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 10 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
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 4
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 425 270 260
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.18% 15.89% 14.06%
As % of the Vendors category 26.71% 33.17% 30.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 323 178 178
10th Percentile £258 £165 £164
25th Percentile £375 £263 £271
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £400 £418
Median % change year-on-year +12.50% -4.19% +4.38%
75th Percentile £519 £541 £520
90th Percentile £622 £613 £638
England median daily rate £490 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.62% -0.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 21 8
10th Percentile £16.28 £15.13 £13.78
25th Percentile £17.74 £27.21 £15.24
Median hourly rate £21.50 £30.00 £31.81
Median % change year-on-year -28.33% -5.70% +67.43%
75th Percentile £21.75 £50.00 £55.31
90th Percentile £70.07 - £56.25
England median hourly rate £21.75 £22.57 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.61% +39.03% -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 1,591 814 852
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 45.61% 47.91% 46.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,085 520 599
10th Percentile £317 £230 £263
25th Percentile £402 £350 £360
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.11% - -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £613
90th Percentile £656 £638 £698
England median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 29 20
10th Percentile £14.53 £14.86 £13.93
25th Percentile £20.07 £24.66 £15.17
Median hourly rate £28.40 £30.00 £25.06
Median % change year-on-year -5.33% +19.70% +11.39%
75th Percentile £48.25 £43.25 £47.88
90th Percentile £63.60 £50.00 £57.38
England median hourly rate £34.30 £25.15 £30.00
% change year-on-year +36.39% -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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +1 125 £450 +22.55% 236
Warwickshire -3 89 £450 +12.50% 35
Coventry 0 77 £425 +44.68% 45
Shropshire -26 49 £447 -13.20% 17
Staffordshire -3 13 £413 +194.64% 51
Worcestershire -1 10 £450 -21.74% 25
Solihull -30 9 £425 -11.64% 10
Herefordshire +3 8 £700 -22.22% 13
Dudley - 6 £400 - 9
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 7
West Bromwich - 3 - - 4
Brierley Hill - 2 £446 - 2
Wolverhampton -7 1 - - 15
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 39 (9.18%) SharePoint
2 14 (3.29%) Microsoft Exchange
3 5 (1.18%) SAS
4 4 (0.94%) Apache Spark
4 4 (0.94%) Confluence
5 3 (0.71%) Apache
5 3 (0.71%) Apache Airflow
5 3 (0.71%) IIS
5 3 (0.71%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.47%) CloudStack
6 2 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.24%) Appian
7 1 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 46 (10.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (9.18%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (3.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (2.35%) MS Visio
5 9 (2.12%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
7 1 (0.24%) AutoCAD
7 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.24%) Navisworks
7 1 (0.24%) ProjectWise
7 1 (0.24%) Revit
Business Applications
1 24 (5.65%) 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 EHS
5 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.24%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 177 (41.65%) Azure
2 91 (21.41%) Microsoft 365
3 79 (18.59%) Power Platform
4 50 (11.76%) Azure DevOps
4 50 (11.76%) Dynamics 365
5 46 (10.82%) Entra ID
6 38 (8.94%) Power Automate
7 36 (8.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 34 (8.00%) Microsoft Purview
9 32 (7.53%) AWS
9 32 (7.53%) Azure Data Factory
10 24 (5.65%) PowerApps
11 22 (5.18%) OneDrive
12 17 (4.00%) Serverless
13 14 (3.29%) Microsoft Copilot
14 11 (2.59%) GCP
15 10 (2.35%) GitHub
15 10 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
16 8 (1.88%) Azure Functions
