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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,094 4,112 4,833
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.36% 14.82% 14.67%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.49% 39.45% 42.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,978 2,820 3,409
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £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 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 38 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £16.10 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.24 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% -11.06% -16.63%
75th Percentile £82.09 £66.83 £55.00
90th Percentile £103.78 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £38.88 £34.48 £36.75
% change year-on-year +12.75% -6.18% -31.94%

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 15,946 10,424 11,360
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.52% 37.57% 34.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,641 7,046 7,788
10th Percentile £320 £307 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.95% -4.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 544 257 182
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.40 £14.27
25th Percentile £17.92 £18.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £31.75
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -17.17% -3.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £62.14
90th Percentile £82.81 £69.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £29.25 £30.88
% change year-on-year +11.11% -5.26% -11.79%

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 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 13 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 13 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 +1 3,709 £550 +0.92% 2,623
North of England +9 1,032 £500 +5.26% 823
South East +1 899 £525 +5.00% 901
Midlands +2 647 £493 -3.90% 473
North West +5 528 £500 +5.26% 417
West Midlands +2 476 £488 -9.72% 274
South West +2 427 £550 +10.00% 387
Yorkshire +6 424 £500 +5.26% 286
East of England +3 182 £525 +5.00% 304
East Midlands +5 160 £500 +8.11% 198
North East +6 93 £500 - 126
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
1 413 (5.82%) SharePoint
2 222 (3.13%) Confluence
3 183 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.28%) Apache Spark
5 151 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
6 106 (1.49%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) CMS
10 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
13 12 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.099%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.099%) Mendix
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 6 (0.085%) Oracle Workflow
17 5 (0.070%) Tomcat
Applications
1 107 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 68 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
5 35 (0.49%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.16%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) 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
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 112 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.085%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.085%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 6 (0.085%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.056%) Endur
11 4 (0.056%) Maximo
11 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,517 (35.48%) AWS
2 1,500 (21.14%) Azure DevOps
3 1,204 (16.97%) GCP
4 966 (13.62%) Entra ID
5 921 (12.98%) Power Platform
6 760 (10.71%) Microsoft 365
7 710 (10.01%) GitHub
8 420 (5.92%) Azure Data Factory
9 418 (5.89%) GitHub Actions
10 339 (4.78%) Serverless
11 314 (4.43%) SaaS
12 273 (3.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 268 (3.78%) Power Automate
14 266 (3.75%) Azure Monitor
15 255 (3.59%) Dynamics 365
16 249 (3.51%) Snowflake
17 241 (3.40%) Azure AKS
18 236 (3.33%) PowerApps
19 228 (3.21%) Microsoft Copilot
20 204 (2.88%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 477 (6.72%) Firewall
2 370 (5.22%) DNS
3 287 (4.05%) VPN
4 268 (3.78%) Network Security
5 212 (2.99%) DHCP
6 178 (2.51%) WAN
7 159 (2.24%) TCP/IP
8 102 (1.44%) BGP
9 100 (1.41%) LAN
10 92 (1.30%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) VLAN
12 84 (1.18%) OSPF
13 76 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.87%) SSL
15 60 (0.85%) SAN
16 56 (0.79%) Wireless
17 41 (0.58%) VXLAN
18 37 (0.52%) IPsec
19 36 (0.51%) HTTP
20 35 (0.49%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 628 (8.85%) Power BI
2 420 (5.92%) SQL Server
3 352 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 308 (4.34%) Data Lake
5 242 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 209 (2.95%) Metadata
7 188 (2.65%) NoSQL
8 160 (2.26%) Azure SQL Database
9 123 (1.73%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.72%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (1.21%) Big Data
13 78 (1.10%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.03%) MySQL
15 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
16 57 (0.80%) Tableau
17 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
18 53 (0.75%) Amazon RDS
19 52 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
20 50 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 586 (8.26%) Git
2 491 (6.92%) JIRA
3 389 (5.48%) Jenkins
4 307 (4.33%) GitLab
5 110 (1.55%) Selenium
6 61 (0.86%) Postman
7 51 (0.72%) SonarQube
8 50 (0.70%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.69%) JUnit
10 47 (0.66%) Cucumber
11 44 (0.62%) Maven
12 43 (0.61%) JMeter
13 37 (0.52%) Gradle
13 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.51%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.44%) Claude Code
17 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
17 29 (0.41%) MLflow
18 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,956 (27.57%) Social Skills
2 1,386 (19.54%) Finance
3 756 (10.66%) Public Sector
4 719 (10.14%) Analytical Skills
5 426 (6.01%) Banking
6 203 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 198 (2.79%) Retail
8 181 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
9 148 (2.09%) Legal
10 95 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 83 (1.17%) Marketing
13 80 (1.13%) Aerospace
14 75 (1.06%) Telecoms
15 72 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 71 (1.00%) Military
17 70 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
