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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,080 4,290 4,781
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.21% 15.37% 14.95%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.07% 39.81% 42.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,931 2,951 3,268
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £413 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £528 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +1.54% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 170 41 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £53.75 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.09% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.08 £93.75 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £33.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +35.39% -4.61% -24.21%

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 16,067 10,775 11,247
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.51% 38.60% 35.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,693 7,284 7,497
10th Percentile £325 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.95% -4.71% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 576 260 159
10th Percentile £15.44 £14.99 £16.24
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.51 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +8.36%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.03 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 3,750 £550 +0.92% 3,138
North of England +4 1,011 £500 +5.26% 1,027
South East +1 906 £537 +7.45% 810
Midlands +1 627 £490 -5.77% 511
North West +3 492 £500 +5.26% 519
West Midlands +1 487 £477 -13.27% 326
Yorkshire +5 431 £500 +1.42% 378
South West +2 401 £550 +7.42% 374
East of England -2 187 £505 +1.00% 291
East Midlands +1 136 £500 +8.11% 185
North East -1 97 £513 +2.50% 138
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
1 416 (5.88%) SharePoint
2 239 (3.38%) Confluence
3 174 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 173 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 145 (2.05%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.58%) Apache
7 33 (0.47%) SAS
8 25 (0.35%) CMS
9 24 (0.34%) IIS
10 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) nginx
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.099%) Mendix
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
17 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
17 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 112 (1.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 40 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.16%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.099%) CPLEX
10 6 (0.085%) Revit
11 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 5 (0.071%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) Mingle
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%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 113 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.13%) Cloudability
7 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 8 (0.11%) Magento
8 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
9 7 (0.099%) Shopify
10 6 (0.085%) Teamcenter
11 5 (0.071%) Maximo
11 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
12 4 (0.056%) Quorum
12 4 (0.056%) Ripple
12 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
12 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,454 (34.66%) AWS
2 1,523 (21.51%) Azure DevOps
3 1,238 (17.49%) GCP
4 1,039 (14.68%) Entra ID
5 928 (13.11%) Power Platform
6 801 (11.31%) Microsoft 365
7 732 (10.34%) GitHub
8 424 (5.99%) GitHub Actions
9 408 (5.76%) Azure Data Factory
10 342 (4.83%) Serverless
11 316 (4.46%) SaaS
12 287 (4.05%) Azure Monitor
13 276 (3.90%) Dynamics 365
13 276 (3.90%) Power Automate
14 264 (3.73%) Snowflake
15 251 (3.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 243 (3.43%) PowerApps
17 242 (3.42%) Azure AKS
18 239 (3.38%) Microsoft Copilot
19 215 (3.04%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 475 (6.71%) Firewall
2 390 (5.51%) DNS
3 292 (4.12%) VPN
4 264 (3.73%) Network Security
5 223 (3.15%) DHCP
6 166 (2.34%) WAN
7 165 (2.33%) TCP/IP
8 103 (1.45%) BGP
9 93 (1.31%) LAN
10 87 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 85 (1.20%) OSPF
12 77 (1.09%) VLAN
13 72 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.86%) Wireless
15 57 (0.81%) SAN
16 56 (0.79%) SSL
17 38 (0.54%) HTTP
17 38 (0.54%) IPsec
17 38 (0.54%) MPLS
18 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 609 (8.60%) Power BI
2 415 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 335 (4.73%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.31%) Data Lake
5 239 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 222 (3.14%) Metadata
7 178 (2.51%) NoSQL
8 158 (2.23%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.78%) Relational Database
10 119 (1.68%) Delta Lake
11 96 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 93 (1.31%) MySQL
13 84 (1.19%) Big Data
14 78 (1.10%) MongoDB
15 61 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
16 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
17 57 (0.81%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 50 (0.71%) Tableau
20 47 (0.66%) Redis
Development Applications
1 617 (8.71%) Git
2 494 (6.98%) JIRA
3 398 (5.62%) Jenkins
4 308 (4.35%) GitLab
5 125 (1.77%) Selenium
6 70 (0.99%) Postman
7 65 (0.92%) Cucumber
8 53 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.71%) JUnit
10 48 (0.68%) JMeter
11 47 (0.66%) Visual Studio
12 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
13 43 (0.61%) Maven
14 41 (0.58%) Claude Code
15 40 (0.56%) Gradle
16 36 (0.51%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.48%) Bitbucket
18 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
19 30 (0.42%) LoadRunner
20 28 (0.40%) MLflow
General
1 2,008 (28.36%) Social Skills
2 1,431 (20.21%) Finance
3 762 (10.76%) Public Sector
4 737 (10.41%) Analytical Skills
5 468 (6.61%) Banking
6 208 (2.94%) Retail
7 201 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 170 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (1.95%) Legal
10 98 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
10 98 (1.38%) Manufacturing
11 93 (1.31%) Marketing
12 90 (1.27%) Investment Banking
13 88 (1.24%) Aerospace
14 79 (1.12%) Telecoms
15 73 (1.03%) Military
16 67 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
17 61 (0.86%) Law
18 58 (0.82%) Billing
18 58 (0.82%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,328 (18.76%) Architect
2 913 (12.90%) Senior
3 796 (11.24%) Developer
4 614 (8.67%) Lead
