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 21 June 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 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 5 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -4
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 146 105 117
As % of all contract jobs in the East Midlands 13.20% 15.46% 13.36%
As % of the Vendors category 30.10% 35.96% 33.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 95 73 69
10th Percentile £131 £177 £159
25th Percentile £240 £250 £250
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £375 £400
Median % change year-on-year +13.33% -6.25% +6.67%
75th Percentile £516 £475 £550
90th Percentile £600 £540 £648
England median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 9 21
10th Percentile £12.94 £16.10 -
25th Percentile £13.25 £18.38 £12.75
Median hourly rate £15.23 £23.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.80% +64.29% -30.00%
75th Percentile £26.88 £25.15 £15.00
90th Percentile £32.63 - £26.50
England median hourly rate £22.50 £19.00 £15.89
% change year-on-year +18.42% +19.57% -28.58%

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 485 292 354
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the East Midlands 43.85% 43.00% 40.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 286 194 215
10th Percentile £199 £238 £188
25th Percentile £375 £323 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £430 £475
Median % change year-on-year +10.47% -9.47% -
75th Percentile £575 £537 £600
90th Percentile £641 £629 £642
England median daily rate £505 £513 £520
% change year-on-year -1.46% -1.44% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 25 28
10th Percentile £13.25 £13.81 £10.90
25th Percentile £13.54 £15.09 £12.60
Median hourly rate £17.87 £18.87 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.30% +34.79% -35.39%
75th Percentile £22.00 £25.11 £14.54
90th Percentile £74.00 £25.15 £26.50
England median hourly rate £34.87 £27.17 £24.19
% change year-on-year +28.35% +12.33% -38.85%

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 21 June 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 21 June 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 21 June 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 +4 50 £375 -8.54% 44
Northamptonshire +3 33 £424 +2.85% 32
Leicestershire -2 27 £131 -47.53% 44
Derbyshire -2 22 £475 +58.33% 33
Lincolnshire -10 7 £488 +170.83% 39
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 (10.96%) Microsoft Exchange
2 12 (8.22%) SharePoint
3 4 (2.74%) Confluence
4 3 (2.05%) 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 20 (13.70%) Microsoft Excel
1 20 (13.70%) Microsoft Office
2 9 (6.16%) Spreadsheet
3 7 (4.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.68%) FrameMaker
4 1 (0.68%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.68%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 5 (3.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (2.05%) SAP CRM
3 2 (1.37%) Maximo
4 1 (0.68%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 49 (33.56%) Azure
2 28 (19.18%) Microsoft 365
3 20 (13.70%) Entra ID
4 12 (8.22%) Power Platform
5 10 (6.85%) AWS
6 7 (4.79%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (4.11%) Azure AKS
7 6 (4.11%) GCP
8 5 (3.42%) Dynamics 365
8 5 (3.42%) Salesforce Commerce Cloud
9 4 (2.74%) Azure Service Bus
9 4 (2.74%) GitHub
9 4 (2.74%) OCI
9 4 (2.74%) Serverless
10 3 (2.05%) Algolia
10 3 (2.05%) Amazon GuardDuty
10 3 (2.05%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (2.05%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 3 (2.05%) Azure Functions
10 3 (2.05%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 10 (6.85%) Network Security
2 7 (4.79%) VLAN
3 6 (4.11%) Firewall
4 4 (2.74%) DNS
5 3 (2.05%) DHCP
5 3 (2.05%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (1.37%) SAN
7 1 (0.68%) LAN
7 1 (0.68%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.68%) Unified Communications
7 1 (0.68%) VPN
7 1 (0.68%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (4.79%) PostgreSQL
2 6 (4.11%) Power BI
2 6 (4.11%) SQL Server
3 5 (3.42%) Azure SQL Database
4 4 (2.74%) Relational Database
5 3 (2.05%) Metabase
5 3 (2.05%) Parquet
6 2 (1.37%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.37%) Tableau
7 1 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (0.68%) Big Data
7 1 (0.68%) Data Lake
7 1 (0.68%) Metadata
7 1 (0.68%) MySQL
7 1 (0.68%) Power Query
7 1 (0.68%) RDBMS
7 1 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (0.68%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 1 (0.68%) VLDB
Development Applications
1 5 (3.42%) JIRA
2 2 (1.37%) Git
2 2 (1.37%) GitLab
General
1 48 (32.88%) Social Skills
2 16 (10.96%) Analytical Skills
3 14 (9.59%) Finance
4 9 (6.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 8 (5.48%) Law
6 7 (4.79%) Organisational Skills
7 6 (4.11%) Retail
8 5 (3.42%) Public Sector
9 4 (2.74%) Banking
9 4 (2.74%) Manufacturing
10 2 (1.37%) Automotive
10 2 (1.37%) Billing
10 2 (1.37%) Documentation Skills
11 1 (0.68%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.68%) Agriculture
