Azure Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft Azure
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Azure skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 22 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,202 4,046 4,796
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.70% 14.66% 14.44%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.92% 39.30% 42.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,037 2,778 3,472
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £416 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year - -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 40 31
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.62 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.68 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £35.99 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.82% +2.83% -24.21%
75th Percentile £80.63 £72.50 £54.00
90th Percentile £101.84 £95.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +5.33% +7.14% -35.19%

All Cloud Computing Skills
England

Azure falls under the Cloud Services category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring cloud computing skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for cloud computing skills 16,032 10,294 11,223
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.95% 37.31% 33.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,712 6,972 7,902
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 275 212
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.29 £18.51 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £26.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.62% +4.00% -24.24%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.10 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £34.13 £28.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +21.88% +12.00% -28.57%

Azure
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Azure relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Azure job vacancy trend in England

Azure
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure

Azure
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Azure in England over the 6 months to 22 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Azure in England

Azure
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure

Azure
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Azure in England over the 6 months to 22 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Azure in England

Azure
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Azure within the England region over the 6 months to 22 August 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
London +1 3,773 £550 +0.92% 936
North of England +8 1,046 £500 +5.26% 569
South East +1 932 £525 +5.00% 677
Midlands +4 652 £495 -4.21% 307
North West +6 539 £500 +3.09% 292
West Midlands +2 480 £493 -8.29% 184
South West +6 433 £540 +8.00% 311
Yorkshire +6 425 £500 +5.26% 191
East of England +4 174 £525 +2.94% 186
East Midlands +9 160 £494 +6.76% 122
North East +8 95 £506 +1.25% 95
Azure
UK

