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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,082 4,281 4,725
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.21% 15.32% 14.71%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.11% 39.99% 42.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,939 2,942 3,227
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £444 £413 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £529 £517 £525
% change year-on-year +2.32% -1.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 40 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £24.22 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £64.77 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.34 £89.38 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £33.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +18.32% -4.61% -24.21%

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 16,054 10,705 11,177
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.49% 38.30% 34.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,690 7,236 7,464
10th Percentile £321 £304 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -2.86%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £640
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 572 255 161
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.35 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £22.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £31.25 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +24.25% -28.14% +6.06%

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 7 October 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 7 October 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 7 October 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 3,723 £550 - 3,792
North of England +4 1,013 £500 +5.26% 1,242
South East +1 907 £525 +5.00% 1,210
Midlands +1 636 £500 -3.57% 674
North West +4 493 £500 +5.26% 635
West Midlands +2 485 £488 -11.36% 434
Yorkshire +5 430 £500 +2.04% 428
South West +3 413 £550 +7.53% 517
East of England 0 193 £510 +0.99% 377
East Midlands +3 147 £500 +8.11% 240
North East +4 104 £513 +2.50% 189
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
1 411 (5.80%) SharePoint
2 236 (3.33%) Confluence
3 174 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 171 (2.41%) Apache Spark
5 144 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.54%) Apache
7 32 (0.45%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) CMS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
10 14 (0.20%) nginx
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.099%) Mendix
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
16 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 109 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 36 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 12 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.099%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.099%) Revit
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 4 (0.056%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) Mingle
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) 1Password
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 113 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 5 (0.071%) Maximo
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.056%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.056%) Quorum
10 4 (0.056%) Ripple
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,500 (35.30%) AWS
2 1,516 (21.41%) Azure DevOps
3 1,252 (17.68%) GCP
4 1,019 (14.39%) Entra ID
5 924 (13.05%) Power Platform
6 785 (11.08%) Microsoft 365
7 728 (10.28%) GitHub
8 416 (5.87%) GitHub Actions
9 405 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
10 339 (4.79%) Serverless
11 322 (4.55%) SaaS
12 278 (3.93%) Azure Monitor
13 269 (3.80%) Power Automate
14 268 (3.78%) Dynamics 365
15 259 (3.66%) Snowflake
16 255 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 242 (3.42%) Azure AKS
18 237 (3.35%) PowerApps
19 235 (3.32%) Microsoft Copilot
20 205 (2.89%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 470 (6.64%) Firewall
2 380 (5.37%) DNS
3 289 (4.08%) VPN
4 268 (3.78%) Network Security
5 221 (3.12%) DHCP
6 168 (2.37%) WAN
7 164 (2.32%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.40%) BGP
9 94 (1.33%) LAN
10 87 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.14%) OSPF
12 76 (1.07%) VLAN
13 75 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.85%) Wireless
15 59 (0.83%) SAN
15 59 (0.83%) SSL
16 39 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 38 (0.54%) MPLS
18 37 (0.52%) Internet
18 37 (0.52%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (8.64%) Power BI
2 416 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 333 (4.70%) Data Warehouse
4 304 (4.29%) Data Lake
5 238 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (3.05%) Metadata
7 180 (2.54%) NoSQL
8 159 (2.25%) Azure SQL Database
9 125 (1.77%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.69%) Delta Lake
11 92 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 91 (1.28%) MySQL
13 83 (1.17%) Big Data
14 74 (1.04%) MongoDB
15 60 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
16 57 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
17 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.72%) Tableau
19 50 (0.71%) Redis
20 49 (0.69%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 617 (8.71%) Git
2 496 (7.00%) JIRA
3 396 (5.59%) Jenkins
4 310 (4.38%) GitLab
5 122 (1.72%) Selenium
6 67 (0.95%) Postman
7 64 (0.90%) Cucumber
8 52 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.68%) JMeter
9 48 (0.68%) JUnit
10 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
11 45 (0.64%) Visual Studio
12 41 (0.58%) Maven
13 40 (0.56%) Claude Code
14 38 (0.54%) Gradle
15 35 (0.49%) Bitbucket
15 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
16 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
17 30 (0.42%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.38%) Gatling
General
1 1,986 (28.04%) Social Skills
2 1,417 (20.01%) Finance
3 747 (10.55%) Public Sector
4 721 (10.18%) Analytical Skills
5 455 (6.42%) Banking
6 207 (2.92%) Retail
7 202 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 169 (2.39%) Documentation Skills
9 136 (1.92%) Legal
10 99 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 98 (1.38%) Manufacturing
12 89 (1.26%) Investment Banking
13 88 (1.24%) Aerospace
13 88 (1.24%) Marketing
14 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
15 75 (1.06%) Military
16 69 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
