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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,009 4,286 4,767
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.13% 15.27% 14.71%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.97% 39.95% 42.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,888 2,951 3,268
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £444 £414 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £529 £518 £530
% change year-on-year +2.12% -2.26% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 41 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.41% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.76 £95.00 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £42.35 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +24.56% -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 15,941 10,729 11,282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.41% 38.21% 34.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,608 7,259 7,549
10th Percentile £322 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.96% -3.81% -3.67%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £643
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 568 256 166
10th Percentile £15.36 £15.38 £15.99
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.53
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +6.06%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £65.68
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.13 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £31.13 £26.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +19.71% -25.71% +6.06%

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 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 4 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 4 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 3,690 £550 - 3,785
North of England +4 997 £500 +5.26% 1,544
South East +1 894 £525 +5.53% 1,460
Midlands +1 629 £493 -5.01% 897
North West +5 485 £500 +5.26% 740
West Midlands +2 480 £481 -12.55% 512
Yorkshire +5 426 £500 +2.04% 534
South West +2 410 £550 +7.84% 702
East of England 0 194 £510 +1.49% 520
East Midlands +2 145 £500 +8.11% 385
North East +4 100 £513 +2.50% 283
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
1 409 (5.84%) SharePoint
2 230 (3.28%) Confluence
3 172 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 170 (2.43%) Apache Spark
5 142 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.53%) Apache
7 32 (0.46%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 23 (0.33%) CMS
10 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) nginx
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.100%) Mendix
16 6 (0.086%) Documentum
17 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
17 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 106 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.53%) Chatbot
6 33 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 12 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.100%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.100%) Revit
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) Mingle
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) 1Password
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.029%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 110 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.100%) Shopify
9 5 (0.071%) Maximo
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.057%) Quorum
10 4 (0.057%) Ripple
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.057%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,472 (35.27%) AWS
2 1,485 (21.19%) Azure DevOps
3 1,238 (17.66%) GCP
4 996 (14.21%) Entra ID
5 916 (13.07%) Power Platform
6 777 (11.09%) Microsoft 365
7 714 (10.19%) GitHub
8 412 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
9 402 (5.74%) Azure Data Factory
10 334 (4.77%) Serverless
11 315 (4.49%) SaaS
12 269 (3.84%) Power Automate
13 268 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
14 264 (3.77%) Dynamics 365
15 258 (3.68%) Snowflake
16 252 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 239 (3.41%) Azure AKS
18 236 (3.37%) Microsoft Copilot
19 235 (3.35%) PowerApps
20 205 (2.92%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 462 (6.59%) Firewall
2 376 (5.36%) DNS
3 280 (3.99%) VPN
4 261 (3.72%) Network Security
5 218 (3.11%) DHCP
6 165 (2.35%) WAN
7 159 (2.27%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.41%) BGP
9 92 (1.31%) LAN
10 85 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.16%) OSPF
12 75 (1.07%) VLAN
13 73 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.84%) SAN
14 59 (0.84%) Wireless
15 58 (0.83%) SSL
16 39 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 38 (0.54%) MPLS
18 36 (0.51%) HTTP
18 36 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 609 (8.69%) Power BI
2 413 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 334 (4.77%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.31%) Data Lake
5 233 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 212 (3.02%) Metadata
7 180 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 154 (2.20%) Azure SQL Database
9 120 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 119 (1.70%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.24%) MySQL
13 84 (1.20%) Big Data
14 73 (1.04%) MongoDB
15 57 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 56 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
16 56 (0.80%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.74%) Tableau
18 48 (0.68%) Redis
19 46 (0.66%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 608 (8.67%) Git
2 488 (6.96%) JIRA
3 383 (5.46%) Jenkins
4 307 (4.38%) GitLab
5 119 (1.70%) Selenium
6 65 (0.93%) Postman
7 62 (0.88%) Cucumber
8 50 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.67%) JMeter
9 47 (0.67%) JUnit
10 45 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 44 (0.63%) Visual Studio
12 40 (0.57%) Maven
13 38 (0.54%) Claude Code
14 37 (0.53%) Gradle
15 35 (0.50%) Bitbucket
15 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
16 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
17 30 (0.43%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.39%) Gatling
General
1 1,957 (27.92%) Social Skills
2 1,407 (20.07%) Finance
3 726 (10.36%) Public Sector
4 712 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
5 452 (6.45%) Banking
6 206 (2.94%) Retail
7 201 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 167 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
9 135 (1.93%) Legal
10 99 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 96 (1.37%) Manufacturing
12 88 (1.26%) Investment Banking
13 87 (1.24%) Marketing
14 86 (1.23%) Aerospace
15 80 (1.14%) Telecoms
16 74 (1.06%) Military
