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

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 496 400 429
Rank change year-on-year -96 +29 -52
Contract jobs citing Visual Studio 99 168 188
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.27% 0.46% 0.41%
As % of the Development Applications category 1.80% 3.53% 3.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 83 141
10th Percentile £358 £325 £350
25th Percentile £415 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -9.52% +2.14%
75th Percentile £575 £617 £625
90th Percentile £725 £658 £672
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 23 3
10th Percentile £63.05 £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 - - £52.85
90th Percentile £67.00 £68.50 £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 5,508 4,764 5,994
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.26% 13.01% 13.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,793 2,947 4,175
10th Percentile £331 £341 £363
25th Percentile £406 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -4.63% -2.26%
75th Percentile £600 £627 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £513
% change year-on-year -2.56% -4.88% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 124 226
10th Percentile £29.63 £28.47 £45.88
25th Percentile £51.38 £47.00 £50.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.56% -1.54% +5.69%
75th Percentile £70.12 £70.00 £77.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £74.83 £87.66
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 28 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 28 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 -99 78 £450 -5.26% 54
UK excluding London -67 59 £500 +5.26% 50
Work from Home +1 47 £456 -8.75% 32
London -27 31 £463 -2.63% 10
East of England -19 30 - - 15
Scotland +8 12 £525 +13.51% 4
Wales +1 6 £675 +255.31%
South East -16 6 £365 -23.16% 21
Midlands -27 2 £388 +10.71% 6
West Midlands -36 2 £388 -0.96% 4
North of England -49 2 £550 +46.67% 6
North East -7 1 - -
South West -14 1 - - 5
Yorkshire - 1 £550 -

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 (3.03%) Confluence
2 2 (2.02%) SharePoint
3 1 (1.01%) ArcGIS
3 1 (1.01%) BizTalk Server
3 1 (1.01%) CICS
3 1 (1.01%) CMS
3 1 (1.01%) GeoServer
3 1 (1.01%) Oracle Spatial
3 1 (1.01%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.01%) Adobe Creative Suite
2 1 (1.01%) Moqups
2 1 (1.01%) Trello
Business Applications
1 3 (3.03%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (2.02%) Fidessa
3 1 (1.01%) Eikon
3 1 (1.01%) RMDS
Cloud Services
1 35 (35.35%) Azure
2 26 (26.26%) Azure DevOps
3 23 (23.23%) GitHub
4 16 (16.16%) Power Platform
5 15 (15.15%) AWS
6 13 (13.13%) Dynamics 365
7 9 (9.09%) npm
8 7 (7.07%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (5.05%) Power Automate
10 4 (4.04%) SaaS
11 3 (3.03%) Azure Data Factory
11 3 (3.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 3 (3.03%) PowerApps
12 2 (2.02%) GitHub Copilot
12 2 (2.02%) Snowflake
13 1 (1.01%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 1 (1.01%) GCP
13 1 (1.01%) Google Data Studio
13 1 (1.01%) Google Sheets
13 1 (1.01%) Google Tag Manager
Communications & Networking
1 22 (22.22%) Ethernet
1 22 (22.22%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (20.20%) SQL Server
2 11 (11.11%) Power BI
3 5 (5.05%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 4 (4.04%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (3.03%) MongoDB
5 3 (3.03%) MSDE
5 3 (3.03%) Relational Database
5 3 (3.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 2 (2.02%) Metadata
7 1 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.01%) Big Data
7 1 (1.01%) Data Lake
7 1 (1.01%) DB2
7 1 (1.01%) GIS
7 1 (1.01%) NoSQL
7 1 (1.01%) Oracle Database
7 1 (1.01%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (1.01%) Power Query
7 1 (1.01%) RDBMS
7 1 (1.01%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 25 (25.25%) JIRA
2 22 (22.22%) Eclipse
3 13 (13.13%) Bitbucket
3 13 (13.13%) Git
3 13 (13.13%) Visual Studio Code
4 12 (12.12%) GitLab
4 12 (12.12%) Jenkins
5 11 (11.11%) IntelliJ
5 11 (11.11%) PyCharm
6 9 (9.09%) Artifactory
6 9 (9.09%) MSTest
6 9 (9.09%) Selenium
7 7 (7.07%) JMeter
8 6 (6.06%) NUnit
9 3 (3.03%) SpecFlow
9 3 (3.03%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (1.01%) JetBrains Rider
10 1 (1.01%) Toad
10 1 (1.01%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 37 (37.37%) Social Skills
2 29 (29.29%) Finance
3 22 (22.22%) Military
3 22 (22.22%) Presentation Skills
4 7 (7.07%) Banking
5 6 (6.06%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (6.06%) Investment Banking
6 5 (5.05%) Documentation Skills
6 5 (5.05%) Public Sector
7 4 (4.04%) Front Office
