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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,934 3,893 5,072
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.82% 16.04% 13.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.98% 42.29% 41.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,251 2,775 3,724
10th Percentile £358 £354 £338
25th Percentile £425 £425 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 27 62
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £24.40 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +16.01% -16.15%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £86.00 £79.22 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.12
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.53% -16.15%

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 13,807 9,206 12,176
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.81% 37.92% 32.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,518 6,471 8,752
10th Percentile £313 £313 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £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 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 176 331
10th Percentile £15.89 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.75 £26.81 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.25% +27.68% -16.00%
75th Percentile £63.24 £43.48 £40.75
90th Percentile £80.06 £74.38 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +41.51% +26.19% -18.64%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 3,232 £540 -1.82% 1,004
North of England +3 804 £488 - 604
South East 0 738 £500 -9.09% 685
Midlands -3 479 £500 - 369
North West +1 436 £475 -5.00% 303
West Midlands -1 356 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 349 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire -1 323 £488 +8.33% 208
East of England +4 148 £550 -8.33% 207
East Midlands -2 115 £436 -8.21% 163
North East -4 47 £525 +10.53% 97
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
1 279 (4.70%) SharePoint
2 187 (3.15%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 162 (2.73%) Confluence
5 96 (1.62%) Apache
6 82 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.25%) Appian
9 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.25%) Camunda
10 14 (0.24%) CMS
10 14 (0.24%) SAS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
13 8 (0.13%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
Applications
1 106 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 52 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 5 (0.084%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.084%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.084%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.084%) Weka
9 4 (0.067%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.034%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.034%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 98 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.084%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.084%) Endur
9 5 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.084%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.067%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.067%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.067%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.067%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,073 (34.93%) AWS
2 1,242 (20.93%) Azure DevOps
3 1,170 (19.72%) GCP
4 797 (13.43%) Power Platform
5 763 (12.86%) Entra ID
6 674 (11.36%) Microsoft 365
7 600 (10.11%) GitHub
8 448 (7.55%) Azure Data Factory
9 339 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
10 335 (5.65%) Serverless
11 285 (4.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (4.11%) Dynamics 365
13 242 (4.08%) SaaS
14 219 (3.69%) Power Automate
15 217 (3.66%) Azure Monitor
16 216 (3.64%) Azure AKS
17 206 (3.47%) Azure Functions
18 204 (3.44%) PaaS
19 194 (3.27%) Azure Logic Apps
20 175 (2.95%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 393 (6.62%) Firewall
2 264 (4.45%) DNS
3 229 (3.86%) VPN
4 200 (3.37%) Network Security
5 154 (2.60%) WAN
6 148 (2.49%) DHCP
7 115 (1.94%) LAN
8 91 (1.53%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.28%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 70 (1.18%) VLAN
12 63 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 50 (0.84%) BGP
14 44 (0.74%) OSPF
15 40 (0.67%) Wireless
