Microsoft Contract Job Trends in the North West

Microsoft
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West 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 31 July 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
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 490 380 343
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 13.07% 17.53% 14.10%
As % of the Vendors category 31.84% 35.61% 36.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 322 244 199
10th Percentile £185 £207 £184
25th Percentile £326 £350 £338
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £439 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.51% -2.44% -2.70%
75th Percentile £538 £525 £588
90th Percentile £611 £600 £643
England median daily rate £490 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.52% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 48 69
10th Percentile £19.29 £12.95 -
25th Percentile £25.38 £17.44 £10.95
Median hourly rate £29.00 £22.47 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +29.05% +39.93% -27.00%
75th Percentile £65.21 £30.82 £17.72
90th Percentile £178.75 £63.40 £29.50
England median hourly rate £23.08 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year +1.99% +39.43% -26.23%

All Vendors
North West

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 North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 1,539 1,067 943
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 41.04% 49.22% 38.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 907 673 556
10th Percentile £266 £300 £266
25th Percentile £400 £393 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £594
90th Percentile £663 £674 £652
England median daily rate £510 £510 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 72 104
10th Percentile £17.25 £13.00 £10.95
25th Percentile £24.00 £19.07 £12.07
Median hourly rate £29.96 £28.59 £16.06
Median % change year-on-year +4.79% +78.02% -45.19%
75th Percentile £65.93 £51.37 £35.36
90th Percentile £85.90 £70.00 £55.79
England median hourly rate £35.50 £25.15 £28.00
% change year-on-year +41.15% -10.18% -27.32%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in the North West

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in the North West over the 6 months to 31 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the North West

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in the North West over the 6 months to 31 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the North West

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the North West region over the 6 months to 31 July 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
Manchester -3 243 £450 - 217
Cheshire +4 118 £510 +16.70% 59
Merseyside +1 58 £150 -62.50% 57
Lancashire -6 32 £400 -15.79% 101
Cumbria -5 30 £460 +2.22% 13
Microsoft
England

