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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,948 3,912 5,062
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.84% 16.12% 13.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.07% 42.47% 41.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,259 2,795 3,720
10th Percentile £358 £355 £340
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.38% -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £646
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -1.13% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 28 61
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £24.70 £22.30
Median hourly rate £57.50 £44.25 £46.06
Median % change year-on-year +29.94% -3.92% -16.26%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £86.00 £79.09 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.06
% change year-on-year +79.69% -30.52% -16.26%

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 13,811 9,211 12,152
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.77% 37.96% 32.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,512 6,488 8,740
10th Percentile £313 £313 £277
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 420 178 328
10th Percentile £15.96 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -16.00%
75th Percentile £64.38 £43.29 £39.22
90th Percentile £80.28 £74.13 £62.15
UK median hourly rate £39.47 £25.98 £21.00
% change year-on-year +51.93% +23.69% -18.64%

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 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 26 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 26 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 3,245 £540 -1.82% 1,004
North of England +3 808 £487 -0.05% 604
South East 0 736 £500 -9.09% 685
Midlands -2 482 £500 - 369
North West +1 438 £476 -4.90% 303
West Midlands -2 358 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 347 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire -2 325 £488 +8.33% 208
East of England +4 151 £550 -6.78% 207
East Midlands -1 116 £433 -8.84% 163
North East -4 47 £525 +10.53% 97
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
1 282 (4.74%) SharePoint
2 187 (3.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 164 (2.76%) Apache Spark
4 162 (2.72%) Confluence
5 97 (1.63%) Apache
6 82 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 16 (0.27%) Camunda
10 15 (0.25%) Appian
10 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.24%) CMS
11 14 (0.24%) SAS
12 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Mendix
13 9 (0.15%) GeoServer
14 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.13%) Smallworld
15 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
Applications
1 106 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.084%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.084%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.084%) Weka
10 4 (0.067%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.050%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.034%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 97 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.084%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.084%) Endur
9 5 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.084%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.067%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.067%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.067%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.067%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,077 (34.92%) AWS
2 1,243 (20.90%) Azure DevOps
3 1,169 (19.65%) GCP
4 797 (13.40%) Power Platform
5 760 (12.78%) Entra ID
6 674 (11.33%) Microsoft 365
7 596 (10.02%) GitHub
8 441 (7.41%) Azure Data Factory
9 340 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
10 336 (5.65%) Serverless
11 283 (4.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 243 (4.09%) SaaS
13 242 (4.07%) Dynamics 365
14 221 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
15 219 (3.68%) Power Automate
16 216 (3.63%) Azure AKS
17 206 (3.46%) Azure Functions
18 204 (3.43%) PaaS
19 194 (3.26%) Azure Logic Apps
20 176 (2.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 395 (6.64%) Firewall
2 266 (4.47%) DNS
3 234 (3.93%) VPN
4 201 (3.38%) Network Security
5 154 (2.59%) WAN
6 146 (2.45%) DHCP
7 114 (1.92%) LAN
8 93 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.26%) VLAN
