Microsoft Certified Professional Contract Job Trends in the South East

Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the South East 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 16 March 2026, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 199 147 210
Rank change year-on-year -52 +63 -15
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certified Professional 1 6 1
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 0.019% 0.20% 0.018%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.040% 0.51% 0.040%
Number of daily rates quoted 1 4 1
10th Percentile - £158 -
25th Percentile £513 £185 £356
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £200 £363
Median % change year-on-year +162.50% -44.83% -22.81%
75th Percentile £538 £213 £369
90th Percentile - £235 -
England median daily rate £500 £200 £270
% change year-on-year +150.00% -25.93% -32.50%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
South East

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 the South East.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 2,483 1,170 2,530
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 47.02% 39.09% 44.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,643 760 1,426
10th Percentile £303 £263 £259
25th Percentile £413 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £544 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.29% -1.14% +3.77%
75th Percentile £610 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £700 £713
England median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 81 177
10th Percentile £15.62 £19.97 £17.80
25th Percentile £20.13 £28.00 £22.75
Median hourly rate £41.34 £56.75 £57.32
Median % change year-on-year -27.15% -0.99% +14.64%
75th Percentile £84.00 £67.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £89.05 £78.36 £82.67
England median hourly rate £27.69 £51.50 £38.85
% change year-on-year -46.23% +32.56% -22.30%

Microsoft Certified Professional
Job Vacancy Trend in the South East

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

Microsoft Certified Professional job vacancy trend in the South East

Microsoft Certified Professional
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

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

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

Microsoft Certified Professional
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

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

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

Microsoft Certified Professional
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 Certified Professional within the South East region over the 6 months to 16 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
Buckinghamshire -20 1 £525 +162.50%
Thames Valley -43 1 £525 +162.50%
Microsoft Certified Professional
England

Microsoft Certified Professional
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:

Cloud Services
1 1 (100.00%) AWS
1 1 (100.00%) Azure
1 1 (100.00%) Azure Sentinel
1 1 (100.00%) Entra ID
1 1 (100.00%) GCP
1 1 (100.00%) IaaS
1 1 (100.00%) Microsoft 365
1 1 (100.00%) PaaS
1 1 (100.00%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (100.00%) BGP
1 1 (100.00%) Cisco Nexus
1 1 (100.00%) Ethernet VPN
1 1 (100.00%) Firewall
1 1 (100.00%) IPsec
1 1 (100.00%) IPv6
1 1 (100.00%) MPLS
1 1 (100.00%) Multicast
1 1 (100.00%) OSPF
1 1 (100.00%) SD-WAN
1 1 (100.00%) SNMP
1 1 (100.00%) VoIP
1 1 (100.00%) VPN
1 1 (100.00%) VXLAN
1 1 (100.00%) WAN
1 1 (100.00%) Wireless
1 1 (100.00%) Wireshark
Development Applications
1 1 (100.00%) Sonatype Nexus
Job Titles
1 1 (100.00%) Architect
1 1 (100.00%) Network Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (100.00%) 802.1X
Miscellaneous
1 1 (100.00%) Cyber Kill Chain
1 1 (100.00%) Data Centre
1 1 (100.00%) Greenfield Project
1 1 (100.00%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 1 (100.00%) Linux
1 1 (100.00%) VMS
1 1 (100.00%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 1 (100.00%) Analytics
1 1 (100.00%) Behavioural Analytics
1 1 (100.00%) Cloud Security
1 1 (100.00%) Cyber Resilience
1 1 (100.00%) Data Loss Prevention
1 1 (100.00%) Incident Response
1 1 (100.00%) Load Balancing
1 1 (100.00%) Migration
1 1 (100.00%) Network Architecture
1 1 (100.00%) Network Management
1 1 (100.00%) Security Operations
1 1 (100.00%) SIEM
1 1 (100.00%) SOAR
1 1 (100.00%) Zero Trust
Programming Languages
1 1 (100.00%) Python
Qualifications
1 1 (100.00%) AWS Certification
1 1 (100.00%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
1 1 (100.00%) CCDA
1 1 (100.00%) CCDP
1 1 (100.00%) CCIE
1 1 (100.00%) CCIP
1 1 (100.00%) CCNA
1 1 (100.00%) CCNP
1 1 (100.00%) Cisco Certification
1 1 (100.00%) DV Cleared
1 1 (100.00%) Microsoft Certification
1 1 (100.00%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (100.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 1 (100.00%) NCSC
System Software
1 1 (100.00%) Active Directory
1 1 (100.00%) Hyper-V
1 1 (100.00%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 1 (100.00%) Ansible
1 1 (100.00%) CASB
1 1 (100.00%) Cisco CUCM
1 1 (100.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 1 (100.00%) Arista
1 1 (100.00%) Aruba
1 1 (100.00%) CheckPoint
1 1 (100.00%) Cisco
1 1 (100.00%) Fortinet
1 1 (100.00%) HP
1 1 (100.00%) Juniper
1 1 (100.00%) Meraki
1 1 (100.00%) Microsoft
1 1 (100.00%) Palo Alto
1 1 (100.00%) SolarWinds
1 1 (100.00%) VMware
1 1 (100.00%) Zscaler