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 16 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
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 405 254 272
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.93% 15.86% 13.28%
As % of the Vendors category 26.56% 33.96% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 306 161 185
10th Percentile £258 £190 £171
25th Percentile £363 £250 £298
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £396 £420
Median % change year-on-year +13.64% -5.71% -1.18%
75th Percentile £525 £538 £520
90th Percentile £617 £613 £642
England median daily rate £496 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +4.40% -2.61% -2.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 21 19
10th Percentile £19.34 £15.13 £10.50
25th Percentile £20.30 £29.00 £11.06
Median hourly rate £25.00 £30.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% +114.29% -22.22%
75th Percentile £50.00 £50.00 £26.50
90th Percentile £70.23 - £55.25
England median hourly rate £22.81 £22.63 £16.06
% change year-on-year +0.77% +40.91% -23.52%

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 1,525 748 911
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 44.92% 46.69% 44.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,046 468 619
10th Percentile £314 £205 £250
25th Percentile £401 £325 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +2.22% -5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £648 £688 £688
England median daily rate £510 £513 £515
% change year-on-year -0.49% -0.49% -1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 31 51
10th Percentile £17.96 £15.13 £11.06
25th Percentile £21.25 £24.83 £13.63
Median hourly rate £32.24 £30.00 £16.82
Median % change year-on-year +7.47% +78.36% -17.36%
75th Percentile £51.25 £42.61 £27.86
90th Percentile £65.51 £50.00 £56.25
England median hourly rate £35.50 £25.15 £25.25
% change year-on-year +41.15% -0.40% -29.86%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +2 122 £450 +20.00% 102
Warwickshire -3 94 £485 +38.57% 24
Coventry -2 66 £425 +47.83% 11
Shropshire -32 41 £440 +2.33% 22
Worcestershire +1 15 £475 -17.39% 15
Staffordshire -3 11 £388 +176.79% 26
Solihull -22 11 £425 -9.67% 6
Herefordshire +2 9 £700 -22.22% 4
Dudley - 5 £400 - 8
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 1
West Bromwich - 3 - - 3
Brierley Hill - 2 £446 -
Wolverhampton -4 1 - - 14
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 36 (8.89%) SharePoint
2 15 (3.70%) Microsoft Exchange
3 8 (1.98%) Confluence
4 6 (1.48%) SAS
5 4 (0.99%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.74%) Apache
6 3 (0.74%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.74%) IIS
6 3 (0.74%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.49%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.49%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.25%) Appian
8 1 (0.25%) CMS
Applications
1 46 (11.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (10.62%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (4.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (2.72%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (2.72%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.25%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.25%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.25%) Navisworks
6 1 (0.25%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.25%) Revit
Business Applications
1 23 (5.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.23%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.74%) Primavera
4 2 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.25%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 1 (0.25%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.25%) SAP EHS
5 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.25%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 158 (39.01%) Azure
2 80 (19.75%) Microsoft 365
3 68 (16.79%) Power Platform
4 45 (11.11%) Entra ID
5 42 (10.37%) Azure DevOps
5 42 (10.37%) Dynamics 365
6 38 (9.38%) AWS
7 32 (7.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 31 (7.65%) Microsoft Purview
9 26 (6.42%) Azure Data Factory
10 23 (5.68%) Power Automate
11 19 (4.69%) OneDrive
12 15 (3.70%) Microsoft Copilot
13 13 (3.21%) GCP
13 13 (3.21%) PowerApps