Azure
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 395 (5.48%) SharePoint
2 230 (3.19%) Confluence
3 181 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 141 (1.96%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.50%) Apache
7 39 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.40%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.12%) nginx
15 8 (0.11%) Mendix
16 7 (0.097%) Camunda
16 7 (0.097%) Umbraco
16 7 (0.097%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.083%) Documentum
17 6 (0.083%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 110 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.44%) Chatbot
4 32 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.15%) Trello
8 9 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
9 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.069%) Notion
11 3 (0.042%) Houdini
11 3 (0.042%) NUKE
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
13 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
13 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 105 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.097%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.097%) Shopify
8 6 (0.083%) Maximo
8 6 (0.083%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.069%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.069%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.056%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,553 (35.45%) AWS
2 1,550 (21.52%) Azure DevOps
3 1,221 (16.95%) GCP
4 952 (13.22%) Entra ID
5 911 (12.65%) Power Platform
6 742 (10.30%) Microsoft 365
7 704 (9.78%) GitHub
8 435 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 427 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
10 323 (4.48%) Serverless
11 317 (4.40%) SaaS
12 283 (3.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 274 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
14 259 (3.60%) Power Automate
15 258 (3.58%) Azure AKS
16 244 (3.39%) Dynamics 365
17 229 (3.18%) Snowflake
18 227 (3.15%) PowerApps
19 215 (2.99%) PaaS
20 208 (2.89%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 486 (6.75%) Firewall
2 380 (5.28%) DNS
3 299 (4.15%) VPN
4 276 (3.83%) Network Security
5 204 (2.83%) DHCP
6 185 (2.57%) WAN
7 168 (2.33%) TCP/IP
8 112 (1.56%) LAN
9 111 (1.54%) BGP
10 91 (1.26%) OSPF
10 91 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.24%) VLAN
12 74 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.87%) SAN
14 60 (0.83%) SSL
15 52 (0.72%) Wireless
16 44 (0.61%) VXLAN
17 41 (0.57%) HTTP
18 37 (0.51%) Internet
18 37 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 641 (8.90%) Power BI
2 423 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 365 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 299 (4.15%) Data Lake
5 242 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 196 (2.72%) Metadata
7 191 (2.65%) NoSQL
8 179 (2.49%) Azure SQL Database
9 122 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 119 (1.65%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.26%) Big Data
12 88 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 73 (1.01%) MongoDB
14 62 (0.86%) Tableau
15 61 (0.85%) MySQL
16 57 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 54 (0.75%) Star Schema
19 53 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
20 50 (0.69%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 577 (8.01%) Git
2 521 (7.23%) JIRA
3 385 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 299 (4.15%) GitLab
5 117 (1.62%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) Postman
7 52 (0.72%) JUnit
8 51 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.67%) JMeter
10 47 (0.65%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.54%) Maven
12 39 (0.54%) Visual Studio
13 37 (0.51%) WebDriver
14 34 (0.47%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.46%) Gradle
16 29 (0.40%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.37%) Gatling
19 26 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 1,920 (26.66%) Social Skills
2 1,406 (19.52%) Finance
3 790 (10.97%) Public Sector
4 727 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
5 419 (5.82%) Banking
6 206 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 193 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
8 186 (2.58%) Retail
9 146 (2.03%) Legal
10 84 (1.17%) Manufacturing
11 83 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
12 81 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 73 (1.01%) Aerospace
13 73 (1.01%) Marketing
13 73 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
14 71 (0.99%) Investment Banking
15 70 (0.97%) Law
16 62 (0.86%) Financial Institution
17 58 (0.81%) Military
18 53 (0.74%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,305 (18.12%) Architect
2 917 (12.73%) Senior
3 843 (11.71%) Developer
4 626 (8.69%) Azure Engineer
5 608 (8.44%) Lead
6 531 (7.37%) Data Engineer
7 421 (5.85%) Analyst
8 393 (5.46%) Solutions Architect
9 354 (4.92%) DevOps Engineer
10 329 (4.57%) Cloud Engineer
11 289 (4.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 260 (3.61%) Consultant
13 222 (3.08%) Data Architect
14 200 (2.78%) Platform Engineer
15 186 (2.58%) Azure Architect
16 178 (2.47%) Security Engineer
17 163 (2.26%) Technical Architect
18 162 (2.25%) Project Manager
19 161 (2.24%) Senior Developer
20 158 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,209 (16.79%) Terraform
2 556 (7.72%) .NET
3 547 (7.60%) REST
4 312 (4.33%) Kafka
5 259 (3.60%) React
6 249 (3.46%) PySpark
7 229 (3.18%) RESTful
8 225 (3.12%) OAuth
9 184 (2.55%) JSON
10 151 (2.10%) Spring
11 147 (2.04%) AngularJS
12 139 (1.93%) SAML
13 137 (1.90%) OpenID
14 136 (1.89%) Node.js
15 128 (1.78%) .NET Framework
15 128 (1.78%) HTML
16 127 (1.76%) OAuth2
