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 19 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
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 4
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 423 273 260
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.22% 15.88% 13.81%
As % of the Vendors category 26.81% 33.01% 29.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 316 183 174
10th Percentile £254 £165 £162
25th Percentile £375 £263 £258
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £400 £418
Median % change year-on-year +11.75% -4.19% +1.21%
75th Percentile £519 £541 £524
90th Percentile £608 £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 £21.50 £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 1,578 827 872
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 45.59% 48.11% 46.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,060 534 603
10th Percentile £315 £230 £263
25th Percentile £400 £354 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.37% - -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £621
90th Percentile £651 £638 £700
England median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 29 20
10th Percentile £13.50 £14.86 £13.93
25th Percentile £18.34 £24.66 £15.17
Median hourly rate £25.15 £30.00 £28.81
Median % change year-on-year -16.18% +4.12% +28.06%
75th Percentile £47.50 £43.25 £50.31
90th Percentile £62.50 £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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +2 120 £450 +18.03% 215
Warwickshire -3 86 £450 +12.50% 41
Coventry 0 81 £425 +41.67% 34
Shropshire -20 49 £447 -13.20% 22
Staffordshire -4 16 £413 +194.64% 46
Worcestershire -2 11 £450 -21.74% 33
Solihull -22 9 £425 -22.73% 15
Herefordshire +3 8 £700 -22.22% 11
Dudley - 7 £400 - 8
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 5
West Bromwich - 3 - - 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 (9.69%) SharePoint
2 18 (4.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.18%) SAS
4 4 (0.95%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.95%) Confluence
5 3 (0.71%) Apache
5 3 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.71%) IIS
6 2 (0.47%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.47%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.24%) Appian
7 1 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 49 (11.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (9.69%) Microsoft Office
3 15 (3.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (2.36%) MS Visio
5 9 (2.13%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.47%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.24%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.24%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.24%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.24%) Revit
7 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 18 (4.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.18%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.71%) Primavera
4 2 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.24%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.24%) Integrated Workplace Management System
5 1 (0.24%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 177 (41.84%) Azure
2 95 (22.46%) Microsoft 365
3 77 (18.20%) Power Platform
4 51 (12.06%) Azure DevOps
5 50 (11.82%) Entra ID
6 45 (10.64%) Dynamics 365
7 39 (9.22%) Power Automate
8 35 (8.27%) AWS
8 35 (8.27%) Microsoft Purview
9 34 (8.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 32 (7.57%) Azure Data Factory
11 25 (5.91%) OneDrive
11 25 (5.91%) PowerApps
12 19 (4.49%) Serverless
13 15 (3.55%) Microsoft Copilot
14 12 (2.84%) GitHub
14 12 (2.84%) GitHub Actions
15 11 (2.60%) GCP
16 8 (1.89%) Azure Functions
17 6 (1.42%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 34 (8.04%) DNS
