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 11 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
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 6 4
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 443 286 280
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.60% 15.73% 14.67%
As % of the Vendors category 28.43% 32.03% 32.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 316 199 184
10th Percentile £250 £160 £163
25th Percentile £363 £275 £255
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £443 £425 £410
Median % change year-on-year +4.12% +3.66% +2.50%
75th Percentile £501 £575 £525
90th Percentile £619 £625 £637
England median daily rate £490 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.57% -0.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 20 3
10th Percentile £13.98 £24.30 £14.26
25th Percentile £17.48 £29.00 £18.50
Median hourly rate £19.41 £31.94 £26.13
Median % change year-on-year -39.23% +22.26% +32.28%
75th Percentile £21.75 £50.00 £40.84
90th Percentile £33.75 - £49.34
England median hourly rate £19.33 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year -14.58% +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 1,558 893 871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 44.31% 49.12% 45.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,014 585 582
10th Percentile £313 £235 £250
25th Percentile £405 £375 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £495 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.25% -1.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £625
90th Percentile £675 £641 £724
England median daily rate £513 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 28 12
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.72 £14.33
25th Percentile £17.57 £26.66 £15.17
Median hourly rate £21.50 £30.00 £28.81
Median % change year-on-year -28.33% +4.12% +35.59%
75th Percentile £33.99 £44.94 £46.31
90th Percentile £53.75 £50.00 £54.38
England median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +19.28% -28.14% -17.31%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 +1 134 £450 +14.50% 165
Warwickshire +2 91 £450 +5.88% 54
Coventry +1 85 £425 +41.67% 33
Shropshire -23 56 £445 -13.59% 18
Staffordshire -5 20 £400 +185.71% 48
Worcestershire +3 11 £425 -26.09% 24
Herefordshire +5 7 £500 -23.08% 18
Solihull -33 6 £350 -37.78% 14
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 4
Dudley - 3 £400 - 8
West Bromwich - 3 - - 5
Halesowen - 1 - - 2
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 51 (11.51%) SharePoint
2 22 (4.97%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.90%) Apache Spark
3 4 (0.90%) SAS
4 3 (0.68%) Apache
4 3 (0.68%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.68%) IIS
4 3 (0.68%) Oracle Workflow
5 2 (0.45%) CloudStack
5 2 (0.45%) Skype for Business
6 1 (0.23%) Appian
6 1 (0.23%) CMS
6 1 (0.23%) Confluence
6 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
Applications
1 57 (12.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (11.06%) Microsoft Office
3 15 (3.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.81%) Microsoft Project
5 7 (1.58%) MS Visio
6 4 (0.90%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 4 (0.90%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.90%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.23%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.23%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.23%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.23%) Revit
Business Applications
1 23 (5.19%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.13%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.68%) Primavera
3 3 (0.68%) Remedy ITSM
3 3 (0.68%) ResourceLink
3 3 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
4 1 (0.23%) MIS ActiveH
Cloud Services
1 195 (44.02%) Azure
2 123 (27.77%) Microsoft 365
3 73 (16.48%) Power Platform
4 64 (14.45%) Entra ID
5 54 (12.19%) Azure DevOps
6 53 (11.96%) Dynamics 365
7 48 (10.84%) Power Automate
8 33 (7.45%) AWS
9 31 (7.00%) Microsoft Purview
10 29 (6.55%) PowerApps
11 28 (6.32%) Azure Data Factory
11 28 (6.32%) OneDrive
12 26 (5.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 21 (4.74%) Serverless
