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 17 August 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
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 4
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 419 276 258
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.06% 16.05% 13.80%
As % of the Vendors category 26.54% 33.21% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 316 185 174
10th Percentile £254 £162 £162
25th Percentile £375 £263 £258
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £400 £418
Median % change year-on-year +11.75% -4.19% +0.91%
75th Percentile £502 £541 £524
90th Percentile £608 £613 £638
England median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 21 7
10th Percentile £13.74 £15.13 £13.70
25th Percentile £17.50 £27.21 £19.78
Median hourly rate £19.41 £30.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -35.30% -20.00% +102.70%
75th Percentile £21.75 £50.00 £55.63
90th Percentile £70.05 - £56.25
England median hourly rate £21.50 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.99% +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 1,579 831 864
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 45.47% 48.31% 46.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,069 537 603
10th Percentile £315 £230 £263
25th Percentile £400 £350 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% - -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £621
90th Percentile £650 £638 £700
England median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 29 20
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.86 £13.93
25th Percentile £18.34 £24.66 £15.17
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.00 £28.81
Median % change year-on-year -16.18% +4.12% +28.06%
75th Percentile £47.50 £43.25 £50.31
90th Percentile £62.50 £50.00 £57.38
England median hourly rate £33.98 £25.15 £30.00
% change year-on-year +35.11% -16.17% -20.00%

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 17 August 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 17 August 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 17 August 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 0 120 £450 +20.50% 205
Warwickshire -4 85 £450 +12.50% 42
Coventry 0 79 £425 +41.67% 30
Shropshire -25 50 £447 -13.20% 19
Staffordshire -2 14 £413 +194.64% 47
Worcestershire -3 11 £450 -21.74% 31
Solihull -25 9 £425 -17.56% 15
Herefordshire +2 8 £700 -22.22% 7
Dudley - 7 £400 - 8
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 7
West Bromwich - 3 - - 2
Halesowen - 1 - - 1
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 41 (9.79%) SharePoint
2 17 (4.06%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.19%) SAS
4 4 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.95%) Confluence
5 3 (0.72%) Apache
5 3 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.72%) IIS
6 2 (0.48%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.48%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.24%) Appian
7 1 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 49 (11.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (9.79%) Microsoft Office
3 15 (3.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (2.39%) MS Visio
5 9 (2.15%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.48%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.24%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.24%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.24%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.24%) Revit
7 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 18 (4.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.19%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.72%) Primavera
4 2 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
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 S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 175 (41.77%) Azure
2 94 (22.43%) Microsoft 365
3 78 (18.62%) Power Platform
4 51 (12.17%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (11.69%) Entra ID
6 45 (10.74%) Dynamics 365
7 39 (9.31%) Power Automate
8 35 (8.35%) Microsoft Purview
9 34 (8.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 33 (7.88%) AWS
