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 14 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
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 426 273 263
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.27% 15.96% 14.03%
As % of the Vendors category 26.81% 33.21% 30.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 322 182 178
10th Percentile £258 £166 £164
25th Percentile £375 £263 £258
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £448 £400 £415
Median % change year-on-year +11.88% -3.61% +3.75%
75th Percentile £516 £541 £519
90th Percentile £614 £613 £638
England median daily rate £490 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 21 7
10th Percentile £16.28 £15.13 £13.70
25th Percentile £17.74 £27.21 £19.78
Median hourly rate £20.46 £30.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -31.82% -20.00% +97.37%
75th Percentile £21.75 £50.00 £55.63
90th Percentile £70.07 - £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 1,589 822 866
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 45.75% 48.04% 46.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,082 528 604
10th Percentile £316 £230 £263
25th Percentile £401 £350 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% - -
75th Percentile £549 £575 £613
90th Percentile £650 £638 £699
England median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 29 19
10th Percentile £14.53 £14.86 £13.85
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.66 £15.11
Median hourly rate £26.30 £30.00 £26.13
Median % change year-on-year -12.34% +14.83% +16.11%
75th Percentile £48.25 £43.25 £50.25
90th Percentile £63.60 £50.00 £58.50
England median hourly rate £33.99 £25.15 £30.00
% change year-on-year +35.15% -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 14 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 14 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 14 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 +2 124 £450 +20.50% 129
Warwickshire -3 87 £450 +12.50% 38
Coventry 0 80 £425 +41.67% 30
Shropshire -23 49 £447 -13.20% 19
Staffordshire -2 14 £413 +194.64% 40
Worcestershire -2 10 £450 -21.74% 29
Solihull -28 9 £425 -11.64% 10
Herefordshire +2 8 £700 -22.22% 9
Dudley - 7 £400 - 9
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 7
West Bromwich - 3 - - 3
Brierley Hill - 2 £446 - 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 (9.62%) SharePoint
2 16 (3.76%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.17%) SAS
4 4 (0.94%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.94%) Confluence
5 3 (0.70%) Apache
5 3 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.70%) IIS
5 3 (0.70%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.47%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.23%) Appian
7 1 (0.23%) CMS
Applications
1 47 (11.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (9.15%) Microsoft Office
3 15 (3.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (2.35%) MS Visio
5 9 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
6 1 (0.23%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.23%) Navisworks
6 1 (0.23%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.23%) Revit
6 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 22 (5.16%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.17%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.70%) Primavera
4 2 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 1 (0.23%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 179 (42.02%) Azure
2 94 (22.07%) Microsoft 365
3 80 (18.78%) Power Platform
4 51 (11.97%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (11.50%) Dynamics 365
6 48 (11.27%) Entra ID
7 39 (9.15%) Power Automate
8 36 (8.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 35 (8.22%) Microsoft Purview
10 33 (7.75%) AWS
10 33 (7.75%) Azure Data Factory
11 25 (5.87%) PowerApps
12 24 (5.63%) OneDrive
13 17 (3.99%) Serverless
14 15 (3.52%) Microsoft Copilot
15 11 (2.58%) GCP
16 10 (2.35%) GitHub
16 10 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
17 8 (1.88%) Azure Functions
18 7 (1.64%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 32 (7.51%) DNS
