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 7 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 275 229 281
Rank change year-on-year -46 +52 +74
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certification 341 275 286
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.94% 1.07% 0.75%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.74% 3.49% 2.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 242 161 201
10th Percentile £219 £200 £205
25th Percentile £365 £300 £280
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.75% - +4.17%
75th Percentile £608 £630 £588
90th Percentile £700 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £508 £450 £448
% change year-on-year +12.78% +0.56% -6.77%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 24 40
10th Percentile - £14.99 £13.69
25th Percentile £6.00 £17.74 £14.48
Median hourly rate £16.00 £21.46 £16.90
Median % change year-on-year -25.44% +26.98% +9.03%
75th Percentile £24.25 £35.00 £21.39
90th Percentile £25.47 £64.22 £35.06
UK median hourly rate £16.00 £21.46 £17.50
% change year-on-year -25.44% +22.63% +12.90%

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 12,440 7,887 11,894
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.16% 30.68% 31.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,257 4,905 7,335
10th Percentile £325 £285 £291
25th Percentile £422 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £730 £738
UK median daily rate £515 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -1.90% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 968 415 929
10th Percentile £16.17 £20.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.43 £25.26 £19.50
Median hourly rate £25.77 £52.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -50.91% +31.25% -18.37%
75th Percentile £65.06 £68.09 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.48 £82.92 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £26.22 £43.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -39.02% +7.50% -20.00%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 -6 128 £525 +22.66% 93
South West +1 53 £560 -2.61% 37
Midlands -45 46 £315 -21.25% 67
North of England -69 45 £464 -9.02% 92
South East -44 42 £480 -4.00% 101
West Midlands -41 36 £425 +67.49% 30
North West -48 34 £460 -9.80% 45
East of England -27 21 £173 -8.00% 41
East Midlands -24 10 £210 -47.50% 35
Yorkshire -53 8 £484 -19.33% 35
North East -9 3 - - 17
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 45 (13.20%) Microsoft Exchange
2 35 (10.26%) SharePoint
3 4 (1.17%) Confluence
3 4 (1.17%) Skype for Business
4 3 (0.88%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 19 (5.57%) Microsoft Office
2 10 (2.93%) Microsoft Excel
3 7 (2.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (1.17%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 8 (2.35%) Dynamics CRM
1 8 (2.35%) Veritas eDiscovery
2 7 (2.05%) Maximo
3 1 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 156 (45.75%) Azure
2 109 (31.96%) Microsoft 365
3 61 (17.89%) Entra ID
4 55 (16.13%) Power Platform
5 38 (11.14%) Azure DevOps
6 34 (9.97%) AWS
7 30 (8.80%) Microsoft Purview
8 27 (7.92%) Power Automate
8 27 (7.92%) PowerApps
9 22 (6.45%) Azure Data Factory
10 21 (6.16%) GitHub
11 20 (5.87%) Azure Monitor
12 19 (5.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 19 (5.57%) Dynamics 365
13 15 (4.40%) Azure AKS
13 15 (4.40%) Azure Sentinel
13 15 (4.40%) Microsoft Copilot
14 14 (4.11%) OneDrive
15 13 (3.81%) Azure Key Vault
16 12 (3.52%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 54 (15.84%) DNS
2 39 (11.44%) Firewall
3 35 (10.26%) VPN
4 26 (7.62%) DHCP
5 20 (5.87%) TCP/IP
6 17 (4.99%) SAN
7 12 (3.52%) Wi-Fi
8 11 (3.23%) LAN
9 10 (2.93%) Network Security
9 10 (2.93%) VLAN
10 8 (2.35%) SSL
11 7 (2.05%) Skype
12 5 (1.47%) Kerberos