11 32 (7.64%) Azure Data Factory
12 25 (5.97%) OneDrive
12 25 (5.97%) PowerApps
13 17 (4.06%) Serverless
14 13 (3.10%) Microsoft Copilot
15 11 (2.63%) GCP
16 10 (2.39%) GitHub
16 10 (2.39%) GitHub Actions
17 8 (1.91%) Azure Functions
18 7 (1.67%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 33 (7.88%) DNS
2 26 (6.21%) DHCP
3 25 (5.97%) VPN
4 19 (4.53%) Firewall
5 11 (2.63%) LAN
5 11 (2.63%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.15%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (1.91%) WAN
8 6 (1.43%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.43%) SSL
9 4 (0.95%) SAN
9 4 (0.95%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.72%) BIG-IP
10 3 (0.72%) NAS
10 3 (0.72%) Network Security
10 3 (0.72%) SNMP
10 3 (0.72%) Structured Cabling
10 3 (0.72%) Wireless
11 2 (0.48%) Ethereal
11 2 (0.48%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (10.98%) Power BI
2 31 (7.40%) SQL Server
3 29 (6.92%) Data Warehouse
4 21 (5.01%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (3.34%) Azure SQL Database
6 12 (2.86%) Data Lake
6 12 (2.86%) MySQL
7 10 (2.39%) Delta Lake
8 8 (1.91%) NoSQL
9 7 (1.67%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 7 (1.67%) Metadata
9 7 (1.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 6 (1.43%) Data Vault
10 6 (1.43%) Relational Database
11 5 (1.19%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.72%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.72%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.72%) Power Query
12 3 (0.72%) Redis
12 3 (0.72%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 19 (4.53%) JIRA
2 12 (2.86%) Team Foundation Server
3 11 (2.63%) Selenium
3 11 (2.63%) Visual Studio
3 11 (2.63%) WebDriver
4 9 (2.15%) Cypress.io
4 9 (2.15%) Postman
5 6 (1.43%) Cucumber
5 6 (1.43%) Git
6 4 (0.95%) MLflow
7 3 (0.72%) GitLab
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%) Maven
9 1 (0.24%) Rational Rhapsody
9 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.24%) Zephyr
General
1 142 (33.89%) Social Skills
2 60 (14.32%) Finance
3 43 (10.26%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (10.26%) Public Sector
4 32 (7.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 18 (4.30%) Organisational Skills
6 11 (2.63%) Legal
6 11 (2.63%) Manufacturing
7 10 (2.39%) Banking
8 7 (1.67%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (1.67%) Marketing
9 6 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (1.19%) Retail
11 4 (0.95%) Billing
11 4 (0.95%) Law
12 3 (0.72%) Electronics
13 2 (0.48%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.48%) Local Government
13 2 (0.48%) Publishing
13 2 (0.48%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 56 (13.37%) Developer
2 54 (12.89%) Analyst
3 48 (11.46%) Senior
4 40 (9.55%) Data Engineer
5 32 (7.64%) Architect
6 27 (6.44%) Consultant
7 26 (6.21%) Lead
8 22 (5.25%) Administrator
9 21 (5.01%) Azure Engineer
10 15 (3.58%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 14 (3.34%) Solutions Architect
12 13 (3.10%) Data Architect
12 13 (3.10%) Senior Data Engineer
13 12 (2.86%) Dynamics 365 Developer
14 11 (2.63%) Support Engineer
15 10 (2.39%) DBA
15 10 (2.39%) IT Support
15 10 (2.39%) Senior Analyst
15 10 (2.39%) Test Analyst
16 9 (2.15%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.77%) PySpark
2 18 (4.30%) JSON
3 16 (3.82%) SOAP
4 14 (3.34%) XML
5 11 (2.63%) ActiveX
6 10 (2.39%) .NET
6 10 (2.39%) REST
7 9 (2.15%) Gherkin
8 6 (1.43%) Kafka
8 6 (1.43%) Microsoft Graph
9 5 (1.19%) JDBC
9 5 (1.19%) SAP PI
10 4 (0.95%) .NET Framework
10 4 (0.95%) IDoc
10 4 (0.95%) YAML
11 3 (0.72%) .NET Core
11 3 (0.72%) FastAPI
11 3 (0.72%) GraphQL
11 3 (0.72%) gRPC
11 3 (0.72%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 21 (5.01%) Cloud Native
2 20 (4.77%) Onboarding
3 17 (4.06%) Management Information System
4 16 (3.82%) Hybrid Cloud
5 15 (3.58%) Product Ownership
6 13 (3.10%) SCADA
7 9 (2.15%) CMDB
8 7 (1.67%) Data Centre
8 7 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (1.67%) Operational Technology
8 7 (1.67%) Smartphone
9 6 (1.43%) Data Structures
9 6 (1.43%) IoT
9 6 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.19%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.19%) PKI