2 25 (5.87%) DHCP
2 25 (5.87%) VPN
3 19 (4.46%) Firewall
4 11 (2.58%) LAN
5 10 (2.35%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.11%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (1.88%) WAN
8 6 (1.41%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.41%) SSL
9 5 (1.17%) Network Security
10 4 (0.94%) SAN
10 4 (0.94%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.70%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.70%) NAS
11 3 (0.70%) SNMP
11 3 (0.70%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (0.70%) Wireless
12 2 (0.47%) Cisco Nexus
12 2 (0.47%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (10.80%) Power BI
2 31 (7.28%) Data Warehouse
2 31 (7.28%) SQL Server
3 21 (4.93%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
5 13 (3.05%) Data Lake
6 12 (2.82%) MySQL
7 11 (2.58%) Delta Lake
8 8 (1.88%) NoSQL
9 7 (1.64%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
9 7 (1.64%) Metadata
9 7 (1.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 6 (1.41%) Data Vault
10 6 (1.41%) Relational Database
11 5 (1.17%) Oracle Database
12 3 (0.70%) Data Mining
12 3 (0.70%) Oracle Reports
12 3 (0.70%) Power Query
12 3 (0.70%) Redis
12 3 (0.70%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 19 (4.46%) JIRA
2 12 (2.82%) Team Foundation Server
3 11 (2.58%) Selenium
3 11 (2.58%) Visual Studio
3 11 (2.58%) WebDriver
4 9 (2.11%) Cypress.io
4 9 (2.11%) Postman
5 6 (1.41%) Cucumber
5 6 (1.41%) Git
6 4 (0.94%) MLflow
7 3 (0.70%) GitLab
7 3 (0.70%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.70%) Protractor
8 2 (0.47%) MSI
8 2 (0.47%) NUnit
9 1 (0.23%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.23%) Maven
9 1 (0.23%) Rational Rhapsody
9 1 (0.23%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.23%) Zephyr
General
1 141 (33.10%) Social Skills
2 61 (14.32%) Finance
3 43 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (10.09%) Public Sector
4 32 (7.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 17 (3.99%) Organisational Skills
6 12 (2.82%) Manufacturing
7 11 (2.58%) Legal
8 10 (2.35%) Banking
9 7 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.64%) Marketing
10 6 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.41%) Law
11 5 (1.17%) Retail
12 4 (0.94%) Billing
13 3 (0.70%) Electronics
13 3 (0.70%) Games
14 2 (0.47%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.47%) Local Government
14 2 (0.47%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 58 (13.62%) Analyst
2 56 (13.15%) Developer
3 48 (11.27%) Senior
4 41 (9.62%) Data Engineer
5 34 (7.98%) Architect
6 28 (6.57%) Consultant
7 26 (6.10%) Lead
8 21 (4.93%) Administrator
8 21 (4.93%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
10 13 (3.05%) Data Architect
10 13 (3.05%) Senior Data Engineer
11 12 (2.82%) Dynamics 365 Developer
12 11 (2.58%) Support Engineer
12 11 (2.58%) Test Analyst
13 10 (2.35%) DBA
13 10 (2.35%) IT Support
13 10 (2.35%) Senior Analyst
14 9 (2.11%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (5.16%) PySpark
2 18 (4.23%) JSON
3 16 (3.76%) SOAP
4 14 (3.29%) XML
5 11 (2.58%) ActiveX
6 10 (2.35%) .NET
6 10 (2.35%) REST
7 9 (2.11%) Gherkin
8 6 (1.41%) Kafka
8 6 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
9 5 (1.17%) JDBC
9 5 (1.17%) SAP PI
10 4 (0.94%) .NET Framework
10 4 (0.94%) IDoc
10 4 (0.94%) YAML
11 3 (0.70%) FastAPI
11 3 (0.70%) Flask
11 3 (0.70%) GraphQL
11 3 (0.70%) WebSockets
11 3 (0.70%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 23 (5.40%) Cloud Native
2 21 (4.93%) Onboarding
3 17 (3.99%) Management Information System
4 16 (3.76%) Hybrid Cloud
5 15 (3.52%) Product Ownership
6 13 (3.05%) SCADA
7 9 (2.11%) CMDB
8 8 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
9 7 (1.64%) Data Centre
9 7 (1.64%) Operational Technology
9 7 (1.64%) Security Operations Centre
9 7 (1.64%) Smartphone
10 6 (1.41%) Data Structures
10 6 (1.41%) IoT
10 6 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
11 5 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.17%) PKI
11 5 (1.17%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.17%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 81 (19.01%) Windows
