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 4 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
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 6 4
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 0
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 427 271 269
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.47% 15.42% 14.24%
As % of the Vendors category 27.78% 31.70% 31.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 310 183 179
10th Percentile £250 £165 £168
25th Percentile £365 £275 £255
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £420 £415
Median % change year-on-year +5.95% +1.20% +2.15%
75th Percentile £501 £543 £525
90th Percentile £602 £613 £638
England median daily rate £489 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +2.95% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 21 3
10th Percentile £13.99 £18.00 £14.26
25th Percentile £17.48 £29.00 £18.50
Median hourly rate £19.41 £30.00 £26.13
Median % change year-on-year -35.30% +14.83% +33.97%
75th Percentile £21.75 £50.00 £40.84
90th Percentile £50.70 - £49.34
England median hourly rate £20.51 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year -9.39% +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 1,537 855 851
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 44.88% 48.66% 45.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,007 556 573
10th Percentile £319 £235 £251
25th Percentile £406 £374 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £482 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -3.60% +4.17%
75th Percentile £574 £575 £625
90th Percentile £675 £638 £713
England median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 29 12
10th Percentile £13.50 £13.72 £14.33
25th Percentile £17.74 £25.00 £15.17
Median hourly rate £23.00 £30.00 £28.81
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% +4.12% +44.06%
75th Percentile £34.56 £43.25 £46.31
90th Percentile £54.95 £50.00 £54.38
England median hourly rate £32.00 £25.15 £32.75
% change year-on-year +27.24% -23.21% -21.65%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 0 131 £450 +14.50% 240
Coventry +1 86 £425 +36.00% 34
Warwickshire -5 84 £450 +11.11% 60
Shropshire -22 52 £447 -13.20% 21
Staffordshire -5 17 £400 +185.71% 55
Worcestershire 0 9 £425 -26.09% 32
Herefordshire +5 7 £500 -23.08% 18
Solihull -30 7 £388 -29.55% 16
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 4
West Bromwich - 3 - - 5
Dudley - 3 £400 - 8
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 48 (11.24%) SharePoint
2 21 (4.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (0.94%) Apache Spark
3 4 (0.94%) SAS
4 3 (0.70%) Apache
4 3 (0.70%) Apache Airflow
4 3 (0.70%) IIS
4 3 (0.70%) Oracle Workflow
5 2 (0.47%) CloudStack
6 1 (0.23%) Appian
6 1 (0.23%) CMS
6 1 (0.23%) Confluence
6 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.23%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 53 (12.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 43 (10.07%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (3.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 8 (1.87%) MS Visio
5 7 (1.64%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.47%) Adobe Creative Suite
6 2 (0.47%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.23%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.23%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.23%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.23%) Revit
Business Applications
1 21 (4.92%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.17%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.70%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.47%) Primavera
5 1 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.23%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 1 (0.23%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.23%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 189 (44.26%) Azure
2 113 (26.46%) Microsoft 365
3 74 (17.33%) Power Platform