17 63 (0.89%) Law
18 58 (0.82%) Billing
19 54 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,328 (18.75%) Architect
2 922 (13.02%) Senior
3 803 (11.34%) Developer
4 609 (8.60%) Lead
5 591 (8.35%) Azure Engineer
6 503 (7.10%) Data Engineer
7 422 (5.96%) Solutions Architect
8 396 (5.59%) Analyst
9 365 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
10 353 (4.98%) Cloud Engineer
11 294 (4.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 277 (3.91%) Consultant
13 221 (3.12%) Data Architect
14 187 (2.64%) Platform Engineer
15 186 (2.63%) Security Engineer
16 180 (2.54%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 168 (2.37%) Azure Architect
18 163 (2.30%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 161 (2.27%) Project Manager
20 152 (2.15%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,236 (17.45%) Terraform
2 627 (8.85%) REST
3 534 (7.54%) .NET
4 343 (4.84%) Kafka
5 269 (3.80%) React
6 250 (3.53%) OAuth
7 238 (3.36%) PySpark
8 229 (3.23%) RESTful
9 200 (2.82%) JSON
10 152 (2.15%) OpenID
11 147 (2.08%) OAuth2
12 140 (1.98%) HTML
12 140 (1.98%) SAML
13 130 (1.84%) Middleware
13 130 (1.84%) SOAP
14 126 (1.78%) Spring
15 121 (1.71%) AngularJS
16 120 (1.69%) Spring Boot
17 118 (1.67%) .NET Framework
18 116 (1.64%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 803 (11.34%) Cloud Native
2 383 (5.41%) Onboarding
3 337 (4.76%) Product Ownership
4 280 (3.95%) Enterprise Software
5 274 (3.87%) AI Agents
6 260 (3.67%) Hybrid Cloud
7 245 (3.46%) Distributed Systems
8 231 (3.26%) Data Centre
9 196 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
10 165 (2.33%) Management Information System
11 162 (2.29%) Security Posture
12 131 (1.85%) Data Structures
13 117 (1.65%) PKI
13 117 (1.65%) Public Cloud
14 97 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
15 90 (1.27%) Enterprise Cloud
16 89 (1.26%) CMDB
17 80 (1.13%) Replication
18 74 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 68 (0.96%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 897 (12.67%) Windows
2 471 (6.65%) Linux
3 351 (4.96%) Windows Server
4 145 (2.05%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.13%) Android
5 80 (1.13%) Unix
6 78 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 75 (1.06%) Apple iOS
8 62 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.79%) Ubuntu
10 40 (0.56%) VMS
11 26 (0.37%) CentOS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 7 (0.099%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
18 4 (0.056%) Data ONTAP
18 4 (0.056%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,606 (36.80%) DevOps
2 2,279 (32.18%) CI/CD
3 1,769 (24.98%) Agile
4 1,347 (19.02%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,272 (17.96%) AI
6 1,236 (17.45%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,066 (15.05%) Migration
8 1,016 (14.35%) Problem-Solving
9 994 (14.04%) Analytics
10 852 (12.03%) Continuous Improvement
11 786 (11.10%) Roadmaps
12 759 (10.72%) Data Modelling
13 674 (9.52%) Business Intelligence
14 660 (9.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 652 (9.21%) Data Pipeline
16 645 (9.11%) Test Automation
17 644 (9.09%) Technical Leadership
18 628 (8.87%) Containerisation
19 608 (8.59%) Cybersecurity
20 604 (8.53%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,694 (23.92%) Python
2 1,370 (19.34%) SQL
3 837 (11.82%) PowerShell
4 575 (8.12%) Java
5 538 (7.60%) C#
6 446 (6.30%) JavaScript
7 377 (5.32%) Bash
8 322 (4.55%) Bicep
9 270 (3.81%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.02%) Go
13 56 (0.79%) Kusto Query Language
14 53 (0.75%) Scala
15 51 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) C++
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,856 (26.21%) Security Cleared
2 1,473 (20.80%) SC Cleared
3 532 (7.51%) Degree
4 420 (5.93%) Azure Certification
5 286 (4.04%) DV Cleared
6 246 (3.47%) CISSP
7 231 (3.26%) Microsoft Certification
8 204 (2.88%) AWS Certification
9 173 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
9 173 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
10 171 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
11 124 (1.75%) CISM
12 86 (1.21%) PMI Certification
13 83 (1.17%) PMP
14 78 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 75 (1.06%) CCNP
16 60 (0.85%) Master's Degree
17 56 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 53 (0.75%) CCSP
19 52 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 532 (7.51%) Data Quality
2 412 (5.82%) QA
3 274 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 259 (3.66%) NIST
5 247 (3.49%) GDPR
6 181 (2.56%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.41%) SLA
8 87 (1.23%) NCSC
9 76 (1.07%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 72 (1.02%) GRC
11 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
12 49 (0.69%) PMO
13 48 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 42 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 34 (0.48%) SOC 2
16 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.28%) COBIT
17 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 930 (13.13%) Active Directory
2 774 (10.93%) Docker
3 229 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
6 110 (1.55%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.97%) vSphere
8 50 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.27%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (0.14%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.099%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,079 (15.24%) Kubernetes
2 421 (5.94%) Ansible
3 410 (5.79%) Microsoft Intune
4 239 (3.37%) Grafana
5 179 (2.53%) Prometheus
6 134 (1.89%) SCCM
7 124 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
8 61 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 52 (0.73%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.45%) SCOM
13 30 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) CASB
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 19 (0.27%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.24%) Packer
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
19 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,654 (37.48%) Microsoft
2 728 (10.28%) Databricks
3 360 (5.08%) ServiceNow
4 336 (4.74%) Google
5 328 (4.63%) VMware
6 283 (4.00%) Oracle
7 216 (3.05%) Cisco
8 204 (2.88%) Splunk
9 186 (2.63%) OpenAI
10 185 (2.61%) SAP
11 166 (2.34%) Salesforce
12 144 (2.03%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.95%) CyberArk
14 124 (1.75%) Dynatrace
15 111 (1.57%) Foundry
16 84 (1.19%) IBM
17 81 (1.14%) Zscaler
18 74 (1.04%) Fortinet
19 66 (0.93%) Informatica
19 66 (0.93%) MuleSoft