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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,604 4,114 5,168
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.83% 16.11% 13.61%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.27% 42.73% 41.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,990 2,812 3,811
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK median daily rate £523 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.43% -2.33% -4.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 24 70
10th Percentile £25.47 £23.65 £17.78
25th Percentile £54.66 £24.70 £22.61
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 £59.95
90th Percentile £83.00 £77.41 £66.30
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 13,257 9,627 12,380
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.44% 37.71% 32.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,149 6,534 8,935
10th Percentile £310 £313 £275
25th Percentile £409 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £707 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 373 150 325
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.28 £14.18
25th Percentile £20.32 £21.05 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +45.45% +28.69% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £45.98 £43.75
90th Percentile £79.90 £73.93 £65.25
UK median hourly rate £39.75 £27.19 £21.37
% change year-on-year +46.21% +27.22% -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 1 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 1 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 1 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 3,039 £545 -0.96% 1,058
North of England +1 733 £500 +5.26% 697
South East -1 693 £500 -7.24% 993
Midlands -2 466 £500 -4.08% 416
North West 0 372 £490 -2.05% 353
West Midlands -1 350 £525 -1.87% 230
South West +5 342 £512 -2.57% 350
Yorkshire -3 314 £500 +11.11% 247
East of England -1 157 £550 +1.15% 319
East Midlands -1 114 £433 -7.87% 178
North East -4 51 £515 +7.01% 108
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
1 269 (4.80%) SharePoint
2 190 (3.39%) Microsoft Exchange
3 154 (2.75%) Apache Spark
4 146 (2.61%) Confluence
5 82 (1.46%) Apache
6 76 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.27%) Appian
9 14 (0.25%) CMS
9 14 (0.25%) SAS
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 (1.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.82%) MS Visio
4 42 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 39 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
6 12 (0.21%) 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
11 1 (0.018%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 95 (1.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.14%) 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 9 (0.16%) 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 1,985 (35.42%) AWS
2 1,172 (20.91%) GCP
3 1,107 (19.75%) Azure DevOps
4 760 (13.56%) Power Platform
5 720 (12.85%) Entra ID
6 667 (11.90%) Microsoft 365
7 551 (9.83%) GitHub
8 415 (7.41%) Azure Data Factory
9 317 (5.66%) Serverless
10 309 (5.51%) GitHub Actions
11 259 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 243 (4.34%) Dynamics 365
13 239 (4.26%) SaaS
14 215 (3.84%) Power Automate
15 211 (3.77%) Azure AKS
16 200 (3.57%) Azure Functions
17 191 (3.41%) Azure Monitor
18 189 (3.37%) PaaS
19 184 (3.28%) Azure Logic Apps
19 184 (3.28%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 376 (6.71%) Firewall
2 251 (4.48%) DNS
3 197 (3.52%) VPN
4 167 (2.98%) Network Security
5 150 (2.68%) DHCP
6 128 (2.28%) WAN
7 95 (1.70%) LAN
8 92 (1.64%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.18%) VLAN
11 65 (1.16%) Kerberos
12 61 (1.09%) SD-WAN
13 40 (0.71%) HTTP
14 35 (0.62%) BGP
15 34 (0.61%) Wireless
16 31 (0.55%) OSPF
16 31 (0.55%) SSL
17 29 (0.52%) MPLS
18 28 (0.50%) Internet
18 28 (0.50%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 526 (9.39%) Power BI
2 317 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 296 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