18 68 (0.96%) Law
19 54 (0.76%) Financial Institution
20 52 (0.73%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,331 (18.76%) Architect
2 909 (12.81%) Senior
3 789 (11.12%) Developer
4 605 (8.53%) Azure Engineer
5 597 (8.42%) Lead
6 516 (7.27%) Data Engineer
7 418 (5.89%) Solutions Architect
8 414 (5.84%) Analyst
9 361 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
10 342 (4.82%) Cloud Engineer
11 286 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 273 (3.85%) Consultant
13 225 (3.17%) Data Architect
14 204 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
15 180 (2.54%) Security Engineer
16 174 (2.45%) Azure Architect
17 166 (2.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 163 (2.30%) Technical Architect
19 159 (2.24%) Project Manager
19 159 (2.24%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,225 (17.27%) Terraform
2 566 (7.98%) REST
3 527 (7.43%) .NET
4 326 (4.60%) Kafka
5 250 (3.52%) React
6 247 (3.48%) PySpark
7 237 (3.34%) OAuth
8 223 (3.14%) RESTful
9 194 (2.73%) JSON
10 144 (2.03%) OpenID
11 142 (2.00%) SAML
12 138 (1.95%) Spring
13 135 (1.90%) OAuth2
14 126 (1.78%) Spring Boot
15 125 (1.76%) AngularJS
16 123 (1.73%) HTML
17 118 (1.66%) Node.js
18 117 (1.65%) .NET Framework
19 114 (1.61%) SOAP
20 113 (1.59%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 787 (11.09%) Cloud Native
2 369 (5.20%) Onboarding
3 328 (4.62%) Product Ownership
4 260 (3.67%) Hybrid Cloud
5 243 (3.43%) AI Agents
5 243 (3.43%) Enterprise Software
6 235 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
7 219 (3.09%) Data Centre
8 188 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
9 156 (2.20%) Security Posture
10 143 (2.02%) Management Information System
11 128 (1.80%) Data Structures
12 121 (1.71%) Public Cloud
13 99 (1.40%) PKI
14 96 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
15 95 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
16 88 (1.24%) Replication
17 78 (1.10%) CMDB
18 73 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 63 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 876 (12.35%) Windows
2 446 (6.29%) Linux
3 330 (4.65%) Windows Server
4 128 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.13%) Unix
6 77 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 74 (1.04%) Android
8 69 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 67 (0.94%) Mac OS
10 54 (0.76%) Ubuntu
11 45 (0.63%) VMS
12 21 (0.30%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,598 (36.62%) DevOps
2 2,230 (31.44%) CI/CD
3 1,771 (24.96%) Agile
4 1,261 (17.78%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,240 (17.48%) AI
6 1,214 (17.11%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,038 (14.63%) Migration
8 1,026 (14.46%) Analytics
9 1,000 (14.10%) Problem-Solving
10 824 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
11 774 (10.91%) Data Modelling
12 749 (10.56%) Roadmaps
13 684 (9.64%) Business Intelligence
14 678 (9.56%) Data Pipeline
15 677 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 642 (9.05%) Containerisation
17 631 (8.89%) Technical Leadership
18 596 (8.40%) Test Automation
19 587 (8.27%) Data Engineering
20 578 (8.15%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,648 (23.23%) Python
2 1,377 (19.41%) SQL
3 798 (11.25%) PowerShell
4 584 (8.23%) Java
5 520 (7.33%) C#
6 417 (5.88%) JavaScript
7 353 (4.98%) Bash
8 313 (4.41%) Bicep
9 248 (3.50%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 59 (0.83%) Go
13 54 (0.76%) Scala
14 51 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.48%) R
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Groovy
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,851 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 1,473 (20.76%) SC Cleared
3 521 (7.34%) Degree
4 416 (5.86%) Azure Certification
5 270 (3.81%) DV Cleared
6 246 (3.47%) CISSP
7 233 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 186 (2.62%) AWS Certification
9 184 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
10 163 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
11 162 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
12 119 (1.68%) CISM
13 85 (1.20%) CCNP
14 77 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 77 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 75 (1.06%) PMP
16 55 (0.78%) Master's Degree
17 53 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.70%) CCSP
18 50 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (7.32%) Data Quality
2 401 (5.65%) QA
3 281 (3.96%) NIST
4 277 (3.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 259 (3.65%) GDPR
6 173 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.38%) SLA
8 96 (1.35%) NCSC
9 77 (1.09%) WCAG
10 73 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.96%) GRC
11 68 (0.96%) PCI DSS
12 56 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 52 (0.73%) PMO
14 41 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 28 (0.39%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.27%) NIST 800
19 18 (0.25%) COBIT
System Software
1 922 (13.00%) Active Directory
2 777 (10.95%) Docker
3 217 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.99%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
6 105 (1.48%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.90%) vSphere
8 52 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) IAG
12 15 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,069 (15.07%) Kubernetes
2 411 (5.79%) Ansible
3 397 (5.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 221 (3.12%) Grafana
5 172 (2.42%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
7 122 (1.72%) SCCM
8 63 (0.89%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Argo
10 48 (0.68%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.47%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 31 (0.44%) SCOM
15 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 18 (0.25%) CASB
16 18 (0.25%) Istio
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 16 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,579 (36.35%) Microsoft
2 723 (10.19%) Databricks
3 372 (5.24%) ServiceNow
4 321 (4.52%) VMware
5 303 (4.27%) Google
6 285 (4.02%) Oracle
7 227 (3.20%) Cisco
8 190 (2.68%) Splunk
9 189 (2.66%) SAP
10 169 (2.38%) OpenAI
11 155 (2.18%) Salesforce
12 145 (2.04%) CyberArk
13 143 (2.02%) Palo Alto
14 113 (1.59%) Foundry
15 110 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 80 (1.13%) Zscaler
17 79 (1.11%) Informatica
18 76 (1.07%) Fortinet
19 75 (1.06%) IBM
20 65 (0.92%) Red Hat