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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,076 4,245 4,751
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.20% 15.19% 14.71%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.04% 39.78% 42.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,934 2,919 3,259
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £414 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £518 £530
% change year-on-year +1.40% -2.31% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 39 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.41% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.04 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.33 £90.00 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £34.24 £35.00
% change year-on-year +15.36% -2.17% -24.21%

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 16,066 10,672 11,196
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.51% 38.19% 34.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,700 7,228 7,489
10th Percentile £320 £303 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £530
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -5.57% -3.59%
75th Percentile £628 £625 £645
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 563 249 162
10th Percentile £15.32 £15.20 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.53
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +6.06%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £68.06
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £26.30 £35.00
% change year-on-year +21.67% -24.86% +6.06%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 0 3,718 £550 - 3,117
North of England +5 1,009 £500 +5.26% 1,071
South East +1 900 £525 +5.00% 839
Midlands +1 645 £488 -6.11% 602
West Midlands +2 494 £477 -13.27% 366
North West +5 492 £500 +5.26% 568
Yorkshire +5 432 £500 +2.56% 376
South West +2 412 £550 +8.11% 492
East of England +2 197 £505 +1.00% 311
East Midlands +3 146 £500 +8.11% 236
North East +4 100 £516 +3.25% 134
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
1 418 (5.91%) SharePoint
2 229 (3.24%) Confluence
3 176 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 146 (2.06%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.53%) Apache
7 35 (0.49%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) CMS
10 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) nginx
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.099%) Mendix
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
17 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
17 5 (0.071%) WebSphere
Applications
1 105 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 33 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Revit
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.099%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) Mingle
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) 1Password
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 112 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.099%) Cloudability
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 5 (0.071%) Maximo
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.057%) Quorum
10 4 (0.057%) Ripple
10 4 (0.057%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,498 (35.30%) AWS
2 1,493 (21.10%) Azure DevOps
3 1,238 (17.50%) GCP
4 1,006 (14.22%) Entra ID
5 927 (13.10%) Power Platform
6 785 (11.09%) Microsoft 365
7 712 (10.06%) GitHub
8 412 (5.82%) GitHub Actions
9 406 (5.74%) Azure Data Factory
10 340 (4.80%) Serverless
11 316 (4.47%) SaaS
12 275 (3.89%) Power Automate
13 270 (3.82%) Azure Monitor
14 266 (3.76%) Dynamics 365
15 258 (3.65%) Snowflake
16 257 (3.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 240 (3.39%) Azure AKS
18 239 (3.38%) Microsoft Copilot
19 238 (3.36%) PowerApps
20 206 (2.91%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 465 (6.57%) Firewall
2 379 (5.36%) DNS
3 290 (4.10%) VPN
4 262 (3.70%) Network Security
5 221 (3.12%) DHCP
6 170 (2.40%) WAN
7 161 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.40%) BGP
9 96 (1.36%) LAN
10 88 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.14%) OSPF
12 78 (1.10%) VLAN
13 76 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.85%) SSL
14 60 (0.85%) Wireless
15 58 (0.82%) SAN
16 39 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 37 (0.52%) Internet
17 37 (0.52%) IPsec
17 37 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 617 (8.72%) Power BI
2 415 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 339 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 307 (4.34%) Data Lake
5 238 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (3.05%) Metadata
7 183 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 152 (2.15%) Azure SQL Database
9 120 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 118 (1.67%) Delta Lake
11 92 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (1.22%) Big Data
13 85 (1.20%) MySQL
14 74 (1.05%) MongoDB
15 57 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 55 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
16 55 (0.78%) BigQuery
17 53 (0.75%) Tableau
18 48 (0.68%) Redis
18 48 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 607 (8.58%) Git
2 491 (6.94%) JIRA
3 383 (5.41%) Jenkins
4 309 (4.37%) GitLab
5 123 (1.74%) Selenium
6 67 (0.95%) Postman
7 62 (0.88%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.68%) JUnit
10 47 (0.66%) JMeter
11 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.62%) Visual Studio
13 41 (0.58%) Maven
14 38 (0.54%) Claude Code
15 37 (0.52%) Gradle
16 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.48%) Bitbucket
18 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
19 30 (0.42%) LoadRunner
20 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,973 (27.88%) Social Skills
2 1,414 (19.98%) Finance
3 740 (10.46%) Public Sector
4 713 (10.08%) Analytical Skills
5 451 (6.37%) Banking
6 206 (2.91%) Retail
7 205 (2.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 173 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
9 136 (1.92%) Legal
10 98 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
11 95 (1.34%) Manufacturing
12 87 (1.23%) Investment Banking
13 86 (1.22%) Aerospace
14 83 (1.17%) Marketing
15 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
16 75 (1.06%) Military
17 67 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
18 61 (0.86%) Law
19 55 (0.78%) Billing
20 52 (0.73%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,329 (18.78%) Architect
2 908 (12.83%) Senior
3 803 (11.35%) Developer
4 606 (8.56%) Lead
5 595 (8.41%) Azure Engineer
