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 15 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
15 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 485 614 692
Rank change year-on-year +129 +78 -86
Contract jobs citing MCSA 88 86 165
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.21% 0.15% 0.19%
As % of the Qualifications category 0.69% 0.55% 0.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 39 63 107
10th Percentile £105 £223 £185
25th Percentile £313 £372 £218
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £400 £500 £403
Median % change year-on-year -20.00% +24.22% +15.00%
75th Percentile £556 £645 £538
90th Percentile £633 £675 £575
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £495 £355
% change year-on-year -1.52% +39.44% +9.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 41 13 26
10th Percentile £14.16 - £14.25
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 - - -
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 12,821 15,525 18,800
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 30.13% 27.19% 21.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,940 10,364 12,432
10th Percentile £307 £330 £336
25th Percentile £425 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.45% +4.76% +7.69%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £626
90th Percentile £738 £743 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £530 £525 £500
% change year-on-year +0.95% +5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,052 789 770
10th Percentile £13.69 £15.25 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.72 £20.47 £19.77
Median hourly rate £40.00 £54.00 £43.85
Median % change year-on-year -25.93% +23.15% +13.90%
75th Percentile £61.35 £67.50 £58.66
90th Percentile £76.15 £79.30 £67.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.63 £49.94 £35.00
% change year-on-year -18.63% +42.68% -1.41%

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 +100 80 £538 +4.37% 32
UK excluding London +63 76 £488 -1.52% 33
East of England +47 48 £100 - 12
Work from Home +103 11 £444 -11.25% 7
South East +19 11 £538 +11.98% 3
London +98 10 £488 -4.41% 3
South West +19 8 £538 -2.27% 5
Scotland +52 6 £325 +47.73% 4
North of England +3 3 £325 -50.00% 5
Yorkshire +19 2 £325 -22.16% 3
North West +1 1 £400 -38.46% 2

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 25 (28.41%) Microsoft Exchange
2 17 (19.32%) Confluence
3 7 (7.95%) IIS
4 6 (6.82%) SharePoint
5 1 (1.14%) Exchange Server 2007
5 1 (1.14%) Exchange Server 2010
Applications
1 13 (14.77%) Microsoft Excel
1 13 (14.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (5.68%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (2.27%) Eikon
Cloud Services
1 50 (56.82%) Microsoft 365
2 9 (10.23%) Azure
3 2 (2.27%) AWS
3 2 (2.27%) Entra ID
3 2 (2.27%) OneDrive
4 1 (1.14%) Azure AKS
4 1 (1.14%) GCP
4 1 (1.14%) IaaS
4 1 (1.14%) Mimecast
4 1 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 41 (46.59%) Wi-Fi
2 21 (23.86%) DHCP
2 21 (23.86%) DNS
3 7 (7.95%) VPN
4 5 (5.68%) SAN
5 4 (4.55%) LAN
5 4 (4.55%) WAN
6 2 (2.27%) Firewall
6 2 (2.27%) NAS
7 1 (1.14%) Fibre Channel
7 1 (1.14%) iSCSI
7 1 (1.14%) Kerberos
7 1 (1.14%) MPLS
7 1 (1.14%) Network Security
7 1 (1.14%) TCP/IP
7 1 (1.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 2 (2.27%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (19.32%) JIRA
General
1 28 (31.82%) Retail
2 24 (27.27%) Social Skills
3 22 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (19.32%) Military
