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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,969 3,900 5,059
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.85% 16.10% 13.42%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.17% 42.43% 41.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,269 2,796 3,719
10th Percentile £358 £355 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £646
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 29 58
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £53.91 £25.00 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -4.76% -33.18%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £78.96 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £36.75
% change year-on-year +82.54% -14.29% -33.18%

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 13,826 9,192 12,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.71% 37.94% 32.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,507 6,489 8,726
10th Percentile £313 £313 £279
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £524 £525
% change year-on-year -4.58% -0.19% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 424 182 326
10th Percentile £15.74 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £26.81 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.18% +27.68% -16.00%
75th Percentile £66.56 £43.29 £38.13
90th Percentile £80.14 £74.88 £62.00
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +49.06% +26.19% -18.64%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 3,257 £540 -1.82% 1,004
North of England +3 812 £487 -0.10% 604
South East 0 735 £500 -9.09% 685
Midlands -2 484 £500 - 369
North West +2 440 £474 -5.20% 303
West Midlands -2 360 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 350 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire -2 327 £488 +8.33% 208
East of England +8 155 £550 -8.33% 207
East Midlands -1 116 £433 -8.84% 163
North East -5 47 £525 +9.09% 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
1 284 (4.76%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.76%) Apache Spark
4 163 (2.73%) Confluence
5 97 (1.63%) Apache
6 82 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 16 (0.27%) Camunda
10 15 (0.25%) Appian
10 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.25%) CMS
10 15 (0.25%) SAS
11 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) Mendix
12 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
12 8 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.084%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.084%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 105 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.084%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.084%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.084%) Weka
10 4 (0.067%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.050%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.034%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 101 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.084%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.084%) Endur
9 5 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.084%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.067%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle General Ledger
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,084 (34.91%) AWS
2 1,252 (20.98%) Azure DevOps
3 1,168 (19.57%) GCP
4 799 (13.39%) Power Platform
5 767 (12.85%) Entra ID
6 677 (11.34%) Microsoft 365
7 599 (10.04%) GitHub
8 449 (7.52%) Azure Data Factory
9 343 (5.75%) GitHub Actions
10 337 (5.65%) Serverless
11 285 (4.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 243 (4.07%) Dynamics 365
12 243 (4.07%) SaaS
13 222 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
14 218 (3.65%) Power Automate
15 217 (3.64%) Azure AKS
16 206 (3.45%) Azure Functions
17 204 (3.42%) PaaS
18 194 (3.25%) Azure Logic Apps
19 178 (2.98%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 396 (6.63%) Firewall
2 267 (4.47%) DNS
3 235 (3.94%) VPN
4 199 (3.33%) Network Security
5 156 (2.61%) WAN
6 146 (2.45%) DHCP
7 115 (1.93%) LAN
8 93 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.27%) SD-WAN
10 75 (1.26%) VLAN
10 75 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
11 64 (1.07%) Kerberos
12 51 (0.85%) BGP
13 45 (0.75%) OSPF
14 40 (0.67%) Wireless
15 37 (0.62%) HTTP
16 36 (0.60%) SAN
17 30 (0.50%) MPLS
18 27 (0.45%) Internet
18 27 (0.45%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 555 (9.30%) Power BI
2 341 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 323 (5.41%) Data Warehouse
4 283 (4.74%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.48%) Azure SQL Database
6 203 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
7 177 (2.97%) NoSQL
8 135 (2.26%) Metadata
9 127 (2.13%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 81 (1.36%) Big Data
13 78 (1.31%) MongoDB
14 75 (1.26%) Tableau
15 57 (0.95%) Oracle Database
16 55 (0.92%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.87%) Snowflake Schema
18 50 (0.84%) MySQL
19 46 (0.77%) Redis
19 46 (0.77%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 442 (7.40%) Git
2 415 (6.95%) JIRA
3 302 (5.06%) Jenkins
4 219 (3.67%) GitLab
5 100 (1.68%) Selenium
6 66 (1.11%) Postman
7 58 (0.97%) Cucumber
7 58 (0.97%) JUnit
8 52 (0.87%) JMeter
9 51 (0.85%) MLflow
10 39 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 36 (0.60%) SonarQube
12 35 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 33 (0.55%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
14 30 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 26 (0.44%) TestRail
16 25 (0.42%) SpecFlow
17 23 (0.39%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,697 (28.43%) Social Skills
2 1,122 (18.80%) Finance
3 645 (10.81%) Public Sector
4 604 (10.12%) Analytical Skills
5 358 (6.00%) Banking
6 190 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 128 (2.14%) Legal
8 104 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
9 83 (1.39%) Retail
10 80 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.16%) Marketing
12 67 (1.12%) Financial Institution
13 65 (1.09%) Telecoms
14 57 (0.95%) Law
15 54 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 51 (0.85%) Front Office
17 46 (0.77%) Local Government
18 36 (0.60%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 991 (16.60%) Architect
2 795 (13.32%) Developer
3 713 (11.95%) Senior
4 523 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 502 (8.41%) Data Engineer
6 448 (7.51%) Lead
7 385 (6.45%) Analyst
8 290 (4.86%) DevOps Engineer
9 269 (4.51%) Solutions Architect
10 258 (4.32%) Consultant
