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

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,183 4,037 4,817
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.71% 14.64% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.98% 39.36% 42.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,027 2,774 3,497
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £419 £445
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 £730
UK median daily rate £525 £517 £525
% change year-on-year +1.55% -1.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 157 38 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.11 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.53 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.94% +10.71% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £51.30
90th Percentile £101.51 £96.50 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £43.15 £40.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +7.88% +14.29% -35.19%

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 15,971 10,257 11,229
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.93% 37.19% 33.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,675 6,951 7,933
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 548 272 218
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.11 £26.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.04% +4.00% -22.86%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £54.69
90th Percentile £83.36 £67.23 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £34.38 £27.88 £25.00
% change year-on-year +23.30% +11.52% -28.57%

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 19 August 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 19 August 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 19 August 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 3,738 £550 - 1,941
North of England +8 1,054 £500 +5.26% 803
South East +2 941 £525 +5.00% 843
Midlands +4 648 £500 - 380
North West +7 550 £500 +2.56% 437
West Midlands +3 481 £493 -6.19% 250
South West +6 431 £539 +7.75% 347
Yorkshire +6 421 £500 +5.26% 252
East of England +2 179 £525 +1.45% 244
East Midlands +9 155 £500 +8.11% 130
North East +5 96 £500 -3.29% 122
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
1 392 (5.46%) SharePoint
2 228 (3.17%) Confluence
3 183 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 143 (1.99%) Apache Airflow
6 110 (1.53%) Apache
7 38 (0.53%) SAS
8 29 (0.40%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 9 (0.13%) nginx
15 8 (0.11%) Mendix
16 7 (0.097%) Camunda
16 7 (0.097%) Umbraco
16 7 (0.097%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.084%) Documentum
17 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 109 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 33 (0.46%) Chatbot
4 31 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.15%) Trello
8 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
9 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.070%) Notion
11 3 (0.042%) Houdini
11 3 (0.042%) NUKE
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
13 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
13 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 101 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.097%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Maximo
8 6 (0.084%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.056%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,555 (35.57%) AWS
2 1,538 (21.41%) Azure DevOps
3 1,216 (16.93%) GCP
4 958 (13.34%) Entra ID
5 899 (12.52%) Power Platform
6 735 (10.23%) Microsoft 365
7 702 (9.77%) GitHub
8 432 (6.01%) Azure Data Factory
9 428 (5.96%) GitHub Actions
10 312 (4.34%) SaaS
11 310 (4.32%) Serverless
12 283 (3.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 268 (3.73%) Azure Monitor
14 257 (3.58%) Azure AKS
15 256 (3.56%) Power Automate
16 234 (3.26%) Dynamics 365
17 227 (3.16%) Snowflake
18 225 (3.13%) PowerApps
19 220 (3.06%) PaaS
20 202 (2.81%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 491 (6.84%) Firewall
2 382 (5.32%) DNS
3 302 (4.20%) VPN
4 273 (3.80%) Network Security
5 206 (2.87%) DHCP
6 182 (2.53%) WAN
7 167 (2.32%) TCP/IP
8 111 (1.55%) LAN
9 109 (1.52%) BGP
10 92 (1.28%) VLAN
11 91 (1.27%) SD-WAN
12 90 (1.25%) OSPF
13 74 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.89%) SAN
15 62 (0.86%) SSL
16 52 (0.72%) Wireless
17 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
18 41 (0.57%) HTTP
