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 contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 2 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 505 412 426
Rank change year-on-year -93 +14 -35
Contract jobs citing Visual Studio 85 121 182
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.22% 0.39% 0.40%
As % of the Development Applications category 1.57% 2.86% 3.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 54 53 141
10th Percentile £400 £350 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £465 £535
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% -13.08% +1.90%
75th Percentile £725 £538 £625
90th Percentile £850 £650 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £675 £444 £533
% change year-on-year +52.20% -16.71% +18.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 6 7
10th Percentile - £54.13 £37.16
25th Percentile - £62.19 £45.42
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%
75th Percentile - £67.81 £49.97
90th Percentile - £74.38 £52.52
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%

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 5,431 4,231 5,467
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.13% 13.62% 12.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,729 2,645 3,818
10th Percentile £343 £338 £363
25th Percentile £406 £410 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £625 £634
90th Percentile £700 £725 £715
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £500
% change year-on-year -0.52% -4.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 136 67 214
10th Percentile £39.00 £26.40 £40.38
25th Percentile £52.50 £47.50 £50.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +5.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £75.25
90th Percentile £85.00 £76.75 £88.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% -

Visual Studio
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Visual Studio relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Visual Studio job vacancy trend 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 2 February 2026.

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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Visual Studio over the 6 months to 2 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Visual Studio in the UK

Visual Studio
Top 14 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 2 February 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
England -113 70 £450 -2.96% 59
London -20 40 £415 -17.00% 14
UK excluding London -105 39 £675 +52.20% 52
Work from Home -31 37 £450 +5.88% 27
East of England -28 12 - - 8
South East -45 9 £525 +20.90% 19
Scotland +11 8 £725 +56.76% 4
Wales - 6 £675 -
North of England -54 2 £580 +61.11% 7
North East -15 1 - -
North West -30 1 £580 +65.71% 5
South West -31 1 - - 6
West Midlands -41 1 £580 +71.85% 3
Midlands -58 1 £580 +65.71% 8

