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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,143 4,067 4,814
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.67% 14.69% 14.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.78% 39.53% 42.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,991 2,806 3,509
10th Percentile £367 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £631 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 36 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £22.44 £17.84
25th Percentile £25.94 £27.24 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £40.73 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.19% +16.36% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.25 £76.56 £54.13
90th Percentile £100.59 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £41.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +26.66% +18.43% -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 15,950 10,289 11,214
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.99% 37.17% 33.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,644 6,980 7,945
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.84% -2.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 270 232
10th Percentile £15.99 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.68 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £26.15 £24.59
Median % change year-on-year +35.76% +6.34% -23.92%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.66 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.64 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £28.00 £24.84
% change year-on-year +25.00% +12.72% -29.03%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 3,731 £550 - 3,093
North of England +8 1,038 £500 +5.26% 977
South East +2 918 £525 +5.00% 957
Midlands +4 655 £493 -2.76% 448
North West +7 539 £500 +2.83% 566
West Midlands +3 493 £493 -6.19% 296
South West +7 439 £540 +8.00% 422
Yorkshire +5 417 £500 +5.26% 289
East of England +3 176 £525 -4.55% 267
East Midlands +11 149 £488 +5.41% 152
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 135
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
1 380 (5.32%) SharePoint
2 239 (3.35%) Confluence
3 183 (2.56%) Microsoft Exchange
4 157 (2.20%) Apache Spark
5 137 (1.92%) Apache Airflow
6 111 (1.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.52%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
12 9 (0.13%) nginx
13 8 (0.11%) Mendix
14 7 (0.098%) Camunda
14 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.084%) Documentum
15 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 106 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 64 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 30 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
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
1 105 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) 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%) Maximo
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Ripple
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.056%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,498 (34.97%) AWS
2 1,515 (21.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,194 (16.72%) GCP
4 955 (13.37%) Entra ID
5 896 (12.54%) Power Platform
6 735 (10.29%) Microsoft 365
7 701 (9.81%) GitHub
8 432 (6.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 430 (6.02%) GitHub Actions
10 301 (4.21%) SaaS
10 301 (4.21%) Serverless
11 281 (3.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 260 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
13 251 (3.51%) Azure AKS
14 249 (3.49%) Power Automate
15 236 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
16 223 (3.12%) Snowflake
17 222 (3.11%) PowerApps
18 221 (3.09%) PaaS
19 200 (2.80%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 485 (6.79%) Firewall
2 371 (5.19%) DNS
3 302 (4.23%) VPN
4 268 (3.75%) Network Security
5 197 (2.76%) DHCP
6 183 (2.56%) WAN
7 164 (2.30%) TCP/IP
8 112 (1.57%) LAN
9 109 (1.53%) BGP
10 91 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) OSPF
11 89 (1.25%) VLAN
12 70 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 60 (0.84%) SSL
14 59 (0.83%) SAN
15 52 (0.73%) Wireless
16 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
17 41 (0.57%) HTTP
18 40 (0.56%) IPsec
19 39 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 636 (8.90%) Power BI
2 418 (5.85%) SQL Server
3 362 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 307 (4.30%) Data Lake
5 244 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.58%) NoSQL
7 183 (2.56%) Metadata
8 173 (2.42%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.76%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.27%) Big Data
12 87 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 66 (0.92%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.84%) MySQL
15 59 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
15 59 (0.83%) Tableau
16 57 (0.80%) BigQuery
17 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 49 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
19 47 (0.66%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 555 (7.77%) Git
2 523 (7.32%) JIRA
3 371 (5.19%) Jenkins
4 291 (4.07%) GitLab
5 113 (1.58%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) JUnit
7 55 (0.77%) Postman
8 54 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.73%) JMeter
10 49 (0.69%) Cypress.io
10 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 42 (0.59%) WebDriver
12 40 (0.56%) Maven
13 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 32 (0.45%) REST Assured
15 31 (0.43%) Gradle
16 27 (0.38%) Bitbucket
16 27 (0.38%) LoadRunner
16 27 (0.38%) MLflow
17 25 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 1,864 (26.10%) Social Skills
2 1,393 (19.50%) Finance
3 775 (10.85%) Public Sector
4 721 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
5 404 (5.66%) Banking
6 191 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 189 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
8 179 (2.51%) Retail
9 151 (2.11%) Legal
10 82 (1.15%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.15%) Organisational Skills
11 80 (1.12%) Manufacturing
11 80 (1.12%) Telecoms
12 72 (1.01%) Law
13 69 (0.97%) Aerospace
14 68 (0.95%) Marketing
15 66 (0.92%) Financial Institution
15 66 (0.92%) Investment Banking
16 58 (0.81%) Front Office