5 7 (7.95%) Finance
6 5 (5.68%) Telecoms
7 4 (4.55%) Banking
7 4 (4.55%) Manufacturing
7 4 (4.55%) Marketing
7 4 (4.55%) Pharmaceutical
8 2 (2.27%) Financial Institution
9 1 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (1.14%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 43 (48.86%) Analyst
2 41 (46.59%) Service Analyst
2 41 (46.59%) Service Desk Analyst
3 17 (19.32%) Test Engineer
4 16 (18.18%) Integration Engineer
4 16 (18.18%) Test and Integration Engineer
5 13 (14.77%) 1st Line Service Desk Analyst
6 9 (10.23%) Support Engineer
7 8 (9.09%) 3rd Line Support
8 5 (5.68%) 2nd Line Engineer
8 5 (5.68%) 2nd Line Support
8 5 (5.68%) 2nd Line Support Engineer
9 4 (4.55%) 3rd Line Engineer
9 4 (4.55%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
9 4 (4.55%) Infrastructure Engineer
9 4 (4.55%) Service Delivery Engineer
10 3 (3.41%) Server Engineer
11 2 (2.27%) Desktop Engineer
11 2 (2.27%) Technical Analyst
11 2 (2.27%) Technical Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (1.14%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 18 (20.45%) PKI
2 12 (13.64%) Data Centre
3 3 (3.41%) Self-Motivation
4 2 (2.27%) Blackberry
4 2 (2.27%) iPad
4 2 (2.27%) iPhone
5 1 (1.14%) Clustering
5 1 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (1.14%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 46 (52.27%) Windows
2 34 (38.64%) Windows Server
3 23 (26.14%) Windows Server 2012
4 8 (9.09%) Linux
5 7 (7.95%) Windows Server 2016
6 6 (6.82%) CentOS
6 6 (6.82%) Debian
6 6 (6.82%) Windows Server 2008
7 5 (5.68%) Windows 7
7 5 (5.68%) Windows 8
8 4 (4.55%) Windows 10
9 1 (1.14%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (53.41%) ITIL
2 46 (52.27%) Customer Service
3 41 (46.59%) Incident Management
4 19 (21.59%) Problem-Solving
5 17 (19.32%) Agile
5 17 (19.32%) Critical Thinking
5 17 (19.32%) Regression Testing
5 17 (19.32%) Service Delivery
5 17 (19.32%) Test Scripting
6 13 (14.77%) Mathematics
7 8 (9.09%) Infrastructure Engineering
8 7 (7.95%) Computer Science
9 5 (5.68%) Employee Productivity
10 4 (4.55%) PRINCE2
11 3 (3.41%) High Availability
12 2 (2.27%) BCP
12 2 (2.27%) Business Analysis
12 2 (2.27%) Fintech
12 2 (2.27%) Server Management
12 2 (2.27%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 19 (21.59%) SQL
2 4 (4.55%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 88 (100.00%) Microsoft Certification
2 48 (54.55%) A+ Certification
3 35 (39.77%) MCSE
4 32 (36.36%) SC Cleared
4 32 (36.36%) Security Cleared
5 17 (19.32%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
6 14 (15.91%) CCNA
6 14 (15.91%) Cisco Certification
6 14 (15.91%) Degree
7 8 (9.09%) MCP
8 7 (7.95%) CCNP
9 6 (6.82%) RHCT
10 5 (5.68%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (2.27%) CCENT
11 2 (2.27%) MCSD
12 1 (1.14%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (4.55%) SLA
System Software
1 50 (56.82%) Active Directory
2 28 (31.82%) VMware Infrastructure
3 6 (6.82%) Hyper-V
3 6 (6.82%) KVM
4 1 (1.14%) Terminal Services
4 1 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 2 (2.27%) SCCM
2 1 (1.14%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.14%) Microsoft Intune
2 1 (1.14%) Nessus
2 1 (1.14%) Terraform
2 1 (1.14%) WSUS
Vendors
1 51 (57.95%) Microsoft
2 49 (55.68%) Citrix
3 41 (46.59%) ServiceNow
4 29 (32.95%) VMware
5 6 (6.82%) Red Hat
6 3 (3.41%) Cisco
6 3 (3.41%) HP
6 3 (3.41%) SolarWinds
7 2 (2.27%) Bloomberg
7 2 (2.27%) Dell
7 2 (2.27%) Reuters
8 1 (1.14%) CrowdStrike
8 1 (1.14%) IronPort
8 1 (1.14%) TOWER Software
8 1 (1.14%) Veeam