11 167 (2.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 163 (2.73%) Cloud Engineer
13 148 (2.48%) Azure Architect
14 146 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
15 141 (2.36%) Security Engineer
16 137 (2.30%) Senior Developer
17 130 (2.18%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 123 (2.06%) Data Architect
19 115 (1.93%) Software Engineer
19 115 (1.93%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 454 (7.61%) .NET
2 397 (6.65%) REST
3 267 (4.47%) React
4 249 (4.17%) Kafka
5 221 (3.70%) PySpark
6 208 (3.48%) Node.js
7 204 (3.42%) RESTful
8 180 (3.02%) Spring
9 168 (2.81%) OAuth
10 166 (2.78%) AngularJS
11 143 (2.40%) Spring Boot
12 142 (2.38%) LDAP
13 141 (2.36%) HTML
14 127 (2.13%) Middleware
15 124 (2.08%) JSON
16 123 (2.06%) PyTorch
17 119 (1.99%) CSS
18 117 (1.96%) SOAP
19 111 (1.86%) TensorFlow
20 109 (1.83%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 531 (8.90%) Cloud Native
2 242 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 218 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 179 (3.00%) Hybrid Cloud
5 157 (2.63%) Security Posture
6 152 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
7 143 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.35%) Data Centre
9 127 (2.13%) Public Cloud
10 123 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
11 99 (1.66%) AI Agents
12 82 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 81 (1.36%) Replication
14 68 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
15 67 (1.12%) Management Information System
16 59 (0.99%) Algorithms
17 56 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
18 53 (0.89%) PKI
19 50 (0.84%) Low-Code
20 45 (0.75%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 671 (11.24%) Windows
2 319 (5.34%) Linux
3 204 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.11%) VMS
6 59 (0.99%) Unix
7 44 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 39 (0.65%) Mac OS
9 31 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 25 (0.42%) Android
11 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 5 (0.084%) AIX
16 5 (0.084%) CentOS
16 5 (0.084%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.084%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.067%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,231 (37.38%) DevOps
2 1,798 (30.12%) CI/CD
3 1,403 (23.50%) Agile
4 999 (16.74%) Problem-Solving
5 915 (15.33%) Analytics
6 856 (14.34%) AI
7 805 (13.49%) Infrastructure as Code
8 771 (12.92%) Migration
9 655 (10.97%) Data Modelling
10 622 (10.42%) Business Intelligence
10 622 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
11 589 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
12 565 (9.47%) Containerisation
13 564 (9.45%) Data Pipeline
14 561 (9.40%) ETL
15 538 (9.01%) Microservices
16 530 (8.88%) Data Engineering
17 519 (8.69%) Machine Learning
18 504 (8.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 481 (8.06%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,553 (26.02%) Python
2 1,361 (22.80%) SQL
3 665 (11.14%) PowerShell
4 504 (8.44%) C#
5 498 (8.34%) Java
6 416 (6.97%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.90%) TypeScript
8 224 (3.75%) Bash
9 185 (3.10%) Bicep
10 95 (1.59%) Scala
11 78 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.27%) Go
13 72 (1.21%) PL/SQL
14 70 (1.17%) Kusto Query Language
15 66 (1.11%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.69%) R
17 34 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.45%) C++
19 22 (0.37%) PHP
20 17 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,473 (24.68%) Security Cleared
2 1,215 (20.36%) SC Cleared
3 458 (7.67%) Degree
4 343 (5.75%) Azure Certification
5 190 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 168 (2.81%) CISSP
7 150 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.04%) Cisco Certification
9 118 (1.98%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.96%) DV Cleared
11 101 (1.69%) CISM
12 92 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
13 66 (1.11%) Master's Degree
14 65 (1.09%) CCNP
15 53 (0.89%) PMP
16 52 (0.87%) PMI Certification
17 49 (0.82%) TOGAF Certification
18 47 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 39 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 425 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 355 (5.95%) GDPR
3 328 (5.50%) QA
4 262 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 229 (3.84%) NIST
6 96 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.44%) NCSC
8 84 (1.41%) PCI DSS
9 60 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 53 (0.89%) SLA
12 50 (0.84%) PMO
13 36 (0.60%) GRC
14 33 (0.55%) HIPAA
14 33 (0.55%) WCAG
15 25 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 24 (0.40%) ISO 20022
17 22 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.37%) SOC 2
18 20 (0.34%) PSD2
System Software
1 804 (13.47%) Active Directory
2 702 (11.76%) Docker
3 187 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
5 86 (1.44%) Hyper-V
6 77 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.24%) vSphere
8 31 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
8 31 (0.52%) VMware NSX
9 19 (0.32%) Firmware
10 14 (0.23%) NFS
11 8 (0.13%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
12 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.10%) GPFS
13 6 (0.10%) Lustre
13 6 (0.10%) Snort
14 5 (0.084%) KVM
14 5 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.084%) RACF
Systems Management
1 929 (15.56%) Terraform
2 893 (14.96%) Kubernetes
3 336 (5.63%) Microsoft Intune
4 270 (4.52%) Ansible
5 164 (2.75%) Grafana
6 144 (2.41%) Single Sign-On
7 138 (2.31%) Prometheus
8 111 (1.86%) SCCM
9 72 (1.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.67%) Argo
11 33 (0.55%) Istio
12 30 (0.50%) Puppet
13 27 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 22 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
15 20 (0.34%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.28%) vRealize
17 16 (0.27%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.27%) Nmap
17 16 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,939 (32.48%) Microsoft
2 606 (10.15%) Databricks
3 293 (4.91%) Oracle
4 280 (4.69%) Google
5 262 (4.39%) ServiceNow
6 253 (4.24%) VMware
7 175 (2.93%) SAP
8 161 (2.70%) Cisco
9 157 (2.63%) OpenAI
10 140 (2.35%) Splunk
11 126 (2.11%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.78%) Foundry
13 95 (1.59%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.37%) Salesforce
15 81 (1.36%) Okta
16 69 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
16 69 (1.16%) IBM
17 65 (1.09%) Citrix
18 63 (1.06%) Informatica
18 63 (1.06%) Red Hat