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 11 July 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 304 245 260
Rank change year-on-year -59 +15 +92
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certification 355 292 334
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.79% 1.08% 0.90%
As % of the Qualifications category 2.49% 3.49% 2.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 250 175 208
10th Percentile £156 £201 £182
25th Percentile £306 £300 £323
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £500 £491
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +1.78% -6.43%
75th Percentile £568 £620 £564
90th Percentile £675 £658 £675
UK median daily rate £450 £475 £490
% change year-on-year -5.26% -3.06% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 30 55
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.99 £13.69
25th Percentile £20.75 £15.10 £14.16
Median hourly rate £52.50 £17.44 £16.30
Median % change year-on-year +201.03% +6.99% +5.16%
75th Percentile £178.75 £33.75 £21.37
90th Percentile - £37.95 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £17.44 £16.30
% change year-on-year +201.03% +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 14,247 8,374 11,297
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.64% 30.89% 30.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,611 5,284 7,039
10th Percentile £350 £285 £313
25th Percentile £430 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £713 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £524 £525
% change year-on-year +0.24% -0.24% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,061 587 982
10th Percentile £17.87 £18.13 £14.17
25th Percentile £25.24 £20.00 £20.98
Median hourly rate £53.90 £28.00 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +92.50% -34.88% -21.82%
75th Percentile £74.00 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £86.11 £76.63 £76.92
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £27.45 £41.50
% change year-on-year +82.15% -33.86% -24.72%

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 11 July 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 11 July 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 11 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
London -38 118 £523 +4.50% 64
North of England -52 76 £483 +13.65% 63
North West -39 59 £482 +13.41% 31
South East -45 58 £275 -54.17% 72
East of England -28 33 £173 -54.00% 25
Midlands -49 33 £425 +46.55% 33
South West -27 32 £450 -13.46% 22
West Midlands -58 27 £425 +58.88% 17
Yorkshire -42 13 £650 +57.58% 20
East Midlands -18 6 £431 -13.05% 16
North East -31 4 £363 +81.25% 14
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 (11.27%) SharePoint
2 26 (7.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (0.28%) Apache Spark
3 1 (0.28%) Confluence
Applications
1 15 (4.23%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (1.69%) Microsoft Excel
3 4 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.28%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 8 (2.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.41%) Oracle Payables
2 5 (1.41%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.28%) Veritas eDiscovery
Cloud Services
1 186 (52.39%) Azure
2 98 (27.61%) Microsoft 365
3 80 (22.54%) Entra ID
4 62 (17.46%) Power Platform
5 41 (11.55%) Power Automate
6 40 (11.27%) Azure DevOps
7 35 (9.86%) PowerApps
8 30 (8.45%) Microsoft Purview
9 29 (8.17%) AWS
10 28 (7.89%) Dynamics 365
11 24 (6.76%) OneDrive
12 22 (6.20%) GitHub
13 18 (5.07%) Azure Logic Apps
14 17 (4.79%) Microsoft Copilot
15 14 (3.94%) Azure Monitor
16 11 (3.10%) Azure Data Factory
16 11 (3.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 11 (3.10%) Serverless
17 10 (2.82%) Azure Functions
17 10 (2.82%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 39 (10.99%) DNS
2 38 (10.70%) SAN
3 30 (8.45%) Firewall
4 28 (7.89%) VPN
5 23 (6.48%) TCP/IP
6 16 (4.51%) DHCP
7 15 (4.23%) LAN
8 9 (2.54%) Wi-Fi
