Microsoft Contract Job Trends in the South West

Microsoft
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South 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 7 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
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 +1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 362 277 466
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 12.48% 15.81% 14.44%
As % of the Vendors category 36.20% 33.21% 34.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 263 196 307
10th Percentile £211 £195 £203
25th Percentile £375 £222 £315
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +9.47% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £600 £606 £600
90th Percentile £725 £725 £705
England median daily rate £492 £476 £493
% change year-on-year +3.47% -3.45% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 9 56
10th Percentile £15.60 £17.06 £13.00
25th Percentile £19.15 £18.51 £14.36
Median hourly rate £25.46 £27.13 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -6.14% -42.89% -25.78%
75th Percentile £60.00 £28.99 £49.35
90th Percentile £64.95 £37.00 £51.25
England median hourly rate £19.91 £24.18 £16.06
% change year-on-year -17.66% +50.56% -23.27%

All Vendors
South 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 South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 1,000 834 1,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 34.47% 47.60% 41.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 632 542 857
10th Percentile £275 £215 £213
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £525
75th Percentile £600 £619 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £725
England median daily rate £505 £525 £515
% change year-on-year -3.81% +1.94% -4.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 42 175
10th Percentile £18.87 £18.51 £14.54
25th Percentile £23.12 £25.26 £37.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £63.25 £48.72
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +29.82% -25.05%
75th Percentile £60.00 £68.75 £65.98
90th Percentile £72.63 £74.00 £74.78
England median hourly rate £24.55 £31.17 £25.06
% change year-on-year -21.24% +24.40% -26.39%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Microsoft job vacancy trend in the South West

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

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

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

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in the South West over the 6 months to 7 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the South West

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

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

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

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in the South West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in the South West over the 6 months to 7 March 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the South West

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in the South 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 South West region over the 6 months to 7 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
Wiltshire +1 116 £550 - 36
Bristol -8 78 £513 +56.49% 68
Gloucestershire +3 74 £413 -2.94% 62
Somerset 0 49 £475 +4.11% 56
Devon +6 26 £220 +14.29% 42
Dorset -14 8 £394 -21.15% 34
Microsoft
England

