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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 7 6
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,081 3,967 4,744
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.52% 14.57% 14.57%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.69% 38.95% 42.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,972 2,728 3,401
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.50% -3.09%
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 151 38 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £18.87
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.48% +10.71% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £71.19 £53.00
90th Percentile £102.50 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £40.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -4.38% +14.29% -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 15,845 10,186 11,124
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.72% 37.42% 34.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,613 6,888 7,730
10th Percentile £325 £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 £639
90th Percentile £719 £733 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 540 261 189
10th Percentile £15.30 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.38 £18.87 £18.50
Median hourly rate £34.18 £26.45 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -11.83% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £44.09 £59.95
90th Percentile £82.43 £71.45 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.99 £29.16 £30.00
% change year-on-year +16.56% -2.80% -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 4 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 4 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 4 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 3,705 £550 +0.92% 3,116
North of England +10 1,032 £500 +5.26% 914
South East +2 902 £525 +5.00% 874
Midlands +4 648 £493 -4.14% 508
North West +8 527 £500 +5.26% 517
West Midlands +3 477 £488 -9.22% 307
South West +5 427 £540 +8.00% 462
Yorkshire +7 425 £500 +5.26% 281
East of England +3 179 £525 +5.00% 298
East Midlands +8 159 £500 +8.11% 200
North East +10 93 £500 - 122
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 (5.58%) SharePoint
2 225 (3.18%) Confluence
3 174 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 168 (2.37%) Apache Spark
5 151 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
6 110 (1.55%) Apache
7 38 (0.54%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
14 11 (0.16%) SharePoint Server
15 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
17 7 (0.099%) Mendix
18 6 (0.085%) Camunda
18 6 (0.085%) Documentum
19 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 109 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 70 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.47%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
6 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.16%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.071%) 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
1 107 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) 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 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.099%) Shopify
8 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.085%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.071%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.071%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,527 (35.69%) AWS
2 1,515 (21.40%) Azure DevOps
3 1,198 (16.92%) GCP
4 959 (13.54%) Entra ID
5 903 (12.75%) Power Platform
6 743 (10.49%) Microsoft 365
7 710 (10.03%) GitHub
8 429 (6.06%) Azure Data Factory
9 421 (5.95%) GitHub Actions
10 337 (4.76%) Serverless
11 319 (4.51%) SaaS
12 276 (3.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 272 (3.84%) Azure Monitor
14 252 (3.56%) Power Automate
15 246 (3.47%) Snowflake
16 243 (3.43%) Dynamics 365
17 238 (3.36%) Azure AKS
18 222 (3.14%) PowerApps
19 210 (2.97%) Microsoft Copilot
20 193 (2.73%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 480 (6.78%) Firewall
2 371 (5.24%) DNS
3 281 (3.97%) VPN
4 275 (3.88%) Network Security
5 212 (2.99%) DHCP
6 178 (2.51%) WAN
7 163 (2.30%) TCP/IP
8 105 (1.48%) BGP
9 103 (1.45%) LAN
10 90 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 86 (1.21%) OSPF
11 86 (1.21%) VLAN
12 71 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
13 60 (0.85%) SAN
13 60 (0.85%) SSL
14 54 (0.76%) Wireless
15 43 (0.61%) VXLAN
16 39 (0.55%) IPsec
17 37 (0.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 37 (0.52%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 632 (8.93%) Power BI
2 417 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 359 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 310 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 239 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 211 (2.98%) Metadata
7 194 (2.74%) NoSQL
8 165 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 129 (1.82%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.69%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.30%) Big Data
12 85 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (1.07%) MongoDB
14 71 (1.00%) MySQL
15 61 (0.86%) Tableau
16 57 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
17 56 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
18 55 (0.78%) BigQuery
19 51 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
19 51 (0.72%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 575 (8.12%) Git
2 500 (7.06%) JIRA
3 389 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 306 (4.32%) GitLab
5 113 (1.60%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) Postman
7 50 (0.71%) JUnit
7 50 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 49 (0.69%) Cypress.io
9 46 (0.65%) Cucumber
9 46 (0.65%) JMeter
10 42 (0.59%) Maven
11 36 (0.51%) Visual Studio
12 35 (0.49%) Gradle
12 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.49%) WebDriver
13 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
13 29 (0.41%) MLflow
14 28 (0.40%) Bitbucket
15 27 (0.38%) Gatling
General
1 1,936 (27.34%) Social Skills
2 1,383 (19.53%) Finance
3 762 (10.76%) Public Sector
4 728 (10.28%) Analytical Skills
5 408 (5.76%) Banking
6 201 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 194 (2.74%) Retail
8 187 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.08%) Legal
10 96 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 85 (1.20%) Manufacturing
12 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
13 77 (1.09%) Aerospace
14 76 (1.07%) Marketing
15 72 (1.02%) Investment Banking
16 70 (0.99%) Law
16 70 (0.99%) Military