16 8 (1.88%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 31 (7.29%) DNS
2 24 (5.65%) DHCP
2 24 (5.65%) VPN
3 18 (4.24%) Firewall
4 10 (2.35%) LAN
5 9 (2.12%) TCP/IP
5 9 (2.12%) Wi-Fi
6 7 (1.65%) WAN
7 6 (1.41%) Cisco IOS
7 6 (1.41%) SSL
8 4 (0.94%) Network Security
8 4 (0.94%) SAN
9 3 (0.71%) BIG-IP
9 3 (0.71%) Intrusion Detection
9 3 (0.71%) NAS
9 3 (0.71%) SD-WAN
9 3 (0.71%) Structured Cabling
9 3 (0.71%) Wireless
10 2 (0.47%) Remote Desktop
10 2 (0.47%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 46 (10.82%) Power BI
2 30 (7.06%) Data Warehouse
2 30 (7.06%) SQL Server
3 22 (5.18%) PostgreSQL
4 14 (3.29%) Azure SQL Database
5 12 (2.82%) Data Lake
5 12 (2.82%) MySQL
6 11 (2.59%) Delta Lake
7 9 (2.12%) NoSQL
8 7 (1.65%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
8 7 (1.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 6 (1.41%) Data Vault
9 6 (1.41%) Metadata
9 6 (1.41%) Relational Database
10 5 (1.18%) Oracle Database
11 3 (0.71%) Oracle Reports
11 3 (0.71%) Power Query
11 3 (0.71%) Redis
11 3 (0.71%) SAP Data Services
11 3 (0.71%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 21 (4.94%) JIRA
2 12 (2.82%) Team Foundation Server
3 11 (2.59%) Selenium
3 11 (2.59%) Visual Studio
3 11 (2.59%) WebDriver
4 9 (2.12%) Cypress.io
4 9 (2.12%) Postman
5 7 (1.65%) Git
6 6 (1.41%) Cucumber
7 4 (0.94%) MLflow
8 3 (0.71%) GitLab
8 3 (0.71%) Jenkins
8 3 (0.71%) Protractor
9 2 (0.47%) MSI
9 2 (0.47%) NUnit
10 1 (0.24%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.24%) Maven
10 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.24%) Zephyr
General
1 141 (33.18%) Social Skills
2 60 (14.12%) Finance
3 43 (10.12%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (9.88%) Public Sector
5 30 (7.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 16 (3.76%) Organisational Skills
7 11 (2.59%) Manufacturing
8 10 (2.35%) Banking
8 10 (2.35%) Legal
9 7 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.65%) Marketing
10 6 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.41%) Law
11 5 (1.18%) Games
11 5 (1.18%) Retail
12 4 (0.94%) Billing
12 4 (0.94%) Electronics
13 2 (0.47%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.47%) Local Government
13 2 (0.47%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 60 (14.12%) Analyst
2 53 (12.47%) Developer
3 48 (11.29%) Senior
4 42 (9.88%) Data Engineer
5 34 (8.00%) Architect
6 28 (6.59%) Consultant
6 28 (6.59%) Lead
7 21 (4.94%) Azure Engineer
8 19 (4.47%) Administrator
9 15 (3.53%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 15 (3.53%) Solutions Architect
10 13 (3.06%) Data Architect
10 13 (3.06%) Senior Data Engineer
11 11 (2.59%) Dynamics 365 Developer
11 11 (2.59%) Support Engineer
11 11 (2.59%) Test Analyst
12 10 (2.35%) DBA
12 10 (2.35%) IT Support
12 10 (2.35%) Senior Analyst
13 9 (2.12%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (4.94%) PySpark
2 17 (4.00%) JSON
3 16 (3.76%) SOAP
4 14 (3.29%) XML
5 11 (2.59%) ActiveX
6 10 (2.35%) REST
7 9 (2.12%) .NET
7 9 (2.12%) Gherkin
8 6 (1.41%) Kafka
9 5 (1.18%) JDBC
9 5 (1.18%) SAP PI
9 5 (1.18%) YAML
10 4 (0.94%) .NET Framework
10 4 (0.94%) FastAPI
10 4 (0.94%) IDoc
10 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Graph
11 3 (0.71%) Flask
11 3 (0.71%) GraphQL
11 3 (0.71%) gRPC
11 3 (0.71%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 25 (5.88%) Cloud Native
2 21 (4.94%) Onboarding
3 16 (3.76%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (3.06%) Management Information System
4 13 (3.06%) Product Ownership
5 11 (2.59%) SCADA
6 8 (1.88%) CMDB
6 8 (1.88%) Enterprise Software
6 8 (1.88%) Security Operations Centre
7 7 (1.65%) Data Centre
7 7 (1.65%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (1.65%) Smartphone
8 6 (1.41%) Data Structures
9 5 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.18%) IoT
9 5 (1.18%) Operational Technology
9 5 (1.18%) PKI
9 5 (1.18%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.18%) Security Posture
10 4 (0.94%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 83 (19.53%) Windows
