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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,035 4,299 4,802
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.21% 15.33% 14.85%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.14% 39.86% 42.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,901 2,955 3,277
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £413 £438
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 169 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 £100.17 £89.38 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £32.77 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.93% -6.37% -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 15,937 10,784 11,324
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.45% 38.44% 35.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,602 7,280 7,554
10th Percentile £323 £303 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -3.49%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
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 574 256 162
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.12 £16.03
25th Percentile £17.60 £18.51 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +8.29%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £68.06
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +19.28% -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 10 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 10 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 10 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 3,729 £550 - 3,915
North of England +4 999 £500 +5.26% 1,264
South East +1 900 £530 +5.90% 962
Midlands +1 625 £493 -5.29% 640
North West +4 487 £500 +5.26% 669
West Midlands +2 485 £480 -12.73% 425
Yorkshire +4 425 £500 +2.56% 438
South West +2 398 £550 +7.68% 483
East of England 0 188 £505 +1.00% 338
East Midlands 0 136 £500 +8.11% 215
North East -1 96 £513 +2.50% 166
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
1 412 (5.86%) SharePoint
2 232 (3.30%) Confluence
3 174 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 172 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 145 (2.06%) Apache Airflow
6 111 (1.58%) Apache
7 32 (0.45%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) CMS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) 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 (0.100%) Mendix
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
16 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 111 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 39 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.100%) CPLEX
10 6 (0.085%) Revit
11 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 5 (0.071%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) Mingle
12 3 (0.043%) 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%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 112 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.13%) Cloudability
7 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 8 (0.11%) Magento
8 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
9 7 (0.100%) Shopify
10 5 (0.071%) Maximo
10 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.071%) Teamcenter
11 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.057%) Quorum
11 4 (0.057%) Ripple
11 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,449 (34.81%) AWS
2 1,504 (21.38%) Azure DevOps
3 1,235 (17.56%) GCP
4 1,029 (14.63%) Entra ID
5 921 (13.09%) Power Platform
6 790 (11.23%) Microsoft 365
7 727 (10.33%) GitHub
8 420 (5.97%) GitHub Actions
9 403 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 338 (4.80%) Serverless
11 316 (4.49%) SaaS
12 286 (4.07%) Azure Monitor
13 274 (3.89%) Dynamics 365
14 273 (3.88%) Power Automate
15 261 (3.71%) Snowflake
16 249 (3.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 241 (3.43%) PowerApps
18 240 (3.41%) Azure AKS
19 236 (3.35%) Microsoft Copilot
20 210 (2.99%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 474 (6.74%) Firewall
2 388 (5.52%) DNS
3 291 (4.14%) VPN
4 264 (3.75%) Network Security
5 223 (3.17%) DHCP
6 166 (2.36%) WAN
7 165 (2.35%) TCP/IP
8 103 (1.46%) BGP
9 92 (1.31%) LAN
10 87 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 85 (1.21%) OSPF
12 77 (1.09%) VLAN
13 72 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.85%) Wireless
15 57 (0.81%) SAN
16 56 (0.80%) SSL
17 38 (0.54%) HTTP
17 38 (0.54%) IPsec
17 38 (0.54%) MPLS
18 37 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 603 (8.57%) Power BI
2 414 (5.88%) SQL Server
3 331 (4.71%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.29%) Data Lake
5 237 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
6 220 (3.13%) Metadata
7 178 (2.53%) NoSQL
8 157 (2.23%) Azure SQL Database
9 125 (1.78%) Relational Database
10 118 (1.68%) Delta Lake
11 94 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 93 (1.32%) MySQL
13 84 (1.19%) Big Data
14 76 (1.08%) MongoDB
15 60 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
16 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
17 57 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 50 (0.71%) Tableau
20 47 (0.67%) Redis
Development Applications
1 615 (8.74%) Git
2 483 (6.87%) JIRA
3 396 (5.63%) Jenkins
4 308 (4.38%) GitLab
5 124 (1.76%) Selenium
6 68 (0.97%) Postman
7 65 (0.92%) Cucumber
8 53 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.71%) JUnit
10 48 (0.68%) JMeter
11 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
11 46 (0.65%) Visual Studio
12 43 (0.61%) Maven
13 41 (0.58%) Claude Code
14 40 (0.57%) Gradle
15 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
16 34 (0.48%) Bitbucket
17 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
18 30 (0.43%) LoadRunner
19 27 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 1,988 (28.26%) Social Skills
2 1,422 (20.21%) Finance
3 754 (10.72%) Public Sector
4 725 (10.31%) Analytical Skills
5 464 (6.60%) Banking
6 206 (2.93%) Retail
7 199 (2.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 169 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 135 (1.92%) Legal
10 98 (1.39%) Influencing Skills
10 98 (1.39%) Manufacturing
11 92 (1.31%) Marketing
12 90 (1.28%) Investment Banking
13 88 (1.25%) Aerospace
14 78 (1.11%) Telecoms
15 73 (1.04%) Military
16 66 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
17 61 (0.87%) Law
18 58 (0.82%) Billing
19 57 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,326 (18.85%) Architect
2 911 (12.95%) Senior
3 797 (11.33%) Developer
4 612 (8.70%) Lead
5 583 (8.29%) Azure Engineer
6 502 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 428 (6.08%) Solutions Architect
8 391 (5.56%) Analyst
9 358 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
