Microsoft Certification Contract Job Trends in the South East

Microsoft Certification
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East 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 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 171 102 168
Rank change year-on-year -69 +66 -10
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certification 38 53 41
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.73% 1.78% 0.73%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.55% 4.58% 1.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 29 40 34
10th Percentile £219 £215 £215
25th Percentile £231 £374 £263
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £325
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% +53.85% -40.91%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £548
90th Percentile £650 £727 £636
England median daily rate £510 £500 £450
% change year-on-year +2.00% +11.11% -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 3
10th Percentile - £12.80 -
25th Percentile - £13.99 £16.25
Median hourly rate - £15.99 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year - -8.66% -
75th Percentile - £17.98 £37.58
90th Percentile - £19.17 £48.87
England median hourly rate £16.00 £21.46 £16.30
% change year-on-year -25.44% +31.66% +5.16%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 2,447 1,157 2,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 46.87% 38.83% 44.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,622 748 1,428
10th Percentile £303 £263 £250
25th Percentile £413 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.09% -1.82% +3.77%
75th Percentile £610 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £691 £713
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.42% -2.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 77 174
10th Percentile £15.62 £20.06 £17.80
25th Percentile £19.54 £28.00 £22.62
Median hourly rate £40.00 £56.75 £57.10
Median % change year-on-year -29.52% -0.62% +16.54%
75th Percentile £84.00 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £89.88 £79.02 £83.04
England median hourly rate £27.50 £52.50 £38.95
% change year-on-year -47.62% +34.79% -22.10%

Microsoft Certification
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Microsoft Certification job vacancy trend in the South East

Microsoft Certification
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft Certification.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft Certification

Microsoft Certification
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Microsoft Certification in the South East over the 6 months to 13 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft Certification in the South East

Microsoft Certification
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft Certification.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing Microsoft Certification

Microsoft Certification
Contract Job Locations in the South East

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 South East region over the 6 months to 13 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
Thames Valley -48 25 £480 -6.34% 28
Berkshire -13 15 £480 -8.57% 17
Hampshire -20 11 £447 -10.60% 11
Oxfordshire -11 6 £238 -52.50% 2
Buckinghamshire -39 4 £595 +5.31% 9
Surrey -14 1 - - 5
Home Counties - 1 - -
Microsoft Certification
England

