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

6 months to
24 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,147 4,073 4,798
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.64% 14.68% 14.44%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.99% 39.32% 42.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,999 2,795 3,457
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £416 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £631 £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 154 40 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.62 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.68 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.99 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.87% +2.83% -24.21%
75th Percentile £80.94 £72.50 £54.50
90th Percentile £102.00 £95.50 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +5.33% +7.14% -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 15,887 10,359 11,239
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.78% 37.34% 33.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,607 7,010 7,887
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 275 200
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £17.24
Median hourly rate £35.00 £26.00 £26.99
Median % change year-on-year +34.62% -3.65% -18.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.10 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.99 £28.00 £27.00
% change year-on-year +21.39% +3.70% -22.86%

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 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 24 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 24 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 3,742 £550 - 929
North of England +7 1,042 £500 +5.26% 555
South East 0 922 £525 +5.00% 670
Midlands +4 644 £493 -4.69% 318
North West +6 537 £492 +0.66% 285
West Midlands +3 477 £493 -8.29% 193
South West +5 431 £540 +7.95% 308
Yorkshire +6 423 £500 +5.26% 185
East of England +5 174 £525 +2.94% 187
East Midlands +10 155 £488 +5.41% 124
North East +9 95 £506 +1.25% 93
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
1 392 (5.48%) SharePoint
2 227 (3.18%) Confluence
3 181 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 160 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 141 (1.97%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.50%) Apache
7 39 (0.55%) SAS
8 29 (0.41%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) nginx
15 8 (0.11%) Mendix
16 7 (0.098%) Camunda
16 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
16 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.084%) Documentum
17 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 108 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
4 32 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.14%) Trello
8 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
9 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.070%) Notion
11 3 (0.042%) Houdini
11 3 (0.042%) NUKE
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
13 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
13 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 105 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (0.94%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Maximo
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,534 (35.46%) AWS
2 1,538 (21.52%) Azure DevOps
3 1,212 (16.96%) GCP
4 945 (13.22%) Entra ID
5 904 (12.65%) Power Platform
6 739 (10.34%) Microsoft 365
7 699 (9.78%) GitHub
8 430 (6.02%) Azure Data Factory
9 423 (5.92%) GitHub Actions
10 319 (4.46%) Serverless
11 316 (4.42%) SaaS
12 277 (3.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 272 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
14 258 (3.61%) Power Automate
15 257 (3.60%) Azure AKS
16 245 (3.43%) Dynamics 365
17 229 (3.20%) Snowflake
18 226 (3.16%) PowerApps
19 214 (2.99%) PaaS
20 207 (2.90%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 478 (6.69%) Firewall
2 376 (5.26%) DNS
3 295 (4.13%) VPN
4 274 (3.83%) Network Security
5 202 (2.83%) DHCP
6 182 (2.55%) WAN
7 167 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 110 (1.54%) BGP
9 108 (1.51%) LAN
10 90 (1.26%) OSPF
10 90 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 87 (1.22%) VLAN
12 72 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.85%) SAN
14 59 (0.83%) SSL
15 51 (0.71%) Wireless
16 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
17 41 (0.57%) HTTP
18 37 (0.52%) Internet
18 37 (0.52%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 637 (8.91%) Power BI
2 417 (5.83%) SQL Server
3 361 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
4 296 (4.14%) Data Lake
5 237 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 196 (2.74%) Metadata
7 192 (2.69%) NoSQL
8 175 (2.45%) Azure SQL Database
9 121 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 118 (1.65%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.27%) Big Data
12 85 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.04%) MongoDB
14 62 (0.87%) MySQL
14 62 (0.87%) Tableau
15 57 (0.80%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.76%) Star Schema
18 53 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
19 50 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 574 (8.03%) Git
2 513 (7.18%) JIRA
3 385 (5.39%) Jenkins
4 298 (4.17%) GitLab
5 116 (1.62%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) Postman
7 52 (0.73%) JUnit
8 51 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.67%) JMeter
10 47 (0.66%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.55%) Maven
13 38 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.52%) WebDriver
15 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.46%) Gradle
17 29 (0.41%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
19 27 (0.38%) Gatling
20 26 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 1,905 (26.65%) Social Skills
2 1,395 (19.52%) Finance
3 787 (11.01%) Public Sector
4 728 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
5 412 (5.76%) Banking
6 204 (2.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 192 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
8 186 (2.60%) Retail
9 146 (2.04%) Legal
10 84 (1.18%) Manufacturing
11 83 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 80 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 73 (1.02%) Aerospace
13 73 (1.02%) Marketing
14 71 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
15 70 (0.98%) Investment Banking
15 70 (0.98%) Law
16 60 (0.84%) Financial Institution
17 58 (0.81%) Military
18 53 (0.74%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,302 (18.22%) Architect
