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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,981 4,269 4,762
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.14% 15.29% 14.68%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.02% 39.99% 42.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,864 2,940 3,258
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £413 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £529 £517 £528
% change year-on-year +2.27% -1.94% -4.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 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 £100.76 £89.38 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £42.35 £33.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +26.85% -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 15,857 10,675 11,284
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.39% 38.22% 34.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,546 7,222 7,541
10th Percentile £320 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% -3.67%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £644
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 568 255 165
10th Percentile £15.36 £15.35 £15.99
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £26.00 £34.47
% change year-on-year +15.38% -24.56% +4.44%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 3,676 £550 - 3,723
North of England +4 996 £500 +5.26% 1,376
South East +1 890 £525 +5.00% 1,275
Midlands +1 625 £500 -3.24% 762
North West +5 484 £500 +5.26% 680
West Midlands +2 478 £488 -11.36% 449
Yorkshire +5 426 £500 +2.04% 485
South West +2 406 £550 +7.84% 606
East of England 0 193 £510 +1.49% 469
East Midlands +2 143 £500 +8.11% 313
North East +3 100 £513 +2.50% 224
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
1 407 (5.83%) SharePoint
2 230 (3.29%) Confluence
3 171 (2.45%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.42%) Apache Spark
5 142 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.53%) Apache
7 32 (0.46%) SAS
8 23 (0.33%) CMS
8 23 (0.33%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
10 14 (0.20%) nginx
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.10%) Mendix
15 6 (0.086%) Documentum
16 5 (0.072%) HCL Notes
16 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 106 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.53%) Chatbot
6 33 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 12 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.10%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.10%) Revit
10 5 (0.072%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) Mingle
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) 1Password
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.029%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 110 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.19%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.10%) Shopify
9 5 (0.072%) Maximo
9 5 (0.072%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.057%) Ripple
10 4 (0.057%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.057%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,465 (35.31%) AWS
2 1,481 (21.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,233 (17.66%) GCP
4 991 (14.20%) Entra ID
5 910 (13.04%) Power Platform
6 771 (11.04%) Microsoft 365
7 713 (10.21%) GitHub
8 412 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
9 400 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 334 (4.78%) Serverless
11 314 (4.50%) SaaS
12 268 (3.84%) Power Automate
13 267 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
14 264 (3.78%) Dynamics 365
15 256 (3.67%) Snowflake
16 252 (3.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 239 (3.42%) Azure AKS
18 234 (3.35%) Microsoft Copilot
18 234 (3.35%) PowerApps
19 205 (2.94%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 462 (6.62%) Firewall
2 374 (5.36%) DNS
3 279 (4.00%) VPN
4 261 (3.74%) Network Security
5 217 (3.11%) DHCP
6 165 (2.36%) WAN
7 159 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.42%) BGP
9 92 (1.32%) LAN
10 85 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.16%) OSPF
12 75 (1.07%) VLAN
13 73 (1.05%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.85%) SAN
14 59 (0.85%) Wireless
15 58 (0.83%) SSL
16 39 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 38 (0.54%) MPLS
18 36 (0.52%) HTTP
18 36 (0.52%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 603 (8.64%) Power BI
2 411 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 330 (4.73%) Data Warehouse
4 300 (4.30%) Data Lake
5 232 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 212 (3.04%) Metadata
7 180 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 153 (2.19%) Azure SQL Database
9 119 (1.70%) Delta Lake
9 119 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 90 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 87 (1.25%) MySQL
12 83 (1.19%) Big Data
13 73 (1.05%) MongoDB
14 57 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
15 56 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
15 56 (0.80%) BigQuery
16 50 (0.72%) Tableau
17 48 (0.69%) Redis
18 46 (0.66%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 607 (8.70%) Git
2 487 (6.98%) JIRA
3 384 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 307 (4.40%) GitLab
5 119 (1.70%) Selenium
6 65 (0.93%) Postman
7 62 (0.89%) Cucumber
8 50 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.67%) JMeter
9 47 (0.67%) JUnit
10 45 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 44 (0.63%) Visual Studio
12 40 (0.57%) Maven
13 38 (0.54%) Claude Code
14 37 (0.53%) Gradle
15 35 (0.50%) Bitbucket
15 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
16 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
17 30 (0.43%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.39%) Gatling
General
1 1,953 (27.98%) Social Skills
2 1,401 (20.07%) Finance
3 726 (10.40%) Public Sector
4 710 (10.17%) Analytical Skills
5 450 (6.45%) Banking
6 205 (2.94%) Retail
7 200 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 165 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
9 135 (1.93%) Legal
10 99 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
11 96 (1.38%) Manufacturing
12 87 (1.25%) Investment Banking
12 87 (1.25%) Marketing
13 86 (1.23%) Aerospace
14 79 (1.13%) Telecoms
15 74 (1.06%) Military
16 67 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
17 62 (0.89%) Law
18 58 (0.83%) Billing
19 54 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,308 (18.74%) Architect
2 902 (12.92%) Senior
3 798 (11.43%) Developer
4 599 (8.58%) Lead
5 584 (8.37%) Azure Engineer
6 497 (7.12%) Data Engineer
7 416 (5.96%) Solutions Architect
8 393 (5.63%) Analyst
9 358 (5.13%) DevOps Engineer
