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 24 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
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 418 257 267
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.11% 15.85% 13.69%
As % of the Vendors category 26.74% 34.22% 29.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 320 167 184
10th Percentile £262 £183 £167
25th Percentile £372 £243 £272
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £388 £420
Median % change year-on-year +16.13% -7.74% -1.18%
75th Percentile £530 £539 £520
90th Percentile £619 £613 £638
England median daily rate £493 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +3.68% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 22 13
10th Percentile £19.34 £15.41 £10.59
25th Percentile £21.25 £27.66 £11.06
Median hourly rate £21.50 £30.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.33% +114.29% -23.29%
75th Percentile £30.00 £50.00 £38.75
90th Percentile £70.18 - £56.00
England median hourly rate £24.00 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year +6.05% +39.43% -24.51%

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 1,563 751 892
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 45.29% 46.33% 45.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,079 473 623
10th Percentile £315 £208 £251
25th Percentile £400 £325 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £460 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.74% +2.22% -5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £648 £688
England median daily rate £510 £510 £520
% change year-on-year - -1.92% -0.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 31 31
10th Percentile £18.27 £15.13 £11.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.83 £13.63
Median hourly rate £30.50 £30.00 £16.19
Median % change year-on-year +1.67% +85.30% -28.04%
75th Percentile £51.25 £42.61 £38.13
90th Percentile £67.32 £50.00 £56.25
England median hourly rate £35.81 £25.15 £27.00
% change year-on-year +42.39% -6.85% -29.92%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +1 122 £450 +38.46% 111
Warwickshire -2 95 £485 +38.57% 40
Coventry 0 70 £425 +47.83% 20
Shropshire -29 47 £440 - 20
Worcestershire 0 13 £450 -21.74% 17
Staffordshire -5 11 £388 +176.79% 25
Solihull -24 10 £425 -9.67% 5
Herefordshire +1 8 £700 -22.22% 5
Dudley - 5 £400 - 8
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 5
West Bromwich - 3 - - 5
Brierley Hill - 2 £446 - 1
Wolverhampton -4 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 38 (9.09%) SharePoint
2 15 (3.59%) Microsoft Exchange
3 7 (1.67%) Confluence
4 6 (1.44%) SAS
5 4 (0.96%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.72%) Apache
6 3 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.72%) IIS
6 3 (0.72%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.48%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.24%) Appian
8 1 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 44 (10.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (9.81%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (4.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (2.63%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (2.63%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.48%) 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 25 (5.98%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.20%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.72%) Primavera
4 2 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.48%) 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
1 162 (38.76%) Azure
2 84 (20.10%) Microsoft 365
3 72 (17.22%) Power Platform
4 47 (11.24%) Dynamics 365
5 44 (10.53%) Entra ID
6 43 (10.29%) Azure DevOps
7 37 (8.85%) AWS
8 33 (7.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 32 (7.66%) Microsoft Purview
10 30 (7.18%) Power Automate
11 26 (6.22%) Azure Data Factory
12 19 (4.55%) OneDrive
13 18 (4.31%) PowerApps
14 15 (3.59%) Microsoft Copilot
15 13 (3.11%) Serverless
16 12 (2.87%) GCP
17 9 (2.15%) GitHub
17 9 (2.15%) GitHub Actions
18 6 (1.44%) Azure Machine Learning
18 6 (1.44%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 28 (6.70%) DNS
2 24 (5.74%) VPN
3 22 (5.26%) DHCP
4 20 (4.78%) Firewall
