Job Vacancy Trend Daily Rate Trend Daily Rate Histogram Hourly Rate Trend Hourly Rate Histogram Job Locations Skill Sets
Period
to 8 April 2020

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for MCSA qualifications. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered over the 6 months to 8 April 2020 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

Note that daily and hourly rates are treated separately in these statistics. When calculating contractor rate percentiles, daily rates are never derived from quoted hourly rates or vice versa.

Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) formerly Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
UK
6 months to
8 Apr 2020		 Same period 2019 Same period 2018
Rank 535 594 605
Rank change year-on-year +59 +11 +68
Contract jobs citing MCSA 148 292 288
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.24% 0.30% 0.28%
As % of the Qualifications category 1.10% 1.55% 1.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 87 196 163
Median daily rate £400 £325 £325
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +23.08% - -1.52%
10th Percentile £186 £141 £156
90th Percentile £510 £575 £513
UK excluding London median daily rate £390 £325 £350
% change year-on-year +20.00% -7.14% +6.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 20 15
Median hourly rate £17.50 £17.65 £20.66
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year -0.85% -14.55% +25.18%
10th Percentile £16.25 £14.99 £14.35
90th Percentile £32.00 £58.58 £37.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.50 £15.30 £23.50
% change year-on-year +14.38% -34.89% +42.42%

MCSA is in the Academic Qualifications and Professional Certifications category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for academic qualifications or professional certifications.

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK
Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,435 18,825 19,589
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 22.03% 19.42% 19.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,119 11,353 11,864
Median daily rate £475 £455 £450
Median daily rate % change year-on-year +4.40% +1.11% +5.88%
10th Percentile £255 £263 £235
90th Percentile £638 £638 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £430 £405
% change year-on-year +4.65% +6.17% +1.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 653 863 868
Median hourly rate £35.00 £32.50 £23.75
Median hourly rate % change year-on-year +7.69% +36.84% -16.21%
10th Percentile £15.69 £12.50 £12.50
90th Percentile £57.00 £52.90 £50.08
Median hourly rate £34.77 £29.45 £25.00
% change year-on-year +18.06% +17.80% -13.79%

MCSA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing MCSA as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for MCSA in the UK

MCSA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing MCSA.

Daily rate trend for MCSA in the UK

MCSA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing MCSA over the 6 months to 8 April 2020.

Daily rate histogram for MCSA in the UK

MCSA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing MCSA.

Hourly rate trend for MCSA in the UK

MCSA
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing MCSA over the 6 months to 8 April 2020.

Hourly rate histogram for MCSA in the UK

MCSA
Top 15 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing MCSA within the UK over the 6 months to 8 April 2020. 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
Job
Vacancies
England +46 128 £400 +17.65% 70
UK excluding London +28 99 £390 +20.00% 63
London +105 47 £400 +3.23% 22
South East +89 36 £390 +30.00% 12
Scotland +41 17 £388 +180.80% 11
South West -7 17 £475 +11.76% 5
Midlands +53 15 £288 +8.49% 11
West Midlands +62 12 £475 +90.00% 9
North of England +42 9 £263 +5.00% 18
Yorkshire +42 4 £225 -25.00% 6
North West +25 4 - - 10
East of England +20 4 £375 -9.09% 2
East Midlands +19 3 £288 -11.54% 2
North East +27 1 £300 - 2
Wales - 1 £175 - 4

For the 6 months to 8 April 2020, IT contractor jobs citing MCSA also mentioned the following skills in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads with a requirement for MCSA.

