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

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,918 3,908 5,071
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.81% 16.07% 13.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.93% 42.40% 41.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,239 2,784 3,722
10th Percentile £356 £352 £338
25th Percentile £425 £425 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 27 62
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £24.40 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +16.01% -16.15%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £86.00 £79.22 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.12
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.53% -16.15%

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 13,785 9,218 12,173
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.82% 37.90% 32.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,506 6,476 8,749
10th Percentile £313 £313 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £611 £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 418 173 332
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% +26.19% -16.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £40.75
90th Percentile £80.06 £74.75 £62.45
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £26.00 £21.00
% change year-on-year +42.31% +23.81% -18.69%

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 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 24 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 24 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 3,215 £541 -1.66% 1,008
North of England +3 800 £487 +0.15% 601
South East 0 744 £500 -9.09% 710
Midlands -2 477 £500 - 378
North West +1 431 £473 -5.50% 309
West Midlands -3 357 £500 -4.76% 213
South West +6 346 £500 -4.76% 297
Yorkshire -1 323 £488 +8.33% 209
East of England +6 151 £550 -8.33% 213
East Midlands -1 112 £430 -9.47% 164
North East -5 48 £525 +10.53% 87
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
1 278 (4.70%) SharePoint
2 187 (3.16%) Microsoft Exchange
3 164 (2.77%) Apache Spark
4 161 (2.72%) Confluence
5 95 (1.61%) Apache
6 80 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.25%) Appian
9 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.25%) Camunda
10 14 (0.24%) CMS
10 14 (0.24%) SAS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 103 (1.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 52 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.14%) Trello
8 5 (0.084%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.084%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.084%) Weka
9 4 (0.068%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.051%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.034%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.034%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 99 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.14%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.084%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.084%) Endur
9 5 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.084%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.068%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.068%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.068%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.068%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,071 (34.99%) AWS
2 1,229 (20.77%) Azure DevOps
3 1,175 (19.85%) GCP
4 795 (13.43%) Power Platform
5 762 (12.88%) Entra ID
6 677 (11.44%) Microsoft 365
7 604 (10.21%) GitHub
8 448 (7.57%) Azure Data Factory
9 342 (5.78%) GitHub Actions
10 337 (5.69%) Serverless
11 287 (4.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 245 (4.14%) Dynamics 365
13 239 (4.04%) SaaS
14 221 (3.73%) Power Automate
15 218 (3.68%) Azure Monitor
16 215 (3.63%) Azure AKS
17 207 (3.50%) Azure Functions
18 203 (3.43%) PaaS
19 196 (3.31%) Azure Logic Apps
20 177 (2.99%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 392 (6.62%) Firewall
2 262 (4.43%) DNS
3 223 (3.77%) VPN
4 198 (3.35%) Network Security
5 151 (2.55%) WAN
6 147 (2.48%) DHCP
7 115 (1.94%) LAN
8 89 (1.50%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
10 71 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 66 (1.12%) VLAN
12 62 (1.05%) Kerberos
13 48 (0.81%) BGP
14 43 (0.73%) OSPF
