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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,973 3,880 5,056
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.70% 15.98% 13.42%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.92% 42.20% 41.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,292 2,774 3,721
10th Percentile £358 £353 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £640
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -5.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 28 55
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.89 £26.09 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £44.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.94% +14.94% -27.84%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £79.09 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year +79.69% -16.88% -29.36%

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 13,917 9,194 12,136
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.58% 37.87% 32.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,590 6,488 8,722
10th Percentile £313 £313 £280
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 425 182 328
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.25 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.78 £26.81 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.09% +27.68% -18.32%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.74 £35.00
90th Percentile £80.68 £74.88 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -23.64%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 3,254 £538 -2.23% 1,004
North of England +3 812 £485 - 604
South East 0 739 £503 -7.80% 685
Midlands -1 485 £499 -0.25% 369
North West +1 436 £475 -5.00% 303
West Midlands -2 360 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 349 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire 0 331 £486 +8.00% 208
East of England +8 154 £550 -6.78% 207
East Midlands 0 116 £430 -9.47% 163
North East -6 47 £525 +9.09% 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
1 283 (4.74%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.08%) Microsoft Exchange
3 166 (2.78%) Confluence
4 164 (2.75%) Apache Spark
5 94 (1.57%) Apache
6 86 (1.44%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) SAS
9 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
10 16 (0.27%) Camunda
11 15 (0.25%) Appian
11 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.22%) CMS
13 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.18%) Mendix
14 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
15 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 5 (0.084%) BizTalk Server
17 4 (0.067%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 106 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 52 (0.87%) 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 6 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.084%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.084%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.067%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.067%) Weka
11 3 (0.050%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 100 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.084%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.084%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.067%) Endur
10 4 (0.067%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Receivables
10 4 (0.067%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,082 (34.86%) AWS
2 1,245 (20.84%) Azure DevOps
3 1,164 (19.49%) GCP
4 800 (13.39%) Power Platform
5 765 (12.81%) Entra ID
6 674 (11.28%) Microsoft 365
7 592 (9.91%) GitHub
8 448 (7.50%) Azure Data Factory
9 337 (5.64%) GitHub Actions
10 332 (5.56%) Serverless
11 283 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 243 (4.07%) SaaS
13 241 (4.03%) Dynamics 365
14 218 (3.65%) Azure AKS
15 217 (3.63%) Azure Monitor
16 216 (3.62%) Power Automate
17 210 (3.52%) PaaS
18 204 (3.42%) Azure Functions
19 194 (3.25%) Azure Logic Apps
20 178 (2.98%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 394 (6.60%) Firewall
2 271 (4.54%) DNS
3 235 (3.93%) VPN
4 199 (3.33%) Network Security
5 155 (2.60%) WAN
6 148 (2.48%) DHCP
7 114 (1.91%) LAN
8 93 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.27%) SD-WAN
10 75 (1.26%) VLAN
11 73 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (1.09%) Kerberos
