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 2 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,573 4,080 5,159
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.78% 16.12% 13.59%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.23% 42.70% 41.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,963 2,790 3,799
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK median daily rate £523 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -0.48% -1.87% -4.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 24 69
10th Percentile £25.47 £23.65 £17.78
25th Percentile £54.66 £24.70 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -21.26%
75th Percentile £64.20 £65.94 £60.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £77.41 £72.00
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -17.90%

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 13,196 9,555 12,372
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.37% 37.74% 32.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,101 6,485 8,919
10th Percentile £309 £313 £272
25th Percentile £408 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £708 £738 £730
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 374 149 323
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.28 £14.15
25th Percentile £20.31 £21.05 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +45.45% +28.69% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £45.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £79.28 £74.10 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £27.13 £21.37
% change year-on-year +45.62% +26.93% -14.52%

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 2 March 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 2 March 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 2 March 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 3,017 £545 -0.91% 1,017
North of England 0 730 £500 +5.26% 655
South East -1 695 £500 -7.83% 877
Midlands -2 461 £500 -4.08% 363
North West 0 370 £492 -1.60% 334
West Midlands -2 347 £525 -1.87% 201
South West +4 339 £510 -2.95% 320
Yorkshire -3 313 £500 +11.11% 233
East of England -2 157 £550 +2.33% 276
East Midlands -3 112 £436 -7.23% 155
North East -3 51 £515 +7.01% 99
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
1 269 (4.83%) SharePoint
2 190 (3.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 154 (2.76%) Apache Spark
4 146 (2.62%) Confluence
5 82 (1.47%) Apache
6 76 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
9 14 (0.25%) CMS
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
10 13 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.23%) Camunda
11 10 (0.18%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.18%) IIS
11 10 (0.18%) Mendix
12 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.13%) Skype for Business
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 6 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 105 (1.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.49%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.83%) MS Visio
4 42 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.13%) Trello
8 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.090%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.090%) Weka
9 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.036%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.018%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.018%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.018%) InDesign
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 95 (1.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.20%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.13%) Endur
7 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.090%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.090%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.090%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.090%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.090%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.090%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.090%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 4 (0.072%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 1,977 (35.47%) AWS
2 1,167 (20.94%) GCP
3 1,104 (19.81%) Azure DevOps
4 756 (13.57%) Power Platform
5 713 (12.79%) Entra ID
6 667 (11.97%) Microsoft 365
7 548 (9.83%) GitHub
8 413 (7.41%) Azure Data Factory
9 312 (5.60%) Serverless
10 307 (5.51%) GitHub Actions
11 258 (4.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 240 (4.31%) Dynamics 365
13 234 (4.20%) SaaS
14 213 (3.82%) Power Automate
15 211 (3.79%) Azure AKS
