Microsoft Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Microsoft
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the West Midlands 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 29 July 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
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 410 262 257
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.98% 15.92% 13.57%
As % of the Vendors category 26.16% 34.16% 29.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 315 172 178
10th Percentile £260 £166 £164
25th Percentile £375 £246 £298
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £381 £418
Median % change year-on-year +18.03% -8.68% +4.38%
75th Percentile £523 £538 £520
90th Percentile £621 £613 £638
England median daily rate £492 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +3.58% -4.52% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 22 11
10th Percentile £18.09 £15.41 £10.93
25th Percentile £20.30 £27.66 £12.31
Median hourly rate £21.50 £30.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.33% +114.29% -24.32%
75th Percentile £27.50 £50.00 £46.88
90th Percentile £70.14 - £56.25
England median hourly rate £24.00 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year +6.05% +39.43% -26.23%

All Vendors
West Midlands

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 West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for knowledge or experience of vendor products and services 1,567 767 864
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 45.81% 46.60% 45.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,080 487 610
10th Percentile £315 £205 £262
25th Percentile £402 £325 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £460 £470
Median % change year-on-year +1.74% -2.13% -1.05%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £651 £640 £688
England median daily rate £510 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 30 25
10th Percentile £17.79 £14.99 £12.02
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.75 £14.00
Median hourly rate £30.27 £30.00 £16.82
Median % change year-on-year +0.90% +78.36% -25.24%
75th Percentile £51.25 £42.93 £38.75
90th Percentile £66.54 £50.00 £56.25
England median hourly rate £35.71 £25.15 £28.00
% change year-on-year +41.99% -10.18% -29.20%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Microsoft relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Microsoft job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Microsoft
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Microsoft.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 29 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft in the West Midlands

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Microsoft.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Microsoft

Microsoft
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 29 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft in the West Midlands

Microsoft
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 29 July 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
Birmingham +1 120 £450 +38.46% 113
Warwickshire -5 84 £450 +28.57% 31
Coventry -1 71 £425 +47.83% 18
Shropshire -25 52 £447 +0.11% 22
Staffordshire -4 12 £400 +185.71% 31
Worcestershire -2 11 £450 -21.74% 23
Solihull -27 9 £425 -7.61% 4
Herefordshire +2 8 £700 -22.22% 7
Dudley - 5 £400 - 8
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 5
West Bromwich - 3 - - 7
Brierley Hill - 2 £446 - 1
Wolverhampton -5 1 - - 11
Microsoft
England

