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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,178 4,033 4,800
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.73% 14.61% 14.47%
As % of the Cloud Services category 45.01% 39.25% 42.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,025 2,768 3,486
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £419 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £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 155 40 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.62 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.68 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £35.99 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.82% +2.83% -24.21%
75th Percentile £80.63 £72.50 £51.30
90th Percentile £101.84 £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 15,947 10,275 11,199
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.94% 37.23% 33.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,657 6,963 7,911
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 542 273 216
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.12 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.00 £26.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +34.62% +4.00% -22.86%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.23 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £34.13 £28.00 £25.00
% change year-on-year +21.88% +12.00% -28.57%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 3,745 £550 - 2,066
North of England +8 1,047 £500 +5.26% 811
South East +2 936 £525 +5.00% 864
Midlands +4 650 £498 -0.60% 399
North West +7 543 £500 +2.30% 445
West Midlands +3 479 £493 -6.19% 260
South West +6 431 £540 +10.72% 373
Yorkshire +5 420 £500 +5.26% 255
East of England +5 178 £525 +2.94% 247
East Midlands +8 159 £500 +8.11% 138
North East +7 97 £506 -2.08% 118
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
1 396 (5.52%) SharePoint
2 226 (3.15%) Confluence
3 182 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 140 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.52%) Apache
7 38 (0.53%) SAS
8 29 (0.40%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) 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
1 110 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 32 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.070%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 102 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Maximo
8 6 (0.084%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
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
10 4 (0.056%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,544 (35.44%) AWS
2 1,540 (21.45%) Azure DevOps
3 1,216 (16.94%) GCP
4 957 (13.33%) Entra ID
5 904 (12.59%) Power Platform
6 735 (10.24%) Microsoft 365
7 706 (9.84%) GitHub
8 433 (6.03%) Azure Data Factory
9 429 (5.98%) GitHub Actions
10 317 (4.42%) Serverless
11 315 (4.39%) SaaS
12 281 (3.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 272 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
14 259 (3.61%) Power Automate
15 257 (3.58%) Azure AKS
16 236 (3.29%) Dynamics 365
17 228 (3.18%) PowerApps
18 225 (3.13%) Snowflake
19 218 (3.04%) PaaS
20 206 (2.87%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 488 (6.80%) Firewall
2 383 (5.34%) DNS
3 303 (4.22%) VPN
4 275 (3.83%) Network Security
5 207 (2.88%) DHCP
6 182 (2.54%) WAN
7 168 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 111 (1.55%) LAN
9 109 (1.52%) BGP
10 92 (1.28%) VLAN
11 90 (1.25%) OSPF
11 90 (1.25%) SD-WAN
12 74 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.88%) SAN
14 62 (0.86%) SSL
15 52 (0.72%) Wireless
16 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
17 41 (0.57%) HTTP
18 40 (0.56%) IPsec
19 37 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 636 (8.86%) Power BI
2 424 (5.91%) SQL Server
3 359 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
4 300 (4.18%) Data Lake
5 240 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 193 (2.69%) Metadata
6 193 (2.69%) NoSQL
7 180 (2.51%) Azure SQL Database
8 122 (1.70%) Relational Database
9 120 (1.67%) Delta Lake
10 89 (1.24%) Big Data
11 86 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 73 (1.02%) MongoDB
13 62 (0.86%) Tableau
14 61 (0.85%) MySQL
15 58 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
17 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 50 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
19 49 (0.68%) Redis
Development Applications
1 575 (8.01%) Git
2 516 (7.19%) JIRA
3 385 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 304 (4.24%) GitLab
5 114 (1.59%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) Postman
7 53 (0.74%) JUnit
8 52 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.65%) Cucumber
9 47 (0.65%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.64%) JMeter
11 40 (0.56%) Maven
12 39 (0.54%) Visual Studio
13 36 (0.50%) WebDriver
14 34 (0.47%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.46%) Gradle
16 29 (0.40%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.38%) Gatling
19 25 (0.35%) MLflow
General
1 1,906 (26.55%) Social Skills
2 1,404 (19.56%) Finance
3 781 (10.88%) Public Sector
4 727 (10.13%) Analytical Skills
5 414 (5.77%) Banking
6 204 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 192 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
8 182 (2.54%) Retail
9 147 (2.05%) Legal
10 85 (1.18%) Manufacturing
11 81 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
11 81 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 73 (1.02%) Aerospace
13 72 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
14 71 (0.99%) Marketing
15 70 (0.98%) Law
16 69 (0.96%) Investment Banking
17 64 (0.89%) Financial Institution
18 57 (0.79%) Military
19 54 (0.75%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,293 (18.01%) Architect
2 919 (12.80%) Senior
3 840 (11.70%) Developer
4 625 (8.71%) Azure Engineer
5 603 (8.40%) Lead
6 531 (7.40%) Data Engineer
7 420 (5.85%) Analyst
8 391 (5.45%) Solutions Architect
9 348 (4.85%) DevOps Engineer
10 326 (4.54%) Cloud Engineer
11 289 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 260 (3.62%) Consultant
13 216 (3.01%) Data Architect
14 198 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
