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

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,050 4,095 4,785
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.23% 14.93% 14.73%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.25% 39.46% 42.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,923 2,808 3,335
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £446 £413 £450
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 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £517 £530
% change year-on-year +1.55% -2.45% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 158 38 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.39 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -13.29% -16.63%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.12 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.88 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £42.35 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +23.69% -6.83% -31.94%

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 15,934 10,377 11,247
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.42% 37.85% 34.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,619 7,014 7,631
10th Percentile £320 £306 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £530
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -5.57% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 553 244 172
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.33 £15.55
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.13
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.73% -21.21% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £64.73
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.18 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £28.00 £32.50
% change year-on-year +16.07% -13.85% -7.14%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 3,694 £550 - 3,174
North of England +7 998 £500 +5.26% 1,191
South East +1 898 £525 +5.00% 1,061
Midlands +2 642 £493 -3.90% 659
North West +5 491 £500 +5.26% 626
West Midlands +2 483 £484 -10.32% 395
Yorkshire +6 426 £500 +5.26% 404
South West +2 419 £550 +10.00% 479
East of England +2 198 £510 +2.00% 321
East Midlands +4 153 £500 +8.11% 264
North East +6 94 £506 +1.25% 167
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
1 413 (5.86%) SharePoint
2 221 (3.13%) Confluence
3 178 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 168 (2.38%) Apache Spark
5 152 (2.16%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (1.46%) Apache
7 40 (0.57%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.30%) IIS
10 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
14 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.099%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.099%) Mendix
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 6 (0.085%) Oracle Workflow
17 5 (0.071%) WebSphere
Applications
1 105 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 7 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.071%) Notion
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Mingle
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 116 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 61 (0.87%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.071%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.057%) Maximo
11 4 (0.057%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.057%) Ripple
11 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,499 (35.45%) AWS
2 1,482 (21.02%) Azure DevOps
3 1,223 (17.35%) GCP
4 990 (14.04%) Entra ID
5 920 (13.05%) Power Platform
6 764 (10.84%) Microsoft 365
7 690 (9.79%) GitHub
8 411 (5.83%) Azure Data Factory
9 404 (5.73%) GitHub Actions
10 337 (4.78%) Serverless
11 318 (4.51%) SaaS
12 271 (3.84%) Power Automate
13 267 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
14 265 (3.76%) Dynamics 365
15 262 (3.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 256 (3.63%) Snowflake
17 240 (3.40%) Azure AKS
18 238 (3.38%) Microsoft Copilot
19 234 (3.32%) PowerApps
20 208 (2.95%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 470 (6.67%) Firewall
2 379 (5.38%) DNS
3 288 (4.09%) VPN
4 260 (3.69%) Network Security
5 218 (3.09%) DHCP
6 173 (2.45%) WAN
7 165 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 100 (1.42%) BGP
9 97 (1.38%) LAN
10 89 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 86 (1.22%) VLAN
12 81 (1.15%) OSPF
13 77 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.88%) SAN
14 62 (0.88%) SSL
15 60 (0.85%) Wireless
16 40 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 38 (0.54%) IPsec
18 37 (0.52%) Internet
18 37 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 620 (8.79%) Power BI
2 408 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 343 (4.87%) Data Warehouse
4 304 (4.31%) Data Lake
5 232 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (3.05%) Metadata
7 183 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 148 (2.10%) Azure SQL Database
9 118 (1.67%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.25%) Big Data
11 88 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.06%) MongoDB
13 74 (1.05%) MySQL
14 57 (0.81%) Tableau
15 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
16 55 (0.78%) Amazon Redshift
17 52 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
18 51 (0.72%) Snowflake Schema
19 50 (0.71%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 600 (8.51%) Git
2 476 (6.75%) JIRA
3 382 (5.42%) Jenkins
4 308 (4.37%) GitLab
5 119 (1.69%) Selenium
6 63 (0.89%) Postman
7 54 (0.77%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.70%) JUnit
9 49 (0.70%) SonarQube
10 44 (0.62%) JMeter
11 43 (0.61%) Visual Studio
12 42 (0.60%) Maven
13 37 (0.52%) Gradle
14 33 (0.47%) Claude Code
14 33 (0.47%) REST Assured
14 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
15 30 (0.43%) Bitbucket
15 30 (0.43%) LoadRunner
16 28 (0.40%) MLflow
General
1 1,964 (27.86%) Social Skills
2 1,370 (19.43%) Finance
3 742 (10.52%) Public Sector
4 721 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
5 425 (6.03%) Banking
6 206 (2.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 205 (2.91%) Retail
8 175 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (1.97%) Legal
10 95 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 90 (1.28%) Manufacturing
12 85 (1.21%) Aerospace
13 83 (1.18%) Marketing
14 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
15 76 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 74 (1.05%) Military
17 69 (0.98%) Law
17 69 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