13 13 (3.21%) Serverless
14 11 (2.72%) GitHub
15 10 (2.47%) GitHub Actions
16 6 (1.48%) Azure Key Vault
16 6 (1.48%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 29 (7.16%) DNS
2 25 (6.17%) VPN
3 22 (5.43%) DHCP
4 21 (5.19%) Firewall
5 11 (2.72%) LAN
6 9 (2.22%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.22%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (1.73%) Network Security
7 7 (1.73%) SSL
7 7 (1.73%) WAN
8 6 (1.48%) Cisco IOS
9 5 (1.23%) Intrusion Detection
10 4 (0.99%) HTTP
10 4 (0.99%) SAN
10 4 (0.99%) SMTP
10 4 (0.99%) SNMP
11 3 (0.74%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.74%) HTTPS
11 3 (0.74%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (0.74%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (10.86%) Power BI
2 28 (6.91%) Data Warehouse
3 26 (6.42%) SQL Server
4 22 (5.43%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (3.46%) Azure SQL Database
6 10 (2.47%) Delta Lake
6 10 (2.47%) MySQL
7 9 (2.22%) Data Lake
8 8 (1.98%) Metadata
8 8 (1.98%) NoSQL
8 8 (1.98%) Relational Database
9 7 (1.73%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
10 5 (1.23%) Data Vault
10 5 (1.23%) Oracle Database
11 4 (0.99%) Redis
11 4 (0.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 3 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
12 3 (0.74%) SAP Data Services
12 3 (0.74%) SAS Enterprise Guide
12 3 (0.74%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 29 (7.16%) JIRA
2 8 (1.98%) Git
2 8 (1.98%) Selenium
2 8 (1.98%) WebDriver
3 7 (1.73%) Team Foundation Server
4 6 (1.48%) Cypress.io
4 6 (1.48%) Postman
4 6 (1.48%) Visual Studio
5 4 (0.99%) GitLab
5 4 (0.99%) MLflow
6 3 (0.74%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.74%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.74%) Protractor
7 2 (0.49%) JMeter
7 2 (0.49%) MSI
7 2 (0.49%) NUnit
8 1 (0.25%) CircleCI
8 1 (0.25%) Maven
8 1 (0.25%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 129 (31.85%) Social Skills
2 59 (14.57%) Finance
3 46 (11.36%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (8.64%) Public Sector
5 22 (5.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 13 (3.21%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (2.47%) Banking
7 10 (2.47%) Manufacturing
8 7 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (1.73%) Games
8 7 (1.73%) Influencing Skills
8 7 (1.73%) Legal
9 6 (1.48%) Marketing
9 6 (1.48%) Police
10 5 (1.23%) Law
10 5 (1.23%) Retail
11 4 (0.99%) Electronics
12 3 (0.74%) Billing
12 3 (0.74%) Local Government
12 3 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 59 (14.57%) Analyst
2 41 (10.12%) Developer
3 40 (9.88%) Senior
4 33 (8.15%) Architect
5 31 (7.65%) Data Engineer
6 27 (6.67%) Lead
7 25 (6.17%) Consultant
8 17 (4.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 16 (3.95%) Azure Engineer
10 15 (3.70%) Administrator
11 13 (3.21%) Data Architect
12 12 (2.96%) Business Analyst
12 12 (2.96%) Solutions Architect
13 11 (2.72%) Support Engineer
14 10 (2.47%) Senior Data Engineer
15 9 (2.22%) DBA
15 9 (2.22%) Dynamics 365 Developer
15 9 (2.22%) IT Support
15 9 (2.22%) Support Technician
15 9 (2.22%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.94%) PySpark
2 14 (3.46%) JSON
3 11 (2.72%) REST
3 11 (2.72%) SOAP
4 10 (2.47%) XML
5 9 (2.22%) .NET
5 9 (2.22%) SailPoint
6 7 (1.73%) FastAPI
7 6 (1.48%) ActiveX
7 6 (1.48%) Gherkin
8 5 (1.23%) ADO
8 5 (1.23%) JDBC
8 5 (1.23%) Kafka
8 5 (1.23%) SAP PI
8 5 (1.23%) YAML
9 4 (0.99%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.99%) Flask
9 4 (0.99%) GraphQL
9 4 (0.99%) gRPC
9 4 (0.99%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 27 (6.67%) Cloud Native
2 26 (6.42%) Onboarding
3 17 (4.20%) Hybrid Cloud
4 11 (2.72%) Management Information System
5 10 (2.47%) Product Ownership
5 10 (2.47%) SCADA
5 10 (2.47%) Security Operations Centre
6 8 (1.98%) Data Centre
6 8 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (1.98%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (1.73%) Smartphone
8 6 (1.48%) Security Posture
9 5 (1.23%) CMDB
9 5 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.23%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.23%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.23%) Virtual Team
10 4 (0.99%) Cyber Threat
10 4 (0.99%) IoT
