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 21 January 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 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 5
Rank change year-on-year +1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 362 305 416
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 14.31% 15.80% 13.86%
As % of the Vendors category 38.15% 34.86% 33.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 262 201 282
10th Percentile £200 £200 £196
25th Percentile £341 £225 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £470 £513
Median % change year-on-year +7.18% -8.29% +2.50%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £647
90th Percentile £715 £713 £712
England median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 11 43
10th Percentile £15.45 £12.50 £13.69
25th Percentile £17.24 £14.00 £14.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £25.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.16% -44.44% -30.77%
75th Percentile £49.38 £28.99 £48.72
90th Percentile £64.60 £37.00 £68.20
England median hourly rate £19.91 £22.39 £19.12
% change year-on-year -11.06% +17.08% -8.95%

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 949 875 1,242
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 37.52% 45.34% 41.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 633 527 806
10th Percentile £224 £215 £213
25th Percentile £413 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% +3.81%
75th Percentile £600 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £713
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 37 140
10th Percentile £15.60 £12.55 £14.54
25th Percentile £18.87 £18.51 £40.00
Median hourly rate £24.00 £62.50 £51.45
Median % change year-on-year -61.60% +21.49% -20.85%
75th Percentile £64.13 £68.75 £65.98
90th Percentile £73.75 £74.66 £73.75
England median hourly rate £23.83 £30.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year -20.58% -15.49% +9.23%

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 21 January 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 21 January 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 21 January 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 -2 110 £575 +4.55% 67
Gloucestershire +7 80 £413 -2.94% 59
Bristol -6 74 £513 +41.38% 66
Somerset +2 56 £425 -5.56% 45
Devon +14 24 £248 +28.57% 50
Dorset -9 10 £270 -46.00% 47
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 71 (19.61%) SharePoint
2 61 (16.85%) Microsoft Exchange
3 23 (6.35%) Skype for Business
4 5 (1.38%) Confluence
4 5 (1.38%) Oracle Application Server
5 4 (1.10%) SharePoint Server
6 3 (0.83%) IIS
7 1 (0.28%) Apache
7 1 (0.28%) CMS
7 1 (0.28%) nginx
7 1 (0.28%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 40 (11.05%) Microsoft Office
2 26 (7.18%) Microsoft Excel
3 9 (2.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (1.93%) Adobe Creative Suite
4 7 (1.93%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (1.38%) Adobe Captivate
6 4 (1.10%) MS Visio
7 3 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
8 2 (0.55%) Windchill
9 1 (0.28%) Adobe Illustrator
9 1 (0.28%) InDesign
9 1 (0.28%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 8 (2.21%) Maximo
2 5 (1.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (1.10%) Teamcenter
4 3 (0.83%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.55%) assyst
5 2 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.28%) Primavera
6 1 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 112 (30.94%) Azure
2 95 (26.24%) Microsoft 365
3 39 (10.77%) Power Platform
4 37 (10.22%) Entra ID
5 34 (9.39%) AWS
6 25 (6.91%) Azure DevOps
7 21 (5.80%) Azure Sentinel
8 17 (4.70%) Power Automate
9 15 (4.14%) Azure Monitor
9 15 (4.14%) GitHub
10 14 (3.87%) Dynamics 365
10 14 (3.87%) PowerApps
11 13 (3.59%) Azure AKS
12 12 (3.31%) Serverless
