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 May 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 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 4 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 +4 -4
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 348 232 227
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.03% 16.76% 12.00%
As % of the Vendors category 24.68% 35.10% 28.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 246 156 157
10th Percentile £254 £165 £184
25th Percentile £363 £229 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £400 £400
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% - -11.11%
75th Percentile £540 £538 £568
90th Percentile £621 £600 £653
England median daily rate £498 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +4.74% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 10 22
10th Percentile £14.10 £12.24 £10.54
25th Percentile £19.34 £12.97 £11.08
Median hourly rate £25.00 £19.50 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.21% +39.29% -16.21%
75th Percentile £30.00 £37.73 £26.50
90th Percentile £70.12 £51.06 £53.38
England median hourly rate £20.35 £18.63 £15.00
% change year-on-year +9.23% +24.20% -28.57%

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 1,410 661 789
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 44.71% 47.76% 41.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 942 420 505
10th Percentile £307 £171 £222
25th Percentile £400 £313 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £479 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.99% +6.33% -8.44%
75th Percentile £550 £589 £600
90th Percentile £645 £663 £700
England median daily rate £500 £525 £519
% change year-on-year -4.76% +1.11% -2.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 21 54
10th Percentile £19.41 £12.25 £11.08
25th Percentile £22.50 £15.22 £13.25
Median hourly rate £33.99 £18.51 £18.39
Median % change year-on-year +83.60% +0.68% -11.21%
75th Percentile £53.75 £24.66 £26.98
90th Percentile £67.84 £41.97 £52.15
England median hourly rate £32.50 £26.39 £22.50
% change year-on-year +23.14% +17.30% -41.56%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 +2 130 £450 +5.88% 83
Warwickshire -8 69 £500 +112.77% 27
Coventry -3 39 £450 +109.30% 16
Shropshire -35 31 £444 -2.10% 22
Worcestershire 0 14 £700 -22.22% 28
Staffordshire 0 12 £388 +50.49% 26
Herefordshire -3 10 £625 -30.56% 5
Solihull -16 9 £425 -11.64% 8
Dudley - 5 £400 - 7
Smethwick - 3 - -
West Bromwich - 3 - - 5
Brierley Hill - 2 £446 - 1
Wolverhampton -4 1 - - 5
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 27 (7.76%) SharePoint
2 14 (4.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (2.59%) Confluence
4 5 (1.44%) SAS
5 4 (1.15%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.86%) Apache
6 3 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.86%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.57%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.57%) IIS
7 2 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.29%) Appian
8 1 (0.29%) CMS
Applications
1 39 (11.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (8.91%) Microsoft Office
3 17 (4.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 14 (4.02%) MS Visio
5 12 (3.45%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.29%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 18 (5.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (2.59%) Dynamics NAV
3 3 (0.86%) Maximo
4 2 (0.57%) Primavera
4 2 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.29%) SAP EHS
5 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.29%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 125 (35.92%) Azure
2 66 (18.97%) Power Platform
3 59 (16.95%) Microsoft 365
4 38 (10.92%) AWS
5 37 (10.63%) Entra ID
6 33 (9.48%) Dynamics 365
7 26 (7.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 22 (6.32%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (5.17%) Azure Data Factory
9 18 (5.17%) Microsoft Purview
10 17 (4.89%) Power Automate
11 14 (4.02%) PowerApps
12 12 (3.45%) OneDrive
13 11 (3.16%) Serverless
14 10 (2.87%) GitHub
