Microsoft Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Microsoft
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in Manchester 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 2 March 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
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 2 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 +5 +1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 178 186 191
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 12.76% 18.24% 12.17%
As % of the Vendors category 33.71% 39.74% 32.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 141 141 132
10th Percentile £300 £213 £248
25th Percentile £326 £348 £322
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £450 £428
Median % change year-on-year -5.56% +5.26% -9.43%
75th Percentile £528 £525 £525
90th Percentile £599 £700 £606
North West median daily rate £415 £450 £413
% change year-on-year -7.78% +9.09% -13.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 8 33
10th Percentile £16.83 - £11.83
25th Percentile £19.75 £31.25 £12.84
Median hourly rate £25.25 £32.50 £16.05
Median % change year-on-year -22.31% +102.56% -18.76%
75th Percentile £31.40 £33.75 £25.25
90th Percentile - - £26.50
North West median hourly rate £29.30 £28.75 £16.06
% change year-on-year +1.91% +79.02% -33.08%

All Vendors
Manchester

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 Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 528 468 589
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 37.85% 45.88% 37.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 379 311 409
10th Percentile £313 £313 £282
25th Percentile £392 £400 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £473 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.74% -5.50% +2.56%
75th Percentile £581 £575 £575
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
North West median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +3.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 11 43
10th Percentile £16.41 - £11.83
25th Percentile £19.75 £31.25 £12.84
Median hourly rate £22.68 £32.50 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -30.22% +83.41% -52.75%
75th Percentile £30.00 £33.75 £26.50
90th Percentile £31.91 £60.00 £57.80
North West median hourly rate £29.60 £32.50 £17.04
% change year-on-year -8.92% +90.76% -49.52%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in Manchester

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in Manchester

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in Manchester over the 6 months to 2 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in Manchester

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in Manchester

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in Manchester over the 6 months to 2 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in Manchester

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in Manchester

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the Manchester region over the 6 months to 2 March 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
Bolton +1 5 £400 +113.33% 11
Oldham -1 3 £215 -40.69% 5
Stockport -2 2 £155 -61.25% 12
Salford +2 1 - - 11
Rochdale - 1 - -
Microsoft
North West

