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 31 July 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
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing Microsoft 414 261 254
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.97% 15.82% 13.48%
As % of the Vendors category 26.25% 33.81% 29.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 316 171 175
10th Percentile £260 £165 £162
25th Percentile £375 £250 £299
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £388 £415
Median % change year-on-year +16.13% -6.63% +2.15%
75th Percentile £520 £539 £520
90th Percentile £621 £613 £638
England median daily rate £490 £475 £498
% change year-on-year +3.16% -4.52% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 22 11
10th Percentile £18.09 £15.41 £10.93
25th Percentile £20.30 £27.66 £12.31
Median hourly rate £21.50 £30.00 £14.00
Median % change year-on-year -28.33% +114.29% -24.32%
75th Percentile £27.50 £50.00 £46.88
90th Percentile £70.14 - £56.25
England median hourly rate £23.08 £22.63 £16.23
% change year-on-year +1.99% +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 1,577 772 861
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 45.58% 46.79% 45.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,084 491 605
10th Percentile £315 £208 £263
25th Percentile £402 £325 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £460 £470
Median % change year-on-year +1.68% -2.13% -1.05%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £638 £688
England median daily rate £510 £510 £525
% change year-on-year - -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 30 25
10th Percentile £17.57 £14.99 £12.02
25th Percentile £20.55 £24.75 £14.00
Median hourly rate £30.25 £30.00 £16.82
Median % change year-on-year +0.82% +78.36% -25.24%
75th Percentile £51.06 £42.93 £38.75
90th Percentile £66.03 £50.00 £56.25
England median hourly rate £35.50 £25.15 £28.00
% change year-on-year +41.15% -10.18% -27.32%

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 31 July 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 31 July 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 31 July 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 +1 122 £450 +38.46% 103
Warwickshire -5 85 £450 +20.00% 27
Coventry 0 74 £425 +47.83% 19
Shropshire -25 50 £447 +0.11% 17
Staffordshire -4 12 £400 +185.71% 37
Worcestershire -1 11 £450 -21.74% 24
Solihull -26 9 £425 -7.61% 6
Herefordshire +2 8 £700 -22.22% 7
Dudley - 5 £400 - 11
Walsall +2 4 £600 - 8
West Bromwich - 3 - - 5
Brierley Hill - 2 £446 - 1
Wolverhampton -6 1 - - 11
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 (9.42%) SharePoint
2 13 (3.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.45%) Confluence
4 5 (1.21%) SAS
5 4 (0.97%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.72%) Apache
6 3 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.72%) IIS
6 3 (0.72%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.48%) CloudStack
7 2 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.24%) Appian
8 1 (0.24%) CMS
Applications
1 44 (10.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 40 (9.66%) Microsoft Office
3 17 (4.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (2.66%) Microsoft Project
4 11 (2.66%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.24%) AutoCAD
6 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.24%) Navisworks
6 1 (0.24%) ProjectWise
6 1 (0.24%) Revit
Business Applications
1 26 (6.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.21%) SAP PSCD
3 3 (0.72%) Primavera
4 2 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
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%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 167 (40.34%) Azure
2 85 (20.53%) Microsoft 365
3 75 (18.12%) Power Platform
4 50 (12.08%) Dynamics 365
5 46 (11.11%) Azure DevOps
6 40 (9.66%) Entra ID
7 36 (8.70%) AWS
8 35 (8.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 33 (7.97%) Power Automate
10 32 (7.73%) Microsoft Purview
11 28 (6.76%) Azure Data Factory
12 21 (5.07%) PowerApps
13 20 (4.83%) OneDrive
14 15 (3.62%) Serverless
15 14 (3.38%) GCP
15 14 (3.38%) Microsoft Copilot
16 9 (2.17%) GitHub
