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 September 2025, 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 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 6 4 4
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 +4
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 285 282 324
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the West Midlands 15.72% 14.94% 15.48%
As % of the Vendors category 31.32% 32.27% 30.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 186 246
10th Percentile £165 £165 £160
25th Percentile £275 £255 £275
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £425 £400
Median % change year-on-year - +6.25% -5.88%
75th Percentile £575 £534 £538
90th Percentile £625 £635 £688
England median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 4 15
10th Percentile £24.30 £15.68 £17.20
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.03 £17.75
Median hourly rate £31.94 £30.56 £20.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.51% +52.81% +33.33%
75th Percentile £50.00 £40.00 £25.88
90th Percentile - £49.00 £39.15
England median hourly rate £22.63 £16.23 £22.00
% change year-on-year +39.43% -26.23% +25.28%

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 910 874 1,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 50.19% 46.29% 50.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 600 580 656
10th Percentile £235 £248 £216
25th Percentile £379 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year - +5.26% -4.04%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £600
90th Percentile £638 £713 £700
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 13 17
10th Percentile £14.59 £14.40 £17.30
25th Percentile £28.11 £15.22 £17.75
Median hourly rate £30.00 £31.50 £22.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +40.00% +36.36%
75th Percentile £46.63 £48.75 £34.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £59.00 £46.85
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -17.65% +77.75%

Microsoft
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Job postings citing Microsoft as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Job vacancy trend for Microsoft 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 September 2025.

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 September 2025.

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 September 2025. 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 89 £396 -12.00% 119
Warwickshire -6 66 £405 -28.00% 38
Coventry +12 32 £300 -40.00% 44
Shropshire -14 27 £515 +20.61% 44
Solihull +2 24 £563 +25.84% 11
Staffordshire +5 14 £140 -22.22% 73
Worcestershire -2 13 £575 +177.11% 39
Wolverhampton -1 4 £344 -0.36% 29
Herefordshire +4 2 £650 +2.36% 5
Walsall -1 1 - - 10
Microsoft
England

