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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,725 3,959 5,147
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.72% 16.07% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.43% 42.33% 41.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,072 2,779 3,779
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -0.46% -4.85%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £528
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.57% -6.13%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 25 71
10th Percentile £25.47 £21.42 £17.78
25th Percentile £54.78 £23.80 £22.19
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -21.26%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £59.98
90th Percentile £86.00 £79.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -16.04%

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 13,494 9,353 12,286
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.04% 37.96% 32.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,274 6,490 8,861
10th Percentile £313 £313 £275
25th Percentile £412 £415 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 155 330
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.41 £19.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.06% +26.19% -16.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £43.44
90th Percentile £79.90 £71.75 £62.63
UK median hourly rate £37.54 £26.00 £21.37
% change year-on-year +44.38% +21.67% -14.52%

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 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 12 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 12 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 3,119 £540 -1.82% 1,043
North of England +2 747 £492 +3.58% 565
South East 0 734 £500 -9.09% 673
Midlands -2 467 £500 - 302
North West 0 380 £488 -2.50% 301
West Midlands -3 361 £508 -3.24% 192
South West +4 331 £510 -2.95% 227
Yorkshire -3 321 £488 +8.33% 181
East of England 0 152 £550 -5.17% 184
East Midlands -5 103 £436 -8.21% 107
North East -6 48 £525 +10.53% 91
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
1 277 (4.84%) SharePoint
2 188 (3.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 162 (2.83%) Apache Spark
4 148 (2.59%) Confluence
5 86 (1.50%) Apache
6 77 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.31%) OpenStack
8 17 (0.30%) IIS
9 15 (0.26%) Appian
9 15 (0.26%) SAS
10 14 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.24%) Camunda
10 14 (0.24%) CMS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
Applications
1 101 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 40 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
5 37 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.10%) Trello
8 5 (0.087%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.087%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.087%) Weka
9 4 (0.070%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.017%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.017%) InDesign
11 1 (0.017%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 101 (1.76%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 10 (0.17%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.087%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.087%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.087%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.087%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.070%) Endur
10 4 (0.070%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.070%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.070%) Oracle FAH
Cloud Services
1 2,011 (35.13%) AWS
2 1,165 (20.35%) GCP
3 1,155 (20.17%) Azure DevOps
4 788 (13.76%) Power Platform
5 742 (12.96%) Entra ID
6 670 (11.70%) Microsoft 365
7 582 (10.17%) GitHub
8 430 (7.51%) Azure Data Factory
9 329 (5.75%) GitHub Actions
10 328 (5.73%) Serverless
11 266 (4.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 248 (4.33%) Dynamics 365
13 242 (4.23%) SaaS
14 223 (3.90%) Power Automate
15 220 (3.84%) Azure AKS
16 212 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
17 206 (3.60%) Azure Functions
18 204 (3.56%) PaaS
19 185 (3.23%) Azure Logic Apps
20 177 (3.09%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 384 (6.71%) Firewall
2 252 (4.40%) DNS
3 211 (3.69%) VPN
4 179 (3.13%) Network Security
5 148 (2.59%) DHCP
6 142 (2.48%) WAN
7 105 (1.83%) LAN
8 96 (1.68%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.36%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.15%) SD-WAN