Microsoft
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands 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 39 (9.51%) SharePoint
2 12 (2.93%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.46%) Confluence
4 5 (1.22%) SAS
5 4 (0.98%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.73%) Apache
6 3 (0.73%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.73%) IIS
6 3 (0.73%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.49%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.24%) Appian
8 1 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 43 (10.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (9.51%) Microsoft Office
3 17 (4.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (2.68%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (2.68%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.24%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.24%) Navisworks
6 1 (0.24%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.24%) Revit
Business Applications
1 26 (6.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.22%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.73%) Primavera
4 2 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.49%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.24%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 1 (0.24%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.24%) SAP EHS
5 1 (0.24%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 165 (40.24%) Azure
2 85 (20.73%) Microsoft 365
3 75 (18.29%) Power Platform
4 50 (12.20%) Dynamics 365
5 46 (11.22%) Azure DevOps
6 39 (9.51%) Entra ID
7 36 (8.78%) AWS
8 34 (8.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 33 (8.05%) Power Automate
10 32 (7.80%) Microsoft Purview
11 27 (6.59%) Azure Data Factory
12 21 (5.12%) PowerApps
13 19 (4.63%) OneDrive
14 15 (3.66%) Serverless
15 14 (3.41%) Microsoft Copilot
16 13 (3.17%) GCP
17 9 (2.20%) GitHub
17 9 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
18 7 (1.71%) Azure Functions
19 6 (1.46%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 27 (6.59%) DNS
2 23 (5.61%) VPN
3 20 (4.88%) DHCP
4 18 (4.39%) Firewall
5 10 (2.44%) LAN
6 8 (1.95%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (1.71%) TCP/IP
7 7 (1.71%) WAN
8 6 (1.46%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.46%) SSL
9 5 (1.22%) Network Security
10 4 (0.98%) SAN
11 3 (0.73%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.73%) Intrusion Detection
11 3 (0.73%) NAS
11 3 (0.73%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.73%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (0.73%) Wireless
12 2 (0.49%) Cisco Nexus
12 2 (0.49%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (10.73%) Power BI
2 28 (6.83%) Data Warehouse
2 28 (6.83%) SQL Server
3 21 (5.12%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (3.41%) Azure SQL Database
5 12 (2.93%) MySQL
6 10 (2.44%) Data Lake
6 10 (2.44%) Delta Lake
7 8 (1.95%) NoSQL
7 8 (1.95%) Relational Database
8 7 (1.71%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 6 (1.46%) Data Vault
9 6 (1.46%) Metadata
10 5 (1.22%) Oracle Database
10 5 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 3 (0.73%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.73%) Redis
11 3 (0.73%) SAP Data Services
11 3 (0.73%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 3 (0.73%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 24 (5.85%) JIRA
2 12 (2.93%) Team Foundation Server
3 11 (2.68%) Visual Studio
4 10 (2.44%) Selenium
4 10 (2.44%) WebDriver
5 8 (1.95%) Cypress.io
5 8 (1.95%) Postman
6 7 (1.71%) Git
7 5 (1.22%) Cucumber
8 4 (0.98%) MLflow
9 3 (0.73%) GitLab
9 3 (0.73%) Jenkins
9 3 (0.73%) Protractor
10 2 (0.49%) MSI
10 2 (0.49%) NUnit
11 1 (0.24%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.24%) JMeter
11 1 (0.24%) Maven
11 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.24%) Zephyr
General
1 130 (31.71%) Social Skills
2 60 (14.63%) Finance
3 41 (10.00%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (9.51%) Public Sector
5 26 (6.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 13 (3.17%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (2.44%) Banking
7 10 (2.44%) Manufacturing
8 8 (1.95%) Legal
9 7 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.71%) Games
9 7 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.46%) Marketing
11 5 (1.22%) Law
11 5 (1.22%) Retail
12 4 (0.98%) Billing
12 4 (0.98%) Electronics
13 3 (0.73%) Local Government
13 3 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.49%) Investment Banking
Job Titles
1 59 (14.39%) Analyst
2 50 (12.20%) Developer
3 46 (11.22%) Senior
4 39 (9.51%) Data Engineer
5 34 (8.29%) Architect
6 29 (7.07%) Lead
7 27 (6.59%) Consultant
8 21 (5.12%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (3.66%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 14 (3.41%) Administrator
10 14 (3.41%) Solutions Architect
11 12 (2.93%) Business Analyst
11 12 (2.93%) Data Architect
11 12 (2.93%) Senior Data Engineer
12 11 (2.68%) Test Analyst
13 10 (2.44%) DBA
13 10 (2.44%) Support Engineer
14 9 (2.20%) IT Support
14 9 (2.20%) Senior Analyst
14 9 (2.20%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.88%) PySpark
2 16 (3.90%) JSON
2 16 (3.90%) SOAP
3 15 (3.66%) XML
4 11 (2.68%) ActiveX
5 10 (2.44%) REST
6 9 (2.20%) .NET
7 8 (1.95%) Gherkin
8 5 (1.22%) JDBC
8 5 (1.22%) Kafka
8 5 (1.22%) SAP PI
8 5 (1.22%) YAML