Microsoft
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the West Midlands by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 27 (9.47%) SharePoint
2 12 (4.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 9 (3.16%) SAS
4 7 (2.46%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.46%) Confluence
5 5 (1.75%) Oracle Workflow
6 3 (1.05%) Apache
6 3 (1.05%) IIS
7 2 (0.70%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.70%) FileNet
8 1 (0.35%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.35%) Oracle Self-Service HR
8 1 (0.35%) WebLogic
Applications
1 42 (14.74%) Microsoft Office
2 39 (13.68%) Microsoft Excel
3 18 (6.32%) Microsoft Project
4 13 (4.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (2.11%) Adobe Captivate
5 6 (2.11%) Maya
6 3 (1.05%) MS Visio
6 3 (1.05%) Spreadsheet
7 2 (0.70%) Trello
8 1 (0.35%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 1 (0.35%) Moqups
Business Applications
1 8 (2.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (2.11%) SAP PM
3 1 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
3 1 (0.35%) Oracle HRMS
3 1 (0.35%) Primavera
3 1 (0.35%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 95 (33.33%) Azure
2 58 (20.35%) Microsoft 365
3 40 (14.04%) Power Platform
4 31 (10.88%) AWS
5 22 (7.72%) Entra ID
6 20 (7.02%) Dynamics 365
6 20 (7.02%) PowerApps
7 17 (5.96%) Power Automate
8 16 (5.61%) Azure DevOps
9 15 (5.26%) Azure Data Factory
10 13 (4.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 12 (4.21%) GCP
12 11 (3.86%) Serverless
13 10 (3.51%) Microsoft Purview
14 9 (3.16%) GitHub
14 9 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
14 9 (3.16%) SaaS
15 8 (2.81%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 8 (2.81%) OneDrive
16 7 (2.46%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 27 (9.47%) Firewall
2 22 (7.72%) DNS
3 21 (7.37%) DHCP
4 11 (3.86%) Wireless
5 9 (3.16%) TCP/IP
5 9 (3.16%) VPN
6 7 (2.46%) WAN
7 6 (2.11%) LAN
8 5 (1.75%) Cisco IOS
8 5 (1.75%) Network Security
8 5 (1.75%) PuTTY
8 5 (1.75%) WLAN
9 4 (1.40%) Unified Communications
9 4 (1.40%) VLAN
9 4 (1.40%) VoIP
10 3 (1.05%) Remote Desktop
10 3 (1.05%) Telepresence
10 3 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
11 2 (0.70%) Software-Defined Networking
11 2 (0.70%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 24 (8.42%) Power BI
2 15 (5.26%) SQL Server
3 11 (3.86%) NoSQL
4 10 (3.51%) Azure SQL Database
5 9 (3.16%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (2.81%) Delta Lake
7 7 (2.46%) Data Mining
7 7 (2.46%) Oracle Database
7 7 (2.46%) PostgreSQL
8 6 (2.11%) GIS
8 6 (2.11%) SAS Enterprise Guide
8 6 (2.11%) SAS Visual Analytics
8 6 (2.11%) Tableau
9 4 (1.40%) Metadata
9 4 (1.40%) SAS Data Integration Studio
10 3 (1.05%) Hadoop
10 3 (1.05%) Pentaho
10 3 (1.05%) Redis
11 2 (0.70%) Apache Hive
11 2 (0.70%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 16 (5.61%) JIRA
2 9 (3.16%) Git
2 9 (3.16%) GitLab
3 5 (1.75%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.40%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.70%) Liquibase
5 2 (0.70%) SonarQube
6 1 (0.35%) Jaeger
6 1 (0.35%) LoadRunner
6 1 (0.35%) MLflow
6 1 (0.35%) NUnit
6 1 (0.35%) PVCS
6 1 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.35%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio
6 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 120 (42.11%) Social Skills
2 49 (17.19%) Analytical Skills
3 44 (15.44%) Finance
4 24 (8.42%) Public Sector
5 18 (6.32%) Organisational Skills
6 15 (5.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (4.56%) Manufacturing
8 12 (4.21%) Automotive
9 9 (3.16%) Legal
9 9 (3.16%) Presentation Skills
10 8 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (2.11%) Games
12 3 (1.05%) Banking
12 3 (1.05%) Law
12 3 (1.05%) Marketing
13 2 (0.70%) Advertising
13 2 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
14 1 (0.35%) Aerospace
14 1 (0.35%) Billing
14 1 (0.35%) Environmental Health
Job Titles
1 54 (18.95%) Analyst
2 22 (7.72%) Architect
2 22 (7.72%) Developer
3 19 (6.67%) Support Engineer
4 17 (5.96%) Administrator
5 16 (5.61%) Support Analyst
6 13 (4.56%) Lead
7 12 (4.21%) Project Manager
7 12 (4.21%) Senior
8 10 (3.51%) 2nd Line Support
8 10 (3.51%) Consultant
8 10 (3.51%) Data Analyst
8 10 (3.51%) IT Support
9 9 (3.16%) 1st Line Support
9 9 (3.16%) IT Analyst
9 9 (3.16%) Solutions Architect
10 8 (2.81%) IT Engineer
10 8 (2.81%) Support Officer
11 7 (2.46%) Engagement Manager
11 7 (2.46%) Support Assistant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (7.02%) .NET
2 12 (4.21%) HTML
3 7 (2.46%) CSS
3 7 (2.46%) Django
3 7 (2.46%) Kafka
4 6 (2.11%) .NET Framework
4 6 (2.11%) Unreal Engine
4 6 (2.11%) V-Ray
5 5 (1.75%) REST
6 4 (1.40%) Flask
6 4 (1.40%) Middleware
7 3 (1.05%) Elastic Stack
7 3 (1.05%) FastAPI
7 3 (1.05%) GraphQL
