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 26 September 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
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 463 297 290
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.93% 16.17% 15.22%
As % of the Vendors category 29.55% 31.30% 31.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 328 216 192
10th Percentile £228 £168 £170
25th Percentile £363 £280 £254
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £430 £439 £425
Median % change year-on-year -1.99% +3.24% +6.25%
75th Percentile £501 £578 £538
90th Percentile £625 £644 £635
England median daily rate £488 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 37 20 4
10th Percentile £14.17 £20.25 £15.68
25th Percentile £17.48 £28.55 £22.03
Median hourly rate £19.41 £30.00 £30.56
Median % change year-on-year -35.30% -1.84% +35.83%
75th Percentile £21.75 £50.00 £40.00
90th Percentile £40.65 - £49.00
England median hourly rate £18.58 £22.63 £16.81
% change year-on-year -17.92% +34.66% -25.41%

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 1,567 949 912
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 43.75% 51.66% 47.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,024 617 594
10th Percentile £313 £243 £222
25th Percentile £403 £385 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £624
90th Percentile £675 £650 £713
England median daily rate £514 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +1.28% -3.33% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 97 31 13
10th Percentile £13.50 £15.13 £14.40
25th Percentile £17.57 £19.25 £15.22
Median hourly rate £21.50 £30.00 £31.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.33% -4.76% +36.96%
75th Percentile £33.99 £36.25 £48.75
90th Percentile £53.75 £50.00 £59.00
England median hourly rate £27.30 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +8.55% -28.14% -20.16%

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 26 September 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 26 September 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 26 September 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 0 141 £483 +20.75% 231
Coventry +1 93 £425 +38.78% 42
Warwickshire -1 90 £450 +2.04% 69
Shropshire -23 56 £445 -13.38% 36
Staffordshire -5 22 £413 +194.64% 77
Worcestershire 0 11 £300 -47.83% 44
Herefordshire +7 9 £500 -23.08% 31
Solihull -30 5 £228 -59.56% 17
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 5
West Bromwich - 3 - - 2
Dudley - 2 £388 - 9
Halesowen - 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 59 (12.74%) SharePoint
2 23 (4.97%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.86%) Apache Spark
3 4 (0.86%) SAS
4 3 (0.65%) Apache
4 3 (0.65%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.65%) IIS
4 3 (0.65%) Oracle Workflow
5 2 (0.43%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.43%) CMS
5 2 (0.43%) Skype for Business
6 1 (0.22%) Appian
6 1 (0.22%) Confluence
Applications
1 58 (12.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (10.37%) Microsoft Office
3 15 (3.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.73%) Microsoft Project
5 5 (1.08%) Chatbot
5 5 (1.08%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.86%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 4 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.22%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.22%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.22%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.22%) Revit
Business Applications
1 29 (6.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.08%) SAP PSCD
2 5 (1.08%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.86%) ResourceLink
4 3 (0.65%) Primavera
4 3 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.22%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 1 (0.22%) MIS ActiveH
Cloud Services
1 208 (44.92%) Azure
2 135 (29.16%) Microsoft 365
3 76 (16.41%) Power Platform
4 71 (15.33%) Entra ID
5 59 (12.74%) Dynamics 365
6 56 (12.10%) Azure DevOps
7 55 (11.88%) Power Automate
8 39 (8.42%) AWS
9 31 (6.70%) PowerApps
10 29 (6.26%) OneDrive
11 28 (6.05%) Microsoft Purview
12 26 (5.62%) Azure Data Factory
12 26 (5.62%) Serverless
