Microsoft Certified Professional Contract Job Trends

Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies 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 537 490 489
Rank change year-on-year -47 -1 +113
Contract jobs citing Microsoft Certified Professional 58 30 116
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.15% 0.095% 0.26%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.44% 0.32% 0.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 21 39
10th Percentile £128 £115 £135
25th Percentile £200 £140 £158
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £188 £225
Median % change year-on-year +140.00% -16.67% -43.75%
75th Percentile £616 £238 £319
90th Percentile £688 £338 £500
UK excluding London median daily rate £225 £160 £225
% change year-on-year +40.63% -28.89% -40.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 1 59
10th Percentile - - £13.41
25th Percentile £6.00 - £14.00
Median hourly rate £14.75 £50.00 £14.16
Median % change year-on-year -70.50% +253.11% -2.34%
75th Percentile £25.47 - £18.75
90th Percentile - - £20.56
UK excluding London median hourly rate £6.00 £50.00 £14.16
% change year-on-year -88.00% +253.11% -2.34%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

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.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 13,088 9,382 13,516
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 33.85% 29.83% 30.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,634 5,651 8,426
10th Percentile £317 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year -1.24% -4.11% -0.45%
75th Percentile £623 £634 £650
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% +1.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 965 452 918
10th Percentile £15.67 £19.35 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.10 £24.18 £21.46
Median hourly rate £25.15 £39.52 £46.39
Median % change year-on-year -36.36% -14.81% +3.09%
75th Percentile £62.50 £65.71 £65.83
90th Percentile £76.26 £77.47 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £43.94 £47.50
% change year-on-year -42.76% -7.49% +5.56%

Microsoft Certified Professional
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Microsoft Certified Professional job vacancy trend in the UK

Microsoft Certified Professional
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

Microsoft Certified Professional
Daily Rate Histogram

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

Daily rate histogram for Microsoft Certified Professional in the UK

Microsoft Certified Professional
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

