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

6 months to
29 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,016 3,913 5,054
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.81% 16.01% 13.42%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.13% 42.23% 41.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,304 2,796 3,721
10th Percentile £358 £354 £343
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 £644
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 28 55
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £53.91 £26.09 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £44.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.94% +14.94% -30.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £79.09 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +79.69% -16.88% -30.00%

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 13,948 9,265 12,130
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.66% 37.90% 32.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,594 6,533 8,714
10th Percentile £313 £313 £280
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 -4.51% -0.26% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 427 186 325
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.24 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.13 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.19 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +47.13% +29.46% -18.32%
75th Percentile £66.88 £43.29 £38.13
90th Percentile £80.52 £74.38 £61.84
UK median hourly rate £39.47 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +48.92% +26.19% -23.64%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 3,278 £540 -1.82% 1,004
North of England +3 822 £485 -0.51% 604
South East 0 740 £500 -9.09% 685
Midlands -1 488 £500 - 369
North West +2 442 £473 -5.50% 303
West Midlands -2 363 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +5 353 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire -1 335 £487 +8.22% 208
East of England +5 157 £550 -6.78% 207
East Midlands 0 116 £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 (4.72%) SharePoint
2 185 (3.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 168 (2.79%) Apache Spark
4 166 (2.76%) Confluence
5 98 (1.63%) Apache
6 85 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 17 (0.28%) SAS
10 16 (0.27%) Camunda
11 15 (0.25%) Appian
11 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 15 (0.25%) CMS
12 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Mendix
13 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 5 (0.083%) BizTalk Server
15 5 (0.083%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 106 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.100%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.083%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.083%) Weka
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.050%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 101 (1.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.10%) 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 (0.100%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.100%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.083%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.083%) Endur
9 5 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.083%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.083%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.066%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.066%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.066%) Oracle General Ledger
10 4 (0.066%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.066%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,102 (34.94%) AWS
2 1,255 (20.86%) Azure DevOps
3 1,179 (19.60%) GCP
4 804 (13.36%) Power Platform
5 772 (12.83%) Entra ID
6 680 (11.30%) Microsoft 365
7 600 (9.97%) GitHub
8 450 (7.48%) Azure Data Factory
9 344 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
10 339 (5.63%) Serverless
11 287 (4.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (4.06%) Dynamics 365
12 244 (4.06%) SaaS
13 222 (3.69%) Azure Monitor
14 218 (3.62%) Azure AKS
14 218 (3.62%) Power Automate
15 207 (3.44%) PaaS
16 206 (3.42%) Azure Functions
17 196 (3.26%) Azure Logic Apps
18 179 (2.98%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 397 (6.60%) Firewall
2 269 (4.47%) DNS
3 236 (3.92%) VPN
4 201 (3.34%) Network Security
5 157 (2.61%) WAN
6 148 (2.46%) DHCP
7 116 (1.93%) LAN
8 94 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.26%) SD-WAN
9 76 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.25%) VLAN
11 65 (1.08%) Kerberos
12 51 (0.85%) BGP
13 45 (0.75%) OSPF
14 40 (0.66%) Wireless
15 37 (0.62%) HTTP
16 36 (0.60%) SAN
17 30 (0.50%) MPLS
17 30 (0.50%) SSL
18 27 (0.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 558 (9.28%) Power BI
2 346 (5.75%) SQL Server
3 325 (5.40%) Data Warehouse
4 284 (4.72%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.46%) Azure SQL Database
6 203 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
7 180 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 141 (2.34%) Metadata
9 129 (2.14%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.60%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 83 (1.38%) Big Data
13 78 (1.30%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.26%) Tableau
15 58 (0.96%) Oracle Database
16 56 (0.93%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
18 50 (0.83%) MySQL
19 46 (0.76%) Redis
19 46 (0.76%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 445 (7.40%) Git
2 418 (6.95%) JIRA
3 306 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 224 (3.72%) GitLab
5 102 (1.70%) Selenium
6 66 (1.10%) Postman
7 60 (1.00%) JUnit
8 58 (0.96%) Cucumber
9 53 (0.88%) JMeter
10 51 (0.85%) MLflow
11 39 (0.65%) REST Assured
12 37 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.55%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 30 (0.50%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.43%) TestRail
17 25 (0.42%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.38%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,707 (28.37%) Social Skills
2 1,130 (18.78%) Finance
3 650 (10.80%) Public Sector
4 610 (10.14%) Analytical Skills
5 358 (5.95%) Banking
6 192 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 132 (2.19%) Legal
8 104 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 84 (1.40%) Retail