5 11 (2.63%) LAN
6 9 (2.15%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.15%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (1.67%) SSL
7 7 (1.67%) WAN
8 6 (1.44%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.44%) Network Security
9 5 (1.20%) Intrusion Detection
10 4 (0.96%) HTTP
10 4 (0.96%) SAN
10 4 (0.96%) SMTP
10 4 (0.96%) SNMP
11 3 (0.72%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.72%) HTTPS
11 3 (0.72%) NAS
11 3 (0.72%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (10.29%) Power BI
2 27 (6.46%) Data Warehouse
2 27 (6.46%) SQL Server
3 21 (5.02%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (3.35%) Azure SQL Database
5 10 (2.39%) Data Lake
5 10 (2.39%) Delta Lake
5 10 (2.39%) MySQL
6 8 (1.91%) NoSQL
6 8 (1.91%) Relational Database
7 7 (1.67%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
7 7 (1.67%) Metadata
8 5 (1.20%) Data Vault
8 5 (1.20%) Oracle Database
9 4 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (0.72%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.72%) Redis
10 3 (0.72%) SAP Data Services
10 3 (0.72%) SAS Enterprise Guide
10 3 (0.72%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 29 (6.94%) JIRA
2 11 (2.63%) Team Foundation Server
3 10 (2.39%) Visual Studio
4 9 (2.15%) Selenium
4 9 (2.15%) WebDriver
5 7 (1.67%) Cypress.io
5 7 (1.67%) Git
5 7 (1.67%) Postman
6 4 (0.96%) Cucumber
6 4 (0.96%) GitLab
6 4 (0.96%) MLflow
7 3 (0.72%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.72%) Protractor
8 2 (0.48%) MSI
8 2 (0.48%) NUnit
9 1 (0.24%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.24%) JMeter
9 1 (0.24%) Maven
9 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.24%) Zephyr
General
1 129 (30.86%) Social Skills
2 61 (14.59%) Finance
3 45 (10.77%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (9.33%) Public Sector
5 24 (5.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 13 (3.11%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (2.39%) Banking
7 10 (2.39%) Manufacturing
8 8 (1.91%) Legal
9 7 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.67%) Games
9 7 (1.67%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (1.67%) Marketing
10 6 (1.44%) Law
10 6 (1.44%) Police
11 5 (1.20%) Retail
12 4 (0.96%) Billing
12 4 (0.96%) Electronics
13 3 (0.72%) Local Government
13 3 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 59 (14.11%) Analyst
2 49 (11.72%) Developer
3 44 (10.53%) Senior
4 37 (8.85%) Data Engineer
5 33 (7.89%) Architect
6 28 (6.70%) Consultant
6 28 (6.70%) Lead
7 19 (4.55%) Azure Engineer
8 15 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 13 (3.11%) Administrator
9 13 (3.11%) Solutions Architect
10 12 (2.87%) Business Analyst
10 12 (2.87%) Data Architect
10 12 (2.87%) Senior Data Engineer
11 11 (2.63%) Support Engineer
12 10 (2.39%) Test Analyst
13 9 (2.15%) Cloud Engineer
13 9 (2.15%) DBA
13 9 (2.15%) IT Support
13 9 (2.15%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.78%) PySpark
2 15 (3.59%) JSON
2 15 (3.59%) SOAP
3 14 (3.35%) XML
4 10 (2.39%) ActiveX
4 10 (2.39%) REST
5 9 (2.15%) .NET
5 9 (2.15%) SailPoint
6 7 (1.67%) Gherkin
7 6 (1.44%) FastAPI
8 5 (1.20%) JDBC
8 5 (1.20%) Kafka
8 5 (1.20%) SAP PI
8 5 (1.20%) YAML
9 4 (0.96%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.96%) ADO
9 4 (0.96%) IDoc
9 4 (0.96%) Microsoft Graph
9 4 (0.96%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (0.96%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 25 (5.98%) Cloud Native
2 24 (5.74%) Onboarding
3 17 (4.07%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (2.87%) Management Information System
5 10 (2.39%) Product Ownership
5 10 (2.39%) SCADA
5 10 (2.39%) Security Operations Centre
6 9 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
7 7 (1.67%) Data Centre
7 7 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (1.67%) Smartphone
8 6 (1.44%) CMDB
9 5 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.20%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.20%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.20%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.20%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.20%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.96%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (0.96%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 84 (20.10%) Windows