11 63 (1.10%) VLAN
12 62 (1.08%) Kerberos
13 43 (0.75%) BGP
14 40 (0.70%) HTTP
15 39 (0.68%) Wireless
16 38 (0.66%) OSPF
17 31 (0.54%) Internet
18 30 (0.52%) MPLS
19 29 (0.51%) SAN
19 29 (0.51%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (9.54%) Power BI
2 330 (5.76%) SQL Server
3 301 (5.26%) Data Warehouse
4 269 (4.70%) Data Lake
5 206 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
6 197 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
7 173 (3.02%) NoSQL
8 130 (2.27%) Metadata
9 113 (1.97%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.69%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 76 (1.33%) Big Data
13 70 (1.22%) MongoDB
13 70 (1.22%) Tableau
14 57 (1.00%) Oracle Database
15 56 (0.98%) BigQuery
16 51 (0.89%) MySQL
17 49 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
18 47 (0.82%) Redis
19 37 (0.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 435 (7.60%) Git
2 383 (6.69%) JIRA
3 276 (4.82%) Jenkins
4 210 (3.67%) GitLab
5 97 (1.69%) Selenium
6 67 (1.17%) Postman
7 59 (1.03%) JUnit
8 57 (1.00%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.91%) JMeter
10 49 (0.86%) MLflow
11 38 (0.66%) SonarQube
12 36 (0.63%) REST Assured
13 35 (0.61%) Oracle APEX
14 34 (0.59%) Cypress.io
15 31 (0.54%) Visual Studio
16 28 (0.49%) Artifactory
17 27 (0.47%) TestRail
18 26 (0.45%) Bitbucket
19 23 (0.40%) SpecFlow
20 22 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,688 (29.48%) Social Skills
2 1,066 (18.62%) Finance
3 623 (10.88%) Public Sector
4 576 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
5 342 (5.97%) Banking
6 187 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 115 (2.01%) Legal
8 100 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.47%) Influencing Skills
10 81 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
11 80 (1.40%) Retail
12 76 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
13 64 (1.12%) Telecoms
14 63 (1.10%) Financial Institution
14 63 (1.10%) Marketing
15 58 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 54 (0.94%) Law
17 52 (0.91%) Front Office
18 39 (0.68%) Local Government
19 38 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 953 (16.65%) Architect
2 811 (14.17%) Developer
3 667 (11.65%) Senior
4 487 (8.51%) Azure Engineer
5 477 (8.33%) Data Engineer
6 425 (7.42%) Lead
7 366 (6.39%) Analyst
8 268 (4.68%) Solutions Architect
9 261 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
10 254 (4.44%) Consultant
11 167 (2.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 158 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
13 150 (2.62%) Security Engineer
14 148 (2.59%) Azure Architect
15 136 (2.38%) Senior Developer
16 133 (2.32%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 130 (2.27%) Platform Engineer
18 116 (2.03%) Data Architect
19 113 (1.97%) Azure Data Engineer
20 111 (1.94%) Azure Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 448 (7.83%) .NET
2 397 (6.93%) REST
3 268 (4.68%) React
4 222 (3.88%) Kafka
5 212 (3.70%) PySpark
6 208 (3.63%) Node.js
7 198 (3.46%) RESTful
8 178 (3.11%) Spring
9 173 (3.02%) OAuth
10 164 (2.86%) AngularJS
11 151 (2.64%) HTML
12 139 (2.43%) LDAP
13 138 (2.41%) Spring Boot
14 133 (2.32%) PyTorch
15 127 (2.22%) CSS
16 125 (2.18%) SOAP
17 123 (2.15%) Middleware
18 119 (2.08%) TensorFlow
19 115 (2.01%) SAML
20 112 (1.96%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 516 (9.01%) Cloud Native
2 239 (4.17%) Onboarding
3 197 (3.44%) Product Ownership
4 159 (2.78%) Hybrid Cloud
5 156 (2.72%) Security Posture
6 146 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
7 145 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (2.34%) Data Centre
9 112 (1.96%) Public Cloud
10 103 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
11 92 (1.61%) AI Agents
12 77 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.24%) Replication
14 67 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
15 65 (1.14%) Algorithms
16 63 (1.10%) Management Information System
17 54 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
18 51 (0.89%) Low-Code
19 50 (0.87%) PKI
20 46 (0.80%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 635 (11.09%) Windows
2 300 (5.24%) Linux
3 191 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 57 (1.00%) VMS
6 55 (0.96%) Unix
7 41 (0.72%) Mac OS
8 36 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 33 (0.58%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.45%) Android
