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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,182 4,056 4,806
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.70% 14.69% 14.50%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.96% 39.51% 42.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,023 2,787 3,499
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £420 £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 £730
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 37 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.50% +14.29% -24.21%
75th Percentile £80.31 £72.50 £51.30
90th Percentile £101.01 £97.00 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £40.73 £35.00
% change year-on-year +28.91% +16.36% -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 15,975 10,267 11,194
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.93% 37.18% 33.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,666 6,947 7,935
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.54% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £723 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 553 271 219
10th Percentile £15.55 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.31 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £26.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.54% +4.00% -22.65%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £54.38
90th Percentile £83.54 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £27.88 £25.00
% change year-on-year +25.54% +11.52% -28.15%

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 18 August 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 18 August 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 18 August 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 3,738 £550 - 846
North of England +8 1,057 £500 +5.26% 565
South East +1 941 £525 +5.00% 691
Midlands +4 650 £494 -1.25% 289
North West +6 552 £500 +2.30% 297
West Midlands +3 483 £493 -6.19% 179
South West +6 428 £540 +7.90% 269
Yorkshire +6 423 £500 +5.26% 181
East of England +3 177 £525 +1.45% 177
East Midlands +8 155 £500 +8.11% 110
North East +6 95 £506 -2.08% 97
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
1 388 (5.40%) SharePoint
2 229 (3.19%) Confluence
3 185 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 159 (2.21%) Apache Spark
5 139 (1.94%) Apache Airflow
6 111 (1.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.52%) SAS
8 29 (0.40%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
13 9 (0.13%) nginx
14 8 (0.11%) Mendix
15 7 (0.097%) Camunda
15 7 (0.097%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.097%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 108 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 70 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
4 33 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 30 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.38%) 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%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 102 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.097%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Maximo
8 6 (0.084%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,545 (35.44%) AWS
2 1,533 (21.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,217 (16.95%) GCP
4 966 (13.45%) Entra ID
5 903 (12.57%) Power Platform
6 737 (10.26%) Microsoft 365
7 705 (9.82%) GitHub
8 434 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 431 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
10 311 (4.33%) SaaS
11 308 (4.29%) Serverless
12 284 (3.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 263 (3.66%) Azure Monitor
14 256 (3.56%) Power Automate
15 251 (3.49%) Azure AKS
16 235 (3.27%) Dynamics 365
17 225 (3.13%) PowerApps
18 222 (3.09%) PaaS
19 221 (3.08%) Snowflake
20 202 (2.81%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 487 (6.78%) Firewall
2 378 (5.26%) DNS
3 299 (4.16%) VPN
4 268 (3.73%) Network Security
5 201 (2.80%) DHCP
6 179 (2.49%) WAN
7 166 (2.31%) TCP/IP
8 108 (1.50%) LAN
9 106 (1.48%) BGP
10 91 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.24%) VLAN
12 87 (1.21%) OSPF
13 71 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
14 63 (0.88%) SAN
15 62 (0.86%) SSL
16 50 (0.70%) Wireless
17 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
18 41 (0.57%) HTTP
19 40 (0.56%) IPsec
20 38 (0.53%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 636 (8.86%) Power BI
2 425 (5.92%) SQL Server
3 358 (4.98%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.22%) Data Lake
5 245 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 192 (2.67%) Metadata
6 192 (2.67%) NoSQL
7 180 (2.51%) Azure SQL Database
8 123 (1.71%) Relational Database
9 118 (1.64%) Delta Lake
10 91 (1.27%) Big Data
11 85 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 70 (0.97%) MongoDB
13 62 (0.86%) Tableau
14 61 (0.85%) MySQL
15 59 (0.82%) BigQuery
16 58 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
17 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 50 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
19 48 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 568 (7.91%) Git
2 515 (7.17%) JIRA
3 383 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 301 (4.19%) GitLab
5 116 (1.62%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) JUnit
7 56 (0.78%) Postman
8 51 (0.71%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.70%) JMeter
10 49 (0.68%) Cypress.io
11 48 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 41 (0.57%) WebDriver
13 40 (0.56%) Maven
14 38 (0.53%) Visual Studio
15 33 (0.46%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.45%) Gradle
17 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.38%) Gatling
18 27 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 1,893 (26.36%) Social Skills
2 1,398 (19.47%) Finance
3 780 (10.86%) Public Sector
4 722 (10.05%) Analytical Skills
5 412 (5.74%) Banking
6 205 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 192 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
8 182 (2.53%) Retail
9 149 (2.07%) Legal
10 85 (1.18%) Manufacturing
11 81 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
11 81 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 77 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
13 73 (1.02%) Aerospace
14 71 (0.99%) Marketing
15 70 (0.97%) Law
16 69 (0.96%) Investment Banking
17 66 (0.92%) Financial Institution
18 57 (0.79%) Military
19 54 (0.75%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,287 (17.92%) Architect
2 921 (12.82%) Senior
3 836 (11.64%) Developer
4 619 (8.62%) Azure Engineer
5 610 (8.49%) Lead