10 5 (1.19%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.19%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.19%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 80 (19.09%) Windows
2 25 (5.97%) Windows 10
3 24 (5.73%) Windows Server
4 20 (4.77%) Linux
5 12 (2.86%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.67%) Android
7 6 (1.43%) Unix
8 5 (1.19%) SUSE
8 5 (1.19%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.95%) 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 (20.05%) Problem-Solving
2 70 (16.71%) Agile
3 69 (16.47%) DevOps
4 55 (13.13%) CI/CD
4 55 (13.13%) Migration
5 52 (12.41%) Continuous Improvement
5 52 (12.41%) Stakeholder Management
6 50 (11.93%) AI
7 49 (11.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 48 (11.46%) Analytics
9 47 (11.22%) Business Intelligence
10 43 (10.26%) Data Modelling
11 40 (9.55%) Customer Service
12 36 (8.59%) ETL
12 36 (8.59%) Technical Leadership
12 36 (8.59%) Validation
13 35 (8.35%) ITIL
13 35 (8.35%) ITSM
14 30 (7.16%) Infrastructure as Code
15 29 (6.92%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 70 (16.71%) SQL
2 38 (9.07%) Python
3 23 (5.49%) JavaScript
4 22 (5.25%) C#
5 16 (3.82%) Java
5 16 (3.82%) PowerShell
6 13 (3.10%) VBA
7 12 (2.86%) Bicep
8 11 (2.63%) VB
8 11 (2.63%) VB6
9 6 (1.43%) T-SQL
10 5 (1.19%) ABAP
10 5 (1.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.19%) Kusto Query Language
10 5 (1.19%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.72%) Bash
11 3 (0.72%) Go
12 2 (0.48%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.48%) Scala
12 2 (0.48%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 72 (17.18%) Security Cleared
2 58 (13.84%) SC Cleared
3 34 (8.11%) Microsoft Certification
4 27 (6.44%) Degree
5 16 (3.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.10%) ISTQB
7 11 (2.63%) Azure Certification
8 10 (2.39%) OCP
8 10 (2.39%) Oracle Certification
9 8 (1.91%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.91%) CISSP
10 7 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.19%) CISM
11 5 (1.19%) DV Cleared
12 4 (0.95%) CCNP
12 4 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.95%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.95%) PhD
13 3 (0.72%) A+ Certification
13 3 (0.72%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (6.68%) Data Quality
2 25 (5.97%) Accessibility
3 21 (5.01%) GDPR
4 18 (4.30%) QA
5 16 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (3.34%) NIST
7 12 (2.86%) PMO
7 12 (2.86%) SLA
8 10 (2.39%) WCAG
9 5 (1.19%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.95%) GRC
11 2 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 12207
11 2 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 2 (0.48%) NCSC
12 1 (0.24%) HL7
12 1 (0.24%) ISO 14001
12 1 (0.24%) ISO 22301
12 1 (0.24%) ISO 9001
12 1 (0.24%) P3O
12 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 65 (15.51%) Active Directory
2 21 (5.01%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.30%) Docker
4 15 (3.58%) Hyper-V
5 11 (2.63%) vSphere
6 9 (2.15%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.95%) 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 39 (9.31%) Microsoft Intune
2 24 (5.73%) Kubernetes
2 24 (5.73%) SCCM
3 23 (5.49%) Terraform
4 14 (3.34%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (1.67%) Grafana
6 6 (1.43%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.19%) Ansible
7 5 (1.19%) Jamf Pro
8 3 (0.72%) QRadar
9 2 (0.48%) Check_MK
9 2 (0.48%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.48%) WMI
9 2 (0.48%) WSUS
10 1 (0.24%) AirWatch
10 1 (0.24%) Argo
10 1 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.24%) SCOM
Vendors
1 35 (8.35%) Oracle
2 34 (8.11%) ServiceNow
3 28 (6.68%) Databricks
4 27 (6.44%) VMware
5 25 (5.97%) SAP
6 23 (5.49%) Cisco
7 10 (2.39%) Splunk
7 10 (2.39%) UiPath
8 9 (2.15%) Informatica
9 8 (1.91%) Apple
9 8 (1.91%) Red Hat
10 7 (1.67%) Palo Alto
11 6 (1.43%) Canon
11 6 (1.43%) Citrix
11 6 (1.43%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.19%) IBM
12 5 (1.19%) MathWorks
12 5 (1.19%) Siemens
12 5 (1.19%) SolarWinds
12 5 (1.19%) webMethods