9 8 (2.25%) SSL
10 7 (1.97%) WAN
10 7 (1.97%) Wireless
11 6 (1.69%) Network Security
12 5 (1.41%) NGFW
13 4 (1.13%) Internet
13 4 (1.13%) Kerberos
13 4 (1.13%) VLAN
14 3 (0.85%) DMZ
14 3 (0.85%) Intrusion Detection
14 3 (0.85%) NAS
14 3 (0.85%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 36 (10.14%) SQL Server
2 35 (9.86%) Power BI
3 20 (5.63%) MySQL
4 17 (4.79%) PostgreSQL
5 7 (1.97%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (1.69%) Power Query
7 5 (1.41%) Metadata
7 5 (1.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 4 (1.13%) Data Lake
8 4 (1.13%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 4 (1.13%) Star Schema
9 3 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
9 3 (0.85%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (0.85%) Big Data
10 2 (0.56%) BusinessObjects
10 2 (0.56%) Data Mart
10 2 (0.56%) QlikView
10 2 (0.56%) Relational Database
10 2 (0.56%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (0.56%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 8 (2.25%) Git
2 5 (1.41%) Selenium
2 5 (1.41%) WebDriver
3 4 (1.13%) JIRA
4 3 (0.85%) Cucumber
4 3 (0.85%) Cypress.io
4 3 (0.85%) Postman
4 3 (0.85%) Visual Studio Code
5 2 (0.56%) GitLab
6 1 (0.28%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.28%) MLflow
6 1 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
6 1 (0.28%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 134 (37.75%) Social Skills
2 87 (24.51%) Analytical Skills
3 50 (14.08%) Public Sector
4 46 (12.96%) Finance
5 22 (6.20%) Telecoms
6 16 (4.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (3.38%) Legal
8 11 (3.10%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.41%) Banking
9 5 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.13%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.85%) Front Office
11 3 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.85%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.85%) Military
11 3 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
12 2 (0.56%) Law
12 2 (0.56%) Local Government
12 2 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.28%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 46 (12.96%) IT Engineer
2 43 (12.11%) Analyst
3 42 (11.83%) Architect
4 36 (10.14%) Senior
5 35 (9.86%) IT Support
6 34 (9.58%) Field Engineer
6 34 (9.58%) Field Service Engineer
7 27 (7.61%) Administrator
8 25 (7.04%) DBA
8 25 (7.04%) Support Engineer
9 22 (6.20%) IT Support Engineer
10 20 (5.63%) Support Analyst
11 19 (5.35%) Developer
11 19 (5.35%) Lead
12 18 (5.07%) Technical Support
13 17 (4.79%) IT Analyst
14 16 (4.51%) Solutions Architect
15 15 (4.23%) Wintel Engineer
16 13 (3.66%) Field Support Engineer
16 13 (3.66%) IT Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (3.94%) OAuth
2 13 (3.66%) ONVIF
3 12 (3.38%) .NET
3 12 (3.38%) LDAP
3 12 (3.38%) OpenID
3 12 (3.38%) SAML
4 10 (2.82%) OAuth2
5 8 (2.25%) JSON
6 7 (1.97%) Microsoft Graph
7 6 (1.69%) SailPoint
7 6 (1.69%) Web Services
8 5 (1.41%) REST
9 4 (1.13%) ARM Templates
10 3 (0.85%) Gherkin
10 3 (0.85%) Middleware
10 3 (0.85%) PySpark
10 3 (0.85%) YAML
11 2 (0.56%) OpenGL
11 2 (0.56%) XML
11 2 (0.56%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 40 (11.27%) Data Centre
2 37 (10.42%) Analytical Mindset
3 28 (7.89%) Onboarding
4 20 (5.63%) Replication
5 18 (5.07%) Management Information System
6 17 (4.79%) Clustering
6 17 (4.79%) Security Posture
7 16 (4.51%) Cloud Native
8 13 (3.66%) Video\Live Streaming
9 11 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
9 11 (3.10%) Legacy Systems
10 8 (2.25%) Hybrid Cloud
10 8 (2.25%) PKI
10 8 (2.25%) Product Ownership
11 6 (1.69%) AI Agents
11 6 (1.69%) Data Structures
11 6 (1.69%) Enterprise Cloud
11 6 (1.69%) Low-Code
11 6 (1.69%) Mobile App
12 5 (1.41%) Cloud Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 112 (31.55%) Windows
2 50 (14.08%) Windows Server
3 32 (9.01%) Windows 10
4 20 (5.63%) Linux
5 14 (3.94%) Android
6 10 (2.82%) Apple iOS
6 10 (2.82%) Mac OS
