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

6 months to
3 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,625 4,032 5,148
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.80% 16.11% 13.58%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.26% 42.64% 41.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,998 2,772 3,795
10th Percentile £350 £352 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £536 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% -2.50% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £533
% change year-on-year - -1.41% -5.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 24 68
10th Percentile £25.47 £23.65 £17.78
25th Percentile £54.66 £24.70 £22.58
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -19.69%
75th Percentile £64.20 £65.94 £60.40
90th Percentile £83.00 £77.41 £72.38
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -16.04%

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 13,311 9,457 12,349
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.39% 37.80% 32.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,183 6,447 8,905
10th Percentile £310 £313 £274
25th Percentile £409 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £730
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 375 146 325
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.27 £14.18
25th Percentile £20.31 £21.05 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.38 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +46.12% +28.10% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £44.69 £43.75
90th Percentile £79.20 £71.25 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £27.13 £21.37
% change year-on-year +45.62% +26.93% -14.52%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 3,049 £548 -0.45% 1,023
North of England 0 735 £500 +5.26% 662
South East -1 702 £500 -8.26% 890
Midlands -2 468 £500 -4.08% 379
North West 0 374 £492 -1.60% 340
West Midlands -1 353 £525 -1.87% 207
South West +3 342 £512 -2.57% 326
Yorkshire -3 314 £500 +11.11% 233
East of England -2 156 £558 +3.72% 282
East Midlands -2 113 £437 -7.07% 163
North East -3 51 £515 +7.01% 101
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
1 272 (4.84%) SharePoint
2 192 (3.41%) Microsoft Exchange
3 154 (2.74%) Apache Spark
4 146 (2.60%) Confluence
5 82 (1.46%) Apache
6 77 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
8 15 (0.27%) SAS
9 14 (0.25%) CMS
10 13 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.23%) Camunda
11 10 (0.18%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.18%) IIS
11 10 (0.18%) Mendix
12 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 6 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 106 (1.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.84%) MS Visio
4 42 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.12%) Trello
8 5 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.089%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.089%) Weka
9 4 (0.071%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.036%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.018%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.018%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.018%) InDesign
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 95 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.20%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.12%) Endur
7 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.089%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.089%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.089%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.089%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.089%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.089%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 4 (0.071%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 1,997 (35.50%) AWS
2 1,178 (20.94%) GCP
3 1,109 (19.72%) Azure DevOps
4 762 (13.55%) Power Platform
5 718 (12.76%) Entra ID
6 670 (11.91%) Microsoft 365
7 555 (9.87%) GitHub
8 421 (7.48%) Azure Data Factory
9 314 (5.58%) Serverless
10 311 (5.53%) GitHub Actions
11 264 (4.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 241 (4.28%) Dynamics 365
13 238 (4.23%) SaaS
14 217 (3.86%) Azure AKS
15 213 (3.79%) Power Automate
16 200 (3.56%) Azure Functions
17 192 (3.41%) PaaS
18 191 (3.40%) Azure Monitor
19 182 (3.24%) Snowflake
20 181 (3.22%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 378 (6.72%) Firewall
2 251 (4.46%) DNS
3 198 (3.52%) VPN
4 170 (3.02%) Network Security
