MCP Contracts in the UK excluding London

Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London with a requirement for MCP qualifications. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months leading up to 14 August 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 343 341 336
Rank change year-on-year -2 -5 +56
Contract jobs citing MCP 24 34 87
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 0.16% 0.19% 0.40%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.44% 0.51% 1.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 9 19 22
10th Percentile £132 £230 £172
25th Percentile £200 £340 £209
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £250 £400 £240
Median % change year-on-year -37.50% +66.67% -2.04%
75th Percentile £400 £484 £270
90th Percentile £427 £514 £332
UK median daily rate £400 £340 £240
% change year-on-year +17.65% +41.67% -43.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 5 58
10th Percentile - £17.69 -
25th Percentile - - £13.41
Median hourly rate £17.44 £21.46 £14.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.73% +48.00% +6.15%
75th Percentile - - £20.56
90th Percentile - £38.58 -
UK median hourly rate £17.44 £21.46 £14.50
% change year-on-year -18.73% +48.00% +6.15%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK excluding London

MCP 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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 5,400 6,605 7,230
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 35.20% 36.08% 32.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,180 3,992 4,601
10th Percentile £220 £291 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - +5.00%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £638
90th Percentile £675 £713 £701
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 657 747 524
10th Percentile £17.87 £14.16 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.19 £20.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £47.50 £51.89
Median % change year-on-year -47.05% -8.46% +15.41%
75th Percentile £50.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.70 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year -41.51% -21.82% +22.22%

MCP
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing MCP as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for MCP in the UK excluding London

MCP
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing MCP in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for MCP in the UK excluding London

MCP
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing MCP in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 14 August 2025.

Daily rate histogram for MCP in the UK excluding London

MCP
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing MCP in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for MCP in the UK excluding London

MCP
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing MCP within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 14 August 2025. 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
North of England -12 9 £406 -12.87% 6
North West -3 8 £406 -12.87% 2
East of England +5 5 - - 9
South West +27 4 £200 -54.29% 6
South East +26 3 £250 -23.08% 19
Midlands -11 2 - - 7
West Midlands -11 2 - - 4
Scotland -17 1 £130 -61.76% 2
North East - 1 - -
MCP
UK