16 199 (3.57%) Azure Functions
17 188 (3.37%) Azure Monitor
17 188 (3.37%) PaaS
18 182 (3.27%) Snowflake
19 181 (3.25%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 376 (6.75%) Firewall
2 250 (4.49%) DNS
3 197 (3.53%) VPN
4 167 (3.00%) Network Security
5 150 (2.69%) DHCP
6 128 (2.30%) WAN
7 95 (1.70%) LAN
8 92 (1.65%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.40%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.18%) VLAN
11 65 (1.17%) Kerberos
12 61 (1.09%) SD-WAN
13 40 (0.72%) HTTP
14 35 (0.63%) BGP
15 34 (0.61%) Wireless
16 31 (0.56%) OSPF
16 31 (0.56%) SSL
17 29 (0.52%) MPLS
18 28 (0.50%) Internet
18 28 (0.50%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 523 (9.38%) Power BI
2 316 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 296 (5.31%) Data Warehouse
4 270 (4.84%) Data Lake
5 204 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
6 185 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
7 163 (2.92%) NoSQL
8 132 (2.37%) Metadata
9 106 (1.90%) Delta Lake
10 102 (1.83%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 73 (1.31%) MongoDB
13 67 (1.20%) Big Data
14 65 (1.17%) Tableau
15 58 (1.04%) BigQuery
15 58 (1.04%) Oracle Database
16 53 (0.95%) MySQL
17 48 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
18 46 (0.83%) Redis
19 37 (0.66%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 428 (7.68%) Git
2 388 (6.96%) JIRA
3 271 (4.86%) Jenkins
4 209 (3.75%) GitLab
5 91 (1.63%) Selenium
6 68 (1.22%) Postman
7 57 (1.02%) JUnit
8 54 (0.97%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.88%) JMeter
9 49 (0.88%) MLflow
10 43 (0.77%) SonarQube
11 37 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
13 32 (0.57%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.50%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.48%) TestRail
17 25 (0.45%) Bitbucket
18 24 (0.43%) Maven
19 22 (0.39%) ERwin
General
1 1,703 (30.56%) Social Skills
2 1,022 (18.34%) Finance
3 586 (10.51%) Public Sector
4 570 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
5 334 (5.99%) Banking
6 185 (3.32%) Documentation Skills
7 104 (1.87%) Legal
8 97 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
10 81 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
11 80 (1.44%) Retail
12 78 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
13 71 (1.27%) Marketing
14 58 (1.04%) Financial Institution
15 57 (1.02%) Investment Banking
15 57 (1.02%) Telecoms
16 54 (0.97%) Law
17 46 (0.83%) Front Office
18 38 (0.68%) Manufacturing
19 35 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 919 (16.49%) Architect
2 777 (13.94%) Developer
3 634 (11.38%) Senior
4 459 (8.24%) Data Engineer
5 458 (8.22%) Azure Engineer
6 409 (7.34%) Lead
7 372 (6.68%) Analyst
8 271 (4.86%) Solutions Architect
9 262 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 251 (4.50%) Consultant
11 156 (2.80%) Security Engineer
12 152 (2.73%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 151 (2.71%) Cloud Engineer
14 138 (2.48%) Azure Architect
15 134 (2.40%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 134 (2.40%) Senior Developer
16 123 (2.21%) Platform Engineer
17 112 (2.01%) Data Architect
18 110 (1.97%) Azure Data Engineer
19 108 (1.94%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 428 (7.68%) .NET
2 376 (6.75%) REST
3 262 (4.70%) React
4 213 (3.82%) Kafka
5 207 (3.71%) PySpark
6 200 (3.59%) Node.js
7 197 (3.53%) RESTful
8 171 (3.07%) OAuth
9 168 (3.01%) Spring
10 157 (2.82%) HTML
11 154 (2.76%) AngularJS
12 142 (2.55%) LDAP
13 139 (2.49%) Spring Boot
14 133 (2.39%) PyTorch
15 126 (2.26%) CSS
16 122 (2.19%) Middleware
16 122 (2.19%) SOAP
17 118 (2.12%) SAML
17 118 (2.12%) TensorFlow
18 113 (2.03%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 501 (8.99%) Cloud Native
2 229 (4.11%) Onboarding
3 193 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 161 (2.89%) Security Posture
5 152 (2.73%) Hybrid Cloud
6 144 (2.58%) Enterprise Software
7 135 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
8 125 (2.24%) Data Centre
9 107 (1.92%) Public Cloud
10 90 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
11 82 (1.47%) AI Agents
12 76 (1.36%) Data Structures
12 76 (1.36%) Replication
13 65 (1.17%) Algorithms
14 64 (1.15%) Management Information System
15 60 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
16 55 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
17 53 (0.95%) Low-Code
18 46 (0.83%) PKI
19 45 (0.81%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 625 (11.21%) Windows
2 305 (5.47%) Linux
3 177 (3.18%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.03%) Windows 10
5 60 (1.08%) Unix
6 55 (0.99%) VMS
