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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,069 4,189 4,811
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.18% 14.99% 14.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.08% 39.46% 42.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,931 2,883 3,325
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £444 £415 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £519 £534
% change year-on-year +1.20% -2.86% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 39 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.41% -11.69% -16.63%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.04 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.17 £90.00 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +32.01% -6.83% -23.58%

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 16,037 10,617 11,325
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.45% 38.00% 34.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,689 7,193 7,615
10th Percentile £319 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £533
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -6.10% -3.09%
75th Percentile £626 £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 555 252 166
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £15.99
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -27.03% +4.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £65.68
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £26.48 £33.54
% change year-on-year +13.31% -21.06% -4.17%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 3,696 £550 +0.92% 3,721
North of England +8 1,000 £500 +5.26% 1,273
South East +1 911 £525 +5.53% 1,183
Midlands +2 646 £493 -4.37% 726
West Midlands +2 494 £488 -11.36% 443
North West +6 490 £500 +5.26% 678
Yorkshire +5 428 £500 +2.04% 447
South West +2 415 £550 +10.00% 535
East of England +1 200 £510 +2.00% 398
East Midlands +1 146 £500 +8.11% 283
North East +2 95 £513 +2.50% 156
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
1 414 (5.86%) SharePoint
2 226 (3.20%) Confluence
3 176 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 172 (2.43%) Apache Spark
5 151 (2.14%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.53%) Apache
7 40 (0.57%) 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 (0.085%) Documentum
15 6 (0.085%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 103 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.45%) 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%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) 1Password
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%) Weka
Business Applications
1 115 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) 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%) Shopify
9 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.057%) Maximo
11 4 (0.057%) Quorum
11 4 (0.057%) Ripple
11 4 (0.057%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,502 (35.39%) AWS
2 1,484 (20.99%) Azure DevOps
3 1,230 (17.40%) GCP
4 999 (14.13%) Entra ID
5 928 (13.13%) Power Platform
6 774 (10.95%) Microsoft 365
7 702 (9.93%) GitHub
8 408 (5.77%) Azure Data Factory
8 408 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
9 341 (4.82%) Serverless
10 312 (4.41%) SaaS
11 276 (3.90%) Power Automate
12 269 (3.81%) Dynamics 365
13 264 (3.73%) Azure Monitor
14 257 (3.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 257 (3.64%) Snowflake
15 240 (3.40%) Azure AKS
15 240 (3.40%) Microsoft Copilot
15 240 (3.40%) PowerApps
16 209 (2.96%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 462 (6.54%) Firewall
2 377 (5.33%) DNS
3 287 (4.06%) VPN
4 258 (3.65%) Network Security
5 221 (3.13%) DHCP
6 171 (2.42%) WAN
7 161 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.40%) BGP
9 98 (1.39%) LAN
10 88 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.15%) OSPF
12 78 (1.10%) VLAN
13 77 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
14 63 (0.89%) SSL
15 60 (0.85%) Wireless
16 59 (0.83%) SAN
17 39 (0.55%) VXLAN
18 38 (0.54%) MPLS
19 37 (0.52%) Internet
19 37 (0.52%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 616 (8.71%) Power BI
2 414 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 338 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
4 309 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 235 (3.32%) PostgreSQL
6 218 (3.08%) Metadata
7 183 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.07%) Azure SQL Database
9 120 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 118 (1.67%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.23%) Big Data
13 82 (1.16%) MySQL
14 72 (1.02%) MongoDB
15 56 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
15 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.76%) Tableau
17 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
18 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
19 49 (0.69%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 600 (8.49%) Git
2 480 (6.79%) JIRA
3 376 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 308 (4.36%) GitLab
5 119 (1.68%) Selenium
6 64 (0.91%) Postman
7 56 (0.79%) Cucumber
8 52 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.69%) JUnit
10 47 (0.66%) SonarQube
11 46 (0.65%) JMeter
12 45 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 42 (0.59%) Maven
14 38 (0.54%) Gradle
15 37 (0.52%) Claude Code
16 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
17 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
18 31 (0.44%) LoadRunner
19 30 (0.42%) Bitbucket
20 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,965 (27.80%) Social Skills
2 1,388 (19.64%) Finance
3 741 (10.48%) Public Sector
4 714 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
5 436 (6.17%) Banking
6 208 (2.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 207 (2.93%) Retail
8 176 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (1.94%) Legal
10 96 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 93 (1.32%) Manufacturing
12 86 (1.22%) Aerospace
13 83 (1.17%) Marketing
14 80 (1.13%) Investment Banking
15 79 (1.12%) Telecoms
16 75 (1.06%) Military
17 67 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
18 66 (0.93%) Law
19 54 (0.76%) Billing
20 53 (0.75%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,333 (18.86%) Architect
2 910 (12.87%) Senior
3 799 (11.30%) Developer
4 608 (8.60%) Lead
5 598 (8.46%) Azure Engineer