17 68 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
18 62 (0.88%) Law
19 58 (0.83%) Billing
20 55 (0.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,313 (18.73%) Architect
2 905 (12.91%) Senior
3 797 (11.37%) Developer
4 601 (8.57%) Lead
5 590 (8.42%) Azure Engineer
6 500 (7.13%) Data Engineer
7 417 (5.95%) Solutions Architect
8 396 (5.65%) Analyst
9 360 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 352 (5.02%) Cloud Engineer
11 290 (4.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 269 (3.84%) Consultant
13 221 (3.15%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.70%) Platform Engineer
15 187 (2.67%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.51%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 169 (2.41%) Azure Architect
18 165 (2.35%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 158 (2.25%) Project Manager
20 149 (2.13%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,224 (17.46%) Terraform
2 613 (8.75%) REST
3 525 (7.49%) .NET
4 338 (4.82%) Kafka
5 264 (3.77%) React
6 246 (3.51%) OAuth
7 235 (3.35%) PySpark
8 228 (3.25%) RESTful
9 198 (2.82%) JSON
10 148 (2.11%) OpenID
11 142 (2.03%) OAuth2
12 138 (1.97%) HTML
13 137 (1.95%) SAML
14 128 (1.83%) SOAP
15 127 (1.81%) Middleware
16 122 (1.74%) Spring
17 119 (1.70%) .NET Framework
17 119 (1.70%) AngularJS
18 116 (1.66%) Spring Boot
19 112 (1.60%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 793 (11.31%) Cloud Native
2 381 (5.44%) Onboarding
3 328 (4.68%) Product Ownership
4 271 (3.87%) AI Agents
5 268 (3.82%) Enterprise Software
6 256 (3.65%) Hybrid Cloud
7 239 (3.41%) Distributed Systems
8 227 (3.24%) Data Centre
9 194 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
10 163 (2.33%) Security Posture
11 155 (2.21%) Management Information System
12 132 (1.88%) Data Structures
13 114 (1.63%) Public Cloud
14 111 (1.58%) PKI
15 94 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
16 90 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
17 86 (1.23%) CMDB
18 79 (1.13%) Replication
19 74 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
20 66 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 882 (12.58%) Windows
2 459 (6.55%) Linux
3 346 (4.94%) Windows Server
4 138 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.14%) Android
6 79 (1.13%) Unix
7 78 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 74 (1.06%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.80%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.57%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.100%) Debian
18 6 (0.086%) AIX
19 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
19 4 (0.057%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,555 (36.45%) DevOps
2 2,243 (32.00%) CI/CD
3 1,751 (24.98%) Agile
4 1,317 (18.79%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,265 (18.05%) AI
6 1,220 (17.41%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,044 (14.90%) Migration
8 997 (14.22%) Problem-Solving
9 983 (14.02%) Analytics
10 832 (11.87%) Continuous Improvement
11 772 (11.01%) Roadmaps
12 756 (10.79%) Data Modelling
13 672 (9.59%) Business Intelligence
14 655 (9.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 651 (9.29%) Data Pipeline
16 638 (9.10%) Technical Leadership
17 627 (8.95%) Test Automation
18 618 (8.82%) Containerisation
19 588 (8.39%) Cybersecurity
19 588 (8.39%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,671 (23.84%) Python
2 1,364 (19.46%) SQL
3 818 (11.67%) PowerShell
4 571 (8.15%) Java
5 530 (7.56%) C#
6 442 (6.31%) JavaScript
7 366 (5.22%) Bash
8 311 (4.44%) Bicep
9 264 (3.77%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.03%) Go
13 56 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
14 54 (0.77%) Scala
15 50 (0.71%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) C++
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,818 (25.94%) Security Cleared
2 1,440 (20.55%) SC Cleared
3 521 (7.43%) Degree
4 412 (5.88%) Azure Certification
5 279 (3.98%) DV Cleared
6 240 (3.42%) CISSP
7 229 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 196 (2.80%) AWS Certification
9 169 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
10 167 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
11 166 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
12 121 (1.73%) CISM
13 86 (1.23%) PMI Certification
14 83 (1.18%) PMP
15 77 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 74 (1.06%) CCNP
17 60 (0.86%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 52 (0.74%) CCSP
20 46 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 528 (7.53%) Data Quality
2 403 (5.75%) QA
3 268 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 256 (3.65%) NIST
5 247 (3.52%) GDPR
6 176 (2.51%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.43%) SLA
8 84 (1.20%) NCSC
9 76 (1.08%) WCAG
10 73 (1.04%) GRC
11 71 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
12 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
13 49 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 48 (0.68%) PMO
15 41 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 33 (0.47%) SOC 2
17 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.29%) COBIT
18 20 (0.29%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 916 (13.07%) Active Directory
2 758 (10.81%) Docker
3 226 (3.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 133 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 109 (1.56%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.97%) vSphere
8 49 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.39%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.27%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (0.14%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.100%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.086%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,061 (15.14%) Kubernetes
2 415 (5.92%) Ansible
3 402 (5.74%) Microsoft Intune
4 230 (3.28%) Grafana
5 177 (2.53%) Prometheus
6 127 (1.81%) SCCM
7 122 (1.74%) Single Sign-On
8 60 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.73%) Argo
10 46 (0.66%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.46%) SCOM
13 30 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) CASB
17 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.24%) Packer
19 14 (0.20%) QRadar
20 13 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,617 (37.34%) Microsoft
2 723 (10.32%) Databricks
3 360 (5.14%) ServiceNow
4 332 (4.74%) Google
5 323 (4.61%) VMware
6 281 (4.01%) Oracle
7 216 (3.08%) Cisco
8 206 (2.94%) Splunk
9 184 (2.63%) SAP
10 182 (2.60%) OpenAI
11 164 (2.34%) Salesforce
12 143 (2.04%) Palo Alto
13 139 (1.98%) CyberArk
14 117 (1.67%) Dynatrace
15 110 (1.57%) Foundry
16 84 (1.20%) IBM
17 81 (1.16%) Zscaler
18 73 (1.04%) Fortinet
19 66 (0.94%) Informatica
20 63 (0.90%) Red Hat