2 27 (6.46%) Linux
3 24 (5.74%) Windows 10
4 23 (5.50%) Windows Server
5 11 (2.63%) Mac OS
6 8 (1.91%) Unix
7 7 (1.67%) Android
8 5 (1.20%) SUSE
8 5 (1.20%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.96%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.72%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.24%) CentOS
12 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (20.10%) Problem-Solving
2 76 (18.18%) Agile
3 66 (15.79%) DevOps
4 58 (13.88%) CI/CD
4 58 (13.88%) Migration
5 53 (12.68%) AI
6 50 (11.96%) Continuous Improvement
7 49 (11.72%) Analytics
8 46 (11.00%) Business Intelligence
8 46 (11.00%) Stakeholder Management
9 38 (9.09%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 38 (9.09%) Validation
10 37 (8.85%) Data Modelling
11 35 (8.37%) ETL
12 33 (7.89%) CRM
13 31 (7.42%) Customer Service
13 31 (7.42%) ITIL
14 30 (7.18%) Infrastructure as Code
15 29 (6.94%) Technical Leadership
16 28 (6.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 69 (16.51%) SQL
2 40 (9.57%) Python
3 19 (4.55%) Java
4 18 (4.31%) PowerShell
5 15 (3.59%) C#
5 15 (3.59%) JavaScript
6 12 (2.87%) Bicep
6 12 (2.87%) VBA
7 11 (2.63%) VB
8 10 (2.39%) VB6
9 9 (2.15%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (1.20%) ABAP
10 5 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.20%) PL/SQL
10 5 (1.20%) T-SQL
11 3 (0.72%) Bash
11 3 (0.72%) Go
11 3 (0.72%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.48%) Scala
12 2 (0.48%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 76 (18.18%) Security Cleared
2 62 (14.83%) SC Cleared
3 29 (6.94%) Degree
4 23 (5.50%) Microsoft Certification
5 14 (3.35%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.11%) ISTQB
7 11 (2.63%) CISSP
8 10 (2.39%) AWS Certification
9 9 (2.15%) Cisco Certification
10 8 (1.91%) Azure Certification
10 8 (1.91%) OCP
10 8 (1.91%) Oracle Certification
11 7 (1.67%) DV Cleared
12 6 (1.44%) CISM
13 5 (1.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 5 (1.20%) Master's Degree
14 4 (0.96%) CCNA
14 4 (0.96%) ITIL Certification
14 4 (0.96%) PhD
15 3 (0.72%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (6.70%) Data Quality
2 21 (5.02%) GDPR
3 20 (4.78%) Accessibility
3 20 (4.78%) QA
4 17 (4.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 13 (3.11%) SLA
6 12 (2.87%) NIST
7 11 (2.63%) PMO
8 8 (1.91%) WCAG
9 4 (0.96%) GRC
10 3 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 3 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 2 (0.48%) NCSC
11 2 (0.48%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.24%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.24%) SOC 2
System Software
1 65 (15.55%) Active Directory
2 23 (5.50%) Docker
3 20 (4.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (2.87%) Hyper-V
5 10 (2.39%) vSphere
6 8 (1.91%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.96%) Snort
7 4 (0.96%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.48%) Microsoft App-V
8 2 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.48%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.48%) XenApp
8 2 (0.48%) XenDesktop
9 1 (0.24%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.24%) Firmware
9 1 (0.24%) NFS
Systems Management
1 34 (8.13%) Kubernetes
1 34 (8.13%) Microsoft Intune
2 23 (5.50%) Terraform
3 22 (5.26%) SCCM
4 15 (3.59%) Single Sign-On
5 10 (2.39%) Grafana
6 9 (2.15%) Prometheus
7 4 (0.96%) Ansible
7 4 (0.96%) CSIRT
7 4 (0.96%) Jamf Pro
8 3 (0.72%) Control-M
8 3 (0.72%) IBM Guardium
8 3 (0.72%) Nessus
8 3 (0.72%) QRadar
9 2 (0.48%) Check_MK
9 2 (0.48%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.48%) HP ALM
9 2 (0.48%) WMI
9 2 (0.48%) WSUS
10 1 (0.24%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 36 (8.61%) ServiceNow
2 35 (8.37%) Oracle
3 31 (7.42%) SAP
4 27 (6.46%) Databricks
5 25 (5.98%) VMware
6 21 (5.02%) Cisco
7 12 (2.87%) Splunk
8 9 (2.15%) UiPath
9 8 (1.91%) Red Hat
10 7 (1.67%) Apple
10 7 (1.67%) Informatica
10 7 (1.67%) Okta
11 6 (1.44%) Canon
11 6 (1.44%) Citrix
12 5 (1.20%) F5
12 5 (1.20%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.20%) IBM
12 5 (1.20%) MathWorks
12 5 (1.20%) Siemens
12 5 (1.20%) webMethods