10 354 (5.03%) Cloud Engineer
11 289 (4.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 283 (4.02%) Consultant
13 217 (3.08%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.69%) Platform Engineer
15 187 (2.66%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.50%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 169 (2.40%) Azure Architect
18 158 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 156 (2.22%) Project Manager
20 150 (2.13%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,234 (17.54%) Terraform
2 632 (8.98%) REST
3 532 (7.56%) .NET
4 346 (4.92%) Kafka
5 271 (3.85%) React
6 256 (3.64%) OAuth
7 236 (3.35%) PySpark
8 230 (3.27%) RESTful
9 197 (2.80%) JSON
10 158 (2.25%) OpenID
11 150 (2.13%) OAuth2
12 146 (2.08%) SAML
13 140 (1.99%) HTML
14 133 (1.89%) SOAP
15 132 (1.88%) Middleware
16 125 (1.78%) Spring
17 121 (1.72%) AngularJS
18 120 (1.71%) ARM Templates
18 120 (1.71%) Spring Boot
19 116 (1.65%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 788 (11.20%) Cloud Native
2 391 (5.56%) Onboarding
3 346 (4.92%) Product Ownership
4 284 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
5 276 (3.92%) AI Agents
6 263 (3.74%) Hybrid Cloud
7 241 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
8 233 (3.31%) Data Centre
9 197 (2.80%) Legacy Systems
10 165 (2.35%) Management Information System
10 165 (2.35%) Security Posture
11 132 (1.88%) Data Structures
12 114 (1.62%) Public Cloud
13 113 (1.61%) PKI
14 98 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
15 92 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
16 88 (1.25%) CMDB
17 80 (1.14%) Replication
18 73 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 67 (0.95%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 881 (12.52%) Windows
2 472 (6.71%) Linux
3 351 (4.99%) Windows Server
4 144 (2.05%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.18%) Unix
6 78 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 74 (1.05%) Android
8 68 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 57 (0.81%) Ubuntu
10 54 (0.77%) Mac OS
11 39 (0.55%) 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 6 (0.085%) AIX
17 6 (0.085%) Debian
18 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
18 4 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,594 (36.87%) DevOps
2 2,268 (32.24%) CI/CD
3 1,745 (24.80%) Agile
4 1,354 (19.25%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,268 (18.02%) AI
6 1,238 (17.60%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,060 (15.07%) Migration
8 1,010 (14.36%) Problem-Solving
9 991 (14.09%) Analytics
10 856 (12.17%) Continuous Improvement
11 786 (11.17%) Roadmaps
12 751 (10.68%) Data Modelling
13 662 (9.41%) Business Intelligence
14 652 (9.27%) Data Pipeline
15 650 (9.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 647 (9.20%) Technical Leadership
17 645 (9.17%) Test Automation
18 617 (8.77%) Containerisation
19 613 (8.71%) Cybersecurity
20 605 (8.60%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,685 (23.95%) Python
2 1,357 (19.29%) SQL
3 846 (12.03%) PowerShell
4 568 (8.07%) Java
5 537 (7.63%) C#
6 450 (6.40%) JavaScript
7 377 (5.36%) Bash
8 330 (4.69%) Bicep
9 273 (3.88%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 71 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 66 (0.94%) Go
13 60 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.74%) Scala
15 51 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 32 (0.45%) Groovy
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
17 30 (0.43%) R
18 29 (0.41%) C++
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,843 (26.20%) Security Cleared
2 1,459 (20.74%) SC Cleared
3 532 (7.56%) Degree
4 416 (5.91%) Azure Certification
5 294 (4.18%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.47%) CISSP
7 231 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 203 (2.89%) AWS Certification
9 173 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
10 170 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
11 169 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
12 124 (1.76%) CISM
13 85 (1.21%) PMI Certification
14 81 (1.15%) PMP
15 78 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 73 (1.04%) CCNP
17 61 (0.87%) ISTQB
17 61 (0.87%) Master's Degree
18 53 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
19 52 (0.74%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 535 (7.60%) Data Quality
2 415 (5.90%) QA
3 271 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 253 (3.60%) NIST
5 247 (3.51%) GDPR
6 174 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.42%) SLA
8 87 (1.24%) NCSC
9 73 (1.04%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (1.00%) GRC
12 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
13 49 (0.70%) PMO
14 46 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 42 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 36 (0.51%) SOC 2
17 22 (0.31%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.28%) COBIT
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 932 (13.25%) Active Directory
2 766 (10.89%) Docker
3 227 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 134 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
6 105 (1.49%) Hyper-V
7 70 (1.00%) vSphere
8 46 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.37%) VMware NSX
10 18 (0.26%) Firmware
11 16 (0.23%) IAG
12 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.13%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.100%) 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 1,070 (15.21%) Kubernetes
2 426 (6.06%) Ansible
3 413 (5.87%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (3.37%) Grafana
5 175 (2.49%) Prometheus
6 139 (1.98%) SCCM
7 127 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
8 61 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 52 (0.74%) Argo
10 47 (0.67%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.45%) SCOM
13 30 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) CASB
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 17 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.23%) Packer
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
19 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,682 (38.12%) Microsoft
2 730 (10.38%) Databricks
3 353 (5.02%) ServiceNow
4 338 (4.80%) Google
5 322 (4.58%) VMware
6 297 (4.22%) Oracle
7 215 (3.06%) Cisco
8 203 (2.89%) Splunk
9 188 (2.67%) OpenAI
10 186 (2.64%) SAP
11 168 (2.39%) Salesforce
12 145 (2.06%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.96%) CyberArk
14 129 (1.83%) Dynatrace
15 116 (1.65%) Foundry
16 84 (1.19%) IBM
17 82 (1.17%) Zscaler
18 76 (1.08%) Fortinet
19 67 (0.95%) Informatica
20 64 (0.91%) Red Hat