11 1 (0.68%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.68%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 31 (21.23%) Analyst
2 20 (13.70%) Architect
3 17 (11.64%) Developer
4 15 (10.27%) Administrator
5 12 (8.22%) Senior
6 11 (7.53%) Service Analyst
6 11 (7.53%) Service Desk Analyst
7 10 (6.85%) .NET Developer
8 9 (6.16%) Desktop Support
8 9 (6.16%) IT Support
8 9 (6.16%) Lead
9 8 (5.48%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 8 (5.48%) Systems Administrator
10 7 (4.79%) Data Analyst
10 7 (4.79%) Solutions Architect
11 6 (4.11%) Consultant
11 6 (4.11%) Lead Developer
11 6 (4.11%) Senior Architect
12 5 (3.42%) .NET Software Developer
12 5 (3.42%) Lead .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (8.22%) .NET
2 9 (6.16%) REST
3 7 (4.79%) Node.js
4 4 (2.74%) React
5 3 (2.05%) Kafka
5 3 (2.05%) Middleware
5 3 (2.05%) OAuth
5 3 (2.05%) OAuth2
5 3 (2.05%) OpenID
5 3 (2.05%) Plotly
5 3 (2.05%) SAML
6 2 (1.37%) Lightning Web Components
6 2 (1.37%) RabbitMQ
6 2 (1.37%) SOAP
7 1 (0.68%) Express.js
7 1 (0.68%) J2EE
7 1 (0.68%) OSGi
7 1 (0.68%) PySpark
7 1 (0.68%) Web Services
7 1 (0.68%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 9 (6.16%) Cloud Native
2 7 (4.79%) Product Ownership
3 5 (3.42%) Management Information System
3 5 (3.42%) Smartphone
4 4 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
4 4 (2.74%) Onboarding
4 4 (2.74%) Self-Motivation
5 3 (2.05%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.37%) Data Structures
6 2 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
6 2 (1.37%) Low-Code
6 2 (1.37%) Security Posture
7 1 (0.68%) Data Centre
7 1 (0.68%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.68%) Device Driver
7 1 (0.68%) Mainframe
7 1 (0.68%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.68%) NHS
7 1 (0.68%) PMI
7 1 (0.68%) Smartcard
Operating Systems
1 43 (29.45%) Windows
2 20 (13.70%) Windows 10
3 7 (4.79%) Windows Server
4 4 (2.74%) Apple iOS
4 4 (2.74%) Linux
5 3 (2.05%) Windows 7
5 3 (2.05%) Windows 8
6 2 (1.37%) CentOS
6 2 (1.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.68%) Data ONTAP
7 1 (0.68%) MVS
7 1 (0.68%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.68%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (25.34%) Problem-Solving
2 28 (19.18%) CI/CD
3 22 (15.07%) Customer Service
3 22 (15.07%) DevOps
4 19 (13.01%) Stakeholder Management
5 16 (10.96%) Infrastructure as Code
6 14 (9.59%) Continuous Improvement
7 12 (8.22%) Asset Management
7 12 (8.22%) CRM
7 12 (8.22%) Project Delivery
8 11 (7.53%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 11 (7.53%) Migration
9 10 (6.85%) Agile
9 10 (6.85%) Decision-Making
9 10 (6.85%) Validation
10 9 (6.16%) Digital Strategy
10 9 (6.16%) Network Segmentation
10 9 (6.16%) Performance Tuning
11 8 (5.48%) Collaborative Working
11 8 (5.48%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 16 (10.96%) C#
2 11 (7.53%) SQL
3 9 (6.16%) PowerShell
4 8 (5.48%) JavaScript
5 5 (3.42%) Bicep
5 5 (3.42%) Python
6 4 (2.74%) Kusto Query Language
7 3 (2.05%) MATLAB
7 3 (2.05%) Rust
8 2 (1.37%) Apex Code
8 2 (1.37%) SOQL
8 2 (1.37%) TypeScript
9 1 (0.68%) Java
9 1 (0.68%) JCL
9 1 (0.68%) REXX
9 1 (0.68%) SOSL
9 1 (0.68%) VBA
Qualifications
1 7 (4.79%) Degree
2 5 (3.42%) BPSS Clearance
2 5 (3.42%) Microsoft Certification
2 5 (3.42%) Security Cleared
3 4 (2.74%) SC Cleared
4 3 (2.05%) Azure Certification
5 2 (1.37%) CISM
5 2 (1.37%) CISSP
5 2 (1.37%) Master's Degree
5 2 (1.37%) Oracle Certification
6 1 (0.68%) AAT
6 1 (0.68%) CIMA
6 1 (0.68%) CompTIA Security+
6 1 (0.68%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.68%) CREST Certified
6 1 (0.68%) CRISC
6 1 (0.68%) ECSA
6 1 (0.68%) IIBA
6 1 (0.68%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
6 1 (0.68%) OSCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (3.42%) GDPR
2 4 (2.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 4 (2.74%) NIST
2 4 (2.74%) PCI DSS
3 3 (2.05%) GRC
3 3 (2.05%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
3 3 (2.05%) PMO
3 3 (2.05%) SLA
3 3 (2.05%) SOC 2
4 2 (1.37%) QA
5 1 (0.68%) Data Quality
System Software
1 37 (25.34%) Active Directory
2 5 (3.42%) Docker
3 2 (1.37%) Firmware
3 2 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.68%) BitLocker
4 1 (0.68%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.68%) Job Entry Subsystem
4 1 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.68%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 16 (10.96%) Terraform
2 13 (8.90%) Microsoft Intune
3 12 (8.22%) SCCM
4 6 (4.11%) Kubernetes
5 4 (2.74%) Ansible
5 4 (2.74%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.68%) Control-M
6 1 (0.68%) SCOM
6 1 (0.68%) VxRail
Vendors
1 11 (7.53%) SAP
2 9 (6.16%) Salesforce
3 6 (4.11%) Oracle
4 5 (3.42%) HP
4 5 (3.42%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.74%) Databricks
5 4 (2.74%) Splunk
6 3 (2.05%) MuleSoft
7 2 (1.37%) Adobe
7 2 (1.37%) Google
7 2 (1.37%) NetApp
7 2 (1.37%) SolarWinds
7 2 (1.37%) VMware
8 1 (0.68%) Apple
8 1 (0.68%) BMC
8 1 (0.68%) Citrix
8 1 (0.68%) Dell
8 1 (0.68%) Intel
8 1 (0.68%) NEC
8 1 (0.68%) Sage