16 9 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
17 7 (1.69%) Azure Functions
18 6 (1.45%) Azure Machine Learning
Communications & Networking
1 27 (6.52%) DNS
2 24 (5.80%) VPN
3 20 (4.83%) DHCP
4 18 (4.35%) Firewall
5 10 (2.42%) LAN
6 8 (1.93%) TCP/IP
7 7 (1.69%) WAN
7 7 (1.69%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (1.45%) Cisco IOS
8 6 (1.45%) SSL
9 5 (1.21%) Network Security
10 4 (0.97%) SAN
11 3 (0.72%) BIG-IP
11 3 (0.72%) Intrusion Detection
11 3 (0.72%) NAS
11 3 (0.72%) SD-WAN
11 3 (0.72%) Structured Cabling
11 3 (0.72%) Wireless
12 2 (0.48%) Remote Desktop
12 2 (0.48%) Unified Communications
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (10.63%) Power BI
2 29 (7.00%) Data Warehouse
3 28 (6.76%) SQL Server
4 21 (5.07%) PostgreSQL
5 13 (3.14%) Azure SQL Database
6 12 (2.90%) MySQL
7 11 (2.66%) Data Lake
8 10 (2.42%) Delta Lake
9 8 (1.93%) NoSQL
9 8 (1.93%) Relational Database
10 7 (1.69%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 6 (1.45%) Data Vault
11 6 (1.45%) Metadata
12 5 (1.21%) Oracle Database
12 5 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 3 (0.72%) Power Query
13 3 (0.72%) Redis
13 3 (0.72%) SAP Data Services
13 3 (0.72%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 3 (0.72%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 24 (5.80%) JIRA
2 12 (2.90%) Team Foundation Server
3 11 (2.66%) Visual Studio
4 10 (2.42%) Selenium
4 10 (2.42%) WebDriver
5 8 (1.93%) Cypress.io
5 8 (1.93%) Postman
6 7 (1.69%) Git
7 5 (1.21%) Cucumber
8 4 (0.97%) MLflow
9 3 (0.72%) GitLab
9 3 (0.72%) Jenkins
9 3 (0.72%) Protractor
10 2 (0.48%) MSI
10 2 (0.48%) NUnit
11 1 (0.24%) CircleCI
11 1 (0.24%) JMeter
11 1 (0.24%) Maven
11 1 (0.24%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.24%) Zephyr
General
1 131 (31.64%) Social Skills
2 61 (14.73%) Finance
3 41 (9.90%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (9.66%) Public Sector
5 26 (6.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 13 (3.14%) Organisational Skills
7 10 (2.42%) Banking
7 10 (2.42%) Manufacturing
8 8 (1.93%) Legal
9 7 (1.69%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.69%) Games
10 6 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.45%) Marketing
11 5 (1.21%) Law
11 5 (1.21%) Retail
12 4 (0.97%) Billing
12 4 (0.97%) Electronics
13 3 (0.72%) Local Government
13 3 (0.72%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.48%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 61 (14.73%) Analyst
2 50 (12.08%) Developer
3 47 (11.35%) Senior
4 40 (9.66%) Data Engineer
5 34 (8.21%) Architect
6 28 (6.76%) Consultant
6 28 (6.76%) Lead
7 20 (4.83%) Azure Engineer
8 15 (3.62%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 14 (3.38%) Administrator
9 14 (3.38%) Solutions Architect
10 12 (2.90%) Business Analyst
10 12 (2.90%) Data Architect
10 12 (2.90%) Senior Data Engineer
11 11 (2.66%) Test Analyst
12 10 (2.42%) DBA
13 9 (2.17%) Dynamics 365 Developer
13 9 (2.17%) Senior Analyst
13 9 (2.17%) Support Engineer
13 9 (2.17%) Support Technician
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 20 (4.83%) PySpark
2 16 (3.86%) JSON
2 16 (3.86%) SOAP
3 15 (3.62%) XML
4 11 (2.66%) ActiveX
5 10 (2.42%) REST
6 9 (2.17%) .NET
7 8 (1.93%) Gherkin
8 5 (1.21%) JDBC
8 5 (1.21%) Kafka
8 5 (1.21%) SAP PI
8 5 (1.21%) YAML
9 4 (0.97%) .NET Framework
9 4 (0.97%) ADO
9 4 (0.97%) FastAPI
9 4 (0.97%) IDoc
9 4 (0.97%) Microsoft Graph
10 3 (0.72%) Flask
10 3 (0.72%) GraphQL
10 3 (0.72%) gRPC
Miscellaneous
1 24 (5.80%) Cloud Native
2 21 (5.07%) Onboarding
3 16 (3.86%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (2.90%) Management Information System
5 11 (2.66%) Product Ownership
6 10 (2.42%) SCADA
7 9 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
8 8 (1.93%) CMDB
8 8 (1.93%) Security Operations Centre
9 7 (1.69%) Data Centre
9 7 (1.69%) Smartphone
10 6 (1.45%) Data Structures
10 6 (1.45%) Operational Technology
10 6 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.21%) PKI
11 5 (1.21%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.21%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.97%) IoT
12 4 (0.97%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 80 (19.32%) Windows
