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

6 months to
31 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 7 6
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,126 4,063 4,802
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.57% 14.64% 14.53%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.89% 39.22% 42.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,996 2,796 3,443
10th Percentile £365 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £632 £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 153 41 28
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £18.05
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% +7.14% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £53.50
90th Percentile £102.17 £95.00 £75.03
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -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 15,874 10,360 11,265
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.69% 37.33% 34.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,597 7,015 7,852
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £716 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 549 268 195
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £18.33
Median hourly rate £34.13 £26.30 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.75% -12.33% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £59.76
90th Percentile £82.49 £68.63 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.12 £28.75 £30.00
% change year-on-year +15.20% -4.17% -14.29%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 3,728 £550 +1.10% 1,787
North of England +9 1,043 £500 +5.26% 705
South East +2 926 £525 +5.00% 716
Midlands +4 643 £493 -3.90% 383
North West +6 529 £492 +3.58% 386
West Midlands +3 473 £490 -9.01% 217
Yorkshire +6 432 £500 +5.26% 224
South West +6 424 £540 +8.00% 351
East of England +3 174 £525 +3.96% 196
East Midlands +9 158 £500 +8.11% 165
North East +9 95 £506 +1.25% 102
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
1 397 (5.57%) SharePoint
2 228 (3.20%) Confluence
3 178 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 143 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.53%) Apache
7 38 (0.53%) SAS
8 28 (0.39%) IIS
9 20 (0.28%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) nginx
13 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.098%) Mendix
16 6 (0.084%) Camunda
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 29 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) 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
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 110 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
5 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) Maximo
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.070%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,533 (35.55%) AWS
2 1,533 (21.51%) Azure DevOps
3 1,192 (16.73%) GCP
4 962 (13.50%) Entra ID
5 911 (12.78%) Power Platform
6 751 (10.54%) Microsoft 365
7 709 (9.95%) GitHub
8 427 (5.99%) GitHub Actions
9 422 (5.92%) Azure Data Factory
10 332 (4.66%) Serverless
11 314 (4.41%) SaaS
12 278 (3.90%) Azure Monitor
13 270 (3.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 260 (3.65%) Power Automate
15 251 (3.52%) Dynamics 365
16 247 (3.47%) Azure AKS
17 232 (3.26%) Snowflake
18 226 (3.17%) PowerApps
19 208 (2.92%) Microsoft Copilot
20 201 (2.82%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 487 (6.83%) Firewall
2 380 (5.33%) DNS
3 295 (4.14%) VPN
4 277 (3.89%) Network Security
5 212 (2.98%) DHCP
6 185 (2.60%) WAN
7 167 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.53%) BGP
9 108 (1.52%) LAN
10 92 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) OSPF
12 88 (1.23%) VLAN
13 73 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.87%) SAN
15 57 (0.80%) SSL
16 53 (0.74%) Wireless
17 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
18 39 (0.55%) HTTP
18 39 (0.55%) IPsec
19 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 638 (8.95%) Power BI
2 410 (5.75%) SQL Server
3 354 (4.97%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.24%) Data Lake
5 233 (3.27%) PostgreSQL
6 203 (2.85%) Metadata
7 189 (2.65%) NoSQL
8 169 (2.37%) Azure SQL Database
9 124 (1.74%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.71%) Relational Database
11 87 (1.22%) Big Data
12 85 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.01%) MongoDB
14 64 (0.90%) MySQL
15 62 (0.87%) Tableau
16 58 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
17 54 (0.76%) Star Schema
18 53 (0.74%) BigQuery
19 52 (0.73%) Amazon Redshift
20 49 (0.69%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 570 (8.00%) Git
2 503 (7.06%) JIRA
3 386 (5.42%) Jenkins
4 302 (4.24%) GitLab
5 116 (1.63%) Selenium
6 60 (0.84%) Postman
7 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
8 49 (0.69%) JUnit
9 47 (0.66%) JMeter
9 47 (0.66%) SonarQube
10 44 (0.62%) Cucumber
11 41 (0.58%) Maven
12 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 35 (0.49%) WebDriver
14 34 (0.48%) Gradle
15 29 (0.41%) Bitbucket
15 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
16 27 (0.38%) Gatling
16 27 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 1,936 (27.17%) Social Skills
2 1,388 (19.48%) Finance
3 785 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 732 (10.27%) Analytical Skills
5 408 (5.73%) Banking
6 202 (2.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 191 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
8 188 (2.64%) Retail
9 147 (2.06%) Legal
10 89 (1.25%) Influencing Skills
11 85 (1.19%) Manufacturing
12 82 (1.15%) Telecoms
13 76 (1.07%) Aerospace
14 73 (1.02%) Marketing
15 72 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 69 (0.97%) Law
16 69 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
17 67 (0.94%) Military
18 59 (0.83%) Financial Institution
19 55 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,302 (18.27%) Architect
2 907 (12.73%) Senior
3 802 (11.25%) Developer
4 613 (8.60%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (8.39%) Lead
6 523 (7.34%) Data Engineer
7 429 (6.02%) Analyst
8 398 (5.59%) Solutions Architect
9 356 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
10 329 (4.62%) Cloud Engineer
11 287 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 267 (3.75%) Consultant
13 221 (3.10%) Data Architect
