Enterprise IT. Windows / AD / M365
The Microsoft-shop spine. A durable, hireable lane and a direct on-ramp to security, cloud and IAM.
Underrated, hireable everywhere, and the most reliable on-ramp into security, cloud and IAM from the inside of a Microsoft shop.
You want a stable, well-paid technical lane that lets you specialise later. Endpoint, Intune, AD and M365 work is everywhere and the pivot options later are excellent.
You're certain you want to write code or run product. Enterprise IT is operational work, and trying to make it into something it isn't leads to a frustrated couple of years.
Phased progression
Foundations → first role → specialisation → advanced. The realistic order, not a script.
Salary figures are POST practitioner estimates, not survey data.
- 010–6 monthsFoundations
Literacy, lab habits, the cert that opens first conversations.
MS-900 - 026–18 monthsFirst paid role
Land a Junior Sysadmin / Endpoint Admin. Operational time, not more certs, earns the next move.
Junior Sysadmin / Endpoint Admin£28–42k junior - 031.5–3 yearsSpecialisation
Add a specialist credential aligned to the work you're already doing.
MD-102AZ-801£45–65k senior sysadmin - 043+ yearsAdvanced
Move into adjacent roles. Long-term credentials become worth their cost.
M365 Administrator£70–95k infra lead (UK)
- 01Foundations0–6 months
Literacy, lab habits, the cert that opens first conversations.
MS-900 - 02First paid role6–18 months
Land a Junior Sysadmin / Endpoint Admin. Operational time, not more certs, earns the next move.
Junior Sysadmin / Endpoint Admin£28–42k junior - 03Specialisation1.5–3 years
Add a specialist credential aligned to the work you're already doing.
MD-102AZ-801£45–65k senior sysadmin - 04Advanced3+ years
Move into adjacent roles. Long-term credentials become worth their cost.
M365 Administrator£70–95k infra lead (UK)
Certification sequence
Ordered by realistic relevance, not vendor marketing.
- MS-900
- MD-102
- MS-102
- AZ-800
- AZ-801
- SC-300
Practical projects
What to actually build, the portfolio that opens interviews.
- Build a lab AD forest with one trust and a hybrid Entra connect
- Standard endpoint baseline with Intune Autopilot
- Hybrid Exchange mail-flow lab end-to-end
- ·Pivot to Azure admin
- ·Pivot to IAM via SC-300
Realistic expectations
What no recruiter will tell you.
That it's a dead-end. The dead-end version is the person who learned AD in 2010 and never touched cloud or scripting. The version that pivots into cloud, security or IAM is one of the most resilient careers on this site.
Two to five years from junior sysadmin to senior is the honest range. The fast end assumes you're actively picking up PowerShell, Intune and a bit of Azure; the slow end is what happens when you stay inside a single-vendor stack and let the years do the work for you. Plateau is the default outcome, not the exception.
What this is based on
Practitioner judgement. External evidence review pending.
Last reviewed: not yet reviewed · UK market
Where this fits
A pathway is a sequence, not a destination. Here are the roles and certs along it.
- IT Support → Sysadmin (the honest on-ramp)
The realistic first paid technology job. No shortcuts, but the cleanest gateway into every other world.
- Defensive / SOC → Detection Engineer
The realistic on-ramp into security. Defensive, structured, hireable. Biased toward SOC-stack certs. NOT CISSP.
- Network Engineer
Underrated, stable, foundational to almost every other track.
- AI will not delete IT, but it will shrink one kind of IT role
The 'AI replaces all of IT' narrative is wrong. The narrower version is mostly right, and worth planning around.
- Why most people fail trying to leave helpdesk
It's almost never a skills problem. It's a positioning problem, a portfolio problem, and a willingness-to-be-uncomfortable problem, in that order.
The next step
The pathway is plausible. Whether it holds for five years is a different question.
A Career Verdict applies the framework to your actual stage and stack: what holds, what breaks, what would change the call.
A route shows what is possible. A Career Verdict makes the call.
Career Verdict
Helpdesk → Security Architect
- 01The callA clear judgement on whether your route is realistic, and under what conditions.
- 02Where the route breaksThe most likely point to stall, and why it happens in practice.
- 03What to do nextSpecific priorities for the next 6–24 months, and what to drop.
Career Verdict
- The callA single written judgement on whether the route is realistic for you.
- Plateaus and failure modesThe flat years and the specific ways this route tends to stall.
- Where you standThe strongest and weakest parts of your current position, named.
- Salary realityWhat this route actually pays, set against what you've been told it pays.
Usually within minutes of payment. Kept 24 months, then deleted. Deletion on request at any time.
Built on POST's practitioner-authored assessment framework, informed by two decades across helpdesk, infrastructure and security. The verdict applies that framework to your inputs.