automotive
10 4 (2.41%) Banking
10 4 (2.41%) Police
11 3 (1.81%) Aerospace
11 3 (1.81%) Documentation Skills
12 1 (0.60%) Agriculture
12 1 (0.60%) Billing
12 1 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 27 (16.27%) Analyst
2 24 (14.46%) Developer
3 18 (10.84%) Architect
4 16 (9.64%) Administrator
5 12 (7.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 12 (7.23%) Senior
6 11 (6.63%) .NET Developer
6 11 (6.63%) IT Support
7 10 (6.02%) Lead
8 9 (5.42%) Cloud Engineer
8 9 (5.42%) Support Engineer
9 8 (4.82%) Data Analyst
10 7 (4.22%) Consultant
10 7 (4.22%) Service Analyst
10 7 (4.22%) Service Desk Analyst
10 7 (4.22%) Systems Administrator
11 6 (3.61%) .NET Software Developer
11 6 (3.61%) Lead Developer
11 6 (3.61%) Senior Architect
11 6 (3.61%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.83%) .NET
2 9 (5.42%) REST
3 7 (4.22%) Node.js
4 4 (2.41%) Kafka
4 4 (2.41%) React
5 3 (1.81%) Plotly
5 3 (1.81%) RabbitMQ
6 2 (1.20%) Middleware
6 2 (1.20%) SOAP
6 2 (1.20%) Software Packaging
7 1 (0.60%) ARM Templates
7 1 (0.60%) Express.js
7 1 (0.60%) HTML
7 1 (0.60%) ISPF
7 1 (0.60%) MERN Stack
7 1 (0.60%) Oracle Fusion
7 1 (0.60%) PySpark
7 1 (0.60%) SailPoint
7 1 (0.60%) Web Services
7 1 (0.60%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 6 (3.61%) Cloud Native
1 6 (3.61%) Driving Licence
1 6 (3.61%) Management Information System
2 5 (3.01%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (2.41%) Hybrid Cloud
3 4 (2.41%) Onboarding
4 3 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (1.81%) Security Posture
5 2 (1.20%) Data Structures
5 2 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (1.20%) Low-Code
5 2 (1.20%) Product Ownership
5 2 (1.20%) Smartphone
5 2 (1.20%) Team-Oriented Environment
6 1 (0.60%) Clustering
6 1 (0.60%) CMDB
6 1 (0.60%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (0.60%) Device Driver
6 1 (0.60%) Learning Management System
6 1 (0.60%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 46 (27.71%) Windows
2 13 (7.83%) Windows 10
3 9 (5.42%) Windows Server
4 5 (3.01%) Linux
5 3 (1.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (1.20%) Apple iOS
6 2 (1.20%) CentOS
7 1 (0.60%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.60%) MVS
7 1 (0.60%) Ubuntu
7 1 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.60%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (27.71%) Problem-Solving
2 23 (13.86%) CI/CD
3 22 (13.25%) DevOps
4 21 (12.65%) Continuous Improvement
5 20 (12.05%) Customer Service
6 17 (10.24%) Infrastructure Engineering
7 15 (9.04%) Business Intelligence
7 15 (9.04%) CRM
7 15 (9.04%) Decision-Making
7 15 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 14 (8.43%) Data Modelling
9 13 (7.83%) Agile
9 13 (7.83%) Infrastructure as Code
10 12 (7.23%) Asset Management
10 12 (7.23%) ERP
10 12 (7.23%) Visualisation
11 11 (6.63%) Stakeholder Management
12 10 (6.02%) AI
12 10 (6.02%) Migration
13 9 (5.42%) Data Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 17 (10.24%) C#
2 14 (8.43%) SQL
3 12 (7.23%) PowerShell
4 8 (4.82%) JavaScript
5 5 (3.01%) Python
6 4 (2.41%) Kusto Query Language
7 3 (1.81%) MATLAB
7 3 (1.81%) Rust
8 2 (1.20%) Bicep
8 2 (1.20%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.60%) Apex Code
9 1 (0.60%) JCL
9 1 (0.60%) REXX
9 1 (0.60%) SOQL
9 1 (0.60%) SOSL
Qualifications
1 23 (13.86%) Security Cleared
2 15 (9.04%) SC Cleared
3 14 (8.43%) Degree
4 4 (2.41%) CISM
4 4 (2.41%) CISSP
4 4 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
4 4 (2.41%) Microsoft Certification
5 3 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
5 3 (1.81%) Master's Degree
6 2 (1.20%) Azure Certification
6 2 (1.20%) CRISC
6 2 (1.20%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
6 2 (1.20%) MCSA
6 2 (1.20%) MCSE
6 2 (1.20%) Oracle Certification
7 1 (0.60%) CIPD
7 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 1 (0.60%) NVQ Level 3
7 1 (0.60%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.60%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (3.61%) Data Quality
2 3 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (1.81%) PMO
2 3 (1.81%) QA
3 2 (1.20%) NIST
3 2 (1.20%) SLA
4 1 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials
4 1 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
4 1 (0.60%) GDPR
4 1 (0.60%) ISO 22301
4 1 (0.60%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 37 (22.29%) Active Directory
2 6 (3.61%) Docker
3 5 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (1.20%) Firmware
4 2 (1.20%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.60%) BitLocker
5 1 (0.60%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.60%) Job Entry Subsystem
5 1 (0.60%) NFS
5 1 (0.60%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 16 (9.64%) Microsoft Intune
2 12 (7.23%) Terraform
3 7 (4.22%) SCCM
4 4 (2.41%) Kubernetes
5 3 (1.81%) Ansible
5 3 (1.81%) VxRail
6 2 (1.20%) SCOM
6 2 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.60%) Control-M
7 1 (0.60%) Failover Clustering
7 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 11 (6.63%) Oracle
1 11 (6.63%) SAP
2 8 (4.82%) Salesforce
3 5 (3.01%) Databricks
3 5 (3.01%) ServiceNow
3 5 (3.01%) VMware
4 3 (1.81%) Apple
4 3 (1.81%) MuleSoft
4 3 (1.81%) Samsung
5 2 (1.20%) CyberArk
5 2 (1.20%) NetApp
5 2 (1.20%) SolarWinds
5 2 (1.20%) Workday
6 1 (0.60%) Aruba
6 1 (0.60%) AVEVA
6 1 (0.60%) DocuSign
6 1 (0.60%) Google
6 1 (0.60%) Okta
6 1 (0.60%) Ping Identity
6 1 (0.60%) Splunk