2 24 (5.63%) Windows 10
2 24 (5.63%) Windows Server
3 22 (5.16%) Linux
4 12 (2.82%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.64%) Android
6 6 (1.41%) Unix
7 5 (1.17%) SUSE
7 5 (1.17%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.94%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.70%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.23%) CentOS
11 1 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (19.95%) Problem-Solving
2 70 (16.43%) Agile
2 70 (16.43%) DevOps
3 55 (12.91%) CI/CD
3 55 (12.91%) Continuous Improvement
3 55 (12.91%) Migration
4 53 (12.44%) Analytics
5 51 (11.97%) AI
5 51 (11.97%) Stakeholder Management
6 49 (11.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
7 47 (11.03%) Business Intelligence
8 43 (10.09%) Data Modelling
9 39 (9.15%) Customer Service
10 38 (8.92%) ETL
10 38 (8.92%) Validation
11 36 (8.45%) Technical Leadership
12 34 (7.98%) ITIL
13 33 (7.75%) ITSM
14 30 (7.04%) Infrastructure as Code
15 29 (6.81%) CRM
Programming Languages
1 72 (16.90%) SQL
2 40 (9.39%) Python
3 23 (5.40%) JavaScript
4 22 (5.16%) C#
5 16 (3.76%) Java
5 16 (3.76%) PowerShell
6 13 (3.05%) VBA
7 12 (2.82%) Bicep
8 11 (2.58%) VB
8 11 (2.58%) VB6
9 7 (1.64%) Kusto Query Language
9 7 (1.64%) T-SQL
10 5 (1.17%) ABAP
10 5 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.17%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.70%) Bash
11 3 (0.70%) Go
12 2 (0.47%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.47%) Scala
12 2 (0.47%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 74 (17.37%) Security Cleared
2 60 (14.08%) SC Cleared
3 33 (7.75%) Microsoft Certification
4 27 (6.34%) Degree
5 15 (3.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.05%) ISTQB
7 11 (2.58%) Azure Certification
8 10 (2.35%) OCP
8 10 (2.35%) Oracle Certification
9 9 (2.11%) CISSP
10 8 (1.88%) AWS Certification
11 7 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (1.17%) CISM
12 5 (1.17%) DV Cleared
13 4 (0.94%) CCNP
13 4 (0.94%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.94%) Master's Degree
13 4 (0.94%) PhD
14 3 (0.70%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 2 (0.47%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (6.81%) Data Quality
2 25 (5.87%) Accessibility
3 21 (4.93%) GDPR
4 18 (4.23%) QA
5 16 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (3.29%) NIST
7 12 (2.82%) PMO
7 12 (2.82%) SLA
8 10 (2.35%) WCAG
9 5 (1.17%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.94%) GRC
11 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 12207
11 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 2 (0.47%) NCSC
12 1 (0.23%) Basel III
12 1 (0.23%) HL7
12 1 (0.23%) ISO 14001
12 1 (0.23%) ISO 9001
12 1 (0.23%) P3O
12 1 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 64 (15.02%) Active Directory
2 21 (4.93%) VMware Infrastructure
3 18 (4.23%) Docker
4 15 (3.52%) Hyper-V
5 11 (2.58%) vSphere
6 9 (2.11%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
8 2 (0.47%) Snort
8 2 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.47%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.47%) XenApp
8 2 (0.47%) XenDesktop
9 1 (0.23%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.23%) Firmware
9 1 (0.23%) NFS
Systems Management
1 38 (8.92%) Microsoft Intune
2 26 (6.10%) Kubernetes
3 23 (5.40%) SCCM
3 23 (5.40%) Terraform
4 14 (3.29%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (1.64%) Grafana
6 6 (1.41%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.17%) Ansible
7 5 (1.17%) Jamf Pro
8 3 (0.70%) QRadar
9 2 (0.47%) Check_MK
9 2 (0.47%) CSIRT
9 2 (0.47%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.47%) WMI
9 2 (0.47%) WSUS
10 1 (0.23%) AirWatch
10 1 (0.23%) Argo
10 1 (0.23%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 35 (8.22%) Oracle
2 34 (7.98%) ServiceNow
3 30 (7.04%) Databricks
4 27 (6.34%) VMware
5 25 (5.87%) SAP
6 23 (5.40%) Cisco
7 12 (2.82%) Splunk
8 10 (2.35%) UiPath
9 9 (2.11%) Informatica
10 8 (1.88%) Apple
10 8 (1.88%) Red Hat
11 7 (1.64%) Palo Alto
12 6 (1.41%) Canon
12 6 (1.41%) Citrix
12 6 (1.41%) Fortinet
12 6 (1.41%) Okta
13 5 (1.17%) IBM
13 5 (1.17%) MathWorks
13 5 (1.17%) Siemens
13 5 (1.17%) webMethods