MCP
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (8.33%) IBM Notes
1 2 (8.33%) Microsoft Exchange
2 1 (4.17%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (12.50%) Chatbot
1 3 (12.50%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 6 (25.00%) Azure
1 6 (25.00%) Microsoft 365
2 3 (12.50%) Amazon Bedrock
2 3 (12.50%) Azure AI
2 3 (12.50%) Vertex AI
3 2 (8.33%) AWS
4 1 (4.17%) Cloud Computing
4 1 (4.17%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 7 (29.17%) TCP/IP
2 6 (25.00%) LAN
3 3 (12.50%) VPN
4 2 (8.33%) Firewall
4 2 (8.33%) Unified Communications
4 2 (8.33%) Wireless
5 1 (4.17%) DHCP
5 1 (4.17%) DNS
5 1 (4.17%) H.323
5 1 (4.17%) Internet
5 1 (4.17%) Intrusion Detection
5 1 (4.17%) IP Telephony
5 1 (4.17%) MPLS
5 1 (4.17%) NAS
5 1 (4.17%) NetScaler
5 1 (4.17%) SAN
5 1 (4.17%) Skype
5 1 (4.17%) WAN
5 1 (4.17%) WebEx
5 1 (4.17%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (20.83%) Oracle Database
1 5 (20.83%) SQL Server
2 3 (12.50%) Pinecone
2 3 (12.50%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 1 (4.17%) JIRA
1 1 (4.17%) MSI
General
1 14 (58.33%) Social Skills
2 8 (33.33%) Analytical Skills
3 1 (4.17%) Documentation Skills
3 1 (4.17%) Finance
3 1 (4.17%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 1 (4.17%) Legal
3 1 (4.17%) Manufacturing
3 1 (4.17%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 12 (50.00%) Analyst
2 11 (45.83%) Support Analyst
3 7 (29.17%) Technical Analyst
4 6 (25.00%) IT Support
4 6 (25.00%) Technical Support
4 6 (25.00%) Technical Support Analyst
5 5 (20.83%) IT Analyst
5 5 (20.83%) IT Support Analyst
6 3 (12.50%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
7 2 (8.33%) Desktop Support
7 2 (8.33%) Junior
7 2 (8.33%) Support Engineer
8 1 (4.17%) Desktop Engineer
8 1 (4.17%) Head of Security
8 1 (4.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
8 1 (4.17%) IT Support Engineer
8 1 (4.17%) Junior IT Support
8 1 (4.17%) Migration Engineer
8 1 (4.17%) Product Manager
8 1 (4.17%) Project Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (12.50%) CrewAI
1 3 (12.50%) LangChain
2 1 (4.17%) Faiss
2 1 (4.17%) Gradio
2 1 (4.17%) LangGraph
2 1 (4.17%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 5 (20.83%) NHS
2 4 (16.67%) AI Agents
2 4 (16.67%) Data Protection Act
3 3 (12.50%) Autonomous Agent
3 3 (12.50%) Blackberry
4 1 (4.17%) Driving Licence
4 1 (4.17%) Management Information System
4 1 (4.17%) Onboarding
4 1 (4.17%) Video Conferencing
Operating Systems
1 16 (66.67%) Windows
2 6 (25.00%) Windows Server
3 4 (16.67%) Windows 10
4 3 (12.50%) Mac OS
5 2 (8.33%) Android
6 1 (4.17%) Apple iOS
6 1 (4.17%) Windows 7
6 1 (4.17%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 15 (62.50%) Problem-Solving
2 9 (37.50%) ITIL
3 6 (25.00%) Collaborative Working
4 5 (20.83%) Capacity Planning
4 5 (20.83%) Data Protection
4 5 (20.83%) Security Patching
5 4 (16.67%) Artificial Intelligence
5 4 (16.67%) LLM
5 4 (16.67%) Use Case
6 3 (12.50%) API Integration
6 3 (12.50%) Artificial Intelligence Engineering
6 3 (12.50%) Conversational UI
6 3 (12.50%) Machine Learning
6 3 (12.50%) Memory Management
6 3 (12.50%) Mobile Device Management
6 3 (12.50%) Multi-Agent System
6 3 (12.50%) Observability
6 3 (12.50%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
6 3 (12.50%) Semantic Search
7 2 (8.33%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 4 (16.67%) SQL
2 3 (12.50%) Python
3 1 (4.17%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 18 (75.00%) Microsoft Certification
2 12 (50.00%) Degree
3 10 (41.67%) A+ Certification
4 9 (37.50%) MCSE
5 5 (20.83%) HNC
5 5 (20.83%) HND
6 3 (12.50%) MCSA
7 2 (8.33%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (8.33%) Dell Certification
8 1 (4.17%) CCNA
8 1 (4.17%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (4.17%) CISSP
8 1 (4.17%) DBS Check
8 1 (4.17%) ITIL Certification
8 1 (4.17%) MCITP
8 1 (4.17%) MCTS
8 1 (4.17%) PMI Certification
8 1 (4.17%) PMP
8 1 (4.17%) SC Cleared
8 1 (4.17%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (4.17%) GDPR
1 1 (4.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 1 (4.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 4 (16.67%) Active Directory
2 2 (8.33%) XenApp
3 1 (4.17%) Hyper-V
3 1 (4.17%) Virtual Desktop
3 1 (4.17%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (4.17%) vSphere
3 1 (4.17%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 3 (12.50%) SCCM
2 2 (8.33%) Microsoft Intune
3 1 (4.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 1 (4.17%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 20 (83.33%) Microsoft
2 7 (29.17%) Citrix
3 5 (20.83%) Google
3 5 (20.83%) Oracle
4 4 (16.67%) Cisco
5 2 (8.33%) Dell
5 2 (8.33%) Lotus
5 2 (8.33%) VMware
6 1 (4.17%) F5
6 1 (4.17%) ServiceNow