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 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,025 4,303 4,794
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.20% 15.31% 14.80%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.12% 39.86% 42.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,898 2,954 3,275
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £413 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £529 £519 £525
% change year-on-year +2.03% -1.24% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 168 40 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £24.22 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £64.77 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.25 £89.38 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £42.35 £32.77 £35.00
% change year-on-year +29.23% -6.37% -24.21%

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 15,923 10,795 11,323
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.45% 38.42% 34.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,605 7,284 7,564
10th Percentile £322 £303 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% -3.67%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 570 256 161
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.12 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.51 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +8.29%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +19.28% -28.14% +6.06%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 0 3,714 £550 - 3,778
North of England +5 1,003 £500 +5.26% 1,125
South East +1 897 £525 +5.00% 858
Midlands +1 623 £493 -5.38% 570
North West +4 486 £500 +5.26% 587
West Midlands +2 483 £479 -12.91% 374
Yorkshire +4 429 £500 +1.73% 393
South West +3 400 £550 +7.53% 432
East of England -1 187 £503 +0.50% 319
East Midlands -1 136 £500 +8.11% 196
North East -1 97 £506 +1.25% 152
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
1 410 (5.84%) SharePoint
2 233 (3.32%) Confluence
3 175 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.41%) Apache Spark
5 143 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.55%) Apache
7 32 (0.46%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) CMS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
10 14 (0.20%) nginx
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.100%) Mendix
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
16 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 107 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.100%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.100%) Revit
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) Mingle
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) 1Password
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) PTC Creo
Business Applications
1 112 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.19%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.100%) Shopify
9 5 (0.071%) Maximo
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.071%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.057%) Quorum
10 4 (0.057%) Ripple
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,453 (34.92%) AWS
2 1,498 (21.32%) Azure DevOps
3 1,234 (17.57%) GCP
4 1,026 (14.60%) Entra ID
5 920 (13.10%) Power Platform
6 790 (11.25%) Microsoft 365
7 725 (10.32%) GitHub
8 420 (5.98%) GitHub Actions
9 401 (5.71%) Azure Data Factory
10 339 (4.83%) Serverless
11 316 (4.50%) SaaS
12 283 (4.03%) Azure Monitor
13 272 (3.87%) Dynamics 365
14 271 (3.86%) Power Automate
15 256 (3.64%) Snowflake
16 250 (3.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 240 (3.42%) PowerApps
18 237 (3.37%) Azure AKS
19 234 (3.33%) Microsoft Copilot
20 209 (2.98%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 473 (6.73%) Firewall
2 384 (5.47%) DNS
3 291 (4.14%) VPN
4 265 (3.77%) Network Security
5 221 (3.15%) DHCP
6 166 (2.36%) WAN
7 165 (2.35%) TCP/IP
8 103 (1.47%) BGP
9 91 (1.30%) LAN
10 87 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 85 (1.21%) OSPF
12 76 (1.08%) VLAN
13 72 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.84%) Wireless
15 57 (0.81%) SAN
16 56 (0.80%) SSL
17 38 (0.54%) MPLS
18 37 (0.53%) HTTP
18 37 (0.53%) Internet
18 37 (0.53%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 605 (8.61%) Power BI
2 412 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 333 (4.74%) Data Warehouse
4 301 (4.28%) Data Lake
5 232 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
6 217 (3.09%) Metadata
7 180 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 157 (2.23%) Azure SQL Database
9 122 (1.74%) Relational Database
10 117 (1.67%) Delta Lake
11 93 (1.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 91 (1.30%) MySQL
13 84 (1.20%) Big Data
14 74 (1.05%) MongoDB
15 60 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
16 57 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
17 56 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.73%) Redis
18 51 (0.73%) Tableau
19 50 (0.71%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 615 (8.75%) Git
2 484 (6.89%) JIRA
3 396 (5.64%) Jenkins
4 310 (4.41%) GitLab
5 124 (1.77%) Selenium
6 68 (0.97%) Postman
7 64 (0.91%) Cucumber
8 53 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.70%) JUnit
10 48 (0.68%) JMeter
11 46 (0.65%) Visual Studio
12 45 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 42 (0.60%) Maven
14 40 (0.57%) Claude Code
15 39 (0.56%) Gradle
16 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.48%) Bitbucket
18 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
19 30 (0.43%) LoadRunner
20 27 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 1,985 (28.26%) Social Skills
2 1,417 (20.17%) Finance
3 754 (10.73%) Public Sector
4 722 (10.28%) Analytical Skills
5 457 (6.51%) Banking
6 206 (2.93%) Retail
7 198 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 170 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
9 136 (1.94%) Legal
10 98 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
10 98 (1.40%) Manufacturing
11 91 (1.30%) Marketing
12 88 (1.25%) Aerospace
12 88 (1.25%) Investment Banking
13 78 (1.11%) Telecoms
14 74 (1.05%) Military
15 66 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
16 61 (0.87%) Law
17 57 (0.81%) Billing
18 55 (0.78%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,323 (18.83%) Architect
2 909 (12.94%) Senior
3 800 (11.39%) Developer
4 608 (8.65%) Lead
5 583 (8.30%) Azure Engineer
6 502 (7.15%) Data Engineer
7 425 (6.05%) Solutions Architect
8 389 (5.54%) Analyst
9 359 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