17 69 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
18 56 (0.79%) Financial Institution
19 54 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,307 (18.46%) Architect
2 911 (12.87%) Senior
3 780 (11.02%) Developer
4 606 (8.56%) Azure Engineer
5 599 (8.46%) Lead
6 532 (7.51%) Data Engineer
7 423 (5.97%) Analyst
8 406 (5.73%) Solutions Architect
9 354 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
10 333 (4.70%) Cloud Engineer
11 283 (4.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 265 (3.74%) Consultant
13 227 (3.21%) Data Architect
14 205 (2.90%) Platform Engineer
15 178 (2.51%) Azure Architect
16 168 (2.37%) Security Engineer
17 163 (2.30%) Project Manager
18 162 (2.29%) Technical Architect
19 159 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 158 (2.23%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,208 (17.06%) Terraform
2 551 (7.78%) REST
3 532 (7.51%) .NET
4 322 (4.55%) Kafka
5 254 (3.59%) PySpark
6 251 (3.54%) React
7 231 (3.26%) OAuth
8 226 (3.19%) RESTful
9 189 (2.67%) JSON
10 144 (2.03%) Spring
11 142 (2.01%) OpenID
11 142 (2.01%) SAML
12 130 (1.84%) OAuth2
13 128 (1.81%) AngularJS
14 124 (1.75%) .NET Framework
14 124 (1.75%) Spring Boot
15 121 (1.71%) Node.js
16 120 (1.69%) HTML
17 115 (1.62%) Middleware
18 108 (1.53%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 796 (11.24%) Cloud Native
2 363 (5.13%) Onboarding
3 313 (4.42%) Product Ownership
4 255 (3.60%) Hybrid Cloud
5 240 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
6 239 (3.38%) Enterprise Software
7 232 (3.28%) AI Agents
8 218 (3.08%) Data Centre
9 201 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
10 159 (2.25%) Security Posture
11 140 (1.98%) Management Information System
12 129 (1.82%) Data Structures
13 116 (1.64%) Public Cloud
14 101 (1.43%) PKI
15 96 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
16 95 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
17 86 (1.21%) Replication
18 78 (1.10%) CMDB
19 74 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
20 63 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 874 (12.34%) Windows
2 441 (6.23%) Linux
3 326 (4.60%) Windows Server
4 125 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.14%) Unix
6 78 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 73 (1.03%) Android
8 68 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 66 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 46 (0.65%) VMS
12 19 (0.27%) 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 (0.085%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,604 (36.77%) DevOps
2 2,225 (31.42%) CI/CD
3 1,773 (25.04%) Agile
4 1,222 (17.26%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,203 (16.99%) AI
6 1,195 (16.88%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,052 (14.86%) Migration
8 1,030 (14.55%) Analytics
9 989 (13.97%) Problem-Solving
10 819 (11.57%) Continuous Improvement
11 789 (11.14%) Data Modelling
12 729 (10.30%) Roadmaps
13 692 (9.77%) Business Intelligence
14 690 (9.74%) Data Pipeline
15 681 (9.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 639 (9.02%) Containerisation
17 620 (8.76%) Technical Leadership
18 596 (8.42%) Data Engineering
19 591 (8.35%) Test Automation
20 584 (8.25%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,660 (23.44%) Python
2 1,401 (19.79%) SQL
3 791 (11.17%) PowerShell
4 584 (8.25%) Java
5 519 (7.33%) C#
6 405 (5.72%) JavaScript
7 353 (4.99%) Bash
8 307 (4.34%) Bicep
9 240 (3.39%) TypeScript
10 92 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.05%) T-SQL
12 58 (0.82%) Go
13 57 (0.80%) Scala
14 50 (0.71%) Shell Script
15 48 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 36 (0.51%) R
17 31 (0.44%) Groovy
18 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 28 (0.40%) Kotlin
20 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,847 (26.08%) Security Cleared
2 1,475 (20.83%) SC Cleared
3 519 (7.33%) Degree
4 405 (5.72%) Azure Certification
5 262 (3.70%) DV Cleared
6 245 (3.46%) CISSP
7 224 (3.16%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.61%) AWS Certification
9 181 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
10 163 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
11 159 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
12 120 (1.69%) CISM
13 84 (1.19%) CCNP
14 75 (1.06%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 75 (1.06%) PMI Certification
15 73 (1.03%) PMP
16 57 (0.80%) Master's Degree
17 55 (0.78%) ISTQB
18 48 (0.68%) CCSP
19 46 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 529 (7.47%) Data Quality
2 394 (5.56%) QA
3 282 (3.98%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 280 (3.95%) NIST
5 269 (3.80%) GDPR
6 169 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.41%) SLA
8 94 (1.33%) NCSC
9 73 (1.03%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.97%) GRC
11 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
12 56 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.75%) PMO
14 41 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.37%) SOC 2
16 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 17 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 910 (12.85%) Active Directory
2 775 (10.94%) Docker
3 220 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.99%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 107 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.88%) vSphere
8 53 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.38%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 15 (0.21%) NFS
13 13 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (0.16%) Postfix
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.085%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,063 (15.01%) Kubernetes
2 401 (5.66%) Ansible
3 390 (5.51%) Microsoft Intune
4 224 (3.16%) Grafana
5 175 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.84%) Single Sign-On
7 118 (1.67%) SCCM
8 62 (0.88%) Progress Chef
9 50 (0.71%) Argo
10 46 (0.65%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.47%) FortiGate
13 30 (0.42%) SCOM
14 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.27%) Istio
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 16 (0.23%) CASB
17 16 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 14 (0.20%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,529 (35.72%) Microsoft
2 719 (10.15%) Databricks
3 371 (5.24%) ServiceNow
4 321 (4.53%) VMware
5 302 (4.26%) Google
6 285 (4.02%) Oracle
7 223 (3.15%) Cisco
8 194 (2.74%) SAP
9 188 (2.65%) Splunk
10 162 (2.29%) OpenAI
11 150 (2.12%) Salesforce
12 147 (2.08%) CyberArk
13 144 (2.03%) Palo Alto
14 110 (1.55%) Foundry
15 104 (1.47%) Dynatrace
16 80 (1.13%) Informatica
17 79 (1.12%) Zscaler
18 74 (1.05%) Fortinet
19 72 (1.02%) IBM
20 68 (0.96%) Okta