10 350 (5.01%) Cloud Engineer
11 289 (4.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 267 (3.82%) Consultant
13 218 (3.12%) Data Architect
14 187 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
14 187 (2.68%) Security Engineer
15 176 (2.52%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 167 (2.39%) Azure Architect
17 162 (2.32%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 157 (2.25%) Project Manager
19 149 (2.13%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,219 (17.46%) Terraform
2 612 (8.77%) REST
3 524 (7.51%) .NET
4 338 (4.84%) Kafka
5 265 (3.80%) React
6 245 (3.51%) OAuth
7 234 (3.35%) PySpark
8 227 (3.25%) RESTful
9 198 (2.84%) JSON
10 147 (2.11%) OpenID
11 142 (2.03%) OAuth2
12 138 (1.98%) HTML
13 136 (1.95%) SAML
14 128 (1.83%) SOAP
15 127 (1.82%) Middleware
16 122 (1.75%) Spring
17 119 (1.70%) AngularJS
18 117 (1.68%) .NET Framework
19 116 (1.66%) Spring Boot
20 112 (1.60%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 793 (11.36%) Cloud Native
2 379 (5.43%) Onboarding
3 327 (4.68%) Product Ownership
4 270 (3.87%) AI Agents
5 269 (3.85%) Enterprise Software
6 255 (3.65%) Hybrid Cloud
7 239 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
8 227 (3.25%) Data Centre
9 193 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 162 (2.32%) Security Posture
11 155 (2.22%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.86%) Data Structures
13 114 (1.63%) Public Cloud
14 112 (1.60%) PKI
15 94 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
16 90 (1.29%) Enterprise Cloud
17 86 (1.23%) CMDB
18 79 (1.13%) Replication
19 74 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
20 66 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 879 (12.59%) Windows
2 459 (6.57%) Linux
3 344 (4.93%) Windows Server
4 137 (1.96%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.15%) Android
6 79 (1.13%) Unix
7 78 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 74 (1.06%) Apple iOS
9 62 (0.89%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.80%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.57%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.10%) Debian
18 6 (0.086%) AIX
19 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
19 4 (0.057%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,549 (36.51%) DevOps
2 2,236 (32.03%) CI/CD
3 1,745 (25.00%) Agile
4 1,315 (18.84%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,261 (18.06%) AI
6 1,216 (17.42%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,041 (14.91%) Migration
8 996 (14.27%) Problem-Solving
9 978 (14.01%) Analytics
10 830 (11.89%) Continuous Improvement
11 770 (11.03%) Roadmaps
12 750 (10.74%) Data Modelling
13 665 (9.53%) Business Intelligence
14 655 (9.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 647 (9.27%) Data Pipeline
16 637 (9.12%) Technical Leadership
17 626 (8.97%) Test Automation
18 618 (8.85%) Containerisation
19 587 (8.41%) Observability
20 586 (8.39%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,667 (23.88%) Python
2 1,357 (19.44%) SQL
3 816 (11.69%) PowerShell
4 571 (8.18%) Java
5 530 (7.59%) C#
6 441 (6.32%) JavaScript
7 367 (5.26%) Bash
8 311 (4.45%) Bicep
9 264 (3.78%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.05%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.03%) Go
13 56 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.74%) Scala
15 50 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) C++
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.42%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,814 (25.98%) Security Cleared
2 1,436 (20.57%) SC Cleared
3 521 (7.46%) Degree
4 410 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 279 (4.00%) DV Cleared
6 239 (3.42%) CISSP
7 229 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 196 (2.81%) AWS Certification
9 169 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
10 167 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
11 166 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
12 121 (1.73%) CISM
13 84 (1.20%) PMI Certification
14 81 (1.16%) PMP
15 77 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 74 (1.06%) CCNP
17 60 (0.86%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 52 (0.74%) CCSP
20 46 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 524 (7.51%) Data Quality
2 403 (5.77%) QA
3 267 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 255 (3.65%) NIST
5 244 (3.50%) GDPR
6 176 (2.52%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.43%) SLA
8 84 (1.20%) NCSC
9 76 (1.09%) WCAG
10 72 (1.03%) GRC
11 71 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
12 69 (0.99%) PCI DSS
13 48 (0.69%) PMO
13 48 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 41 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 33 (0.47%) SOC 2
16 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 20 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.29%) COBIT
17 20 (0.29%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 913 (13.08%) Active Directory
2 759 (10.87%) Docker
3 226 (3.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 131 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
4 131 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
5 109 (1.56%) Hyper-V
6 68 (0.97%) vSphere
7 49 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
8 27 (0.39%) VMware NSX
9 19 (0.27%) Firmware
10 17 (0.24%) IAG
11 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
12 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
12 10 (0.14%) NFS
13 9 (0.13%) Postfix
14 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.086%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 5 (0.072%) Dovecot
16 5 (0.072%) ISA Server
16 5 (0.072%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,062 (15.21%) Kubernetes
2 415 (5.94%) Ansible
3 399 (5.72%) Microsoft Intune
4 230 (3.29%) Grafana
5 177 (2.54%) Prometheus
6 127 (1.82%) SCCM
7 122 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
8 60 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.73%) Argo
10 46 (0.66%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.46%) SCOM
13 30 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) CASB
17 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.24%) Packer
19 14 (0.20%) QRadar
20 13 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,607 (37.34%) Microsoft
2 720 (10.31%) Databricks
3 358 (5.13%) ServiceNow
4 329 (4.71%) Google
5 323 (4.63%) VMware
6 280 (4.01%) Oracle
7 214 (3.07%) Cisco
8 204 (2.92%) Splunk
9 183 (2.62%) SAP
10 182 (2.61%) OpenAI
11 164 (2.35%) Salesforce
12 143 (2.05%) Palo Alto
13 137 (1.96%) CyberArk
14 117 (1.68%) Dynatrace
15 110 (1.58%) Foundry
16 84 (1.20%) IBM
17 80 (1.15%) Zscaler
18 73 (1.05%) Fortinet
19 66 (0.95%) Informatica
20 63 (0.90%) Red Hat