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

6 months to
27 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,017 4,197 4,813
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.13% 15.03% 14.72%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.01% 39.47% 42.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,898 2,890 3,317
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £519 £530
% change year-on-year +1.25% -2.17% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 38 24
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.24 £40.59
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% -15.64% -12.10%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.30 £55.63
90th Percentile £102.33 £90.63 £82.16
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £34.48 £35.00
% change year-on-year +31.09% -1.49% -32.69%

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 15,945 10,634 11,321
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.39% 38.08% 34.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,637 7,206 7,601
10th Percentile £319 £304 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £532
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -5.92% -3.27%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £644
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 551 249 164
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.45 £15.99
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -27.03% +4.44%
75th Percentile £69.79 £43.75 £66.69
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £26.30 £33.54
% change year-on-year +14.07% -21.59% -4.17%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 0 3,671 £550 +0.92% 3,234
North of England +8 994 £500 +5.26% 1,230
South East +1 901 £525 +6.06% 1,140
Midlands +2 643 £493 -4.37% 684
West Midlands +2 491 £488 -11.36% 412
North West +7 487 £500 +5.26% 644
Yorkshire +5 425 £500 +2.56% 430
South West +2 411 £550 +10.00% 494
East of England +1 196 £505 +1.00% 369
East Midlands +1 146 £500 +8.11% 272
North East +4 95 £513 +2.50% 164
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
1 411 (5.86%) SharePoint
2 225 (3.21%) Confluence
3 176 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 170 (2.42%) Apache Spark
5 150 (2.14%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.52%) Apache
7 39 (0.56%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) CMS
10 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.19%) nginx
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
16 6 (0.086%) Oracle Workflow
17 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 103 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.53%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Revit
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.100%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
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%) Mingle
13 2 (0.029%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 110 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
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 6 (0.086%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.057%) Maximo
11 4 (0.057%) Quorum
11 4 (0.057%) Ripple
11 4 (0.057%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,484 (35.40%) AWS
2 1,470 (20.95%) Azure DevOps
3 1,222 (17.41%) GCP
4 989 (14.09%) Entra ID
5 921 (13.13%) Power Platform
6 769 (10.96%) Microsoft 365
7 698 (9.95%) GitHub
8 404 (5.76%) GitHub Actions
9 399 (5.69%) Azure Data Factory
10 339 (4.83%) Serverless
11 312 (4.45%) SaaS
12 275 (3.92%) Power Automate
13 264 (3.76%) Dynamics 365
14 262 (3.73%) Azure Monitor
15 255 (3.63%) Snowflake
16 254 (3.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 239 (3.41%) Microsoft Copilot
18 238 (3.39%) Azure AKS
18 238 (3.39%) PowerApps
19 207 (2.95%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 461 (6.57%) Firewall
2 375 (5.34%) DNS
3 286 (4.08%) VPN
4 257 (3.66%) Network Security
5 220 (3.14%) DHCP
6 169 (2.41%) WAN
7 160 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.41%) BGP
9 97 (1.38%) LAN
10 86 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.15%) OSPF
12 77 (1.10%) VLAN
12 77 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.90%) SSL
14 60 (0.86%) Wireless
15 58 (0.83%) SAN
16 39 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 37 (0.53%) Internet
17 37 (0.53%) IPsec
17 37 (0.53%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 611 (8.71%) Power BI
2 409 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 336 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 234 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (3.08%) Metadata
7 182 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.07%) Azure SQL Database
9 119 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 117 (1.67%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (1.23%) Big Data
13 82 (1.17%) MySQL
14 70 (1.00%) MongoDB
15 56 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
16 55 (0.78%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.77%) Tableau
18 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
18 50 (0.71%) Oracle Database
19 48 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 598 (8.52%) Git
2 478 (6.81%) JIRA
3 374 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 307 (4.38%) GitLab
5 118 (1.68%) Selenium
6 64 (0.91%) Postman
7 56 (0.80%) Cucumber
8 52 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.70%) JUnit
10 46 (0.66%) JMeter
10 46 (0.66%) SonarQube
11 44 (0.63%) Visual Studio
12 42 (0.60%) Maven
13 38 (0.54%) Gradle
14 37 (0.53%) Claude Code
15 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.44%) LoadRunner
18 29 (0.41%) Bitbucket
19 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,957 (27.89%) Social Skills
2 1,384 (19.72%) Finance
3 738 (10.52%) Public Sector
4 710 (10.12%) Analytical Skills
5 435 (6.20%) Banking
6 205 (2.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 205 (2.92%) Retail
7 174 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
8 136 (1.94%) Legal
9 96 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 93 (1.33%) Manufacturing
11 85 (1.21%) Aerospace
12 82 (1.17%) Marketing
13 80 (1.14%) Investment Banking
14 78 (1.11%) Telecoms
15 75 (1.07%) Military
16 67 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
17 66 (0.94%) Law
18 54 (0.77%) Billing
19 53 (0.76%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,323 (18.85%) Architect
2 902 (12.85%) Senior
3 795 (11.33%) Developer
4 600 (8.55%) Lead
5 590 (8.41%) Azure Engineer
6 506 (7.21%) Data Engineer
7 422 (6.01%) Solutions Architect