16 35 (0.59%) HTTP
17 34 (0.57%) SAN
18 29 (0.49%) MPLS
18 29 (0.49%) SSL
19 28 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 557 (9.39%) Power BI
2 336 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 326 (5.49%) Data Warehouse
4 282 (4.75%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.51%) Azure SQL Database
5 208 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
6 177 (2.98%) NoSQL
7 136 (2.29%) Metadata
8 126 (2.12%) Delta Lake
9 99 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 91 (1.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 82 (1.38%) Big Data
12 76 (1.28%) Tableau
13 73 (1.23%) MongoDB
14 58 (0.98%) Oracle Database
15 54 (0.91%) BigQuery
16 51 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
17 49 (0.83%) MySQL
18 45 (0.76%) Star Schema
19 44 (0.74%) Redis
Development Applications
1 445 (7.50%) Git
2 415 (6.99%) JIRA
3 298 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 218 (3.67%) GitLab
5 99 (1.67%) Selenium
6 66 (1.11%) Postman
7 58 (0.98%) Cucumber
7 58 (0.98%) JUnit
8 52 (0.88%) JMeter
9 50 (0.84%) MLflow
10 39 (0.66%) REST Assured
11 35 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 33 (0.56%) Oracle APEX
12 33 (0.56%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.54%) Artifactory
14 31 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 26 (0.44%) TestRail
16 24 (0.40%) SpecFlow
17 23 (0.39%) Gatling
17 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,703 (28.70%) Social Skills
2 1,121 (18.89%) Finance
3 653 (11.00%) Public Sector
4 598 (10.08%) Analytical Skills
5 353 (5.95%) Banking
6 188 (3.17%) Documentation Skills
7 126 (2.12%) Legal
8 100 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
10 83 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
11 81 (1.37%) Retail
12 80 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
13 68 (1.15%) Marketing
14 66 (1.11%) Financial Institution
15 64 (1.08%) Telecoms
16 56 (0.94%) Law
17 54 (0.91%) Investment Banking
18 52 (0.88%) Front Office
19 47 (0.79%) Local Government
20 37 (0.62%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 989 (16.67%) Architect
2 799 (13.46%) Developer
3 710 (11.96%) Senior
4 514 (8.66%) Azure Engineer
5 500 (8.43%) Data Engineer
6 442 (7.45%) Lead
7 386 (6.50%) Analyst
8 280 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
9 262 (4.42%) Solutions Architect
10 256 (4.31%) Consultant
11 170 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 162 (2.73%) Cloud Engineer
13 148 (2.49%) Azure Architect
14 143 (2.41%) Platform Engineer
15 142 (2.39%) Security Engineer
16 137 (2.31%) Senior Developer
17 131 (2.21%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 124 (2.09%) Data Architect
19 115 (1.94%) Business Analyst
20 114 (1.92%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 451 (7.60%) .NET
2 396 (6.67%) REST
3 270 (4.55%) React
4 236 (3.98%) Kafka
5 218 (3.67%) PySpark
6 212 (3.57%) Node.js
7 204 (3.44%) RESTful
8 181 (3.05%) Spring
9 174 (2.93%) OAuth
10 169 (2.85%) AngularJS
11 147 (2.48%) HTML
12 141 (2.38%) LDAP
13 139 (2.34%) Spring Boot
14 125 (2.11%) Middleware
15 124 (2.09%) CSS
16 123 (2.07%) PyTorch
17 122 (2.06%) JSON
18 117 (1.97%) SOAP
19 114 (1.92%) SAML
20 111 (1.87%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 531 (8.95%) Cloud Native
2 242 (4.08%) Onboarding
3 217 (3.66%) Product Ownership
4 175 (2.95%) Hybrid Cloud
5 156 (2.63%) Security Posture
6 150 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
7 148 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
8 141 (2.38%) Data Centre
9 125 (2.11%) Public Cloud
10 119 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
11 95 (1.60%) AI Agents
12 81 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 78 (1.31%) Replication
14 69 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
15 68 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 58 (0.98%) Algorithms
17 56 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
18 54 (0.91%) PKI
19 49 (0.83%) Low-Code
20 44 (0.74%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 658 (11.09%) Windows
2 316 (5.33%) Linux
3 202 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.94%) Windows 10
5 64 (1.08%) VMS
6 58 (0.98%) Unix
7 42 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 39 (0.66%) Mac OS
9 31 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 25 (0.42%) Android
11 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 5 (0.084%) AIX