18 41 (0.57%) IPsec
19 37 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 634 (8.83%) Power BI
2 424 (5.90%) SQL Server
3 359 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
4 301 (4.19%) Data Lake
5 239 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
6 194 (2.70%) NoSQL
7 193 (2.69%) Metadata
8 180 (2.51%) Azure SQL Database
9 122 (1.70%) Relational Database
10 117 (1.63%) Delta Lake
11 90 (1.25%) Big Data
12 85 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.00%) MongoDB
14 62 (0.86%) Tableau
15 61 (0.85%) MySQL
16 59 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 58 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
18 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
19 51 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
20 47 (0.65%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 571 (7.95%) Git
2 515 (7.17%) JIRA
3 383 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 302 (4.20%) GitLab
5 112 (1.56%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) Postman
7 53 (0.74%) JUnit
8 52 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.67%) SonarQube
10 47 (0.65%) Cucumber
11 46 (0.64%) JMeter
12 40 (0.56%) Maven
13 38 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 36 (0.50%) WebDriver
15 34 (0.47%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.45%) Gradle
17 29 (0.40%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
19 27 (0.38%) Gatling
20 26 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 1,899 (26.44%) Social Skills
2 1,402 (19.52%) Finance
3 780 (10.86%) Public Sector
4 725 (10.09%) Analytical Skills
5 412 (5.74%) Banking
6 204 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 191 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
8 185 (2.58%) Retail
9 148 (2.06%) Legal
10 85 (1.18%) Manufacturing
11 82 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
12 81 (1.13%) Telecoms
13 73 (1.02%) Aerospace
13 73 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
14 71 (0.99%) Marketing
15 70 (0.97%) Law
16 69 (0.96%) Investment Banking
17 66 (0.92%) Financial Institution
18 57 (0.79%) Military
19 54 (0.75%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,286 (17.90%) Architect
2 926 (12.89%) Senior
3 835 (11.62%) Developer
4 623 (8.67%) Azure Engineer
5 606 (8.44%) Lead
6 533 (7.42%) Data Engineer
7 422 (5.87%) Analyst
8 389 (5.42%) Solutions Architect
9 345 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
10 328 (4.57%) Cloud Engineer
11 289 (4.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 260 (3.62%) Consultant
13 215 (2.99%) Data Architect
14 194 (2.70%) Platform Engineer
15 187 (2.60%) Security Engineer
16 185 (2.58%) Azure Architect
17 165 (2.30%) Project Manager
18 161 (2.24%) Technical Architect
19 160 (2.23%) Senior Developer
20 153 (2.13%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 547 (7.62%) .NET
2 539 (7.50%) REST
3 309 (4.30%) Kafka
4 257 (3.58%) React
5 238 (3.31%) PySpark
6 230 (3.20%) RESTful
7 224 (3.12%) OAuth
8 181 (2.52%) JSON
9 153 (2.13%) Spring
10 148 (2.06%) AngularJS
11 140 (1.95%) SAML
12 138 (1.92%) Node.js
12 138 (1.92%) OpenID
13 128 (1.78%) Spring Boot
14 126 (1.75%) .NET Framework
15 125 (1.74%) OAuth2
16 120 (1.67%) HTML
16 120 (1.67%) Middleware
17 113 (1.57%) SOAP
18 105 (1.46%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 807 (11.23%) Cloud Native
2 367 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 301 (4.19%) Product Ownership
4 254 (3.54%) Hybrid Cloud
5 247 (3.44%) Distributed Systems
6 224 (3.12%) Data Centre
7 216 (3.01%) Enterprise Software
8 215 (2.99%) AI Agents
9 203 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
10 170 (2.37%) Security Posture
11 131 (1.82%) Management Information System
12 129 (1.80%) Data Structures
13 122 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 99 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
14 99 (1.38%) Enterprise Cloud
15 96 (1.34%) PKI
16 80 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
17 78 (1.09%) Replication
18 75 (1.04%) CMDB
19 67 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 882 (12.28%) Windows
2 449 (6.25%) Linux
3 317 (4.41%) Windows Server
4 124 (1.73%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.16%) Unix
6 82 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 69 (0.96%) Android
8 64 (0.89%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 51 (0.71%) Ubuntu
11 46 (0.64%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.25%) CentOS