4 61 (14.29%) Entra ID
5 54 (12.65%) Azure DevOps
6 53 (12.41%) Dynamics 365
7 45 (10.54%) Power Automate
8 34 (7.96%) Microsoft Purview
9 32 (7.49%) AWS
10 30 (7.03%) Azure Data Factory
10 30 (7.03%) OneDrive
11 29 (6.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 27 (6.32%) PowerApps
13 20 (4.68%) Serverless
14 16 (3.75%) Microsoft Copilot
15 12 (2.81%) GCP
16 11 (2.58%) Azure Functions
17 10 (2.34%) GitHub
17 10 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
18 8 (1.87%) Azure Sentinel
Communications & Networking
1 37 (8.67%) DNS
2 30 (7.03%) DHCP
3 26 (6.09%) VPN
4 22 (5.15%) Firewall
5 13 (3.04%) TCP/IP
6 11 (2.58%) LAN
6 11 (2.58%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (1.87%) WAN
8 6 (1.41%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.41%) SSL
9 5 (1.17%) SAN
10 4 (0.94%) Network Security
10 4 (0.94%) SD-WAN
10 4 (0.94%) Wireless
11 3 (0.70%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.70%) NAS
11 3 (0.70%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (0.70%) Unified Communications
11 3 (0.70%) VLAN
11 3 (0.70%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (9.37%) Power BI
2 36 (8.43%) SQL Server
3 18 (4.22%) Data Warehouse
3 18 (4.22%) PostgreSQL
4 13 (3.04%) Azure SQL Database
5 11 (2.58%) MySQL
6 10 (2.34%) Data Lake
7 9 (2.11%) Delta Lake
8 6 (1.41%) Metadata
8 6 (1.41%) Relational Database
8 6 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 5 (1.17%) Data Vault
9 5 (1.17%) NoSQL
9 5 (1.17%) Oracle Database
10 4 (0.94%) Oracle Reports
10 4 (0.94%) Power Query
10 4 (0.94%) Tableau
11 3 (0.70%) Data Mining
11 3 (0.70%) Redis
11 3 (0.70%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 16 (3.75%) JIRA
2 12 (2.81%) Team Foundation Server
3 11 (2.58%) Visual Studio
4 10 (2.34%) Git
4 10 (2.34%) Selenium
4 10 (2.34%) WebDriver
5 9 (2.11%) Cypress.io
5 9 (2.11%) Postman
6 6 (1.41%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.70%) GitLab
7 3 (0.70%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.70%) MLflow
7 3 (0.70%) Protractor
8 2 (0.47%) MSI
8 2 (0.47%) NUnit
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
1 155 (36.30%) Social Skills
2 59 (13.82%) Finance
3 47 (11.01%) Public Sector
4 46 (10.77%) Analytical Skills
5 32 (7.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 21 (4.92%) Organisational Skills
7 14 (3.28%) Legal
8 12 (2.81%) Manufacturing
9 9 (2.11%) Banking
10 7 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.64%) Marketing
11 6 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (1.17%) Law
13 4 (0.94%) Billing
13 4 (0.94%) Retail
14 3 (0.70%) Telecoms
15 2 (0.47%) Electronics
15 2 (0.47%) Investment Banking
15 2 (0.47%) Local Government
15 2 (0.47%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 57 (13.35%) Analyst
2 55 (12.88%) Developer
3 50 (11.71%) Senior
4 37 (8.67%) Data Engineer
5 31 (7.26%) Architect
6 30 (7.03%) Lead
7 25 (5.85%) Administrator
7 25 (5.85%) Consultant
8 22 (5.15%) Azure Engineer
9 19 (4.45%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 18 (4.22%) Solutions Architect
11 17 (3.98%) Dynamics 365 Developer
11 17 (3.98%) Support Engineer
12 13 (3.04%) IT Support
12 13 (3.04%) Senior Data Engineer
13 11 (2.58%) Senior Analyst
14 10 (2.34%) Data Architect
14 10 (2.34%) Senior Developer
14 10 (2.34%) Support Technician
14 10 (2.34%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (5.39%) JSON
2 21 (4.92%) Terraform
3 19 (4.45%) XML
4 18 (4.22%) SOAP
5 13 (3.04%) PySpark
6 12 (2.81%) REST
7 11 (2.58%) ActiveX
8 9 (2.11%) Gherkin
9 8 (1.87%) .NET
10 7 (1.64%) Microsoft Graph
10 7 (1.64%) XSLT
11 6 (1.41%) Kafka
12 5 (1.17%) JDBC
12 5 (1.17%) SAP PI
13 4 (0.94%) IDoc
13 4 (0.94%) YAML
14 3 (0.70%) .NET Core
14 3 (0.70%) GraphQL
14 3 (0.70%) OAuth
14 3 (0.70%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 24 (5.62%) Management Information System
2 23 (5.39%) Onboarding
3 20 (4.68%) Cloud Native
4 15 (3.51%) Hybrid Cloud
4 15 (3.51%) Product Ownership
5 13 (3.04%) SCADA
