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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,147 4,118 4,845
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.42% 14.80% 14.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.56% 39.49% 42.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,014 2,827 3,423
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £731 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 151 40 24
10th Percentile £19.50 £16.27 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.99 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +45.87% -2.07% -20.42%
75th Percentile £81.81 £68.56 £53.50
90th Percentile £103.75 £89.38 £82.16
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +2.00% +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 16,038 10,427 11,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.60% 37.48% 34.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,714 7,046 7,779
10th Percentile £320 £308 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £640
90th Percentile £718 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 545 260 183
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.48 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.97 £18.87 £19.97
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.38 £30.88
Median % change year-on-year +28.87% -14.57% -6.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £44.61 £61.78
90th Percentile £82.75 £71.51 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £29.63 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.70% -1.25% -14.29%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 3,734 £550 +0.92% 2,509
North of England +9 1,043 £500 +5.26% 806
South East 0 910 £525 +5.00% 892
Midlands +2 647 £493 -3.90% 453
North West +5 532 £500 +5.26% 403
West Midlands +2 476 £488 -9.72% 259
South West +3 433 £550 +10.00% 395
Yorkshire +7 427 £500 +5.26% 277
East of England +3 183 £525 +5.00% 291
East Midlands +6 160 £500 +11.11% 193
North East +5 97 £500 - 131
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
1 416 (5.82%) SharePoint
2 222 (3.11%) Confluence
3 184 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 165 (2.31%) Apache Spark
5 155 (2.17%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.53%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 21 (0.29%) CMS
10 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
14 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.098%) Mendix
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
17 5 (0.070%) Tomcat
Applications
1 110 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 69 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.50%) Chatbot
5 35 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 5 (0.070%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Mingle
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 112 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.098%) Shopify
9 6 (0.084%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.084%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 6 (0.084%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.056%) Endur
11 4 (0.056%) Maximo
11 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,542 (35.57%) AWS
2 1,514 (21.18%) Azure DevOps
3 1,218 (17.04%) GCP
4 974 (13.63%) Entra ID
5 928 (12.98%) Power Platform
6 766 (10.72%) Microsoft 365
7 715 (10.00%) GitHub
8 424 (5.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 421 (5.89%) GitHub Actions
10 344 (4.81%) Serverless
11 315 (4.41%) SaaS
12 275 (3.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 269 (3.76%) Power Automate
14 268 (3.75%) Azure Monitor
15 255 (3.57%) Dynamics 365
16 251 (3.51%) Snowflake
17 241 (3.37%) Azure AKS
18 237 (3.32%) PowerApps
19 229 (3.20%) Microsoft Copilot
20 205 (2.87%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 480 (6.72%) Firewall
2 377 (5.27%) DNS
3 289 (4.04%) VPN
4 272 (3.81%) Network Security
5 214 (2.99%) DHCP
6 179 (2.50%) WAN
7 159 (2.22%) TCP/IP
8 102 (1.43%) BGP
9 101 (1.41%) LAN
10 93 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) VLAN
12 84 (1.18%) OSPF
13 76 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.87%) SSL
15 61 (0.85%) SAN
16 56 (0.78%) Wireless
17 41 (0.57%) VXLAN
18 37 (0.52%) HTTP
18 37 (0.52%) IPsec
19 36 (0.50%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 634 (8.87%) Power BI
2 422 (5.90%) SQL Server
3 358 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
4 313 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 244 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 214 (2.99%) Metadata
7 189 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 163 (2.28%) Azure SQL Database
9 127 (1.78%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.71%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 88 (1.23%) Big Data
13 79 (1.11%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.04%) MySQL
15 58 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
15 58 (0.81%) Tableau
16 56 (0.78%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
18 52 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
18 52 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 588 (8.23%) Git
2 494 (6.91%) JIRA
3 389 (5.44%) Jenkins
4 307 (4.30%) GitLab
5 111 (1.55%) Selenium
6 61 (0.85%) Postman
7 51 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 50 (0.70%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.69%) JUnit
10 47 (0.66%) Cucumber
11 44 (0.62%) Maven
12 43 (0.60%) JMeter
13 37 (0.52%) Gradle
13 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.50%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.43%) Claude Code
17 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
17 29 (0.41%) MLflow
18 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,969 (27.55%) Social Skills
2 1,403 (19.63%) Finance
3 762 (10.66%) Public Sector
4 729 (10.20%) Analytical Skills
5 426 (5.96%) Banking
6 204 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 199 (2.78%) Retail
8 182 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
9 149 (2.08%) Legal
10 96 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 83 (1.16%) Marketing
13 80 (1.12%) Aerospace
14 76 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 72 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 71 (0.99%) Military
17 70 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
18 69 (0.97%) Law
19 54 (0.76%) Financial Institution