15 9 (2.59%) Azure Sentinel
15 9 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
16 8 (2.30%) GCP
17 7 (2.01%) Microsoft Copilot
18 6 (1.72%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 27 (7.76%) DNS
1 27 (7.76%) VPN
2 23 (6.61%) Firewall
3 16 (4.60%) DHCP
4 14 (4.02%) LAN
5 13 (3.74%) SSL
6 12 (3.45%) Network Security
7 10 (2.87%) WAN
8 9 (2.59%) HTTP
9 8 (2.30%) BIG-IP
9 8 (2.30%) HTTPS
10 7 (2.01%) Cisco ASA
10 7 (2.01%) Cisco Nexus
10 7 (2.01%) Ethereal
10 7 (2.01%) IPsec
10 7 (2.01%) TCP/IP
10 7 (2.01%) Wireless
10 7 (2.01%) Wireshark
11 5 (1.44%) SAN
11 5 (1.44%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (11.49%) Power BI
2 26 (7.47%) Data Warehouse
3 15 (4.31%) SQL Server
4 14 (4.02%) PostgreSQL
5 9 (2.59%) Delta Lake
6 7 (2.01%) Data Lake
6 7 (2.01%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
6 7 (2.01%) NoSQL
6 7 (2.01%) Relational Database
7 6 (1.72%) Metadata
8 5 (1.44%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (1.44%) MySQL
8 5 (1.44%) Oracle Database
8 5 (1.44%) Power Query
8 5 (1.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 4 (1.15%) Redis
10 3 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
10 3 (0.86%) Amazon Redshift
10 3 (0.86%) SAP Data Services
10 3 (0.86%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 28 (8.05%) JIRA
2 11 (3.16%) Git
3 8 (2.30%) GitLab
4 4 (1.15%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.15%) MLflow
5 3 (0.86%) MSI
6 2 (0.57%) JMeter
6 2 (0.57%) Selenium
6 2 (0.57%) WebDriver
7 1 (0.29%) CircleCI
7 1 (0.29%) InstallShield
7 1 (0.29%) Maven
7 1 (0.29%) NUnit
7 1 (0.29%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.29%) Zephyr
General
1 107 (30.75%) Social Skills
2 44 (12.64%) Analytical Skills
3 39 (11.21%) Finance
4 19 (5.46%) Public Sector
5 12 (3.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 12 (3.45%) Organisational Skills
6 10 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.59%) Manufacturing
8 8 (2.30%) Banking
9 7 (2.01%) Games
9 7 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.72%) Legal
10 6 (1.72%) Police
11 5 (1.44%) Law
12 4 (1.15%) Electronics
12 4 (1.15%) Local Government
12 4 (1.15%) Marketing
13 3 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.86%) Publishing
13 3 (0.86%) Retail
Job Titles
1 45 (12.93%) Analyst
2 33 (9.48%) Developer
3 32 (9.20%) Architect
4 31 (8.91%) Senior
5 22 (6.32%) Data Engineer
6 18 (5.17%) Administrator
7 17 (4.89%) Consultant
8 14 (4.02%) IT Support
8 14 (4.02%) Support Engineer
9 13 (3.74%) Business Analyst
10 12 (3.45%) Lead
10 12 (3.45%) Solutions Architect
11 11 (3.16%) Data Architect
11 11 (3.16%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 11 (3.16%) IT Engineer
12 10 (2.87%) Azure Engineer
12 10 (2.87%) Network Engineer
13 8 (2.30%) Project Manager
13 8 (2.30%) Security Consultant
13 8 (2.30%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (5.46%) PySpark
2 9 (2.59%) LDAP
2 9 (2.59%) SailPoint
2 9 (2.59%) SAML
3 7 (2.01%) .NET
3 7 (2.01%) FastAPI
4 5 (1.44%) REST
5 4 (1.15%) ADO
5 4 (1.15%) Flask
5 4 (1.15%) GraphQL
5 4 (1.15%) gRPC
5 4 (1.15%) JSON
5 4 (1.15%) Kafka
5 4 (1.15%) Middleware
5 4 (1.15%) OpenTelemetry
5 4 (1.15%) WebSockets
6 3 (0.86%) .NET Framework
6 3 (0.86%) YAML
7 2 (0.57%) .NET Core
7 2 (0.57%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 24 (6.90%) Cloud Native
2 23 (6.61%) Onboarding
3 11 (3.16%) Hybrid Cloud
4 10 (2.87%) Security Operations Centre
5 9 (2.59%) Security Posture
5 9 (2.59%) Self-Motivation
6 8 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (2.30%) SCADA
7 7 (2.01%) Operational Technology
8 6 (1.72%) Data Centre
8 6 (1.72%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.15%) CSOC
9 4 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
9 4 (1.15%) PKI
9 4 (1.15%) Product Ownership
10 3 (0.86%) CMDB
10 3 (0.86%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (0.86%) Driving Licence
10 3 (0.86%) Public Cloud
10 3 (0.86%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 69 (19.83%) Windows
2 26 (7.47%) Windows 10
3 24 (6.90%) Linux
4 21 (6.03%) Windows Server
5 9 (2.59%) Mac OS
6 5 (1.44%) Apple iOS