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
17 9 (0.13%) Debian
18 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 6 (0.084%) Amazon Linux
19 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,649 (36.88%) DevOps
2 2,235 (31.12%) CI/CD
3 1,783 (24.82%) Agile
4 1,161 (16.16%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,158 (16.12%) AI
6 1,125 (15.66%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,057 (14.72%) Migration
8 1,042 (14.51%) Analytics
9 992 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
10 809 (11.26%) Continuous Improvement
11 797 (11.10%) Data Modelling
12 705 (9.81%) Roadmaps
13 703 (9.79%) Data Pipeline
14 691 (9.62%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 682 (9.49%) Business Intelligence
16 651 (9.06%) Containerisation
17 602 (8.38%) Microservices
18 599 (8.34%) ETL
19 596 (8.30%) Test Automation
20 589 (8.20%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 1,664 (23.17%) Python
2 1,429 (19.89%) SQL
3 801 (11.15%) PowerShell
4 600 (8.35%) Java
5 542 (7.55%) C#
6 415 (5.78%) JavaScript
7 350 (4.87%) Bash
8 296 (4.12%) Bicep
9 243 (3.38%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 76 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.89%) Go
13 50 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
13 50 (0.70%) Scala
13 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
14 33 (0.46%) Kotlin
14 33 (0.46%) PL/SQL
14 33 (0.46%) R
15 29 (0.40%) Groovy
16 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,855 (25.82%) Security Cleared
2 1,493 (20.79%) SC Cleared
3 525 (7.31%) Degree
4 406 (5.65%) Azure Certification
5 254 (3.54%) DV Cleared
6 243 (3.38%) CISSP
7 211 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 192 (2.67%) Cisco Certification
9 180 (2.51%) AWS Certification
10 169 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 148 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
12 115 (1.60%) CISM
13 93 (1.29%) CCNP
14 76 (1.06%) PMP
15 75 (1.04%) PMI Certification
16 74 (1.03%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 59 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 58 (0.81%) Master's Degree
19 46 (0.64%) CCSP
20 43 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 503 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 388 (5.40%) QA
3 282 (3.93%) GDPR
4 276 (3.84%) NIST
5 274 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 168 (2.34%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.39%) NCSC
8 95 (1.32%) SLA
9 69 (0.96%) GRC
9 69 (0.96%) WCAG
10 67 (0.93%) PCI DSS
11 63 (0.88%) Cyber Essentials
12 57 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 51 (0.71%) PMO
14 33 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.40%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 19 (0.26%) NIST 800
18 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
19 16 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 916 (12.75%) Active Directory
2 781 (10.87%) Docker
3 219 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.98%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 105 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 65 (0.90%) vSphere
8 56 (0.78%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 31 (0.43%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 16 (0.22%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.097%) Varnish
17 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,204 (16.76%) Terraform
2 1,078 (15.01%) Kubernetes
3 404 (5.62%) Ansible
4 389 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 226 (3.15%) Grafana
6 181 (2.52%) Prometheus
7 132 (1.84%) Single Sign-On
8 117 (1.63%) SCCM
9 65 (0.90%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.68%) Argo
11 48 (0.67%) Puppet
12 36 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 32 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 28 (0.39%) Istio
16 24 (0.33%) vCenter Server
17 23 (0.32%) SCOM
18 20 (0.28%) Packer
19 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
20 14 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,495 (34.73%) Microsoft
2 679 (9.45%) Databricks
3 374 (5.21%) ServiceNow
4 314 (4.37%) VMware
5 304 (4.23%) Google
6 284 (3.95%) Oracle
7 221 (3.08%) Cisco
8 200 (2.78%) SAP
9 177 (2.46%) Splunk
10 160 (2.23%) OpenAI
11 148 (2.06%) CyberArk
12 141 (1.96%) Salesforce
13 139 (1.94%) Palo Alto
14 115 (1.60%) Foundry
15 111 (1.55%) Dynatrace
16 92 (1.28%) Zscaler
17 78 (1.09%) IBM
18 75 (1.04%) Informatica
19 74 (1.03%) Okta
20 69 (0.96%) Red Hat