5 150 (2.67%) DHCP
6 129 (2.29%) WAN
7 95 (1.69%) LAN
8 92 (1.64%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 67 (1.19%) VLAN
11 65 (1.16%) Kerberos
12 62 (1.10%) SD-WAN
13 40 (0.71%) HTTP
14 36 (0.64%) BGP
15 34 (0.60%) Wireless
16 32 (0.57%) OSPF
16 32 (0.57%) SSL
17 29 (0.52%) MPLS
18 28 (0.50%) Internet
18 28 (0.50%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 528 (9.39%) Power BI
2 319 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 300 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
4 270 (4.80%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.73%) PostgreSQL
6 189 (3.36%) Azure SQL Database
7 164 (2.92%) NoSQL
8 134 (2.38%) Metadata
9 107 (1.90%) Delta Lake
10 103 (1.83%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 73 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 70 (1.24%) Big Data
14 66 (1.17%) Tableau
15 58 (1.03%) BigQuery
15 58 (1.03%) Oracle Database
16 53 (0.94%) MySQL
17 48 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
18 47 (0.84%) Redis
19 37 (0.66%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 430 (7.64%) Git
2 389 (6.92%) JIRA
3 273 (4.85%) Jenkins
4 211 (3.75%) GitLab
5 92 (1.64%) Selenium
6 68 (1.21%) Postman
7 58 (1.03%) JUnit
8 54 (0.96%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.87%) JMeter
9 49 (0.87%) MLflow
10 43 (0.76%) SonarQube
11 37 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
13 32 (0.57%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.50%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.48%) TestRail
17 25 (0.44%) Bitbucket
18 24 (0.43%) Maven
19 23 (0.41%) ERwin
General
1 1,711 (30.42%) Social Skills
2 1,034 (18.38%) Finance
3 593 (10.54%) Public Sector
4 573 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
5 338 (6.01%) Banking
6 185 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (1.88%) Legal
8 97 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.48%) Presentation Skills
10 81 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
10 81 (1.44%) Retail
11 78 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
12 71 (1.26%) Marketing
13 58 (1.03%) Financial Institution
14 57 (1.01%) Investment Banking
14 57 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 55 (0.98%) Law
16 50 (0.89%) Front Office
17 38 (0.68%) Manufacturing
18 36 (0.64%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 933 (16.59%) Architect
2 786 (13.97%) Developer
3 640 (11.38%) Senior
4 464 (8.25%) Azure Engineer
4 464 (8.25%) Data Engineer
5 414 (7.36%) Lead
6 373 (6.63%) Analyst
7 272 (4.84%) Solutions Architect
8 264 (4.69%) DevOps Engineer
9 252 (4.48%) Consultant
10 156 (2.77%) Security Engineer
11 155 (2.76%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 154 (2.74%) Cloud Engineer
13 140 (2.49%) Azure Architect
14 137 (2.44%) Senior Developer
15 136 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 125 (2.22%) Platform Engineer
17 115 (2.04%) Data Architect
18 111 (1.97%) Azure Data Engineer
19 108 (1.92%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 432 (7.68%) .NET
2 378 (6.72%) REST
3 270 (4.80%) React
4 214 (3.80%) Kafka
5 208 (3.70%) PySpark
6 205 (3.64%) Node.js
7 198 (3.52%) RESTful
8 172 (3.06%) OAuth
9 169 (3.00%) Spring
10 158 (2.81%) HTML
11 157 (2.79%) AngularJS
12 142 (2.52%) LDAP
13 140 (2.49%) Spring Boot
14 134 (2.38%) PyTorch
15 127 (2.26%) CSS
16 122 (2.17%) Middleware
16 122 (2.17%) SOAP
17 119 (2.12%) TensorFlow
18 118 (2.10%) SAML
19 113 (2.01%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 507 (9.01%) Cloud Native
2 230 (4.09%) Onboarding
3 195 (3.47%) Product Ownership
4 161 (2.86%) Security Posture
5 154 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
6 146 (2.60%) Enterprise Software
7 139 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
8 128 (2.28%) Data Centre
9 108 (1.92%) Public Cloud
10 90 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
11 84 (1.49%) AI Agents
12 77 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 76 (1.35%) Replication
14 66 (1.17%) Algorithms
15 65 (1.16%) Management Information System
16 61 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
17 56 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
18 53 (0.94%) Low-Code
19 46 (0.82%) PKI
20 45 (0.80%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 629 (11.18%) Windows
2 306 (5.44%) Linux
3 177 (3.15%) Windows Server
4 114 (2.03%) Windows 10
5 60 (1.07%) Unix
6 55 (0.98%) VMS
7 45 (0.80%) Mac OS
8 36 (0.64%) Apple iOS
8 36 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 28 (0.50%) Android
