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 19 June 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 296 235 264
Rank change year-on-year -61 +29 +92
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certification 332 274 318
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.77% 1.10% 0.84%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.44% 3.53% 2.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 157 203
10th Percentile £156 £200 £183
25th Percentile £331 £251 £309
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.65%
75th Percentile £582 £600 £556
90th Percentile £675 £680 £669
UK median daily rate £467 £450 £475
% change year-on-year +3.83% -5.26% -8.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 33 56
10th Percentile £19.03 - £13.69
25th Percentile £38.25 £14.99 £14.16
Median hourly rate £63.14 £17.44 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +262.01% +6.99% +5.16%
75th Percentile £178.75 £33.75 £21.37
90th Percentile - £37.50 -
UK median hourly rate £63.14 £17.44 £16.30
% change year-on-year +262.01% +6.99% +5.16%

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 13,625 7,757 11,501
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.61% 31.19% 30.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,174 4,885 7,098
10th Percentile £350 £281 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year - -1.75% -2.84%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £719 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,037 498 1,016
10th Percentile £17.87 £17.87 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.68 £20.00 £20.24
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.13 £41.38
Median % change year-on-year +74.27% -27.20% -24.76%
75th Percentile £73.46 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.38 £80.30 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -25.00% -27.65%

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 19 June 2026.

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 19 June 2026.

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 19 June 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
London -36 127 £525 +5.00% 69
North of England -61 68 £483 +13.65% 63
North West -37 52 £481 +9.94% 35
South East -48 46 £275 -45.00% 74
South West -13 36 £438 -12.06% 25
East of England -34 28 £173 -23.33% 29
Midlands -58 23 £425 +72.94% 32
West Midlands -63 18 £425 +89.73% 16
Yorkshire -52 12 £650 +57.58% 19
East Midlands -15 5 £500 - 16
North East -34 4 £363 +81.25% 10
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 32 (9.64%) Microsoft Exchange
2 31 (9.34%) SharePoint
3 1 (0.30%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.30%) Confluence
Applications
1 20 (6.02%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (2.41%) Veritas eDiscovery
2 5 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.51%) Maximo
2 5 (1.51%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (0.90%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.30%) Dynamics AX
Cloud Services
1 164 (49.40%) Azure
2 94 (28.31%) Microsoft 365
3 68 (20.48%) Entra ID
4 56 (16.87%) Power Platform
5 37 (11.14%) Azure DevOps
6 33 (9.94%) Power Automate
7 30 (9.04%) Microsoft Purview
8 29 (8.73%) PowerApps
9 24 (7.23%) GitHub
10 23 (6.93%) AWS
11 22 (6.63%) Dynamics 365
12 18 (5.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 17 (5.12%) Azure Data Factory
13 17 (5.12%) OneDrive
14 16 (4.82%) Azure Logic Apps
15 15 (4.52%) Microsoft Copilot
16 13 (3.92%) Azure Monitor
17 12 (3.61%) Azure Sentinel
18 10 (3.01%) Azure AKS
19 9 (2.71%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 38 (11.45%) SAN
2 30 (9.04%) Firewall
3 27 (8.13%) DNS
4 23 (6.93%) VPN
5 16 (4.82%) TCP/IP
6 12 (3.61%) LAN
7 10 (3.01%) DHCP
8 8 (2.41%) Wi-Fi
9 7 (2.11%) Network Security
10 5 (1.51%) NetScaler
10 5 (1.51%) WAN
11 4 (1.20%) DMZ
11 4 (1.20%) Internet
11 4 (1.20%) Kerberos