4 274 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.69%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (3.28%) Azure SQL Database
7 163 (2.91%) NoSQL
8 132 (2.36%) Metadata
9 108 (1.93%) Delta Lake
10 103 (1.84%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.32%) MongoDB
13 67 (1.20%) Big Data
14 65 (1.16%) Tableau
15 58 (1.03%) BigQuery
15 58 (1.03%) Oracle Database
16 55 (0.98%) MySQL
17 48 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
18 47 (0.84%) Redis
19 37 (0.66%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 430 (7.67%) Git
2 389 (6.94%) JIRA
3 272 (4.85%) Jenkins
4 210 (3.75%) GitLab
5 91 (1.62%) Selenium
6 69 (1.23%) Postman
7 57 (1.02%) JUnit
8 54 (0.96%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.87%) JMeter
9 49 (0.87%) MLflow
10 43 (0.77%) SonarQube
11 37 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
13 32 (0.57%) Cypress.io
14 28 (0.50%) Artifactory
14 28 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 27 (0.48%) TestRail
16 25 (0.45%) Bitbucket
17 24 (0.43%) Maven
18 22 (0.39%) ERwin
General
1 1,710 (30.51%) Social Skills
2 1,027 (18.33%) Finance
3 589 (10.51%) Public Sector
4 572 (10.21%) Analytical Skills
5 336 (6.00%) Banking
6 186 (3.32%) Documentation Skills
7 106 (1.89%) Legal
8 98 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
10 82 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
11 81 (1.45%) Retail
12 78 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
13 72 (1.28%) Marketing
14 59 (1.05%) Financial Institution
15 58 (1.03%) Investment Banking
15 58 (1.03%) Telecoms
16 54 (0.96%) Law
17 46 (0.82%) Front Office
18 39 (0.70%) Manufacturing
19 35 (0.62%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 920 (16.42%) Architect
2 783 (13.97%) Developer
3 638 (11.38%) Senior
4 461 (8.23%) Data Engineer
5 460 (8.21%) Azure Engineer
6 410 (7.32%) Lead
7 374 (6.67%) Analyst
8 271 (4.84%) Solutions Architect
9 262 (4.68%) DevOps Engineer
10 252 (4.50%) Consultant
11 159 (2.84%) Security Engineer
12 156 (2.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 151 (2.69%) Cloud Engineer
14 138 (2.46%) Azure Architect
15 135 (2.41%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 135 (2.41%) Senior Developer
16 123 (2.19%) Platform Engineer
17 112 (2.00%) Azure Data Engineer
17 112 (2.00%) Data Architect
18 109 (1.95%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 428 (7.64%) .NET
2 381 (6.80%) REST
3 264 (4.71%) React
4 214 (3.82%) Kafka
5 209 (3.73%) PySpark
6 200 (3.57%) Node.js
7 197 (3.52%) RESTful
8 176 (3.14%) OAuth
9 168 (3.00%) Spring
10 158 (2.82%) HTML
11 156 (2.78%) AngularJS
12 142 (2.53%) LDAP
13 139 (2.48%) Spring Boot
14 133 (2.37%) PyTorch
15 127 (2.27%) CSS
16 123 (2.19%) SOAP
17 122 (2.18%) Middleware
18 121 (2.16%) SAML
19 118 (2.11%) TensorFlow
20 115 (2.05%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 505 (9.01%) Cloud Native
2 231 (4.12%) Onboarding
3 193 (3.44%) Product Ownership
4 161 (2.87%) Security Posture
5 152 (2.71%) Hybrid Cloud
6 145 (2.59%) Enterprise Software
7 136 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
8 126 (2.25%) Data Centre
9 107 (1.91%) Public Cloud
10 90 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
11 82 (1.46%) AI Agents
12 77 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 76 (1.36%) Replication
14 65 (1.16%) Algorithms
15 64 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 60 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
17 55 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 53 (0.95%) Low-Code
19 46 (0.82%) PKI
20 45 (0.80%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 630 (11.24%) Windows
2 308 (5.50%) Linux
3 181 (3.23%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.02%) Windows 10
5 62 (1.11%) Unix
6 55 (0.98%) VMS
7 46 (0.82%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.64%) Apple iOS
10 28 (0.50%) Android
11 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.30%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.21%) CentOS
