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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,103 4,128 4,749
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.26% 14.95% 14.75%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.29% 39.48% 42.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,954 2,835 3,310
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £447 £414 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £517 £530
% change year-on-year +1.55% -2.45% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 38 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.39 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -13.29% -16.63%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.12 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.50 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +15.36% -6.83% -29.33%

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 16,039 10,456 11,138
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.46% 37.88% 34.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,685 7,075 7,552
10th Percentile £320 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 558 245 165
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.35 £15.99
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.73% -25.71% +6.06%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.15 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £28.00 £33.27
% change year-on-year +16.07% -15.84% -4.94%

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 23 September 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 23 September 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 23 September 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 3,728 £550 - 3,245
North of England +5 1,007 £500 +5.26% 1,247
South East 0 902 £525 +5.00% 1,123
Midlands +2 646 £493 -3.90% 711
North West +5 495 £500 +5.26% 647
West Midlands +2 487 £484 -10.32% 424
Yorkshire +5 430 £500 +4.17% 440
South West +2 421 £550 +10.00% 523
East of England +1 198 £510 +2.00% 369
East Midlands +5 153 £500 +8.11% 287
North East +4 95 £513 +2.50% 165
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
1 415 (5.84%) SharePoint
2 223 (3.14%) Confluence
3 179 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.38%) Apache Spark
5 154 (2.17%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.52%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.18%) nginx
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.099%) Mendix
15 6 (0.084%) Documentum
15 6 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.070%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 105 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.79%) Microsoft Project
4 38 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 7 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.070%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Mingle
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 116 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 9 (0.13%) Workday HCM
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 6 (0.084%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.070%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.056%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.056%) Maximo
11 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,518 (35.45%) AWS
2 1,493 (21.02%) Azure DevOps
3 1,232 (17.34%) GCP
4 1,003 (14.12%) Entra ID
5 927 (13.05%) Power Platform
6 773 (10.88%) Microsoft 365
7 697 (9.81%) GitHub
8 414 (5.83%) Azure Data Factory
9 407 (5.73%) GitHub Actions
10 340 (4.79%) Serverless
11 318 (4.48%) SaaS
12 272 (3.83%) Power Automate
13 270 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
14 266 (3.74%) Dynamics 365
15 264 (3.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 258 (3.63%) Snowflake
17 242 (3.41%) Azure AKS
18 240 (3.38%) Microsoft Copilot
19 236 (3.32%) PowerApps
20 209 (2.94%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 475 (6.69%) Firewall
2 382 (5.38%) DNS
3 293 (4.13%) VPN
4 263 (3.70%) Network Security
5 220 (3.10%) DHCP
6 173 (2.44%) WAN
7 166 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 100 (1.41%) BGP
9 97 (1.37%) LAN
10 89 (1.25%) SD-WAN
11 86 (1.21%) VLAN
12 81 (1.14%) OSPF
13 78 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.90%) SSL
15 62 (0.87%) SAN
16 60 (0.84%) Wireless
17 40 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 38 (0.53%) IPsec
19 37 (0.52%) Internet
19 37 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 622 (8.76%) Power BI
2 412 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 344 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.29%) Data Lake
5 235 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (3.03%) Metadata
7 185 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 149 (2.10%) Azure SQL Database
9 118 (1.66%) Delta Lake
9 118 (1.66%) Relational Database
10 89 (1.25%) Big Data
11 88 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (1.08%) MySQL
13 76 (1.07%) MongoDB
14 57 (0.80%) Tableau
15 56 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
15 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
16 52 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
17 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
17 51 (0.72%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 604 (8.50%) Git
2 478 (6.73%) JIRA
3 385 (5.42%) Jenkins
4 311 (4.38%) GitLab
5 121 (1.70%) Selenium
6 64 (0.90%) Postman
7 56 (0.79%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.70%) JUnit
10 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 44 (0.62%) JMeter
11 44 (0.62%) Visual Studio
12 42 (0.59%) Maven
13 37 (0.52%) Gradle
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.46%) Claude Code
15 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 30 (0.42%) Bitbucket
16 30 (0.42%) LoadRunner
17 28 (0.39%) MLflow
General
1 1,979 (27.86%) Social Skills
2 1,387 (19.53%) Finance
3 745 (10.49%) Public Sector
4 724 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
5 436 (6.14%) Banking
6 207 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 205 (2.89%) Retail
8 175 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (1.96%) Legal
10 96 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 90 (1.27%) Manufacturing
12 85 (1.20%) Aerospace
13 83 (1.17%) Marketing
14 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
15 78 (1.10%) Investment Banking
16 74 (1.04%) Military
17 70 (0.99%) Law
18 69 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
19 53 (0.75%) Financial Institution
20 52 (0.73%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,341 (18.88%) Architect