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South 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 61 (16.85%) SharePoint
2 52 (14.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 20 (5.52%) Skype for Business
4 5 (1.38%) Confluence
5 3 (0.83%) Oracle Application Server
5 3 (0.83%) SharePoint Server
6 2 (0.55%) Apache
7 1 (0.28%) Apache Airflow
7 1 (0.28%) CMS
7 1 (0.28%) IIS
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.28%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 36 (9.94%) Microsoft Office
2 31 (8.56%) Microsoft Excel
3 10 (2.76%) Microsoft Project
4 9 (2.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (1.93%) Adobe Captivate
5 7 (1.93%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 7 (1.93%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.83%) MS Visio
7 2 (0.55%) InDesign
7 2 (0.55%) InfoPath
8 1 (0.28%) Adobe Illustrator
8 1 (0.28%) PTC Creo
8 1 (0.28%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 7 (1.93%) Maximo
2 6 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.55%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.28%) assyst
4 1 (0.28%) Primavera
4 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 112 (30.94%) Azure
2 89 (24.59%) Microsoft 365
3 42 (11.60%) Entra ID
3 42 (11.60%) Power Platform
4 31 (8.56%) AWS
5 30 (8.29%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (5.25%) Power Automate
7 18 (4.97%) Azure Sentinel
8 17 (4.70%) GitHub
9 16 (4.42%) Dynamics 365
10 15 (4.14%) Azure Monitor
10 15 (4.14%) PowerApps
11 13 (3.59%) Azure Key Vault
12 11 (3.04%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (3.04%) OneDrive
12 11 (3.04%) Serverless
13 10 (2.76%) Azure AKS
13 10 (2.76%) GCP
13 10 (2.76%) SaaS
14 8 (2.21%) Figma
Communications & Networking
1 46 (12.71%) DNS
2 30 (8.29%) Firewall
3 29 (8.01%) DHCP
4 26 (7.18%) Skype
5 21 (5.80%) TCP/IP
6 19 (5.25%) VPN
7 8 (2.21%) Unified Communications
8 5 (1.38%) Network Security
9 4 (1.10%) WAN
10 3 (0.83%) Ethernet
10 3 (0.83%) HTTP
10 3 (0.83%) Kerberos
10 3 (0.83%) LAN
10 3 (0.83%) VLAN
10 3 (0.83%) VoIP
10 3 (0.83%) Wireless
11 2 (0.55%) Cisco IOS
11 2 (0.55%) H.323
11 2 (0.55%) RTP
12 1 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (8.29%) Power BI
2 15 (4.14%) SQL Server
3 13 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
4 9 (2.49%) Redis
5 7 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
5 7 (1.93%) Metadata
6 6 (1.66%) Star Schema
7 4 (1.10%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (0.83%) GIS
8 3 (0.83%) Oracle ODI
8 3 (0.83%) Oracle Reports
8 3 (0.83%) Power Query
9 2 (0.55%) Data Lake
9 2 (0.55%) Delta Lake
9 2 (0.55%) Looker
9 2 (0.55%) MySQL
9 2 (0.55%) Spatial Data
9 2 (0.55%) Tableau
10 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 30 (8.29%) JIRA
2 9 (2.49%) Git
3 7 (1.93%) MSI
4 4 (1.10%) Artifactory
4 4 (1.10%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.83%) DBeaver
5 3 (0.83%) Eclipse
5 3 (0.83%) GitLab
5 3 (0.83%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.28%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.28%) Maven
6 1 (0.28%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.28%) webpack
General
1 156 (43.09%) Social Skills
2 63 (17.40%) Analytical Skills
3 42 (11.60%) Finance
4 37 (10.22%) Public Sector
5 19 (5.25%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (3.87%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (2.76%) Legal
7 10 (2.76%) Manufacturing
8 9 (2.49%) Marketing
8 9 (2.49%) Military
8 9 (2.49%) Telecoms
9 6 (1.66%) Banking
10 5 (1.38%) Electronics
11 4 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.10%) Police
12 3 (0.83%) Back Office
13 2 (0.55%) Law
13 2 (0.55%) Local Government
13 2 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.28%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 38 (10.50%) Architect
1 38 (10.50%) Support Engineer
2 35 (9.67%) Developer
3 34 (9.39%) Analyst
4 27 (7.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 20 (5.52%) Microsoft Engineer
6 19 (5.25%) Administrator
7 16 (4.42%) Desktop Engineer
7 16 (4.42%) Desktop Support
7 16 (4.42%) Desktop Support Engineer
7 16 (4.42%) Solutions Architect
8 15 (4.14%) Azure Engineer
9 13 (3.59%) Consultant
9 13 (3.59%) Data Engineer
10 12 (3.31%) Senior
11 10 (2.76%) Backend Developer
11 10 (2.76%) IT Support
12 9 (2.49%) Designer
12 9 (2.49%) DevOps Engineer
12 9 (2.49%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (6.91%) OAuth
2 24 (6.63%) SAML
3 22 (6.08%) OAuth2
3 22 (6.08%) OpenID
4 21 (5.80%) REST
5 12 (3.31%) ARM Templates
6 9 (2.49%) FastAPI
6 9 (2.49%) Flask
6 9 (2.49%) GraphQL
6 9 (2.49%) gRPC
6 9 (2.49%) WebSockets
7 8 (2.21%) CSS
7 8 (2.21%) HTML
8 7 (1.93%) SOAP
8 7 (1.93%) Web Services
9 6 (1.66%) .NET
9 6 (1.66%) JSON
10 5 (1.38%) JDO
10 5 (1.38%) LDAP
10 5 (1.38%) React
Miscellaneous
1 22 (6.08%) Onboarding
2 21 (5.80%) Hybrid Cloud
3 14 (3.87%) Blackberry
3 14 (3.87%) Cloud Native