11 83 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
12 80 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
13 69 (1.15%) Marketing
14 68 (1.13%) Financial Institution
15 66 (1.10%) Telecoms
16 59 (0.98%) Law
17 54 (0.90%) Investment Banking
18 51 (0.85%) Front Office
19 46 (0.76%) Local Government
20 36 (0.60%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 998 (16.59%) Architect
2 802 (13.33%) Developer
3 718 (11.93%) Senior
4 527 (8.76%) Azure Engineer
5 506 (8.41%) Data Engineer
6 449 (7.46%) Lead
7 388 (6.45%) Analyst
8 290 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
9 272 (4.52%) Solutions Architect
10 261 (4.34%) Consultant
11 167 (2.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 163 (2.71%) Cloud Engineer
13 149 (2.48%) Azure Architect
13 149 (2.48%) Platform Engineer
14 141 (2.34%) Security Engineer
15 140 (2.33%) Senior Developer
16 130 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 124 (2.06%) Data Architect
18 117 (1.94%) Software Engineer
19 115 (1.91%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 459 (7.63%) .NET
2 397 (6.60%) REST
3 270 (4.49%) React
4 250 (4.16%) Kafka
5 221 (3.67%) PySpark
6 209 (3.47%) Node.js
7 204 (3.39%) RESTful
8 182 (3.03%) Spring
9 174 (2.89%) OAuth
10 166 (2.76%) AngularJS
11 146 (2.43%) LDAP
12 145 (2.41%) Spring Boot
13 142 (2.36%) HTML
14 127 (2.11%) Middleware
15 126 (2.09%) JSON
16 124 (2.06%) PyTorch
17 120 (1.99%) CSS
18 117 (1.94%) SOAP
19 113 (1.88%) SAML
20 112 (1.86%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 538 (8.94%) Cloud Native
2 242 (4.02%) Onboarding
3 218 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 179 (2.98%) Hybrid Cloud
5 158 (2.63%) Security Posture
6 152 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
7 143 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 140 (2.33%) Data Centre
9 129 (2.14%) Public Cloud
10 125 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
11 101 (1.68%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.36%) Replication
14 68 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
15 67 (1.11%) Management Information System
16 60 (1.00%) Algorithms
17 57 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 54 (0.90%) PKI
19 50 (0.83%) Low-Code
20 45 (0.75%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 674 (11.20%) Windows
2 320 (5.32%) Linux
3 206 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 116 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.10%) VMS
6 59 (0.98%) Unix
7 44 (0.73%) 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 (0.083%) AIX
16 5 (0.083%) CentOS
16 5 (0.083%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.083%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.066%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,245 (37.32%) DevOps
2 1,813 (30.14%) CI/CD
3 1,412 (23.47%) Agile
4 1,004 (16.69%) Problem-Solving
5 924 (15.36%) Analytics
6 865 (14.38%) AI
7 810 (13.46%) Infrastructure as Code
8 777 (12.92%) Migration
9 664 (11.04%) Data Modelling
10 625 (10.39%) Business Intelligence
11 624 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
12 594 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
13 573 (9.52%) Containerisation
14 570 (9.47%) Data Pipeline
15 564 (9.38%) ETL
16 546 (9.08%) Microservices
17 538 (8.94%) Data Engineering
18 527 (8.76%) Machine Learning
19 510 (8.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 483 (8.03%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,562 (25.96%) Python
2 1,370 (22.77%) SQL
3 666 (11.07%) PowerShell
4 508 (8.44%) C#
5 504 (8.38%) Java
6 419 (6.96%) JavaScript
7 235 (3.91%) TypeScript
8 224 (3.72%) Bash
9 185 (3.08%) Bicep
10 95 (1.58%) Scala
11 78 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.26%) Go
13 72 (1.20%) PL/SQL
14 70 (1.16%) Kusto Query Language
15 66 (1.10%) T-SQL
16 42 (0.70%) R
17 34 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.45%) C++
19 22 (0.37%) PHP
20 18 (0.30%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,486 (24.70%) Security Cleared
2 1,227 (20.40%) SC Cleared
3 460 (7.65%) Degree
4 344 (5.72%) Azure Certification
5 192 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.84%) CISSP
7 150 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
9 119 (1.98%) AWS Certification
9 119 (1.98%) DV Cleared
10 104 (1.73%) CISM
11 92 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
12 66 (1.10%) Master's Degree
13 65 (1.08%) CCNP
14 53 (0.88%) PMP
15 52 (0.86%) PMI Certification
16 50 (0.83%) TOGAF Certification
17 49 (0.81%) ISTQB
18 39 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 429 (7.13%) Data Quality
2 359 (5.97%) GDPR
3 329 (5.47%) QA
4 264 (4.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.84%) NIST
6 96 (1.60%) Accessibility
7 87 (1.45%) NCSC
8 84 (1.40%) PCI DSS
9 60 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.90%) SLA
12 50 (0.83%) 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 (0.33%) PSD2
System Software
1 811 (13.48%) Active Directory
2 714 (11.87%) Docker
3 188 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
5 87 (1.45%) Hyper-V
6 78 (1.30%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.23%) 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 (0.100%) GPFS
13 6 (0.100%) Lustre
13 6 (0.100%) Snort
14 5 (0.083%) KVM
14 5 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.083%) RACF
Systems Management
1 933 (15.51%) Terraform
2 902 (14.99%) Kubernetes
3 336 (5.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 270 (4.49%) Ansible
5 164 (2.73%) Grafana
6 148 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
7 138 (2.29%) Prometheus
8 111 (1.85%) SCCM
9 75 (1.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.66%) 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 (0.33%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
16 17 (0.28%) vRealize
17 16 (0.27%) Nmap
17 16 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,957 (32.53%) Microsoft
2 613 (10.19%) Databricks
3 296 (4.92%) Oracle
4 284 (4.72%) Google
5 266 (4.42%) ServiceNow
6 254 (4.22%) VMware
7 176 (2.93%) SAP
8 161 (2.68%) Cisco
9 159 (2.64%) OpenAI
10 140 (2.33%) Splunk
11 126 (2.09%) CyberArk
12 109 (1.81%) Foundry
13 95 (1.58%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.36%) Salesforce
15 81 (1.35%) Okta
16 69 (1.15%) BeyondTrust
16 69 (1.15%) IBM
17 65 (1.08%) Citrix
18 64 (1.06%) Informatica
19 63 (1.05%) Red Hat