13 11 (3.04%) Azure Key Vault
13 11 (3.04%) GCP
14 10 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
14 10 (2.76%) OneDrive
14 10 (2.76%) SaaS
15 9 (2.49%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 56 (15.47%) DNS
2 33 (9.12%) DHCP
2 33 (9.12%) Skype
3 32 (8.84%) Firewall
4 25 (6.91%) VPN
5 19 (5.25%) TCP/IP
6 11 (3.04%) Unified Communications
7 6 (1.66%) Network Security
8 5 (1.38%) VoIP
9 4 (1.10%) LAN
9 4 (1.10%) VLAN
9 4 (1.10%) WAAS
10 3 (0.83%) HTTP
10 3 (0.83%) Kerberos
10 3 (0.83%) VSAN
10 3 (0.83%) WAN
11 2 (0.55%) H.323
11 2 (0.55%) RTP
11 2 (0.55%) SMTP
11 2 (0.55%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (8.01%) Power BI
2 17 (4.70%) SQL Server
3 14 (3.87%) PostgreSQL
4 8 (2.21%) Redis
5 7 (1.93%) Data Warehouse
6 5 (1.38%) Metadata
6 5 (1.38%) Oracle ODI
6 5 (1.38%) Oracle Reports
6 5 (1.38%) Star Schema
7 3 (0.83%) Azure SQL Database
8 2 (0.55%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.55%) Elasticsearch
8 2 (0.55%) Looker
8 2 (0.55%) MySQL
8 2 (0.55%) Power Query
8 2 (0.55%) Relational Database
8 2 (0.55%) Tableau
9 1 (0.28%) Delta Lake
9 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 26 (7.18%) JIRA
2 10 (2.76%) Git
2 10 (2.76%) MSI
3 5 (1.38%) DBeaver
4 4 (1.10%) Artifactory
4 4 (1.10%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.83%) AdminStudio
5 3 (0.83%) GitLab
5 3 (0.83%) InstallShield
6 1 (0.28%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.28%) Eclipse
6 1 (0.28%) Maven
6 1 (0.28%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.28%) Visual Studio
General
1 152 (41.99%) Social Skills
2 53 (14.64%) Public Sector
3 52 (14.36%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (11.05%) Finance
5 22 (6.08%) Documentation Skills
6 14 (3.87%) Organisational Skills
7 11 (3.04%) Telecoms
8 9 (2.49%) Banking
8 9 (2.49%) Military
9 8 (2.21%) Legal
9 8 (2.21%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.66%) Electronics
10 6 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.66%) Marketing
11 4 (1.10%) Police
12 2 (0.55%) Back Office
12 2 (0.55%) Law
13 1 (0.28%) Advertising
13 1 (0.28%) Aerospace
13 1 (0.28%) Retail
Job Titles
1 40 (11.05%) Support Engineer
2 33 (9.12%) Analyst
3 32 (8.84%) Developer
4 27 (7.46%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 25 (6.91%) Architect
6 19 (5.25%) Desktop Engineer
6 19 (5.25%) Microsoft Engineer
7 18 (4.97%) Administrator
7 18 (4.97%) Desktop Support
7 18 (4.97%) Desktop Support Engineer
8 14 (3.87%) Azure Engineer
8 14 (3.87%) Consultant
9 13 (3.59%) IT Support
10 11 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
11 9 (2.49%) Backend Developer
11 9 (2.49%) Data Engineer
11 9 (2.49%) Designer
11 9 (2.49%) Platform Engineer
11 9 (2.49%) Python Developer
11 9 (2.49%) Senior
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 18 (4.97%) REST
5 13 (3.59%) ARM Templates
6 8 (2.21%) FastAPI
6 8 (2.21%) Flask
6 8 (2.21%) GraphQL
6 8 (2.21%) gRPC
6 8 (2.21%) WebSockets
7 7 (1.93%) SOAP
8 6 (1.66%) CSS
8 6 (1.66%) HTML
9 5 (1.38%) .NET
9 5 (1.38%) AngularJS
9 5 (1.38%) JSON
9 5 (1.38%) LDAP
9 5 (1.38%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 5 (1.38%) React
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.18%) Onboarding
2 20 (5.52%) Hybrid Cloud
3 18 (4.97%) PKI
4 17 (4.70%) Cloud Native
5 12 (3.31%) Replication
6 11 (3.04%) Driving Licence
7 10 (2.76%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (2.76%) Mobile App
8 9 (2.49%) Management Information System
8 9 (2.49%) Private Cloud
9 7 (1.93%) Security Posture
10 5 (1.38%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.38%) Data Centre
11 4 (1.10%) Cyber Defence
11 4 (1.10%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.10%) Low-Code
11 4 (1.10%) Product Ownership
11 4 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
12 3 (0.83%) iPad
12 3 (0.83%) iPhone
Operating Systems