2 905 (12.74%) Senior
3 795 (11.19%) Developer
4 610 (8.59%) Lead
5 605 (8.52%) Azure Engineer
6 512 (7.21%) Data Engineer
7 426 (6.00%) Solutions Architect
8 407 (5.73%) Analyst
9 358 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
10 350 (4.93%) Cloud Engineer
11 287 (4.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 268 (3.77%) Consultant
13 223 (3.14%) Data Architect
14 199 (2.80%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.65%) Security Engineer
16 175 (2.46%) Azure Architect
17 168 (2.37%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 164 (2.31%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 157 (2.21%) Technical Architect
20 154 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,233 (17.36%) Terraform
2 586 (8.25%) REST
3 522 (7.35%) .NET
4 342 (4.81%) Kafka
5 256 (3.60%) OAuth
6 251 (3.53%) React
7 242 (3.41%) PySpark
8 224 (3.15%) RESTful
9 191 (2.69%) JSON
10 155 (2.18%) OpenID
11 148 (2.08%) SAML
12 146 (2.06%) OAuth2
13 135 (1.90%) Spring
14 127 (1.79%) HTML
14 127 (1.79%) Spring Boot
15 125 (1.76%) Middleware
16 120 (1.69%) AngularJS
16 120 (1.69%) Node.js
16 120 (1.69%) SOAP
17 116 (1.63%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 799 (11.25%) Cloud Native
2 381 (5.36%) Onboarding
3 326 (4.59%) Product Ownership
4 264 (3.72%) Hybrid Cloud
5 259 (3.65%) AI Agents
5 259 (3.65%) Enterprise Software
6 239 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
7 226 (3.18%) Data Centre
8 196 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
9 163 (2.29%) Security Posture
10 151 (2.13%) Management Information System
11 129 (1.82%) Data Structures
12 119 (1.68%) Public Cloud
13 110 (1.55%) PKI
14 95 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
15 94 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
16 88 (1.24%) CMDB
17 86 (1.21%) Replication
18 77 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 69 (0.97%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 891 (12.54%) Windows
2 452 (6.36%) Linux
3 340 (4.79%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.17%) Unix
6 82 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 78 (1.10%) Android
8 73 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.79%) Ubuntu
11 44 (0.62%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 8 (0.11%) Debian
18 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 6 (0.084%) SUSE
19 4 (0.056%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,581 (36.34%) DevOps
2 2,255 (31.75%) CI/CD
3 1,752 (24.67%) Agile
4 1,294 (18.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,263 (17.78%) AI
6 1,222 (17.20%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,056 (14.87%) Migration
8 1,008 (14.19%) Analytics
9 997 (14.04%) Problem-Solving
10 822 (11.57%) Continuous Improvement
11 779 (10.97%) Data Modelling
12 767 (10.80%) Roadmaps
13 679 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
14 670 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
15 667 (9.39%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 651 (9.17%) Technical Leadership
17 640 (9.01%) Containerisation
18 618 (8.70%) Test Automation
19 591 (8.32%) Data Engineering
20 589 (8.29%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,655 (23.30%) Python
2 1,366 (19.23%) SQL
3 808 (11.38%) PowerShell
4 590 (8.31%) Java
5 530 (7.46%) C#
6 433 (6.10%) JavaScript
7 352 (4.96%) Bash
8 313 (4.41%) Bicep
9 255 (3.59%) TypeScript
10 90 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 69 (0.97%) Go
13 54 (0.76%) Scala
14 52 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
15 48 (0.68%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 28 (0.39%) C++
17 28 (0.39%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,854 (26.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,472 (20.72%) SC Cleared
3 525 (7.39%) Degree
4 428 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 279 (3.93%) DV Cleared
6 249 (3.51%) CISSP
7 234 (3.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 194 (2.73%) AWS Certification
9 181 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 164 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
11 161 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
12 120 (1.69%) CISM
13 81 (1.14%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 80 (1.13%) CCNP
15 79 (1.11%) PMI Certification
16 75 (1.06%) PMP
17 58 (0.82%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.80%) ISTQB
19 52 (0.73%) CCSP
20 50 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 401 (5.65%) QA
3 281 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 267 (3.76%) NIST
5 256 (3.60%) GDPR
6 174 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.41%) SLA
8 93 (1.31%) NCSC
9 76 (1.07%) WCAG
10 75 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
11 73 (1.03%) GRC
12 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
13 53 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 51 (0.72%) PMO
15 42 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 32 (0.45%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.37%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 19 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 937 (13.19%) Active Directory
2 768 (10.81%) Docker
3 224 (3.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
6 108 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 73 (1.03%) vSphere
8 55 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) IAG
12 14 (0.20%) NFS
13 11 (0.15%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.056%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,076 (15.15%) Kubernetes
2 410 (5.77%) Ansible
3 407 (5.73%) Microsoft Intune
4 224 (3.15%) Grafana
5 171 (2.41%) Prometheus
6 135 (1.90%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.82%) SCCM
8 60 (0.84%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Argo
10 44 (0.62%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) SCOM
13 30 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.27%) CASB
15 19 (0.27%) Istio
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.18%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,614 (36.80%) Microsoft
2 728 (10.25%) Databricks
3 377 (5.31%) ServiceNow
4 328 (4.62%) VMware
5 319 (4.49%) Google
6 291 (4.10%) Oracle
7 224 (3.15%) Cisco
8 206 (2.90%) Splunk
9 186 (2.62%) SAP
10 178 (2.51%) OpenAI
11 162 (2.28%) Salesforce
12 149 (2.10%) CyberArk
13 139 (1.96%) Palo Alto
14 119 (1.68%) Dynatrace
15 118 (1.66%) Foundry
16 85 (1.20%) IBM
17 84 (1.18%) Zscaler
18 74 (1.04%) Fortinet
19 70 (0.99%) Informatica
20 66 (0.93%) Okta