6 511 (7.23%) Data Engineer
7 428 (6.05%) Solutions Architect
8 407 (5.76%) Analyst
9 357 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
10 352 (4.98%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 266 (3.76%) Consultant
13 223 (3.15%) Data Architect
14 197 (2.79%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.66%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.49%) Azure Architect
17 168 (2.38%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 167 (2.36%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 157 (2.22%) Senior Developer
20 154 (2.18%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,224 (17.32%) Terraform
2 598 (8.46%) REST
3 519 (7.34%) .NET
4 335 (4.74%) Kafka
5 257 (3.64%) React
6 254 (3.59%) OAuth
7 240 (3.40%) PySpark
8 225 (3.18%) RESTful
9 196 (2.77%) JSON
10 151 (2.14%) OpenID
11 147 (2.08%) OAuth2
12 145 (2.05%) SAML
13 132 (1.87%) Spring
14 130 (1.84%) SOAP
15 128 (1.81%) HTML
16 126 (1.78%) Middleware
17 124 (1.75%) Spring Boot
18 116 (1.64%) .NET Framework
19 115 (1.63%) AngularJS
20 113 (1.60%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 802 (11.35%) Cloud Native
2 384 (5.43%) Onboarding
3 329 (4.65%) Product Ownership
4 263 (3.72%) AI Agents
4 263 (3.72%) Hybrid Cloud
5 261 (3.69%) Enterprise Software
6 239 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
7 226 (3.20%) Data Centre
8 196 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
9 164 (2.32%) Security Posture
10 152 (2.15%) Management Information System
11 129 (1.82%) Data Structures
12 119 (1.68%) Public Cloud
13 109 (1.54%) PKI
14 94 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
15 92 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
16 87 (1.23%) CMDB
17 82 (1.16%) Replication
18 79 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
19 67 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 887 (12.55%) Windows
2 446 (6.31%) Linux
3 339 (4.80%) Windows Server
4 140 (1.98%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.15%) Unix
6 79 (1.12%) Android
7 74 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 38 (0.54%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) 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 2,570 (36.36%) DevOps
2 2,249 (31.81%) CI/CD
3 1,741 (24.63%) Agile
4 1,299 (18.38%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,265 (17.90%) AI
6 1,216 (17.20%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,050 (14.85%) Migration
8 1,002 (14.17%) Analytics
9 997 (14.10%) Problem-Solving
10 820 (11.60%) Continuous Improvement
11 777 (10.99%) Data Modelling
12 769 (10.88%) Roadmaps
13 674 (9.53%) Business Intelligence
14 667 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 659 (9.32%) Data Pipeline
16 641 (9.07%) Technical Leadership
17 635 (8.98%) Containerisation
18 619 (8.76%) Test Automation
19 587 (8.30%) Cybersecurity
20 586 (8.29%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,648 (23.31%) Python
2 1,365 (19.31%) SQL
3 808 (11.43%) PowerShell
4 585 (8.28%) Java
5 526 (7.44%) C#
6 439 (6.21%) JavaScript
7 353 (4.99%) Bash
8 314 (4.44%) Bicep
9 262 (3.71%) TypeScript
10 90 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 75 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.99%) Go
13 53 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
13 53 (0.75%) Scala
14 48 (0.68%) Shell Script
15 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
16 30 (0.42%) R
17 29 (0.41%) C++
17 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,850 (26.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,471 (20.81%) SC Cleared
3 524 (7.41%) Degree
4 418 (5.91%) Azure Certification
5 280 (3.96%) DV Cleared
6 247 (3.49%) CISSP
7 232 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 194 (2.74%) AWS Certification
9 173 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
10 166 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
11 163 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
12 123 (1.74%) CISM
13 79 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 79 (1.12%) PMI Certification
14 76 (1.08%) CCNP
15 75 (1.06%) PMP
16 59 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 58 (0.82%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.74%) CCSP
19 50 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 526 (7.44%) Data Quality
2 397 (5.62%) QA
3 278 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 262 (3.71%) NIST
5 254 (3.59%) GDPR
6 172 (2.43%) Accessibility
7 101 (1.43%) SLA
8 90 (1.27%) NCSC
9 75 (1.06%) GRC
9 75 (1.06%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.96%) PCI DSS
12 50 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 48 (0.68%) PMO
14 40 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 32 (0.45%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 21 (0.30%) COBIT
17 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 932 (13.18%) Active Directory
2 762 (10.78%) Docker
3 222 (3.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 132 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 129 (1.82%) Virtual Machines
6 107 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.96%) vSphere
8 48 (0.68%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.30%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 12 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.057%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 4 (0.057%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,064 (15.05%) Kubernetes
2 410 (5.80%) Microsoft Intune
3 406 (5.74%) Ansible
4 221 (3.13%) Grafana
5 170 (2.40%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
7 129 (1.82%) SCCM
8 58 (0.82%) Progress Chef
9 47 (0.66%) Argo
10 43 (0.61%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 32 (0.45%) SCOM
13 28 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.30%) Istio
15 19 (0.27%) CASB
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
16 18 (0.25%) vCenter Server
17 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,624 (37.12%) Microsoft
2 725 (10.26%) Databricks
3 370 (5.23%) ServiceNow
4 323 (4.57%) Google
5 321 (4.54%) VMware
6 286 (4.05%) Oracle
7 221 (3.13%) Cisco
8 206 (2.91%) Splunk
9 183 (2.59%) SAP
10 178 (2.52%) OpenAI
11 159 (2.25%) Salesforce
12 141 (1.99%) CyberArk
13 137 (1.94%) Palo Alto
14 119 (1.68%) Dynatrace
15 114 (1.61%) Foundry
16 85 (1.20%) IBM
17 84 (1.19%) Zscaler
18 74 (1.05%) Fortinet
19 67 (0.95%) Informatica
20 66 (0.93%) Okta