13 51 (0.85%) BGP
14 45 (0.75%) OSPF
15 39 (0.65%) Wireless
16 36 (0.60%) HTTP
16 36 (0.60%) SAN
17 31 (0.52%) SSL
18 29 (0.49%) MPLS
19 27 (0.45%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (9.31%) Power BI
2 343 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 325 (5.44%) Data Warehouse
4 280 (4.69%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.48%) Azure SQL Database
6 200 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
7 179 (3.00%) NoSQL
8 141 (2.36%) Metadata
9 130 (2.18%) Delta Lake
10 93 (1.56%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 79 (1.32%) Big Data
13 78 (1.31%) Tableau
14 76 (1.27%) MongoDB
15 59 (0.99%) Oracle Database
16 56 (0.94%) BigQuery
17 51 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
18 50 (0.84%) MySQL
19 45 (0.75%) Star Schema
20 44 (0.74%) Redis
Development Applications
1 442 (7.40%) Git
2 415 (6.95%) JIRA
3 304 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 221 (3.70%) GitLab
5 103 (1.72%) Selenium
6 68 (1.14%) Postman
7 60 (1.00%) JUnit
8 58 (0.97%) Cucumber
9 53 (0.89%) JMeter
10 52 (0.87%) MLflow
11 40 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.55%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 29 (0.49%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.44%) TestRail
17 25 (0.42%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.39%) WebDriver
General
1 1,679 (28.11%) Social Skills
2 1,121 (18.77%) Finance
3 642 (10.75%) Public Sector
4 608 (10.18%) Analytical Skills
5 353 (5.91%) Banking
6 191 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
7 134 (2.24%) Legal
8 102 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.42%) Retail
10 82 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
11 80 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 69 (1.16%) Financial Institution
12 69 (1.16%) Marketing
13 66 (1.10%) Telecoms
14 62 (1.04%) Law
15 54 (0.90%) Investment Banking
16 52 (0.87%) Front Office
17 45 (0.75%) Local Government
18 37 (0.62%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 987 (16.52%) Architect
2 794 (13.29%) Developer
3 718 (12.02%) Senior
4 527 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 504 (8.44%) Data Engineer
6 445 (7.45%) Lead
7 381 (6.38%) Analyst
8 285 (4.77%) DevOps Engineer
9 266 (4.45%) Solutions Architect
10 258 (4.32%) Consultant
11 166 (2.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 165 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
13 150 (2.51%) Platform Engineer
14 147 (2.46%) Azure Architect
15 140 (2.34%) Security Engineer
16 138 (2.31%) Senior Developer
17 129 (2.16%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 124 (2.08%) Data Architect
19 117 (1.96%) Software Engineer
20 115 (1.93%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 455 (7.62%) .NET
2 397 (6.65%) REST
3 268 (4.49%) React
4 248 (4.15%) Kafka
5 221 (3.70%) PySpark
6 207 (3.47%) Node.js
7 201 (3.37%) RESTful
8 181 (3.03%) Spring
9 171 (2.86%) OAuth
10 164 (2.75%) AngularJS
11 147 (2.46%) LDAP
12 144 (2.41%) Spring Boot
13 136 (2.28%) HTML
14 128 (2.14%) Middleware
15 125 (2.09%) JSON
16 121 (2.03%) PyTorch
17 117 (1.96%) CSS
17 117 (1.96%) SOAP
18 112 (1.88%) SAML
19 109 (1.82%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 537 (8.99%) Cloud Native
2 239 (4.00%) Onboarding
3 218 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.98%) Hybrid Cloud
5 156 (2.61%) Security Posture
6 151 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
7 142 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 141 (2.36%) Data Centre
9 130 (2.18%) Public Cloud
10 123 (2.06%) Distributed Systems
11 102 (1.71%) AI Agents
12 82 (1.37%) Replication
13 80 (1.34%) Data Structures
14 66 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
15 65 (1.09%) Management Information System
16 58 (0.97%) Algorithms
17 55 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 55 (0.92%) PKI
18 49 (0.82%) Low-Code
19 45 (0.75%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 668 (11.18%) Windows
2 314 (5.26%) Linux
3 204 (3.42%) Windows Server
4 116 (1.94%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.10%) VMS
6 57 (0.95%) Unix
7 44 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 40 (0.67%) Mac OS
9 32 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 25 (0.42%) Android
11 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.28%) 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%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,235 (37.42%) DevOps