1 148 (100.00%) Microsoft Certification
2 112 (75.68%) Windows
3 109 (73.65%) Microsoft
4 102 (68.92%) MCSE
5 90 (60.81%) Active Directory
6 80 (54.05%) Windows Server
7 63 (42.57%) ITIL
8 60 (40.54%) Azure
9 58 (39.19%) Office 365
10 56 (37.84%) VMware
11 50 (33.78%) PowerShell
12 49 (33.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 43 (29.05%) Security Cleared
14 40 (27.03%) DNS
15 38 (25.68%) Windows Server 2008
16 37 (25.00%) SCCM
16 37 (25.00%) Windows 10
17 35 (23.65%) VMware Infrastructure
17 35 (23.65%) SC Cleared
17 35 (23.65%) DHCP
18 33 (22.30%) Hyper-V
19 32 (21.62%) MS Exchange
19 32 (21.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
20 31 (20.95%) Microsoft Office
21 30 (20.27%) MCP
22 26 (17.57%) SharePoint
22 26 (17.57%) Migration
23 25 (16.89%) SQL
23 25 (16.89%) SQL Server
23 25 (16.89%) SLA

MCSA
Co-occurring IT Skills by Category

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

Application Platforms
1 32 (21.62%) MS Exchange
2 26 (17.57%) SharePoint
3 13 (8.78%) IIS
4 10 (6.76%) Exchange Server 2010
5 9 (6.08%) Exchange Server 2013
6 7 (4.73%) Skype for Business
7 4 (2.70%) SharePoint 2010
8 3 (2.03%) Apache
8 3 (2.03%) Confluence
8 3 (2.03%) Exchange Server 2007
8 3 (2.03%) IBM Domino
8 3 (2.03%) IBM Notes
8 3 (2.03%) Tomcat
9 2 (1.35%) BizTalk Server
9 2 (1.35%) Office Communications Server
10 1 (0.68%) Elasticsearch
Applications
1 31 (20.95%) Microsoft Office
2 6 (4.05%) MS Visio
3 4 (2.70%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
5 1 (0.68%) AutoCAD
5 1 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (1.35%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 60 (40.54%) Azure
2 58 (39.19%) Office 365
3 20 (13.51%) AWS
4 12 (8.11%) GitHub
5 10 (6.76%) AWS CloudFormation
6 9 (6.08%) IaaS
6 9 (6.08%) OpenShift
7 8 (5.41%) Azure Active Directory
8 7 (4.73%) PaaS
9 5 (3.38%) GCP
9 5 (3.38%) OneDrive
10 4 (2.70%) Power Platform
11 3 (2.03%) Dynamics 365
11 3 (2.03%) PowerApps
12 2 (1.35%) Amazon S3
13 1 (0.68%) Azure ExpressRoute
13 1 (0.68%) G Suite
13 1 (0.68%) SaaS
13 1 (0.68%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 40 (27.03%) DNS
2 35 (23.65%) DHCP
3 22 (14.86%) SAN
4 13 (8.78%) LAN
5 10 (6.76%) Firewall
6 8 (5.41%) Skype
7 6 (4.05%) VPN
8 5 (3.38%) IPv4
8 5 (3.38%) TCP/IP
8 5 (3.38%) WAN
9 4 (2.70%) NetScaler
9 4 (2.70%) SMTP
10 3 (2.03%) Remote Desktop
10 3 (2.03%) VPLS
11 2 (1.35%) Intranet
11 2 (1.35%) NAS
11 2 (1.35%) Network Security
11 2 (1.35%) VoIP
12 1 (0.68%) Internet
12 1 (0.68%) WLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 25 (16.89%) SQL Server
2 9 (6.08%) Amazon RDS
3 3 (2.03%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (1.35%) SQL Server 2012
5 1 (0.68%) MySQL
5 1 (0.68%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 6 (4.05%) JIRA
2 3 (2.03%) StarTeam
3 2 (1.35%) Bitbucket
3 2 (1.35%) GitLab
3 2 (1.35%) Octopus Deploy
3 2 (1.35%) TeamCity
3 2 (1.35%) Visual Studio
3 2 (1.35%) Visual Studio Team System
