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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,160 4,116 4,830
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.43% 14.79% 14.65%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.62% 39.45% 42.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,018 2,824 3,420
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 £734 £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 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 £81.53 £68.56 £53.50
90th Percentile £103.63 £89.38 £82.16
UK median hourly rate £38.88 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +3.67% +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 16,045 10,434 11,330
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.58% 37.50% 34.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,714 7,046 7,784
10th Percentile £320 £308 £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 £644
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 550 259 186
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.45 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £19.96
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £30.73
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -14.42% -6.87%
75th Percentile £69.96 £45.14 £60.95
90th Percentile £82.43 £71.56 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £29.25 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.11% -2.50% -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 11 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 11 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 11 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 3,739 £550 +0.92% 2,385
North of England +9 1,043 £500 +5.26% 786
South East +1 913 £525 +5.00% 871
Midlands +2 651 £493 -3.90% 449
North West +5 533 £500 +5.26% 394
West Midlands +2 479 £493 -8.54% 255
South West +4 436 £550 +10.00% 393
Yorkshire +6 427 £500 +5.26% 273
East of England +2 184 £525 +5.00% 286
East Midlands +6 161 £500 +9.59% 193
North East +4 96 £500 - 125
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
1 413 (5.77%) SharePoint
2 223 (3.11%) Confluence
3 183 (2.56%) Microsoft Exchange
4 167 (2.33%) Apache Spark
5 154 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.52%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 26 (0.36%) 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 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
16 7 (0.098%) Mendix
17 6 (0.084%) Documentum
17 6 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
18 5 (0.070%) Tomcat
Applications
1 108 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 69 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.50%) Chatbot
5 34 (0.47%) 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
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 (1.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 62 (0.87%) 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%) SAP Oil and Gas
8 6 (0.084%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Maximo
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,548 (35.59%) AWS
2 1,518 (21.20%) Azure DevOps
3 1,218 (17.01%) GCP
4 974 (13.60%) Entra ID
5 932 (13.02%) Power Platform
6 766 (10.70%) Microsoft 365
7 722 (10.08%) GitHub
8 427 (5.96%) Azure Data Factory
9 423 (5.91%) GitHub Actions
10 342 (4.78%) Serverless
11 318 (4.44%) SaaS
12 274 (3.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 272 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
14 269 (3.76%) Power Automate
15 251 (3.51%) Dynamics 365
15 251 (3.51%) Snowflake
16 241 (3.37%) Azure AKS
17 237 (3.31%) PowerApps
18 229 (3.20%) Microsoft Copilot
19 202 (2.82%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 485 (6.77%) Firewall
2 378 (5.28%) DNS
3 288 (4.02%) VPN
4 277 (3.87%) Network Security
5 213 (2.97%) DHCP
6 178 (2.49%) WAN
7 161 (2.25%) TCP/IP
8 103 (1.44%) BGP
9 102 (1.42%) LAN
10 91 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.23%) VLAN
12 85 (1.19%) OSPF
13 75 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.85%) SAN
14 61 (0.85%) SSL
15 58 (0.81%) Wireless
16 41 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 39 (0.54%) IPsec
18 37 (0.52%) HTTP
19 36 (0.50%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 639 (8.92%) Power BI
2 423 (5.91%) SQL Server
3 358 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
4 313 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 246 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 214 (2.99%) Metadata
7 191 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 162 (2.26%) Azure SQL Database
9 127 (1.77%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.69%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.24%) Big Data
11 89 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 80 (1.12%) MongoDB
13 76 (1.06%) MySQL
14 61 (0.85%) Tableau
15 58 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
18 52 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
19 51 (0.71%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 587 (8.20%) Git
2 497 (6.94%) JIRA
3 390 (5.45%) Jenkins
4 311 (4.34%) GitLab
5 109 (1.52%) Selenium
6 59 (0.82%) Postman
7 51 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 50 (0.70%) JUnit
9 48 (0.67%) Cypress.io
10 46 (0.64%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.63%) JMeter
12 44 (0.61%) Maven
13 37 (0.52%) Gradle
14 36 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.43%) Claude Code
18 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
18 29 (0.41%) MLflow
19 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,968 (27.49%) Social Skills
2 1,402 (19.58%) Finance
3 760 (10.61%) Public Sector
4 732 (10.22%) Analytical Skills
5 424 (5.92%) Banking
6 204 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 198 (2.77%) Retail
8 183 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
9 149 (2.08%) Legal
10 96 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 81 (1.13%) Marketing
13 80 (1.12%) Aerospace
14 77 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 72 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 71 (0.99%) Military
17 70 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
18 69 (0.96%) Law
19 55 (0.77%) Financial Institution