8 406 (5.79%) Analyst
9 352 (5.02%) Cloud Engineer
10 350 (4.99%) DevOps Engineer
11 287 (4.09%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 266 (3.79%) Consultant
13 221 (3.15%) Data Architect
14 196 (2.79%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.68%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.51%) Azure Architect
17 168 (2.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 163 (2.32%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 156 (2.22%) Senior Developer
20 154 (2.19%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,216 (17.33%) Terraform
2 598 (8.52%) REST
3 516 (7.35%) .NET
4 330 (4.70%) Kafka
5 255 (3.63%) React
6 253 (3.61%) OAuth
7 235 (3.35%) PySpark
8 225 (3.21%) RESTful
9 195 (2.78%) JSON
10 151 (2.15%) OpenID
11 147 (2.09%) OAuth2
12 144 (2.05%) SAML
13 130 (1.85%) SOAP
14 129 (1.84%) Spring
15 128 (1.82%) HTML
16 125 (1.78%) Middleware
17 122 (1.74%) Spring Boot
18 115 (1.64%) .NET Framework
19 113 (1.61%) AngularJS
20 112 (1.60%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 799 (11.39%) Cloud Native
2 381 (5.43%) Onboarding
3 328 (4.67%) Product Ownership
4 262 (3.73%) Enterprise Software
5 261 (3.72%) AI Agents
6 260 (3.71%) Hybrid Cloud
7 238 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
8 225 (3.21%) Data Centre
9 195 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 164 (2.34%) Security Posture
11 152 (2.17%) Management Information System
12 128 (1.82%) Data Structures
13 118 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 108 (1.54%) PKI
15 94 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
16 92 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
17 86 (1.23%) CMDB
18 79 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
19 78 (1.11%) Replication
20 67 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 879 (12.53%) Windows
2 446 (6.36%) Linux
3 336 (4.79%) Windows Server
4 141 (2.01%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.15%) Unix
6 79 (1.13%) Android
7 74 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (1.04%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.76%) Ubuntu
11 37 (0.53%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 18 (0.26%) 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%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,550 (36.34%) DevOps
2 2,233 (31.82%) CI/CD
3 1,735 (24.73%) Agile
4 1,292 (18.41%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,260 (17.96%) AI
6 1,208 (17.22%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,040 (14.82%) Migration
8 991 (14.12%) Problem-Solving
9 988 (14.08%) Analytics
10 818 (11.66%) Continuous Improvement
11 769 (10.96%) Data Modelling
12 762 (10.86%) Roadmaps
13 670 (9.55%) Business Intelligence
14 665 (9.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 650 (9.26%) Data Pipeline
16 638 (9.09%) Technical Leadership
17 632 (9.01%) Containerisation
18 616 (8.78%) Test Automation
19 586 (8.35%) Cybersecurity
20 581 (8.28%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,639 (23.36%) Python
2 1,353 (19.28%) SQL
3 799 (11.39%) PowerShell
4 579 (8.25%) Java
5 523 (7.45%) C#
6 434 (6.18%) JavaScript
7 350 (4.99%) Bash
8 312 (4.45%) Bicep
9 260 (3.71%) TypeScript
10 89 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 70 (1.00%) Go
13 53 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
13 53 (0.76%) Scala
14 48 (0.68%) Shell Script
15 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
17 29 (0.41%) C++
17 29 (0.41%) R
18 28 (0.40%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,840 (26.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,463 (20.85%) SC Cleared
3 523 (7.45%) Degree
4 418 (5.96%) Azure Certification
5 279 (3.98%) DV Cleared
6 246 (3.51%) CISSP
7 230 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 194 (2.76%) AWS Certification
9 172 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
10 165 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
11 163 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 123 (1.75%) CISM
13 79 (1.13%) PMI Certification
14 78 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 76 (1.08%) CCNP
16 75 (1.07%) PMP
17 59 (0.84%) ISTQB
18 58 (0.83%) Master's Degree
19 51 (0.73%) CCSP
20 50 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 520 (7.41%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.66%) QA
3 275 (3.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 259 (3.69%) NIST
5 251 (3.58%) GDPR
6 172 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.43%) SLA
8 89 (1.27%) NCSC
9 75 (1.07%) GRC
9 75 (1.07%) WCAG
10 72 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.97%) PCI DSS
12 50 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 47 (0.67%) PMO
14 40 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 32 (0.46%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 21 (0.30%) COBIT
17 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 924 (13.17%) Active Directory
2 759 (10.82%) Docker
3 221 (3.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 131 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 129 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.95%) vSphere
8 47 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.30%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 12 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.086%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.057%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 4 (0.057%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,057 (15.06%) Kubernetes
2 405 (5.77%) Ansible
3 404 (5.76%) Microsoft Intune
4 220 (3.14%) Grafana
5 170 (2.42%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 126 (1.80%) SCCM
8 58 (0.83%) Progress Chef
9 46 (0.66%) Argo
10 43 (0.61%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 33 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
13 32 (0.46%) SCOM
14 28 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 19 (0.27%) CASB
17 18 (0.26%) Packer
17 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
18 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
19 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,604 (37.11%) Microsoft
2 717 (10.22%) Databricks
3 371 (5.29%) ServiceNow
4 322 (4.59%) Google
5 319 (4.55%) VMware
6 285 (4.06%) Oracle
7 217 (3.09%) Cisco
8 203 (2.89%) Splunk
9 183 (2.61%) SAP
10 178 (2.54%) OpenAI
11 159 (2.27%) Salesforce
12 142 (2.02%) CyberArk
13 137 (1.95%) Palo Alto
14 118 (1.68%) Dynatrace
15 112 (1.60%) Foundry
16 84 (1.20%) IBM
16 84 (1.20%) Zscaler
17 73 (1.04%) Fortinet
18 66 (0.94%) Informatica
19 65 (0.93%) Okta