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 8 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 481 377 441
Rank change year-on-year -104 +64 -70
Contract jobs citing Visual Studio 96 172 186
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.27% 0.47% 0.40%
As % of the Development Applications category 1.78% 3.57% 3.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 84 136
10th Percentile £358 £325 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £478 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.66% -13.14% +4.36%
75th Percentile £575 £606 £638
90th Percentile £713 £657 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £481 £525
% change year-on-year +4.06% -8.48% +16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 24 3
10th Percentile - £47.00 £45.28
25th Percentile - £62.50 £46.30
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year - +35.42% -26.15%
75th Percentile £65.19 - £52.85
90th Percentile £67.00 £68.38 £53.84
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £48.00
% change year-on-year - +35.42% -26.15%

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 5,383 4,822 6,159
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.38% 13.18% 13.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,705 3,025 4,291
10th Percentile £329 £349 £363
25th Percentile £406 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -3.70% -2.70%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £681 £723 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £501
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.69% -4.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 136 240
10th Percentile £19.63 £25.07 £45.75
25th Percentile £48.13 £46.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year - - +5.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.00 £76.53
90th Percentile £78.25 £74.22 £86.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 8 November 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 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 8 November 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 -100 75 £463 -2.63% 166
UK excluding London -61 61 £500 +4.06% 156
Work from Home +1 46 £463 -9.76% 83
East of England -16 27 £500 +4.06% 38
London -35 26 £525 +10.53% 31
Scotland +19 12 £525 - 6
South East -12 8 £401 -19.75% 62
Wales +3 6 £675 +255.31% 1
South West -13 4 £356 -31.16% 18
West Midlands -32 2 £388 -0.96% 1
Midlands -34 2 £388 +10.71% 13
North of England -36 2 £550 +23.60% 21
North East - 1 - - 1
Yorkshire - 1 £550 - 6

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 4 (4.17%) Confluence
2 2 (2.08%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.04%) ArcGIS
3 1 (1.04%) BizTalk Server
3 1 (1.04%) CICS
3 1 (1.04%) CMS
3 1 (1.04%) GeoServer
3 1 (1.04%) Oracle Spatial
3 1 (1.04%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 2 (2.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.04%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 1 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.04%) Moqups
2 1 (1.04%) Trello
Business Applications
1 2 (2.08%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (2.08%) Fidessa
1 2 (2.08%) Maximo
2 1 (1.04%) Eikon
2 1 (1.04%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 39 (40.63%) Azure
2 31 (32.29%) Azure DevOps
3 24 (25.00%) GitHub
4 16 (16.67%) AWS
5 15 (15.63%) Power Platform
6 13 (13.54%) Dynamics 365
7 9 (9.38%) npm
8 8 (8.33%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (5.21%) SaaS
10 4 (4.17%) Power Automate
11 3 (3.13%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (3.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 2 (2.08%) GitHub Copilot
12 2 (2.08%) PowerApps
12 2 (2.08%) Salesforce Sales Cloud
12 2 (2.08%) Snowflake
13 1 (1.04%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 1 (1.04%) Google Data Studio
13 1 (1.04%) Google Sheets
13 1 (1.04%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (18.75%) Ethernet
1 18 (18.75%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (18.75%) SQL Server
2 10 (10.42%) Power BI
3 5 (5.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 4 (4.17%) MongoDB
4 4 (4.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 3 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (3.13%) Metadata
5 3 (3.13%) MSDE
6 2 (2.08%) NoSQL
6 2 (2.08%) Relational Database
7 1 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.04%) DB2
7 1 (1.04%) GIS
7 1 (1.04%) MS Access
7 1 (1.04%) Oracle Database
7 1 (1.04%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (1.04%) RDBMS
7 1 (1.04%) Snowflake Schema
7 1 (1.04%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 1 (1.04%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 27 (28.13%) JIRA
2 18 (18.75%) Eclipse
3 14 (14.58%) Bitbucket
3 14 (14.58%) Visual Studio Code
4 13 (13.54%) Jenkins
5 12 (12.50%) Git
5 12 (12.50%) GitLab
5 12 (12.50%) IntelliJ
5 12 (12.50%) PyCharm
6 9 (9.38%) Artifactory
6 9 (9.38%) MSTest
7 8 (8.33%) Selenium
8 7 (7.29%) JMeter
9 4 (4.17%) NUnit
10 2 (2.08%) SpecFlow
10 2 (2.08%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (1.04%) Browser DevTools
