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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,134 4,347 4,802
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.23% 15.44% 14.96%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.10% 39.95% 42.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,962 2,994 3,285
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £441 £415 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.81% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £517 £525
% change year-on-year +1.55% -1.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 42 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.24 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% -2.17% -24.21%
75th Percentile £80.63 £66.83 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £93.75 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +32.94% -2.86% -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 16,178 10,882 11,303
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.54% 38.66% 35.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,769 7,357 7,545
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% -2.78%
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 581 264 160
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.07 £16.27
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.51 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +8.36%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.18 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 3,779 £550 +0.92% 545
North of England +4 1,025 £500 +5.26% 372
South East +1 910 £537 +7.40% 355
Midlands +1 633 £493 -5.38% 213
North West +4 497 £500 +5.26% 183
West Midlands +1 491 £477 -13.27% 136
Yorkshire +4 440 £500 - 141
South West +2 400 £550 +5.77% 217
East of England -2 184 £505 +1.00% 98
East Midlands +2 138 £500 +8.11% 77
North East -1 97 £506 +1.25% 56
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
1 418 (5.86%) SharePoint
2 241 (3.38%) Confluence
3 176 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 145 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
6 114 (1.60%) Apache
7 33 (0.46%) SAS
8 25 (0.35%) CMS
9 24 (0.34%) IIS
10 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) nginx
13 12 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
15 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.098%) Mendix
17 6 (0.084%) Documentum
17 6 (0.084%) Traefik
18 5 (0.070%) Tomcat
Applications
1 112 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 36 (0.50%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 6 (0.084%) CPLEX
9 6 (0.084%) Revit
10 5 (0.070%) Notion
10 5 (0.070%) Spreadsheet
11 3 (0.042%) Houdini
11 3 (0.042%) Mingle
11 3 (0.042%) NUKE
11 3 (0.042%) PTC Creo
12 2 (0.028%) 1Password
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 113 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.15%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.13%) Cloudability
7 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 8 (0.11%) Magento
8 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
9 7 (0.098%) Shopify
9 7 (0.098%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.070%) Maximo
10 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.056%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.056%) Quorum
11 4 (0.056%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,464 (34.54%) AWS
2 1,543 (21.63%) Azure DevOps
3 1,244 (17.44%) GCP
4 1,052 (14.75%) Entra ID
5 939 (13.16%) Power Platform
6 808 (11.33%) Microsoft 365
7 747 (10.47%) GitHub
8 429 (6.01%) GitHub Actions
9 408 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
10 348 (4.88%) Serverless
11 319 (4.47%) SaaS
12 291 (4.08%) Azure Monitor
13 279 (3.91%) Power Automate
14 278 (3.90%) Dynamics 365
15 264 (3.70%) Snowflake
16 250 (3.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 247 (3.46%) PowerApps
18 246 (3.45%) Azure AKS
19 242 (3.39%) Microsoft Copilot
20 219 (3.07%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 473 (6.63%) Firewall
2 391 (5.48%) DNS
3 290 (4.07%) VPN
4 264 (3.70%) Network Security
5 224 (3.14%) DHCP
6 164 (2.30%) TCP/IP
7 163 (2.28%) WAN
8 103 (1.44%) BGP
9 92 (1.29%) LAN
10 85 (1.19%) OSPF
10 85 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 76 (1.07%) VLAN
12 71 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.86%) Wireless
14 57 (0.80%) SAN
15 56 (0.78%) SSL
16 38 (0.53%) HTTP
16 38 (0.53%) Internet
16 38 (0.53%) IPsec