2 911 (12.75%) Senior
3 833 (11.66%) Developer
4 622 (8.70%) Azure Engineer
5 601 (8.41%) Lead
6 529 (7.40%) Data Engineer
7 416 (5.82%) Analyst
8 393 (5.50%) Solutions Architect
9 352 (4.93%) DevOps Engineer
10 328 (4.59%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 260 (3.64%) Consultant
13 222 (3.11%) Data Architect
14 199 (2.78%) Platform Engineer
15 186 (2.60%) Azure Architect
16 174 (2.43%) Security Engineer
17 162 (2.27%) Senior Developer
18 161 (2.25%) Technical Architect
19 160 (2.24%) Project Manager
20 156 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,194 (16.71%) Terraform
2 552 (7.72%) .NET
3 545 (7.63%) REST
4 313 (4.38%) Kafka
5 254 (3.55%) React
6 248 (3.47%) PySpark
7 229 (3.20%) RESTful
8 226 (3.16%) OAuth
9 184 (2.57%) JSON
10 152 (2.13%) Spring
11 147 (2.06%) AngularJS
12 139 (1.94%) SAML
13 137 (1.92%) OpenID
14 130 (1.82%) Node.js
15 128 (1.79%) .NET Framework
15 128 (1.79%) OAuth2
16 127 (1.78%) HTML
17 126 (1.76%) Spring Boot
18 119 (1.67%) Middleware
19 111 (1.55%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 791 (11.07%) Cloud Native
2 369 (5.16%) Onboarding
3 304 (4.25%) Product Ownership
4 246 (3.44%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
6 225 (3.15%) Data Centre
7 219 (3.06%) Enterprise Software
8 218 (3.05%) AI Agents
9 203 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
10 157 (2.20%) Security Posture
11 128 (1.79%) Management Information System
12 126 (1.76%) Data Structures
13 120 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 99 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
15 97 (1.36%) PKI
16 95 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
17 80 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
18 76 (1.06%) CMDB
18 76 (1.06%) Replication
19 65 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 874 (12.23%) Windows
2 433 (6.06%) Linux
3 315 (4.41%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.73%) Windows 10
5 82 (1.15%) Unix
6 77 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 71 (0.99%) Android
8 67 (0.94%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 50 (0.70%) Ubuntu
11 46 (0.64%) VMS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.24%) CentOS
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 7 (0.098%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.098%) Data ONTAP
18 6 (0.084%) AIX
19 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,646 (37.02%) DevOps
2 2,234 (31.26%) CI/CD
3 1,790 (25.05%) Agile
4 1,163 (16.27%) AI
5 1,161 (16.24%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,149 (16.08%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,054 (14.75%) Migration
8 1,034 (14.47%) Analytics
9 994 (13.91%) Problem-Solving
10 817 (11.43%) Continuous Improvement
11 779 (10.90%) Data Modelling
12 698 (9.77%) Roadmaps
13 694 (9.71%) Data Pipeline
14 691 (9.67%) Business Intelligence
15 688 (9.63%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 645 (9.02%) Containerisation
17 602 (8.42%) Microservices
18 600 (8.40%) Test Automation
19 597 (8.35%) ETL
20 594 (8.31%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,651 (23.10%) Python
2 1,424 (19.92%) SQL
3 793 (11.10%) PowerShell
4 595 (8.33%) Java
5 543 (7.60%) C#
6 416 (5.82%) JavaScript
7 344 (4.81%) Bash
8 301 (4.21%) Bicep
9 243 (3.40%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.84%) Go
13 50 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
13 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
14 49 (0.69%) Scala
15 36 (0.50%) R
16 33 (0.46%) PL/SQL
17 32 (0.45%) Kotlin
18 30 (0.42%) Groovy
19 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,870 (26.16%) Security Cleared
2 1,505 (21.06%) SC Cleared
3 516 (7.22%) Degree
4 407 (5.69%) Azure Certification
5 253 (3.54%) DV Cleared
6 234 (3.27%) CISSP
7 210 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 186 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 181 (2.53%) AWS Certification
10 169 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
11 146 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
12 110 (1.54%) CISM
13 90 (1.26%) CCNP
14 72 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 72 (1.01%) PMI Certification
15 71 (0.99%) PMP
16 59 (0.83%) Master's Degree
17 57 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 43 (0.60%) CCSP
18 43 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 509 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 395 (5.53%) QA
3 274 (3.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 272 (3.81%) NIST
5 267 (3.74%) GDPR
6 167 (2.34%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.39%) SLA
8 98 (1.37%) NCSC
9 68 (0.95%) GRC
9 68 (0.95%) WCAG
10 64 (0.90%) Cyber Essentials
10 64 (0.90%) PCI DSS
11 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 48 (0.67%) PMO
13 35 (0.49%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.32%) SOC 2
16 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
17 17 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 905 (12.66%) Active Directory
2 776 (10.86%) Docker
3 212 (2.97%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.96%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
6 103 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.85%) vSphere
8 52 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.43%) Firmware
11 19 (0.27%) NFS
12 16 (0.22%) IAG
13 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
14 11 (0.15%) Postfix
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.098%) Varnish
17 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,061 (14.85%) Kubernetes
2 401 (5.61%) Ansible
3 388 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 225 (3.15%) Grafana
5 179 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 115 (1.61%) SCCM
8 63 (0.88%) Progress Chef
9 50 (0.70%) Argo
10 48 (0.67%) Puppet
11 36 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 26 (0.36%) Istio
15 22 (0.31%) SCOM
15 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) Packer
17 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 14 (0.20%) CASB
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,489 (34.83%) Microsoft
2 693 (9.70%) Databricks
3 368 (5.15%) ServiceNow
4 308 (4.31%) VMware
5 296 (4.14%) Google
6 282 (3.95%) Oracle
7 219 (3.06%) Cisco
8 195 (2.73%) SAP
9 176 (2.46%) Splunk
10 164 (2.29%) OpenAI
11 144 (2.01%) CyberArk
12 140 (1.96%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.93%) Salesforce
14 112 (1.57%) Foundry
15 107 (1.50%) Dynatrace
16 92 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 78 (1.09%) Informatica
18 77 (1.08%) IBM
19 71 (0.99%) Okta
20 70 (0.98%) Fortinet