11 1 (1.04%) JetBrains Rider
11 1 (1.04%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 1 (1.04%) Toad
General
1 35 (36.46%) Social Skills
2 26 (27.08%) Finance
3 18 (18.75%) Military
3 18 (18.75%) Presentation Skills
4 7 (7.29%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (7.29%) Banking
5 6 (6.25%) Investment Banking
6 5 (5.21%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (4.17%) Front Office
7 4 (4.17%) General Ledger
7 4 (4.17%) Public Sector
8 3 (3.13%) Law
9 2 (2.08%) Back Office
9 2 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 1 (1.04%) Advertising
10 1 (1.04%) Aerospace
10 1 (1.04%) Manufacturing
10 1 (1.04%) Marketing
10 1 (1.04%) Retail
Job Titles
1 43 (44.79%) Developer
2 24 (25.00%) Software Engineer
3 18 (18.75%) C# Software Engineer
4 14 (14.58%) C++ Software Engineer
5 9 (9.38%) Senior
5 9 (9.38%) Tester
6 8 (8.33%) Python Engineer
7 7 (7.29%) DevOps Engineer
7 7 (7.29%) Dynamics 365 Developer
7 7 (7.29%) Full-Stack Developer
7 7 (7.29%) Python Developer
8 6 (6.25%) Automation Tester
8 6 (6.25%) C# Developer
9 5 (5.21%) .NET Developer
9 5 (5.21%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 5 (5.21%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
9 5 (5.21%) Senior Automation Tester
9 5 (5.21%) Senior Tester
10 4 (4.17%) Software Developer
11 3 (3.13%) Quantitative Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (28.13%) Node.js
1 27 (28.13%) Web Services
2 26 (27.08%) .NET
3 15 (15.63%) .NET Framework
4 14 (14.58%) CSS
4 14 (14.58%) HTML
5 12 (12.50%) React
6 11 (11.46%) AngularJS
7 9 (9.38%) Svelte
7 9 (9.38%) Vue
8 5 (5.21%) ASP.NET
8 5 (5.21%) jQuery
9 4 (4.17%) REST
10 3 (3.13%) HTML5
10 3 (3.13%) PySpark
10 3 (3.13%) RESTful
10 3 (3.13%) WCF
11 2 (2.08%) .NET Core
11 2 (2.08%) Blazor
11 2 (2.08%) SPFx
Miscellaneous
1 9 (9.38%) Algorithms
1 9 (9.38%) Data Structures
1 9 (9.38%) Distributed Systems
1 9 (9.38%) Public Cloud
2 5 (5.21%) Virtual Team
3 4 (4.17%) Fixed Income
4 3 (3.13%) Analytical Mindset
4 3 (3.13%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (3.13%) Derivative
4 3 (3.13%) Legacy Systems
4 3 (3.13%) Mobile App
5 2 (2.08%) Distributed Computing
5 2 (2.08%) Equity Derivative
5 2 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 2 (2.08%) Product Ownership
5 2 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
6 1 (1.04%) DataPower
6 1 (1.04%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (1.04%) Social Media
6 1 (1.04%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 39 (40.63%) Linux
2 36 (37.50%) Windows
3 4 (4.17%) Windows Server
4 2 (2.08%) Android
4 2 (2.08%) Apple iOS
5 1 (1.04%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (63.54%) Agile
2 47 (48.96%) DevOps
3 46 (47.92%) CI/CD
4 31 (32.29%) SDLC
5 28 (29.17%) TDD
5 28 (29.17%) Unit Testing
6 24 (25.00%) Validation
7 23 (23.96%) Continuous Integration
7 23 (23.96%) Software Engineering
8 19 (19.79%) Continuous Delivery
8 19 (19.79%) Visualisation
9 18 (18.75%) Synthetic Environment
9 18 (18.75%) Test Automation
9 18 (18.75%) Verification and Validation
10 17 (17.71%) Digital Twin
11 16 (16.67%) Design Patterns
12 14 (14.58%) Computer Science
13 12 (12.50%) Containerisation
13 12 (12.50%) Full-Stack Development
13 12 (12.50%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 67 (69.79%) C#
2 41 (42.71%) JavaScript
3 28 (29.17%) C++
4 25 (26.04%) Python
5 22 (22.92%) SQL
5 22 (22.92%) TypeScript
6 15 (15.63%) Java
7 6 (6.25%) T-SQL
8 4 (4.17%) PowerShell
8 4 (4.17%) X++
9 3 (3.13%) C
9 3 (3.13%) PL/SQL
10 2 (2.08%) Ada
10 2 (2.08%) Assembly Language
10 2 (2.08%) Korn
10 2 (2.08%) MATLAB
10 2 (2.08%) VBA
11 1 (1.04%) Apex Code
11 1 (1.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (1.04%) XPath
Qualifications
1 24 (25.00%) Security Cleared
2 17 (17.71%) SC Cleared
3 12 (12.50%) Degree
4 7 (7.29%) ISTQB
4 7 (7.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
5 3 (3.13%) DV Cleared
6 2 (2.08%) Master's Degree
7 1 (1.04%) Azure Certification
7 1 (1.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (1.04%) DBS Check
7 1 (1.04%) Numerate Degree
7 1 (1.04%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (7.29%) HMG Security Policy Framework
1 7 (7.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 7 (7.29%) QA
2 2 (2.08%) EMIR
2 2 (2.08%) MiFID
2 2 (2.08%) SLA
3 1 (1.04%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.04%) Actionable Recommendations
3 1 (1.04%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.04%) GDPR
3 1 (1.04%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 14 (14.58%) Docker
2 2 (2.08%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 21 (21.88%) Kubernetes
2 13 (13.54%) Terraform
3 12 (12.50%) Ansible
4 2 (2.08%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (1.04%) CA Endevor
5 1 (1.04%) Grafana
Vendors
1 30 (31.25%) Microsoft
2 6 (6.25%) Oracle
3 4 (4.17%) Salesforce
4 3 (3.13%) IBM
5 2 (2.08%) CQG
5 2 (2.08%) Nintex
5 2 (2.08%) RedGate
5 2 (2.08%) TOWER Software
6 1 (1.04%) Adobe
6 1 (1.04%) Bloomberg
6 1 (1.04%) Citrix
6 1 (1.04%) ESRI
6 1 (1.04%) Google
6 1 (1.04%) Reuters
6 1 (1.04%) SAP
6 1 (1.04%) Sitecore
6 1 (1.04%) Xamarin