Microsoft Certified Professional
Hourly Rate Histogram

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

Hourly rate histogram for Microsoft Certified Professional in the UK

Microsoft Certified Professional
Top 12 Contract Job Locations

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 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
England -38 54 £450 +125.00% 82
UK excluding London -48 34 £225 +40.63% 72
East of England 0 22 £400 +113.33% 8
London -11 21 £600 +152.63% 26
Midlands -45 8 £145 -9.38% 10
Work from Home -5 6 £545 +67.69% 25
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
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 (1.72%) Confluence
Applications
1 3 (5.17%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (5.17%) Microsoft Office
1 3 (5.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 3 (5.17%) Microsoft Project
1 3 (5.17%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (1.72%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 32 (55.17%) Azure
2 18 (31.03%) GitHub
2 18 (31.03%) GitHub Copilot
3 15 (25.86%) Azure Functions
3 15 (25.86%) Microsoft 365
3 15 (25.86%) Serverless
4 13 (22.41%) Azure AI
5 12 (20.69%) Azure AKS
6 11 (18.97%) PaaS
7 8 (13.79%) Power Platform
8 7 (12.07%) AWS
9 6 (10.34%) Azure App Service
9 6 (10.34%) Azure Cognitive Services
9 6 (10.34%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 6 (10.34%) Azure Logic Apps
9 6 (10.34%) Microsoft Purview
9 6 (10.34%) OCI
10 4 (6.90%) Entra ID
11 3 (5.17%) Azure Machine Learning
12 2 (3.45%) Dialogflow
Communications & Networking
1 10 (17.24%) TCP/IP
1 10 (17.24%) VPN
2 7 (12.07%) DHCP
2 7 (12.07%) DNS
3 4 (6.90%) LAN
4 3 (5.17%) Softphone
5 2 (3.45%) Firewall
5 2 (3.45%) RS-232
5 2 (3.45%) X.400
6 1 (1.72%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (1.72%) VLAN
6 1 (1.72%) WAN
6 1 (1.72%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (10.34%) Data Lake
2 3 (5.17%) SQL Server
3 2 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (1.72%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (1.72%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 4 (6.90%) Git
2 2 (3.45%) JIRA
3 1 (1.72%) Jenkins
3 1 (1.72%) Selenium
General
1 21 (36.21%) Social Skills
2 9 (15.52%) Analytical Skills
3 8 (13.79%) Finance
4 4 (6.90%) Public Sector
5 2 (3.45%) Marketing
6 1 (1.72%) Banking
6 1 (1.72%) Legal
6 1 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 19 (32.76%) Analyst
2 14 (24.14%) Support Analyst
3 12 (20.69%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
4 8 (13.79%) IT Support
4 8 (13.79%) Technical Analyst
4 8 (13.79%) Technical Support
5 7 (12.07%) IT Analyst
5 7 (12.07%) IT Support Analyst
5 7 (12.07%) Senior
5 7 (12.07%) Technical Support Analyst
6 6 (10.34%) 2nd Line Support
6 6 (10.34%) Data Scientist
7 5 (8.62%) 1st/2nd Line Support
7 5 (8.62%) 1st/2nd Line Support Analyst
7 5 (8.62%) 2nd Line Support Analyst
8 4 (6.90%) Developer
8 4 (6.90%) Gen AI Engineer
8 4 (6.90%) Support Engineer
9 3 (5.17%) Architect
9 3 (5.17%) Help Desk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (50.00%) Model Context Protocol
2 23 (39.66%) A2A Protocol
3 18 (31.03%) PyTorch
3 18 (31.03%) TensorFlow
4 14 (24.14%) RESTful
5 13 (22.41%) LangChain
6 12 (20.69%) Semantic Kernel
7 11 (18.97%) .NET
7 11 (18.97%) LangGraph
8 7 (12.07%) Pandas
8 7 (12.07%) scikit-learn
9 6 (10.34%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (8.62%) Hugging Face
11 3 (5.17%) FastAPI
11 3 (5.17%) NumPy
11 3 (5.17%) pydantic
11 3 (5.17%) REST
12 2 (3.45%) CSS
12 2 (3.45%) Django
12 2 (3.45%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 13 (22.41%) Algorithms
1 13 (22.41%) Cloud Native
2 6 (10.34%) NHS
3 5 (8.62%) AI Agents
3 5 (8.62%) Self-Motivation
3 5 (8.62%) Team-Oriented Environment
4 3 (5.17%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (3.45%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.72%) CCTV
6 1 (1.72%) Driving Licence
6 1 (1.72%) Fibre Optics
6 1 (1.72%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.72%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 21 (36.21%) Windows
2 12 (20.69%) Windows 10
3 9 (15.52%) Windows Server 2003
4 6 (10.34%) Windows Server 2012
5 4 (6.90%) Windows 7
6 3 (5.17%) Windows Server
6 3 (5.17%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (3.45%) Apple iOS
7 2 (3.45%) Mac OS
8 1 (1.72%) AIX
8 1 (1.72%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (51.72%) AI
2 27 (46.55%) LLM
3 26 (44.83%) Problem-Solving
3 26 (44.83%) Retrieval-Augmented Generation
4 22 (37.93%) Machine Learning
4 22 (37.93%) Prompt Engineering
5 15 (25.86%) Agile
5 15 (25.86%) Data Privacy
6 14 (24.14%) Data Pipeline
6 14 (24.14%) Deep Learning
7 13 (22.41%) Test Automation
8 12 (20.69%) API Management
8 12 (20.69%) Customer Service
8 12 (20.69%) ITIL
9 11 (18.97%) API Design
9 11 (18.97%) Generative AI
9 11 (18.97%) Software Engineering
10 10 (17.24%) Mentoring
10 10 (17.24%) Scrum
11 9 (15.52%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 28 (48.28%) Python
2 3 (5.17%) JavaScript
3 1 (1.72%) SQL
3 1 (1.72%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 24 (41.38%) Microsoft Certification
2 22 (37.93%) Degree
3 14 (24.14%) MCSE
4 7 (12.07%) HNC
4 7 (12.07%) HND
5 5 (8.62%) MCDST
6 4 (6.90%) ITIL Certification
6 4 (6.90%) Master's Degree
7 3 (5.17%) PhD
8 2 (3.45%) A+ Certification
8 2 (3.45%) Azure Certification
8 2 (3.45%) CCNA
8 2 (3.45%) Cisco Certification
8 2 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (3.45%) MCSA
9 1 (1.72%) Network+ Certification
9 1 (1.72%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (20.69%) EU AI Act
2 11 (18.97%) NIST
3 1 (1.72%) GDPR
3 1 (1.72%) QA
3 1 (1.72%) SLA
System Software
1 15 (25.86%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.72%) Firmware
2 1 (1.72%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 6 (10.34%) SCCM
2 3 (5.17%) Microsoft Intune
3 2 (3.45%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 41 (70.69%) Microsoft
2 14 (24.14%) Foundry
3 6 (10.34%) OpenAI
4 5 (8.62%) Google
4 5 (8.62%) iManage
4 5 (8.62%) Mitel
5 3 (5.17%) Citrix
5 3 (5.17%) Databricks
5 3 (5.17%) Salesforce
6 2 (3.45%) Oracle
6 2 (3.45%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
7 1 (1.72%) Ciena
7 1 (1.72%) Cisco
7 1 (1.72%) MuleSoft
7 1 (1.72%) ServiceNow