1 158 (43.65%) Windows
2 69 (19.06%) Windows 10
3 58 (16.02%) Windows Server
4 31 (8.56%) Linux
5 11 (3.04%) Apple iOS
6 8 (2.21%) Android
6 8 (2.21%) Windows Server 2016
7 7 (1.93%) Mac OS
7 7 (1.93%) Windows Server 2012
7 7 (1.93%) Windows Server 2019
8 5 (1.38%) Windows Server 2008
9 3 (0.83%) CentOS
9 3 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.55%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.28%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (24.03%) Problem-Solving
2 64 (17.68%) ITIL
3 53 (14.64%) Agile
4 43 (11.88%) DevOps
4 43 (11.88%) Migration
5 40 (11.05%) Infrastructure Engineering
6 37 (10.22%) RBAC
7 35 (9.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 34 (9.39%) Customer Service
9 31 (8.56%) Business Intelligence
9 31 (8.56%) Change Management
10 28 (7.73%) Analytics
10 28 (7.73%) CI/CD
11 26 (7.18%) Knowledge Transfer
11 26 (7.18%) Service Management
12 23 (6.35%) Cloud Security
12 23 (6.35%) Identity Access Management
13 21 (5.80%) Continuous Improvement
13 21 (5.80%) Stakeholder Management
14 20 (5.52%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 88 (24.31%) PowerShell
2 45 (12.43%) SQL
3 34 (9.39%) Python
4 18 (4.97%) Bicep
5 16 (4.42%) JavaScript
6 8 (2.21%) Go
7 7 (1.93%) Java
8 6 (1.66%) C#
8 6 (1.66%) TypeScript
9 5 (1.38%) VBScript
10 4 (1.10%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.83%) Perl
12 2 (0.55%) Bash
12 2 (0.55%) PHP
13 1 (0.28%) C++
13 1 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 201 (55.52%) Security Cleared
2 140 (38.67%) SC Cleared
3 81 (22.38%) DV Cleared
4 58 (16.02%) Microsoft Certification
5 26 (7.18%) Degree
6 19 (5.25%) Azure Certification
7 12 (3.31%) A+ Certification
7 12 (3.31%) MCSE
8 11 (3.04%) CISSP
8 11 (3.04%) ITIL Certification
9 10 (2.76%) CISM
10 8 (2.21%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 7 (1.93%) CCNP
11 7 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
11 7 (1.93%) MCSA
12 5 (1.38%) CCNA
12 5 (1.38%) Master's Degree
13 4 (1.10%) APMP
14 3 (0.83%) ACCA
15 2 (0.55%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 17 (4.70%) GDPR
3 14 (3.87%) NIST
4 12 (3.31%) Data Quality
5 9 (2.49%) PMO
6 8 (2.21%) Accessibility
6 8 (2.21%) NCSC
6 8 (2.21%) NIST 800
7 7 (1.93%) QA
8 5 (1.38%) 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%) GRC
11 1 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 126 (34.81%) Active Directory
2 33 (9.12%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (4.42%) Hyper-V
4 13 (3.59%) Docker
4 13 (3.59%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (1.66%) VMware ESXi
6 5 (1.38%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 5 (1.38%) Virtual Servers
6 5 (1.38%) VMware NSX
7 4 (1.10%) Microsoft App-V
8 2 (0.55%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.28%) KVM
9 1 (0.28%) Slurm Workload Manager
9 1 (0.28%) UAG
Systems Management
1 37 (10.22%) Microsoft Intune
2 32 (8.84%) Active Directory Federation Services
2 32 (8.84%) SCCM
2 32 (8.84%) Single Sign-On
3 26 (7.18%) Kubernetes
4 23 (6.35%) Terraform
5 15 (4.14%) vCenter Server
6 14 (3.87%) WSUS
7 8 (2.21%) Grafana
7 8 (2.21%) Prometheus
8 7 (1.93%) Norton AntiVirus
9 4 (1.10%) Ansible
10 3 (0.83%) OPNET
10 3 (0.83%) VxRail
11 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Clustering
11 2 (0.55%) NetApp OnCommand
11 2 (0.55%) NetBackup
11 2 (0.55%) PingFederate
11 2 (0.55%) Symantec Endpoint Protection
11 2 (0.55%) vMotion
Vendors
1 42 (11.60%) VMware
2 26 (7.18%) Cisco
3 13 (3.59%) SAP
4 12 (3.31%) Red Hat
4 12 (3.31%) SolarWinds
4 12 (3.31%) Veeam
5 10 (2.76%) McAfee
5 10 (2.76%) ServiceNow
6 9 (2.49%) Oracle
7 8 (2.21%) Adobe
7 8 (2.21%) IBM
8 7 (1.93%) Blue Prism
8 7 (1.93%) Symantec
9 6 (1.66%) Dell
10 5 (1.38%) Splunk
11 4 (1.10%) Atlassian
11 4 (1.10%) Databricks
11 4 (1.10%) ForgeRock
11 4 (1.10%) Fortinet
11 4 (1.10%) Google