

From Product to Roles: How Microsoft Certs Change But to fully understand role-based certifications, you’ll need to understand that Microsoft used to primarily offer product-based certifications. Within each job role, Microsoft certifications test technical professionals on a range of products and skills. Those experience ranges roughly equate to a beginner, intermediate, or expert in one of nine job roles: Microsoft's role-based certifications validate the skills a technical professional would learn in the first year, 3 to 5 years, or 5 to 7 years on the job. In this article, we’ll discuss why Microsoft changed its certifications, how to earn the new role-based Microsoft certifications, and what will replace the MCSA, MCSE, and MCSD. All these changes have shifted the Microsoft Certified Professional program from a product-based to a role-based certification model. They’ve retired product-based certification, introduced new role-based certs, and changed certification expiration dates. In the past couple of years, Microsoft has shaken up their entire certification program significantly with the introduction of role-based certifications. Vulnerability Analyst / Penetration Tester.User Interface / User Experience (UI / UX) Developer.User Interface / User Experience (UI / UX) Designer.Systems Integration Engineer / Specialist.Software Development / Engineering Manager.Software as a Service (SaaS) Sales Engineer.Business Intelligence Developer/Architect.
