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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,890 3,923 5,079
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.86% 16.05% 13.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.89% 42.47% 41.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,218 2,778 3,741
10th Percentile £356 £352 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £531 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.11% -1.74% -4.47%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £527
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.28% -5.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 27 64
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £24.40 £22.24
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +16.01% -21.37%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £86.00 £79.22 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -16.04%

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 13,733 9,237 12,164
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.97% 37.79% 32.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,472 6,447 8,758
10th Percentile £313 £313 £275
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 £710 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 414 169 330
10th Percentile £15.54 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £21.19
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% +25.09% -16.10%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £40.75
90th Percentile £79.85 £75.10 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £26.00 £21.37
% change year-on-year +42.31% +21.67% -17.26%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 3,203 £540 -1.82% 1,023
North of England +2 799 £488 +1.56% 581
South East 0 746 £500 -9.09% 686
Midlands -2 472 £500 -3.85% 361
North West +1 429 £475 -5.00% 296
West Midlands -3 360 £505 -3.90% 207
South West +4 341 £500 -4.76% 289
Yorkshire -2 322 £500 +11.11% 199
East of England +6 152 £550 -8.33% 197
East Midlands -3 105 £425 -10.53% 152
North East -5 50 £525 +10.53% 91
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
1 279 (4.74%) SharePoint
2 190 (3.23%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.80%) Apache Spark
4 156 (2.65%) Confluence
5 95 (1.61%) Apache
6 80 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.36%) IIS
8 18 (0.31%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.25%) Appian
9 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.25%) Camunda
9 15 (0.25%) SAS
10 14 (0.24%) CMS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 103 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.75%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.12%) Trello
8 5 (0.085%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.085%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.085%) Weka
9 4 (0.068%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.034%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.034%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.034%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 98 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.14%) 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 (0.085%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.085%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.085%) Endur
9 5 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.085%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.068%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.068%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle FAH
Cloud Services
1 2,067 (35.09%) AWS
2 1,215 (20.63%) Azure DevOps
3 1,173 (19.92%) GCP
4 800 (13.58%) Power Platform
5 757 (12.85%) Entra ID
6 676 (11.48%) Microsoft 365
7 599 (10.17%) GitHub
8 443 (7.52%) Azure Data Factory
9 337 (5.72%) GitHub Actions
9 337 (5.72%) Serverless
10 279 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 244 (4.14%) Dynamics 365
12 239 (4.06%) SaaS
13 222 (3.77%) Power Automate
14 219 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
15 211 (3.58%) Azure AKS
16 208 (3.53%) Azure Functions
17 206 (3.50%) PaaS
18 193 (3.28%) Azure Logic Apps
19 178 (3.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 390 (6.62%) Firewall
2 263 (4.47%) DNS
3 220 (3.74%) VPN
4 195 (3.31%) Network Security
5 148 (2.51%) DHCP
5 148 (2.51%) WAN
6 112 (1.90%) LAN
7 90 (1.53%) TCP/IP
8 77 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
9 70 (1.19%) SD-WAN
10 64 (1.09%) VLAN
11 63 (1.07%) Kerberos
12 46 (0.78%) BGP
13 41 (0.70%) OSPF
14 40 (0.68%) Wireless
15 37 (0.63%) HTTP
16 31 (0.53%) SAN
17 30 (0.51%) Internet
18 29 (0.49%) MPLS
