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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,701 3,980 5,160
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.70% 16.12% 13.55%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.38% 42.42% 41.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,057 2,790 3,790
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £536 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% -0.69% -4.85%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £735 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.94% -5.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 25 71
10th Percentile £25.46 £21.42 £17.78
25th Percentile £54.66 £23.80 £22.19
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -21.26%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £59.98
90th Percentile £86.40 £79.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -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 13,451 9,383 12,311
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.05% 38.01% 32.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,250 6,498 8,876
10th Percentile £313 £313 £275
25th Percentile £412 £418 £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 £710 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 396 155 331
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £19.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.75 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% +26.19% -16.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £43.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.75 £64.50
UK median hourly rate £38.51 £26.00 £21.37
% change year-on-year +48.10% +21.67% -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 11 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 11 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 11 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 3,110 £540 -1.82% 831
North of England +1 741 £492 +0.46% 579
South East -1 731 £500 -9.09% 689
Midlands -4 468 £500 -4.08% 309
North West 0 376 £488 -2.50% 305
West Midlands -3 357 £510 -4.67% 191
South West +5 328 £512 -2.57% 240
Yorkshire -3 319 £488 +5.41% 193
East of England 0 150 £550 -5.17% 204
East Midlands -4 108 £442 -5.90% 116
North East -5 48 £525 +10.53% 90
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
1 281 (4.93%) SharePoint
2 189 (3.32%) Microsoft Exchange
3 160 (2.81%) Apache Spark
4 147 (2.58%) Confluence
5 85 (1.49%) Apache
6 77 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.26%) Appian
8 15 (0.26%) CMS
8 15 (0.26%) SAS
9 14 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.25%) Camunda
9 14 (0.25%) IIS
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 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
Applications
1 101 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (0.74%) MS Visio
4 40 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
5 37 (0.65%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.088%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.088%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.088%) Weka
9 4 (0.070%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) 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%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 101 (1.77%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.088%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.088%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.088%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.088%) 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 1,996 (35.01%) AWS
2 1,163 (20.40%) GCP
3 1,147 (20.12%) Azure DevOps
4 781 (13.70%) Power Platform
5 742 (13.02%) Entra ID
6 673 (11.80%) Microsoft 365
7 574 (10.07%) GitHub
8 425 (7.45%) Azure Data Factory
9 328 (5.75%) Serverless
10 326 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
11 268 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 250 (4.39%) Dynamics 365
13 241 (4.23%) SaaS
14 222 (3.89%) Power Automate
15 221 (3.88%) Azure AKS
16 207 (3.63%) Azure Functions
16 207 (3.63%) Azure Monitor
17 203 (3.56%) PaaS
18 186 (3.26%) Azure Logic Apps
19 178 (3.12%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 378 (6.63%) Firewall
2 251 (4.40%) DNS
3 211 (3.70%) VPN
4 174 (3.05%) Network Security
5 148 (2.60%) DHCP
6 140 (2.46%) WAN
7 103 (1.81%) LAN
8 95 (1.67%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.16%) SD-WAN
11 63 (1.11%) Kerberos
