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 2 April 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 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 +1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 325 253 484
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 10.64% 14.89% 15.02%
As % of the Vendors category 32.40% 33.12% 36.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 243 185 330
10th Percentile £205 £207 £185
25th Percentile £343 £220 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £594
90th Percentile £723 £681 £700
England median daily rate £492 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +3.58% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 11 47
10th Percentile £14.19 £18.13 £12.50
25th Percentile £20.94 £18.36 £13.69
Median hourly rate £32.75 £18.51 £14.54
Median % change year-on-year +76.93% +27.30% -74.64%
75th Percentile £62.81 £27.00 £48.72
90th Percentile £65.00 £37.50 £51.25
England median hourly rate £20.00 £22.27 £15.00
% change year-on-year -10.19% +48.47% -28.89%

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 1,003 764 1,330
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 32.84% 44.97% 41.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 650 520 858
10th Percentile £262 £220 £205
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -
75th Percentile £594 £613 £638
90th Percentile £725 £688 £725
England median daily rate £500 £525 £515
% change year-on-year -4.76% +1.94% -4.19%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 43 169
10th Percentile £18.87 £18.26 £13.69
25th Percentile £23.50 £19.76 £27.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £62.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% +31.58% -24.88%
75th Percentile £60.00 £68.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £74.68 £74.00 £77.50
England median hourly rate £25.77 £29.04 £24.00
% change year-on-year -11.25% +20.98% -33.33%

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 2 April 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 2 April 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 2 April 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 -1 103 £550 - 33
Gloucestershire +2 71 £410 -3.53% 69
Bristol -14 68 £500 +37.93% 76
Somerset -3 42 £472 +9.45% 57
Devon +3 24 £220 -35.77% 45
Dorset -18 7 £409 -13.89% 35
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 47 (14.46%) SharePoint
2 26 (8.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 10 (3.08%) Skype for Business
4 5 (1.54%) Confluence
5 2 (0.62%) Apache
5 2 (0.62%) Oracle Application Server
5 2 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.31%) Apache Airflow
6 1 (0.31%) CMS
6 1 (0.31%) IIS
6 1 (0.31%) SharePoint Server
6 1 (0.31%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 36 (11.08%) Microsoft Excel
1 36 (11.08%) Microsoft Office
2 13 (4.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 11 (3.38%) Microsoft Project
4 8 (2.46%) Spreadsheet
5 5 (1.54%) Adobe Captivate
5 5 (1.54%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 5 (1.54%) MS Visio
6 2 (0.62%) InDesign
6 2 (0.62%) InfoPath
7 1 (0.31%) Adobe Illustrator
7 1 (0.31%) PTC Creo
7 1 (0.31%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 7 (2.15%) Maximo
2 5 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.54%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.62%) Dynamics AX
3 2 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.62%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.31%) assyst
4 1 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
4 1 (0.31%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 103 (31.69%) Azure
2 62 (19.08%) Microsoft 365
3 39 (12.00%) Power Platform
4 33 (10.15%) Entra ID
5 26 (8.00%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (6.15%) AWS
6 20 (6.15%) Power Automate
7 18 (5.54%) GitHub
8 17 (5.23%) Dynamics 365
9 15 (4.62%) Azure Monitor
9 15 (4.62%) PowerApps
10 14 (4.31%) Azure Sentinel
11 9 (2.77%) Azure AKS
11 9 (2.77%) Azure Key Vault
