MCSA Contracts

Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA) formerly Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
UK

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 1 June 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 483 600 676
Rank change year-on-year +117 +76 -44
Contract jobs citing MCSA 92 82 162
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.21% 0.15% 0.18%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.71% 0.54% 0.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 61 103
10th Percentile £115 £223 £183
25th Percentile £313 £381 £218
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £425 £520 £427
Median % change year-on-year -18.27% +21.78% +22.00%
75th Percentile £556 £645 £538
90th Percentile £628 £675 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £519 £325
% change year-on-year +3.61% +59.62% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 10 27
10th Percentile £14.16 - -
25th Percentile £14.48 £15.25 £15.25
Median hourly rate £16.30 £15.50 £15.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.16% - +3.33%
75th Percentile £21.37 £15.75 £15.75
90th Percentile - £16.82 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £16.30 £15.50 £15.50
% change year-on-year +5.16% - +3.33%

All Academic and Professional Certifications
UK

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.

Contract vacancies requiring academic qualifications or professional certifications 12,872 15,254 19,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 29.89% 27.21% 21.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,011 10,183 12,699
10th Percentile £310 £338 £345
25th Percentile £425 £450 £428
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% +4.76% +6.06%
75th Percentile £645 £650 £630
90th Percentile £738 £738 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £535 £525 £500
% change year-on-year +1.90% +5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,100 745 759
10th Percentile £13.87 £14.67 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.13 £21.24 £19.52
Median hourly rate £40.00 £55.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -27.27% +23.60% +28.21%
75th Percentile £62.50 £68.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £76.32 £79.19 £67.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.25 £52.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -21.43% +50.00% +16.67%

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 1 June 2024.

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
Top 11 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 1 June 2024. 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 +96 84 £538 +3.37% 32
UK excluding London +54 75 £538 +3.61% 35
East of England +42 48 £100 -40.30% 9
London +94 15 £350 -32.69% 1
Work from Home +94 13 £469 -9.86% 4
South East +10 10 £538 +8.59% 11
South West +7 9 £538 -2.27% 4
Scotland +42 6 £325 +47.73% 4
North of England +6 2 £363 -44.23% 7
Yorkshire +17 1 £325 -52.55% 4
North West +4 1 £400 -38.46% 3