Microsoft Certification
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 5 (13.16%) SharePoint
2 2 (5.26%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (2.63%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 1 (2.63%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (2.63%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 27 (71.05%) Azure
2 14 (36.84%) AWS
3 10 (26.32%) Microsoft 365
4 8 (21.05%) Entra ID
5 5 (13.16%) OneDrive
6 4 (10.53%) IaaS
6 4 (10.53%) PaaS
6 4 (10.53%) SaaS
7 3 (7.89%) Microsoft Purview
7 3 (7.89%) Power Platform
8 2 (5.26%) Azure Data Factory
8 2 (5.26%) Azure Sentinel
8 2 (5.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 2 (5.26%) Dynamics 365
9 1 (2.63%) Azure DevOps
9 1 (2.63%) Azure Functions
9 1 (2.63%) Azure Machine Learning
9 1 (2.63%) GCP
9 1 (2.63%) Lucidchart
9 1 (2.63%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 8 (21.05%) DNS
2 7 (18.42%) Wi-Fi
3 6 (15.79%) VPN
4 5 (13.16%) DHCP
4 5 (13.16%) LAN
5 4 (10.53%) Firewall
5 4 (10.53%) SAN
6 3 (7.89%) TCP/IP
6 3 (7.89%) VLAN
7 2 (5.26%) Network Security
7 2 (5.26%) SSL
8 1 (2.63%) Cisco Nexus
8 1 (2.63%) IPv6
8 1 (2.63%) MPLS
8 1 (2.63%) Multicast
8 1 (2.63%) Skype
8 1 (2.63%) Structured Cabling
8 1 (2.63%) Unified Communications
8 1 (2.63%) VXLAN
8 1 (2.63%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (10.53%) SQL Server
2 3 (7.89%) Data Warehouse
3 2 (5.26%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (5.26%) Apache Cassandra
3 2 (5.26%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (5.26%) Data Lake
3 2 (5.26%) Metadata
3 2 (5.26%) MongoDB
3 2 (5.26%) MySQL
3 2 (5.26%) NoSQL
3 2 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (5.26%) RDBMS
3 2 (5.26%) Relational Database
4 1 (2.63%) Oracle Database
4 1 (2.63%) Oracle Database 12c
4 1 (2.63%) Semantic Layer
4 1 (2.63%) Snowflake Schema
4 1 (2.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 1 (2.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 1 (2.63%) MLflow
1 1 (2.63%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 14 (36.84%) Social Skills
2 8 (21.05%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (10.53%) Finance
4 3 (7.89%) Public Sector
5 2 (5.26%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (2.63%) Manufacturing
6 1 (2.63%) Military
6 1 (2.63%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 13 (34.21%) Architect
2 11 (28.95%) Support Engineer
3 9 (23.68%) IT Engineer
4 8 (21.05%) IT Support
4 8 (21.05%) IT Support Engineer
5 4 (10.53%) Cybersecurity Architect
5 4 (10.53%) Field Engineer
5 4 (10.53%) Field Service Engineer
5 4 (10.53%) Security Architect
5 4 (10.53%) Solutions Architect
6 3 (7.89%) Field Support Engineer
6 3 (7.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
6 3 (7.89%) Infrastructure Support
6 3 (7.89%) Infrastructure Support Engineer
6 3 (7.89%) Security Solutions Architect
6 3 (7.89%) Technical Architect
7 2 (5.26%) Consultant
7 2 (5.26%) Data Architect
7 2 (5.26%) Service Desk Analyst
7 2 (5.26%) Technical Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (5.26%) OAuth
1 2 (5.26%) OpenID
1 2 (5.26%) SAML
2 1 (2.63%) .NET
2 1 (2.63%) 802.1X
2 1 (2.63%) ARM Templates
2 1 (2.63%) LDAP
2 1 (2.63%) OAuth2
2 1 (2.63%) PySpark
2 1 (2.63%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 7 (18.42%) Analytical Mindset
2 5 (13.16%) Data Centre
2 5 (13.16%) Replication
3 3 (7.89%) Operational Technology
3 3 (7.89%) PKI
3 3 (7.89%) Security Operations Centre
4 2 (5.26%) Cloud Native
4 2 (5.26%) Clustering
4 2 (5.26%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (5.26%) Private Cloud
4 2 (5.26%) Public Cloud
4 2 (5.26%) Video Conferencing
5 1 (2.63%) Cyber Kill Chain
5 1 (2.63%) Data Fabric
5 1 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (2.63%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (2.63%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (2.63%) IoT
5 1 (2.63%) Life Science
5 1 (2.63%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 13 (34.21%) Windows
2 5 (13.16%) Linux
3 2 (5.26%) Windows 10
3 2 (5.26%) Windows Server
4 1 (2.63%) Unix
4 1 (2.63%) VMS
4 1 (2.63%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (34.21%) Problem-Solving
2 11 (28.95%) Customer Service
3 8 (21.05%) TOGAF
4 7 (18.42%) Cybersecurity
4 7 (18.42%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 5 (13.16%) Analytics
5 5 (13.16%) Data Governance
5 5 (13.16%) Data Modelling
5 5 (13.16%) DevOps
5 5 (13.16%) Disaster Recovery
5 5 (13.16%) ITIL
6 4 (10.53%) Agile
6 4 (10.53%) Break/Fix
6 4 (10.53%) Continuous Improvement
6 4 (10.53%) Cyber Resilience
6 4 (10.53%) Enterprise Architecture
6 4 (10.53%) Infrastructure as Code
6 4 (10.53%) Migration
6 4 (10.53%) Security Operations
7 3 (7.89%) Preventative Maintenance
Programming Languages
1 9 (23.68%) PowerShell
2 6 (15.79%) SQL
3 5 (13.16%) Python
4 2 (5.26%) Bash
5 1 (2.63%) PL/SQL
5 1 (2.63%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 13 (34.21%) Security Cleared
2 12 (31.58%) Azure Certification
3 9 (23.68%) Cisco Certification
3 9 (23.68%) MCSE
3 9 (23.68%) SC Cleared
4 7 (18.42%) Network+ Certification
5 6 (15.79%) CCNA
6 5 (13.16%) CCNP
6 5 (13.16%) Degree
7 4 (10.53%) A+ Certification
7 4 (10.53%) CISSP
7 4 (10.53%) DV Cleared
7 4 (10.53%) TOGAF Certification
8 3 (7.89%) AWS Certification
8 3 (7.89%) OCP
8 3 (7.89%) Oracle Certification
8 3 (7.89%) Server+ Certification
9 1 (2.63%) CCDA
9 1 (2.63%) CCDP
9 1 (2.63%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (21.05%) NIST
2 5 (13.16%) GDPR
3 4 (10.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (10.53%) NCSC
4 2 (5.26%) Cyber Essentials
5 1 (2.63%) NIST 800
5 1 (2.63%) PMO
System Software
1 16 (42.11%) Active Directory
2 6 (15.79%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (10.53%) Hyper-V
4 1 (2.63%) Docker
Systems Management
1 7 (18.42%) Microsoft Intune
2 4 (10.53%) SCCM
3 2 (5.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 2 (5.26%) Terraform
4 1 (2.63%) Ansible
4 1 (2.63%) CASB
4 1 (2.63%) Cisco CUCM
4 1 (2.63%) Kubeflow
4 1 (2.63%) Kubernetes
4 1 (2.63%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (2.63%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 30 (78.95%) Microsoft
2 9 (23.68%) VMware
3 4 (10.53%) Dell
4 3 (7.89%) CheckPoint
4 3 (7.89%) Fortinet
4 3 (7.89%) Oracle
4 3 (7.89%) Tenable
5 2 (5.26%) Cisco
5 2 (5.26%) Databricks
5 2 (5.26%) ServiceNow
5 2 (5.26%) Thales
6 1 (2.63%) Arista
6 1 (2.63%) Aruba
6 1 (2.63%) CyberArk
6 1 (2.63%) HP
6 1 (2.63%) Informatica
6 1 (2.63%) Meraki
6 1 (2.63%) Palo Alto
6 1 (2.63%) Polycom
6 1 (2.63%) SolarWinds