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 20 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
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 426 271 262
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.40% 15.91% 13.85%
As % of the Vendors category 27.22% 33.09% 30.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 317 181 176
10th Percentile £250 £165 £163
25th Percentile £375 £263 £256
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £400 £415
Median % change year-on-year +11.75% -3.61% +0.61%
75th Percentile £519 £541 £525
90th Percentile £606 £613 £638
England median daily rate £490 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +3.16% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 21 7
10th Percentile £13.74 £15.13 £13.70
25th Percentile £17.50 £27.21 £19.78
Median hourly rate £19.41 £30.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year -35.30% -20.00% +102.70%
75th Percentile £21.75 £50.00 £55.63
90th Percentile £70.05 - £56.25
England median hourly rate £21.43 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year -5.32% +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 1,565 819 871
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 45.56% 48.09% 46.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,047 528 600
10th Percentile £314 £231 £263
25th Percentile £400 £358 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% - -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £625
90th Percentile £656 £638 £713
England median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 29 20
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.86 £13.93
25th Percentile £19.34 £24.66 £15.17
Median hourly rate £25.30 £30.00 £28.81
Median % change year-on-year -15.68% +4.12% +28.06%
75th Percentile £47.50 £43.25 £50.31
90th Percentile £63.05 £50.00 £57.38
England median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £29.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -13.28% -26.68%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +2 123 £450 +16.13% 119
Warwickshire -3 85 £450 +12.50% 39
Coventry 0 82 £425 +41.67% 27
Shropshire -20 49 £447 -13.20% 23
Staffordshire -2 16 £413 +194.64% 45
Worcestershire -1 11 £450 -21.74% 39
Solihull -23 9 £425 -22.73% 14
Herefordshire +3 8 £700 -22.22% 13
Dudley - 7 £400 - 9
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 5
West Bromwich - 3 - - 2
Halesowen - 1 - - 3
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 42 (9.86%) SharePoint
2 18 (4.23%) 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
6 2 (0.47%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.47%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.23%) Appian
7 1 (0.23%) CMS
Applications
1 49 (11.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (9.62%) Microsoft Office
3 15 (3.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (2.35%) MS Visio
5 9 (2.11%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.23%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.23%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.23%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.23%) Revit
7 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 18 (4.23%) 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
1 177 (41.55%) Azure
2 97 (22.77%) Microsoft 365
3 77 (18.08%) Power Platform
4 51 (11.97%) Azure DevOps
5 50 (11.74%) Entra ID
6 46 (10.80%) Dynamics 365
7 39 (9.15%) Power Automate
8 35 (8.22%) Microsoft Purview
9 34 (7.98%) AWS
9 34 (7.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 32 (7.51%) Azure Data Factory
11 26 (6.10%) OneDrive
12 25 (5.87%) PowerApps
13 19 (4.46%) Serverless
14 15 (3.52%) Microsoft Copilot
15 12 (2.82%) GitHub
15 12 (2.82%) GitHub Actions
16 11 (2.58%) GCP
17 8 (1.88%) Azure Functions
18 6 (1.41%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 34 (7.98%) DNS
2 27 (6.34%) DHCP
3 25 (5.87%) VPN
4 20 (4.69%) Firewall
5 11 (2.58%) LAN
5 11 (2.58%) TCP/IP
6 10 (2.35%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (1.88%) WAN
8 6 (1.41%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.41%) SSL
9 4 (0.94%) Network Security
9 4 (0.94%) SAN
9 4 (0.94%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.70%) BIG-IP
10 3 (0.70%) NAS
10 3 (0.70%) SNMP
10 3 (0.70%) Structured Cabling
10 3 (0.70%) Unified Communications
10 3 (0.70%) VoIP
10 3 (0.70%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (10.56%) Power BI
2 34 (7.98%) SQL Server
3 29 (6.81%) Data Warehouse
4 23 (5.40%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
6 12 (2.82%) Data Lake
6 12 (2.82%) MySQL
7 10 (2.35%) Delta Lake
8 7 (1.64%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.64%) Metadata
8 7 (1.64%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.41%) Data Vault
9 6 (1.41%) Relational Database
10 5 (1.17%) Oracle Database
10 5 (1.17%) Redis
11 3 (0.70%) Power Query
11 3 (0.70%) SAP Data Services
11 3 (0.70%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 3 (0.70%) Tableau
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
1 144 (33.80%) Social Skills
2 60 (14.08%) Finance
3 43 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (10.09%) Public Sector
4 33 (7.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 18 (4.23%) 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
11 5 (1.17%) Retail
12 4 (0.94%) Billing
12 4 (0.94%) Law