2 27 (6.38%) DHCP
3 25 (5.91%) VPN
4 20 (4.73%) Firewall
5 11 (2.60%) LAN
5 11 (2.60%) TCP/IP
6 9 (2.13%) Wi-Fi
7 8 (1.89%) WAN
8 6 (1.42%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.42%) SSL
9 4 (0.95%) Network Security
9 4 (0.95%) SAN
9 4 (0.95%) SD-WAN
10 3 (0.71%) BIG-IP
10 3 (0.71%) NAS
10 3 (0.71%) SNMP
10 3 (0.71%) Structured Cabling
10 3 (0.71%) Wireless
11 2 (0.47%) Cisco ASA
11 2 (0.47%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (10.64%) Power BI
2 34 (8.04%) SQL Server
3 29 (6.86%) Data Warehouse
4 23 (5.44%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
6 12 (2.84%) Data Lake
6 12 (2.84%) MySQL
7 10 (2.36%) Delta Lake
8 7 (1.65%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.65%) Metadata
8 7 (1.65%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.42%) Data Vault
9 6 (1.42%) Relational Database
10 5 (1.18%) Oracle Database
10 5 (1.18%) Redis
11 3 (0.71%) Power Query
11 3 (0.71%) SAP Data Services
11 3 (0.71%) SAS Enterprise Guide
11 3 (0.71%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 19 (4.49%) JIRA
2 12 (2.84%) Team Foundation Server
3 11 (2.60%) Selenium
3 11 (2.60%) Visual Studio
3 11 (2.60%) WebDriver
4 9 (2.13%) Cypress.io
4 9 (2.13%) Postman
5 6 (1.42%) Cucumber
5 6 (1.42%) Git
6 4 (0.95%) MLflow
7 3 (0.71%) GitLab
7 3 (0.71%) Jenkins
7 3 (0.71%) Protractor
8 2 (0.47%) MSI
8 2 (0.47%) NUnit
9 1 (0.24%) CircleCI
9 1 (0.24%) Maven
9 1 (0.24%) Rational Rhapsody
9 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.24%) Zephyr
General
1 142 (33.57%) Social Skills
2 60 (14.18%) Finance
3 43 (10.17%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (10.17%) Public Sector
4 32 (7.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 18 (4.26%) Organisational Skills
6 12 (2.84%) Manufacturing
7 11 (2.60%) Legal
8 10 (2.36%) Banking
9 7 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.65%) Marketing
10 6 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.18%) Retail
12 4 (0.95%) Billing
12 4 (0.95%) Law
13 3 (0.71%) 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 (13.24%) Developer
2 54 (12.77%) Analyst
3 49 (11.58%) Senior
4 39 (9.22%) Data Engineer
5 31 (7.33%) Architect
6 28 (6.62%) Consultant
7 27 (6.38%) Lead
8 22 (5.20%) Administrator
8 22 (5.20%) Azure Engineer
9 17 (4.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
10 14 (3.31%) Solutions Architect
11 13 (3.07%) Senior Data Engineer
12 12 (2.84%) Data Architect
12 12 (2.84%) Dynamics 365 Developer
13 11 (2.60%) Support Engineer
14 10 (2.36%) DBA
14 10 (2.36%) IT Support
14 10 (2.36%) Senior Analyst
14 10 (2.36%) Test Analyst
15 9 (2.13%) Junior
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.73%) PySpark
2 18 (4.26%) JSON
3 16 (3.78%) SOAP
4 14 (3.31%) XML
5 12 (2.84%) REST
6 11 (2.60%) ActiveX
7 10 (2.36%) .NET
8 9 (2.13%) Gherkin
9 6 (1.42%) Kafka
9 6 (1.42%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (1.18%) GraphQL
10 5 (1.18%) JDBC
10 5 (1.18%) SAP PI
11 4 (0.95%) .NET Framework
11 4 (0.95%) IDoc
11 4 (0.95%) YAML
12 3 (0.71%) .NET Core
12 3 (0.71%) FastAPI
12 3 (0.71%) Flask
12 3 (0.71%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 23 (5.44%) Cloud Native
2 21 (4.96%) Onboarding
3 17 (4.02%) Management Information System
4 16 (3.78%) Hybrid Cloud
5 15 (3.55%) Product Ownership
6 13 (3.07%) SCADA
7 9 (2.13%) CMDB
8 7 (1.65%) Data Centre
8 7 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
8 7 (1.65%) Operational Technology
8 7 (1.65%) Smartphone
9 6 (1.42%) Data Structures
9 6 (1.42%) IoT
9 6 (1.42%) PKI
9 6 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
10 5 (1.18%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.18%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.18%) Security Operations Centre
10 5 (1.18%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 83 (19.62%) Windows
2 26 (6.15%) Windows 10
2 26 (6.15%) Windows Server