13 21 (4.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 20 (4.32%) Azure Functions
14 20 (4.32%) Microsoft Copilot
15 14 (3.02%) GCP
16 9 (1.94%) Azure Sentinel
16 9 (1.94%) GitHub
17 8 (1.73%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 37 (7.99%) DNS
2 33 (7.13%) DHCP
3 25 (5.40%) VPN
4 24 (5.18%) Firewall
5 16 (3.46%) TCP/IP
6 13 (2.81%) Wi-Fi
7 11 (2.38%) LAN
8 9 (1.94%) Wireless
9 7 (1.51%) WAN
10 6 (1.30%) Cisco IOS
10 6 (1.30%) SAN
10 6 (1.30%) Unified Communications
11 5 (1.08%) VLAN
12 4 (0.86%) Network Security
12 4 (0.86%) SD-WAN
12 4 (0.86%) VoIP
13 3 (0.65%) DNSSEC
13 3 (0.65%) SNMP
13 3 (0.65%) SSL
13 3 (0.65%) Structured Cabling
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (9.29%) SQL Server
2 34 (7.34%) Power BI
3 18 (3.89%) PostgreSQL
4 15 (3.24%) Data Warehouse
5 12 (2.59%) MySQL
6 10 (2.16%) Azure SQL Database
7 9 (1.94%) Data Lake
8 7 (1.51%) Power Query
8 7 (1.51%) Relational Database
9 6 (1.30%) Metadata
9 6 (1.30%) Oracle Reports
9 6 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 5 (1.08%) Data Vault
10 5 (1.08%) Delta Lake
11 4 (0.86%) Oracle BI Publisher
12 3 (0.65%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.65%) MongoDB
12 3 (0.65%) NoSQL
12 3 (0.65%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 3 (0.65%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 16 (3.46%) JIRA
2 14 (3.02%) Git
3 12 (2.59%) Team Foundation Server
4 11 (2.38%) Cypress.io
4 11 (2.38%) Postman
4 11 (2.38%) Selenium
4 11 (2.38%) Visual Studio
4 11 (2.38%) WebDriver
5 8 (1.73%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.65%) GitLab
6 3 (0.65%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.65%) Protractor
7 2 (0.43%) NUnit
8 1 (0.22%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.22%) Maven
8 1 (0.22%) MLflow
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle Forms
8 1 (0.22%) Rational Rhapsody
8 1 (0.22%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.22%) Zephyr
General
1 182 (39.31%) Social Skills
2 64 (13.82%) Finance
3 58 (12.53%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (11.45%) Public Sector
5 37 (7.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 26 (5.62%) Organisational Skills
7 19 (4.10%) Legal
8 11 (2.38%) Manufacturing
9 9 (1.94%) Banking
9 9 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
9 9 (1.94%) Influencing Skills
10 8 (1.73%) Billing
11 5 (1.08%) Marketing
11 5 (1.08%) Retail
12 4 (0.86%) Back Office
12 4 (0.86%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.65%) Law
14 2 (0.43%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.43%) Publishing
15 1 (0.22%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 62 (13.39%) Analyst
2 58 (12.53%) Developer
3 55 (11.88%) Senior
4 35 (7.56%) Data Engineer
5 34 (7.34%) Lead
6 31 (6.70%) Architect
7 28 (6.05%) Administrator
8 26 (5.62%) Support Engineer
9 25 (5.40%) Consultant
10 23 (4.97%) Azure Engineer
11 21 (4.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 20 (4.32%) IT Support
12 20 (4.32%) Solutions Architect
13 19 (4.10%) Dynamics 365 Developer
14 14 (3.02%) IT Engineer
15 13 (2.81%) IT Support Engineer
15 13 (2.81%) Senior Data Engineer
16 12 (2.59%) Senior Analyst
16 12 (2.59%) Senior Developer
17 11 (2.38%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (6.48%) JSON
2 23 (4.97%) XML
3 21 (4.54%) SOAP
4 18 (3.89%) REST
4 18 (3.89%) Terraform
5 11 (2.38%) ActiveX
5 11 (2.38%) Gherkin
5 11 (2.38%) XSLT
6 10 (2.16%) PySpark
7 9 (1.94%) Microsoft Graph
8 7 (1.51%) .NET
9 6 (1.30%) OAuth
9 6 (1.30%) OpenID
10 5 (1.08%) JDBC
10 5 (1.08%) LangChain
10 5 (1.08%) Oracle Fusion
10 5 (1.08%) SAML
10 5 (1.08%) SAP PI
10 5 (1.08%) Semantic Kernel
11 4 (0.86%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 36 (7.78%) Management Information System
2 32 (6.91%) Onboarding
3 19 (4.10%) Cloud Native
4 15 (3.24%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (3.24%) Product Ownership
5 12 (2.59%) Enterprise Software
6 11 (2.38%) Data Structures
6 11 (2.38%) Taxonomies
7 10 (2.16%) Virtual Team
8 9 (1.94%) CMDB
9 8 (1.73%) Cyber Threat
9 8 (1.73%) SCADA
9 8 (1.73%) Smartphone
10 7 (1.51%) Operational Technology
11 6 (1.30%) AI Agents
11 6 (1.30%) PKI
11 6 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (1.08%) iPhone