MCSA
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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 26 (28.26%) Microsoft Exchange
2 18 (19.57%) Confluence
3 7 (7.61%) IIS
3 7 (7.61%) SharePoint
4 1 (1.09%) Exchange Server 2007
4 1 (1.09%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 13 (14.13%) Microsoft Excel
1 13 (14.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 6 (6.52%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (2.17%) Eikon
Cloud Services
1 53 (57.61%) Microsoft 365
2 10 (10.87%) Azure
3 6 (6.52%) AWS
4 3 (3.26%) OneDrive
5 2 (2.17%) Entra ID
6 1 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
6 1 (1.09%) Azure AKS
6 1 (1.09%) GCP
6 1 (1.09%) IaaS
6 1 (1.09%) Mimecast
6 1 (1.09%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 41 (44.57%) Wi-Fi
2 25 (27.17%) DNS
3 24 (26.09%) DHCP
4 6 (6.52%) VPN
5 4 (4.35%) SAN
6 3 (3.26%) LAN
6 3 (3.26%) WAN
7 2 (2.17%) Firewall
7 2 (2.17%) NAS
7 2 (2.17%) NetScaler
7 2 (2.17%) TCP/IP
8 1 (1.09%) Fibre Channel
8 1 (1.09%) iSCSI
8 1 (1.09%) Kerberos
8 1 (1.09%) MPLS
8 1 (1.09%) Network Security
8 1 (1.09%) Remote Desktop
8 1 (1.09%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.17%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 18 (19.57%) JIRA
General
1 28 (30.43%) Retail
2 27 (29.35%) Social Skills
3 23 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
4 18 (19.57%) Military
5 6 (6.52%) Finance
5 6 (6.52%) Telecoms
6 4 (4.35%) Banking
6 4 (4.35%) Manufacturing
6 4 (4.35%) Marketing
6 4 (4.35%) Pharmaceutical
7 2 (2.17%) Financial Institution
8 1 (1.09%) Documentation Skills
8 1 (1.09%) Local Government
8 1 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.09%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 43 (46.74%) Analyst
2 41 (44.57%) Service Analyst
2 41 (44.57%) Service Desk Analyst
3 18 (19.57%) Test Engineer
4 16 (17.39%) Integration Engineer
4 16 (17.39%) Test and Integration Engineer
5 13 (14.13%) 1st Line Service Desk Analyst
6 10 (10.87%) Support Engineer
7 7 (7.61%) 3rd Line Support
8 5 (5.43%) 2nd Line Support
8 5 (5.43%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 4 (4.35%) 2nd Line Engineer
9 4 (4.35%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
9 4 (4.35%) Service Delivery Engineer
10 3 (3.26%) 3rd Line Engineer
10 3 (3.26%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
10 3 (3.26%) Desktop Engineer
10 3 (3.26%) IT Engineer
11 2 (2.17%) IT Support Engineer
11 2 (2.17%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (1.09%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 19 (20.65%) PKI
2 12 (13.04%) Data Centre
3 4 (4.35%) iPhone
4 3 (3.26%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (2.17%) Blackberry
5 2 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.17%) Enterprise Software
5 2 (2.17%) iPad
5 2 (2.17%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.09%) Clustering
6 1 (1.09%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 51 (55.43%) Windows
2 35 (38.04%) Windows Server
3 24 (26.09%) Windows Server 2012
4 7 (7.61%) Linux
4 7 (7.61%) Windows 10
4 7 (7.61%) Windows Server 2016
5 6 (6.52%) CentOS
5 6 (6.52%) Debian
5 6 (6.52%) Windows Server 2008
6 5 (5.43%) Windows 7
6 5 (5.43%) Windows 8
7 4 (4.35%) Mac OS
8 1 (1.09%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (54.35%) ITIL
2 47 (51.09%) Customer Service
3 43 (46.74%) Incident Management
4 21 (22.83%) Problem-Solving
5 19 (20.65%) Agile
6 18 (19.57%) Critical Thinking
6 18 (19.57%) Regression Testing
6 18 (19.57%) Test Scripting
7 17 (18.48%) Service Delivery
8 13 (14.13%) Mathematics
9 8 (8.70%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 7 (7.61%) Computer Science
11 5 (5.43%) Employee Productivity
11 5 (5.43%) PRINCE2
12 4 (4.35%) Project Management
12 4 (4.35%) User Experience
13 2 (2.17%) Application Packaging
13 2 (2.17%) Asset Management
13 2 (2.17%) BCP
13 2 (2.17%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 20 (21.74%) SQL
2 6 (6.52%) PowerShell
3 1 (1.09%) Python
Qualifications
1 92 (100.00%) Microsoft Certification
2 47 (51.09%) A+ Certification
3 37 (40.22%) MCSE
4 35 (38.04%) SC Cleared
4 35 (38.04%) Security Cleared
5 18 (19.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 14 (15.22%) Degree
7 13 (14.13%) CCNA
7 13 (14.13%) Cisco Certification
8 8 (8.70%) CCNP
9 6 (6.52%) MCP
9 6 (6.52%) RHCT
10 5 (5.43%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (3.26%) AWS Certification
12 2 (2.17%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 2 (2.17%) CESG Certified Professional
12 2 (2.17%) Citrix Certification
12 2 (2.17%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 2 (2.17%) MCSD
13 1 (1.09%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.35%) SLA
System Software
1 53 (57.61%) Active Directory
2 29 (31.52%) VMware Infrastructure
3 8 (8.70%) Hyper-V
4 6 (6.52%) KVM
5 2 (2.17%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (2.17%) XenApp
5 2 (2.17%) XenDesktop
6 1 (1.09%) Terminal Services
6 1 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 2 (2.17%) Jamf Pro
1 2 (2.17%) Microsoft Intune
1 2 (2.17%) SCCM
2 1 (1.09%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.09%) Nessus
2 1 (1.09%) Terraform
2 1 (1.09%) WSUS
Vendors
1 54 (58.70%) Microsoft
2 51 (55.43%) Citrix
3 41 (44.57%) ServiceNow
4 30 (32.61%) VMware
5 6 (6.52%) Red Hat
6 3 (3.26%) HP
6 3 (3.26%) Okta
7 2 (2.17%) Apple
7 2 (2.17%) Bloomberg
7 2 (2.17%) Cisco
7 2 (2.17%) Dell
7 2 (2.17%) Reuters
7 2 (2.17%) SolarWinds
7 2 (2.17%) Zscaler
8 1 (1.09%) CrowdStrike
8 1 (1.09%) IronPort
8 1 (1.09%) TOWER Software