16 5 (0.084%) CentOS
16 5 (0.084%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.084%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.067%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,228 (37.55%) DevOps
2 1,789 (30.15%) CI/CD
3 1,415 (23.85%) Agile
4 1,005 (16.94%) Problem-Solving
5 915 (15.42%) Analytics
6 851 (14.34%) AI
7 788 (13.28%) Infrastructure as Code
8 766 (12.91%) Migration
9 652 (10.99%) Data Modelling
10 622 (10.48%) Business Intelligence
11 616 (10.38%) Stakeholder Management
12 589 (9.93%) Continuous Improvement
13 567 (9.56%) Containerisation
14 557 (9.39%) Data Pipeline
15 554 (9.34%) ETL
16 538 (9.07%) Microservices
17 523 (8.81%) Data Engineering
18 519 (8.75%) Machine Learning
19 517 (8.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 477 (8.04%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,553 (26.17%) Python
2 1,354 (22.82%) SQL
3 660 (11.12%) PowerShell
4 501 (8.44%) C#
5 500 (8.43%) Java
6 417 (7.03%) JavaScript
7 237 (3.99%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.66%) Bash
9 182 (3.07%) Bicep
10 96 (1.62%) Scala
11 78 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.28%) Go
13 71 (1.20%) PL/SQL
14 70 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
15 64 (1.08%) T-SQL
16 42 (0.71%) R
17 34 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 28 (0.47%) C++
19 22 (0.37%) PHP
19 22 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,475 (24.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,215 (20.48%) SC Cleared
3 470 (7.92%) Degree
4 345 (5.81%) Azure Certification
5 203 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 168 (2.83%) CISSP
7 148 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
9 120 (2.02%) AWS Certification
10 118 (1.99%) DV Cleared
11 102 (1.72%) CISM
12 91 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
13 71 (1.20%) Master's Degree
14 63 (1.06%) CCNP
15 52 (0.88%) PMP
16 51 (0.86%) PMI Certification
16 51 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
17 47 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 41 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 35 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 425 (7.16%) Data Quality
2 359 (6.05%) GDPR
3 327 (5.51%) QA
4 262 (4.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 225 (3.79%) NIST
6 95 (1.60%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.45%) NCSC
7 86 (1.45%) PCI DSS
8 62 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
9 60 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 55 (0.93%) SLA
11 49 (0.83%) PMO
12 35 (0.59%) HIPAA
13 34 (0.57%) GRC
14 32 (0.54%) WCAG
15 25 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 24 (0.40%) ISO 20022
17 23 (0.39%) PSD2
17 23 (0.39%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 796 (13.41%) Active Directory
2 704 (11.86%) Docker
3 184 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 94 (1.58%) Virtual Machines
5 84 (1.42%) Hyper-V
6 74 (1.25%) Virtual Desktop
7 72 (1.21%) vSphere
8 31 (0.52%) VMware NSX
9 28 (0.47%) VMware ESXi
10 17 (0.29%) Firmware
11 15 (0.25%) NFS
12 8 (0.13%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
14 6 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.10%) Snort
15 5 (0.084%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.084%) RACF
Systems Management
1 918 (15.47%) Terraform
2 887 (14.95%) Kubernetes
3 334 (5.63%) Microsoft Intune
4 267 (4.50%) Ansible
5 162 (2.73%) Grafana
6 146 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
7 137 (2.31%) Prometheus
8 112 (1.89%) SCCM
9 72 (1.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.74%) Argo
11 33 (0.56%) Istio
12 30 (0.51%) Puppet
13 27 (0.46%) Progress Chef
14 25 (0.42%) vCenter Server
15 21 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
16 19 (0.32%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.29%) vRealize
18 16 (0.27%) Nmap
19 15 (0.25%) HP ALM
19 15 (0.25%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 1,923 (32.41%) Microsoft
2 600 (10.11%) Databricks
3 292 (4.92%) Oracle
4 287 (4.84%) Google
5 260 (4.38%) ServiceNow
6 249 (4.20%) VMware
7 174 (2.93%) SAP
8 156 (2.63%) Cisco
8 156 (2.63%) OpenAI
9 136 (2.29%) Splunk
10 127 (2.14%) CyberArk
11 103 (1.74%) Foundry
12 98 (1.65%) Palo Alto
13 82 (1.38%) Salesforce
14 81 (1.37%) Okta
15 70 (1.18%) Red Hat
16 69 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.10%) IBM
18 64 (1.08%) Citrix
19 63 (1.06%) Informatica