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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,105 4,165 4,789
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.25% 14.97% 14.71%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.23% 39.48% 42.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,953 2,861 3,323
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £447 £413 £450
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 £517 £533
% change year-on-year +1.55% -3.00% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 40 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £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 £64.77 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.17 £89.38 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +32.01% -6.83% -29.33%

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 16,062 10,549 11,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.48% 37.91% 34.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,699 7,136 7,593
10th Percentile £320 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £533
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -6.10% -3.09%
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 557 252 166
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £15.99
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £33.99 £25.58 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +32.90% -25.79% +4.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £65.68
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £27.45 £33.00
% change year-on-year +18.40% -16.82% -5.44%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 3,729 £550 +0.92% 3,613
North of England +7 1,005 £500 +5.26% 1,239
South East 0 903 £525 +5.00% 1,118
Midlands +2 648 £496 -3.17% 700
North West +6 492 £500 +5.26% 655
West Midlands +2 491 £488 -11.36% 424
Yorkshire +5 431 £500 +4.17% 436
South West +2 421 £550 +10.00% 509
East of England 0 202 £510 +2.00% 373
East Midlands +4 151 £500 +8.11% 276
North East +1 95 £513 +2.50% 156
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
1 415 (5.84%) SharePoint
2 226 (3.18%) Confluence
3 178 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 170 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 154 (2.17%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.53%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.18%) nginx
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.099%) Mendix
15 6 (0.084%) Documentum
15 6 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.070%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 104 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.11%) Revit
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.070%) Notion
11 3 (0.042%) Houdini
11 3 (0.042%) NUKE
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.028%) Mingle
12 2 (0.028%) Windchill
13 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 115 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.89%) 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
6 9 (0.13%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 6 (0.084%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.070%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 4 (0.056%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.056%) Maximo
11 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,526 (35.55%) AWS
2 1,490 (20.97%) Azure DevOps
3 1,238 (17.42%) GCP
4 1,000 (14.07%) Entra ID
5 929 (13.08%) Power Platform
6 772 (10.87%) Microsoft 365
7 699 (9.84%) GitHub
8 410 (5.77%) Azure Data Factory
9 406 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
10 340 (4.79%) Serverless
11 316 (4.45%) SaaS
12 272 (3.83%) Power Automate
13 269 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
14 264 (3.72%) Dynamics 365
15 259 (3.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 257 (3.62%) Snowflake
17 242 (3.41%) Azure AKS
18 238 (3.35%) Microsoft Copilot
18 238 (3.35%) PowerApps
19 209 (2.94%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 475 (6.69%) Firewall
2 380 (5.35%) DNS
3 294 (4.14%) VPN
4 262 (3.69%) Network Security
5 219 (3.08%) DHCP
6 175 (2.46%) WAN
7 166 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 102 (1.44%) BGP
9 98 (1.38%) LAN
10 91 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 86 (1.21%) VLAN
12 83 (1.17%) OSPF
13 78 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.90%) SSL
15 62 (0.87%) SAN
16 61 (0.86%) Wireless
17 40 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 38 (0.53%) IPsec
18 38 (0.53%) MPLS
19 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 621 (8.74%) Power BI
2 413 (5.81%) SQL Server
3 345 (4.86%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.29%) Data Lake
5 237 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 218 (3.07%) Metadata
7 186 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 147 (2.07%) Azure SQL Database
9 118 (1.66%) Relational Database
10 117 (1.65%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.24%) Big Data
11 88 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 80 (1.13%) MySQL
13 77 (1.08%) MongoDB
14 57 (0.80%) BigQuery
14 57 (0.80%) Tableau
15 56 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
16 51 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
16 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
16 51 (0.72%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 601 (8.46%) Git
2 477 (6.71%) JIRA
3 380 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 312 (4.39%) GitLab
5 120 (1.69%) Selenium
6 64 (0.90%) Postman
7 56 (0.79%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.70%) JUnit
10 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 45 (0.63%) Visual Studio
12 44 (0.62%) JMeter
13 42 (0.59%) Maven
14 37 (0.52%) Gradle
15 36 (0.51%) Claude Code
16 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
18 30 (0.42%) Bitbucket
18 30 (0.42%) LoadRunner
19 27 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 1,980 (27.87%) Social Skills
2 1,392 (19.59%) Finance
3 743 (10.46%) Public Sector
4 722 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
5 438 (6.16%) Banking
6 208 (2.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 207 (2.91%) Retail
8 175 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (1.94%) Legal
10 95 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 91 (1.28%) Manufacturing
12 86 (1.21%) Aerospace
12 86 (1.21%) Marketing
13 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
14 78 (1.10%) Investment Banking
15 74 (1.04%) Military
16 70 (0.99%) Law
17 67 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
18 52 (0.73%) Financial Institution
