Microsoft Certified Professional Contract Job Trends 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 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 374 326 301
Rank change year-on-year -48 -25 +37
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certified Professional 34 23 104
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 0.18% 0.17% 0.50%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.48% 0.49% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 18 31
10th Percentile £125 £115 £135
25th Percentile £136 £140 £158
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £225 £160 £225
Median % change year-on-year +40.63% -28.89% -40.00%
75th Percentile £545 £200 £300
90th Percentile £559 £276 £500
UK median daily rate £450 £188 £225
% change year-on-year +140.00% -16.67% -43.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 59
10th Percentile - - £13.41
25th Percentile - - £14.00
Median hourly rate £6.00 £50.00 £14.16
Median % change year-on-year -88.00% +253.11% -2.34%
75th Percentile - - £18.75
90th Percentile £16.95 - £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
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 7,028 4,724 7,611
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 36.47% 34.51% 36.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,479 2,759 4,504
10th Percentile £263 £215 £250
25th Percentile £402 £391 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
75th Percentile £600 £614 £649
90th Percentile £703 £696 £710
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £548
% change year-on-year -1.24% -4.11% -0.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 842 360 759
10th Percentile £15.62 £18.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.87 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.94 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -42.76% -7.49% +5.56%
75th Percentile £61.18 £67.25 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £75.67 £77.10
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 the UK excluding London

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

Microsoft Certified Professional job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Microsoft Certified Professional
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Microsoft Certified Professional.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Microsoft Certified Professional

Microsoft Certified Professional
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

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

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft Certified Professional in the UK excluding London

Microsoft Certified Professional
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Microsoft Certified Professional.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK excluding London citing Microsoft Certified Professional

Microsoft Certified Professional
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

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

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft Certified Professional in the UK excluding London

Microsoft Certified Professional
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 Microsoft Certified Professional within the UK excluding London 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
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
Scotland -1 1 £438 +243.14% 7
Yorkshire - 1 - - 6
Microsoft Certified Professional
UK

Microsoft Certified Professional
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 1 (2.94%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (5.88%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (2.94%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 11 (32.35%) Azure
2 10 (29.41%) Azure AKS
2 10 (29.41%) GitHub
2 10 (29.41%) GitHub Copilot
2 10 (29.41%) Microsoft 365
3 9 (26.47%) PaaS
4 7 (20.59%) Azure Functions
4 7 (20.59%) Serverless
5 1 (2.94%) Azure API Management
Communications & Networking
1 9 (26.47%) TCP/IP
2 6 (17.65%) DHCP
2 6 (17.65%) DNS
2 6 (17.65%) VPN
3 3 (8.82%) LAN
4 2 (5.88%) RS-232
4 2 (5.88%) X.400
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (8.82%) SQL Server
2 1 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
2 1 (2.94%) Oracle Database
2 1 (2.94%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 2 (5.88%) JIRA
2 1 (2.94%) Git
General
1 16 (47.06%) Social Skills
2 8 (23.53%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (11.76%) Public Sector
4 2 (5.88%) Marketing
5 1 (2.94%) Banking
5 1 (2.94%) Legal
5 1 (2.94%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 16 (47.06%) Analyst
2 14 (41.18%) Support Analyst
3 8 (23.53%) IT Support
3 8 (23.53%) Technical Analyst
3 8 (23.53%) Technical Support
4 7 (20.59%) IT Analyst
4 7 (20.59%) IT Support Analyst
4 7 (20.59%) Senior
4 7 (20.59%) Technical Support Analyst
5 5 (14.71%) 1st/2nd Line Support
5 5 (14.71%) 1st/2nd Line Support Analyst
5 5 (14.71%) 2nd Line Support
5 5 (14.71%) 2nd Line Support Analyst
5 5 (14.71%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
6 4 (11.76%) Developer
7 3 (8.82%) Senior Developer
8 2 (5.88%) Artificial Intelligence Developer
8 2 (5.88%) Data Scientist
8 2 (5.88%) Senior Software Developer
8 2 (5.88%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (35.29%) A2A Protocol
1 12 (35.29%) Model Context Protocol
2 11 (32.35%) PyTorch
2 11 (32.35%) TensorFlow
3 10 (29.41%) RESTful
3 10 (29.41%) Semantic Kernel
4 9 (26.47%) .NET
5 2 (5.88%) CSS
5 2 (5.88%) HTML
5 2 (5.88%) Pandas
5 2 (5.88%) scikit-learn
6 1 (2.94%) CSS3
6 1 (2.94%) FastAPI
6 1 (2.94%) HTML5
6 1 (2.94%) LangChain
6 1 (2.94%) React
6 1 (2.94%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 11 (32.35%) Algorithms
1 11 (32.35%) Cloud Native
2 6 (17.65%) NHS
3 5 (14.71%) Self-Motivation
3 5 (14.71%) Team-Oriented Environment
4 2 (5.88%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (2.94%) Driving Licence
5 1 (2.94%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 18 (52.94%) Windows
2 12 (35.29%) Windows 10
3 9 (26.47%) Windows Server 2003
4 6 (17.65%) Windows Server 2012
5 4 (11.76%) Windows 7
6 3 (8.82%) Windows Server
6 3 (8.82%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (2.94%) AIX
7 1 (2.94%) Android
7 1 (2.94%) Apple iOS
7 1 (2.94%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (61.76%) Problem-Solving
2 13 (38.24%) AI
2 13 (38.24%) Data Privacy
3 12 (35.29%) Customer Service
3 12 (35.29%) ITIL
3 12 (35.29%) LLM
3 12 (35.29%) Machine Learning
4 11 (32.35%) Agile
4 11 (32.35%) Prompt Engineering
4 11 (32.35%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
5 10 (29.41%) API Management
5 10 (29.41%) Deep Learning
5 10 (29.41%) Test Automation
6 9 (26.47%) API Design
6 9 (26.47%) Data Pipeline
6 9 (26.47%) Software Engineering
7 7 (20.59%) CRM
7 7 (20.59%) Mobile Device Management
7 7 (20.59%) Scrum
8 5 (14.71%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 12 (35.29%) Python
2 2 (5.88%) JavaScript
3 1 (2.94%) SQL
3 1 (2.94%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 16 (47.06%) Microsoft Certification
2 13 (38.24%) Degree
3 10 (29.41%) MCSE
4 7 (20.59%) HNC
4 7 (20.59%) HND
5 5 (14.71%) MCDST
6 4 (11.76%) ITIL Certification
7 2 (5.88%) A+ Certification
7 2 (5.88%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (2.94%) Master's Degree
8 1 (2.94%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (29.41%) EU AI Act
2 9 (26.47%) NIST
3 1 (2.94%) GDPR
3 1 (2.94%) QA
3 1 (2.94%) SLA
System Software
1 10 (29.41%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 6 (17.65%) SCCM
2 1 (2.94%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 23 (67.65%) Microsoft
2 10 (29.41%) Foundry
3 5 (14.71%) iManage
3 5 (14.71%) Mitel
4 2 (5.88%) Citrix
4 2 (5.88%) Oracle
4 2 (5.88%) Salesforce
4 2 (5.88%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
5 1 (2.94%) MuleSoft
5 1 (2.94%) ServiceNow