11 63 (1.11%) VLAN
12 40 (0.70%) BGP
12 40 (0.70%) HTTP
13 35 (0.61%) OSPF
13 35 (0.61%) Wireless
14 30 (0.53%) Internet
14 30 (0.53%) MPLS
15 29 (0.51%) SAN
15 29 (0.51%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 539 (9.45%) Power BI
2 326 (5.72%) SQL Server
3 301 (5.28%) Data Warehouse
4 268 (4.70%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
6 197 (3.46%) Azure SQL Database
7 172 (3.02%) NoSQL
8 129 (2.26%) Metadata
9 112 (1.96%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.70%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.32%) Big Data
13 70 (1.23%) MongoDB
14 68 (1.19%) Tableau
15 57 (1.00%) BigQuery
15 57 (1.00%) Oracle Database
16 49 (0.86%) MySQL
16 49 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
17 48 (0.84%) Redis
18 37 (0.65%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 434 (7.61%) Git
2 380 (6.67%) JIRA
3 275 (4.82%) Jenkins
4 206 (3.61%) GitLab
5 95 (1.67%) Selenium
6 67 (1.18%) Postman
7 57 (1.00%) JUnit
8 56 (0.98%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.88%) JMeter
9 50 (0.88%) MLflow
10 38 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 36 (0.63%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.61%) Oracle APEX
13 34 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 31 (0.54%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.49%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.47%) TestRail
17 26 (0.46%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.40%) SpecFlow
19 22 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,683 (29.52%) Social Skills
2 1,061 (18.61%) Finance
3 621 (10.89%) Public Sector
4 571 (10.02%) Analytical Skills
5 341 (5.98%) Banking
6 186 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
7 114 (2.00%) Legal
8 99 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
11 81 (1.42%) Retail
12 76 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
13 63 (1.11%) Marketing
13 63 (1.11%) Telecoms
14 61 (1.07%) Financial Institution
15 58 (1.02%) Investment Banking
16 54 (0.95%) Law
17 52 (0.91%) Front Office
18 39 (0.68%) Local Government
18 39 (0.68%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 952 (16.70%) Architect
2 810 (14.21%) Developer
3 662 (11.61%) Senior
4 484 (8.49%) Azure Engineer
5 470 (8.24%) Data Engineer
6 426 (7.47%) Lead
7 367 (6.44%) Analyst
8 268 (4.70%) Solutions Architect
9 260 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
10 253 (4.44%) Consultant
11 165 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 157 (2.75%) Cloud Engineer
13 153 (2.68%) Security Engineer
14 147 (2.58%) Azure Architect
15 136 (2.39%) Senior Developer
16 135 (2.37%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 130 (2.28%) Platform Engineer
18 116 (2.03%) Data Architect
19 113 (1.98%) Azure Data Engineer
20 111 (1.95%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 446 (7.82%) .NET
2 395 (6.93%) REST
3 268 (4.70%) React
4 219 (3.84%) Kafka
5 210 (3.68%) PySpark
6 208 (3.65%) Node.js
7 196 (3.44%) RESTful
8 175 (3.07%) Spring
9 174 (3.05%) OAuth
10 163 (2.86%) AngularJS
11 152 (2.67%) HTML
12 140 (2.46%) LDAP
13 137 (2.40%) Spring Boot
14 132 (2.32%) PyTorch
15 127 (2.23%) CSS
16 124 (2.18%) SOAP
17 122 (2.14%) Middleware
18 118 (2.07%) TensorFlow
19 116 (2.03%) SAML
20 114 (2.00%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 510 (8.95%) Cloud Native
2 238 (4.17%) Onboarding
3 197 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 158 (2.77%) Hybrid Cloud
5 157 (2.75%) Security Posture
6 146 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
7 141 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
8 134 (2.35%) Data Centre
9 112 (1.96%) Public Cloud
10 101 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
11 92 (1.61%) AI Agents
12 74 (1.30%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.25%) Replication
14 67 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
15 64 (1.12%) Algorithms
16 63 (1.11%) Management Information System
17 56 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 52 (0.91%) Low-Code
19 49 (0.86%) PKI
20 45 (0.79%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 631 (11.07%) Windows
2 298 (5.23%) Linux
3 187 (3.28%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.98%) Windows 10
5 56 (0.98%) VMS
6 54 (0.95%) Unix
7 42 (0.74%) Mac OS
8 35 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 33 (0.58%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.46%) 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 (0.088%) AIX
