Visual Studio Contract Job Trends

Microsoft Visual Studio
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Visual Studio skills. It covers vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 464 344 459
Rank change year-on-year -120 +115 -85
Contract jobs citing Visual Studio 95 235 180
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.29% 0.61% 0.36%
As % of the Development Applications category 1.90% 4.63% 2.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 40 136 133
10th Percentile £357 £363 £363
25th Percentile £417 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -0.19%
75th Percentile £556 £619 £625
90th Percentile £694 £654 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £513 £513
% change year-on-year -2.49% +0.05% +13.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 35 5
10th Percentile - £51.20 £45.96
25th Percentile - - £48.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year - +23.81% -19.23%
75th Percentile £65.13 - £54.50
90th Percentile £67.00 - £60.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £50.25
% change year-on-year - +29.35% -22.69%

All Development Application Skills
UK

Visual Studio falls under the Development Applications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring development application skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for development application skills 5,013 5,075 6,688
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.22% 13.27% 13.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,372 3,242 4,640
10th Percentile £325 £350 £363
25th Percentile £405 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £510
% change year-on-year -5.00% -1.96% -0.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 175 243
10th Percentile £31.28 £28.09 £45.94
25th Percentile £50.75 £51.13 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year - - +8.33%
75th Percentile £73.75 £70.00 £77.25
90th Percentile £87.05 £73.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +5.69%

Visual Studio
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Visual Studio as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Visual Studio in the UK

Visual Studio
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Visual Studio.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Visual Studio

Visual Studio
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Visual Studio over the 6 months to 17 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Visual Studio in the UK

Visual Studio
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Visual Studio.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Visual Studio

Visual Studio
Top 15 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Visual Studio within the UK over the 6 months to 17 September 2025. 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
England -102 75 £490 -4.39% 76
UK excluding London -72 66 £500 -2.49% 72
Work from Home -20 43 £475 -5.28% 48
East of England -9 27 £500 +4.06% 7
London -38 18 £563 +15.98% 19
Scotland +2 13 £500 +5.26% 3
North of England -10 9 £500 +12.36% 12
South East -6 8 £438 -27.08% 22
South West +5 5 £356 -28.75% 8
North West -17 5 £513 +15.17% 2
Midlands -30 4 £385 -25.10% 15
Yorkshire - 3 £390 - 10
East Midlands -5 2 £385 - 6
West Midlands -29 2 £388 -24.61% 9
North East - 1 - -