7 45 (0.81%) Mac OS
8 36 (0.65%) Apple iOS
8 36 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 28 (0.50%) Android
10 21 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
11 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
13 12 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.20%) CentOS
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.090%) AIX
17 5 (0.090%) Data ONTAP
18 4 (0.072%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,024 (36.32%) DevOps
2 1,677 (30.09%) CI/CD
3 1,339 (24.03%) Agile
4 1,018 (18.27%) Problem-Solving
5 852 (15.29%) Analytics
6 791 (14.19%) AI
7 721 (12.94%) Infrastructure as Code
8 688 (12.35%) Migration
9 596 (10.69%) Business Intelligence
9 596 (10.69%) Data Modelling
10 583 (10.46%) Stakeholder Management
11 542 (9.73%) Containerisation
12 533 (9.56%) Continuous Improvement
13 508 (9.12%) ETL
14 507 (9.10%) Data Pipeline
15 504 (9.04%) Machine Learning
16 490 (8.79%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 485 (8.70%) Microservices
18 473 (8.49%) Data Engineering
19 439 (7.88%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,455 (26.11%) Python
2 1,262 (22.64%) SQL
3 621 (11.14%) PowerShell
4 467 (8.38%) C#
5 463 (8.31%) Java
6 434 (7.79%) JavaScript
7 241 (4.32%) TypeScript
8 224 (4.02%) Bash
9 159 (2.85%) Bicep
10 90 (1.61%) Scala
11 77 (1.38%) PL/SQL
12 76 (1.36%) Go
13 66 (1.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 62 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
15 61 (1.09%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.70%) R
17 28 (0.50%) C++
17 28 (0.50%) PHP
17 28 (0.50%) Shell Script
18 20 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,360 (24.40%) Security Cleared
2 1,113 (19.97%) SC Cleared
3 449 (8.06%) Degree
4 327 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 189 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.94%) CISSP
7 152 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.19%) AWS Certification
9 113 (2.03%) DV Cleared
10 102 (1.83%) CISM
11 99 (1.78%) Cisco Certification
12 82 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
13 70 (1.26%) Master's Degree
14 54 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
15 51 (0.92%) CCNP
16 47 (0.84%) PMI Certification
17 45 (0.81%) PMP
18 42 (0.75%) ISTQB
19 35 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 31 (0.56%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 349 (6.26%) GDPR
3 294 (5.28%) QA
4 260 (4.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 207 (3.71%) NIST
6 95 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.47%) NCSC
8 79 (1.42%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 51 (0.92%) SLA
12 40 (0.72%) PMO
13 36 (0.65%) HIPAA
14 32 (0.57%) GRC
15 28 (0.50%) SOC 2
15 28 (0.50%) WCAG
16 25 (0.45%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.43%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.41%) PSD2
19 20 (0.36%) NIST 800
System Software
1 773 (13.87%) Active Directory
2 663 (11.90%) Docker
3 172 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
5 77 (1.38%) Hyper-V
6 68 (1.22%) Virtual Desktop
6 68 (1.22%) vSphere
7 24 (0.43%) VMware NSX
8 18 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
9 11 (0.20%) Firmware
9 11 (0.20%) NFS
10 8 (0.14%) Postfix
11 7 (0.13%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 7 (0.13%) KVM
11 7 (0.13%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 7 (0.13%) Snort
12 6 (0.11%) GPFS
12 6 (0.11%) Lustre
13 5 (0.090%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.090%) RACF
Systems Management
1 828 (14.86%) Terraform
2 817 (14.66%) Kubernetes
3 330 (5.92%) Microsoft Intune
4 240 (4.31%) Ansible
5 140 (2.51%) Single Sign-On
6 136 (2.44%) Grafana
7 125 (2.24%) SCCM
8 118 (2.12%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.75%) Argo
11 25 (0.45%) Istio
11 25 (0.45%) Puppet
12 21 (0.38%) Progress Chef
13 19 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
13 19 (0.34%) Nmap
13 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
14 18 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 17 (0.31%) Nessus
16 16 (0.29%) vRealize
17 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,815 (32.57%) Microsoft
2 567 (10.17%) Databricks
3 300 (5.38%) Oracle
4 283 (5.08%) Google
5 262 (4.70%) ServiceNow
6 229 (4.11%) VMware
7 165 (2.96%) SAP
8 140 (2.51%) OpenAI
9 139 (2.49%) Cisco
10 135 (2.42%) Splunk
11 112 (2.01%) CyberArk
12 93 (1.67%) Salesforce
13 91 (1.63%) Foundry
14 87 (1.56%) Palo Alto
15 78 (1.40%) Okta
16 70 (1.26%) Citrix
17 66 (1.18%) Red Hat
18 63 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
19 60 (1.08%) IBM
20 52 (0.93%) Siemens