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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,149 4,033 4,799
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.64% 14.61% 14.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 45.04% 39.21% 42.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,001 2,767 3,458
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 41 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% +7.14% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £54.50
90th Percentile £102.63 £95.00 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -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 15,872 10,285 11,248
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.72% 37.27% 33.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,606 6,960 7,889
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.96% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £643
90th Percentile £718 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 541 275 197
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.15 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £17.80
Median hourly rate £34.38 £26.30 £28.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.70% -6.07% -15.15%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.00 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.99 £28.00 £27.86
% change year-on-year +21.39% +0.50% -20.40%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 3,739 £550 +1.29% 3,089
North of England +9 1,050 £500 +5.26% 999
South East +3 928 £525 +5.00% 991
Midlands +4 643 £488 -5.34% 513
North West +6 537 £492 +3.58% 552
West Midlands +3 474 £488 -9.47% 315
Yorkshire +6 431 £500 +5.82% 312
South West +6 429 £540 +8.00% 483
East of England +3 174 £525 +3.45% 299
East Midlands +9 157 £488 +5.41% 197
North East +10 95 £506 +1.25% 144
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
1 393 (5.50%) SharePoint
2 228 (3.19%) Confluence
3 180 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 160 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 142 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.51%) Apache
7 39 (0.55%) SAS
8 29 (0.41%) IIS
9 19 (0.27%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) nginx
13 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.098%) Camunda
15 7 (0.098%) Mendix
16 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
16 6 (0.084%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
6 29 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
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%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 107 (1.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.070%) Maximo
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.070%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,531 (35.40%) AWS
2 1,542 (21.57%) Azure DevOps
3 1,201 (16.80%) GCP
4 954 (13.34%) Entra ID
5 911 (12.74%) Power Platform
6 743 (10.39%) Microsoft 365
7 703 (9.83%) GitHub
8 432 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 422 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
10 328 (4.59%) Serverless
11 313 (4.38%) SaaS
12 278 (3.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 276 (3.86%) Azure Monitor
14 260 (3.64%) Power Automate
15 255 (3.57%) Azure AKS
16 250 (3.50%) Dynamics 365
17 229 (3.20%) Snowflake
18 226 (3.16%) PowerApps
19 207 (2.90%) Microsoft Copilot
20 206 (2.88%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 478 (6.69%) Firewall
2 377 (5.27%) DNS
3 291 (4.07%) VPN
4 274 (3.83%) Network Security
5 205 (2.87%) DHCP
6 184 (2.57%) WAN
7 164 (2.29%) TCP/IP
8 108 (1.51%) BGP
8 108 (1.51%) LAN
9 91 (1.27%) SD-WAN
10 88 (1.23%) OSPF
11 85 (1.19%) VLAN
12 71 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
13 60 (0.84%) SAN
14 58 (0.81%) SSL
15 50 (0.70%) Wireless
16 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
17 42 (0.59%) HTTP
18 38 (0.53%) IPsec
19 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 640 (8.95%) Power BI
2 414 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 360 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 298 (4.17%) Data Lake
5 238 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
6 200 (2.80%) Metadata
7 190 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 176 (2.46%) Azure SQL Database
9 123 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 121 (1.69%) Delta Lake
11 89 (1.24%) Big Data
12 85 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.04%) MongoDB
14 63 (0.88%) Tableau
15 62 (0.87%) MySQL
16 57 (0.80%) Snowflake Schema
17 54 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 53 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
18 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 571 (7.99%) Git
2 509 (7.12%) JIRA
3 383 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 301 (4.21%) GitLab
5 114 (1.59%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) Postman
7 51 (0.71%) Cypress.io
8 50 (0.70%) JUnit
9 46 (0.64%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.63%) JMeter
11 44 (0.62%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.57%) Maven
13 38 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.49%) WebDriver
15 34 (0.48%) Gradle
16 29 (0.41%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.38%) Gatling
19 26 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 1,923 (26.90%) Social Skills
2 1,393 (19.49%) Finance
3 789 (11.04%) Public Sector
4 732 (10.24%) Analytical Skills
5 408 (5.71%) Banking
6 203 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 191 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
8 186 (2.60%) Retail
9 148 (2.07%) Legal
10 85 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
10 85 (1.19%) Manufacturing
11 81 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 74 (1.04%) Aerospace
13 72 (1.01%) Investment Banking
13 72 (1.01%) Marketing
14 69 (0.97%) Law
14 69 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
15 64 (0.90%) Military
16 61 (0.85%) Financial Institution
17 55 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,306 (18.27%) Architect
2 909 (12.72%) Senior
3 818 (11.44%) Developer
4 620 (8.67%) Azure Engineer
5 602 (8.42%) Lead
6 525 (7.34%) Data Engineer
7 428 (5.99%) Analyst
8 394 (5.51%) Solutions Architect
9 358 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