16 38 (0.53%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 614 (8.61%) Power BI
2 418 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 336 (4.71%) Data Warehouse
4 308 (4.32%) Data Lake
5 241 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 221 (3.10%) Metadata
7 176 (2.47%) NoSQL
8 158 (2.21%) Azure SQL Database
9 125 (1.75%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.68%) Delta Lake
11 94 (1.32%) MySQL
11 94 (1.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 83 (1.16%) Big Data
13 78 (1.09%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.84%) Amazon RDS
14 60 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
15 57 (0.80%) BigQuery
16 50 (0.70%) Oracle Database
17 49 (0.69%) Redis
18 48 (0.67%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 628 (8.80%) Git
2 499 (6.99%) JIRA
3 403 (5.65%) Jenkins
4 308 (4.32%) GitLab
5 130 (1.82%) Selenium
6 71 (1.00%) Postman
7 66 (0.93%) Cucumber
8 57 (0.80%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.70%) JMeter
9 50 (0.70%) JUnit
10 47 (0.66%) Visual Studio
11 46 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.62%) Maven
13 41 (0.57%) Claude Code
14 40 (0.56%) Gradle
15 37 (0.52%) REST Assured
16 34 (0.48%) Bitbucket
17 31 (0.43%) LoadRunner
17 31 (0.43%) WebDriver
18 28 (0.39%) MLflow
General
1 2,027 (28.41%) Social Skills
2 1,450 (20.33%) Finance
3 767 (10.75%) Public Sector
4 738 (10.34%) Analytical Skills
5 476 (6.67%) Banking
6 210 (2.94%) Retail
7 203 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 170 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (1.93%) Legal
10 99 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
11 98 (1.37%) Manufacturing
12 93 (1.30%) Marketing
13 90 (1.26%) Investment Banking
14 88 (1.23%) Aerospace
15 79 (1.11%) Telecoms
16 74 (1.04%) Military
17 67 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
18 63 (0.88%) Law
19 58 (0.81%) Billing
19 58 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,339 (18.77%) Architect
2 919 (12.88%) Senior
3 803 (11.26%) Developer
4 619 (8.68%) Lead
5 604 (8.47%) Azure Engineer
6 509 (7.13%) Data Engineer
7 432 (6.06%) Solutions Architect
8 404 (5.66%) Analyst
9 366 (5.13%) DevOps Engineer
10 357 (5.00%) Cloud Engineer
11 295 (4.14%) Consultant
12 292 (4.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 217 (3.04%) Data Architect
14 202 (2.83%) Platform Engineer
15 190 (2.66%) Security Engineer
16 179 (2.51%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 168 (2.35%) Azure Architect
18 164 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 159 (2.23%) Project Manager
20 150 (2.10%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,257 (17.62%) Terraform
2 654 (9.17%) REST
3 542 (7.60%) .NET
4 347 (4.86%) Kafka
5 274 (3.84%) React
6 262 (3.67%) OAuth
7 239 (3.35%) PySpark
8 235 (3.29%) RESTful
9 201 (2.82%) JSON
10 165 (2.31%) OpenID
11 153 (2.14%) OAuth2
12 151 (2.12%) SAML
13 141 (1.98%) SOAP
14 140 (1.96%) HTML
15 134 (1.88%) Middleware
16 126 (1.77%) Spring
17 123 (1.72%) ARM Templates
18 121 (1.70%) Spring Boot
19 120 (1.68%) AngularJS
20 115 (1.61%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 798 (11.19%) Cloud Native
2 400 (5.61%) Onboarding
3 360 (5.05%) Product Ownership
4 292 (4.09%) Enterprise Software
5 285 (3.99%) AI Agents
6 262 (3.67%) Hybrid Cloud
7 245 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
8 233 (3.27%) Data Centre
9 197 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 169 (2.37%) Security Posture
11 168 (2.35%) Management Information System
12 136 (1.91%) Data Structures
13 115 (1.61%) PKI
14 114 (1.60%) Public Cloud
15 99 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
16 95 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
17 89 (1.25%) CMDB
18 81 (1.14%) Replication
19 73 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
20 67 (0.94%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 891 (12.49%) Windows
2 474 (6.64%) Linux
3 350 (4.91%) Windows Server
4 148 (2.07%) Windows 10
5 82 (1.15%) Unix
6 78 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 75 (1.05%) Android
8 69 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.81%) macOS
9 58 (0.81%) Ubuntu
10 39 (0.55%) VMS
11 26 (0.36%) CentOS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 6 (0.084%) AIX
16 6 (0.084%) Debian
17 5 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
18 3 (0.042%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,650 (37.15%) DevOps