10 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
11 18 (0.32%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
13 11 (0.20%) CentOS
14 7 (0.12%) Solaris
15 6 (0.11%) Data ONTAP
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.089%) AIX
17 4 (0.071%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,035 (36.18%) DevOps
2 1,696 (30.15%) CI/CD
3 1,352 (24.04%) Agile
4 1,023 (18.19%) Problem-Solving
5 861 (15.31%) Analytics
6 798 (14.19%) AI
7 729 (12.96%) Infrastructure as Code
8 696 (12.37%) Migration
9 604 (10.74%) Data Modelling
10 600 (10.67%) Business Intelligence
11 588 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
12 547 (9.72%) Containerisation
13 536 (9.53%) Continuous Improvement
14 514 (9.14%) Data Pipeline
15 512 (9.10%) ETL
16 507 (9.01%) Machine Learning
17 495 (8.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 487 (8.66%) Microservices
19 478 (8.50%) Data Engineering
20 444 (7.89%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,467 (26.08%) Python
2 1,274 (22.65%) SQL
3 627 (11.15%) PowerShell
4 472 (8.39%) C#
5 465 (8.27%) Java
6 440 (7.82%) JavaScript
7 247 (4.39%) TypeScript
8 225 (4.00%) Bash
9 162 (2.88%) Bicep
10 90 (1.60%) Scala
11 77 (1.37%) Go
12 76 (1.35%) PL/SQL
13 69 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 62 (1.10%) Kusto Query Language
15 61 (1.08%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.71%) R
17 28 (0.50%) C++
17 28 (0.50%) PHP
17 28 (0.50%) Shell Script
18 20 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,371 (24.37%) Security Cleared
2 1,122 (19.95%) SC Cleared
3 454 (8.07%) Degree
4 331 (5.88%) Azure Certification
5 192 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.92%) CISSP
7 153 (2.72%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.17%) AWS Certification
9 115 (2.04%) DV Cleared
10 102 (1.81%) CISM
11 101 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
12 82 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
13 70 (1.24%) Master's Degree
14 54 (0.96%) TOGAF Certification
15 52 (0.92%) CCNP
16 48 (0.85%) PMI Certification
17 45 (0.80%) PMP
18 43 (0.76%) ISTQB
19 35 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 31 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 385 (6.84%) Data Quality
2 349 (6.20%) GDPR
3 295 (5.24%) QA
4 260 (4.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 207 (3.68%) NIST
6 95 (1.69%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.46%) NCSC
8 79 (1.40%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 51 (0.91%) SLA
12 40 (0.71%) PMO
13 36 (0.64%) HIPAA
14 32 (0.57%) GRC
15 28 (0.50%) SOC 2
15 28 (0.50%) WCAG
16 25 (0.44%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.43%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.41%) PSD2
19 20 (0.36%) NIST 800
System Software
1 776 (13.80%) Active Directory
2 669 (11.89%) Docker
3 174 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 82 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
5 77 (1.37%) Hyper-V
6 68 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
6 68 (1.21%) vSphere
7 24 (0.43%) VMware NSX
8 18 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
9 12 (0.21%) Firmware
9 12 (0.21%) NFS
10 8 (0.14%) Postfix
11 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
11 7 (0.12%) KVM
11 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 7 (0.12%) Snort
12 6 (0.11%) GPFS
12 6 (0.11%) Lustre
13 5 (0.089%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.089%) RACF
Systems Management
1 837 (14.88%) Terraform
2 827 (14.70%) Kubernetes
3 331 (5.88%) Microsoft Intune
4 244 (4.34%) Ansible
5 140 (2.49%) Grafana
5 140 (2.49%) Single Sign-On
6 125 (2.22%) SCCM
7 121 (2.15%) Prometheus
8 72 (1.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 43 (0.76%) Argo
10 26 (0.46%) Istio
11 25 (0.44%) Puppet
12 21 (0.37%) Progress Chef
13 19 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
13 19 (0.34%) Nmap
13 19 (0.34%) vCenter Server
14 18 (0.32%) FortiGate
15 17 (0.30%) Nessus
16 16 (0.28%) vRealize
17 15 (0.27%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,830 (32.53%) Microsoft
2 572 (10.17%) Databricks
3 302 (5.37%) Oracle
4 283 (5.03%) Google
5 262 (4.66%) ServiceNow
6 232 (4.12%) VMware
7 165 (2.93%) SAP
8 142 (2.52%) OpenAI
9 141 (2.51%) Cisco
10 137 (2.44%) Splunk
11 112 (1.99%) CyberArk
12 93 (1.65%) Salesforce
13 92 (1.64%) Foundry
14 87 (1.55%) Palo Alto
15 78 (1.39%) Okta
16 70 (1.24%) Citrix
17 67 (1.19%) Red Hat
18 63 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
19 61 (1.08%) IBM
20 52 (0.92%) Siemens