7 4 (1.15%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.15%) Unix
8 3 (0.86%) CatOS
8 3 (0.86%) Windows 7
8 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2012
8 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2019
9 2 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 2 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
10 1 (0.29%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (20.40%) Agile
2 70 (20.11%) Problem-Solving
3 62 (17.82%) CI/CD
4 52 (14.94%) Migration
5 50 (14.37%) Analytics
6 46 (13.22%) DevOps
7 42 (12.07%) Business Intelligence
8 41 (11.78%) AI
8 41 (11.78%) Continuous Improvement
9 32 (9.20%) Stakeholder Management
10 31 (8.91%) Customer Service
10 31 (8.91%) Cybersecurity
10 31 (8.91%) ETL
11 30 (8.62%) Data Modelling
12 29 (8.33%) Containerisation
12 29 (8.33%) ITIL
13 27 (7.76%) Infrastructure as Code
14 24 (6.90%) Validation
15 23 (6.61%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 22 (6.32%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 62 (17.82%) SQL
2 43 (12.36%) Python
3 22 (6.32%) PowerShell
4 11 (3.16%) Bicep
5 9 (2.59%) Java
6 8 (2.30%) Kusto Query Language
7 7 (2.01%) C#
7 7 (2.01%) PL/SQL
8 6 (1.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.72%) Go
9 5 (1.44%) JavaScript
10 4 (1.15%) R
10 4 (1.15%) Shell Script
11 3 (0.86%) MATLAB
11 3 (0.86%) Scala
11 3 (0.86%) VB
11 3 (0.86%) VBScript
12 2 (0.57%) Bash
12 2 (0.57%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.57%) VBA
Qualifications
1 57 (16.38%) Security Cleared
2 41 (11.78%) SC Cleared
3 38 (10.92%) Degree
4 20 (5.75%) Microsoft Certification
5 14 (4.02%) CISSP
6 12 (3.45%) AWS Certification
7 11 (3.16%) Cisco Certification
8 10 (2.87%) Azure Certification
8 10 (2.87%) DV Cleared
9 9 (2.59%) CISM
10 7 (2.01%) ISTQB
11 6 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
12 5 (1.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (1.44%) CCNA
12 5 (1.44%) Master's Degree
13 4 (1.15%) CCNP
13 4 (1.15%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (1.15%) OCP
13 4 (1.15%) Oracle Certification
13 4 (1.15%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (6.32%) Data Quality
2 18 (5.17%) QA
3 13 (3.74%) GDPR
4 12 (3.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 9 (2.59%) NIST
6 8 (2.30%) SLA
7 6 (1.72%) PMO
8 5 (1.44%) Accessibility
9 4 (1.15%) GRC
10 3 (0.86%) ISO 9001
10 3 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 3 (0.86%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 2 (0.57%) GxP
11 2 (0.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.29%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.29%) ISO 14001
12 1 (0.29%) NCSC
12 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.29%) SOC 2
12 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 66 (18.97%) Active Directory
2 30 (8.62%) Docker
3 21 (6.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 7 (2.01%) VMware NSX
5 6 (1.72%) Hyper-V
6 5 (1.44%) vSphere
7 4 (1.15%) Snort
8 3 (0.86%) Microsoft App-V
8 3 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.57%) BitLocker
9 2 (0.57%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.57%) XenApp
9 2 (0.57%) XenDesktop
10 1 (0.29%) NFS
10 1 (0.29%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 41 (11.78%) Kubernetes
2 24 (6.90%) Microsoft Intune
2 24 (6.90%) Terraform
3 14 (4.02%) SCCM
4 13 (3.74%) Grafana
4 13 (3.74%) Prometheus
5 10 (2.87%) Single Sign-On
6 9 (2.59%) Ansible
7 4 (1.15%) CSIRT
8 3 (0.86%) Control-M
8 3 (0.86%) HP ALM
8 3 (0.86%) IBM Guardium
8 3 (0.86%) Nessus
9 2 (0.57%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.57%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.57%) Puppet
9 2 (0.57%) SCOM
9 2 (0.57%) WMI
9 2 (0.57%) WSUS
Vendors
1 33 (9.48%) ServiceNow
2 24 (6.90%) Databricks
2 24 (6.90%) Oracle
3 23 (6.61%) VMware
4 22 (6.32%) Cisco
5 19 (5.46%) SAP
6 13 (3.74%) Splunk
7 10 (2.87%) F5
8 9 (2.59%) CheckPoint
8 9 (2.59%) Palo Alto
8 9 (2.59%) SolarWinds
9 8 (2.30%) Informatica
10 7 (2.01%) Okta
11 5 (1.44%) Citrix
11 5 (1.44%) Fortinet
11 5 (1.44%) Tenable
11 5 (1.44%) Veeam
12 3 (0.86%) Commvault
12 3 (0.86%) MobileIron
12 3 (0.86%) Remedy