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 67 (13.67%) SharePoint
2 45 (9.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.65%) Confluence
4 8 (1.63%) Skype for Business
5 7 (1.43%) SharePoint Server
6 3 (0.61%) CMS
6 3 (0.61%) IIS
7 2 (0.41%) Apache
7 2 (0.41%) Apache Spark
8 1 (0.20%) CICS
8 1 (0.20%) SharePoint 2013
8 1 (0.20%) WebSphere
Applications
1 55 (11.22%) Microsoft Office
2 35 (7.14%) Microsoft Excel
3 13 (2.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (2.24%) Microsoft Project
5 8 (1.63%) MS Visio
6 5 (1.02%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.41%) AutoCAD
8 1 (0.20%) MicroStation
8 1 (0.20%) Navisworks
8 1 (0.20%) ProjectWise
8 1 (0.20%) Revit
Business Applications
1 13 (2.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 12 (2.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 5 (1.02%) Oracle Payables
3 5 (1.02%) Primavera
3 5 (1.02%) SAP MM
4 4 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.61%) Elite 3E
6 2 (0.41%) Dynamics AX
7 1 (0.20%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.20%) Integrated Workplace Management System
7 1 (0.20%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 200 (40.82%) Azure
2 165 (33.67%) Microsoft 365
3 82 (16.73%) Power Platform
4 68 (13.88%) Entra ID
5 49 (10.00%) Microsoft Copilot
6 43 (8.78%) AWS
7 37 (7.55%) Dynamics 365
8 33 (6.73%) Azure DevOps
9 31 (6.33%) Power Automate
9 31 (6.33%) PowerApps
10 24 (4.90%) OneDrive
11 18 (3.67%) GCP
12 14 (2.86%) Serverless
13 13 (2.65%) GitHub
13 13 (2.65%) Microsoft Purview
14 12 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
15 11 (2.24%) Azure AI
16 10 (2.04%) GitHub Actions
17 9 (1.84%) Azure AKS
18 8 (1.63%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 27 (5.51%) DNS
2 25 (5.10%) Firewall
3 20 (4.08%) VPN
4 14 (2.86%) Network Security
4 14 (2.86%) Skype
5 13 (2.65%) DHCP
6 11 (2.24%) TCP/IP
7 8 (1.63%) LAN
8 7 (1.43%) SSL
8 7 (1.43%) WAN
8 7 (1.43%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (1.02%) VLAN
10 4 (0.82%) SAN
11 3 (0.61%) NAS
11 3 (0.61%) PABX
11 3 (0.61%) SSH
11 3 (0.61%) WebEx
12 2 (0.41%) BGP
12 2 (0.41%) Internet
12 2 (0.41%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (10.41%) Power BI
2 40 (8.16%) SQL Server
3 15 (3.06%) MySQL
3 15 (3.06%) PostgreSQL
3 15 (3.06%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (1.63%) Power Query
4 8 (1.63%) Relational Database
5 6 (1.22%) Data Warehouse
5 6 (1.22%) Metadata
6 5 (1.02%) MongoDB
6 5 (1.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 4 (0.82%) Data Lake
7 4 (0.82%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 3 (0.61%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.61%) NoSQL
8 3 (0.61%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (0.61%) RDBMS
9 2 (0.41%) BusinessObjects
9 2 (0.41%) Oracle Database
9 2 (0.41%) Oracle Database 12c
Development Applications
1 22 (4.49%) JIRA
2 12 (2.45%) Git
3 7 (1.43%) Jenkins
4 5 (1.02%) GitLab
5 3 (0.61%) MSI
6 2 (0.41%) Claude Code
6 2 (0.41%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.41%) Toad
7 1 (0.20%) Postman
7 1 (0.20%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.20%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 143 (29.18%) Social Skills
2 100 (20.41%) Finance
3 62 (12.65%) Analytical Skills
4 43 (8.78%) Banking
4 43 (8.78%) Public Sector
5 33 (6.73%) Legal
6 17 (3.47%) Manufacturing
7 15 (3.06%) Local Government
7 15 (3.06%) Organisational Skills
8 8 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.63%) Retail
9 7 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (1.43%) Investment Banking
10 6 (1.22%) Telecoms
11 5 (1.02%) Marketing
11 5 (1.02%) Military
11 5 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.82%) Advertising
12 4 (0.82%) Corporate Banking
12 4 (0.82%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 50 (10.20%) Analyst
2 40 (8.16%) IT Support
3 39 (7.96%) Architect
4 38 (7.76%) Support Engineer
5 30 (6.12%) Developer
5 30 (6.12%) IT Engineer
5 30 (6.12%) IT Support Engineer
6 29 (5.92%) Lead
7 27 (5.51%) DBA
8 23 (4.69%) Administrator
9 20 (4.08%) Security Engineer
10 18 (3.67%) Senior
11 17 (3.47%) Service Analyst
12 16 (3.27%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
12 16 (3.27%) SQL DBA
13 15 (3.06%) 1st Line Support
14 13 (2.65%) Cloud Engineer
14 13 (2.65%) Designer
15 12 (2.45%) IT Analyst
15 12 (2.45%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (1.43%) Microsoft Graph
1 7 (1.43%) REST
1 7 (1.43%) SAML
1 7 (1.43%) Spring
1 7 (1.43%) Spring Boot
2 6 (1.22%) JSON
2 6 (1.22%) Software Packaging
3 5 (1.02%) .NET
3 5 (1.02%) ARM Templates
3 5 (1.02%) Kafka
3 5 (1.02%) XML
4 4 (0.82%) HTML5 Canvas
4 4 (0.82%) Node.js
4 4 (0.82%) OAuth
4 4 (0.82%) SailPoint
5 3 (0.61%) Azure Blueprints
5 3 (0.61%) LangChain
5 3 (0.61%) PySpark
5 3 (0.61%) React
5 3 (0.61%) XMPP
Miscellaneous
1 32 (6.53%) Onboarding
2 24 (4.90%) Cloud Native
3 20 (4.08%) Management Information System