9 75 (1.26%) Wi-Fi
10 74 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 63 (1.06%) Kerberos
12 51 (0.86%) BGP
13 45 (0.76%) OSPF
14 40 (0.67%) Wireless
15 36 (0.61%) HTTP
16 35 (0.59%) SAN
17 29 (0.49%) MPLS
17 29 (0.49%) SSL
18 27 (0.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 555 (9.33%) Power BI
2 337 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 322 (5.41%) Data Warehouse
4 280 (4.71%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.48%) Azure SQL Database
6 203 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
7 178 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 136 (2.29%) Metadata
9 126 (2.12%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.60%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 80 (1.34%) Big Data
13 76 (1.28%) MongoDB
14 75 (1.26%) Tableau
15 56 (0.94%) Oracle Database
16 54 (0.91%) BigQuery
17 51 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
18 50 (0.84%) MySQL
19 45 (0.76%) Redis
19 45 (0.76%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 440 (7.40%) Git
2 417 (7.01%) JIRA
3 300 (5.04%) Jenkins
4 218 (3.67%) GitLab
5 99 (1.66%) Selenium
6 66 (1.11%) Postman
7 58 (0.98%) Cucumber
7 58 (0.98%) JUnit
8 52 (0.87%) JMeter
9 50 (0.84%) MLflow
10 39 (0.66%) REST Assured
11 35 (0.59%) Cypress.io
11 35 (0.59%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
13 32 (0.54%) Artifactory
14 30 (0.50%) Visual Studio
15 26 (0.44%) TestRail
16 24 (0.40%) SpecFlow
17 23 (0.39%) Gatling
17 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,701 (28.60%) Social Skills
2 1,128 (18.96%) Finance
3 650 (10.93%) Public Sector
4 604 (10.15%) Analytical Skills
5 358 (6.02%) Banking
6 188 (3.16%) Documentation Skills
7 127 (2.14%) Legal
8 101 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
10 82 (1.38%) Retail
11 80 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
12 68 (1.14%) Marketing
13 66 (1.11%) Financial Institution
14 65 (1.09%) Telecoms
15 58 (0.98%) Law
16 54 (0.91%) Investment Banking
17 52 (0.87%) Front Office
18 46 (0.77%) Local Government
19 37 (0.62%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 990 (16.64%) Architect
2 795 (13.37%) Developer
3 710 (11.94%) Senior
4 516 (8.68%) Azure Engineer
5 498 (8.37%) Data Engineer
6 445 (7.48%) Lead
7 390 (6.56%) Analyst
8 283 (4.76%) DevOps Engineer
9 264 (4.44%) Solutions Architect
10 259 (4.35%) Consultant
11 170 (2.86%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 162 (2.72%) Cloud Engineer
13 149 (2.51%) Azure Architect
14 145 (2.44%) Platform Engineer
15 142 (2.39%) Security Engineer
16 138 (2.32%) Senior Developer
17 130 (2.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 123 (2.07%) Data Architect
19 115 (1.93%) Business Analyst
19 115 (1.93%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 452 (7.60%) .NET
2 399 (6.71%) REST
3 265 (4.46%) React
4 245 (4.12%) Kafka
5 216 (3.63%) PySpark
6 208 (3.50%) Node.js
7 204 (3.43%) RESTful
8 178 (2.99%) Spring
9 172 (2.89%) OAuth
10 164 (2.76%) AngularJS
11 142 (2.39%) HTML
11 142 (2.39%) Spring Boot
12 141 (2.37%) LDAP
13 127 (2.14%) Middleware
14 123 (2.07%) JSON
14 123 (2.07%) PyTorch
15 119 (2.00%) CSS
16 117 (1.97%) SOAP
17 112 (1.88%) SAML
18 111 (1.87%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 529 (8.89%) Cloud Native
2 241 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 218 (3.67%) Product Ownership
4 175 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 157 (2.64%) Security Posture
6 152 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
7 149 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
8 142 (2.39%) Data Centre
9 126 (2.12%) Public Cloud
10 122 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
11 97 (1.63%) AI Agents
12 81 (1.36%) Data Structures
13 80 (1.34%) Replication
14 70 (1.18%) Management Information System
15 69 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
16 59 (0.99%) Algorithms
17 57 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
18 54 (0.91%) PKI
19 49 (0.82%) Low-Code
20 44 (0.74%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 664 (11.16%) Windows
2 320 (5.38%) Linux
3 201 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.09%) VMS
6 59 (0.99%) Unix
7 44 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 39 (0.66%) Mac OS
9 31 (0.52%) Apple iOS
10 25 (0.42%) Android
11 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
14 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 5 (0.084%) AIX