10 4 (0.99%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 87 (21.48%) Windows
2 28 (6.91%) Linux
3 25 (6.17%) Windows 10
4 24 (5.93%) Windows Server
5 12 (2.96%) Mac OS
6 8 (1.98%) Unix
7 7 (1.73%) Android
8 5 (1.23%) Apple iOS
8 5 (1.23%) SUSE
8 5 (1.23%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.99%) Windows 7
10 3 (0.74%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.49%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.25%) CentOS
12 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (21.23%) Problem-Solving
2 72 (17.78%) Agile
3 66 (16.30%) DevOps
4 60 (14.81%) CI/CD
5 55 (13.58%) Migration
6 52 (12.84%) AI
6 52 (12.84%) Continuous Improvement
7 48 (11.85%) Analytics
8 47 (11.60%) Business Intelligence
9 41 (10.12%) Stakeholder Management
10 36 (8.89%) Data Modelling
11 34 (8.40%) ETL
11 34 (8.40%) Validation
12 33 (8.15%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 32 (7.90%) Customer Service
13 32 (7.90%) ITIL
14 31 (7.65%) Infrastructure as Code
15 30 (7.41%) CRM
15 30 (7.41%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 27 (6.67%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 71 (17.53%) SQL
2 41 (10.12%) Python
3 21 (5.19%) PowerShell
4 16 (3.95%) Java
5 13 (3.21%) C#
6 12 (2.96%) Bicep
7 11 (2.72%) JavaScript
8 9 (2.22%) Kusto Query Language
9 8 (1.98%) VB
9 8 (1.98%) VBA
10 6 (1.48%) PL/SQL
10 6 (1.48%) VB6
11 5 (1.23%) ABAP
11 5 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (1.23%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.99%) Go
13 3 (0.74%) Bash
13 3 (0.74%) MATLAB
14 2 (0.49%) Scala
14 2 (0.49%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 77 (19.01%) Security Cleared
2 62 (15.31%) SC Cleared
3 31 (7.65%) Degree
4 21 (5.19%) Microsoft Certification
5 13 (3.21%) ISTQB
6 11 (2.72%) AWS Certification
6 11 (2.72%) CISSP
7 10 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
8 9 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (2.22%) DV Cleared
9 8 (1.98%) OCP
9 8 (1.98%) Oracle Certification
10 7 (1.73%) Azure Certification
11 6 (1.48%) CISM
11 6 (1.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 5 (1.23%) CCNA
12 5 (1.23%) Master's Degree
13 4 (0.99%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.99%) PhD
14 3 (0.74%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (6.91%) Data Quality
2 19 (4.69%) GDPR
3 18 (4.44%) Accessibility
3 18 (4.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 17 (4.20%) QA
5 14 (3.46%) SLA
6 13 (3.21%) NIST
6 13 (3.21%) PMO
7 7 (1.73%) WCAG
8 4 (0.99%) GRC
9 3 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 3 (0.74%) ISO/IEC 15288
10 2 (0.49%) NCSC
10 2 (0.49%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.25%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.25%) ISO 19650
11 1 (0.25%) NIST 800
11 1 (0.25%) SOC 2
System Software
1 68 (16.79%) Active Directory
2 25 (6.17%) Docker
3 21 (5.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 12 (2.96%) Hyper-V
5 10 (2.47%) vSphere
6 7 (1.73%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.99%) Snort
7 4 (0.99%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.49%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.49%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.49%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.49%) XenApp
9 2 (0.49%) XenDesktop
10 1 (0.25%) Firmware
10 1 (0.25%) NFS
Systems Management
1 36 (8.89%) Kubernetes
1 36 (8.89%) Microsoft Intune
2 23 (5.68%) SCCM
3 22 (5.43%) Terraform
4 12 (2.96%) Single Sign-On
5 11 (2.72%) Grafana
5 11 (2.72%) Prometheus
6 5 (1.23%) Jamf Pro
7 4 (0.99%) Ansible
7 4 (0.99%) CSIRT
8 3 (0.74%) Control-M
8 3 (0.74%) HP ALM
8 3 (0.74%) IBM Guardium
8 3 (0.74%) Nessus
8 3 (0.74%) QRadar
9 2 (0.49%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.49%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.49%) SCOM
9 2 (0.49%) WMI
9 2 (0.49%) WSUS
Vendors
1 36 (8.89%) ServiceNow
2 35 (8.64%) Oracle
3 30 (7.41%) SAP
4 27 (6.67%) Databricks
5 26 (6.42%) VMware
6 22 (5.43%) Cisco
7 12 (2.96%) Splunk
8 9 (2.22%) UiPath
9 8 (1.98%) Red Hat
10 7 (1.73%) Apple
10 7 (1.73%) Informatica
10 7 (1.73%) Okta
11 6 (1.48%) Canon
11 6 (1.48%) Citrix
11 6 (1.48%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.23%) F5
12 5 (1.23%) IBM
12 5 (1.23%) MathWorks
12 5 (1.23%) Siemens
12 5 (1.23%) webMethods