6 9 (2.11%) CMDB
7 8 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (1.64%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (1.64%) Data Structures
8 7 (1.64%) Smartphone
8 7 (1.64%) Taxonomies
8 7 (1.64%) Virtual Team
9 6 (1.41%) Data Centre
9 6 (1.41%) IoT
9 6 (1.41%) Operational Technology
9 6 (1.41%) PKI
9 6 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.17%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.17%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 94 (22.01%) Windows
2 31 (7.26%) Windows Server
3 30 (7.03%) Windows 10
4 22 (5.15%) Linux
5 13 (3.04%) Mac OS
6 8 (1.87%) Android
7 7 (1.64%) Ubuntu
8 5 (1.17%) SUSE
8 5 (1.17%) Unix
9 4 (0.94%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.70%) CentOS
10 3 (0.70%) Windows 7
10 3 (0.70%) Windows Server 2012
10 3 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (21.08%) Problem-Solving
2 71 (16.63%) DevOps
3 67 (15.69%) Agile
4 60 (14.05%) Stakeholder Management
5 56 (13.11%) Continuous Improvement
6 54 (12.65%) Migration
7 50 (11.71%) CI/CD
7 50 (11.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 48 (11.24%) AI
9 44 (10.30%) Customer Service
10 43 (10.07%) Data Modelling
11 42 (9.84%) Analytics
11 42 (9.84%) Technical Leadership
12 41 (9.60%) ITSM
13 40 (9.37%) Business Intelligence
14 39 (9.13%) ITIL
15 34 (7.96%) Validation
16 33 (7.73%) Mentoring
17 30 (7.03%) CRM
18 29 (6.79%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 59 (13.82%) SQL
2 32 (7.49%) Python
3 28 (6.56%) JavaScript
4 27 (6.32%) C#
5 20 (4.68%) PowerShell
6 16 (3.75%) Java
7 13 (3.04%) VBA
8 11 (2.58%) VB
8 11 (2.58%) VB6
9 10 (2.34%) Bicep
10 6 (1.41%) Kusto Query Language
11 5 (1.17%) ABAP
11 5 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 4 (0.94%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.70%) Bash
14 2 (0.47%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.47%) VBScript
15 1 (0.23%) Go
15 1 (0.23%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 71 (16.63%) Security Cleared
2 58 (13.58%) SC Cleared
3 39 (9.13%) Microsoft Certification
4 26 (6.09%) Degree
5 16 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.04%) Azure Certification
7 12 (2.81%) ISTQB
8 10 (2.34%) CISSP
9 9 (2.11%) OCP
9 9 (2.11%) Oracle Certification
10 6 (1.41%) AWS Certification
10 6 (1.41%) CISM
11 5 (1.17%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (1.17%) DBS Check
12 4 (0.94%) A+ Certification
12 4 (0.94%) CCNP
12 4 (0.94%) Network+ Certification
13 3 (0.70%) DV Cleared
13 3 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
13 3 (0.70%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 30 (7.03%) Accessibility
2 28 (6.56%) Data Quality
3 25 (5.85%) GDPR
4 18 (4.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 17 (3.98%) NIST
5 17 (3.98%) QA
6 14 (3.28%) WCAG
7 13 (3.04%) SLA
8 12 (2.81%) PMO
9 7 (1.64%) PCI DSS
10 5 (1.17%) GRC
11 2 (0.47%) 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 74 (17.33%) Active Directory
2 26 (6.09%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (3.75%) Hyper-V
4 15 (3.51%) Docker
5 14 (3.28%) vSphere
6 12 (2.81%) 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 45 (10.54%) Microsoft Intune
2 27 (6.32%) SCCM
3 18 (4.22%) Kubernetes
4 17 (3.98%) Single Sign-On
5 5 (1.17%) Ansible
5 5 (1.17%) Grafana
5 5 (1.17%) Jamf Pro
6 4 (0.94%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.70%) QRadar
8 2 (0.47%) Check_MK
8 2 (0.47%) Failover Clustering
8 2 (0.47%) WMI
8 2 (0.47%) WSUS
9 1 (0.23%) AirWatch
9 1 (0.23%) Argo
9 1 (0.23%) FortiGate
9 1 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 37 (8.67%) ServiceNow
2 34 (7.96%) Oracle
3 32 (7.49%) VMware
4 26 (6.09%) Cisco
5 23 (5.39%) SAP
6 20 (4.68%) Databricks
7 13 (3.04%) Splunk
8 10 (2.34%) UiPath
9 9 (2.11%) Palo Alto
10 8 (1.87%) Apple
10 8 (1.87%) Informatica
10 8 (1.87%) Red Hat
11 7 (1.64%) Fortinet
12 6 (1.41%) Canon
12 6 (1.41%) Citrix
13 5 (1.17%) Adobe
13 5 (1.17%) F5
13 5 (1.17%) IBM
13 5 (1.17%) Samsung
13 5 (1.17%) Siemens