16 5 (0.084%) CentOS
16 5 (0.084%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.084%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.067%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,223 (37.37%) DevOps
2 1,787 (30.04%) CI/CD
3 1,408 (23.67%) Agile
4 1,001 (16.83%) Problem-Solving
5 911 (15.32%) Analytics
6 857 (14.41%) AI
7 798 (13.42%) Infrastructure as Code
8 772 (12.98%) Migration
9 647 (10.88%) Data Modelling
10 621 (10.44%) Business Intelligence
11 619 (10.41%) Stakeholder Management
12 593 (9.97%) Continuous Improvement
13 564 (9.48%) Containerisation
14 556 (9.35%) Data Pipeline
15 553 (9.30%) ETL
16 536 (9.01%) Microservices
17 525 (8.83%) Data Engineering
18 520 (8.74%) Machine Learning
19 510 (8.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 475 (7.99%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,550 (26.06%) Python
2 1,352 (22.73%) SQL
3 659 (11.08%) PowerShell
4 500 (8.41%) C#
5 498 (8.37%) Java
6 412 (6.93%) JavaScript
7 231 (3.88%) TypeScript
8 222 (3.73%) Bash
9 184 (3.09%) Bicep
10 96 (1.61%) Scala
11 77 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.28%) Go
13 72 (1.21%) PL/SQL
14 70 (1.18%) Kusto Query Language
15 64 (1.08%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.67%) R
17 34 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 27 (0.45%) C++
19 22 (0.37%) PHP
20 17 (0.29%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,474 (24.78%) Security Cleared
2 1,213 (20.39%) SC Cleared
3 464 (7.80%) Degree
4 346 (5.82%) Azure Certification
5 197 (3.31%) Computer Science Degree
6 169 (2.84%) CISSP
7 149 (2.51%) Microsoft Certification
8 123 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
9 121 (2.03%) AWS Certification
10 117 (1.97%) DV Cleared
11 101 (1.70%) CISM
12 91 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
13 72 (1.21%) Master's Degree
14 65 (1.09%) CCNP
15 53 (0.89%) PMP
16 52 (0.87%) PMI Certification
17 51 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
18 47 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.61%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 426 (7.16%) Data Quality
2 357 (6.00%) GDPR
3 328 (5.51%) QA
4 262 (4.40%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 227 (3.82%) NIST
6 96 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.45%) PCI DSS
8 85 (1.43%) NCSC
9 60 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
10 59 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.91%) SLA
12 49 (0.82%) PMO
13 36 (0.61%) GRC
13 36 (0.61%) HIPAA
14 33 (0.55%) WCAG
15 25 (0.42%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 24 (0.40%) ISO 20022
17 22 (0.37%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.37%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.35%) PSD2
System Software
1 798 (13.42%) Active Directory
2 702 (11.80%) Docker
3 187 (3.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 98 (1.65%) Virtual Machines
5 86 (1.45%) Hyper-V
6 77 (1.29%) Virtual Desktop
7 73 (1.23%) vSphere
8 31 (0.52%) VMware NSX
9 30 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
10 19 (0.32%) Firmware
11 14 (0.24%) NFS
12 8 (0.13%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
14 6 (0.10%) Snort
15 5 (0.084%) KVM
15 5 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.084%) RACF
Systems Management
1 924 (15.53%) Terraform
2 889 (14.95%) Kubernetes
3 331 (5.56%) Microsoft Intune
4 270 (4.54%) Ansible
5 163 (2.74%) Grafana
6 145 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
7 138 (2.32%) Prometheus
8 110 (1.85%) SCCM
9 72 (1.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 39 (0.66%) Argo
11 33 (0.55%) Istio
12 30 (0.50%) Puppet
13 27 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 21 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 20 (0.34%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.29%) vRealize
17 16 (0.27%) Nmap
17 16 (0.27%) VxRail
18 15 (0.25%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,926 (32.38%) Microsoft
2 598 (10.05%) Databricks
3 294 (4.94%) Oracle
4 281 (4.72%) Google
5 264 (4.44%) ServiceNow
6 252 (4.24%) VMware
7 178 (2.99%) SAP
8 157 (2.64%) Cisco
8 157 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 137 (2.30%) Splunk
10 128 (2.15%) CyberArk
11 104 (1.75%) Foundry
12 96 (1.61%) Palo Alto
13 82 (1.38%) Salesforce
14 81 (1.36%) Okta
15 69 (1.16%) BeyondTrust
16 68 (1.14%) IBM
17 65 (1.09%) Citrix
18 64 (1.08%) Informatica
19 63 (1.06%) Red Hat