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

6 months to
13 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,749 3,966 5,143
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.74% 16.08% 13.55%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.49% 42.48% 41.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,088 2,785 3,785
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £534 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.69% -1.11% -4.85%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £749
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 26 70
10th Percentile £25.39 £21.78 £17.78
25th Percentile £53.91 £24.10 £22.13
Median hourly rate £57.50 £44.25 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +29.94% -4.05% -22.88%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.06 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £79.35 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -17.90%

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 13,531 9,337 12,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.04% 37.85% 32.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,305 6,474 8,855
10th Percentile £313 £313 £275
25th Percentile £412 £413 £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 £712 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 403 157 330
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.19 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.66 £18.74 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.06% +26.19% -16.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £42.06
90th Percentile £79.90 £75.80 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £37.54 £25.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +47.22% +19.33% -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 13 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 13 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 13 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 3,128 £540 -1.82% 1,070
North of England +2 754 £488 +2.63% 573
South East -1 741 £500 -9.09% 674
Midlands -3 465 £500 - 299
North West +1 382 £476 -4.80% 298
West Midlands -3 361 £508 -3.24% 181
South West +5 335 £508 -3.33% 247
Yorkshire -2 322 £488 +8.33% 188
East of England 0 153 £550 -5.17% 180
East Midlands -5 101 £430 -9.47% 116
North East -4 52 £525 +10.53% 95
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
1 277 (4.82%) SharePoint
2 187 (3.25%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.87%) Apache Spark
4 147 (2.56%) Confluence
5 89 (1.55%) Apache
6 81 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.33%) IIS
7 19 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.26%) Appian
8 15 (0.26%) ArcGIS
8 15 (0.26%) SAS
9 14 (0.24%) Camunda
9 14 (0.24%) CMS
10 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.19%) Mendix
11 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
12 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
13 7 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
14 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
Applications
1 104 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 41 (0.71%) Microsoft Project
5 37 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.10%) Trello
8 5 (0.087%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.087%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.087%) Weka
9 4 (0.070%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.035%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.017%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 100 (1.74%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.17%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 10 (0.17%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.087%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.087%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.087%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.087%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.070%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.070%) Endur
10 4 (0.070%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.070%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 2,027 (35.26%) AWS
2 1,172 (20.39%) GCP
3 1,165 (20.26%) Azure DevOps
4 791 (13.76%) Power Platform
5 746 (12.98%) Entra ID
6 667 (11.60%) Microsoft 365
7 584 (10.16%) GitHub
8 433 (7.53%) Azure Data Factory
9 333 (5.79%) Serverless
10 331 (5.76%) GitHub Actions
11 267 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (4.30%) Dynamics 365
13 242 (4.21%) SaaS
14 222 (3.86%) Power Automate
15 220 (3.83%) Azure AKS
16 213 (3.70%) Azure Monitor
17 211 (3.67%) Azure Functions
18 205 (3.57%) PaaS