14 17 (3.84%) Microsoft Copilot
15 15 (3.39%) Azure Functions
16 12 (2.71%) GCP
17 9 (2.03%) GitHub
18 8 (1.81%) Azure Sentinel
18 8 (1.81%) Copilot Studio
Communications & Networking
1 37 (8.35%) DNS
2 31 (7.00%) DHCP
3 23 (5.19%) Firewall
3 23 (5.19%) VPN
4 14 (3.16%) TCP/IP
5 12 (2.71%) Wi-Fi
6 10 (2.26%) LAN
7 7 (1.58%) WAN
8 6 (1.35%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.35%) SAN
8 6 (1.35%) Wireless
9 5 (1.13%) Network Security
9 5 (1.13%) SSL
10 4 (0.90%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.90%) Unified Communications
11 3 (0.68%) NAS
11 3 (0.68%) SNMP
11 3 (0.68%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (0.68%) VLAN
11 3 (0.68%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (8.80%) SQL Server
2 38 (8.58%) Power BI
3 17 (3.84%) Data Warehouse
3 17 (3.84%) PostgreSQL
4 11 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
4 11 (2.48%) MySQL
5 10 (2.26%) Data Lake
6 7 (1.58%) Delta Lake
7 6 (1.35%) Metadata
7 6 (1.35%) Oracle Reports
7 6 (1.35%) Power Query
7 6 (1.35%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (1.13%) Data Vault
9 4 (0.90%) Tableau
10 3 (0.68%) Data Mining
10 3 (0.68%) NoSQL
10 3 (0.68%) Oracle BI Publisher
10 3 (0.68%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.68%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 18 (4.06%) JIRA
2 12 (2.71%) Git
2 12 (2.71%) Team Foundation Server
3 11 (2.48%) Visual Studio
4 10 (2.26%) Selenium
4 10 (2.26%) WebDriver
5 9 (2.03%) Cypress.io
5 9 (2.03%) Postman
6 6 (1.35%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.68%) GitLab
7 3 (0.68%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.68%) Protractor
8 2 (0.45%) MLflow
8 2 (0.45%) NUnit
9 1 (0.23%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.23%) Maven
9 1 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
9 1 (0.23%) Rational Rhapsody
9 1 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.23%) Zephyr
General
1 166 (37.47%) Social Skills
2 60 (13.54%) Finance
3 52 (11.74%) Analytical Skills
4 47 (10.61%) Public Sector
5 33 (7.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 24 (5.42%) Organisational Skills
7 16 (3.61%) Legal
8 12 (2.71%) Manufacturing
9 9 (2.03%) Banking
10 7 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.58%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.35%) Billing
11 6 (1.35%) Marketing
12 5 (1.13%) Law
12 5 (1.13%) Retail
13 4 (0.90%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.45%) Back Office
14 2 (0.45%) Electronics
14 2 (0.45%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.45%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 58 (13.09%) Analyst
2 55 (12.42%) Developer
3 53 (11.96%) Senior
4 36 (8.13%) Data Engineer
5 32 (7.22%) Lead
6 30 (6.77%) Architect
7 28 (6.32%) Administrator
8 25 (5.64%) Consultant
9 23 (5.19%) Azure Engineer
10 22 (4.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 21 (4.74%) Support Engineer
12 18 (4.06%) Dynamics 365 Developer
13 17 (3.84%) IT Support
13 17 (3.84%) Solutions Architect
14 13 (2.93%) IT Engineer
14 13 (2.93%) Senior Data Engineer
15 11 (2.48%) IT Support Engineer
15 11 (2.48%) Senior Developer
16 10 (2.26%) Senior Analyst
16 10 (2.26%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (6.09%) JSON
2 21 (4.74%) XML
3 20 (4.51%) SOAP
3 20 (4.51%) Terraform
4 16 (3.61%) REST
5 12 (2.71%) PySpark
6 11 (2.48%) ActiveX
7 9 (2.03%) Gherkin
7 9 (2.03%) Microsoft Graph
7 9 (2.03%) XSLT
8 8 (1.81%) .NET
9 5 (1.13%) JDBC
9 5 (1.13%) SAP PI
10 4 (0.90%) IDoc
10 4 (0.90%) Kafka
10 4 (0.90%) LangChain
10 4 (0.90%) Oracle Fusion
10 4 (0.90%) Semantic Kernel
10 4 (0.90%) YAML
11 3 (0.68%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 27 (6.09%) Management Information System
1 27 (6.09%) Onboarding
2 17 (3.84%) Cloud Native
3 15 (3.39%) Hybrid Cloud
3 15 (3.39%) Product Ownership
4 11 (2.48%) SCADA
5 10 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
6 9 (2.03%) CMDB
6 9 (2.03%) Data Structures
6 9 (2.03%) Taxonomies
7 8 (1.81%) Virtual Team
8 7 (1.58%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (1.58%) Self-Motivation
8 7 (1.58%) Smartphone
9 6 (1.35%) Data Centre
9 6 (1.35%) Operational Technology