13 3 (0.70%) Electronics
14 2 (0.47%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.47%) Local Government
14 2 (0.47%) Publishing
14 2 (0.47%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 56 (13.15%) Developer
2 54 (12.68%) Analyst
3 49 (11.50%) Senior
4 39 (9.15%) Data Engineer
5 32 (7.51%) Architect
6 28 (6.57%) Consultant
7 26 (6.10%) Lead
8 22 (5.16%) Administrator
8 22 (5.16%) Azure Engineer
9 17 (3.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 15 (3.52%) Solutions Architect
11 13 (3.05%) Senior Data Engineer
11 13 (3.05%) Support Engineer
12 12 (2.82%) Data Architect
12 12 (2.82%) Dynamics 365 Developer
13 10 (2.35%) DBA
13 10 (2.35%) IT Support
13 10 (2.35%) Senior Analyst
13 10 (2.35%) Support Technician
13 10 (2.35%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 22 (5.16%) Terraform
2 20 (4.69%) PySpark
3 18 (4.23%) JSON
4 16 (3.76%) SOAP
5 14 (3.29%) XML
6 12 (2.82%) REST
7 11 (2.58%) ActiveX
8 10 (2.35%) .NET
9 9 (2.11%) Gherkin
10 6 (1.41%) Kafka
10 6 (1.41%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (1.17%) GraphQL
11 5 (1.17%) JDBC
11 5 (1.17%) SAP PI
12 4 (0.94%) .NET Framework
12 4 (0.94%) IDoc
12 4 (0.94%) YAML
13 3 (0.70%) .NET Core
13 3 (0.70%) FastAPI
13 3 (0.70%) gRPC
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 7 (1.64%) Data Centre
8 7 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (1.64%) Operational Technology
8 7 (1.64%) Smartphone
9 6 (1.41%) Data Structures
9 6 (1.41%) IoT
9 6 (1.41%) PKI
9 6 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.17%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.17%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.17%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.17%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 86 (20.19%) Windows
2 27 (6.34%) Windows 10
3 26 (6.10%) Windows Server
4 22 (5.16%) Linux
5 12 (2.82%) Mac OS
6 8 (1.88%) Android
7 6 (1.41%) Ubuntu
8 5 (1.17%) SUSE
8 5 (1.17%) Unix
9 4 (0.94%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.70%) Windows 7
10 3 (0.70%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.47%) CentOS
11 2 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (20.19%) Problem-Solving
2 71 (16.67%) DevOps
3 70 (16.43%) Agile
4 57 (13.38%) CI/CD
5 54 (12.68%) Stakeholder Management
6 53 (12.44%) Migration
7 52 (12.21%) Continuous Improvement
8 51 (11.97%) AI
9 49 (11.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 48 (11.27%) Analytics
11 45 (10.56%) Business Intelligence
12 42 (9.86%) Data Modelling
13 41 (9.62%) Customer Service
14 38 (8.92%) Technical Leadership
15 37 (8.69%) ITIL
15 37 (8.69%) ITSM
15 37 (8.69%) Validation
16 35 (8.22%) ETL
17 31 (7.28%) Mentoring
18 29 (6.81%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 69 (16.20%) SQL
2 38 (8.92%) Python
3 23 (5.40%) JavaScript
4 22 (5.16%) C#
5 17 (3.99%) PowerShell
6 16 (3.76%) Java
7 13 (3.05%) VBA
8 11 (2.58%) Bicep
8 11 (2.58%) VB
8 11 (2.58%) VB6
9 6 (1.41%) T-SQL
10 5 (1.17%) ABAP
10 5 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.17%) Kusto Query Language
11 4 (0.94%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.70%) Bash
12 3 (0.70%) Go
13 2 (0.47%) Scala
13 2 (0.47%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.47%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 72 (16.90%) Security Cleared
2 57 (13.38%) SC Cleared
3 35 (8.22%) Microsoft Certification
4 28 (6.57%) Degree
5 16 (3.76%) 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 8 (1.88%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.88%) CISSP
10 7 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.41%) DV Cleared
12 5 (1.17%) CISM
12 5 (1.17%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.94%) CCNP
13 4 (0.94%) DBS Check
13 4 (0.94%) Master's Degree
13 4 (0.94%) PhD
14 3 (0.70%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (6.34%) Data Quality
2 25 (5.87%) Accessibility
3 20 (4.69%) GDPR
4 18 (4.23%) QA
5 17 (3.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (3.29%) NIST
7 13 (3.05%) SLA
8 12 (2.82%) PMO
9 10 (2.35%) WCAG
10 5 (1.17%) PCI DSS
11 4 (0.94%) GRC
12 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 12207
12 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 15288
12 2 (0.47%) NCSC
13 1 (0.23%) Basel III
13 1 (0.23%) Cyber Essentials
13 1 (0.23%) HL7
13 1 (0.23%) ISO 14001
13 1 (0.23%) ISO 9001
13 1 (0.23%) NIST 800
System Software
1 66 (15.49%) Active Directory
2 23 (5.40%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (4.69%) Docker
4 15 (3.52%) Hyper-V
5 12 (2.82%) vSphere
6 10 (2.35%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.47%) Firmware
8 2 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
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%) NFS
Systems Management
1 41 (9.62%) Microsoft Intune
2 26 (6.10%) SCCM
3 25 (5.87%) Kubernetes
4 16 (3.76%) 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%) 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
1 35 (8.22%) ServiceNow
2 29 (6.81%) VMware
3 27 (6.34%) Databricks
4 25 (5.87%) SAP
5 24 (5.63%) Cisco
6 10 (2.35%) Splunk
6 10 (2.35%) UiPath
7 9 (2.11%) Informatica
8 8 (1.88%) Apple
8 8 (1.88%) Palo Alto
8 8 (1.88%) Red Hat
9 7 (1.64%) Fortinet
10 6 (1.41%) Canon
10 6 (1.41%) Citrix
11 5 (1.17%) IBM
11 5 (1.17%) MathWorks
11 5 (1.17%) Siemens
11 5 (1.17%) SolarWinds
11 5 (1.17%) webMethods