19 187 (3.25%) Azure Logic Apps
20 177 (3.08%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 385 (6.70%) Firewall
2 259 (4.51%) DNS
3 213 (3.70%) VPN
4 183 (3.18%) Network Security
5 150 (2.61%) DHCP
6 142 (2.47%) WAN
7 106 (1.84%) LAN
8 96 (1.67%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.36%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.15%) SD-WAN
11 62 (1.08%) Kerberos
11 62 (1.08%) VLAN
12 42 (0.73%) BGP
13 41 (0.71%) HTTP
14 39 (0.68%) Wireless
15 37 (0.64%) OSPF
16 31 (0.54%) Internet
17 30 (0.52%) SAN
18 29 (0.50%) MPLS
18 29 (0.50%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 551 (9.58%) Power BI
2 330 (5.74%) SQL Server
3 305 (5.31%) Data Warehouse
4 272 (4.73%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
6 200 (3.48%) Azure SQL Database
7 173 (3.01%) NoSQL
8 135 (2.35%) Metadata
9 116 (2.02%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 78 (1.36%) Big Data
13 71 (1.23%) Tableau
14 70 (1.22%) MongoDB
15 59 (1.03%) Oracle Database
16 56 (0.97%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.90%) MySQL
18 49 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.82%) Redis
20 37 (0.64%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 435 (7.57%) Git
2 384 (6.68%) JIRA
3 275 (4.78%) Jenkins
4 210 (3.65%) GitLab
5 97 (1.69%) Selenium
6 67 (1.17%) Postman
7 58 (1.01%) JUnit
8 57 (0.99%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.90%) JMeter
10 49 (0.85%) MLflow
11 38 (0.66%) SonarQube
12 36 (0.63%) REST Assured
13 34 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.59%) Oracle APEX
14 31 (0.54%) Visual Studio
15 27 (0.47%) Artifactory
16 26 (0.45%) TestRail
17 25 (0.43%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.40%) SpecFlow
19 22 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,690 (29.40%) Social Skills
2 1,078 (18.75%) Finance
3 628 (10.92%) Public Sector
4 586 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
5 339 (5.90%) Banking
6 188 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 116 (2.02%) Legal
8 101 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.46%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
11 81 (1.41%) Retail
12 76 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
13 65 (1.13%) Telecoms
14 63 (1.10%) Marketing
15 62 (1.08%) Financial Institution
16 57 (0.99%) Investment Banking
17 54 (0.94%) Law
18 52 (0.90%) Front Office
19 41 (0.71%) Local Government
20 38 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 961 (16.72%) Architect
2 810 (14.09%) Developer
3 666 (11.58%) Senior
4 490 (8.52%) Azure Engineer
5 485 (8.44%) Data Engineer
6 429 (7.46%) Lead
7 371 (6.45%) Analyst
8 267 (4.64%) Solutions Architect
9 265 (4.61%) DevOps Engineer
10 255 (4.44%) Consultant
11 169 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 157 (2.73%) Cloud Engineer
13 150 (2.61%) Security Engineer
14 148 (2.57%) Azure Architect
15 133 (2.31%) Senior Developer
16 131 (2.28%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 130 (2.26%) Platform Engineer
18 117 (2.04%) Data Architect
19 113 (1.97%) Azure Data Engineer
20 111 (1.93%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 448 (7.79%) .NET
2 399 (6.94%) REST
3 269 (4.68%) React
4 222 (3.86%) Kafka
5 217 (3.77%) PySpark
6 210 (3.65%) Node.js
7 199 (3.46%) RESTful
8 178 (3.10%) Spring
9 172 (2.99%) OAuth
10 165 (2.87%) AngularJS
11 151 (2.63%) HTML
12 140 (2.44%) LDAP
13 139 (2.42%) Spring Boot
14 134 (2.33%) PyTorch
15 127 (2.21%) CSS
16 125 (2.17%) SOAP
17 123 (2.14%) Middleware
18 120 (2.09%) TensorFlow
19 115 (2.00%) SAML
20 112 (1.95%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 529 (9.20%) Cloud Native
2 238 (4.14%) Onboarding
3 196 (3.41%) Product Ownership
4 160 (2.78%) Security Posture
5 159 (2.77%) Hybrid Cloud
6 149 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
7 144 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
8 136 (2.37%) Data Centre
9 112 (1.95%) Public Cloud
10 103 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
11 93 (1.62%) AI Agents
12 79 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 72 (1.25%) Replication
14 68 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
15 66 (1.15%) Algorithms
15 66 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 55 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
17 51 (0.89%) PKI
18 50 (0.87%) Low-Code
19 46 (0.80%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 637 (11.08%) Windows
2 303 (5.27%) Linux
3 194 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 57 (0.99%) Unix
6 55 (0.96%) VMS
7 39 (0.68%) Mac OS
8 35 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 33 (0.57%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.45%) Android