9 6 (1.35%) PKI
10 5 (1.13%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.13%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.13%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 104 (23.48%) Windows
2 36 (8.13%) Windows Server
3 31 (7.00%) Windows 10
4 24 (5.42%) Linux
5 13 (2.93%) Mac OS
6 8 (1.81%) Android
6 8 (1.81%) Ubuntu
7 5 (1.13%) SUSE
7 5 (1.13%) Unix
8 4 (0.90%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.90%) CentOS
9 3 (0.68%) Windows 7
9 3 (0.68%) Windows Server 2012
9 3 (0.68%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.45%) Windows Server 2016
11 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (21.67%) Problem-Solving
2 73 (16.48%) DevOps
3 66 (14.90%) Agile
4 64 (14.45%) Stakeholder Management
5 61 (13.77%) Continuous Improvement
6 56 (12.64%) Migration
7 52 (11.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 50 (11.29%) AI
9 48 (10.84%) Customer Service
10 47 (10.61%) CI/CD
11 46 (10.38%) Data Modelling
12 43 (9.71%) ITSM
12 43 (9.71%) Technical Leadership
13 40 (9.03%) Analytics
13 40 (9.03%) Business Intelligence
14 38 (8.58%) ITIL
15 36 (8.13%) Mentoring
15 36 (8.13%) Validation
16 32 (7.22%) CRM
17 30 (6.77%) Infrastructure Engineering
Programming Languages
1 56 (12.64%) SQL
2 32 (7.22%) Python
3 30 (6.77%) C#
3 30 (6.77%) JavaScript
4 21 (4.74%) PowerShell
5 16 (3.61%) Java
6 13 (2.93%) VBA
7 11 (2.48%) VB
7 11 (2.48%) VB6
8 8 (1.81%) Bicep
9 6 (1.35%) Kusto Query Language
9 6 (1.35%) PL/SQL
10 5 (1.13%) ABAP
10 5 (1.13%) T-SQL
11 4 (0.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 3 (0.68%) Bash
13 2 (0.45%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.23%) Groovy
14 1 (0.23%) Scala
14 1 (0.23%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 71 (16.03%) Security Cleared
2 59 (13.32%) SC Cleared
3 41 (9.26%) Microsoft Certification
4 26 (5.87%) Degree
5 19 (4.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (3.39%) Azure Certification
7 11 (2.48%) ISTQB
8 10 (2.26%) CISSP
9 9 (2.03%) OCP
9 9 (2.03%) Oracle Certification
10 7 (1.58%) DBS Check
11 6 (1.35%) AWS Certification
11 6 (1.35%) CISM
12 5 (1.13%) Cisco Certification
13 4 (0.90%) A+ Certification
13 4 (0.90%) CCNP
13 4 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
14 3 (0.68%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 3 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
15 2 (0.45%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (7.22%) Accessibility
2 28 (6.32%) Data Quality
3 25 (5.64%) GDPR
4 20 (4.51%) QA
5 17 (3.84%) NIST
6 16 (3.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (3.61%) WCAG
7 14 (3.16%) SLA
8 13 (2.93%) PMO
9 7 (1.58%) PCI DSS
10 5 (1.13%) GRC
11 2 (0.45%) NCSC
12 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 15288
12 1 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 17025
12 1 (0.23%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.23%) SOC 2
System Software
1 77 (17.38%) Active Directory
2 27 (6.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 17 (3.84%) Hyper-V
4 15 (3.39%) vSphere
5 13 (2.93%) Docker
5 13 (2.93%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.45%) Firmware
7 2 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.45%) XenApp
7 2 (0.45%) XenDesktop
8 1 (0.23%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.23%) NFS
8 1 (0.23%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 47 (10.61%) Microsoft Intune
2 26 (5.87%) SCCM
3 16 (3.61%) Kubernetes
3 16 (3.61%) Single Sign-On
4 5 (1.13%) Ansible
4 5 (1.13%) Jamf Pro
5 4 (0.90%) Grafana
6 3 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.68%) QRadar
7 2 (0.45%) Check_MK
7 2 (0.45%) Failover Clustering
7 2 (0.45%) WMI
7 2 (0.45%) WSUS
8 1 (0.23%) AirWatch
8 1 (0.23%) Argo
8 1 (0.23%) FortiGate
8 1 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 39 (8.80%) ServiceNow
2 34 (7.67%) Oracle
3 33 (7.45%) VMware
4 25 (5.64%) Cisco
5 24 (5.42%) SAP
6 16 (3.61%) Databricks
7 13 (2.93%) Splunk
8 9 (2.03%) UiPath
9 8 (1.81%) Palo Alto
9 8 (1.81%) Red Hat
10 7 (1.58%) Adobe
10 7 (1.58%) Apple
10 7 (1.58%) Fortinet
11 6 (1.35%) Canon
11 6 (1.35%) Informatica
12 5 (1.13%) Citrix
12 5 (1.13%) IBM
12 5 (1.13%) OpenAI
12 5 (1.13%) Samsung
12 5 (1.13%) Siemens