17 125 (1.74%) Spring Boot
18 120 (1.67%) Middleware
19 111 (1.54%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 798 (11.08%) Cloud Native
2 370 (5.14%) Onboarding
3 306 (4.25%) Product Ownership
4 251 (3.49%) Hybrid Cloud
5 244 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
6 225 (3.12%) Data Centre
7 220 (3.05%) AI Agents
8 216 (3.00%) Enterprise Software
9 206 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
10 162 (2.25%) Security Posture
11 129 (1.79%) Management Information System
12 127 (1.76%) Data Structures
13 121 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 98 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
15 97 (1.35%) PKI
16 96 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
17 81 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
18 78 (1.08%) Replication
19 74 (1.03%) CMDB
20 68 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 879 (12.20%) Windows
2 438 (6.08%) Linux
3 315 (4.37%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.71%) Windows 10
5 84 (1.17%) Unix
6 80 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 70 (0.97%) Android
8 66 (0.92%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.87%) Mac OS
10 50 (0.69%) Ubuntu
11 48 (0.67%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.24%) CentOS
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
17 9 (0.12%) Debian
18 7 (0.097%) Amazon Linux
19 6 (0.083%) AIX
20 5 (0.069%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,665 (37.00%) DevOps
2 2,247 (31.20%) CI/CD
3 1,806 (25.08%) Agile
4 1,172 (16.27%) AI
5 1,169 (16.23%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,149 (15.95%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,062 (14.75%) Migration
8 1,041 (14.45%) Analytics
9 997 (13.84%) Problem-Solving
10 819 (11.37%) Continuous Improvement
11 784 (10.89%) Data Modelling
12 702 (9.75%) Roadmaps
13 699 (9.71%) Data Pipeline
14 694 (9.64%) Business Intelligence
14 694 (9.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 651 (9.04%) Containerisation
16 605 (8.40%) Microservices
17 603 (8.37%) Test Automation
18 598 (8.30%) ETL
19 597 (8.29%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,670 (23.19%) Python
2 1,435 (19.93%) SQL
3 802 (11.14%) PowerShell
4 597 (8.29%) Java
5 546 (7.58%) C#
6 422 (5.86%) JavaScript
7 348 (4.83%) Bash
8 304 (4.22%) Bicep
9 251 (3.49%) TypeScript
10 96 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 63 (0.87%) Go
13 51 (0.71%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.68%) Scala
16 37 (0.51%) R
17 33 (0.46%) PL/SQL
18 32 (0.44%) Kotlin
19 30 (0.42%) Groovy
20 27 (0.37%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,873 (26.01%) Security Cleared
2 1,510 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 525 (7.29%) Degree
4 408 (5.67%) Azure Certification
5 255 (3.54%) DV Cleared
6 238 (3.30%) CISSP
7 212 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 180 (2.50%) AWS Certification
10 171 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 149 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
12 113 (1.57%) CISM
13 91 (1.26%) CCNP
14 74 (1.03%) PMI Certification
15 73 (1.01%) PMP
16 72 (1.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 60 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 43 (0.60%) CCSP
19 43 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 511 (7.10%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.51%) QA
3 275 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 274 (3.80%) NIST
5 272 (3.78%) GDPR
6 168 (2.33%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.37%) SLA
8 98 (1.36%) NCSC
9 69 (0.96%) GRC
9 69 (0.96%) WCAG
10 66 (0.92%) PCI DSS
11 64 (0.89%) Cyber Essentials
12 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 52 (0.72%) PMO
14 35 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.36%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 17 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 910 (12.64%) Active Directory
2 781 (10.84%) Docker
3 216 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 104 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.89%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 35 (0.49%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.43%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 16 (0.22%) IAG
13 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (0.15%) Postfix
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.097%) Varnish
17 6 (0.083%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.083%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.069%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.069%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,072 (14.88%) Kubernetes
2 404 (5.61%) Ansible
3 392 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 228 (3.17%) Grafana
5 182 (2.53%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 116 (1.61%) SCCM
8 63 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 50 (0.69%) Argo
10 48 (0.67%) Puppet
11 36 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 27 (0.37%) Istio
15 24 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 22 (0.31%) SCOM
17 19 (0.26%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 14 (0.19%) CASB
19 14 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,508 (34.82%) Microsoft
2 693 (9.62%) Databricks
3 368 (5.11%) ServiceNow
4 311 (4.32%) VMware
5 298 (4.14%) Google
6 287 (3.99%) Oracle
7 220 (3.05%) Cisco
8 194 (2.69%) SAP
9 177 (2.46%) Splunk
10 164 (2.28%) OpenAI
11 146 (2.03%) CyberArk
12 140 (1.94%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.94%) Salesforce
13 115 (1.60%) Foundry
14 108 (1.50%) Dynatrace
15 92 (1.28%) Zscaler
16 79 (1.10%) Informatica
17 77 (1.07%) IBM
18 73 (1.01%) Okta
19 70 (0.97%) Fortinet