17 5 (0.088%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.088%) Solaris
17 5 (0.088%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,083 (36.54%) DevOps
2 1,715 (30.08%) CI/CD
3 1,349 (23.66%) Agile
4 1,004 (17.61%) Problem-Solving
5 879 (15.42%) Analytics
6 819 (14.37%) AI
7 724 (12.70%) Infrastructure as Code
8 715 (12.54%) Migration
9 614 (10.77%) Data Modelling
10 604 (10.59%) Business Intelligence
11 595 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
12 549 (9.63%) Continuous Improvement
13 545 (9.56%) Containerisation
14 524 (9.19%) Data Pipeline
14 524 (9.19%) ETL
15 516 (9.05%) Machine Learning
16 507 (8.89%) Microservices
16 507 (8.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 486 (8.52%) Data Engineering
18 455 (7.98%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,492 (26.17%) Python
2 1,314 (23.05%) SQL
3 644 (11.30%) PowerShell
4 489 (8.58%) C#
5 477 (8.37%) Java
6 430 (7.54%) JavaScript
7 247 (4.33%) TypeScript
8 220 (3.86%) Bash
9 166 (2.91%) Bicep
10 91 (1.60%) Scala
11 76 (1.33%) Go
12 73 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 73 (1.28%) PL/SQL
13 69 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
14 65 (1.14%) T-SQL
15 37 (0.65%) R
16 29 (0.51%) C++
17 28 (0.49%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.39%) PHP
18 22 (0.39%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,405 (24.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,154 (20.24%) SC Cleared
3 457 (8.02%) Degree
4 336 (5.89%) Azure Certification
5 198 (3.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 162 (2.84%) CISSP
7 149 (2.61%) Microsoft Certification
8 120 (2.10%) AWS Certification
9 117 (2.05%) DV Cleared
10 105 (1.84%) Cisco Certification
11 100 (1.75%) CISM
12 85 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
13 71 (1.25%) Master's Degree
14 53 (0.93%) CCNP
14 53 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
15 48 (0.84%) PMI Certification
16 46 (0.81%) ISTQB
16 46 (0.81%) PMP
17 37 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 34 (0.60%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 389 (6.82%) Data Quality
2 355 (6.23%) GDPR
3 298 (5.23%) QA
4 262 (4.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 209 (3.67%) NIST
6 96 (1.68%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.42%) NCSC
7 81 (1.42%) PCI DSS
8 55 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
9 54 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 52 (0.91%) SLA
11 42 (0.74%) PMO
12 34 (0.60%) HIPAA
13 31 (0.54%) GRC
14 29 (0.51%) WCAG
15 28 (0.49%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.44%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.42%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.40%) PSD2
19 21 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 784 (13.75%) Active Directory
2 674 (11.82%) Docker
3 174 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (1.53%) Virtual Machines
5 76 (1.33%) Hyper-V
6 66 (1.16%) vSphere
7 63 (1.11%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 19 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (0.25%) 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 (0.11%) GPFS
14 6 (0.11%) Lustre
14 6 (0.11%) Snort
15 5 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.088%) RACF
Systems Management
1 856 (15.01%) Terraform
2 845 (14.82%) Kubernetes
3 330 (5.79%) Microsoft Intune
4 246 (4.32%) Ansible
5 148 (2.60%) Grafana
6 141 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
7 126 (2.21%) Prometheus
8 118 (2.07%) SCCM
9 72 (1.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.74%) Argo
11 31 (0.54%) Istio
12 26 (0.46%) Puppet
13 23 (0.40%) Progress Chef
14 20 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 16 (0.28%) vRealize
17 15 (0.26%) Kubeflow
17 15 (0.26%) Nmap
18 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,865 (32.71%) Microsoft
2 574 (10.07%) Databricks
3 292 (5.12%) Oracle
4 290 (5.09%) Google
5 255 (4.47%) ServiceNow
6 232 (4.07%) VMware
7 167 (2.93%) SAP
8 153 (2.68%) OpenAI
9 143 (2.51%) Cisco
10 129 (2.26%) Splunk
11 117 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 100 (1.75%) Foundry
13 88 (1.54%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.44%) Salesforce
15 80 (1.40%) Okta
16 67 (1.18%) Citrix
17 66 (1.16%) Red Hat
18 64 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.12%) IBM
19 54 (0.95%) Zscaler