11 9 (2.77%) Serverless
12 8 (2.46%) GCP
12 8 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
12 8 (2.46%) PaaS
13 7 (2.15%) OpenShift
13 7 (2.15%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 29 (8.92%) DNS
2 26 (8.00%) Firewall
3 21 (6.46%) VPN
4 17 (5.23%) DHCP
5 14 (4.31%) Skype
6 13 (4.00%) TCP/IP
7 5 (1.54%) Network Security
7 5 (1.54%) Unified Communications
8 4 (1.23%) Ethernet
8 4 (1.23%) WAN
9 3 (0.92%) LAN
9 3 (0.92%) VLAN
9 3 (0.92%) VoIP
9 3 (0.92%) Wireless
10 2 (0.62%) Cisco IOS
10 2 (0.62%) H.323
10 2 (0.62%) HTTP
10 2 (0.62%) RTP
11 1 (0.31%) Internet
11 1 (0.31%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (8.31%) Power BI
2 14 (4.31%) SQL Server
3 8 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
4 6 (1.85%) Redis
4 6 (1.85%) Star Schema
5 5 (1.54%) Data Warehouse
5 5 (1.54%) Metadata
6 4 (1.23%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (1.23%) Delta Lake
6 4 (1.23%) MySQL
7 3 (0.92%) GIS
7 3 (0.92%) Power Query
8 2 (0.62%) Data Lake
8 2 (0.62%) Electronic Patient Records
8 2 (0.62%) Oracle ODI
8 2 (0.62%) Oracle Reports
8 2 (0.62%) Spatial Data
9 1 (0.31%) Snowflake Schema
9 1 (0.31%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 1 (0.31%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 25 (7.69%) JIRA
2 7 (2.15%) Git
3 4 (1.23%) AdminStudio
3 4 (1.23%) Artifactory
3 4 (1.23%) Eclipse
3 4 (1.23%) GitLab
3 4 (1.23%) InstallShield
3 4 (1.23%) Visual Studio
4 3 (0.92%) MSI
4 3 (0.92%) Visual Studio Code
5 2 (0.62%) DBeaver
6 1 (0.31%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.31%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.31%) Maven
6 1 (0.31%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.31%) webpack
General
1 136 (41.85%) Social Skills
2 55 (16.92%) Analytical Skills
3 41 (12.62%) Finance
4 30 (9.23%) Public Sector
5 16 (4.92%) Organisational Skills
6 15 (4.62%) Documentation Skills
6 15 (4.62%) Legal
7 13 (4.00%) Military
8 9 (2.77%) Manufacturing
9 8 (2.46%) Marketing
10 7 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (2.15%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.23%) Banking
11 4 (1.23%) Electronics
11 4 (1.23%) Police
12 3 (0.92%) Back Office
12 3 (0.92%) Local Government
13 2 (0.62%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.62%) Retail
Job Titles
1 39 (12.00%) Architect
2 34 (10.46%) Support Engineer
3 32 (9.85%) Developer
4 27 (8.31%) Analyst
5 19 (5.85%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 17 (5.23%) Desktop Engineer
6 17 (5.23%) Desktop Support
6 17 (5.23%) Desktop Support Engineer
6 17 (5.23%) Solutions Architect
7 15 (4.62%) Azure Engineer
7 15 (4.62%) Senior
8 14 (4.31%) Microsoft Engineer
9 13 (4.00%) Data Engineer
10 11 (3.38%) Administrator
10 11 (3.38%) Consultant
10 11 (3.38%) IT Support
11 10 (3.08%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (3.08%) Project Officer
12 9 (2.77%) Lead
13 8 (2.46%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.85%) OAuth
2 18 (5.54%) OAuth2
2 18 (5.54%) SAML
3 16 (4.92%) OpenID
4 15 (4.62%) REST
5 12 (3.69%) ARM Templates
6 9 (2.77%) .NET
6 9 (2.77%) CSS
6 9 (2.77%) HTML
7 7 (2.15%) Web Services
8 6 (1.85%) FastAPI
8 6 (1.85%) Flask
8 6 (1.85%) GraphQL
8 6 (1.85%) gRPC
8 6 (1.85%) JDO
8 6 (1.85%) WebSockets
9 5 (1.54%) CSS3
9 5 (1.54%) HTML5
9 5 (1.54%) JSON
9 5 (1.54%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 19 (5.85%) Hybrid Cloud
2 14 (4.31%) Blackberry
3 13 (4.00%) Cloud Native
3 13 (4.00%) Onboarding
3 13 (4.00%) Product Ownership
4 12 (3.69%) Enterprise Software
5 9 (2.77%) Management Information System
5 9 (2.77%) Replication
6 8 (2.46%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.15%) Data Structures
7 7 (2.15%) Private Cloud
8 6 (1.85%) Driving Licence
8 6 (1.85%) PKI
8 6 (1.85%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.54%) Legacy Applications
9 5 (1.54%) Low-Code
9 5 (1.54%) Mobile App
10 4 (1.23%) Security Posture
11 2 (0.62%) Data Centre
11 2 (0.62%) iPad
Operating Systems
1 113 (34.77%) Windows