12 5 (1.47%) Unified Communications
13 4 (1.17%) DKIM
13 4 (1.17%) DMARC
14 3 (0.88%) NetScaler
14 3 (0.88%) RS-232
14 3 (0.88%) Softphone
14 3 (0.88%) X.400
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (8.50%) SQL Server
2 25 (7.33%) Power BI
3 16 (4.69%) Data Lake
4 12 (3.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 10 (2.93%) Azure SQL Database
6 9 (2.64%) Data Warehouse
6 9 (2.64%) MySQL
6 9 (2.64%) PostgreSQL
7 7 (2.05%) Metadata
8 5 (1.47%) Delta Lake
8 5 (1.47%) Spark SQL
9 4 (1.17%) Metadata Repository
9 4 (1.17%) Power Query
10 3 (0.88%) Oracle Database
10 3 (0.88%) Relational Database
11 2 (0.59%) Amazon RDS
11 2 (0.59%) Apache Cassandra
11 2 (0.59%) Big Data
11 2 (0.59%) MongoDB
11 2 (0.59%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 15 (4.40%) Git
2 6 (1.76%) JIRA
3 5 (1.47%) GitLab
3 5 (1.47%) Jenkins
4 4 (1.17%) Bitbucket
5 2 (0.59%) CircleCI
5 2 (0.59%) Cypress.io
5 2 (0.59%) JDeveloper
5 2 (0.59%) MSI
6 1 (0.29%) AdminStudio
6 1 (0.29%) InstallShield
6 1 (0.29%) MLflow
6 1 (0.29%) Selenium
6 1 (0.29%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.29%) Team Foundation Server
6 1 (0.29%) WebDriver
General
1 136 (39.88%) Social Skills
2 58 (17.01%) Analytical Skills
3 39 (11.44%) Public Sector
4 35 (10.26%) Finance
5 18 (5.28%) Documentation Skills
6 12 (3.52%) Legal
7 11 (3.23%) Banking
8 6 (1.76%) Marketing
8 6 (1.76%) Military
8 6 (1.76%) Telecoms
9 4 (1.17%) International Banking
10 3 (0.88%) Aerospace
10 3 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (0.88%) Polish Language
10 3 (0.88%) Retail
11 2 (0.59%) Aeronautics
11 2 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
12 1 (0.29%) Investment Banking
12 1 (0.29%) Spanish Language
Job Titles
1 56 (16.42%) Architect
2 35 (10.26%) Analyst
3 30 (8.80%) Senior
4 27 (7.92%) Support Engineer
5 24 (7.04%) IT Support
6 22 (6.45%) Administrator
7 21 (6.16%) IT Engineer
7 21 (6.16%) Solutions Architect
8 19 (5.57%) Wintel Engineer
9 18 (5.28%) Field Engineer
9 18 (5.28%) Support Analyst
10 17 (4.99%) Azure Engineer
10 17 (4.99%) Lead
11 15 (4.40%) Field Service Engineer
12 14 (4.11%) IT Analyst
12 14 (4.11%) Security Engineer
13 13 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
13 13 (3.81%) Developer
13 13 (3.81%) Microsoft 365 Engineer
13 13 (3.81%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (8.80%) OAuth
2 27 (7.92%) SAML
3 26 (7.62%) OpenID
4 17 (4.99%) OAuth2
5 15 (4.40%) ARM Templates
6 14 (4.11%) .NET
7 11 (3.23%) LDAP
8 10 (2.93%) REST
9 9 (2.64%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (1.47%) JSON
10 5 (1.47%) RESTful
11 4 (1.17%) PySpark
12 3 (0.88%) YAML
13 2 (0.59%) ASP.NET Web API
13 2 (0.59%) Jest
13 2 (0.59%) Model Context Protocol
13 2 (0.59%) Next.js
13 2 (0.59%) React
13 2 (0.59%) SailPoint
13 2 (0.59%) Tailwind CSS
Miscellaneous
1 22 (6.45%) Replication
2 20 (5.87%) Enterprise Software
3 19 (5.57%) Analytical Mindset
4 17 (4.99%) PKI
5 16 (4.69%) Data Centre
5 16 (4.69%) Hybrid Cloud
6 15 (4.40%) Security Posture
7 14 (4.11%) BYOD
8 12 (3.52%) Clustering
8 12 (3.52%) Onboarding
9 11 (3.23%) Cloud Native
10 10 (2.93%) Management Information System
11 9 (2.64%) Private Cloud
12 8 (2.35%) Low-Code
13 5 (1.47%) Cloud Security Posture
13 5 (1.47%) Driving Licence
13 5 (1.47%) Legacy Systems
13 5 (1.47%) Operational Technology
13 5 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (1.47%) Team-Oriented Environment
Operating Systems
1 139 (40.76%) Windows
2 67 (19.65%) Windows Server
3 37 (10.85%) Windows 10
4 24 (7.04%) Linux
5 13 (3.81%) Windows Server 2012
6 12 (3.52%) Windows Server 2003
7 7 (2.05%) Windows 7
7 7 (2.05%) Windows Server 2016
8 6 (1.76%) Mac OS
8 6 (1.76%) Unix
9 4 (1.17%) VMS
9 4 (1.17%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.88%) Android
10 3 (0.88%) CentOS
11 2 (0.59%) AIX