2 2,314 (32.44%) CI/CD
3 1,782 (24.98%) Agile
4 1,379 (19.33%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,296 (18.17%) AI
6 1,257 (17.62%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,070 (15.00%) Migration
8 1,023 (14.34%) Problem-Solving
9 1,015 (14.23%) Analytics
10 884 (12.39%) Continuous Improvement
11 804 (11.27%) Roadmaps
12 758 (10.63%) Data Modelling
13 673 (9.43%) Business Intelligence
14 667 (9.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 663 (9.29%) Test Automation
16 661 (9.27%) Data Pipeline
17 660 (9.25%) Technical Leadership
18 625 (8.76%) Containerisation
19 620 (8.69%) Cybersecurity
20 616 (8.63%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,707 (23.93%) Python
2 1,376 (19.29%) SQL
3 859 (12.04%) PowerShell
4 567 (7.95%) Java
5 551 (7.72%) C#
6 462 (6.48%) JavaScript
7 376 (5.27%) Bash
8 342 (4.79%) Bicep
9 287 (4.02%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 70 (0.98%) T-SQL
12 66 (0.93%) Go
13 63 (0.88%) Kusto Query Language
14 54 (0.76%) Scala
15 51 (0.71%) Shell Script
16 32 (0.45%) Groovy
17 30 (0.42%) C++
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.41%) R
Qualifications
1 1,864 (26.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,476 (20.69%) SC Cleared
3 544 (7.63%) Degree
4 428 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 295 (4.14%) DV Cleared
6 246 (3.45%) CISSP
7 233 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 209 (2.93%) AWS Certification
9 177 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
10 175 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
11 168 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
12 125 (1.75%) CISM
13 90 (1.26%) PMI Certification
14 86 (1.21%) PMP
15 78 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 72 (1.01%) CCNP
17 62 (0.87%) Master's Degree
18 61 (0.86%) ISTQB
19 54 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
20 52 (0.73%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 547 (7.67%) Data Quality
2 426 (5.97%) QA
3 272 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 255 (3.57%) NIST
5 245 (3.43%) GDPR
6 177 (2.48%) Accessibility
7 101 (1.42%) SLA
8 84 (1.18%) NCSC
9 74 (1.04%) WCAG
10 72 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (0.98%) GRC
12 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
13 49 (0.69%) PMO
14 46 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 42 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 37 (0.52%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 21 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
20 19 (0.27%) COBIT
System Software
1 940 (13.18%) Active Directory
2 780 (10.93%) Docker
3 226 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
5 129 (1.81%) Virtual Desktop
6 106 (1.49%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.98%) vSphere
8 46 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.36%) VMware NSX
10 18 (0.25%) Firmware
11 16 (0.22%) IAG
12 11 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.13%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.098%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.070%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.070%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,086 (15.22%) Kubernetes
2 427 (5.99%) Ansible
3 417 (5.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 243 (3.41%) Grafana
5 179 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 140 (1.96%) SCCM
7 128 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
8 62 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.71%) Argo
10 46 (0.64%) Puppet
11 36 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.45%) SCOM
13 30 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
14 25 (0.35%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.32%) Istio
16 21 (0.29%) CASB
17 17 (0.24%) Packer
17 17 (0.24%) vCenter Server
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
19 12 (0.17%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,730 (38.27%) Microsoft
2 745 (10.44%) Databricks
3 362 (5.07%) ServiceNow
4 342 (4.79%) Google
5 322 (4.51%) VMware
6 299 (4.19%) Oracle
7 213 (2.99%) Cisco
8 206 (2.89%) Splunk
9 197 (2.76%) OpenAI
10 187 (2.62%) SAP
11 177 (2.48%) Salesforce
12 144 (2.02%) Palo Alto
13 139 (1.95%) CyberArk
14 132 (1.85%) Dynatrace
15 121 (1.70%) Foundry
16 83 (1.16%) IBM
17 80 (1.12%) Zscaler
18 76 (1.07%) Fortinet
19 68 (0.95%) Informatica
20 66 (0.93%) CrowdStrike