Microsoft Certification Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft Certification
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for Microsoft Certification qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 13 November 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Nov 2025		 Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 255 250 312
Rank change year-on-year -5 +62 +68
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certification 334 289 271
As % of all contract jobs in England 1.11% 0.93% 0.69%
As % of the Qualifications category 3.33% 3.14% 2.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 166 193
10th Percentile £219 £210 £208
25th Percentile £313 £325 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £615 £563 £600
90th Percentile £666 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £500 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 17 14
10th Percentile £6.00 £11.75 £15.60
25th Percentile £16.00 £12.00 £16.69
Median hourly rate £25.47 £21.46 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.69% -21.96% +77.42%
75th Percentile £33.75 £35.00 £35.47
90th Percentile £88.30 £112.00 £39.99
UK median hourly rate £21.25 £21.46 £30.00
% change year-on-year -0.98% -28.47% +93.55%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

Microsoft Certification falls under the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications in England.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 10,021 9,207 11,581
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 33.18% 29.67% 29.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,480 5,638 7,421
10th Percentile £300 £313 £308
25th Percentile £416 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £627 £638 £650
90th Percentile £720 £734 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 871 424 702
10th Percentile £17.69 £20.26 £17.72
25th Percentile £18.87 £26.85 £26.24
Median hourly rate £25.15 £50.00 £52.50
Median % change year-on-year -49.70% -4.76% +16.67%
75th Percentile £45.46 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £53.00
% change year-on-year -44.11% -15.09% +17.78%

Microsoft Certification
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Microsoft Certification relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Microsoft Certification job vacancy trend in England

Microsoft Certification
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Microsoft Certification.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Microsoft Certification

Microsoft Certification
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft Certification in England over the 6 months to 13 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft Certification in England

Microsoft Certification
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Microsoft Certification.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Microsoft Certification

Microsoft Certification
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft Certification in England over the 6 months to 13 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft Certification in England

Microsoft Certification
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Microsoft Certification within the England region over the 6 months to 13 November 2025. 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
London -3 117 £512 +13.67% 285
South West +27 60 £550 +10.00% 78
South East -2 57 £525 +10.53% 191
Midlands -21 38 £310 -27.10% 125
North of England -39 29 £438 -7.89% 170
East of England -2 28 £375 +27.66% 74
West Midlands -18 28 £395 -21.78% 80
North West -26 24 £450 -7.69% 87
East Midlands -6 10 £220 -45.00% 44
Yorkshire -31 5 £400 -15.79% 64
Microsoft Certification
UK