17 56 (0.78%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,260 (17.64%) Architect
2 922 (12.91%) Senior
3 828 (11.59%) Developer
4 619 (8.67%) Azure Engineer
5 600 (8.40%) Lead
6 543 (7.60%) Data Engineer
7 429 (6.01%) Analyst
8 393 (5.50%) Solutions Architect
9 338 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
10 323 (4.52%) Cloud Engineer
11 285 (3.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 265 (3.71%) Consultant
13 210 (2.94%) Data Architect
14 195 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
15 184 (2.58%) Security Engineer
16 179 (2.51%) Azure Architect
17 170 (2.38%) Project Manager
18 158 (2.21%) Senior Developer
19 156 (2.18%) Technical Architect
20 154 (2.16%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 543 (7.60%) .NET
2 510 (7.14%) REST
3 291 (4.07%) Kafka
4 257 (3.60%) React
5 234 (3.28%) PySpark
6 223 (3.12%) RESTful
7 215 (3.01%) OAuth
8 173 (2.42%) JSON
9 155 (2.17%) Spring
10 148 (2.07%) AngularJS
11 146 (2.04%) Node.js
12 137 (1.92%) SAML
13 133 (1.86%) OpenID
14 127 (1.78%) .NET Framework
15 122 (1.71%) OAuth2
16 121 (1.69%) Spring Boot
17 120 (1.68%) Middleware
18 119 (1.67%) HTML
19 111 (1.55%) SOAP
20 103 (1.44%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 772 (10.81%) Cloud Native
2 354 (4.96%) Onboarding
3 299 (4.19%) Product Ownership
4 248 (3.47%) Hybrid Cloud
5 239 (3.35%) Distributed Systems
6 219 (3.07%) Data Centre
7 213 (2.98%) AI Agents
8 206 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
9 193 (2.70%) Enterprise Software
10 167 (2.34%) Security Posture
11 127 (1.78%) Data Structures
12 121 (1.69%) Management Information System
12 121 (1.69%) Public Cloud
13 95 (1.33%) PKI
14 94 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
14 94 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
15 79 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
16 77 (1.08%) Replication
17 70 (0.98%) CMDB
18 69 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 873 (12.22%) Windows
2 429 (6.01%) Linux
3 306 (4.28%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.68%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 77 (1.08%) Unix
7 67 (0.94%) Android
8 62 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 60 (0.84%) Apple iOS
10 47 (0.66%) Ubuntu
11 45 (0.63%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) CentOS
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 2,617 (36.64%) DevOps
2 2,205 (30.87%) CI/CD
3 1,784 (24.98%) Agile
4 1,146 (16.04%) AI
5 1,127 (15.78%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,077 (15.08%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,058 (14.81%) Migration
8 1,029 (14.41%) Analytics
9 969 (13.57%) Problem-Solving
10 803 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
11 796 (11.14%) Data Modelling
12 710 (9.94%) Data Pipeline
13 691 (9.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 690 (9.66%) Roadmaps
15 681 (9.53%) Business Intelligence
16 634 (8.88%) Containerisation
17 602 (8.43%) ETL
18 591 (8.27%) Microservices
19 587 (8.22%) Test Automation
20 585 (8.19%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,666 (23.32%) Python
2 1,414 (19.80%) SQL
3 783 (10.96%) PowerShell
4 581 (8.13%) Java
5 540 (7.56%) C#
6 418 (5.85%) JavaScript
7 336 (4.70%) Bash
8 286 (4.00%) Bicep
9 246 (3.44%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.90%) Go
13 52 (0.73%) Scala
14 51 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
15 45 (0.63%) Shell Script
16 33 (0.46%) Kotlin
16 33 (0.46%) R
17 30 (0.42%) Groovy
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.39%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,824 (25.54%) Security Cleared
2 1,471 (20.59%) SC Cleared
3 517 (7.24%) Degree
4 398 (5.57%) Azure Certification
5 244 (3.42%) DV Cleared
6 229 (3.21%) CISSP
7 207 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
9 173 (2.42%) AWS Certification
10 165 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 146 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
12 109 (1.53%) CISM
13 89 (1.25%) CCNP
14 74 (1.04%) PMP
15 72 (1.01%) PMI Certification
16 70 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 55 (0.77%) ISTQB
18 54 (0.76%) Master's Degree
19 48 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 498 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 381 (5.33%) QA
3 284 (3.98%) GDPR
4 269 (3.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 269 (3.77%) NIST
5 165 (2.31%) Accessibility
6 98 (1.37%) NCSC
7 96 (1.34%) SLA
8 70 (0.98%) WCAG
9 69 (0.97%) GRC
10 68 (0.95%) PCI DSS
11 66 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
12 57 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.70%) PMO
14 31 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.41%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 16 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 905 (12.67%) Active Directory
2 770 (10.78%) Docker
3 212 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.99%) Virtual Desktop
5 135 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
6 103 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.88%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.41%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 15 (0.21%) IAG
13 14 (0.20%) Postfix
14 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.098%) Varnish
15 7 (0.098%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,187 (16.62%) Terraform
2 1,057 (14.80%) Kubernetes
3 392 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 388 (5.43%) Ansible
5 226 (3.16%) Grafana
6 184 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 131 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
8 112 (1.57%) SCCM
9 59 (0.83%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.67%) Argo
11 47 (0.66%) Puppet
12 39 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.39%) Istio
15 21 (0.29%) SCOM
15 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.28%) Packer
17 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,438 (34.13%) Microsoft
2 675 (9.45%) Databricks
3 368 (5.15%) ServiceNow
4 303 (4.24%) VMware
5 281 (3.93%) Google
6 272 (3.81%) Oracle
7 216 (3.02%) Cisco
8 196 (2.74%) SAP
9 170 (2.38%) Splunk
10 160 (2.24%) OpenAI
11 141 (1.97%) CyberArk
11 141 (1.97%) Palo Alto
12 136 (1.90%) Salesforce
13 118 (1.65%) Foundry
14 108 (1.51%) Dynatrace
15 96 (1.34%) Zscaler
16 73 (1.02%) Okta
17 71 (0.99%) IBM
17 71 (0.99%) Informatica
18 68 (0.95%) Fortinet