14 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.12%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.089%) AIX
17 5 (0.089%) Data ONTAP
18 4 (0.071%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,032 (36.26%) DevOps
2 1,686 (30.09%) CI/CD
3 1,341 (23.93%) Agile
4 1,020 (18.20%) Problem-Solving
5 858 (15.31%) Analytics
6 796 (14.20%) AI
7 727 (12.97%) Infrastructure as Code
8 689 (12.29%) Migration
9 599 (10.69%) Business Intelligence
10 597 (10.65%) Data Modelling
11 583 (10.40%) Stakeholder Management
12 544 (9.71%) Containerisation
13 534 (9.53%) Continuous Improvement
14 511 (9.12%) ETL
15 509 (9.08%) Data Pipeline
16 506 (9.03%) Machine Learning
17 490 (8.74%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 485 (8.65%) Microservices
19 474 (8.46%) Data Engineering
20 441 (7.87%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,464 (26.12%) Python
2 1,266 (22.59%) SQL
3 624 (11.13%) PowerShell
4 470 (8.39%) C#
5 465 (8.30%) Java
6 437 (7.80%) JavaScript
7 242 (4.32%) TypeScript
8 226 (4.03%) Bash
9 160 (2.86%) Bicep
10 91 (1.62%) Scala
11 77 (1.37%) Go
11 77 (1.37%) PL/SQL
12 67 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 63 (1.12%) Kusto Query Language
14 61 (1.09%) T-SQL
15 39 (0.70%) R
16 29 (0.52%) PHP
17 28 (0.50%) C++
17 28 (0.50%) Shell Script
18 20 (0.36%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,364 (24.34%) Security Cleared
2 1,117 (19.93%) SC Cleared
3 450 (8.03%) Degree
4 330 (5.89%) Azure Certification
5 189 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.93%) CISSP
7 154 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.18%) AWS Certification
9 114 (2.03%) DV Cleared
10 102 (1.82%) CISM
11 99 (1.77%) Cisco Certification
12 82 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
13 71 (1.27%) Master's Degree
14 54 (0.96%) TOGAF Certification
15 51 (0.91%) CCNP
16 47 (0.84%) PMI Certification
17 45 (0.80%) PMP
18 42 (0.75%) ISTQB
19 35 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 31 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (6.80%) Data Quality
2 350 (6.25%) GDPR
3 295 (5.26%) QA
4 260 (4.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 212 (3.78%) NIST
6 95 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.46%) NCSC
8 79 (1.41%) 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 30 (0.54%) SOC 2
16 28 (0.50%) WCAG
17 25 (0.45%) EU AI Act
18 24 (0.43%) ISO 20022
19 23 (0.41%) PSD2
20 20 (0.36%) NIST 800
System Software
1 780 (13.92%) Active Directory
2 665 (11.87%) Docker
3 172 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 80 (1.43%) Hyper-V
4 80 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
5 68 (1.21%) Virtual Desktop
5 68 (1.21%) vSphere
6 24 (0.43%) VMware NSX
7 18 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.20%) Firmware
8 11 (0.20%) NFS
9 8 (0.14%) Postfix
10 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
10 7 (0.12%) KVM
10 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
10 7 (0.12%) Snort
11 6 (0.11%) GPFS
11 6 (0.11%) Lustre
12 5 (0.089%) Oracle RAC
12 5 (0.089%) RACF
Systems Management
1 834 (14.88%) Terraform
2 820 (14.63%) Kubernetes
3 331 (5.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 241 (4.30%) Ansible
5 145 (2.59%) Single Sign-On
6 138 (2.46%) Grafana
7 126 (2.25%) SCCM
8 120 (2.14%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.75%) Argo
11 25 (0.45%) Istio
11 25 (0.45%) 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 (0.29%) vRealize
17 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,828 (32.62%) Microsoft
2 573 (10.22%) Databricks
3 302 (5.39%) Oracle
4 285 (5.09%) Google
5 262 (4.68%) ServiceNow
6 229 (4.09%) VMware
7 166 (2.96%) SAP
8 141 (2.52%) OpenAI
9 139 (2.48%) Cisco
10 136 (2.43%) Splunk
11 113 (2.02%) CyberArk
12 94 (1.68%) Salesforce
13 93 (1.66%) Foundry
14 88 (1.57%) Palo Alto
15 78 (1.39%) Okta
16 70 (1.25%) Citrix
17 67 (1.20%) Red Hat
18 63 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
19 60 (1.07%) IBM
20 52 (0.93%) Siemens