Microsoft Certified Professional Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in England with a requirement for Microsoft Certified Professional qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 30 January 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 504 466 457
Rank change year-on-year -38 -9 +95
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certified Professional 54 23 99
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.16% 0.087% 0.26%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.48% 0.29% 0.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 15 27
10th Percentile £128 £144 £155
25th Percentile £189 £160 £213
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £200 £275
Median % change year-on-year +125.00% -27.27% -31.25%
75th Percentile £621 £263 £397
90th Percentile £688 £338 £500
UK median daily rate £450 £188 £225
% change year-on-year +140.00% -16.67% -43.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 59
10th Percentile - - £13.41
25th Percentile £6.00 - £14.00
Median hourly rate £14.75 £50.00 £14.16
Median % change year-on-year -70.50% +253.11% -2.34%
75th Percentile £25.47 - £18.75
90th Percentile - - £20.56
UK median hourly rate £14.75 £50.00 £14.16
% change year-on-year -70.50% +253.11% -2.34%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
England

Microsoft Certified Professional 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 11,280 8,062 11,743
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.15% 30.34% 31.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,491 4,869 7,328
10th Percentile £313 £300 £300
25th Percentile £418 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £738
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £548
% change year-on-year -1.24% -4.11% -0.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 873 385 841
10th Percentile £15.65 £19.51 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £25.26 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £46.39
Median % change year-on-year -45.54% -0.45% +3.09%
75th Percentile £63.40 £67.50 £66.25
90th Percentile £75.00 £81.59 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £39.52 £46.39
% change year-on-year -36.36% -14.81% +3.09%

Microsoft Certified Professional
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

Microsoft Certified Professional job vacancy trend in England

Microsoft Certified Professional
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Microsoft Certified Professional

Microsoft Certified Professional
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft Certified Professional in England over the 6 months to 30 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft Certified Professional in England

Microsoft Certified Professional
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Microsoft Certified Professional

Microsoft Certified Professional
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Microsoft Certified Professional in England over the 6 months to 30 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft Certified Professional in England

Microsoft Certified Professional
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 Certified Professional within the England region over the 6 months to 30 January 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
East of England 0 22 £400 +113.33% 8
London -11 21 £600 +152.63% 26
Midlands -45 8 £145 -9.38% 10
West Midlands -33 6 £145 -9.38% 2
North of England -61 3 - - 14
North West -21 2 - - 7
East Midlands - 2 £545 - 7
Yorkshire - 1 - - 6
Microsoft Certified Professional
UK

Microsoft Certified Professional
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:

