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

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,168 4,048 4,767
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.48% 14.67% 14.62%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.61% 39.16% 42.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,034 2,771 3,374
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £445
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 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 152 40 23
10th Percentile £19.50 £16.27 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.99 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +45.87% -6.52% -16.63%
75th Percentile £81.25 £68.56 £54.00
90th Percentile £102.33 £89.38 £83.94
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £38.50
% change year-on-year +2.00% -2.60% -28.70%

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 16,069 10,338 11,188
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.69% 37.46% 34.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,741 6,981 7,683
10th Percentile £322 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £719 £733 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 548 258 185
10th Percentile £15.44 £15.43 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.00 £18.87 £19.95
Median hourly rate £34.06 £26.38 £30.59
Median % change year-on-year +29.13% -13.78% -7.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £45.66 £61.06
90th Percentile £83.08 £71.62 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £30.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +8.33% - -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 9 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 9 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 9 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 3,757 £550 +0.92% 3,095
North of England +8 1,038 £500 +5.26% 913
South East +2 915 £525 +5.00% 865
Midlands +4 653 £493 -3.90% 495
North West +7 530 £500 +5.26% 498
West Midlands +3 481 £488 -9.22% 303
South West +5 431 £540 +8.00% 438
Yorkshire +7 426 £500 +5.26% 297
East of England +3 182 £525 +5.00% 286
East Midlands +8 160 £500 +8.11% 191
North East +6 95 £500 - 123
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
1 398 (5.55%) SharePoint
2 225 (3.14%) Confluence
3 176 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 171 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 154 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
6 110 (1.53%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 21 (0.29%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
14 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
17 7 (0.098%) Mendix
18 6 (0.084%) Camunda
18 6 (0.084%) Documentum
19 5 (0.070%) Tomcat
Applications
1 111 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 70 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.47%) Chatbot
5 33 (0.46%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
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
14 1 (0.014%) Mingle
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 109 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.084%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Maximo
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,562 (35.74%) AWS
2 1,527 (21.30%) Azure DevOps
3 1,223 (17.06%) GCP
4 978 (13.64%) Entra ID
5 916 (12.78%) Power Platform
6 756 (10.55%) Microsoft 365
7 720 (10.04%) GitHub
8 432 (6.03%) Azure Data Factory
9 425 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
10 343 (4.79%) Serverless
11 322 (4.49%) SaaS
12 279 (3.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 274 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
14 254 (3.54%) Power Automate
15 250 (3.49%) Snowflake
16 245 (3.42%) Dynamics 365
17 239 (3.33%) Azure AKS
18 224 (3.13%) PowerApps
19 215 (3.00%) Microsoft Copilot
20 200 (2.79%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 484 (6.75%) Firewall
2 378 (5.27%) DNS
3 287 (4.00%) VPN
4 277 (3.86%) Network Security
5 213 (2.97%) DHCP
6 180 (2.51%) WAN
7 164 (2.29%) TCP/IP
8 106 (1.48%) BGP
9 104 (1.45%) LAN
10 91 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 87 (1.21%) OSPF
12 86 (1.20%) VLAN
13 73 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.85%) SAN
14 61 (0.85%) SSL
15 56 (0.78%) Wireless
16 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
17 39 (0.54%) IPsec
18 38 (0.53%) HTTP
19 37 (0.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 638 (8.90%) Power BI
2 423 (5.90%) SQL Server
3 361 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 312 (4.35%) Data Lake
5 246 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (3.01%) Metadata
7 196 (2.73%) NoSQL
8 166 (2.32%) Azure SQL Database
9 128 (1.79%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 95 (1.33%) Big Data
12 89 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 79 (1.10%) MongoDB
14 75 (1.05%) MySQL
15 63 (0.88%) Tableau
16 58 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
17 56 (0.78%) BigQuery
17 56 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
18 55 (0.77%) Amazon RDS
19 52 (0.73%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 583 (8.13%) Git
2 503 (7.02%) JIRA
3 390 (5.44%) Jenkins
4 309 (4.31%) GitLab
5 114 (1.59%) Selenium
6 62 (0.86%) Postman
7 51 (0.71%) JUnit
8 50 (0.70%) Cypress.io
8 50 (0.70%) SonarQube
9 47 (0.66%) Cucumber
9 47 (0.66%) JMeter
10 43 (0.60%) Maven
11 36 (0.50%) Gradle
12 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.49%) Visual Studio
12 35 (0.49%) WebDriver
13 30 (0.42%) Claude Code
14 29 (0.40%) LoadRunner
14 29 (0.40%) MLflow
15 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,962 (27.37%) Social Skills
2 1,403 (19.57%) Finance
3 766 (10.69%) Public Sector
4 736 (10.27%) Analytical Skills
5 421 (5.87%) Banking
6 202 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 197 (2.75%) Retail
8 187 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
9 153 (2.13%) Legal
10 97 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 85 (1.19%) Manufacturing
12 80 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 78 (1.09%) Marketing
14 77 (1.07%) Aerospace
15 72 (1.00%) Investment Banking
16 70 (0.98%) Law
16 70 (0.98%) Military
16 70 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
17 56 (0.78%) Financial Institution
18 55 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,335 (18.62%) Architect
2 920 (12.83%) Senior