4 1 (0.68%) CF BOSH
4 1 (0.68%) Eclipse
General
1 9 (6.08%) Finance
2 6 (4.05%) Public Sector
3 4 (2.70%) Legal
3 4 (2.70%) Manufacturing
4 3 (2.03%) Military
4 3 (2.03%) Pharmaceutical
5 2 (1.35%) Back Office
5 2 (1.35%) Banking
5 2 (1.35%) Police
5 2 (1.35%) Retail
6 1 (0.68%) Front Office
6 1 (0.68%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 19 (12.84%) Support Engineer
2 16 (10.81%) Analyst
3 12 (8.11%) 3rd Line Support
3 12 (8.11%) DevOps Engineer
4 11 (7.43%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 11 (7.43%) Administrator
4 11 (7.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 11 (7.43%) IT Support
4 11 (7.43%) Windows Engineer
5 10 (6.76%) IT Engineer
5 10 (6.76%) Server Engineer
5 10 (6.76%) Support Analyst
5 10 (6.76%) Technical Support
6 9 (6.08%) Consultant
6 9 (6.08%) Desktop Engineer
6 9 (6.08%) Wintel Engineer
7 8 (5.41%) 2nd Line Support
7 8 (5.41%) AWS Engineer
8 7 (4.73%) Service Analyst
8 7 (4.73%) Service Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (1.35%) LDAP
1 2 (1.35%) Node.js
1 2 (1.35%) Web Services
2 1 (0.68%) .NET
2 1 (0.68%) JSON
2 1 (0.68%) Middleware
2 1 (0.68%) REST
2 1 (0.68%) SOAP
2 1 (0.68%) WSDL
2 1 (0.68%) XMPP
2 1 (0.68%) X-Windows
Miscellaneous
1 17 (11.49%) Replication
2 13 (8.78%) Analytical Skills
2 13 (8.78%) Self-Motivation
3 6 (4.05%) Clustering
3 6 (4.05%) Data Centre
3 6 (4.05%) Management Information System
4 4 (2.70%) HP StoreVirtual
4 4 (2.70%) PKI
4 4 (2.70%) Public Cloud
5 3 (2.03%) Hybrid Cloud
5 3 (2.03%) NHS
6 2 (1.35%) Client/Server
6 2 (1.35%) N-Tier
6 2 (1.35%) Smartphone
7 1 (0.68%) Driving Licence
7 1 (0.68%) Enterprise Storage
7 1 (0.68%) Fat Client
7 1 (0.68%) Life Science
7 1 (0.68%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.68%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 112 (75.68%) Windows
2 80 (54.05%) Windows Server
3 49 (33.11%) Windows Server 2012
4 38 (25.68%) Windows Server 2008
5 37 (25.00%) Windows 10
6 19 (12.84%) Windows Server 2016
7 15 (10.14%) Windows Server 2003
8 13 (8.78%) Windows 7
9 9 (6.08%) Linux
10 8 (5.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 4 (2.70%) Windows XP
12 3 (2.03%) AIX
13 2 (1.35%) Apple iOS
13 2 (1.35%) Windows Vista
14 1 (0.68%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.68%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
14 1 (0.68%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 63 (42.57%) ITIL
2 26 (17.57%) Migration
3 20 (13.51%) Infrastructure Engineering
4 15 (10.14%) High Availability
5 14 (9.46%) Change Management
5 14 (9.46%) DevOps
5 14 (9.46%) Problem-Solving
5 14 (9.46%) Root Cause Analysis
6 13 (8.78%) Server Virtualisation
7 12 (8.11%) ITSM
8 11 (7.43%) Agile Software Development
9 10 (6.76%) Configuration Management
9 10 (6.76%) Disaster Recovery
9 10 (6.76%) Infrastructure as Code
10 8 (5.41%) Mentoring
10 8 (5.41%) Service Delivery
11 7 (4.73%) Data Protection
11 7 (4.73%) Matrix Organization
11 7 (4.73%) Patch Management