Applications
1 3 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (5.56%) Microsoft Office
1 3 (5.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 3 (5.56%) Microsoft Project
1 3 (5.56%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (1.85%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 29 (53.70%) Azure
2 18 (33.33%) GitHub
2 18 (33.33%) GitHub Copilot
3 15 (27.78%) Azure Functions
3 15 (27.78%) Microsoft 365
3 15 (27.78%) Serverless
4 12 (22.22%) Azure AKS
5 11 (20.37%) Azure AI
5 11 (20.37%) PaaS
6 8 (14.81%) Power Platform
7 7 (12.96%) AWS
8 6 (11.11%) Azure App Service
8 6 (11.11%) Azure Cognitive Services
8 6 (11.11%) Azure Cosmos DB
8 6 (11.11%) Azure Logic Apps
8 6 (11.11%) Microsoft Purview
8 6 (11.11%) OCI
9 4 (7.41%) Entra ID
10 3 (5.56%) Azure Machine Learning
11 2 (3.70%) Azure API Management
Communications & Networking
1 10 (18.52%) TCP/IP
1 10 (18.52%) VPN
2 7 (12.96%) DHCP
2 7 (12.96%) DNS
3 4 (7.41%) LAN
4 3 (5.56%) Softphone
5 2 (3.70%) Firewall
5 2 (3.70%) RS-232
5 2 (3.70%) X.400
6 1 (1.85%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (1.85%) VLAN
6 1 (1.85%) WAN
6 1 (1.85%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (11.11%) Data Lake
2 3 (5.56%) SQL Server
3 1 (1.85%) Data Warehouse
3 1 (1.85%) Oracle Database
3 1 (1.85%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 1 (1.85%) Git
1 1 (1.85%) Jenkins
1 1 (1.85%) JIRA
1 1 (1.85%) Selenium
General
1 20 (37.04%) Social Skills
2 9 (16.67%) Analytical Skills
3 8 (14.81%) Finance
4 4 (7.41%) Public Sector
5 2 (3.70%) Marketing
6 1 (1.85%) Banking
6 1 (1.85%) Legal
6 1 (1.85%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 19 (35.19%) Analyst
2 14 (25.93%) Support Analyst
3 11 (20.37%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 8 (14.81%) IT Support
4 8 (14.81%) Technical Analyst
4 8 (14.81%) Technical Support
5 7 (12.96%) IT Analyst
5 7 (12.96%) IT Support Analyst
5 7 (12.96%) Senior
5 7 (12.96%) Technical Support Analyst
6 6 (11.11%) 2nd Line Support
6 6 (11.11%) Data Scientist
7 5 (9.26%) 1st/2nd Line Support
7 5 (9.26%) 1st/2nd Line Support Analyst
7 5 (9.26%) 2nd Line Support Analyst
8 4 (7.41%) Gen AI Engineer
8 4 (7.41%) Support Engineer
9 3 (5.56%) Architect
9 3 (5.56%) Help Desk Analyst
9 3 (5.56%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (48.15%) Model Context Protocol
2 22 (40.74%) A2A Protocol
3 16 (29.63%) PyTorch
3 16 (29.63%) TensorFlow
4 12 (22.22%) RESTful
4 12 (22.22%) Semantic Kernel
5 11 (20.37%) .NET
6 10 (18.52%) LangChain
7 9 (16.67%) LangGraph
8 6 (11.11%) Microsoft Graph
9 5 (9.26%) Pandas
9 5 (9.26%) scikit-learn
10 3 (5.56%) Hugging Face
10 3 (5.56%) NumPy
10 3 (5.56%) pydantic
11 2 (3.70%) CSS
11 2 (3.70%) HTML
12 1 (1.85%) CSS3
12 1 (1.85%) HTML5
12 1 (1.85%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 13 (24.07%) Algorithms
1 13 (24.07%) Cloud Native
2 6 (11.11%) NHS
3 5 (9.26%) Self-Motivation
3 5 (9.26%) Team-Oriented Environment
4 2 (3.70%) AI Agents
4 2 (3.70%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (3.70%) Virtual Team
5 1 (1.85%) CCTV
5 1 (1.85%) Driving Licence
5 1 (1.85%) Fibre Optics
5 1 (1.85%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.85%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 21 (38.89%) Windows
2 12 (22.22%) Windows 10
3 9 (16.67%) Windows Server 2003
4 6 (11.11%) Windows Server 2012
5 4 (7.41%) Windows 7
6 3 (5.56%) Windows Server
6 3 (5.56%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (3.70%) Apple iOS
7 2 (3.70%) Mac OS
8 1 (1.85%) AIX
8 1 (1.85%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (48.15%) AI
1 26 (48.15%) Problem-Solving
2 24 (44.44%) LLM
3 23 (42.59%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
4 22 (40.74%) Prompt Engineering
5 20 (37.04%) Machine Learning
6 15 (27.78%) Data Privacy
7 14 (25.93%) Agile
7 14 (25.93%) Data Pipeline
8 13 (24.07%) Test Automation
9 12 (22.22%) API Management
9 12 (22.22%) Customer Service
9 12 (22.22%) Deep Learning
9 12 (22.22%) ITIL
10 11 (20.37%) API Design
11 10 (18.52%) Software Engineering
12 9 (16.67%) Generative AI
12 9 (16.67%) Integration Patterns
12 9 (16.67%) Mentoring
12 9 (16.67%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 25 (46.30%) Python
2 3 (5.56%) JavaScript
3 1 (1.85%) SQL
Qualifications
1 24 (44.44%) Microsoft Certification
2 21 (38.89%) Degree
3 14 (25.93%) MCSE
4 7 (12.96%) HNC
4 7 (12.96%) HND
5 5 (9.26%) MCDST
6 4 (7.41%) ITIL Certification
6 4 (7.41%) Master's Degree
7 3 (5.56%) PhD
8 2 (3.70%) A+ Certification
8 2 (3.70%) Azure Certification
8 2 (3.70%) CCNA
8 2 (3.70%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (3.70%) MCSA
9 1 (1.85%) Network+ Certification
9 1 (1.85%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (22.22%) EU AI Act
2 11 (20.37%) NIST
3 1 (1.85%) GDPR
3 1 (1.85%) SLA
System Software
1 15 (27.78%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.85%) Firmware
2 1 (1.85%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 6 (11.11%) SCCM
2 3 (5.56%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (3.70%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 39 (72.22%) Microsoft
2 14 (25.93%) Foundry
3 6 (11.11%) OpenAI
4 5 (9.26%) iManage
4 5 (9.26%) Mitel
5 3 (5.56%) Citrix
5 3 (5.56%) Databricks
5 3 (5.56%) Google
5 3 (5.56%) Salesforce
6 2 (3.70%) Oracle
6 2 (3.70%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7 1 (1.85%) Ciena
7 1 (1.85%) Cisco
7 1 (1.85%) MuleSoft
7 1 (1.85%) ServiceNow