14 205 (2.88%) Platform Engineer
15 181 (2.54%) Azure Architect
16 170 (2.39%) Security Engineer
17 165 (2.32%) Technical Architect
18 161 (2.26%) Project Manager
19 159 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 159 (2.23%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,212 (17.01%) Terraform
2 547 (7.68%) REST
3 541 (7.59%) .NET
4 316 (4.43%) Kafka
5 250 (3.51%) PySpark
6 247 (3.47%) React
7 229 (3.21%) RESTful
8 227 (3.19%) OAuth
9 186 (2.61%) JSON
10 148 (2.08%) Spring
11 141 (1.98%) SAML
12 136 (1.91%) OpenID
13 130 (1.82%) .NET Framework
13 130 (1.82%) AngularJS
14 125 (1.75%) OAuth2
14 125 (1.75%) Spring Boot
15 124 (1.74%) Node.js
16 119 (1.67%) HTML
17 117 (1.64%) Middleware
18 111 (1.56%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 793 (11.13%) Cloud Native
2 364 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 307 (4.31%) Product Ownership
4 256 (3.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.40%) Distributed Systems
6 231 (3.24%) AI Agents
7 227 (3.19%) Enterprise Software
8 220 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 201 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
10 160 (2.25%) Security Posture
11 134 (1.88%) Management Information System
12 127 (1.78%) Data Structures
13 120 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 100 (1.40%) PKI
15 99 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
16 97 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
17 80 (1.12%) Replication
18 78 (1.09%) CMDB
18 78 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 62 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 884 (12.41%) Windows
2 441 (6.19%) Linux
3 326 (4.57%) Windows Server
4 128 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.14%) Unix
6 77 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 72 (1.01%) Android
8 68 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 66 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 52 (0.73%) Ubuntu
11 49 (0.69%) VMS
12 18 (0.25%) CentOS
12 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.084%) AIX
16 6 (0.084%) Data ONTAP
17 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,629 (36.89%) DevOps
2 2,217 (31.11%) CI/CD
3 1,780 (24.98%) Agile
4 1,200 (16.84%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,182 (16.59%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,179 (16.55%) AI
7 1,057 (14.83%) Migration
8 1,032 (14.48%) Analytics
9 994 (13.95%) Problem-Solving
10 824 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
11 771 (10.82%) Data Modelling
12 716 (10.05%) Roadmaps
13 694 (9.74%) Business Intelligence
14 692 (9.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 684 (9.60%) Data Pipeline
16 645 (9.05%) Containerisation
17 603 (8.46%) Technical Leadership
18 595 (8.35%) Microservices
19 592 (8.31%) Test Automation
20 588 (8.25%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,658 (23.27%) Python
2 1,403 (19.69%) SQL
3 797 (11.18%) PowerShell
4 589 (8.27%) Java
5 531 (7.45%) C#
6 402 (5.64%) JavaScript
7 352 (4.94%) Bash
8 305 (4.28%) Bicep
9 235 (3.30%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.84%) Go
13 53 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
14 50 (0.70%) Scala
14 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 35 (0.49%) R
16 32 (0.45%) Groovy
16 32 (0.45%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,871 (26.26%) Security Cleared
2 1,504 (21.11%) SC Cleared
3 519 (7.28%) Degree
4 405 (5.68%) Azure Certification
5 257 (3.61%) DV Cleared
6 240 (3.37%) CISSP
7 219 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 186 (2.61%) AWS Certification
9 182 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 167 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 153 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
12 117 (1.64%) CISM
13 84 (1.18%) CCNP
14 75 (1.05%) PMI Certification
15 74 (1.04%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 74 (1.04%) PMP
16 59 (0.83%) Master's Degree
17 56 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.65%) CCSP
19 44 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 512 (7.18%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.52%) QA
3 281 (3.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 281 (3.94%) NIST
4 272 (3.82%) GDPR
5 171 (2.40%) Accessibility
6 98 (1.38%) NCSC
7 97 (1.36%) SLA
8 72 (1.01%) WCAG
9 70 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
9 70 (0.98%) PCI DSS
10 67 (0.94%) GRC
11 55 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.72%) PMO
13 39 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 25 (0.35%) SOC 2
15 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
16 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 918 (12.88%) Active Directory
2 775 (10.88%) Docker
3 219 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.98%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 108 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.87%) vSphere
8 52 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.38%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
11 17 (0.24%) NFS
12 13 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
13 12 (0.17%) Postfix
14 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.084%) Varnish
16 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,065 (14.95%) Kubernetes
2 406 (5.70%) Ansible
3 391 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 225 (3.16%) Grafana
5 179 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 128 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 120 (1.68%) SCCM
8 62 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 50 (0.70%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 26 (0.36%) SCOM
14 23 (0.32%) Istio
14 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.27%) Packer
16 17 (0.24%) HAProxy
17 14 (0.20%) CASB
17 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,530 (35.50%) Microsoft
2 699 (9.81%) Databricks
3 368 (5.16%) ServiceNow
4 318 (4.46%) VMware
5 297 (4.17%) Google
6 279 (3.92%) Oracle
7 222 (3.12%) Cisco
8 192 (2.69%) SAP
9 184 (2.58%) Splunk
10 166 (2.33%) OpenAI
11 146 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 143 (2.01%) Palo Alto
13 142 (1.99%) Salesforce
14 112 (1.57%) Foundry
15 106 (1.49%) Dynatrace
16 88 (1.23%) Zscaler
17 79 (1.11%) Informatica
18 74 (1.04%) Fortinet
18 74 (1.04%) IBM
19 66 (0.93%) Okta