Microsoft Certification
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 40 (11.98%) SharePoint
2 37 (11.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 6 (1.80%) Skype for Business
4 4 (1.20%) Confluence
Applications
1 17 (5.09%) Microsoft Office
2 16 (4.79%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 5 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.90%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (2.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.90%) Maximo
3 1 (0.30%) Dynamics NAV
3 1 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.30%) Sprinklr
Cloud Services
1 157 (47.01%) Azure
2 114 (34.13%) Microsoft 365
3 62 (18.56%) Entra ID
4 48 (14.37%) Power Platform
5 42 (12.57%) AWS
6 32 (9.58%) Azure DevOps
7 29 (8.68%) Dynamics 365
8 26 (7.78%) Power Automate
9 23 (6.89%) Microsoft Purview
10 21 (6.29%) PowerApps
11 17 (5.09%) Azure Monitor
11 17 (5.09%) Azure Sentinel
12 16 (4.79%) GitHub
13 15 (4.49%) Azure Logic Apps
14 14 (4.19%) Azure Data Factory
15 13 (3.89%) OneDrive
16 12 (3.59%) Azure AKS
16 12 (3.59%) GitHub Actions
16 12 (3.59%) SaaS
17 9 (2.69%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 55 (16.47%) DNS
2 42 (12.57%) Firewall
3 35 (10.48%) DHCP
3 35 (10.48%) TCP/IP
4 26 (7.78%) VPN
5 15 (4.49%) Fibre Channel
5 15 (4.49%) iSCSI
6 12 (3.59%) VLAN
7 10 (2.99%) LAN
8 9 (2.69%) Skype
8 9 (2.69%) SSL
8 9 (2.69%) Wi-Fi
9 6 (1.80%) Unified Communications
9 6 (1.80%) Wireless
10 5 (1.50%) Network Security
11 4 (1.20%) S/MIME
11 4 (1.20%) WAN
12 3 (0.90%) SAN
12 3 (0.90%) Softphone
12 3 (0.90%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 23 (6.89%) Power BI
2 20 (5.99%) SQL Server
3 13 (3.89%) Azure SQL Database
4 9 (2.69%) Data Lake
5 7 (2.10%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.80%) Oracle Database
6 6 (1.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 5 (1.50%) MySQL
7 5 (1.50%) NoSQL
7 5 (1.50%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (1.20%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.90%) MongoDB
9 3 (0.90%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.60%) Apache Cassandra
10 2 (0.60%) DynamoDB
10 2 (0.60%) RDBMS
10 2 (0.60%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 1 (0.30%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 1 (0.30%) Redis
11 1 (0.30%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 16 (4.79%) JIRA
2 12 (3.59%) Git
3 6 (1.80%) MSI
4 5 (1.50%) GitLab
4 5 (1.50%) Jenkins
5 3 (0.90%) Bitbucket
5 3 (0.90%) ERwin
6 2 (0.60%) AdminStudio
6 2 (0.60%) CircleCI
6 2 (0.60%) InstallShield
6 2 (0.60%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 138 (41.32%) Social Skills
2 65 (19.46%) Analytical Skills
3 57 (17.07%) Finance
4 45 (13.47%) Public Sector
5 21 (6.29%) Banking
6 19 (5.69%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (2.10%) Marketing
8 6 (1.80%) Legal
9 5 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.50%) Military
10 4 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.20%) Retail
11 3 (0.90%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.90%) Polish Language
12 2 (0.60%) Advertising
12 2 (0.60%) Investment Banking
12 2 (0.60%) Local Government
12 2 (0.60%) Manufacturing
12 2 (0.60%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.60%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 59 (17.66%) Architect
2 49 (14.67%) Analyst
3 29 (8.68%) Support Engineer
4 26 (7.78%) Senior
4 26 (7.78%) Support Analyst
5 21 (6.29%) Consultant
6 20 (5.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 19 (5.69%) Security Engineer
8 16 (4.79%) Infrastructure Architect
8 16 (4.79%) Lead
8 16 (4.79%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
8 16 (4.79%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (4.49%) Azure Engineer
9 15 (4.49%) Developer
10 14 (4.19%) Administrator
10 14 (4.19%) Desktop Support
10 14 (4.19%) VMware Architect
11 13 (3.89%) Azure Architect
11 13 (3.89%) IT Support
11 13 (3.89%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (7.49%) OAuth
2 20 (5.99%) OpenID
2 20 (5.99%) SAML
3 15 (4.49%) .NET
4 13 (3.89%) OAuth2
5 12 (3.59%) ARM Templates
6 11 (3.29%) Microsoft Graph
7 9 (2.69%) JSON
7 9 (2.69%) REST
8 7 (2.10%) LDAP
9 5 (1.50%) RESTful
10 4 (1.20%) YAML
11 3 (0.90%) ASP.NET Web API
11 3 (0.90%) HTML
11 3 (0.90%) PySpark
12 2 (0.60%) ADO
12 2 (0.60%) Azure Blueprints
12 2 (0.60%) Elastic Stack
12 2 (0.60%) HTML5 Canvas
12 2 (0.60%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 22 (6.59%) PKI
2 17 (5.09%) Analytical Mindset
3 13 (3.89%) Cloud Native
3 13 (3.89%) Onboarding
3 13 (3.89%) Security Posture
4 12 (3.59%) Hybrid Cloud
4 12 (3.59%) Replication