10 327 (4.57%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 268 (3.75%) Consultant
13 221 (3.09%) Data Architect
14 203 (2.84%) Platform Engineer
15 186 (2.60%) Azure Architect
16 172 (2.41%) Security Engineer
17 164 (2.29%) Technical Architect
18 163 (2.28%) Senior Developer
19 160 (2.24%) Project Manager
20 158 (2.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,200 (16.79%) Terraform
2 549 (7.68%) REST
3 541 (7.57%) .NET
4 313 (4.38%) Kafka
5 259 (3.62%) React
6 248 (3.47%) PySpark
7 231 (3.23%) RESTful
8 229 (3.20%) OAuth
9 185 (2.59%) JSON
10 149 (2.08%) Spring
11 140 (1.96%) SAML
12 137 (1.92%) OpenID
13 136 (1.90%) AngularJS
14 134 (1.87%) Node.js
15 128 (1.79%) .NET Framework
16 127 (1.78%) OAuth2
17 126 (1.76%) Spring Boot
18 119 (1.66%) Middleware
19 118 (1.65%) HTML
20 114 (1.59%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 791 (11.06%) Cloud Native
2 365 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 312 (4.36%) Product Ownership
4 253 (3.54%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
6 225 (3.15%) AI Agents
7 222 (3.11%) Enterprise Software
8 221 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 205 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
10 156 (2.18%) Security Posture
11 133 (1.86%) Management Information System
12 128 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 122 (1.71%) Public Cloud
14 101 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
15 98 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
15 98 (1.37%) PKI
16 80 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
17 78 (1.09%) CMDB
17 78 (1.09%) Replication
18 62 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 878 (12.28%) Windows
2 433 (6.06%) Linux
3 320 (4.48%) Windows Server
4 127 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.11%) Unix
6 76 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 72 (1.01%) Android
8 68 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 64 (0.90%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.74%) Ubuntu
11 47 (0.66%) VMS
12 18 (0.25%) CentOS
12 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 7 (0.098%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,642 (36.96%) DevOps
2 2,223 (31.10%) CI/CD
3 1,784 (24.95%) Agile
4 1,192 (16.67%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,171 (16.38%) AI
5 1,171 (16.38%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,063 (14.87%) Migration
7 1,042 (14.58%) Analytics
8 994 (13.90%) Problem-Solving
9 818 (11.44%) Continuous Improvement
10 786 (10.99%) Data Modelling
11 713 (9.97%) Roadmaps
12 694 (9.71%) Business Intelligence
13 691 (9.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 690 (9.65%) Data Pipeline
15 649 (9.08%) Containerisation
16 602 (8.42%) Microservices
17 598 (8.36%) ETL
17 598 (8.36%) Technical Leadership
18 592 (8.28%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,657 (23.18%) Python
2 1,415 (19.79%) SQL
3 793 (11.09%) PowerShell
4 591 (8.27%) Java
5 531 (7.43%) C#
6 408 (5.71%) JavaScript
7 345 (4.83%) Bash
8 303 (4.24%) Bicep
9 242 (3.39%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 62 (0.87%) Go
13 53 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
14 51 (0.71%) Scala
15 49 (0.69%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.50%) R
17 32 (0.45%) Groovy
17 32 (0.45%) Kotlin
17 32 (0.45%) PL/SQL
18 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,869 (26.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,499 (20.97%) SC Cleared
3 515 (7.20%) Degree
4 406 (5.68%) Azure Certification
5 257 (3.59%) DV Cleared
6 237 (3.32%) CISSP
7 215 (3.01%) Microsoft Certification
8 183 (2.56%) AWS Certification
9 182 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 166 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
11 151 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
12 114 (1.59%) CISM
13 85 (1.19%) CCNP
14 75 (1.05%) PMI Certification
15 73 (1.02%) PMP
16 72 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 59 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.80%) ISTQB
19 44 (0.62%) CCSP
20 42 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 515 (7.20%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.50%) QA
3 280 (3.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 279 (3.90%) NIST
5 272 (3.80%) GDPR
6 171 (2.39%) Accessibility
7 96 (1.34%) NCSC
7 96 (1.34%) SLA
8 72 (1.01%) WCAG
9 69 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
9 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
10 68 (0.95%) GRC
11 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.71%) PMO
13 39 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.32%) SOC 2
16 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
16 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 909 (12.72%) Active Directory
2 776 (10.85%) Docker
3 215 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 104 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.87%) vSphere
8 52 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.38%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) NFS
12 17 (0.24%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.17%) Postfix
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.084%) Varnish
17 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,064 (14.88%) Kubernetes
2 402 (5.62%) Ansible
3 390 (5.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 224 (3.13%) Grafana
5 178 (2.49%) Prometheus
6 128 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
7 118 (1.65%) SCCM
8 62 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 36 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 24 (0.34%) Istio
14 23 (0.32%) SCOM
15 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.28%) Packer
17 17 (0.24%) HAProxy
18 14 (0.20%) HP ALM
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,520 (35.25%) Microsoft
2 699 (9.78%) Databricks
3 374 (5.23%) ServiceNow
4 313 (4.38%) VMware
5 293 (4.10%) Google
6 279 (3.90%) Oracle
7 219 (3.06%) Cisco
8 195 (2.73%) SAP
9 182 (2.55%) Splunk
10 166 (2.32%) OpenAI
11 146 (2.04%) CyberArk
12 142 (1.99%) Salesforce
13 140 (1.96%) Palo Alto
14 110 (1.54%) Foundry
15 107 (1.50%) Dynatrace
16 91 (1.27%) Zscaler
17 78 (1.09%) Informatica
18 76 (1.06%) IBM
19 74 (1.04%) Fortinet
20 66 (0.92%) Okta