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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 18 (10.11%) SharePoint
2 9 (5.06%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (2.81%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (2.25%) Confluence
5 2 (1.12%) Apache
6 1 (0.56%) CICS
6 1 (0.56%) CMS
6 1 (0.56%) IIS
6 1 (0.56%) iPlanet
6 1 (0.56%) JBoss
6 1 (0.56%) SAS
6 1 (0.56%) WebSphere
6 1 (0.56%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 25 (14.04%) Microsoft Office
2 15 (8.43%) Microsoft Excel
3 5 (2.81%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (2.81%) MS Visio
4 4 (2.25%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (2.25%) Trello
5 2 (1.12%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.56%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 7 (3.93%) Advent Geneva
2 5 (2.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (1.12%) Primavera
3 2 (1.12%) SAP MM
4 1 (0.56%) Infor M3
4 1 (0.56%) Maximo
4 1 (0.56%) NetSuite
4 1 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 69 (38.76%) Azure
2 40 (22.47%) Microsoft 365
3 38 (21.35%) Power Platform
4 25 (14.04%) Entra ID
5 20 (11.24%) AWS
6 19 (10.67%) Power Automate
6 19 (10.67%) PowerApps
7 15 (8.43%) GCP
7 15 (8.43%) Microsoft Copilot
8 14 (7.87%) Dynamics 365
9 12 (6.74%) Azure DevOps
10 9 (5.06%) OneDrive
11 8 (4.49%) Google Tag Manager
11 8 (4.49%) Microsoft Purview
11 8 (4.49%) Serverless
12 7 (3.93%) Google Analytics
13 6 (3.37%) Azure AKS
14 5 (2.81%) Azure Logic Apps
15 4 (2.25%) Azure Functions
15 4 (2.25%) GitHub
Communications & Networking
1 13 (7.30%) Firewall
2 7 (3.93%) Network Security
3 3 (1.69%) DNS
3 3 (1.69%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (1.12%) VPN
4 2 (1.12%) WAN
5 1 (0.56%) Cisco ISE
5 1 (0.56%) DHCP
5 1 (0.56%) HTTP
5 1 (0.56%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (0.56%) Kerberos
5 1 (0.56%) LAN
5 1 (0.56%) NGFW
5 1 (0.56%) SD-WAN
5 1 (0.56%) SSL
5 1 (0.56%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.56%) WebEx
5 1 (0.56%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (12.36%) Power BI
2 14 (7.87%) Relational Database
3 9 (5.06%) SQL Server
4 7 (3.93%) DB2
4 7 (3.93%) MySQL
4 7 (3.93%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 6 (3.37%) BigQuery
5 6 (3.37%) Looker
6 5 (2.81%) NoSQL
6 5 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
7 4 (2.25%) Data Lake
7 4 (2.25%) MongoDB
7 4 (2.25%) RDBMS
8 3 (1.69%) BusinessObjects
8 3 (1.69%) Data Warehouse
8 3 (1.69%) Oracle Reports
9 2 (1.12%) Metadata
9 2 (1.12%) Snowflake Schema
10 1 (0.56%) MS Access
10 1 (0.56%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 8 (4.49%) JIRA
2 4 (2.25%) Git
2 4 (2.25%) GitLab
3 2 (1.12%) Jenkins
4 1 (0.56%) Bitbucket Server
4 1 (0.56%) Browser DevTools
4 1 (0.56%) CA Release Automation
4 1 (0.56%) MSI
4 1 (0.56%) Octopus Deploy
4 1 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 63 (35.39%) Social Skills
2 41 (23.03%) Finance
3 35 (19.66%) Public Sector
4 26 (14.61%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (6.18%) Banking
6 10 (5.62%) Documentation Skills
6 10 (5.62%) Legal
7 5 (2.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (2.81%) Influencing Skills
8 4 (2.25%) Manufacturing
8 4 (2.25%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.69%) Law
9 3 (1.69%) Retail
10 2 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.56%) Billing
11 1 (0.56%) Games
11 1 (0.56%) Marketing
11 1 (0.56%) Military
11 1 (0.56%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 32 (17.98%) Analyst
1 32 (17.98%) Developer
2 15 (8.43%) Senior
3 14 (7.87%) Lead
4 11 (6.18%) Administrator
5 10 (5.62%) Security Engineer
5 10 (5.62%) Support Analyst
6 9 (5.06%) Microsoft Engineer
7 8 (4.49%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
8 7 (3.93%) Architect
8 7 (3.93%) Project Manager
9 6 (3.37%) Business Analyst
9 6 (3.37%) Consultant
9 6 (3.37%) IT Support
9 6 (3.37%) Microsoft Developer
9 6 (3.37%) Senior Analyst
10 5 (2.81%) DBA
10 5 (2.81%) DevOps Engineer
10 5 (2.81%) Java Developer
10 5 (2.81%) Performance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (7.30%) .NET
2 8 (4.49%) JSON
3 7 (3.93%) HTML5 Canvas
4 6 (3.37%) HTML
4 6 (3.37%) Kafka
4 6 (3.37%) REST
4 6 (3.37%) Spring
4 6 (3.37%) Spring Boot
4 6 (3.37%) XML
5 3 (1.69%) LangChain
6 2 (1.12%) LDAP
6 2 (1.12%) OAuth
6 2 (1.12%) OpenID
6 2 (1.12%) SAML
7 1 (0.56%) 802.1X
7 1 (0.56%) AngularJS
7 1 (0.56%) JPA
7 1 (0.56%) OAuth2
7 1 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