20 54 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,340 (18.72%) Architect
2 915 (12.78%) Senior
3 792 (11.06%) Developer
4 612 (8.55%) Azure Engineer
5 600 (8.38%) Lead
6 529 (7.39%) Data Engineer
7 418 (5.84%) Analyst
8 416 (5.81%) Solutions Architect
9 364 (5.08%) DevOps Engineer
10 340 (4.75%) Cloud Engineer
11 290 (4.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 276 (3.85%) Consultant
13 227 (3.17%) Data Architect
14 204 (2.85%) Platform Engineer
15 179 (2.50%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.46%) Azure Architect
17 168 (2.35%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 164 (2.29%) Technical Architect
19 163 (2.28%) Project Manager
20 159 (2.22%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,232 (17.21%) Terraform
2 568 (7.93%) REST
3 535 (7.47%) .NET
4 329 (4.59%) Kafka
5 255 (3.56%) React
6 253 (3.53%) PySpark
7 237 (3.31%) OAuth
8 228 (3.18%) RESTful
9 194 (2.71%) JSON
10 145 (2.03%) OpenID
11 142 (1.98%) SAML
11 142 (1.98%) Spring
12 135 (1.89%) OAuth2
13 128 (1.79%) AngularJS
13 128 (1.79%) Spring Boot
14 124 (1.73%) HTML
15 123 (1.72%) .NET Framework
16 121 (1.69%) Node.js
17 115 (1.61%) SOAP
18 114 (1.59%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 804 (11.23%) Cloud Native
2 370 (5.17%) Onboarding
3 328 (4.58%) Product Ownership
4 261 (3.65%) Hybrid Cloud
5 243 (3.39%) AI Agents
5 243 (3.39%) Enterprise Software
6 237 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
7 218 (3.04%) Data Centre
8 197 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
9 159 (2.22%) Security Posture
10 142 (1.98%) Management Information System
11 133 (1.86%) Data Structures
12 119 (1.66%) Public Cloud
13 100 (1.40%) PKI
14 97 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
15 96 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
16 89 (1.24%) Replication
17 79 (1.10%) CMDB
18 77 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 64 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 885 (12.36%) Windows
2 450 (6.28%) Linux
3 335 (4.68%) Windows Server
4 128 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 84 (1.17%) Unix
6 78 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 74 (1.03%) Android
8 69 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 66 (0.92%) Mac OS
10 54 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 46 (0.64%) 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 2,630 (36.73%) DevOps
2 2,251 (31.44%) CI/CD
3 1,789 (24.99%) Agile
4 1,260 (17.60%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,238 (17.29%) AI
6 1,220 (17.04%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,060 (14.80%) Migration
8 1,044 (14.58%) Analytics
9 1,009 (14.09%) Problem-Solving
10 835 (11.66%) Continuous Improvement
11 786 (10.98%) Data Modelling
12 752 (10.50%) Roadmaps
13 698 (9.75%) Business Intelligence
14 690 (9.64%) Data Pipeline
15 683 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 648 (9.05%) Containerisation
17 632 (8.83%) Technical Leadership
18 598 (8.35%) Data Engineering
18 598 (8.35%) Test Automation
19 587 (8.20%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,667 (23.28%) Python
2 1,399 (19.54%) SQL
3 801 (11.19%) PowerShell
4 587 (8.20%) Java
5 522 (7.29%) C#
6 420 (5.87%) JavaScript
7 354 (4.94%) Bash
8 316 (4.41%) Bicep
9 249 (3.48%) TypeScript
10 92 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 59 (0.82%) Go
13 56 (0.78%) Scala
14 51 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
15 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.50%) 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 (26.05%) Security Cleared
2 1,488 (20.78%) SC Cleared
3 530 (7.40%) Degree
4 414 (5.78%) Azure Certification
5 270 (3.77%) DV Cleared
6 250 (3.49%) CISSP
7 230 (3.21%) Microsoft Certification
8 188 (2.63%) AWS Certification
9 184 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
10 164 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
11 163 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
12 122 (1.70%) CISM
13 85 (1.19%) CCNP
14 79 (1.10%) PMI Certification
15 77 (1.08%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 77 (1.08%) PMP
16 58 (0.81%) Master's Degree
17 53 (0.74%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.70%) CCSP
18 50 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 532 (7.43%) Data Quality
2 401 (5.60%) QA
3 280 (3.91%) NIST
4 276 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 266 (3.72%) GDPR
6 171 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.38%) SLA
8 96 (1.34%) NCSC
9 76 (1.06%) WCAG
10 71 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.96%) GRC
11 69 (0.96%) PCI DSS
12 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 52 (0.73%) PMO
14 40 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 28 (0.39%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.27%) NIST 800
19 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 926 (12.93%) Active Directory
2 785 (10.96%) Docker
3 223 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.98%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
6 109 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 65 (0.91%) vSphere
8 54 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 25 (0.35%) 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 1,078 (15.06%) Kubernetes
2 411 (5.74%) Ansible
3 399 (5.57%) Microsoft Intune
4 222 (3.10%) Grafana
5 173 (2.42%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
7 122 (1.70%) SCCM
8 63 (0.88%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.71%) Argo
10 48 (0.67%) 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 24 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 18 (0.25%) Istio
15 18 (0.25%) Packer
16 17 (0.24%) CASB
17 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,592 (36.20%) Microsoft
2 730 (10.20%) Databricks
3 375 (5.24%) ServiceNow
4 328 (4.58%) VMware
5 304 (4.25%) Google
6 288 (4.02%) Oracle
7 226 (3.16%) Cisco
8 194 (2.71%) SAP
9 191 (2.67%) Splunk
10 170 (2.37%) OpenAI
11 154 (2.15%) Salesforce
12 147 (2.05%) CyberArk
13 145 (2.03%) Palo Alto
14 114 (1.59%) Foundry
15 108 (1.51%) Dynatrace
16 80 (1.12%) Informatica
16 80 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 76 (1.06%) Fortinet
18 75 (1.05%) IBM
19 67 (0.94%) Red Hat