15 40 (0.68%) Wireless
16 35 (0.59%) HTTP
17 31 (0.52%) SAN
18 29 (0.49%) MPLS
18 29 (0.49%) SSL
19 28 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 554 (9.36%) Power BI
2 335 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 322 (5.44%) Data Warehouse
4 282 (4.77%) Data Lake
5 211 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
6 208 (3.51%) Azure SQL Database
7 176 (2.97%) NoSQL
8 136 (2.30%) Metadata
9 125 (2.11%) Delta Lake
10 99 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 80 (1.35%) Big Data
13 73 (1.23%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.23%) Tableau
14 58 (0.98%) Oracle Database
15 53 (0.90%) BigQuery
16 50 (0.84%) MySQL
17 49 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
18 44 (0.74%) Redis
19 43 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 446 (7.54%) Git
2 412 (6.96%) JIRA
3 297 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 216 (3.65%) GitLab
5 97 (1.64%) Selenium
6 65 (1.10%) Postman
7 60 (1.01%) Cucumber
8 58 (0.98%) JUnit
9 52 (0.88%) JMeter
10 50 (0.84%) MLflow
11 39 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.57%) Oracle APEX
14 33 (0.56%) SonarQube
15 32 (0.54%) Artifactory
16 31 (0.52%) Visual Studio
17 26 (0.44%) TestRail
18 23 (0.39%) Gatling
18 23 (0.39%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,707 (28.84%) Social Skills
2 1,119 (18.91%) Finance
3 650 (10.98%) Public Sector
4 595 (10.05%) Analytical Skills
5 351 (5.93%) Banking
6 188 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 126 (2.13%) Legal
8 100 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
10 83 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
11 80 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 79 (1.33%) Retail
13 66 (1.12%) Financial Institution
14 65 (1.10%) Telecoms
15 64 (1.08%) Marketing
16 56 (0.95%) Law
17 55 (0.93%) Investment Banking
18 52 (0.88%) Front Office
19 47 (0.79%) Local Government
20 38 (0.64%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 984 (16.63%) Architect
2 803 (13.57%) Developer
3 711 (12.01%) Senior
4 511 (8.63%) Azure Engineer
5 501 (8.47%) Data Engineer
6 446 (7.54%) Lead
7 386 (6.52%) Analyst
8 279 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
9 263 (4.44%) Solutions Architect
10 255 (4.31%) Consultant
11 170 (2.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 163 (2.75%) Cloud Engineer
13 147 (2.48%) Azure Architect
14 143 (2.42%) Platform Engineer
15 142 (2.40%) Security Engineer
16 141 (2.38%) Senior Developer
17 131 (2.21%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 122 (2.06%) Data Architect
19 116 (1.96%) Business Analyst
20 115 (1.94%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 450 (7.60%) .NET
2 399 (6.74%) REST
3 274 (4.63%) React
4 234 (3.95%) Kafka
5 221 (3.73%) PySpark
6 214 (3.62%) Node.js
7 201 (3.40%) RESTful
8 184 (3.11%) Spring
9 172 (2.91%) OAuth
10 171 (2.89%) AngularJS
11 148 (2.50%) HTML
12 141 (2.38%) Spring Boot
13 140 (2.37%) LDAP
14 125 (2.11%) CSS
14 125 (2.11%) Middleware
15 123 (2.08%) PyTorch
16 120 (2.03%) JSON
17 118 (1.99%) SOAP
18 113 (1.91%) SAML
19 111 (1.88%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 533 (9.01%) Cloud Native
2 240 (4.06%) Onboarding
3 215 (3.63%) Product Ownership
4 173 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.69%) Security Posture
6 149 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
6 149 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
7 139 (2.35%) Data Centre
8 123 (2.08%) Public Cloud
9 115 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
10 96 (1.62%) AI Agents
11 79 (1.33%) Data Structures
12 74 (1.25%) Replication
13 70 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
14 69 (1.17%) Management Information System
15 58 (0.98%) Algorithms
16 55 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 53 (0.90%) PKI
18 48 (0.81%) Low-Code
19 44 (0.74%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 650 (10.98%) Windows
2 309 (5.22%) Linux
3 199 (3.36%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.94%) Windows 10
5 60 (1.01%) VMS
6 56 (0.95%) Unix
7 39 (0.66%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 32 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.44%) Android
11 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.25%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 5 (0.084%) AIX
16 5 (0.084%) CentOS