6 509 (7.19%) Data Engineer
7 422 (5.96%) Solutions Architect
8 408 (5.77%) Analyst
9 357 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
10 354 (5.00%) Cloud Engineer
11 294 (4.15%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 269 (3.80%) Consultant
13 221 (3.12%) Data Architect
14 193 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
15 191 (2.70%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.49%) Azure Architect
17 172 (2.43%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 165 (2.33%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 157 (2.22%) Project Manager
19 157 (2.22%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,234 (17.44%) Terraform
2 617 (8.72%) REST
3 525 (7.42%) .NET
4 341 (4.82%) Kafka
5 261 (3.69%) React
6 251 (3.55%) OAuth
7 237 (3.35%) PySpark
8 231 (3.26%) RESTful
9 198 (2.80%) JSON
10 150 (2.12%) OpenID
11 144 (2.04%) OAuth2
12 141 (1.99%) SAML
13 134 (1.89%) HTML
13 134 (1.89%) SOAP
14 127 (1.79%) Spring
15 126 (1.78%) Middleware
16 120 (1.70%) Spring Boot
17 119 (1.68%) AngularJS
18 118 (1.67%) .NET Framework
19 114 (1.61%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 799 (11.29%) Cloud Native
2 387 (5.47%) Onboarding
3 332 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 271 (3.83%) Enterprise Software
5 262 (3.70%) AI Agents
6 260 (3.67%) Hybrid Cloud
7 240 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
8 228 (3.22%) Data Centre
9 195 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 164 (2.32%) Security Posture
11 156 (2.20%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.84%) Data Structures
13 117 (1.65%) Public Cloud
14 110 (1.55%) PKI
15 94 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
16 93 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
17 86 (1.22%) CMDB
18 78 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
19 77 (1.09%) Replication
20 68 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 892 (12.61%) Windows
2 459 (6.49%) Linux
3 345 (4.88%) Windows Server
4 143 (2.02%) Windows 10
5 84 (1.19%) Unix
6 80 (1.13%) Android
7 77 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 76 (1.07%) Apple iOS
9 67 (0.95%) Mac OS
10 55 (0.78%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.57%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.099%) Debian
18 6 (0.085%) AIX
19 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
19 4 (0.057%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,578 (36.43%) DevOps
2 2,261 (31.95%) CI/CD
3 1,759 (24.86%) Agile
4 1,316 (18.60%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,263 (17.85%) AI
6 1,230 (17.38%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,056 (14.92%) Migration
8 1,003 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
9 997 (14.09%) Analytics
10 833 (11.77%) Continuous Improvement
11 766 (10.83%) Roadmaps
12 763 (10.78%) Data Modelling
13 678 (9.58%) Business Intelligence
14 665 (9.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 659 (9.31%) Data Pipeline
16 643 (9.09%) Technical Leadership
17 634 (8.96%) Containerisation
18 629 (8.89%) Test Automation
19 589 (8.32%) Cybersecurity
20 588 (8.31%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,673 (23.64%) Python
2 1,376 (19.45%) SQL
3 817 (11.55%) PowerShell
4 582 (8.22%) Java
5 531 (7.50%) C#
6 440 (6.22%) JavaScript
7 362 (5.12%) Bash
8 317 (4.48%) Bicep
9 264 (3.73%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.05%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.02%) Go
13 54 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
13 54 (0.76%) Scala
14 51 (0.72%) Shell Script
15 31 (0.44%) Groovy
15 31 (0.44%) R
16 30 (0.42%) C++
16 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
17 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,841 (26.02%) Security Cleared
2 1,463 (20.68%) SC Cleared
3 527 (7.45%) Degree
4 422 (5.96%) Azure Certification
5 276 (3.90%) DV Cleared
6 243 (3.43%) CISSP
7 231 (3.26%) Microsoft Certification
8 198 (2.80%) AWS Certification
9 173 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
10 169 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
11 166 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
12 121 (1.71%) CISM
13 81 (1.14%) PMI Certification
14 79 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 78 (1.10%) PMP
16 76 (1.07%) CCNP
17 60 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.81%) ISTQB
19 52 (0.73%) CCSP
20 49 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 530 (7.49%) Data Quality
2 405 (5.72%) QA
3 272 (3.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 258 (3.65%) NIST
5 247 (3.49%) GDPR
6 174 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.40%) SLA
8 87 (1.23%) NCSC
9 76 (1.07%) WCAG
10 75 (1.06%) GRC
11 71 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
12 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
13 50 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 47 (0.66%) PMO
15 40 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 33 (0.47%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
18 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 928 (13.11%) Active Directory
2 762 (10.77%) Docker
3 224 (3.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.92%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 108 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.96%) vSphere
8 49 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.27%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 12 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,067 (15.08%) Kubernetes
2 414 (5.85%) Microsoft Intune
3 413 (5.84%) Ansible
4 228 (3.22%) Grafana
5 176 (2.49%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.84%) SCCM
7 126 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
8 59 (0.83%) Progress Chef
9 48 (0.68%) Argo
10 46 (0.65%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 33 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
13 32 (0.45%) SCOM
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 20 (0.28%) CASB
17 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 18 (0.25%) vCenter Server
18 14 (0.20%) HP ALM
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,624 (37.08%) Microsoft
2 726 (10.26%) Databricks
3 367 (5.19%) ServiceNow
4 328 (4.64%) Google
5 324 (4.58%) VMware
6 283 (4.00%) Oracle
7 218 (3.08%) Cisco
8 207 (2.93%) Splunk
9 184 (2.60%) SAP
10 180 (2.54%) OpenAI
11 165 (2.33%) Salesforce
12 142 (2.01%) CyberArk
12 142 (2.01%) Palo Alto
13 117 (1.65%) Dynatrace
14 110 (1.55%) Foundry
15 86 (1.22%) IBM
16 85 (1.20%) Zscaler
17 74 (1.05%) Fortinet
18 66 (0.93%) Informatica
19 64 (0.90%) Okta