2 25 (5.88%) Windows 10
3 24 (5.65%) Windows Server
4 23 (5.41%) Linux
5 12 (2.82%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.65%) Android
7 6 (1.41%) Unix
8 5 (1.18%) SUSE
8 5 (1.18%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.94%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.71%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
12 1 (0.24%) CentOS
12 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (20.24%) Problem-Solving
2 71 (16.71%) Agile
3 70 (16.47%) DevOps
4 57 (13.41%) Migration
5 56 (13.18%) CI/CD
6 55 (12.94%) Continuous Improvement
7 52 (12.24%) AI
7 52 (12.24%) Analytics
8 49 (11.53%) Business Intelligence
8 49 (11.53%) Stakeholder Management
9 45 (10.59%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 42 (9.88%) Data Modelling
11 38 (8.94%) Customer Service
11 38 (8.94%) ETL
12 37 (8.71%) Validation
13 34 (8.00%) Technical Leadership
14 33 (7.76%) ITIL
15 32 (7.53%) CRM
15 32 (7.53%) ITSM
16 30 (7.06%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 70 (16.47%) SQL
2 40 (9.41%) Python
3 20 (4.71%) C#
3 20 (4.71%) JavaScript
4 17 (4.00%) Java
5 15 (3.53%) PowerShell
6 13 (3.06%) Bicep
6 13 (3.06%) VBA
7 11 (2.59%) VB
7 11 (2.59%) VB6
8 8 (1.88%) Kusto Query Language
9 7 (1.65%) T-SQL
10 5 (1.18%) ABAP
10 5 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 5 (1.18%) PL/SQL
11 3 (0.71%) Bash
11 3 (0.71%) Go
11 3 (0.71%) MATLAB
12 2 (0.47%) Scala
12 2 (0.47%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 74 (17.41%) Security Cleared
2 60 (14.12%) SC Cleared
3 32 (7.53%) Microsoft Certification
4 27 (6.35%) Degree
5 15 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.06%) ISTQB
7 11 (2.59%) Azure Certification
8 10 (2.35%) OCP
8 10 (2.35%) Oracle Certification
9 9 (2.12%) CISSP
10 8 (1.88%) AWS Certification
11 6 (1.41%) Cisco Certification
12 5 (1.18%) CISM
12 5 (1.18%) DV Cleared
12 5 (1.18%) Master's Degree
13 4 (0.94%) ITIL Certification
13 4 (0.94%) PhD
14 3 (0.71%) CCNP
14 3 (0.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 2 (0.47%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (6.82%) Data Quality
2 24 (5.65%) Accessibility
3 23 (5.41%) GDPR
4 19 (4.47%) QA
5 16 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 13 (3.06%) NIST
7 12 (2.82%) PMO
7 12 (2.82%) SLA
8 10 (2.35%) WCAG
9 4 (0.94%) GRC
9 4 (0.94%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 3 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 15288
11 2 (0.47%) NCSC
11 2 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 1 (0.24%) Basel III
12 1 (0.24%) ISO 19650
12 1 (0.24%) ISO 22301
12 1 (0.24%) NIST 800
12 1 (0.24%) P3O
System Software
1 63 (14.82%) Active Directory
2 21 (4.94%) VMware Infrastructure
3 19 (4.47%) Docker
4 15 (3.53%) Hyper-V
5 11 (2.59%) vSphere
6 9 (2.12%) VMware ESXi
7 4 (0.94%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.71%) Snort
9 2 (0.47%) Microsoft App-V
9 2 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
9 2 (0.47%) VMware NSX
9 2 (0.47%) XenApp
9 2 (0.47%) XenDesktop
10 1 (0.24%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.24%) Firmware
10 1 (0.24%) NFS
Systems Management
1 39 (9.18%) Microsoft Intune
2 29 (6.82%) Kubernetes
3 24 (5.65%) SCCM
4 23 (5.41%) Terraform
5 14 (3.29%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.88%) Grafana
7 7 (1.65%) Prometheus
8 5 (1.18%) Jamf Pro
9 4 (0.94%) Ansible
10 3 (0.71%) CSIRT
10 3 (0.71%) QRadar
11 2 (0.47%) Check_MK
11 2 (0.47%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.47%) WMI
11 2 (0.47%) WSUS
12 1 (0.24%) AirWatch
12 1 (0.24%) Control-M
12 1 (0.24%) FortiGate
12 1 (0.24%) Nessus
12 1 (0.24%) SCOM
Vendors
1 35 (8.24%) Oracle
2 34 (8.00%) ServiceNow
3 29 (6.82%) Databricks
4 27 (6.35%) VMware
5 26 (6.12%) SAP
6 20 (4.71%) Cisco
7 11 (2.59%) Splunk
8 9 (2.12%) UiPath
9 8 (1.88%) Apple
9 8 (1.88%) Informatica
9 8 (1.88%) Red Hat
10 6 (1.41%) Canon
10 6 (1.41%) Citrix
10 6 (1.41%) Okta
11 5 (1.18%) F5
11 5 (1.18%) Fortinet
11 5 (1.18%) MathWorks
11 5 (1.18%) Palo Alto
11 5 (1.18%) Siemens
11 5 (1.18%) webMethods