7 1 (0.56%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 13 (7.30%) Onboarding
2 9 (5.06%) Cloud Native
3 8 (4.49%) Security Posture
4 7 (3.93%) Virtual Team
5 6 (3.37%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (2.81%) Product Ownership
7 4 (2.25%) Cloud Security Posture
7 4 (2.25%) Data Centre
7 4 (2.25%) Low-Code
7 4 (2.25%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.69%) Driving Licence
8 3 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
9 2 (1.12%) Analytical Mindset
9 2 (1.12%) Clustering
9 2 (1.12%) Enterprise Software
9 2 (1.12%) Linux Command Line
9 2 (1.12%) Mainframe
10 1 (0.56%) CMDB
10 1 (0.56%) Taxonomies
10 1 (0.56%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 23 (12.92%) Windows
2 13 (7.30%) Linux
2 13 (7.30%) Windows 10
3 6 (3.37%) Unix
4 5 (2.81%) Mac OS
5 2 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.56%) AIX
6 1 (0.56%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.56%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.56%) Solaris
6 1 (0.56%) VMS
6 1 (0.56%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (16.29%) DevOps
2 28 (15.73%) Agile
3 25 (14.04%) Problem-Solving
4 24 (13.48%) Business Intelligence
5 23 (12.92%) CI/CD
6 20 (11.24%) Analytics
7 19 (10.67%) ITIL
8 18 (10.11%) Stakeholder Management
9 17 (9.55%) User Experience
10 15 (8.43%) Change Management
10 15 (8.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 14 (7.87%) Actionable Insight
11 14 (7.87%) Roadmaps
12 13 (7.30%) Customer Service
12 13 (7.30%) Data Analysis
13 12 (6.74%) Cloud Security
13 12 (6.74%) Containerisation
13 12 (6.74%) Identity Access Management
13 12 (6.74%) Migration
13 12 (6.74%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 29 (16.29%) SQL
2 16 (8.99%) PowerShell
3 15 (8.43%) Python
4 13 (7.30%) Java
5 9 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 6 (3.37%) C#
7 5 (2.81%) Bash
8 3 (1.69%) TypeScript
9 2 (1.12%) Bicep
9 2 (1.12%) COBOL
9 2 (1.12%) PL/SQL
9 2 (1.12%) T-SQL
9 2 (1.12%) VBA
10 1 (0.56%) C++
10 1 (0.56%) CLIST
10 1 (0.56%) Groovy
10 1 (0.56%) JCL
10 1 (0.56%) PHP
10 1 (0.56%) REXX
10 1 (0.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 15 (8.43%) Degree
2 13 (7.30%) Microsoft Certification
3 11 (6.18%) Security Cleared
4 9 (5.06%) SC Cleared
5 7 (3.93%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (2.25%) PMI Certification
7 3 (1.69%) A+ Certification
7 3 (1.69%) Azure Certification
7 3 (1.69%) CISSP
7 3 (1.69%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (1.69%) Network+ Certification
7 3 (1.69%) PMP
8 2 (1.12%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.12%) MCSA
8 2 (1.12%) MCSE
8 2 (1.12%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 1 (0.56%) APMG
9 1 (0.56%) CBAP
9 1 (0.56%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.56%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (7.87%) Accessibility
2 13 (7.30%) Data Quality
3 11 (6.18%) GDPR
4 10 (5.62%) QA
5 9 (5.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (2.25%) Cyber Essentials
7 2 (1.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (1.12%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
8 1 (0.56%) NIST
8 1 (0.56%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.56%) PMO
8 1 (0.56%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.56%) WCAG
System Software
1 30 (16.85%) Active Directory
2 14 (7.87%) Docker
3 3 (1.69%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.56%) ACF2
4 1 (0.56%) RACF
4 1 (0.56%) Time Sharing Option
4 1 (0.56%) Tivoli Directory Server
4 1 (0.56%) Virtual Desktop
4 1 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 15 (8.43%) Microsoft Intune
2 14 (7.87%) Kubernetes
3 5 (2.81%) Terraform
4 4 (2.25%) Progress Chef
4 4 (2.25%) SCCM
4 4 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (1.12%) CASB
5 2 (1.12%) Grafana
5 2 (1.12%) Tivoli
6 1 (0.56%) CA Endevor
6 1 (0.56%) CA Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.56%) CA Wily
6 1 (0.56%) Jamf Pro
6 1 (0.56%) Nessus
6 1 (0.56%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.56%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 15 (8.43%) Google
2 10 (5.62%) Oracle
3 7 (3.93%) Advent
4 4 (2.25%) Cisco
4 4 (2.25%) Citrix
4 4 (2.25%) Splunk
4 4 (2.25%) VMware
5 3 (1.69%) IBM
5 3 (1.69%) Salesforce
5 3 (1.69%) SAP
5 3 (1.69%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.12%) Apple
6 2 (1.12%) Confluent
6 2 (1.12%) Databricks
6 2 (1.12%) Okta
6 2 (1.12%) Red Hat
6 2 (1.12%) Remedy
6 2 (1.12%) Varonis
7 1 (0.56%) Cribl.io
7 1 (0.56%) Ekahau