12 5 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
12 5 (1.08%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 108 (23.33%) Windows
2 34 (7.34%) Windows Server
3 30 (6.48%) Windows 10
4 23 (4.97%) Linux
5 15 (3.24%) Mac OS
6 10 (2.16%) Android
7 8 (1.73%) Ubuntu
8 5 (1.08%) Apple iOS
8 5 (1.08%) SUSE
8 5 (1.08%) Unix
9 4 (0.86%) CentOS
10 3 (0.65%) Windows 7
10 3 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.65%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.43%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (21.60%) Problem-Solving
2 77 (16.63%) DevOps
3 72 (15.55%) Stakeholder Management
4 66 (14.25%) Agile
5 62 (13.39%) Continuous Improvement
6 59 (12.74%) AI
6 59 (12.74%) Migration
7 58 (12.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 52 (11.23%) Customer Service
9 47 (10.15%) CI/CD
9 47 (10.15%) Data Modelling
9 47 (10.15%) Technical Leadership
10 46 (9.94%) ITSM
11 42 (9.07%) Mentoring
12 40 (8.64%) ITIL
13 38 (8.21%) Business Intelligence
13 38 (8.21%) CRM
14 36 (7.78%) Analytics
15 34 (7.34%) Validation
16 33 (7.13%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 51 (11.02%) SQL
2 35 (7.56%) JavaScript
3 33 (7.13%) C#
4 30 (6.48%) Python
5 23 (4.97%) PowerShell
6 16 (3.46%) Java
7 13 (2.81%) VBA
8 11 (2.38%) VB
8 11 (2.38%) VB6
9 7 (1.51%) Kusto Query Language
10 6 (1.30%) Bicep
11 5 (1.08%) ABAP
11 5 (1.08%) PL/SQL
11 5 (1.08%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 3 (0.65%) Bash
14 2 (0.43%) Search Processing Language
14 2 (0.43%) TypeScript
15 1 (0.22%) Groovy
15 1 (0.22%) Scala
Qualifications
1 74 (15.98%) Security Cleared
2 59 (12.74%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.50%) Microsoft Certification
4 24 (5.18%) Degree
5 20 (4.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (3.46%) Azure Certification
7 14 (3.02%) CISSP
8 12 (2.59%) ISTQB
9 9 (1.94%) OCP
9 9 (1.94%) Oracle Certification
10 8 (1.73%) DBS Check
11 7 (1.51%) CISM
12 6 (1.30%) AWS Certification
12 6 (1.30%) Cisco Certification
13 5 (1.08%) A+ Certification
13 5 (1.08%) CCNP
14 4 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
14 4 (0.86%) Network+ Certification
15 3 (0.65%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 2 (0.43%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (7.56%) Accessibility
2 29 (6.26%) GDPR
3 26 (5.62%) Data Quality
4 20 (4.32%) WCAG
5 19 (4.10%) QA
6 18 (3.89%) SLA
7 17 (3.67%) NIST
8 15 (3.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 14 (3.02%) PMO
10 9 (1.94%) GRC
11 8 (1.73%) PCI DSS
12 3 (0.65%) ISO 19650
13 2 (0.43%) NCSC
14 1 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
14 1 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
14 1 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 1 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
14 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 17025
14 1 (0.22%) NIST 800
14 1 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 82 (17.71%) Active Directory
2 26 (5.62%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (3.46%) Hyper-V
3 16 (3.46%) vSphere
4 14 (3.02%) VMware ESXi
5 13 (2.81%) Docker
6 4 (0.86%) Firmware
6 4 (0.86%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.43%) XenApp
7 2 (0.43%) XenDesktop
8 1 (0.22%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.22%) NFS
8 1 (0.22%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 51 (11.02%) Microsoft Intune
2 25 (5.40%) SCCM
3 19 (4.10%) Single Sign-On
4 15 (3.24%) Kubernetes
5 6 (1.30%) Jamf Pro
6 3 (0.65%) Ansible
6 3 (0.65%) Grafana
6 3 (0.65%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.65%) QRadar
7 2 (0.43%) Check_MK
7 2 (0.43%) Failover Clustering
7 2 (0.43%) WMI
7 2 (0.43%) WSUS
8 1 (0.22%) AirWatch
8 1 (0.22%) Argo
8 1 (0.22%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 43 (9.29%) ServiceNow
2 31 (6.70%) Oracle
2 31 (6.70%) VMware
3 26 (5.62%) Cisco
4 24 (5.18%) SAP
5 13 (2.81%) Splunk
6 12 (2.59%) Databricks
7 9 (1.94%) OpenAI
7 9 (1.94%) UiPath
8 8 (1.73%) Apple
8 8 (1.73%) Palo Alto
9 7 (1.51%) Adobe
9 7 (1.51%) Fortinet
9 7 (1.51%) Red Hat
10 6 (1.30%) Canon
10 6 (1.30%) Samsung
11 5 (1.08%) BeyondTrust
11 5 (1.08%) IBM
11 5 (1.08%) Informatica
11 5 (1.08%) SolarWinds