5 11 (3.29%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (3.29%) NHS
6 10 (2.99%) Driving Licence
6 10 (2.99%) Management Information System
7 7 (2.10%) iPad
7 7 (2.10%) iPhone
8 6 (1.80%) Private Cloud
8 6 (1.80%) Video Conferencing
9 5 (1.50%) BYOD
9 5 (1.50%) Low-Code
9 5 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
9 5 (1.50%) Team-Oriented Environment
10 4 (1.20%) Legacy Applications
Operating Systems
1 175 (52.40%) Windows
2 65 (19.46%) Windows Server
3 41 (12.28%) Windows 10
4 28 (8.38%) Linux
5 25 (7.49%) Mac OS
6 15 (4.49%) Windows Server 2019
7 11 (3.29%) Windows Server 2012
8 5 (1.50%) Android
8 5 (1.50%) Windows Server 2003
9 4 (1.20%) Apple iOS
9 4 (1.20%) Unix
10 3 (0.90%) CentOS
10 3 (0.90%) VMS
11 1 (0.30%) Mac OS X
11 1 (0.30%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (30.84%) ITIL
2 92 (27.54%) Problem-Solving
3 54 (16.17%) DevOps
4 45 (13.47%) Customer Service
5 42 (12.57%) Service Management
6 41 (12.28%) Agile
6 41 (12.28%) CI/CD
7 36 (10.78%) Identity Access Management
7 36 (10.78%) Migration
8 35 (10.48%) Computer Science
8 35 (10.48%) Continuous Improvement
9 33 (9.88%) Cloud Security
10 30 (8.98%) Identity Management
11 29 (8.68%) Infrastructure Engineering
11 29 (8.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 27 (8.08%) Analytics
13 26 (7.78%) Business Intelligence
13 26 (7.78%) RBAC
14 25 (7.49%) Data Loss Prevention
14 25 (7.49%) ITSM
Programming Languages
1 84 (25.15%) PowerShell
2 51 (15.27%) SQL
3 18 (5.39%) Python
4 15 (4.49%) JavaScript
5 14 (4.19%) Bicep
5 14 (4.19%) C#
6 11 (3.29%) Bash
7 9 (2.69%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.80%) TypeScript
9 5 (1.50%) VBScript
10 2 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 1 (0.30%) Java
11 1 (0.30%) Korn
11 1 (0.30%) VBA
Qualifications
1 126 (37.72%) Security Cleared
2 84 (25.15%) Degree
3 82 (24.55%) SC Cleared
4 80 (23.95%) Azure Certification
5 67 (20.06%) MCSE
6 35 (10.48%) DV Cleared
7 31 (9.28%) A+ Certification
8 27 (8.08%) MCP
9 26 (7.78%) MCSA
10 19 (5.69%) Cisco Certification
10 19 (5.69%) CISSP
11 18 (5.39%) Computer Science Degree
12 17 (5.09%) AWS Certification
12 17 (5.09%) Network+ Certification
12 17 (5.09%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 14 (4.19%) CCNA
14 13 (3.89%) Master's Degree
15 11 (3.29%) HND
15 11 (3.29%) ITIL Certification
15 11 (3.29%) Server+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 33 (9.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 27 (8.08%) GDPR
3 20 (5.99%) NIST
4 10 (2.99%) SLA
5 7 (2.10%) Accessibility
6 6 (1.80%) HIPAA
7 5 (1.50%) NCSC
8 3 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
8 3 (0.90%) HMG Security Policy Framework
8 3 (0.90%) NIST 800
8 3 (0.90%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.90%) SOC 2
9 2 (0.60%) ISO 22301
10 1 (0.30%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.30%) ISO 9001
10 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 20000
10 1 (0.30%) JSP 440
10 1 (0.30%) PMO
10 1 (0.30%) QA
System Software
1 144 (43.11%) Active Directory
2 47 (14.07%) VMware Infrastructure
3 23 (6.89%) vSphere
4 18 (5.39%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (4.79%) Docker
6 15 (4.49%) NFS
7 14 (4.19%) Hyper-V
8 5 (1.50%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (1.50%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (1.50%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (1.20%) Microsoft App-V
10 3 (0.90%) Firmware
10 3 (0.90%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.60%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.30%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 42 (12.57%) SCCM
2 33 (9.88%) Microsoft Intune
3 27 (8.08%) Terraform
4 24 (7.19%) Kubernetes
5 18 (5.39%) Single Sign-On
6 17 (5.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 8 (2.40%) Ansible
7 8 (2.40%) SCOM
7 8 (2.40%) WSUS
8 4 (1.20%) CASB
8 4 (1.20%) Nessus
8 4 (1.20%) QRadar
9 3 (0.90%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.60%) PowerCLI
10 2 (0.60%) Prometheus
11 1 (0.30%) Argo
11 1 (0.30%) CSIRT
11 1 (0.30%) FortiGate
11 1 (0.30%) Istio
11 1 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 318 (95.21%) Microsoft
2 58 (17.37%) VMware
3 27 (8.08%) Splunk
4 24 (7.19%) Veeam
5 23 (6.89%) ServiceNow
6 18 (5.39%) Cisco
6 18 (5.39%) Oracle
7 16 (4.79%) Citrix
8 15 (4.49%) NetApp
9 9 (2.69%) Dell
10 8 (2.40%) SolarWinds
11 7 (2.10%) CheckPoint
11 7 (2.10%) Red Hat
11 7 (2.10%) Tenable
12 6 (1.80%) Darktrace
12 6 (1.80%) Zscaler
13 5 (1.50%) CyberArk
13 5 (1.50%) Databricks
13 5 (1.50%) iManage
13 5 (1.50%) Mitel
864 Microsoft Certification jobs in England