7 9 (2.54%) Windows Server 2003
8 8 (2.25%) Windows 7
9 6 (1.69%) Unix
9 6 (1.69%) VMS
9 6 (1.69%) Windows Server 2016
10 5 (1.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (1.13%) Solaris
11 4 (1.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
13 2 (0.56%) AIX
13 2 (0.56%) Alpine Linux
13 2 (0.56%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (38.31%) Problem-Solving
2 73 (20.56%) Customer Service
2 73 (20.56%) DevOps
3 68 (19.15%) ITIL
4 54 (15.21%) Agile
5 47 (13.24%) CI/CD
6 40 (11.27%) Infrastructure as Code
7 38 (10.70%) Stakeholder Management
8 37 (10.42%) Computer Science
9 36 (10.14%) Migration
9 36 (10.14%) Project Delivery
10 35 (9.86%) Analytics
10 35 (9.86%) Business Intelligence
11 34 (9.58%) Break/Fix
12 32 (9.01%) Data Governance
12 32 (9.01%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 31 (8.73%) AI
14 27 (7.61%) Continuous Improvement
14 27 (7.61%) ITSM
14 27 (7.61%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 92 (25.92%) PowerShell
2 40 (11.27%) SQL
3 33 (9.30%) Python
4 23 (6.48%) C#
5 19 (5.35%) Bicep
5 19 (5.35%) JavaScript
6 14 (3.94%) Bash
7 7 (1.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.69%) T-SQL
9 3 (0.85%) X++
10 2 (0.56%) Java
10 2 (0.56%) Perl
10 2 (0.56%) R
11 1 (0.28%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.28%) VB
Qualifications
1 120 (33.80%) Security Cleared
2 98 (27.61%) SC Cleared
3 96 (27.04%) Degree
4 90 (25.35%) MCSE
5 68 (19.15%) A+ Certification
6 63 (17.75%) Cisco Certification
7 60 (16.90%) Azure Certification
8 54 (15.21%) CCNA
9 48 (13.52%) Network+ Certification
10 45 (12.68%) MCSA
11 26 (7.32%) DV Cleared
12 23 (6.48%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
13 22 (6.20%) Computer Science Degree
14 13 (3.66%) AWS Certification
14 13 (3.66%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 12 (3.38%) VCAP
16 11 (3.10%) CISSP
17 10 (2.82%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 10 (2.82%) Oracle Certification
18 9 (2.54%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (5.92%) NIST
2 20 (5.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 14 (3.94%) Data Quality
4 13 (3.66%) SLA
5 12 (3.38%) Accessibility
6 11 (3.10%) QA
7 10 (2.82%) GDPR
8 7 (1.97%) NCSC
9 5 (1.41%) WCAG
10 4 (1.13%) Cyber Essentials
11 3 (0.85%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.85%) NIST 800
12 2 (0.56%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.56%) Solvency II
13 1 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 1 (0.28%) GRC
13 1 (0.28%) GxP
13 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 117 (32.96%) Active Directory
2 33 (9.30%) VMware Infrastructure
3 20 (5.63%) VMware ESXi
4 19 (5.35%) Virtual Machines
5 17 (4.79%) Virtual Desktop
6 16 (4.51%) vSphere
7 13 (3.66%) Docker
8 5 (1.41%) Hyper-V
9 3 (0.85%) Firmware
9 3 (0.85%) VMware NSX
10 2 (0.56%) BitLocker
10 2 (0.56%) Microsoft App-V
10 2 (0.56%) VMware Workstation
11 1 (0.28%) NFS
11 1 (0.28%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 42 (11.83%) Microsoft Intune
2 41 (11.55%) Terraform
3 29 (8.17%) Ansible
4 20 (5.63%) vCenter Server
5 18 (5.07%) SCCM
6 13 (3.66%) Kubernetes
7 11 (3.10%) SCOM
8 7 (1.97%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (1.69%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 6 (1.69%) CASB
10 5 (1.41%) Nessus
11 3 (0.85%) Grafana
11 3 (0.85%) Podman
11 3 (0.85%) QRadar
11 3 (0.85%) WSUS
12 2 (0.56%) Dell DRAC
12 2 (0.56%) Packer
12 2 (0.56%) vMotion
13 1 (0.28%) PaperCut
13 1 (0.28%) VxRail
Vendors
1 286 (80.56%) Microsoft
2 42 (11.83%) VMware
3 36 (10.14%) Dell
4 25 (7.04%) Cisco
4 25 (7.04%) Oracle
5 23 (6.48%) ServiceNow
6 12 (3.38%) Apple
6 12 (3.38%) Remedy
7 11 (3.10%) Citrix
8 10 (2.82%) Splunk
9 8 (2.25%) SolarWinds
10 7 (1.97%) CyberArk
10 7 (1.97%) Tenable
11 5 (1.41%) Dynatrace
11 5 (1.41%) Foundry
11 5 (1.41%) Google
11 5 (1.41%) NetApp
12 4 (1.13%) Databricks
12 4 (1.13%) HP
12 4 (1.13%) Palo Alto
250 Microsoft Certification jobs in England