18 52 (0.74%) Local Government
19 50 (0.71%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,330 (18.87%) Architect
2 896 (12.71%) Senior
3 788 (11.18%) Developer
4 604 (8.57%) Azure Engineer
5 602 (8.54%) Lead
6 508 (7.21%) Data Engineer
7 424 (6.01%) Solutions Architect
8 405 (5.74%) Analyst
9 355 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
10 349 (4.95%) Cloud Engineer
11 285 (4.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 268 (3.80%) Consultant
13 222 (3.15%) Data Architect
14 197 (2.79%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.67%) Security Engineer
16 172 (2.44%) Azure Architect
17 169 (2.40%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 163 (2.31%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 154 (2.18%) Technical Architect
20 152 (2.16%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,218 (17.28%) Terraform
2 575 (8.16%) REST
3 516 (7.32%) .NET
4 336 (4.77%) Kafka
5 250 (3.55%) OAuth
6 249 (3.53%) React
7 241 (3.42%) PySpark
8 222 (3.15%) RESTful
9 189 (2.68%) JSON
10 153 (2.17%) OpenID
11 146 (2.07%) SAML
12 145 (2.06%) OAuth2
13 131 (1.86%) Spring
14 126 (1.79%) HTML
15 124 (1.76%) Middleware
16 123 (1.74%) Spring Boot
17 120 (1.70%) AngularJS
17 120 (1.70%) Node.js
18 116 (1.65%) SOAP
19 114 (1.62%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 790 (11.21%) Cloud Native
2 377 (5.35%) Onboarding
3 323 (4.58%) Product Ownership
4 262 (3.72%) Hybrid Cloud
5 258 (3.66%) AI Agents
6 251 (3.56%) Enterprise Software
7 234 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
8 224 (3.18%) Data Centre
9 194 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 162 (2.30%) Security Posture
11 151 (2.14%) Management Information System
12 127 (1.80%) Data Structures
13 118 (1.67%) Public Cloud
14 107 (1.52%) PKI
15 94 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
15 94 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
16 86 (1.22%) CMDB
17 84 (1.19%) Replication
18 77 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 69 (0.98%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 886 (12.57%) Windows
2 447 (6.34%) Linux
3 337 (4.78%) Windows Server
4 134 (1.90%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 81 (1.15%) Unix
6 78 (1.11%) Android
7 73 (1.04%) Apple iOS
8 68 (0.96%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.79%) Ubuntu
10 44 (0.62%) VMS
11 25 (0.35%) CentOS
12 18 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 8 (0.11%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
17 6 (0.085%) SUSE
18 4 (0.057%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,563 (36.35%) DevOps
2 2,234 (31.69%) CI/CD
3 1,743 (24.72%) Agile
4 1,284 (18.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,253 (17.77%) AI
6 1,212 (17.19%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,041 (14.77%) Migration
8 1,003 (14.23%) Analytics
9 994 (14.10%) Problem-Solving
10 818 (11.60%) Continuous Improvement
11 774 (10.98%) Data Modelling
12 757 (10.74%) Roadmaps
13 676 (9.59%) Business Intelligence
14 666 (9.45%) Data Pipeline
15 662 (9.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 644 (9.13%) Technical Leadership
17 634 (8.99%) Containerisation
18 606 (8.60%) Test Automation
19 586 (8.31%) Data Engineering
20 582 (8.26%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,646 (23.35%) Python
2 1,355 (19.22%) SQL
3 800 (11.35%) PowerShell
4 582 (8.26%) Java
5 523 (7.42%) C#
6 427 (6.06%) JavaScript
7 350 (4.96%) Bash
8 310 (4.40%) Bicep
9 253 (3.59%) TypeScript
10 90 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.98%) Go
13 54 (0.77%) Scala
14 51 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 47 (0.67%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,842 (26.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,461 (20.72%) SC Cleared
3 523 (7.42%) Degree
4 423 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 278 (3.94%) DV Cleared
6 246 (3.49%) CISSP
7 234 (3.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 193 (2.74%) AWS Certification
9 179 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 164 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
11 159 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
12 119 (1.69%) CISM
13 80 (1.13%) CCNP
14 79 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 79 (1.12%) PMI Certification
15 75 (1.06%) PMP
16 58 (0.82%) Master's Degree
17 56 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.72%) CCSP
19 50 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 521 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.62%) QA
3 280 (3.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 267 (3.79%) NIST
5 255 (3.62%) GDPR
6 174 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.42%) SLA
8 91 (1.29%) NCSC
9 76 (1.08%) WCAG
10 75 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
11 73 (1.04%) GRC
12 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
13 53 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 50 (0.71%) PMO
15 42 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 32 (0.45%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.37%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 19 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 928 (13.16%) Active Directory
2 759 (10.77%) Docker
3 221 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.90%) Virtual Machines
6 107 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 72 (1.02%) vSphere
8 54 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 18 (0.26%) IAG
12 14 (0.20%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.057%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,062 (15.06%) Kubernetes
2 407 (5.77%) Ansible
3 403 (5.72%) Microsoft Intune
4 221 (3.13%) Grafana
5 168 (2.38%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
7 127 (1.80%) SCCM
8 59 (0.84%) Progress Chef
9 48 (0.68%) Argo
10 43 (0.61%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.47%) SCOM
14 30 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) CASB
17 18 (0.26%) Packer
18 17 (0.24%) Istio
19 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
20 12 (0.17%) VxRail
Vendors
1 2,590 (36.74%) Microsoft
2 722 (10.24%) Databricks
3 375 (5.32%) ServiceNow
4 325 (4.61%) VMware
5 318 (4.51%) Google
6 286 (4.06%) Oracle
7 224 (3.18%) Cisco
8 205 (2.91%) Splunk
9 183 (2.60%) SAP
10 177 (2.51%) OpenAI
11 161 (2.28%) Salesforce
12 148 (2.10%) CyberArk
13 139 (1.97%) Palo Alto
14 117 (1.66%) Foundry
15 116 (1.65%) Dynatrace
16 84 (1.19%) IBM
16 84 (1.19%) Zscaler
17 74 (1.05%) Fortinet
18 70 (0.99%) Informatica
19 66 (0.94%) Okta