11 21 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.28%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.14%) CentOS
16 7 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
17 5 (0.087%) AIX
17 5 (0.087%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.087%) Solaris
17 5 (0.087%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,116 (36.81%) DevOps
2 1,736 (30.20%) CI/CD
3 1,369 (23.81%) Agile
4 1,012 (17.60%) Problem-Solving
5 897 (15.60%) Analytics
6 818 (14.23%) AI
7 739 (12.85%) Infrastructure as Code
7 739 (12.85%) Migration
8 623 (10.84%) Data Modelling
9 618 (10.75%) Business Intelligence
10 596 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
11 561 (9.76%) Continuous Improvement
12 551 (9.58%) Containerisation
13 539 (9.38%) Data Pipeline
14 529 (9.20%) ETL
15 518 (9.01%) Machine Learning
16 515 (8.96%) Microservices
17 512 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 499 (8.68%) Data Engineering
19 458 (7.97%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,514 (26.34%) Python
2 1,333 (23.19%) SQL
3 643 (11.18%) PowerShell
4 488 (8.49%) C#
5 480 (8.35%) Java
6 431 (7.50%) JavaScript
7 243 (4.23%) TypeScript
8 218 (3.79%) Bash
9 171 (2.97%) Bicep
10 93 (1.62%) Scala
11 76 (1.32%) Go
12 73 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 72 (1.25%) PL/SQL
14 70 (1.22%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.13%) T-SQL
16 39 (0.68%) R
17 32 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 29 (0.50%) C++
19 22 (0.38%) PHP
19 22 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,419 (24.68%) Security Cleared
2 1,170 (20.35%) SC Cleared
3 466 (8.11%) Degree
4 338 (5.88%) Azure Certification
5 200 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 167 (2.90%) CISSP
7 148 (2.57%) Microsoft Certification
8 123 (2.14%) AWS Certification
9 115 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 107 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
11 104 (1.81%) CISM
12 86 (1.50%) BPSS Clearance
13 74 (1.29%) Master's Degree
14 54 (0.94%) CCNP
14 54 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
15 50 (0.87%) PMI Certification
16 48 (0.83%) ISTQB
16 48 (0.83%) PMP
17 38 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 34 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 404 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 358 (6.23%) GDPR
3 302 (5.25%) QA
4 256 (4.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 207 (3.60%) NIST
6 96 (1.67%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.44%) PCI DSS
8 81 (1.41%) NCSC
9 55 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 53 (0.92%) SLA
12 43 (0.75%) PMO
13 33 (0.57%) GRC
13 33 (0.57%) HIPAA
14 28 (0.49%) WCAG
15 24 (0.42%) EU AI Act
15 24 (0.42%) ISO 20022
15 24 (0.42%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.40%) PSD2
17 21 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 780 (13.57%) Active Directory
2 680 (11.83%) Docker
3 177 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (1.51%) Virtual Machines
5 80 (1.39%) Hyper-V
6 67 (1.17%) vSphere
7 63 (1.10%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 21 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.26%) Firmware
11 13 (0.23%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.12%) KVM
13 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
14 6 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.10%) Snort
15 5 (0.087%) RACF
Systems Management
1 869 (15.12%) Terraform
2 854 (14.85%) Kubernetes
3 329 (5.72%) Microsoft Intune
4 247 (4.30%) Ansible
5 150 (2.61%) Grafana
6 140 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
7 128 (2.23%) Prometheus
8 115 (2.00%) SCCM
9 72 (1.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.77%) Argo
11 31 (0.54%) Istio
12 26 (0.45%) Puppet
13 23 (0.40%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.37%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
16 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
17 16 (0.28%) Nmap
17 16 (0.28%) vRealize
18 15 (0.26%) HP ALM
19 14 (0.24%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 1,867 (32.48%) Microsoft
2 583 (10.14%) Databricks
3 295 (5.13%) Oracle
4 293 (5.10%) Google
5 257 (4.47%) ServiceNow
6 236 (4.11%) VMware
7 171 (2.97%) SAP
8 151 (2.63%) OpenAI
9 145 (2.52%) Cisco
10 130 (2.26%) Splunk
11 118 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 102 (1.77%) Foundry
13 91 (1.58%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.43%) Okta
15 80 (1.39%) Salesforce
16 68 (1.18%) Red Hat
17 64 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
17 64 (1.11%) Citrix
17 64 (1.11%) IBM
18 54 (0.94%) Zscaler