3 22 (5.20%) Linux
4 12 (2.84%) Mac OS
5 7 (1.65%) Android
6 6 (1.42%) Ubuntu
7 5 (1.18%) SUSE
7 5 (1.18%) Unix
8 4 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.71%) Windows 7
9 3 (0.71%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.47%) CentOS
10 2 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (20.09%) Problem-Solving
2 71 (16.78%) DevOps
3 70 (16.55%) Agile
4 57 (13.48%) CI/CD
5 54 (12.77%) Migration
6 53 (12.53%) Stakeholder Management
7 52 (12.29%) Continuous Improvement
8 51 (12.06%) AI
9 49 (11.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 48 (11.35%) Analytics
11 45 (10.64%) Business Intelligence
12 42 (9.93%) Data Modelling
13 40 (9.46%) Customer Service
14 39 (9.22%) Technical Leadership
15 36 (8.51%) ITIL
15 36 (8.51%) ITSM
15 36 (8.51%) Validation
16 35 (8.27%) ETL
17 31 (7.33%) Mentoring
18 30 (7.09%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 69 (16.31%) SQL
2 38 (8.98%) Python
3 23 (5.44%) JavaScript
4 22 (5.20%) C#
5 17 (4.02%) PowerShell
6 16 (3.78%) Java
7 13 (3.07%) VBA
8 12 (2.84%) Bicep
9 11 (2.60%) VB
9 11 (2.60%) VB6
10 6 (1.42%) T-SQL
11 5 (1.18%) ABAP
11 5 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
12 4 (0.95%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.71%) Bash
13 3 (0.71%) Go
14 2 (0.47%) Scala
14 2 (0.47%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.47%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 73 (17.26%) Security Cleared
2 58 (13.71%) SC Cleared
3 34 (8.04%) Microsoft Certification
4 27 (6.38%) Degree
5 16 (3.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.07%) ISTQB
7 11 (2.60%) Azure Certification
8 10 (2.36%) OCP
8 10 (2.36%) Oracle Certification
9 8 (1.89%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.89%) CISSP
10 7 (1.65%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (1.42%) DV Cleared
12 5 (1.18%) CISM
13 4 (0.95%) CCNP
13 4 (0.95%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.95%) Master's Degree
13 4 (0.95%) PhD
14 3 (0.71%) DBS Check
14 3 (0.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (6.38%) Data Quality
2 25 (5.91%) Accessibility
3 20 (4.73%) GDPR
4 18 (4.26%) QA
5 17 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 14 (3.31%) NIST
7 12 (2.84%) PMO
7 12 (2.84%) SLA
8 10 (2.36%) WCAG
9 5 (1.18%) PCI DSS
10 4 (0.95%) GRC
11 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 12207
11 2 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 2 (0.47%) NCSC
12 1 (0.24%) Basel III
12 1 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
12 1 (0.24%) HL7
12 1 (0.24%) ISO 14001
12 1 (0.24%) ISO 9001
12 1 (0.24%) NIST 800
System Software
1 66 (15.60%) Active Directory
2 23 (5.44%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (4.73%) Docker
4 15 (3.55%) Hyper-V
5 12 (2.84%) vSphere
6 10 (2.36%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.95%) Virtual Desktop
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 (0.24%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.24%) Firmware
9 1 (0.24%) NFS
Systems Management
1 41 (9.69%) Microsoft Intune
2 26 (6.15%) Kubernetes
2 26 (6.15%) SCCM
3 23 (5.44%) Terraform
4 16 (3.78%) Single Sign-On
5 7 (1.65%) Grafana
6 6 (1.42%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.18%) Ansible
7 5 (1.18%) Jamf Pro
8 3 (0.71%) 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 (0.24%) AirWatch
10 1 (0.24%) Argo
10 1 (0.24%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.24%) SCOM
Vendors
1 36 (8.51%) Oracle
2 34 (8.04%) ServiceNow
3 29 (6.86%) VMware
4 27 (6.38%) Databricks
5 25 (5.91%) SAP
6 24 (5.67%) Cisco
7 10 (2.36%) Splunk
7 10 (2.36%) UiPath
8 9 (2.13%) Informatica
9 8 (1.89%) Apple
9 8 (1.89%) Palo Alto
9 8 (1.89%) Red Hat
10 7 (1.65%) Fortinet
11 6 (1.42%) Canon
11 6 (1.42%) Citrix
12 5 (1.18%) IBM
12 5 (1.18%) MathWorks
12 5 (1.18%) Siemens
12 5 (1.18%) SolarWinds
12 5 (1.18%) webMethods