3 785 (10.95%) Developer
4 615 (8.58%) Azure Engineer
5 605 (8.44%) Lead
6 538 (7.51%) Data Engineer
7 427 (5.96%) Analyst
8 418 (5.83%) Solutions Architect
9 358 (4.99%) DevOps Engineer
10 338 (4.72%) Cloud Engineer
11 289 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 277 (3.86%) Consultant
13 231 (3.22%) Data Architect
14 204 (2.85%) Platform Engineer
15 179 (2.50%) Azure Architect
16 174 (2.43%) Security Engineer
17 163 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 163 (2.27%) Project Manager
18 162 (2.26%) Technical Architect
19 158 (2.20%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,225 (17.09%) Terraform
2 567 (7.91%) REST
3 537 (7.49%) .NET
4 330 (4.60%) Kafka
5 255 (3.56%) PySpark
6 253 (3.53%) React
7 236 (3.29%) OAuth
8 226 (3.15%) RESTful
9 193 (2.69%) JSON
10 147 (2.05%) Spring
11 143 (1.99%) OpenID
11 143 (1.99%) SAML
12 133 (1.86%) OAuth2
13 130 (1.81%) AngularJS
14 127 (1.77%) Spring Boot
15 125 (1.74%) .NET Framework
16 123 (1.72%) HTML
17 120 (1.67%) Node.js
18 118 (1.65%) Middleware
19 112 (1.56%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 809 (11.29%) Cloud Native
2 367 (5.12%) Onboarding
3 317 (4.42%) Product Ownership
4 259 (3.61%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
6 241 (3.36%) Enterprise Software
7 236 (3.29%) AI Agents
8 223 (3.11%) Data Centre
9 201 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
10 160 (2.23%) Security Posture
11 141 (1.97%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.81%) Data Structures
13 116 (1.62%) Public Cloud
14 103 (1.44%) PKI
15 97 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
15 97 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
16 88 (1.23%) Replication
17 79 (1.10%) CMDB
18 76 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
19 63 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 888 (12.39%) Windows
2 447 (6.24%) Linux
3 333 (4.65%) Windows Server
4 129 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.13%) Unix
6 78 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 73 (1.02%) Android
8 68 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 67 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 54 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 46 (0.64%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) 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 2,636 (36.77%) DevOps
2 2,246 (31.33%) CI/CD
3 1,787 (24.93%) Agile
4 1,244 (17.35%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,226 (17.10%) AI
6 1,210 (16.88%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,071 (14.94%) Migration
8 1,044 (14.56%) Analytics
9 1,002 (13.98%) Problem-Solving
10 827 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
11 797 (11.12%) Data Modelling
12 742 (10.35%) Roadmaps
13 698 (9.74%) Business Intelligence
14 697 (9.72%) Data Pipeline
15 684 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 642 (8.96%) Containerisation
17 628 (8.76%) Technical Leadership
18 604 (8.43%) Data Engineering
19 597 (8.33%) Test Automation
20 589 (8.22%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,678 (23.41%) Python
2 1,417 (19.77%) SQL
3 801 (11.17%) PowerShell
4 590 (8.23%) Java
5 523 (7.30%) C#
6 412 (5.75%) JavaScript
7 353 (4.92%) Bash
8 311 (4.34%) Bicep
9 243 (3.39%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 59 (0.82%) Go
13 57 (0.80%) Scala
14 50 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
14 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 36 (0.50%) R
16 31 (0.43%) Groovy
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,867 (26.05%) Security Cleared
2 1,492 (20.81%) SC Cleared
3 524 (7.31%) Degree
4 410 (5.72%) Azure Certification
5 265 (3.70%) DV Cleared
6 247 (3.45%) CISSP
7 224 (3.13%) Microsoft Certification
8 188 (2.62%) AWS Certification
9 184 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
10 166 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
11 161 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
12 122 (1.70%) CISM
13 85 (1.19%) CCNP
14 77 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 77 (1.07%) PMI Certification
15 75 (1.05%) PMP
16 58 (0.81%) Master's Degree
17 56 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.70%) CCSP
19 48 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 538 (7.51%) Data Quality
2 401 (5.59%) QA
3 285 (3.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 284 (3.96%) NIST
5 274 (3.82%) GDPR
6 170 (2.37%) Accessibility
7 101 (1.41%) SLA
8 95 (1.33%) NCSC
9 73 (1.02%) WCAG
10 72 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (0.98%) GRC
11 70 (0.98%) PCI DSS
12 57 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.74%) PMO
14 41 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.40%) SOC 2
16 26 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 19 (0.27%) ISO 20022
17 19 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 928 (12.95%) Active Directory
2 779 (10.87%) Docker
3 226 (3.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.98%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
6 110 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.88%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.38%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) IAG
12 15 (0.21%) NFS
13 13 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (0.15%) Postfix
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,071 (14.94%) Kubernetes
2 405 (5.65%) Ansible
3 395 (5.51%) Microsoft Intune
4 226 (3.15%) Grafana
5 177 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.86%) Single Sign-On
7 122 (1.70%) SCCM
8 62 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.71%) Argo
10 46 (0.64%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 31 (0.43%) SCOM
14 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.27%) Istio
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 17 (0.24%) CASB
18 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
19 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,572 (35.88%) Microsoft
2 730 (10.18%) Databricks
3 374 (5.22%) ServiceNow
4 329 (4.59%) VMware
5 307 (4.28%) Google
6 290 (4.05%) Oracle
7 228 (3.18%) Cisco
8 194 (2.71%) SAP
9 192 (2.68%) Splunk
10 165 (2.30%) OpenAI
11 153 (2.13%) Salesforce
12 150 (2.09%) CyberArk
13 145 (2.02%) Palo Alto
14 111 (1.55%) Foundry
15 104 (1.45%) Dynatrace
16 83 (1.16%) Informatica
17 81 (1.13%) Zscaler
18 74 (1.03%) Fortinet
18 74 (1.03%) IBM
19 68 (0.95%) Okta