Visual Studio
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 3 (3.53%) SharePoint
2 2 (2.35%) Confluence
3 1 (1.18%) ArcGIS
3 1 (1.18%) BizTalk Server
3 1 (1.18%) CMS
3 1 (1.18%) GeoServer
3 1 (1.18%) IIS
3 1 (1.18%) Oracle Spatial
3 1 (1.18%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 4 (4.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.18%) Trello
Business Applications
1 3 (3.53%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 40 (47.06%) Azure
2 28 (32.94%) Azure DevOps
3 19 (22.35%) Power Platform
4 15 (17.65%) Dynamics 365
5 9 (10.59%) GitHub
6 5 (5.88%) Power Automate
6 5 (5.88%) PowerApps
7 4 (4.71%) AWS
8 3 (3.53%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (3.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 2 (2.35%) Azure Functions
9 2 (2.35%) Serverless
9 2 (2.35%) Snowflake
10 1 (1.18%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 1 (1.18%) GCP
10 1 (1.18%) Google Data Studio
10 1 (1.18%) Google Sheets
10 1 (1.18%) PaaS
10 1 (1.18%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
10 1 (1.18%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 11 (12.94%) Ethernet
1 11 (12.94%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (30.59%) SQL Server
2 9 (10.59%) Power BI
3 7 (8.24%) SQL Server Reporting Services
3 7 (8.24%) Tick Data
4 5 (5.88%) Data Warehouse
4 5 (5.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 3 (3.53%) Relational Database
6 2 (2.35%) Metadata
6 2 (2.35%) Tableau
7 1 (1.18%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.18%) Big Data
7 1 (1.18%) MongoDB
7 1 (1.18%) MSDE
7 1 (1.18%) Oracle Database
7 1 (1.18%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (1.18%) Power Query
7 1 (1.18%) RDBMS
7 1 (1.18%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (1.18%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 1 (1.18%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 11 (12.94%) Eclipse
2 9 (10.59%) Selenium
3 7 (8.24%) JMeter
3 7 (8.24%) MSTest
4 6 (7.06%) JIRA
5 5 (5.88%) Visual Studio Code
6 3 (3.53%) Git
6 3 (3.53%) NUnit
6 3 (3.53%) SpecFlow
7 1 (1.18%) Bitbucket
7 1 (1.18%) IntelliJ
7 1 (1.18%) Jenkins
7 1 (1.18%) Postman
7 1 (1.18%) PyCharm
7 1 (1.18%) Rational DOORS
7 1 (1.18%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (1.18%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 32 (37.65%) Finance
2 21 (24.71%) Social Skills
3 11 (12.94%) Military
4 10 (11.76%) Presentation Skills
5 5 (5.88%) Banking
5 5 (5.88%) Public Sector
6 4 (4.71%) General Ledger
6 4 (4.71%) Investment Banking
7 3 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (2.35%) Aerospace
8 2 (2.35%) Analytical Skills
8 2 (2.35%) Front Office
9 1 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.18%) Law
9 1 (1.18%) Marketing
9 1 (1.18%) Retail
Job Titles
1 44 (51.76%) Developer
2 16 (18.82%) C# Developer
3 14 (16.47%) Software Engineer
4 10 (11.76%) C# Software Engineer
5 9 (10.59%) Dynamics 365 Developer
5 9 (10.59%) Senior
6 8 (9.41%) Analyst
6 8 (9.41%) Tester
7 6 (7.06%) Automation Tester
7 6 (7.06%) C++ Software Engineer
7 6 (7.06%) Senior Tester
8 5 (5.88%) .NET Developer
8 5 (5.88%) Python Developer
8 5 (5.88%) Qualitative Analyst
8 5 (5.88%) Quantitative Analyst
8 5 (5.88%) Senior Automation Tester
9 4 (4.71%) Data Engineer
10 3 (3.53%) Applications Engineer
10 3 (3.53%) C++ Developer
10 3 (3.53%) Power Platform Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (37.65%) .NET
2 17 (20.00%) .NET Framework
3 16 (18.82%) Web Services
4 11 (12.94%) Node.js
5 6 (7.06%) ASP.NET
6 4 (4.71%) ASP.NET Core
6 4 (4.71%) RESTful
7 3 (3.53%) CSS
7 3 (3.53%) OAuth
7 3 (3.53%) PySpark
7 3 (3.53%) SAML
8 2 (2.35%) ASP.NET MVC
8 2 (2.35%) Entity Framework
8 2 (2.35%) HTML
8 2 (2.35%) JSON
8 2 (2.35%) Material-UI
8 2 (2.35%) React
8 2 (2.35%) Unity (Game Engine)
8 2 (2.35%) Unreal Engine
8 2 (2.35%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 6 (7.06%) Derivative
2 5 (5.88%) Equity Derivative
3 3 (3.53%) Algorithms
3 3 (3.53%) Cloud Native
3 3 (3.53%) Distributed Systems
3 3 (3.53%) Equities
4 2 (2.35%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (2.35%) Distributed Computing
4 2 (2.35%) Fixed Income
4 2 (2.35%) Mixed Reality
4 2 (2.35%) Virtual Reality
5 1 (1.18%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.18%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.18%) FPGA
5 1 (1.18%) Low-Code
5 1 (1.18%) Mobile App
5 1 (1.18%) PCIe
5 1 (1.18%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.18%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 28 (32.94%) Windows
2 15 (17.65%) Linux
3 11 (12.94%) Windows Server
4 1 (1.18%) Debian
4 1 (1.18%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (42.35%) Unit Testing
2 35 (41.18%) Agile
3 31 (36.47%) DevOps
4 30 (35.29%) CI/CD
5 19 (22.35%) Business Intelligence
6 17 (20.00%) Validation
7 14 (16.47%) AI
8 13 (15.29%) Disaster Recovery
8 13 (15.29%) Machine Learning
8 13 (15.29%) Software Engineering
8 13 (15.29%) Verification and Validation
8 13 (15.29%) Visualisation
9 12 (14.12%) Change Management
9 12 (14.12%) Data Analysis
9 12 (14.12%) TDD
10 11 (12.94%) Continuous Delivery
10 11 (12.94%) Continuous Integration
10 11 (12.94%) Data Modelling
10 11 (12.94%) Digital Twin
10 11 (12.94%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 60 (70.59%) C#
2 35 (41.18%) SQL
3 26 (30.59%) C++
3 26 (30.59%) Python
4 25 (29.41%) JavaScript
5 15 (17.65%) T-SQL
6 13 (15.29%) PL/SQL
7 5 (5.88%) X++
8 4 (4.71%) C
9 3 (3.53%) Java
9 3 (3.53%) TypeScript
10 2 (2.35%) Ada
10 2 (2.35%) Assembly Language
10 2 (2.35%) MATLAB
10 2 (2.35%) PowerShell
11 1 (1.18%) Bicep
11 1 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (1.18%) Embedded C
11 1 (1.18%) Embedded C++
11 1 (1.18%) VBA
Qualifications
1 30 (35.29%) Degree
2 23 (27.06%) Security Cleared
3 17 (20.00%) SC Cleared
4 5 (5.88%) ISTQB
4 5 (5.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 4 (4.71%) Numerate Degree
6 2 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (2.35%) Master's Degree
6 2 (2.35%) PhD
7 1 (1.18%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.18%) HP APS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (17.65%) QA
2 7 (8.24%) HMG Security Policy Framework
2 7 (8.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 5 (5.88%) SLA
4 1 (1.18%) Data Quality
System Software
1 8 (9.41%) Docker
2 2 (2.35%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 4 (4.71%) Kubernetes
1 4 (4.71%) Terraform
2 1 (1.18%) Ansible
2 1 (1.18%) Grafana
2 1 (1.18%) HP ALM
2 1 (1.18%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 19 (22.35%) Microsoft
2 13 (15.29%) Oracle
3 11 (12.94%) Citrix
4 2 (2.35%) RedGate
5 1 (1.18%) ESRI
5 1 (1.18%) Google
5 1 (1.18%) HP
5 1 (1.18%) OpenText
5 1 (1.18%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.18%) SAP
5 1 (1.18%) Serena
5 1 (1.18%) Sitecore