2 1,807 (30.25%) CI/CD
3 1,400 (23.44%) Agile
4 993 (16.62%) Problem-Solving
5 921 (15.42%) Analytics
6 866 (14.50%) AI
7 805 (13.48%) Infrastructure as Code
8 773 (12.94%) Migration
9 664 (11.12%) Data Modelling
10 620 (10.38%) Business Intelligence
11 619 (10.36%) Stakeholder Management
12 590 (9.88%) Continuous Improvement
13 564 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
14 563 (9.43%) Containerisation
15 560 (9.38%) ETL
16 537 (8.99%) Microservices
17 534 (8.94%) Data Engineering
18 518 (8.67%) Machine Learning
19 505 (8.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 481 (8.05%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,543 (25.83%) Python
2 1,355 (22.69%) SQL
3 662 (11.08%) PowerShell
4 503 (8.42%) C#
5 500 (8.37%) Java
6 413 (6.91%) JavaScript
7 232 (3.88%) TypeScript
8 215 (3.60%) Bash
9 186 (3.11%) Bicep
10 93 (1.56%) Scala
11 78 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.24%) Go
13 71 (1.19%) PL/SQL
14 70 (1.17%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.09%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.69%) R
17 34 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 25 (0.42%) C++
19 22 (0.37%) PHP
20 16 (0.27%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,485 (24.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,227 (20.54%) SC Cleared
3 454 (7.60%) Degree
4 336 (5.63%) Azure Certification
5 191 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 170 (2.85%) CISSP
7 149 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.04%) DV Cleared
9 121 (2.03%) Cisco Certification
10 112 (1.88%) AWS Certification
11 102 (1.71%) CISM
12 91 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
13 65 (1.09%) CCNP
14 64 (1.07%) Master's Degree
15 55 (0.92%) PMP
16 54 (0.90%) PMI Certification
17 50 (0.84%) TOGAF Certification
18 49 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 39 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 425 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 357 (5.98%) GDPR
3 328 (5.49%) QA
4 264 (4.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 233 (3.90%) NIST
6 93 (1.56%) Accessibility
7 87 (1.46%) NCSC
8 84 (1.41%) PCI DSS
9 61 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 55 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.90%) SLA
12 50 (0.84%) PMO
13 37 (0.62%) GRC
14 33 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 32 (0.54%) WCAG
16 25 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.40%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.39%) NIST 800
19 22 (0.37%) SOC 2
20 18 (0.30%) PSD2
System Software
1 807 (13.51%) Active Directory
2 708 (11.85%) Docker
3 187 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
5 86 (1.44%) Hyper-V
6 79 (1.32%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.24%) vSphere
8 31 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
8 31 (0.52%) VMware NSX
9 22 (0.37%) Firmware
10 14 (0.23%) NFS
11 8 (0.13%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 6 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.10%) Snort
14 5 (0.084%) BitLocker
14 5 (0.084%) GPFS
14 5 (0.084%) Lustre
14 5 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
14 5 (0.084%) RACF
Systems Management
1 927 (15.52%) Terraform
2 891 (14.92%) Kubernetes
3 338 (5.66%) Microsoft Intune
4 267 (4.47%) Ansible
5 160 (2.68%) Grafana
6 145 (2.43%) Single Sign-On
7 131 (2.19%) Prometheus
8 111 (1.86%) SCCM
9 73 (1.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.67%) Argo
11 33 (0.55%) Istio
12 29 (0.49%) Puppet
13 27 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 21 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 19 (0.32%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
16 17 (0.28%) vRealize
17 16 (0.27%) HP ALM
17 16 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,952 (32.68%) Microsoft
2 610 (10.21%) Databricks
3 293 (4.91%) Oracle
4 279 (4.67%) Google
5 265 (4.44%) ServiceNow
6 253 (4.24%) VMware
7 176 (2.95%) SAP
8 163 (2.73%) Cisco
9 158 (2.65%) OpenAI
10 140 (2.34%) Splunk
11 125 (2.09%) CyberArk
12 110 (1.84%) Foundry
13 94 (1.57%) Palo Alto
14 81 (1.36%) Salesforce
15 80 (1.34%) Okta
16 70 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
17 69 (1.16%) IBM
18 65 (1.09%) Citrix
19 64 (1.07%) Informatica
20 63 (1.05%) Red Hat