5 596 (8.42%) Azure Engineer
6 503 (7.10%) Data Engineer
7 427 (6.03%) Solutions Architect
8 399 (5.64%) Analyst
9 362 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
10 358 (5.06%) Cloud Engineer
11 292 (4.12%) Consultant
11 292 (4.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 217 (3.06%) Data Architect
13 194 (2.74%) Platform Engineer
14 187 (2.64%) Security Engineer
15 177 (2.50%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 168 (2.37%) Azure Architect
17 161 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 157 (2.22%) Project Manager
19 149 (2.10%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,241 (17.53%) Terraform
2 640 (9.04%) REST
3 533 (7.53%) .NET
4 347 (4.90%) Kafka
5 270 (3.81%) React
6 258 (3.64%) OAuth
7 236 (3.33%) PySpark
8 229 (3.23%) RESTful
9 199 (2.81%) JSON
10 162 (2.29%) OpenID
11 150 (2.12%) OAuth2
12 148 (2.09%) SAML
13 140 (1.98%) HTML
14 137 (1.94%) SOAP
15 133 (1.88%) Middleware
16 125 (1.77%) Spring
17 121 (1.71%) AngularJS
17 121 (1.71%) ARM Templates
18 120 (1.69%) Spring Boot
19 115 (1.62%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 793 (11.20%) Cloud Native
2 397 (5.61%) Onboarding
3 351 (4.96%) Product Ownership
4 286 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
5 279 (3.94%) AI Agents
6 263 (3.71%) Hybrid Cloud
7 242 (3.42%) Distributed Systems
8 234 (3.31%) Data Centre
9 199 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
10 166 (2.34%) Management Information System
11 165 (2.33%) Security Posture
12 134 (1.89%) Data Structures
13 115 (1.62%) Public Cloud
14 113 (1.60%) PKI
15 100 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
16 93 (1.31%) Enterprise Cloud
17 89 (1.26%) CMDB
18 80 (1.13%) Replication
19 73 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
20 68 (0.96%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 888 (12.54%) Windows
2 475 (6.71%) Linux
3 351 (4.96%) Windows Server
4 147 (2.08%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.17%) Unix
6 78 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 75 (1.06%) Android
8 69 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.82%) macOS
10 57 (0.81%) Ubuntu
11 39 (0.55%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
17 6 (0.085%) Debian
18 4 (0.056%) Alpine Linux
19 3 (0.042%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,618 (36.98%) DevOps
2 2,283 (32.25%) CI/CD
3 1,762 (24.89%) Agile
4 1,368 (19.32%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,278 (18.05%) AI
6 1,245 (17.58%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,068 (15.08%) Migration
8 1,022 (14.44%) Problem-Solving
9 997 (14.08%) Analytics
10 868 (12.26%) Continuous Improvement
11 791 (11.17%) Roadmaps
12 758 (10.71%) Data Modelling
13 669 (9.45%) Business Intelligence
14 658 (9.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 657 (9.28%) Data Pipeline
16 651 (9.19%) Technical Leadership
17 647 (9.14%) Test Automation
18 620 (8.76%) Containerisation
19 615 (8.69%) Cybersecurity
20 608 (8.59%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,693 (23.91%) Python
2 1,363 (19.25%) SQL
3 853 (12.05%) PowerShell
4 568 (8.02%) Java
5 539 (7.61%) C#
6 449 (6.34%) JavaScript
7 379 (5.35%) Bash
8 333 (4.70%) Bicep
9 273 (3.86%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 71 (1.00%) T-SQL
12 66 (0.93%) Go
13 60 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.73%) Scala
15 51 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 32 (0.45%) Groovy
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
17 30 (0.42%) R
18 29 (0.41%) C++
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,854 (26.19%) Security Cleared
2 1,469 (20.75%) SC Cleared
3 538 (7.60%) Degree
4 419 (5.92%) Azure Certification
5 295 (4.17%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.45%) CISSP
7 232 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 206 (2.91%) AWS Certification
9 174 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
9 174 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
10 169 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
11 124 (1.75%) CISM
12 88 (1.24%) PMI Certification
13 84 (1.19%) PMP
14 78 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 73 (1.03%) CCNP
16 61 (0.86%) ISTQB
16 61 (0.86%) Master's Degree
17 53 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
18 52 (0.73%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 539 (7.61%) Data Quality
2 419 (5.92%) QA
3 271 (3.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 255 (3.60%) NIST
5 247 (3.49%) GDPR
6 174 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.41%) SLA
8 87 (1.23%) NCSC
9 73 (1.03%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (0.99%) GRC
12 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
13 49 (0.69%) PMO
14 46 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 42 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 36 (0.51%) SOC 2
17 22 (0.31%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.28%) COBIT
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 936 (13.22%) Active Directory
2 770 (10.88%) Docker
3 227 (3.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.91%) Virtual Machines
5 130 (1.84%) Virtual Desktop
6 105 (1.48%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.99%) vSphere
8 46 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.37%) VMware NSX
10 18 (0.25%) Firmware
11 16 (0.23%) IAG
12 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.13%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.099%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,076 (15.20%) Kubernetes
2 427 (6.03%) Ansible
3 416 (5.88%) Microsoft Intune
4 240 (3.39%) Grafana
5 178 (2.51%) Prometheus
6 140 (1.98%) SCCM
7 127 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
8 61 (0.86%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.72%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.45%) SCOM
13 30 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) CASB
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 17 (0.24%) Packer
16 17 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 14 (0.20%) QRadar
18 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,705 (38.21%) Microsoft
2 739 (10.44%) Databricks
3 355 (5.01%) ServiceNow
4 338 (4.77%) Google
5 322 (4.55%) VMware
6 299 (4.22%) Oracle
7 215 (3.04%) Cisco
8 203 (2.87%) Splunk
9 192 (2.71%) OpenAI
10 187 (2.64%) SAP
11 170 (2.40%) Salesforce
12 145 (2.05%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.95%) CyberArk
14 129 (1.82%) Dynatrace
15 119 (1.68%) Foundry
16 83 (1.17%) IBM
17 82 (1.16%) Zscaler
18 76 (1.07%) Fortinet
19 67 (0.95%) Informatica
20 66 (0.93%) Red Hat