19 54 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,343 (18.79%) Architect
2 912 (12.76%) Senior
3 792 (11.08%) Developer
4 608 (8.51%) Azure Engineer
5 601 (8.41%) Lead
6 524 (7.33%) Data Engineer
7 419 (5.86%) Analyst
7 419 (5.86%) Solutions Architect
8 365 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
9 342 (4.79%) Cloud Engineer
10 288 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
11 275 (3.85%) Consultant
12 227 (3.18%) Data Architect
13 203 (2.84%) Platform Engineer
14 180 (2.52%) Security Engineer
15 175 (2.45%) Azure Architect
16 168 (2.35%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 164 (2.29%) Technical Architect
18 162 (2.27%) Project Manager
19 159 (2.22%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,233 (17.25%) Terraform
2 569 (7.96%) REST
3 529 (7.40%) .NET
4 327 (4.58%) Kafka
5 254 (3.55%) React
6 252 (3.53%) PySpark
7 238 (3.33%) OAuth
8 226 (3.16%) RESTful
9 194 (2.71%) JSON
10 145 (2.03%) OpenID
11 142 (1.99%) SAML
12 139 (1.94%) Spring
13 135 (1.89%) OAuth2
14 127 (1.78%) AngularJS
14 127 (1.78%) Spring Boot
15 125 (1.75%) HTML
16 120 (1.68%) Node.js
17 118 (1.65%) .NET Framework
18 114 (1.60%) ARM Templates
18 114 (1.60%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 800 (11.19%) Cloud Native
2 369 (5.16%) Onboarding
3 328 (4.59%) Product Ownership
4 260 (3.64%) Hybrid Cloud
5 245 (3.43%) AI Agents
6 243 (3.40%) Enterprise Software
7 235 (3.29%) Distributed Systems
8 221 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 193 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
10 160 (2.24%) Security Posture
11 146 (2.04%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.82%) Data Structures
13 121 (1.69%) Public Cloud
14 100 (1.40%) PKI
15 98 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
16 96 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
17 89 (1.25%) Replication
18 78 (1.09%) CMDB
19 77 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
20 64 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 882 (12.34%) Windows
2 451 (6.31%) Linux
3 333 (4.66%) Windows Server
4 129 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.16%) Unix
6 77 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 74 (1.04%) Android
8 69 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 67 (0.94%) Mac OS
10 54 (0.76%) Ubuntu
11 45 (0.63%) VMS
12 21 (0.29%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,622 (36.69%) DevOps
2 2,248 (31.45%) CI/CD
3 1,788 (25.02%) Agile
4 1,266 (17.71%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,244 (17.41%) AI
6 1,221 (17.08%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,054 (14.75%) Migration
8 1,037 (14.51%) Analytics
9 1,009 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
10 834 (11.67%) Continuous Improvement
11 781 (10.93%) Data Modelling
12 752 (10.52%) Roadmaps
13 693 (9.70%) Business Intelligence
14 684 (9.57%) Data Pipeline
15 682 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 645 (9.02%) Containerisation
17 635 (8.88%) Technical Leadership
18 599 (8.38%) Test Automation
19 596 (8.34%) Data Engineering
20 585 (8.19%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,662 (23.25%) Python
2 1,392 (19.48%) SQL
3 802 (11.22%) PowerShell
4 587 (8.21%) Java
5 522 (7.30%) C#
6 419 (5.86%) JavaScript
7 355 (4.97%) Bash
8 315 (4.41%) Bicep
9 250 (3.50%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 59 (0.83%) Go
13 55 (0.77%) Scala
14 52 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.69%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.49%) R
17 30 (0.42%) Groovy
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,865 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 1,484 (20.76%) SC Cleared
3 529 (7.40%) Degree
4 420 (5.88%) Azure Certification
5 271 (3.79%) DV Cleared
6 251 (3.51%) CISSP
7 234 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.62%) AWS Certification
9 184 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
10 164 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
11 162 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
12 123 (1.72%) CISM
13 85 (1.19%) CCNP
14 78 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 77 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 76 (1.06%) PMP
17 57 (0.80%) Master's Degree
18 54 (0.76%) ISTQB
19 51 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
20 50 (0.70%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 526 (7.36%) Data Quality
2 403 (5.64%) QA
3 282 (3.95%) NIST
4 278 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 266 (3.72%) GDPR
6 173 (2.42%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.39%) SLA
8 96 (1.34%) NCSC
9 77 (1.08%) WCAG
10 73 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.97%) GRC
12 68 (0.95%) PCI DSS
13 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 52 (0.73%) PMO
15 41 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 28 (0.39%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
19 19 (0.27%) NIST 800
20 18 (0.25%) COBIT
System Software
1 932 (13.04%) Active Directory
2 782 (10.94%) Docker
3 219 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 107 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.90%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) IAG
12 15 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
13 11 (0.15%) Postfix
14 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
17 4 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,074 (15.03%) Kubernetes
2 413 (5.78%) Ansible
3 399 (5.58%) Microsoft Intune
4 222 (3.11%) Grafana
5 173 (2.42%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
7 122 (1.71%) SCCM
8 63 (0.88%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Argo
10 48 (0.67%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 31 (0.43%) SCOM
15 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
16 18 (0.25%) CASB
16 18 (0.25%) Istio
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,592 (36.27%) Microsoft
2 731 (10.23%) Databricks
3 374 (5.23%) ServiceNow
4 323 (4.52%) VMware
5 307 (4.30%) Google
6 290 (4.06%) Oracle
7 227 (3.18%) Cisco
8 192 (2.69%) SAP
9 191 (2.67%) Splunk
10 171 (2.39%) OpenAI
11 155 (2.17%) Salesforce
12 147 (2.06%) CyberArk
13 143 (2.00%) Palo Alto
14 115 (1.61%) Foundry
15 110 (1.54%) Dynatrace
16 80 (1.12%) Informatica
16 80 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 76 (1.06%) Fortinet
18 75 (1.05%) IBM
19 66 (0.92%) Red Hat