2 25 (6.04%) Linux
3 24 (5.80%) Windows 10
4 21 (5.07%) Windows Server
5 11 (2.66%) Mac OS
6 7 (1.69%) Android
6 7 (1.69%) Unix
7 5 (1.21%) SUSE
7 5 (1.21%) Ubuntu
8 4 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 3 (0.72%) Windows 7
10 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
11 1 (0.24%) CentOS
11 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (19.08%) Problem-Solving
2 73 (17.63%) Agile
3 70 (16.91%) DevOps
4 58 (14.01%) Migration
5 57 (13.77%) CI/CD
6 53 (12.80%) AI
7 52 (12.56%) Continuous Improvement
8 50 (12.08%) Analytics
9 49 (11.84%) Stakeholder Management
10 47 (11.35%) Business Intelligence
11 43 (10.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 40 (9.66%) Data Modelling
13 39 (9.42%) Validation
14 35 (8.45%) ETL
15 34 (8.21%) CRM
16 31 (7.49%) Customer Service
16 31 (7.49%) Technical Leadership
17 30 (7.25%) ITIL
18 29 (7.00%) Infrastructure as Code
18 29 (7.00%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 67 (16.18%) SQL
2 37 (8.94%) Python
3 19 (4.59%) Java
4 17 (4.11%) C#
4 17 (4.11%) JavaScript
5 15 (3.62%) PowerShell
6 13 (3.14%) VBA
7 12 (2.90%) Bicep
7 12 (2.90%) VB
8 11 (2.66%) VB6
9 8 (1.93%) Kusto Query Language
10 6 (1.45%) T-SQL
11 5 (1.21%) ABAP
11 5 (1.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (1.21%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.72%) Bash
12 3 (0.72%) Go
12 3 (0.72%) MATLAB
13 2 (0.48%) Scala
13 2 (0.48%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 74 (17.87%) Security Cleared
2 61 (14.73%) SC Cleared
3 29 (7.00%) Degree
4 28 (6.76%) Microsoft Certification
5 14 (3.38%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (3.38%) ISTQB
6 11 (2.66%) CISSP
7 10 (2.42%) OCP
7 10 (2.42%) Oracle Certification
8 9 (2.17%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.93%) Azure Certification
9 8 (1.93%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (1.45%) CISM
10 6 (1.45%) DV Cleared
11 5 (1.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 5 (1.21%) Master's Degree
12 4 (0.97%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.97%) PhD
13 3 (0.72%) CCNA
13 3 (0.72%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 21 (5.07%) Accessibility
2 21 (5.07%) GDPR
2 21 (5.07%) QA
3 16 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 13 (3.14%) SLA
5 12 (2.90%) NIST
6 11 (2.66%) PMO
7 9 (2.17%) WCAG
8 4 (0.97%) GRC
9 3 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 12207
9 3 (0.72%) ISO/IEC 15288
10 2 (0.48%) NCSC
10 2 (0.48%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 1 (0.24%) Basel III
11 1 (0.24%) FATCA
11 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.24%) ISO 22301
11 1 (0.24%) P3O
System Software
1 59 (14.25%) Active Directory
2 20 (4.83%) Docker
2 20 (4.83%) VMware Infrastructure
3 13 (3.14%) Hyper-V
4 10 (2.42%) vSphere
5 8 (1.93%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.97%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.72%) Snort
8 2 (0.48%) Microsoft App-V
8 2 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.48%) VMware NSX
8 2 (0.48%) XenApp
8 2 (0.48%) XenDesktop
9 1 (0.24%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.24%) Firmware
9 1 (0.24%) NFS
Systems Management
1 35 (8.45%) Microsoft Intune
2 30 (7.25%) Kubernetes
3 23 (5.56%) SCCM
4 22 (5.31%) Terraform
5 15 (3.62%) Single Sign-On
6 8 (1.93%) Grafana
7 7 (1.69%) Prometheus
8 4 (0.97%) Ansible
8 4 (0.97%) Jamf Pro
9 3 (0.72%) CSIRT
9 3 (0.72%) QRadar
10 2 (0.48%) Check_MK
10 2 (0.48%) Failover Clustering
10 2 (0.48%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.48%) WMI
10 2 (0.48%) WSUS
11 1 (0.24%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.24%) FortiGate
11 1 (0.24%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.24%) SCOM
Vendors
1 36 (8.70%) ServiceNow
2 35 (8.45%) Oracle
3 30 (7.25%) SAP
4 27 (6.52%) Databricks
5 26 (6.28%) VMware
6 20 (4.83%) Cisco
7 11 (2.66%) Splunk
8 9 (2.17%) UiPath
9 8 (1.93%) Red Hat
10 7 (1.69%) Apple
10 7 (1.69%) Okta
11 6 (1.45%) Canon
11 6 (1.45%) Citrix
11 6 (1.45%) Informatica
12 5 (1.21%) F5
12 5 (1.21%) Fortinet
12 5 (1.21%) IBM
12 5 (1.21%) MathWorks
12 5 (1.21%) Siemens
12 5 (1.21%) webMethods