15 187 (2.61%) Azure Architect
16 178 (2.48%) Security Engineer
17 165 (2.30%) Project Manager
18 161 (2.24%) Senior Developer
18 161 (2.24%) Technical Architect
19 156 (2.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,203 (16.76%) Terraform
2 551 (7.68%) .NET
3 544 (7.58%) REST
4 311 (4.33%) Kafka
5 256 (3.57%) React
6 244 (3.40%) PySpark
7 231 (3.22%) RESTful
8 223 (3.11%) OAuth
9 180 (2.51%) JSON
10 152 (2.12%) Spring
11 146 (2.03%) AngularJS
12 139 (1.94%) SAML
13 137 (1.91%) Node.js
14 136 (1.89%) OpenID
15 129 (1.80%) .NET Framework
16 126 (1.76%) Spring Boot
17 125 (1.74%) OAuth2
18 122 (1.70%) Middleware
19 121 (1.69%) HTML
20 112 (1.56%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 794 (11.06%) Cloud Native
2 371 (5.17%) Onboarding
3 299 (4.17%) Product Ownership
4 254 (3.54%) Hybrid Cloud
5 245 (3.41%) Distributed Systems
6 223 (3.11%) Data Centre
7 216 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
8 215 (3.00%) AI Agents
9 203 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
10 163 (2.27%) Security Posture
11 128 (1.78%) Management Information System
12 127 (1.77%) Data Structures
13 120 (1.67%) Public Cloud
14 99 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
15 98 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
15 98 (1.37%) PKI
16 81 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 77 (1.07%) Replication
18 75 (1.04%) CMDB
19 67 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 880 (12.26%) Windows
2 443 (6.17%) Linux
3 317 (4.42%) Windows Server
4 123 (1.71%) Windows 10
5 82 (1.14%) Unix
6 80 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 69 (0.96%) Android
8 64 (0.89%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 50 (0.70%) Ubuntu
11 48 (0.67%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.24%) CentOS
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
17 9 (0.13%) Debian
18 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 6 (0.084%) Amazon Linux
19 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,652 (36.95%) DevOps
2 2,234 (31.12%) CI/CD
3 1,783 (24.84%) Agile
4 1,162 (16.19%) AI
5 1,160 (16.16%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,135 (15.81%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,053 (14.67%) Migration
8 1,046 (14.57%) Analytics
9 992 (13.82%) Problem-Solving
10 811 (11.30%) Continuous Improvement
11 794 (11.06%) Data Modelling
12 701 (9.77%) Data Pipeline
12 701 (9.77%) Roadmaps
13 693 (9.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 688 (9.58%) Business Intelligence
15 647 (9.01%) Containerisation
16 602 (8.39%) Microservices
17 598 (8.33%) ETL
18 597 (8.32%) Test Automation
19 589 (8.21%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,659 (23.11%) Python
2 1,430 (19.92%) SQL
3 798 (11.12%) PowerShell
4 596 (8.30%) Java
5 543 (7.56%) C#
6 416 (5.80%) JavaScript
7 350 (4.88%) Bash
8 297 (4.14%) Bicep
9 245 (3.41%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 75 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.89%) Go
13 51 (0.71%) Shell Script
14 50 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
14 50 (0.70%) Scala
15 36 (0.50%) R
16 34 (0.47%) PL/SQL
17 32 (0.45%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.40%) Groovy
19 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,856 (25.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,491 (20.77%) SC Cleared
3 524 (7.30%) Degree
4 404 (5.63%) Azure Certification
5 256 (3.57%) DV Cleared
6 240 (3.34%) CISSP
7 211 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 191 (2.66%) Cisco Certification
9 178 (2.48%) AWS Certification
10 168 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 149 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
12 114 (1.59%) CISM
13 93 (1.30%) CCNP
14 76 (1.06%) PMP
15 75 (1.04%) PMI Certification
16 74 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 61 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 58 (0.81%) ISTQB
19 45 (0.63%) CCSP
20 43 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 506 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 392 (5.46%) QA
3 277 (3.86%) GDPR
4 274 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 274 (3.82%) NIST
5 167 (2.33%) Accessibility
6 99 (1.38%) NCSC
7 98 (1.37%) SLA
8 69 (0.96%) GRC
8 69 (0.96%) WCAG
9 67 (0.93%) PCI DSS
10 63 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
11 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.71%) PMO
13 33 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 27 (0.38%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.32%) SOC 2
16 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
18 16 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 917 (12.78%) Active Directory
2 780 (10.87%) Docker
3 218 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 139 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 105 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.89%) vSphere
8 55 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.43%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 16 (0.22%) IAG
13 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
13 12 (0.17%) Postfix
14 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.098%) Varnish
16 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,074 (14.96%) Kubernetes
2 406 (5.66%) Ansible
3 390 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 228 (3.18%) Grafana
5 182 (2.54%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 116 (1.62%) SCCM
8 63 (0.88%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.68%) 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 28 (0.39%) Istio
15 24 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 23 (0.32%) SCOM
17 20 (0.28%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 14 (0.20%) QRadar
20 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,498 (34.80%) Microsoft
2 686 (9.56%) Databricks
3 373 (5.20%) ServiceNow
4 313 (4.36%) VMware
5 298 (4.15%) Google
6 283 (3.94%) Oracle
7 221 (3.08%) Cisco
8 196 (2.73%) SAP
9 176 (2.45%) Splunk
10 160 (2.23%) OpenAI
11 148 (2.06%) CyberArk
12 143 (1.99%) Salesforce
13 139 (1.94%) Palo Alto
14 114 (1.59%) Foundry
15 111 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 92 (1.28%) Zscaler
17 76 (1.06%) IBM
18 75 (1.04%) Informatica
19 74 (1.03%) Okta
20 67 (0.93%) Fortinet