7 4 (4.04%) General Ledger
7 4 (4.04%) Law
8 2 (2.02%) Back Office
8 2 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (1.01%) Advertising
9 1 (1.01%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.01%) Marketing
9 1 (1.01%) Retail
Job Titles
1 47 (47.47%) Developer
2 27 (27.27%) Software Engineer
3 20 (20.20%) C# Software Engineer
4 14 (14.14%) C++ Software Engineer
5 12 (12.12%) C# Developer
6 10 (10.10%) Senior
7 9 (9.09%) Tester
8 8 (8.08%) Dynamics 365 Developer
8 8 (8.08%) Python Developer
9 6 (6.06%) .NET Developer
9 6 (6.06%) Automation Tester
9 6 (6.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 6 (6.06%) Python Engineer
9 6 (6.06%) Senior Tester
10 5 (5.05%) Full-Stack Developer
10 5 (5.05%) Full-Stack Engineer
10 5 (5.05%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
10 5 (5.05%) Senior Automation Tester
11 4 (4.04%) Software Developer
12 3 (3.03%) C++ Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (31.31%) Node.js
2 30 (30.30%) Web Services
3 27 (27.27%) .NET
4 18 (18.18%) .NET Framework
5 14 (14.14%) HTML
6 13 (13.13%) CSS
7 12 (12.12%) React
8 10 (10.10%) AngularJS
9 9 (9.09%) Svelte
9 9 (9.09%) Vue
10 4 (4.04%) ASP.NET
10 4 (4.04%) jQuery
10 4 (4.04%) REST
11 3 (3.03%) PySpark
11 3 (3.03%) RESTful
12 2 (2.02%) ASP.NET MVC
12 2 (2.02%) Blazor
12 2 (2.02%) HTML5
12 2 (2.02%) JSON
12 2 (2.02%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 10 (10.10%) Algorithms
1 10 (10.10%) Distributed Systems
2 9 (9.09%) Data Structures
3 8 (8.08%) Public Cloud
4 4 (4.04%) Derivative
4 4 (4.04%) Fixed Income
4 4 (4.04%) Virtual Team
5 3 (3.03%) Analytical Mindset
5 3 (3.03%) Data Protection Act
5 3 (3.03%) Equity Derivative
5 3 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (3.03%) Mobile App
6 2 (2.02%) Distributed Computing
6 2 (2.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 2 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
7 1 (1.01%) DataPower
7 1 (1.01%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.01%) Equities
7 1 (1.01%) Social Media
7 1 (1.01%) Wiki
Operating Systems
1 43 (43.43%) Linux
2 40 (40.40%) Windows
3 6 (6.06%) Windows Server
4 2 (2.02%) Android
4 2 (2.02%) Apple iOS
5 1 (1.01%) Debian
5 1 (1.01%) Ubuntu
5 1 (1.01%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (61.62%) Agile
2 50 (50.51%) CI/CD
3 42 (42.42%) DevOps
4 36 (36.36%) Unit Testing
5 32 (32.32%) TDD
6 27 (27.27%) SDLC
6 27 (27.27%) Validation
7 26 (26.26%) Continuous Integration
7 26 (26.26%) Software Engineering
8 24 (24.24%) Visualisation
9 23 (23.23%) Continuous Delivery
10 22 (22.22%) Synthetic Environment
10 22 (22.22%) Verification and Validation
11 21 (21.21%) Digital Twin
12 16 (16.16%) Test Automation
13 15 (15.15%) Business Intelligence
13 15 (15.15%) Computer Science
13 15 (15.15%) Design Patterns
14 12 (12.12%) Containerisation
15 11 (11.11%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 75 (75.76%) C#
2 47 (47.47%) JavaScript
3 34 (34.34%) C++
4 24 (24.24%) Python
5 21 (21.21%) SQL
5 21 (21.21%) TypeScript
6 14 (14.14%) Java
7 9 (9.09%) T-SQL
8 6 (6.06%) PL/SQL
9 4 (4.04%) C
9 4 (4.04%) PowerShell
9 4 (4.04%) X++
10 2 (2.02%) Ada
10 2 (2.02%) Assembly Language
10 2 (2.02%) Korn
10 2 (2.02%) MATLAB
11 1 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (1.01%) Embedded C
11 1 (1.01%) Embedded C++
11 1 (1.01%) XPath
Qualifications
1 24 (24.24%) Security Cleared
2 17 (17.17%) Degree
2 17 (17.17%) SC Cleared
3 5 (5.05%) ISTQB
3 5 (5.05%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
4 2 (2.02%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.02%) Master's Degree
4 2 (2.02%) Numerate Degree
5 1 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.01%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.01%) HP APS
5 1 (1.01%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (8.08%) QA
2 7 (7.07%) HMG Security Policy Framework
2 7 (7.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 3 (3.03%) SLA
4 2 (2.02%) EMIR
4 2 (2.02%) MiFID
5 1 (1.01%) Accessibility
5 1 (1.01%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (1.01%) Data Quality
5 1 (1.01%) GDPR
System Software
1 14 (14.14%) Docker
2 2 (2.02%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 20 (20.20%) Kubernetes
2 12 (12.12%) Terraform
3 11 (11.11%) Ansible
4 2 (2.02%) Single Sign-On
5 1 (1.01%) CA Endevor
5 1 (1.01%) Grafana
5 1 (1.01%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 32 (32.32%) Microsoft
2 7 (7.07%) Oracle
3 4 (4.04%) Citrix
4 3 (3.03%) Salesforce
5 2 (2.02%) CQG
5 2 (2.02%) Nintex
5 2 (2.02%) RedGate
5 2 (2.02%) TOWER Software
6 1 (1.01%) Adobe
6 1 (1.01%) Bloomberg
6 1 (1.01%) ESRI
6 1 (1.01%) Google
6 1 (1.01%) HP
6 1 (1.01%) IBM
6 1 (1.01%) Reuters
6 1 (1.01%) SAP
6 1 (1.01%) Sitecore
6 1 (1.01%) Xamarin