6 529 (7.37%) Data Engineer
7 422 (5.88%) Analyst
8 391 (5.44%) Solutions Architect
9 338 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
10 327 (4.55%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 260 (3.62%) Consultant
13 216 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 194 (2.70%) Platform Engineer
15 186 (2.59%) Security Engineer
16 183 (2.55%) Azure Architect
17 165 (2.30%) Project Manager
18 162 (2.26%) Senior Developer
19 161 (2.24%) Technical Architect
20 150 (2.09%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 546 (7.60%) .NET
2 534 (7.44%) REST
3 301 (4.19%) Kafka
4 256 (3.56%) React
5 238 (3.31%) PySpark
6 227 (3.16%) RESTful
7 220 (3.06%) OAuth
8 180 (2.51%) JSON
9 157 (2.19%) Spring
10 148 (2.06%) AngularJS
11 140 (1.95%) SAML
12 139 (1.94%) Node.js
13 135 (1.88%) OpenID
14 127 (1.77%) Spring Boot
15 126 (1.75%) .NET Framework
16 124 (1.73%) OAuth2
17 120 (1.67%) HTML
18 119 (1.66%) Middleware
19 112 (1.56%) SOAP
20 104 (1.45%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 796 (11.08%) Cloud Native
2 367 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 297 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 253 (3.52%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.37%) Distributed Systems
6 219 (3.05%) Data Centre
7 212 (2.95%) AI Agents
8 210 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
9 203 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
10 169 (2.35%) Security Posture
11 131 (1.82%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.81%) Data Structures
13 123 (1.71%) Public Cloud
14 100 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
15 99 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
16 96 (1.34%) PKI
17 80 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
18 79 (1.10%) Replication
19 76 (1.06%) CMDB
20 68 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 884 (12.31%) Windows
2 445 (6.20%) Linux
3 313 (4.36%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.71%) Windows 10
5 82 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 81 (1.13%) Unix
7 70 (0.97%) Android
8 64 (0.89%) Apple iOS
8 64 (0.89%) Mac OS
9 52 (0.72%) Ubuntu
10 45 (0.63%) VMS
11 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.25%) CentOS
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
15 10 (0.14%) Debian
16 6 (0.084%) AIX
16 6 (0.084%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,637 (36.72%) DevOps
2 2,230 (31.05%) CI/CD
3 1,783 (24.83%) Agile
4 1,153 (16.05%) AI
5 1,152 (16.04%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,114 (15.51%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,061 (14.77%) Migration
8 1,039 (14.47%) Analytics
9 986 (13.73%) Problem-Solving
10 809 (11.26%) Continuous Improvement
11 798 (11.11%) Data Modelling
12 705 (9.82%) Roadmaps
13 704 (9.80%) Data Pipeline
14 699 (9.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 686 (9.55%) Business Intelligence
16 646 (8.99%) Containerisation
17 600 (8.35%) Microservices
18 598 (8.33%) ETL
19 596 (8.30%) Test Automation
20 589 (8.20%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,660 (23.11%) Python
2 1,425 (19.84%) SQL
3 793 (11.04%) PowerShell
4 596 (8.30%) Java
5 543 (7.56%) C#
6 416 (5.79%) JavaScript
7 341 (4.75%) Bash
8 291 (4.05%) Bicep
9 241 (3.36%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 77 (1.07%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.89%) Go
13 50 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
13 50 (0.70%) Scala
14 48 (0.67%) Shell Script
15 34 (0.47%) R
16 33 (0.46%) Kotlin
16 33 (0.46%) PL/SQL
17 29 (0.40%) Groovy
18 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,851 (25.77%) Security Cleared
2 1,489 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 524 (7.30%) Degree
4 405 (5.64%) Azure Certification
5 253 (3.52%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.40%) CISSP
7 211 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 189 (2.63%) Cisco Certification
9 176 (2.45%) AWS Certification
10 166 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 148 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
12 116 (1.62%) CISM
13 90 (1.25%) CCNP
14 77 (1.07%) PMP
15 76 (1.06%) PMI Certification
16 74 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 58 (0.81%) ISTQB
17 58 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.64%) CCSP
19 44 (0.61%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 503 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 385 (5.36%) QA
3 282 (3.93%) GDPR
4 278 (3.87%) NIST
5 276 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 168 (2.34%) Accessibility
7 101 (1.41%) NCSC
8 95 (1.32%) SLA
9 69 (0.96%) GRC
9 69 (0.96%) PCI DSS
9 69 (0.96%) WCAG
10 65 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 59 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.71%) PMO
13 33 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 29 (0.40%) HIPAA
15 25 (0.35%) SOC 2
16 19 (0.26%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 16 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 919 (12.80%) Active Directory
2 773 (10.76%) Docker
3 215 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 144 (2.01%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 105 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.88%) vSphere
8 54 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.42%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 15 (0.21%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.097%) Varnish
17 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,198 (16.68%) Terraform
2 1,070 (14.90%) Kubernetes
3 401 (5.58%) Ansible
4 394 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
5 227 (3.16%) Grafana
6 184 (2.56%) Prometheus
7 129 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 117 (1.63%) SCCM
9 63 (0.88%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.68%) Argo
11 48 (0.67%) Puppet
12 38 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 28 (0.39%) Istio
16 23 (0.32%) SCOM
17 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
18 20 (0.28%) Packer
19 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
20 14 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,489 (34.66%) Microsoft
2 677 (9.43%) Databricks
3 373 (5.19%) ServiceNow
4 310 (4.32%) VMware
5 301 (4.19%) Google
6 281 (3.91%) Oracle
7 218 (3.04%) Cisco
8 200 (2.78%) SAP
9 176 (2.45%) Splunk
10 157 (2.19%) OpenAI
11 148 (2.06%) CyberArk
12 140 (1.95%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.95%) Salesforce
13 118 (1.64%) Foundry
14 108 (1.50%) Dynatrace
15 92 (1.28%) Zscaler
16 77 (1.07%) IBM
17 76 (1.06%) Okta
18 75 (1.04%) Informatica
19 68 (0.95%) Red Hat