Visual Studio
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 9 (9.47%) Confluence
2 4 (4.21%) SharePoint
3 2 (2.11%) CICS
3 2 (2.11%) Oracle Coherence
4 1 (1.05%) Umbraco
Applications
1 4 (4.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (2.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (1.05%) Adobe Creative Suite
3 1 (1.05%) Moqups
3 1 (1.05%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (2.11%) Fidessa
1 2 (2.11%) Maximo
2 1 (1.05%) Eikon
2 1 (1.05%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 35 (36.84%) Azure
2 24 (25.26%) Azure DevOps
3 20 (21.05%) GitHub
4 16 (16.84%) AWS
5 9 (9.47%) GitHub Actions
5 9 (9.47%) npm
6 8 (8.42%) Power Platform
7 6 (6.32%) SaaS
8 3 (3.16%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (3.16%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (2.11%) GCP
9 2 (2.11%) GitHub Copilot
9 2 (2.11%) Power Automate
9 2 (2.11%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 1 (1.05%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 1 (1.05%) dbt
10 1 (1.05%) Figma
10 1 (1.05%) Google Data Studio
10 1 (1.05%) Google Sheets
10 1 (1.05%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 21 (22.11%) TCP/IP
2 19 (20.00%) Ethernet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (18.95%) SQL Server
2 7 (7.37%) Power BI
3 6 (6.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 4 (4.21%) MongoDB
5 3 (3.16%) Dremio
5 3 (3.16%) MSDE
5 3 (3.16%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (2.11%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (2.11%) Big Data
6 2 (2.11%) DB2
6 2 (2.11%) MySQL
6 2 (2.11%) NoSQL
7 1 (1.05%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.05%) Data Warehouse
7 1 (1.05%) Metadata
7 1 (1.05%) MS Access
7 1 (1.05%) Power Query
7 1 (1.05%) Redis
7 1 (1.05%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 1 (1.05%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 34 (35.79%) JIRA
2 19 (20.00%) Eclipse
3 17 (17.89%) Git
4 16 (16.84%) Jenkins
5 15 (15.79%) Bitbucket
5 15 (15.79%) Visual Studio Code
6 13 (13.68%) GitLab
6 13 (13.68%) IntelliJ
6 13 (13.68%) PyCharm
7 9 (9.47%) Artifactory
8 5 (5.26%) NUnit
8 5 (5.26%) Team Foundation Server
9 4 (4.21%) MSTest
9 4 (4.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (2.11%) Cucumber
10 2 (2.11%) Subversion
11 1 (1.05%) ReSharper
11 1 (1.05%) SpecFlow
11 1 (1.05%) Toad
11 1 (1.05%) WebDriver
General
1 37 (38.95%) Social Skills
2 25 (26.32%) Finance
3 19 (20.00%) Military
3 19 (20.00%) Presentation Skills
4 7 (7.37%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (7.37%) Banking
5 6 (6.32%) Investment Banking
6 5 (5.26%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (4.21%) Law
8 3 (3.16%) Front Office
8 3 (3.16%) Public Sector
9 2 (2.11%) Back Office
9 2 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (1.05%) Advertising
10 1 (1.05%) Aerospace
10 1 (1.05%) Manufacturing
10 1 (1.05%) Marketing
10 1 (1.05%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 41 (43.16%) Developer
2 27 (28.42%) Software Engineer
3 20 (21.05%) C# Software Engineer
4 15 (15.79%) C++ Software Engineer
5 10 (10.53%) C# Developer
6 8 (8.42%) .NET Developer
6 8 (8.42%) Full-Stack Developer
7 7 (7.37%) Python Developer
7 7 (7.37%) Python Engineer
8 6 (6.32%) DevOps Engineer
9 5 (5.26%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 5 (5.26%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
9 5 (5.26%) Senior
9 5 (5.26%) Senior Developer
9 5 (5.26%) Software Developer
10 4 (4.21%) Azure Developer
10 4 (4.21%) Data Engineer
10 4 (4.21%) Senior .NET Developer
11 3 (3.16%) C# .NET Developer
11 3 (3.16%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (32.63%) .NET
2 28 (29.47%) Node.js
3 27 (28.42%) Web Services
4 16 (16.84%) .NET Framework
4 16 (16.84%) CSS
4 16 (16.84%) HTML
5 14 (14.74%) React
6 12 (12.63%) AngularJS
7 10 (10.53%) Vue
8 9 (9.47%) REST
8 9 (9.47%) Svelte
9 7 (7.37%) WCF
10 5 (5.26%) ADO
10 5 (5.26%) Entity Framework
10 5 (5.26%) RESTful
11 4 (4.21%) ASP.NET
11 4 (4.21%) Blazor
11 4 (4.21%) jQuery
11 4 (4.21%) JSON
11 4 (4.21%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 11 (11.58%) Distributed Systems
2 10 (10.53%) Public Cloud
3 9 (9.47%) Algorithms
3 9 (9.47%) Data Structures
4 6 (6.32%) Virtual Team
5 5 (5.26%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (4.21%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (3.16%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (3.16%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (3.16%) Fixed Income
8 2 (2.11%) DataPower
8 2 (2.11%) Derivative
8 2 (2.11%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (2.11%) Equity Derivative
8 2 (2.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (2.11%) Mobile App
8 2 (2.11%) Product Ownership
8 2 (2.11%) Wiki
9 1 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (1.05%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 41 (43.16%) Linux
2 38 (40.00%) Windows
3 3 (3.16%) Windows Server
4 2 (2.11%) Android
4 2 (2.11%) Apple iOS
4 2 (2.11%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 69 (72.63%) Agile
2 45 (47.37%) CI/CD
3 43 (45.26%) DevOps
4 36 (37.89%) SDLC
5 30 (31.58%) TDD
6 28 (29.47%) Software Engineering
7 26 (27.37%) Continuous Integration
8 22 (23.16%) Continuous Delivery
8 22 (23.16%) Validation
9 21 (22.11%) Unit Testing
10 20 (21.05%) Visualisation
11 19 (20.00%) Synthetic Environment
11 19 (20.00%) Verification and Validation
12 18 (18.95%) Digital Twin
13 16 (16.84%) Design Patterns
14 15 (15.79%) Computer Science
14 15 (15.79%) Full-Stack Development
14 15 (15.79%) Scrum
15 14 (14.74%) Test Automation
16 12 (12.63%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 69 (72.63%) C#
2 37 (38.95%) JavaScript
3 30 (31.58%) C++
4 24 (25.26%) TypeScript
5 20 (21.05%) Python
6 19 (20.00%) Java
6 19 (20.00%) SQL
7 8 (8.42%) T-SQL
8 6 (6.32%) PowerShell
9 2 (2.11%) Ada
9 2 (2.11%) Assembly Language
9 2 (2.11%) C
9 2 (2.11%) Korn
9 2 (2.11%) MATLAB
9 2 (2.11%) PL/SQL
9 2 (2.11%) VB
9 2 (2.11%) VBA
9 2 (2.11%) XPath
10 1 (1.05%) VB6
10 1 (1.05%) XAML
Qualifications
1 19 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 14 (14.74%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.37%) Degree
4 3 (3.16%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.11%) ISTQB
5 2 (2.11%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 2 (2.11%) Master's Degree
5 2 (2.11%) Numerate Degree
5 2 (2.11%) PhD
6 1 (1.05%) Azure Certification
6 1 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (1.05%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.21%) Accessibility
1 4 (4.21%) QA
2 2 (2.11%) EMIR
2 2 (2.11%) MiFID
3 1 (1.05%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (1.05%) GDPR
3 1 (1.05%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 9 (9.47%) Docker
2 2 (2.11%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.05%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 22 (23.16%) Kubernetes
2 15 (15.79%) Ansible
3 14 (14.74%) Terraform
4 2 (2.11%) CA Endevor
4 2 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (1.05%) Grafana
5 1 (1.05%) MIIS
5 1 (1.05%) Puppet
Vendors
1 37 (38.95%) Microsoft
2 7 (7.37%) Oracle
3 4 (4.21%) IBM
3 4 (4.21%) Salesforce
4 3 (3.16%) Databricks
5 2 (2.11%) CQG
5 2 (2.11%) Nintex
5 2 (2.11%) TOWER Software
6 1 (1.05%) Adobe
6 1 (1.05%) Bloomberg
6 1 (1.05%) Google
6 1 (1.05%) Reuters
6 1 (1.05%) Splunk
6 1 (1.05%) Xamarin