16 5 (0.084%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.084%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.068%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,214 (37.41%) DevOps
2 1,788 (30.21%) CI/CD
3 1,403 (23.71%) Agile
4 1,008 (17.03%) Problem-Solving
5 912 (15.41%) Analytics
6 846 (14.30%) AI
7 786 (13.28%) Infrastructure as Code
8 764 (12.91%) Migration
9 645 (10.90%) Data Modelling
10 620 (10.48%) Business Intelligence
11 613 (10.36%) Stakeholder Management
12 591 (9.99%) Continuous Improvement
13 567 (9.58%) Containerisation
14 554 (9.36%) Data Pipeline
15 553 (9.34%) ETL
16 536 (9.06%) Microservices
17 524 (8.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 520 (8.79%) Data Engineering
19 516 (8.72%) Machine Learning
20 475 (8.03%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,546 (26.12%) Python
2 1,347 (22.76%) SQL
3 660 (11.15%) PowerShell
4 503 (8.50%) Java
5 499 (8.43%) C#
6 419 (7.08%) JavaScript
7 238 (4.02%) TypeScript
8 219 (3.70%) Bash
9 183 (3.09%) Bicep
10 95 (1.61%) Scala
11 76 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 75 (1.27%) Go
13 72 (1.22%) PL/SQL
14 70 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
15 64 (1.08%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.69%) R
17 34 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 28 (0.47%) C++
19 23 (0.39%) Ruby
20 22 (0.37%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,474 (24.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,215 (20.53%) SC Cleared
3 470 (7.94%) Degree
4 345 (5.83%) Azure Certification
5 204 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 169 (2.86%) CISSP
7 148 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 121 (2.04%) AWS Certification
9 119 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
10 114 (1.93%) DV Cleared
11 105 (1.77%) CISM
12 91 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
13 71 (1.20%) Master's Degree
14 61 (1.03%) CCNP
15 52 (0.88%) PMP
15 52 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
16 51 (0.86%) PMI Certification
17 47 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 40 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.57%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 422 (7.13%) Data Quality
2 361 (6.10%) GDPR
3 323 (5.46%) QA
4 262 (4.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 221 (3.73%) NIST
6 95 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.45%) NCSC
8 85 (1.44%) PCI DSS
9 61 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.91%) SLA
12 47 (0.79%) PMO
13 35 (0.59%) GRC
13 35 (0.59%) HIPAA
14 32 (0.54%) WCAG
15 24 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 24 (0.41%) ISO 20022
15 24 (0.41%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.39%) PSD2
17 19 (0.32%) NIST 800
System Software
1 794 (13.42%) Active Directory
2 704 (11.90%) Docker
3 180 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
5 82 (1.39%) Hyper-V
6 74 (1.25%) Virtual Desktop
7 68 (1.15%) vSphere
8 26 (0.44%) VMware NSX
9 23 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (0.27%) Firmware
11 14 (0.24%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
14 6 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.10%) Snort
15 5 (0.084%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.084%) RACF
Systems Management
1 914 (15.44%) Terraform
2 887 (14.99%) Kubernetes
3 337 (5.69%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (4.44%) Ansible
5 160 (2.70%) Grafana
6 145 (2.45%) Single Sign-On
7 136 (2.30%) Prometheus
8 111 (1.88%) SCCM
9 71 (1.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.76%) Argo
11 33 (0.56%) Istio
12 30 (0.51%) Puppet
13 27 (0.46%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
14 21 (0.35%) vCenter Server
15 18 (0.30%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.27%) Nmap
17 15 (0.25%) HP ALM
17 15 (0.25%) Kubeflow
17 15 (0.25%) vRealize
Vendors
1 1,926 (32.54%) Microsoft
2 599 (10.12%) Databricks
3 293 (4.95%) Oracle
4 291 (4.92%) Google
5 256 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 241 (4.07%) VMware
7 172 (2.91%) SAP
8 155 (2.62%) Cisco
9 154 (2.60%) OpenAI
10 135 (2.28%) Splunk
11 121 (2.04%) CyberArk
12 103 (1.74%) Foundry
13 99 (1.67%) Palo Alto
14 81 (1.37%) Okta
14 81 (1.37%) Salesforce
15 71 (1.20%) Red Hat
16 67 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.10%) IBM
18 63 (1.06%) Citrix
18 63 (1.06%) Informatica