11 4 (1.20%) NGFW
11 4 (1.20%) SSL
12 3 (0.90%) Intrusion Detection
12 3 (0.90%) NAS
13 2 (0.60%) iSCSI
13 2 (0.60%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 33 (9.94%) SQL Server
2 32 (9.64%) Power BI
3 13 (3.92%) PostgreSQL
4 12 (3.61%) MySQL
5 11 (3.31%) Data Lake
6 10 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
6 10 (3.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 9 (2.71%) Azure SQL Database
8 8 (2.41%) Metadata
9 5 (1.51%) Power Query
10 4 (1.20%) Delta Lake
10 4 (1.20%) Metadata Repository
10 4 (1.20%) Spark SQL
10 4 (1.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 4 (1.20%) Star Schema
11 3 (0.90%) Amazon RDS
11 3 (0.90%) Big Data
12 2 (0.60%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 2 (0.60%) Relational Database
12 2 (0.60%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 7 (2.11%) Git
2 3 (0.90%) Selenium
2 3 (0.90%) Visual Studio Code
2 3 (0.90%) WebDriver
3 2 (0.60%) GitLab
3 2 (0.60%) JIRA
4 1 (0.30%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.30%) Cucumber
4 1 (0.30%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.30%) MLflow
4 1 (0.30%) Postman
4 1 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (0.30%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 114 (34.34%) Social Skills
2 75 (22.59%) Analytical Skills
3 46 (13.86%) Finance
4 43 (12.95%) Public Sector
5 20 (6.02%) Telecoms
6 12 (3.61%) Legal
7 9 (2.71%) Banking
7 9 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 5 (1.51%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.20%) Front Office
10 4 (1.20%) Investment Banking
10 4 (1.20%) Military
11 3 (0.90%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.90%) International Banking
11 3 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (0.60%) Law
12 2 (0.60%) Local Government
12 2 (0.60%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 41 (12.35%) IT Engineer
2 40 (12.05%) Architect
3 35 (10.54%) Analyst
4 34 (10.24%) Field Engineer
4 34 (10.24%) Field Service Engineer
4 34 (10.24%) Senior
5 30 (9.04%) IT Support
6 22 (6.63%) Administrator
7 21 (6.33%) Support Engineer
8 18 (5.42%) IT Support Engineer
9 17 (5.12%) DBA
9 17 (5.12%) IT Analyst
9 17 (5.12%) Support Analyst
10 16 (4.82%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
10 16 (4.82%) Technical Support
11 15 (4.52%) Developer
11 15 (4.52%) Solutions Architect
11 15 (4.52%) Wintel Engineer
12 14 (4.22%) Azure Engineer
12 14 (4.22%) Cloud Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (4.22%) OAuth
2 12 (3.61%) LDAP
2 12 (3.61%) OpenID
2 12 (3.61%) SAML
3 11 (3.31%) .NET
3 11 (3.31%) ONVIF
4 10 (3.01%) OAuth2
5 9 (2.71%) ARM Templates
6 6 (1.81%) Microsoft Graph
6 6 (1.81%) SailPoint
6 6 (1.81%) Web Services
7 5 (1.51%) JSON
8 4 (1.20%) REST
9 3 (0.90%) Middleware
9 3 (0.90%) PySpark
10 2 (0.60%) Azure Blueprints
10 2 (0.60%) OpenGL
10 2 (0.60%) XML
10 2 (0.60%) XSLT
10 2 (0.60%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 40 (12.05%) Data Centre
2 37 (11.14%) Analytical Mindset
3 27 (8.13%) Onboarding
4 15 (4.52%) Enterprise Software
5 14 (4.22%) Clustering
5 14 (4.22%) Replication
5 14 (4.22%) Security Posture
6 11 (3.31%) BYOD
6 11 (3.31%) Hybrid Cloud
6 11 (3.31%) Management Information System
6 11 (3.31%) Video\Live Streaming
7 10 (3.01%) Cloud Native
8 9 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.81%) Data Structures
9 6 (1.81%) Low-Code
9 6 (1.81%) Mobile App
9 6 (1.81%) PKI
10 5 (1.51%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.51%) Cloud Security Posture
10 5 (1.51%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 106 (31.93%) Windows
2 46 (13.86%) Windows Server
3 32 (9.64%) Windows 10
4 20 (6.02%) Linux
5 12 (3.61%) Android
6 10 (3.01%) Apple iOS
7 9 (2.71%) Windows Server 2003
8 8 (2.41%) Mac OS
8 8 (2.41%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.81%) Unix
10 5 (1.51%) VMS
10 5 (1.51%) Windows Server 2016