10 353 (5.02%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 278 (3.96%) Consultant
13 218 (3.10%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.69%) Platform Engineer
15 185 (2.63%) Security Engineer
16 177 (2.52%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 170 (2.42%) Azure Architect
18 160 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 158 (2.25%) Project Manager
20 150 (2.14%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,230 (17.51%) Terraform
2 630 (8.97%) REST
3 532 (7.57%) .NET
4 343 (4.88%) Kafka
5 273 (3.89%) React
6 256 (3.64%) OAuth
7 235 (3.35%) PySpark
8 229 (3.26%) RESTful
9 197 (2.80%) JSON
10 157 (2.23%) OpenID
11 151 (2.15%) OAuth2
12 145 (2.06%) SAML
13 141 (2.01%) HTML
14 132 (1.88%) SOAP
15 131 (1.86%) Middleware
16 124 (1.77%) AngularJS
16 124 (1.77%) Spring
17 120 (1.71%) ARM Templates
18 119 (1.69%) Spring Boot
19 115 (1.64%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 787 (11.20%) Cloud Native
2 388 (5.52%) Onboarding
3 345 (4.91%) Product Ownership
4 282 (4.01%) Enterprise Software
5 273 (3.89%) AI Agents
6 262 (3.73%) Hybrid Cloud
7 241 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
8 233 (3.32%) Data Centre
9 192 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
10 164 (2.33%) Management Information System
11 163 (2.32%) Security Posture
12 130 (1.85%) Data Structures
13 113 (1.61%) PKI
13 113 (1.61%) Public Cloud
14 97 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
15 92 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
16 88 (1.25%) CMDB
17 79 (1.12%) Replication
18 74 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
19 67 (0.95%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 881 (12.54%) Windows
2 470 (6.69%) Linux
3 350 (4.98%) Windows Server
4 144 (2.05%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.15%) Unix
6 77 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 73 (1.04%) Android
8 67 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 56 (0.80%) Ubuntu
10 53 (0.75%) Mac OS
11 39 (0.56%) VMS
12 25 (0.36%) CentOS
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
17 6 (0.085%) Debian
18 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
18 4 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,587 (36.83%) DevOps
2 2,261 (32.19%) CI/CD
3 1,742 (24.80%) Agile
4 1,348 (19.19%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,261 (17.95%) AI
6 1,236 (17.59%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,055 (15.02%) Migration
8 1,006 (14.32%) Problem-Solving
9 988 (14.06%) Analytics
10 850 (12.10%) Continuous Improvement
11 781 (11.12%) Roadmaps
12 752 (10.70%) Data Modelling
13 664 (9.45%) Business Intelligence
14 655 (9.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 651 (9.27%) Data Pipeline
16 646 (9.20%) Technical Leadership
17 644 (9.17%) Test Automation
18 622 (8.85%) Containerisation
19 613 (8.73%) Cybersecurity
20 602 (8.57%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,682 (23.94%) Python
2 1,352 (19.25%) SQL
3 841 (11.97%) PowerShell
4 569 (8.10%) Java
5 539 (7.67%) C#
6 453 (6.45%) JavaScript
7 376 (5.35%) Bash
8 327 (4.65%) Bicep
9 276 (3.93%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 71 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 67 (0.95%) Go
13 59 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
14 53 (0.75%) Scala
15 51 (0.73%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
17 30 (0.43%) R
18 29 (0.41%) C++
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,838 (26.16%) Security Cleared
2 1,456 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 530 (7.54%) Degree
4 415 (5.91%) Azure Certification
5 290 (4.13%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.47%) CISSP
7 230 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 202 (2.88%) AWS Certification
9 172 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
10 170 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
11 169 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
12 124 (1.77%) CISM
13 85 (1.21%) PMI Certification
14 82 (1.17%) PMP
15 78 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 73 (1.04%) CCNP
17 60 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.81%) ISTQB
19 53 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
20 52 (0.74%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 531 (7.56%) Data Quality
2 411 (5.85%) QA
3 273 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 253 (3.60%) NIST
5 246 (3.50%) GDPR
6 178 (2.53%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.41%) SLA
8 88 (1.25%) NCSC
9 76 (1.08%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (1.00%) GRC
12 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
13 49 (0.70%) PMO
14 47 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 42 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 34 (0.48%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.33%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.28%) COBIT
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 934 (13.30%) Active Directory
2 766 (10.90%) Docker
3 225 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 134 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
6 105 (1.49%) Hyper-V
7 70 (1.00%) vSphere
8 47 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.37%) VMware NSX
10 18 (0.26%) Firmware
11 16 (0.23%) IAG
12 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.13%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.100%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,069 (15.22%) Kubernetes
2 424 (6.04%) Ansible
3 412 (5.86%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (3.37%) Grafana
5 176 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 138 (1.96%) SCCM
7 128 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
8 61 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 52 (0.74%) Argo
10 47 (0.67%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.46%) SCOM
13 30 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) CASB
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.23%) Packer
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
19 13 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,672 (38.04%) Microsoft
2 726 (10.33%) Databricks
3 356 (5.07%) ServiceNow
4 338 (4.81%) Google
5 320 (4.56%) VMware
6 293 (4.17%) Oracle
7 214 (3.05%) Cisco
8 203 (2.89%) Splunk
9 186 (2.65%) OpenAI
9 186 (2.65%) SAP
10 168 (2.39%) Salesforce
11 145 (2.06%) Palo Alto
12 139 (1.98%) CyberArk
13 128 (1.82%) Dynatrace
14 114 (1.62%) Foundry
15 84 (1.20%) IBM
16 82 (1.17%) Zscaler
17 75 (1.07%) Fortinet
18 67 (0.95%) Informatica
19 65 (0.93%) Okta