11 2 (0.59%) Apple iOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (28.45%) Problem-Solving
2 77 (22.58%) ITIL
3 56 (16.42%) DevOps
4 55 (16.13%) Migration
5 50 (14.66%) CI/CD
6 48 (14.08%) Customer Service
7 45 (13.20%) RBAC
8 43 (12.61%) Identity Access Management
9 42 (12.32%) Analytics
10 39 (11.44%) Agile
10 39 (11.44%) Disaster Recovery
11 36 (10.56%) Cloud Security
12 32 (9.38%) Computer Science
12 32 (9.38%) Identity Management
13 31 (9.09%) Roadmaps
14 30 (8.80%) Data Governance
15 29 (8.50%) Continuous Improvement
15 29 (8.50%) High Availability
15 29 (8.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
16 28 (8.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
Programming Languages
1 106 (31.09%) PowerShell
2 47 (13.78%) SQL
3 32 (9.38%) Python
4 20 (5.87%) Bicep
5 10 (2.93%) C#
6 8 (2.35%) JavaScript
7 7 (2.05%) TypeScript
8 6 (1.76%) Bash
8 6 (1.76%) T-SQL
9 4 (1.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (0.88%) R
11 2 (0.59%) VBScript
12 1 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.29%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 113 (33.14%) Security Cleared
2 87 (25.51%) Degree
3 80 (23.46%) SC Cleared
4 78 (22.87%) MCSE
5 71 (20.82%) Azure Certification
6 34 (9.97%) DV Cleared
7 33 (9.68%) MCSA
8 31 (9.09%) Cisco Certification
9 29 (8.50%) CISSP
10 28 (8.21%) A+ Certification
11 26 (7.62%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 25 (7.33%) Network+ Certification
13 23 (6.74%) CCNA
14 21 (6.16%) Computer Science Degree
15 14 (4.11%) AWS Certification
15 14 (4.11%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 12 (3.52%) CCNP
16 12 (3.52%) CISM
16 12 (3.52%) CompTIA Security+
17 10 (2.93%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (7.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 18 (5.28%) GDPR
2 18 (5.28%) NIST
3 8 (2.35%) NCSC
3 8 (2.35%) NIST 800
4 6 (1.76%) Cyber Essentials
5 5 (1.47%) Accessibility
5 5 (1.47%) Data Quality
5 5 (1.47%) SLA
6 3 (0.88%) QA
7 2 (0.59%) HMG Security Policy Framework
7 2 (0.59%) SOC 2
7 2 (0.59%) WCAG
8 1 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.29%) GxP
8 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.29%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.29%) PMO
8 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 151 (44.28%) Active Directory
2 33 (9.68%) VMware Infrastructure
3 16 (4.69%) Docker
4 14 (4.11%) vSphere
5 11 (3.23%) Hyper-V
5 11 (3.23%) VMware ESXi
6 9 (2.64%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (2.05%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.88%) Firmware
8 3 (0.88%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 3 (0.88%) Virtual Servers
9 2 (0.59%) NFS
9 2 (0.59%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.29%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 39 (11.44%) Microsoft Intune
2 36 (10.56%) Terraform
3 31 (9.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
4 30 (8.80%) SCCM
5 26 (7.62%) Kubernetes
6 19 (5.57%) Ansible
6 19 (5.57%) Single Sign-On
7 9 (2.64%) vCenter Server
8 7 (2.05%) WSUS
9 6 (1.76%) CASB
10 5 (1.47%) Nessus
10 5 (1.47%) SCOM
11 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
11 2 (0.59%) PowerCLI
12 1 (0.29%) Cisco CUCM
12 1 (0.29%) Kubeflow
12 1 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
12 1 (0.29%) PaperCut
12 1 (0.29%) QRadar
12 1 (0.29%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 304 (89.15%) Microsoft
2 47 (13.78%) VMware
3 22 (6.45%) Cisco
4 19 (5.57%) Dell
4 19 (5.57%) Oracle
5 16 (4.69%) ServiceNow
6 13 (3.81%) Databricks
7 12 (3.52%) Veeam
8 10 (2.93%) Citrix
8 10 (2.93%) Red Hat
9 9 (2.64%) Splunk
9 9 (2.64%) Tenable
10 8 (2.35%) IBM
10 8 (2.35%) SolarWinds
11 7 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 5 (1.47%) iManage
12 5 (1.47%) Mitel
12 5 (1.47%) Remedy
13 4 (1.17%) CheckPoint
13 4 (1.17%) Palo Alto