11 7 (4.73%) Service Management
Programming Languages
1 50 (33.78%) PowerShell
2 25 (16.89%) SQL
3 13 (8.78%) Python
4 9 (6.08%) Go
5 4 (2.70%) Bash Shell
6 2 (1.35%) C
6 2 (1.35%) Ruby
7 1 (0.68%) C#
7 1 (0.68%) Perl
7 1 (0.68%) Shell Script
7 1 (0.68%) T-SQL
7 1 (0.68%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 148 (100.00%) Microsoft Certification
2 102 (68.92%) MCSE
3 43 (29.05%) Security Cleared
4 35 (23.65%) SC Cleared
5 32 (21.62%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 30 (20.27%) MCP
7 22 (14.86%) CCNA
7 22 (14.86%) Cisco Certification
8 16 (10.81%) MCITP
9 15 (10.14%) DV Cleared
10 14 (9.46%) CCA
10 14 (9.46%) Citrix Certification
11 11 (7.43%) Degree
12 9 (6.08%) A+ Certification
13 8 (5.41%) CCNP
14 7 (4.73%) ITIL Certification
14 7 (4.73%) MCTS
15 5 (3.38%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 5 (3.38%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (2.70%) MOS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (16.89%) SLA
2 5 (3.38%) Government Security Classifications
2 5 (3.38%) PCI DSS
3 4 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 4 (2.70%) NCSC
4 3 (2.03%) HMG Security Policy Framework
4 3 (2.03%) ISO 9001
5 2 (1.35%) QA
6 1 (0.68%) GDPR
6 1 (0.68%) GxP
6 1 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.68%) SSAE 16
System Software
1 90 (60.81%) Active Directory
2 35 (23.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 33 (22.30%) Hyper-V
4 21 (14.19%) VMware ESXi
5 12 (8.11%) Docker
5 12 (8.11%) XenApp
6 9 (6.08%) XenDesktop
7 7 (4.73%) Virtual Servers
8 6 (4.05%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 6 (4.05%) Virtual Machines
8 6 (4.05%) vSphere
9 5 (3.38%) UAG
10 3 (2.03%) Citrix Hypervisor
11 2 (1.35%) Forefront TMG
11 2 (1.35%) ISA Server
12 1 (0.68%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 1 (0.68%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.68%) RHEV
12 1 (0.68%) Terminal Services
12 1 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 37 (25.00%) SCCM
2 16 (10.81%) Terraform
3 15 (10.14%) Ansible
4 13 (8.78%) Kubernetes
4 13 (8.78%) Puppet
5 12 (8.11%) Opscode Chef
6 9 (6.08%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (5.41%) WSUS
8 6 (4.05%) Microsoft Data Protection Manager
9 5 (3.38%) vCenter Server
10 4 (2.70%) McAfee ePO
10 4 (2.70%) Norton AntiVirus
10 4 (2.70%) SCOM
11 3 (2.03%) Netcool
12 2 (1.35%) AirWatch
12 2 (1.35%) Backup Exec
12 2 (1.35%) EMC NetWorker
12 2 (1.35%) Graylog
12 2 (1.35%) Nessus
12 2 (1.35%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 109 (73.65%) Microsoft
2 56 (37.84%) VMware
3 22 (14.86%) Cisco
4 18 (12.16%) Citrix
5 14 (9.46%) HP
6 7 (4.73%) Remedy
6 7 (4.73%) Sophos
7 5 (3.38%) IBM
7 5 (3.38%) Lumension
7 5 (3.38%) Symantec
8 4 (2.70%) CheckPoint
8 4 (2.70%) McAfee
8 4 (2.70%) Veritas
9 3 (2.03%) Computacenter
9 3 (2.03%) Ivanti
9 3 (2.03%) Meraki
9 3 (2.03%) Nimble Storage
9 3 (2.03%) Polycom
9 3 (2.03%) Splunk
9 3 (2.03%) Yealink