9 4 (0.98%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.98%) ADO
9 4 (0.98%) FastAPI
9 4 (0.98%) IDoc
9 4 (0.98%) Microsoft Graph
10 3 (0.73%) Flask
10 3 (0.73%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.73%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 24 (5.85%) Cloud Native
2 22 (5.37%) Onboarding
3 16 (3.90%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (2.93%) Management Information System
5 10 (2.44%) Product Ownership
5 10 (2.44%) SCADA
6 9 (2.20%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.95%) Security Operations Centre
8 7 (1.71%) Data Centre
8 7 (1.71%) Smartphone
9 6 (1.46%) CMDB
9 6 (1.46%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.22%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.22%) Data Structures
10 5 (1.22%) Operational Technology
10 5 (1.22%) PKI
10 5 (1.22%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.22%) Virtual Team
11 4 (0.98%) IoT
11 4 (0.98%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 80 (19.51%) Windows
2 25 (6.10%) Linux
3 23 (5.61%) Windows 10
4 22 (5.37%) Windows Server
5 11 (2.68%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.71%) Android
6 7 (1.71%) Unix
7 5 (1.22%) SUSE
7 5 (1.22%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.98%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.73%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.49%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.49%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.24%) CentOS
11 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (19.27%) Problem-Solving
2 74 (18.05%) Agile
3 70 (17.07%) DevOps
4 57 (13.90%) CI/CD
4 57 (13.90%) Migration
5 52 (12.68%) AI
6 51 (12.44%) Continuous Improvement
7 48 (11.71%) Analytics
7 48 (11.71%) Stakeholder Management
8 47 (11.46%) Business Intelligence
9 42 (10.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 38 (9.27%) Data Modelling
10 38 (9.27%) Validation
11 34 (8.29%) CRM
11 34 (8.29%) ETL
12 32 (7.80%) Technical Leadership
13 30 (7.32%) Customer Service
14 29 (7.07%) Infrastructure as Code
15 28 (6.83%) ITIL
16 27 (6.59%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 68 (16.59%) SQL
2 36 (8.78%) Python
3 20 (4.88%) Java
4 17 (4.15%) C#
4 17 (4.15%) JavaScript
5 15 (3.66%) PowerShell
6 13 (3.17%) VBA
7 12 (2.93%) Bicep
7 12 (2.93%) VB
8 11 (2.68%) VB6
9 8 (1.95%) Kusto Query Language
10 6 (1.46%) T-SQL
11 5 (1.22%) ABAP
11 5 (1.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (1.22%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.73%) Bash
12 3 (0.73%) Go
12 3 (0.73%) MATLAB
13 2 (0.49%) Scala
13 2 (0.49%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 74 (18.05%) Security Cleared
2 61 (14.88%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.07%) Degree
4 27 (6.59%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (3.66%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (3.41%) ISTQB
7 10 (2.44%) CISSP
7 10 (2.44%) OCP
7 10 (2.44%) Oracle Certification
8 9 (2.20%) AWS Certification
8 9 (2.20%) Azure Certification
9 8 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (1.46%) DV Cleared
11 5 (1.22%) CISM
11 5 (1.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 5 (1.22%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.98%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.98%) PhD
13 3 (0.73%) CCNA
13 3 (0.73%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (6.59%) Data Quality
2 21 (5.12%) Accessibility
2 21 (5.12%) GDPR
2 21 (5.12%) QA
3 16 (3.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 13 (3.17%) SLA
5 12 (2.93%) NIST
6 11 (2.68%) PMO
7 9 (2.20%) WCAG
8 4 (0.98%) GRC
9 3 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 3 (0.73%) ISO/IEC 15288
10 2 (0.49%) NCSC
10 2 (0.49%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.24%) FATCA
11 1 (0.24%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.24%) P3O
11 1 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 57 (13.90%) Active Directory
2 20 (4.88%) Docker
2 20 (4.88%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (3.17%) Hyper-V
4 10 (2.44%) vSphere
5 8 (1.95%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.98%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.73%) Snort
8 2 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
8 2 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.49%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.49%) XenApp
8 2 (0.49%) XenDesktop
9 1 (0.24%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.24%) Firmware
9 1 (0.24%) NFS
Systems Management
1 34 (8.29%) Microsoft Intune
2 30 (7.32%) Kubernetes
3 22 (5.37%) SCCM
3 22 (5.37%) Terraform
4 15 (3.66%) Single Sign-On
5 8 (1.95%) Grafana
6 7 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.98%) Ansible
7 4 (0.98%) Jamf Pro
8 3 (0.73%) CSIRT
8 3 (0.73%) QRadar
9 2 (0.49%) Check_MK
9 2 (0.49%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.49%) HP ALM
9 2 (0.49%) WMI
9 2 (0.49%) WSUS
10 1 (0.24%) Control-M
10 1 (0.24%) HP Quality Center
10 1 (0.24%) Nessus
10 1 (0.24%) SCOM
Vendors
1 36 (8.78%) Oracle
2 34 (8.29%) ServiceNow
3 30 (7.32%) SAP
4 27 (6.59%) Databricks
5 26 (6.34%) VMware
6 20 (4.88%) Cisco
7 11 (2.68%) Splunk
8 9 (2.20%) UiPath
9 8 (1.95%) Red Hat
10 7 (1.71%) Apple
11 6 (1.46%) Canon
11 6 (1.46%) Citrix
11 6 (1.46%) Informatica
11 6 (1.46%) Okta
12 5 (1.22%) F5
12 5 (1.22%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.22%) IBM
12 5 (1.22%) MathWorks
12 5 (1.22%) Siemens
12 5 (1.22%) webMethods