11 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.28%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.14%) CentOS
16 7 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
17 5 (0.087%) AIX
17 5 (0.087%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.087%) Solaris
17 5 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,098 (36.65%) DevOps
2 1,724 (30.11%) CI/CD
3 1,358 (23.72%) Agile
4 1,006 (17.57%) Problem-Solving
5 889 (15.53%) Analytics
6 818 (14.29%) AI
7 732 (12.79%) Infrastructure as Code
8 725 (12.66%) Migration
9 619 (10.81%) Data Modelling
10 610 (10.66%) Business Intelligence
11 596 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
12 554 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
13 549 (9.59%) Containerisation
14 533 (9.31%) Data Pipeline
15 524 (9.15%) ETL
16 518 (9.05%) Machine Learning
17 509 (8.89%) Microservices
17 509 (8.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 491 (8.58%) Data Engineering
19 458 (8.00%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,503 (26.25%) Python
2 1,323 (23.11%) SQL
3 646 (11.28%) PowerShell
4 488 (8.52%) C#
5 478 (8.35%) Java
6 430 (7.51%) JavaScript
7 242 (4.23%) TypeScript
8 219 (3.83%) Bash
9 169 (2.95%) Bicep
10 92 (1.61%) Scala
11 76 (1.33%) Go
12 73 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 73 (1.28%) PL/SQL
13 69 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
14 65 (1.14%) T-SQL
15 38 (0.66%) R
16 29 (0.51%) C++
16 29 (0.51%) Shell Script
17 22 (0.38%) PHP
17 22 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,412 (24.66%) Security Cleared
2 1,162 (20.30%) SC Cleared
3 460 (8.03%) Degree
4 334 (5.83%) Azure Certification
5 199 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 162 (2.83%) CISSP
7 148 (2.59%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.13%) AWS Certification
9 116 (2.03%) DV Cleared
10 107 (1.87%) Cisco Certification
11 100 (1.75%) CISM
12 86 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
13 72 (1.26%) Master's Degree
14 54 (0.94%) CCNP
15 53 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
16 49 (0.86%) PMI Certification
17 47 (0.82%) ISTQB
17 47 (0.82%) PMP
18 38 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 397 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 355 (6.20%) GDPR
3 301 (5.26%) QA
4 260 (4.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 207 (3.62%) NIST
6 96 (1.68%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.45%) PCI DSS
8 81 (1.41%) NCSC
9 55 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 52 (0.91%) SLA
12 43 (0.75%) PMO
13 34 (0.59%) HIPAA
14 32 (0.56%) GRC
15 28 (0.49%) WCAG
16 27 (0.47%) SOC 2
17 24 (0.42%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.42%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.40%) PSD2
19 21 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 777 (13.57%) Active Directory
2 677 (11.83%) Docker
3 177 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
5 78 (1.36%) Hyper-V
6 67 (1.17%) vSphere
7 63 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 20 (0.35%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.26%) Firmware
11 13 (0.23%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.12%) KVM
13 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
14 6 (0.10%) Snort
15 5 (0.087%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.087%) RACF
Systems Management
1 862 (15.06%) Terraform
2 850 (14.85%) Kubernetes
3 330 (5.76%) Microsoft Intune
4 246 (4.30%) Ansible
5 149 (2.60%) Grafana
6 141 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
7 127 (2.22%) Prometheus
8 117 (2.04%) SCCM
9 72 (1.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.77%) Argo
11 31 (0.54%) Istio
12 26 (0.45%) Puppet
13 23 (0.40%) Progress Chef
14 20 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
14 20 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.28%) Nmap
16 16 (0.28%) vRealize
17 14 (0.24%) HP ALM
17 14 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 1,866 (32.59%) Microsoft
2 577 (10.08%) Databricks
3 292 (5.10%) Oracle
4 291 (5.08%) Google
5 257 (4.49%) ServiceNow
6 236 (4.12%) VMware
7 169 (2.95%) SAP
8 151 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 146 (2.55%) Cisco
10 130 (2.27%) Splunk
11 116 (2.03%) CyberArk
12 100 (1.75%) Foundry
13 91 (1.59%) Palo Alto
14 83 (1.45%) Okta
15 81 (1.41%) Salesforce
16 67 (1.17%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.14%) Citrix
18 64 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.12%) IBM
19 54 (0.94%) Zscaler