4 19 (3.88%) Replication
5 17 (3.47%) Clustering
6 11 (2.24%) Security Posture
7 10 (2.04%) Product Ownership
8 9 (1.84%) AI Agents
8 9 (1.84%) Data Centre
8 9 (1.84%) Driving Licence
9 8 (1.63%) Legacy Systems
10 7 (1.43%) Enterprise Cloud
11 6 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.22%) PKI
12 5 (1.02%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
12 5 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (1.02%) Linux Command Line
12 5 (1.02%) Mobile App
12 5 (1.02%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 136 (27.76%) Windows
2 63 (12.86%) Windows 10
3 31 (6.33%) Windows Server
4 25 (5.10%) Linux
5 11 (2.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (2.04%) Unix
7 9 (1.84%) Windows 7
8 8 (1.63%) Solaris
9 7 (1.43%) Android
9 7 (1.43%) Apple iOS
9 7 (1.43%) Mac OS
10 5 (1.02%) AIX
10 5 (1.02%) VMS
11 4 (0.82%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.61%) HPUX
12 3 (0.61%) Oracle Linux
12 3 (0.61%) SUSE
13 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
13 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
14 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (16.33%) ITIL
2 72 (14.69%) Problem-Solving
3 64 (13.06%) DevOps
4 59 (12.04%) Customer Service
5 57 (11.63%) Agile
6 51 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
7 49 (10.00%) Business Intelligence
7 49 (10.00%) Migration
8 48 (9.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 47 (9.59%) CI/CD
10 45 (9.18%) Continuous Improvement
11 42 (8.57%) AI
12 40 (8.16%) Analytics
12 40 (8.16%) Service Management
13 38 (7.76%) Change Management
13 38 (7.76%) ITSM
14 32 (6.53%) Roadmaps
15 31 (6.33%) Infrastructure as Code
16 30 (6.12%) Project Delivery
17 28 (5.71%) Disaster Recovery
Programming Languages
1 77 (15.71%) PowerShell
2 65 (13.27%) SQL
3 46 (9.39%) Python
4 18 (3.67%) Bicep
5 16 (3.27%) T-SQL
6 14 (2.86%) Java
7 12 (2.45%) Bash
8 11 (2.24%) VBScript
9 10 (2.04%) C#
10 8 (1.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (1.63%) JavaScript
11 7 (1.43%) VB
12 3 (0.61%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.20%) C++
13 1 (0.20%) COBOL
13 1 (0.20%) Kusto Query Language
13 1 (0.20%) Search Processing Language
13 1 (0.20%) VBA
Qualifications
1 91 (18.57%) Security Cleared
2 77 (15.71%) SC Cleared
3 65 (13.27%) Degree
4 45 (9.18%) Microsoft Certification
5 36 (7.35%) BPSS Clearance
6 21 (4.29%) Azure Certification
7 13 (2.65%) CISSP
8 11 (2.24%) AWS Certification
8 11 (2.24%) Computer Science Degree
9 10 (2.04%) DBS Check
9 10 (2.04%) MCSE
10 9 (1.84%) MCSA
11 8 (1.63%) A+ Certification
11 8 (1.63%) VCAP
11 8 (1.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 7 (1.43%) ITIL Certification
12 7 (1.43%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 6 (1.22%) Network+ Certification
14 4 (0.82%) Cisco Certification
14 4 (0.82%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (3.47%) GDPR
2 15 (3.06%) SLA
3 13 (2.65%) Data Quality
4 12 (2.45%) PMO
5 10 (2.04%) NIST
6 6 (1.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (1.02%) Accessibility
7 5 (1.02%) QA
7 5 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (1.02%) WCAG
8 4 (0.82%) NCSC
9 3 (0.61%) GRC
10 2 (0.41%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.41%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.41%) P3O
10 2 (0.41%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.20%) ISO 19650
11 1 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
System Software
1 125 (25.51%) Active Directory
2 24 (4.90%) Docker
3 19 (3.88%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (2.24%) VMware ESXi
6 10 (2.04%) vSphere
7 9 (1.84%) BitLocker
8 5 (1.02%) Hyper-V
8 5 (1.02%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.82%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.61%) NFS
11 2 (0.41%) GPFS
11 2 (0.41%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.20%) Veritas Volume Manager
12 1 (0.20%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 37 (7.55%) Microsoft Intune
2 31 (6.33%) Terraform
3 28 (5.71%) Kubernetes
4 21 (4.29%) SCCM
5 16 (3.27%) Ansible
6 10 (2.04%) vCenter Server
7 8 (1.63%) Progress Chef
7 8 (1.63%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
8 6 (1.22%) Grafana
8 6 (1.22%) SCOM
9 4 (0.82%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.61%) CASB
10 3 (0.61%) Prometheus
11 2 (0.41%) Argo
11 2 (0.41%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
11 2 (0.41%) Istio
11 2 (0.41%) linkerd
11 2 (0.41%) vRealize
11 2 (0.41%) VxRail
Vendors
1 80 (16.33%) ServiceNow
2 25 (5.10%) Cisco
3 23 (4.69%) Oracle
4 19 (3.88%) VMware
5 18 (3.67%) SAP
6 17 (3.47%) iManage
6 17 (3.47%) Remedy
6 17 (3.47%) Splunk
7 16 (3.27%) BeyondTrust
7 16 (3.27%) Google
8 14 (2.86%) Red Hat
9 12 (2.45%) Bomgar
10 11 (2.24%) Databricks
11 6 (1.22%) CrowdStrike
12 5 (1.02%) Citrix
12 5 (1.02%) CyberArk
12 5 (1.02%) HP
12 5 (1.02%) IBM
12 5 (1.02%) UiPath
13 4 (0.82%) Salesforce