4 12 (3.31%) PKI
5 11 (3.04%) Management Information System
6 10 (2.76%) Driving Licence
6 10 (2.76%) Replication
7 9 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
7 9 (2.49%) Mobile App
8 7 (1.93%) Private Cloud
8 7 (1.93%) Product Ownership
9 6 (1.66%) Virtual Team
10 5 (1.38%) Low-Code
11 4 (1.10%) Cyber Threat
11 4 (1.10%) Data Structures
11 4 (1.10%) Security Posture
12 3 (0.83%) Legacy Applications
12 3 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
13 2 (0.55%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 141 (38.95%) Windows
2 49 (13.54%) Windows Server
3 45 (12.43%) Windows 10
4 25 (6.91%) Linux
5 21 (5.80%) Android
6 19 (5.25%) Apple iOS
7 8 (2.21%) Windows Server 2016
8 5 (1.38%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.83%) CentOS
10 2 (0.55%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.28%) Mac OS
11 1 (0.28%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 1 (0.28%) Windows 8
11 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (26.52%) Problem-Solving
2 48 (13.26%) Agile
3 45 (12.43%) ITIL
4 41 (11.33%) DevOps
5 40 (11.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 39 (10.77%) Migration
6 39 (10.77%) RBAC
7 36 (9.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 36 (9.94%) Stakeholder Management
8 35 (9.67%) Analytics
9 32 (8.84%) Business Intelligence
10 31 (8.56%) CI/CD
11 30 (8.29%) Change Management
12 26 (7.18%) Identity Access Management
12 26 (7.18%) Knowledge Transfer
13 23 (6.35%) Continuous Improvement
13 23 (6.35%) Customer Service
14 22 (6.08%) Service Management
15 21 (5.80%) Cloud Security
16 19 (5.25%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 89 (24.59%) PowerShell
2 48 (13.26%) SQL
3 38 (10.50%) Python
4 23 (6.35%) JavaScript
5 16 (4.42%) Bicep
6 10 (2.76%) C#
7 9 (2.49%) Go
8 8 (2.21%) Java
9 6 (1.66%) TypeScript
10 5 (1.38%) T-SQL
11 4 (1.10%) C++
11 4 (1.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 3 (0.83%) PHP
13 2 (0.55%) Bash
13 2 (0.55%) Perl
14 1 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
14 1 (0.28%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.28%) VBA
14 1 (0.28%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 198 (54.70%) Security Cleared
2 138 (38.12%) SC Cleared
3 82 (22.65%) DV Cleared
4 48 (13.26%) Microsoft Certification
5 26 (7.18%) Degree
6 21 (5.80%) Azure Certification
7 10 (2.76%) CISSP
8 9 (2.49%) CISM
8 9 (2.49%) ITIL Certification
8 9 (2.49%) MCSE
9 7 (1.93%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 3 (0.83%) A+ Certification
10 3 (0.83%) ACCA
10 3 (0.83%) APMP
10 3 (0.83%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.83%) CCNP
10 3 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.83%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.83%) MCSA
10 3 (0.83%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (5.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (4.97%) GDPR
3 13 (3.59%) PMO
4 12 (3.31%) NIST
5 11 (3.04%) Data Quality
6 8 (2.21%) Accessibility
7 7 (1.93%) NIST 800
8 4 (1.10%) NCSC
8 4 (1.10%) SLA
9 3 (0.83%) GAAP
9 3 (0.83%) IFRS
10 2 (0.55%) PSD2
10 2 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.55%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.28%) GRC
11 1 (0.28%) ISO 9001
11 1 (0.28%) QA
11 1 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 112 (30.94%) Active Directory
2 26 (7.18%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (4.42%) Hyper-V
4 12 (3.31%) Docker
5 9 (2.49%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (1.66%) VMware NSX
7 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Virtual Server
7 3 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.83%) Virtual Servers
8 2 (0.55%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.28%) KVM
9 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
9 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.28%) UAG
9 1 (0.28%) VMware Workstation
9 1 (0.28%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 47 (12.98%) Microsoft Intune
2 34 (9.39%) Single Sign-On
3 31 (8.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 25 (6.91%) Terraform
5 24 (6.63%) Kubernetes
5 24 (6.63%) SCCM
6 10 (2.76%) WSUS
7 9 (2.49%) Grafana
7 9 (2.49%) Prometheus
8 7 (1.93%) Norton AntiVirus
8 7 (1.93%) vCenter Server
9 5 (1.38%) Ansible
10 3 (0.83%) VxRail
11 2 (0.55%) CA Single Sign-On
11 2 (0.55%) Cisco CUCM
11 2 (0.55%) McAfee ePO
11 2 (0.55%) NetBackup
11 2 (0.55%) PingFederate
11 2 (0.55%) Puppet
11 2 (0.55%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
Vendors
1 50 (13.81%) VMware
2 19 (5.25%) Cisco
3 17 (4.70%) Citrix
4 15 (4.14%) SAP
5 14 (3.87%) MobileIron
6 12 (3.31%) Adobe
7 11 (3.04%) McAfee
7 11 (3.04%) Red Hat
8 8 (2.21%) Oracle
8 8 (2.21%) SolarWinds
8 8 (2.21%) Veeam
9 7 (1.93%) Databricks
9 7 (1.93%) IBM
9 7 (1.93%) ServiceNow
9 7 (1.93%) Symantec
10 6 (1.66%) Blue Prism
10 6 (1.66%) Google
11 4 (1.10%) Atlassian
11 4 (1.10%) Dell
11 4 (1.10%) Ping Identity