2 38 (11.69%) Windows Server
3 32 (9.85%) Windows 10
4 21 (6.46%) Android
5 18 (5.54%) Linux
6 16 (4.92%) Apple iOS
7 5 (1.54%) Windows Server 2016
8 4 (1.23%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.92%) CentOS
10 2 (0.62%) Mac OS
10 2 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (26.77%) Problem-Solving
2 46 (14.15%) Agile
3 43 (13.23%) ITIL
4 37 (11.38%) DevOps
5 34 (10.46%) Analytics
5 34 (10.46%) RBAC
6 33 (10.15%) Stakeholder Management
7 32 (9.85%) CI/CD
7 32 (9.85%) Continuous Improvement
7 32 (9.85%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 28 (8.62%) Identity Access Management
8 28 (8.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 26 (8.00%) Business Intelligence
9 26 (8.00%) Change Management
10 23 (7.08%) Migration
11 22 (6.77%) Customer Service
12 21 (6.46%) Project Delivery
12 21 (6.46%) Project Management
13 19 (5.85%) Knowledge Transfer
14 17 (5.23%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 71 (21.85%) PowerShell
2 40 (12.31%) SQL
3 28 (8.62%) Python
4 24 (7.38%) JavaScript
5 15 (4.62%) Bicep
6 12 (3.69%) C#
7 10 (3.08%) Java
8 6 (1.85%) Go
9 5 (1.54%) C++
9 5 (1.54%) TypeScript
10 4 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (0.92%) PHP
11 3 (0.92%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.31%) Bash
12 1 (0.31%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.31%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.31%) VBA
Qualifications
1 173 (53.23%) Security Cleared
2 121 (37.23%) SC Cleared
3 68 (20.92%) DV Cleared
4 40 (12.31%) Microsoft Certification
5 26 (8.00%) Degree
6 23 (7.08%) Azure Certification
7 8 (2.46%) CISSP
8 7 (2.15%) CISM
8 7 (2.15%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
9 6 (1.85%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (1.54%) ACCA
11 4 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
11 4 (1.23%) MCSE
12 3 (0.92%) APMP
12 3 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (0.92%) PMP
13 2 (0.62%) CBAP
13 2 (0.62%) CIMA
13 2 (0.62%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
14 1 (0.31%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 11 (3.38%) Data Quality
2 11 (3.38%) PMO
3 10 (3.08%) NIST
4 9 (2.77%) GDPR
5 7 (2.15%) NIST 800
6 6 (1.85%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.92%) GAAP
7 3 (0.92%) IFRS
7 3 (0.92%) NCSC
7 3 (0.92%) QA
8 2 (0.62%) HL7
8 2 (0.62%) SLA
8 2 (0.62%) SNOMED CT
9 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.31%) GRC
9 1 (0.31%) ISO 9001
9 1 (0.31%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (27.08%) Active Directory
2 14 (4.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (4.00%) Hyper-V
4 9 (2.77%) Docker
5 5 (1.54%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (1.23%) Virtual Machines
6 4 (1.23%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.31%) KVM
7 1 (0.31%) UAG
7 1 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.31%) VMware Workstation
7 1 (0.31%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 44 (13.54%) Microsoft Intune
2 30 (9.23%) Single Sign-On
3 27 (8.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 27 (8.31%) Terraform
4 21 (6.46%) Kubernetes
5 13 (4.00%) SCCM
6 6 (1.85%) Grafana
6 6 (1.85%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.54%) Ansible
7 5 (1.54%) WSUS
8 3 (0.92%) VxRail
9 2 (0.62%) CA Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.62%) Cisco CUCM
9 2 (0.62%) McAfee ePO
9 2 (0.62%) NetBackup
9 2 (0.62%) Norton AntiVirus
9 2 (0.62%) Puppet
9 2 (0.62%) vCenter Server
10 1 (0.31%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.31%) SCOM
Vendors
1 36 (11.08%) VMware
2 17 (5.23%) Citrix
3 14 (4.31%) MobileIron
4 13 (4.00%) SAP
5 11 (3.38%) Red Hat
6 10 (3.08%) Adobe
6 10 (3.08%) Cisco
6 10 (3.08%) McAfee
7 9 (2.77%) Databricks
8 8 (2.46%) Oracle
9 7 (2.15%) Google
9 7 (2.15%) IBM
9 7 (2.15%) Starlink
10 6 (1.85%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.54%) Blue Prism
12 4 (1.23%) Apple
12 4 (1.23%) NetApp
13 3 (0.92%) Dell
13 3 (0.92%) Thales
13 3 (0.92%) Workday