11 4 (1.20%) Solaris
11 4 (1.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 3 (0.90%) Windows Server 2019
13 2 (0.60%) AIX
13 2 (0.60%) Alpine Linux
13 2 (0.60%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 126 (37.95%) Problem-Solving
2 67 (20.18%) DevOps
3 61 (18.37%) Customer Service
4 59 (17.77%) ITIL
5 46 (13.86%) CI/CD
6 43 (12.95%) Analytics
7 41 (12.35%) Agile
7 41 (12.35%) Migration
8 36 (10.84%) Infrastructure as Code
9 34 (10.24%) Break/Fix
10 33 (9.94%) Project Delivery
11 32 (9.64%) Business Intelligence
11 32 (9.64%) High Availability
12 31 (9.34%) Computer Science
12 31 (9.34%) Data Governance
12 31 (9.34%) Roadmaps
13 30 (9.04%) RBAC
14 28 (8.43%) AI
14 28 (8.43%) Disaster Recovery
15 27 (8.13%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 93 (28.01%) PowerShell
2 41 (12.35%) SQL
3 31 (9.34%) Python
4 22 (6.63%) Bicep
5 17 (5.12%) C#
6 14 (4.22%) JavaScript
7 13 (3.92%) Bash
8 6 (1.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (1.51%) T-SQL
10 3 (0.90%) X++
11 2 (0.60%) Perl
11 2 (0.60%) R
12 1 (0.30%) Java
12 1 (0.30%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.30%) VB
Qualifications
1 105 (31.63%) Security Cleared
2 94 (28.31%) MCSE
3 87 (26.20%) SC Cleared
4 86 (25.90%) Degree
5 60 (18.07%) Cisco Certification
6 59 (17.77%) A+ Certification
6 59 (17.77%) Azure Certification
7 51 (15.36%) CCNA
8 48 (14.46%) MCSA
9 45 (13.55%) Network+ Certification
10 26 (7.83%) DV Cleared
11 23 (6.93%) Computer Science Degree
12 22 (6.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 17 (5.12%) CISSP
14 12 (3.61%) VCAP
15 11 (3.31%) AWS Certification
16 9 (2.71%) CISM
16 9 (2.71%) CompTIA Security+
16 9 (2.71%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 8 (2.41%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (7.83%) NIST
2 25 (7.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (4.22%) Data Quality
4 12 (3.61%) SLA
5 9 (2.71%) GDPR
6 8 (2.41%) NIST 800
7 7 (2.11%) Accessibility
8 6 (1.81%) NCSC
9 5 (1.51%) QA
10 4 (1.20%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.90%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.90%) SOC 2
11 3 (0.90%) WCAG
12 2 (0.60%) Solvency II
13 1 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 1 (0.30%) GRC
13 1 (0.30%) GxP
13 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 1 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 111 (33.43%) Active Directory
2 29 (8.73%) VMware Infrastructure
3 21 (6.33%) Virtual Desktop
4 20 (6.02%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (4.82%) vSphere
6 15 (4.52%) Virtual Machines
7 11 (3.31%) Docker
8 5 (1.51%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.90%) Firmware
10 2 (0.60%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.60%) Microsoft App-V
10 2 (0.60%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.60%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 43 (12.95%) Microsoft Intune
2 41 (12.35%) Terraform
3 29 (8.73%) Ansible
4 19 (5.72%) SCCM
4 19 (5.72%) vCenter Server
5 15 (4.52%) Kubernetes
6 13 (3.92%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 7 (2.11%) SCOM
7 7 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.81%) CASB
9 5 (1.51%) Nessus
10 3 (0.90%) Podman
10 3 (0.90%) QRadar
10 3 (0.90%) WSUS
11 2 (0.60%) Grafana
11 2 (0.60%) Packer
11 2 (0.60%) vMotion
12 1 (0.30%) Backup Exec
12 1 (0.30%) Cisco CUCM
12 1 (0.30%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 263 (79.22%) Microsoft
2 38 (11.45%) VMware
3 35 (10.54%) Dell
4 23 (6.93%) Cisco
5 20 (6.02%) Oracle
6 17 (5.12%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.22%) Citrix
8 12 (3.61%) Apple
9 9 (2.71%) Remedy
9 9 (2.71%) Splunk
10 7 (2.11%) CyberArk
10 7 (2.11%) SolarWinds
10 7 (2.11%) Tenable
11 6 (1.81%) Databricks
12 5 (1.51%) Foundry
12 5 (1.51%) IBM
12 5 (1.51%) NetApp
12 5 (1.51%) Palo Alto
12 5 (1.51%) Red Hat
13 4 (1.20%) HP
255 Microsoft Certification jobs in England