7 3 (1.05%) LDAP
7 3 (1.05%) RESTful
7 3 (1.05%) WebSockets
8 2 (0.70%) gRPC
8 2 (0.70%) OpenTelemetry
8 2 (0.70%) Razor View Engine
Miscellaneous
1 12 (4.21%) SCADA
2 11 (3.86%) Cloud Native
2 11 (3.86%) Onboarding
3 10 (3.51%) Product Ownership
4 9 (3.16%) Data Centre
4 9 (3.16%) IoT
5 8 (2.81%) Self-Motivation
6 7 (2.46%) Driving Licence
6 7 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.11%) Animation
7 6 (2.11%) Video Conferencing
7 6 (2.11%) Virtual Reality
7 6 (2.11%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.75%) Security Posture
9 4 (1.40%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.40%) Operational Technology
9 4 (1.40%) PKI
10 3 (1.05%) Algorithms
10 3 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
10 3 (1.05%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 67 (23.51%) Windows
2 18 (6.32%) Windows 10
3 13 (4.56%) Linux
4 11 (3.86%) Windows Server
5 7 (2.46%) Android
6 6 (2.11%) Mac OS
7 2 (0.70%) Mac OS X
8 1 (0.35%) Apple iOS
8 1 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.35%) SUSE
8 1 (0.35%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.35%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (20.70%) ITIL
2 57 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
3 49 (17.19%) Agile
4 46 (16.14%) Migration
5 44 (15.44%) DevOps
6 36 (12.63%) Customer Service
7 34 (11.93%) Analytics
8 31 (10.88%) CI/CD
9 30 (10.53%) Business Intelligence
9 30 (10.53%) Change Management
10 27 (9.47%) Stakeholder Management
11 25 (8.77%) Project Delivery
12 22 (7.72%) Project Management
13 20 (7.02%) Computer Science
13 20 (7.02%) Continuous Improvement
13 20 (7.02%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 19 (6.67%) Visualisation
15 18 (6.32%) Cybersecurity
15 18 (6.32%) Data Management
16 17 (5.96%) Artificial Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 57 (20.00%) SQL
2 24 (8.42%) PowerShell
3 22 (7.72%) Python
4 11 (3.86%) Java
5 10 (3.51%) C#
5 10 (3.51%) JavaScript
6 8 (2.81%) Kusto Query Language
7 7 (2.46%) C++
8 5 (1.75%) Go
9 4 (1.40%) Bicep
10 3 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (1.05%) Scala
10 3 (1.05%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.70%) Perl
12 1 (0.35%) Bash
12 1 (0.35%) Groovy
12 1 (0.35%) R
12 1 (0.35%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.35%) UniBasic
12 1 (0.35%) VB
Qualifications
1 41 (14.39%) Security Cleared
2 38 (13.33%) Degree
3 31 (10.88%) SC Cleared
4 21 (7.37%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (5.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.46%) DV Cleared
6 7 (2.46%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
7 6 (2.11%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.11%) CCNA
7 6 (2.11%) Cisco Certification
8 5 (1.75%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.75%) CCNP
8 5 (1.75%) MCP
8 5 (1.75%) MCSE
9 4 (1.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (1.05%) HNC
10 3 (1.05%) MCDST
11 2 (0.70%) CISSP
11 2 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.70%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (5.61%) Data Quality
2 15 (5.26%) PMO
3 11 (3.86%) SLA
4 8 (2.81%) GDPR
5 6 (2.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 6 (2.11%) QA
6 5 (1.75%) Accessibility
7 4 (1.40%) NIST
8 3 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
9 2 (0.70%) NCSC
10 1 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.35%) COSHH
10 1 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.35%) ISO 14001
10 1 (0.35%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.35%) NEBOSH
System Software
1 51 (17.89%) Active Directory
2 20 (7.02%) Docker
3 7 (2.46%) VMware Infrastructure
4 6 (2.11%) Firmware
5 3 (1.05%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.70%) vSphere
7 1 (0.35%) BitLocker
7 1 (0.35%) HDFS
7 1 (0.35%) Microsoft App-V
7 1 (0.35%) Snort
7 1 (0.35%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 25 (8.77%) Kubernetes
2 22 (7.72%) SCCM
3 17 (5.96%) Microsoft Intune
4 10 (3.51%) Terraform
5 9 (3.16%) Grafana
6 6 (2.11%) Ansible
6 6 (2.11%) Prometheus
7 3 (1.05%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 3 (1.05%) QRadar
8 2 (0.70%) CSIRT
8 2 (0.70%) Nagios
8 2 (0.70%) SCOM
8 2 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.35%) Argo
9 1 (0.35%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.35%) Istio
9 1 (0.35%) PowerCLI
9 1 (0.35%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 26 (9.12%) Cisco
2 23 (8.07%) Oracle
3 15 (5.26%) SAP
4 11 (3.86%) Adobe
4 11 (3.86%) Splunk
5 9 (3.16%) ServiceNow
6 8 (2.81%) Databricks
6 8 (2.81%) VMware
7 6 (2.11%) Autodesk
7 6 (2.11%) Google
7 6 (2.11%) IBM
7 6 (2.11%) Informatica
7 6 (2.11%) Salesforce
8 5 (1.75%) Apple
8 5 (1.75%) Atlassian
8 5 (1.75%) Peregrine
8 5 (1.75%) Remedy
9 4 (1.40%) AppDynamics
9 4 (1.40%) CyberArk
9 4 (1.40%) iManage