19 51 (0.72%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,342 (18.89%) Architect
2 906 (12.75%) Senior
3 799 (11.25%) Developer
4 614 (8.64%) Lead
5 604 (8.50%) Azure Engineer
6 511 (7.19%) Data Engineer
7 428 (6.02%) Solutions Architect
8 409 (5.76%) Analyst
9 358 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
10 350 (4.93%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 268 (3.77%) Consultant
13 226 (3.18%) Data Architect
14 200 (2.81%) Platform Engineer
15 189 (2.66%) Security Engineer
16 179 (2.52%) Azure Architect
17 168 (2.36%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 166 (2.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 158 (2.22%) Technical Architect
20 157 (2.21%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,234 (17.37%) Terraform
2 592 (8.33%) REST
3 519 (7.30%) .NET
4 344 (4.84%) Kafka
5 256 (3.60%) React
6 255 (3.59%) OAuth
7 240 (3.38%) PySpark
8 227 (3.19%) RESTful
9 193 (2.72%) JSON
10 153 (2.15%) OpenID
11 147 (2.07%) SAML
12 146 (2.05%) OAuth2
13 136 (1.91%) Spring
14 128 (1.80%) Spring Boot
15 127 (1.79%) HTML
16 123 (1.73%) Middleware
16 123 (1.73%) SOAP
17 116 (1.63%) .NET Framework
17 116 (1.63%) AngularJS
17 116 (1.63%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 804 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 381 (5.36%) Onboarding
3 329 (4.63%) Product Ownership
4 265 (3.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 262 (3.69%) AI Agents
6 259 (3.65%) Enterprise Software
7 241 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
8 228 (3.21%) Data Centre
9 197 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
10 164 (2.31%) Security Posture
11 152 (2.14%) Management Information System
12 131 (1.84%) Data Structures
13 120 (1.69%) Public Cloud
14 110 (1.55%) PKI
15 95 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
16 93 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
17 88 (1.24%) CMDB
18 86 (1.21%) Replication
19 78 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
20 68 (0.96%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 892 (12.55%) Windows
2 453 (6.38%) Linux
3 340 (4.79%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.17%) Unix
6 81 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 78 (1.10%) Android
8 73 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.79%) Ubuntu
11 43 (0.61%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 8 (0.11%) Debian
18 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 6 (0.084%) SUSE
19 4 (0.056%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,582 (36.34%) DevOps
2 2,253 (31.71%) CI/CD
3 1,753 (24.67%) Agile
4 1,294 (18.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,266 (17.82%) AI
6 1,224 (17.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,055 (14.85%) Migration
8 1,009 (14.20%) Analytics
9 995 (14.00%) Problem-Solving
10 820 (11.54%) Continuous Improvement
11 783 (11.02%) Data Modelling
12 767 (10.80%) Roadmaps
13 679 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
14 668 (9.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 665 (9.36%) Data Pipeline
16 648 (9.12%) Technical Leadership
17 636 (8.95%) Containerisation
18 617 (8.68%) Test Automation
19 590 (8.30%) Data Engineering
20 588 (8.28%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,659 (23.35%) Python
2 1,368 (19.25%) SQL
3 807 (11.36%) PowerShell
4 595 (8.37%) Java
5 528 (7.43%) C#
6 436 (6.14%) JavaScript
7 355 (5.00%) Bash
8 314 (4.42%) Bicep
9 260 (3.66%) TypeScript
10 91 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 71 (1.00%) Go
13 55 (0.77%) Scala
14 53 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
15 47 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 29 (0.41%) C++
18 28 (0.39%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,851 (26.05%) Security Cleared
2 1,471 (20.70%) SC Cleared
3 528 (7.43%) Degree
4 428 (6.02%) Azure Certification
5 282 (3.97%) DV Cleared
6 247 (3.48%) CISSP
7 234 (3.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 194 (2.73%) AWS Certification
9 179 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
10 165 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
11 163 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
12 119 (1.67%) CISM
13 80 (1.13%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 80 (1.13%) CCNP
13 80 (1.13%) PMI Certification
14 76 (1.07%) PMP
15 58 (0.82%) Master's Degree
16 57 (0.80%) ISTQB
17 52 (0.73%) CCSP
18 50 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 524 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.59%) QA
3 281 (3.95%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 267 (3.76%) NIST
5 257 (3.62%) GDPR
6 174 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 102 (1.44%) SLA
8 91 (1.28%) NCSC
9 76 (1.07%) WCAG
10 73 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 73 (1.03%) GRC
11 68 (0.96%) PCI DSS
12 53 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.70%) PMO
14 41 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 32 (0.45%) SOC 2
16 26 (0.37%) HIPAA
17 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 19 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 934 (13.15%) Active Directory
2 764 (10.75%) Docker
3 225 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
6 108 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 74 (1.04%) vSphere
8 55 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 19 (0.27%) IAG
12 14 (0.20%) NFS
13 11 (0.15%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.056%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,075 (15.13%) Kubernetes
2 412 (5.80%) Ansible
3 405 (5.70%) Microsoft Intune
4 224 (3.15%) Grafana
5 171 (2.41%) Prometheus
6 134 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.82%) SCCM
8 58 (0.82%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Argo
10 43 (0.61%) Puppet
11 37 (0.52%) FortiGate
12 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.46%) SCOM
14 30 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 21 (0.30%) Istio
17 19 (0.27%) CASB
18 18 (0.25%) Packer
19 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
20 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,613 (36.78%) Microsoft
2 727 (10.23%) Databricks
3 375 (5.28%) ServiceNow
4 329 (4.63%) VMware
5 322 (4.53%) Google
6 292 (4.11%) Oracle
7 227 (3.19%) Cisco
8 206 (2.90%) Splunk
9 183 (2.58%) SAP
10 179 (2.52%) OpenAI
11 160 (2.25%) Salesforce
12 146 (2.05%) CyberArk
13 140 (1.97%) Palo Alto
14 119 (1.67%) Dynatrace
15 115 (1.62%) Foundry
16 87 (1.22%) IBM
17 84 (1.18%) Zscaler
18 76 (1.07%) Fortinet
19 68 (0.96%) Informatica
20 65 (0.91%) Okta