18 29 (0.49%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (9.44%) Power BI
2 336 (5.70%) SQL Server
3 317 (5.38%) Data Warehouse
4 279 (4.74%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
6 207 (3.51%) Azure SQL Database
7 175 (2.97%) NoSQL
8 137 (2.33%) Metadata
9 123 (2.09%) Delta Lake
10 100 (1.70%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 81 (1.38%) Big Data
13 73 (1.24%) Tableau
14 72 (1.22%) MongoDB
15 59 (1.00%) Oracle Database
16 53 (0.90%) BigQuery
17 50 (0.85%) MySQL
18 49 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
19 46 (0.78%) Redis
20 43 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 438 (7.44%) Git
2 409 (6.94%) JIRA
3 289 (4.91%) Jenkins
4 211 (3.58%) GitLab
5 97 (1.65%) Selenium
6 67 (1.14%) Postman
7 60 (1.02%) Cucumber
8 59 (1.00%) JUnit
9 53 (0.90%) JMeter
10 49 (0.83%) MLflow
11 39 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
15 31 (0.53%) Visual Studio
16 30 (0.51%) Artifactory
17 26 (0.44%) TestRail
18 23 (0.39%) Gatling
18 23 (0.39%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,700 (28.86%) Social Skills
2 1,105 (18.76%) Finance
3 652 (11.07%) Public Sector
4 590 (10.02%) Analytical Skills
5 345 (5.86%) Banking
6 189 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 125 (2.12%) Legal
8 100 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
10 83 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 79 (1.34%) Retail
12 76 (1.29%) Organisational Skills
13 65 (1.10%) Marketing
13 65 (1.10%) Telecoms
14 63 (1.07%) Financial Institution
15 55 (0.93%) Investment Banking
15 55 (0.93%) Law
16 53 (0.90%) Front Office
17 44 (0.75%) Local Government
18 39 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 978 (16.60%) Architect
2 812 (13.79%) Developer
3 700 (11.88%) Senior
4 506 (8.59%) Azure Engineer
5 501 (8.51%) Data Engineer
6 446 (7.57%) Lead
7 385 (6.54%) Analyst
8 270 (4.58%) DevOps Engineer
9 266 (4.52%) Solutions Architect
10 253 (4.30%) Consultant
11 170 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 162 (2.75%) Cloud Engineer
13 151 (2.56%) Azure Architect
14 150 (2.55%) Security Engineer
15 140 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
16 139 (2.36%) Senior Developer
17 131 (2.22%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 122 (2.07%) Data Architect
19 118 (2.00%) Business Analyst
20 115 (1.95%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 447 (7.59%) .NET
2 403 (6.84%) REST
3 273 (4.63%) React
4 235 (3.99%) Kafka
5 220 (3.74%) PySpark
6 209 (3.55%) Node.js
7 201 (3.41%) RESTful
8 186 (3.16%) Spring
9 173 (2.94%) OAuth
10 165 (2.80%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.53%) HTML
12 143 (2.43%) Spring Boot
13 141 (2.39%) LDAP
14 126 (2.14%) CSS
15 123 (2.09%) PyTorch
16 122 (2.07%) SOAP
17 121 (2.05%) Middleware
18 120 (2.04%) JSON
19 116 (1.97%) SAML
20 111 (1.88%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 532 (9.03%) Cloud Native
2 232 (3.94%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.63%) Product Ownership
4 169 (2.87%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.70%) Security Posture
6 151 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 149 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
8 139 (2.36%) Data Centre
9 119 (2.02%) Public Cloud
10 114 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
11 97 (1.65%) AI Agents
12 78 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 73 (1.24%) Replication
14 71 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
15 68 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 60 (1.02%) Algorithms
17 56 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 53 (0.90%) PKI
19 48 (0.81%) Low-Code
20 47 (0.80%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 648 (11.00%) Windows
2 304 (5.16%) Linux
3 200 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 59 (1.00%) VMS
6 53 (0.90%) Unix
7 38 (0.65%) Mac OS
8 36 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 32 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.44%) Android
11 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.25%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 5 (0.085%) AIX
16 5 (0.085%) CentOS
16 5 (0.085%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.085%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.068%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,197 (37.30%) DevOps
2 1,778 (30.19%) CI/CD
3 1,404 (23.84%) Agile
4 1,008 (17.11%) Problem-Solving
5 910 (15.45%) Analytics
6 837 (14.21%) AI
7 774 (13.14%) Infrastructure as Code
8 755 (12.82%) Migration
9 644 (10.93%) Data Modelling
10 625 (10.61%) Business Intelligence
11 607 (10.31%) Stakeholder Management
12 585 (9.93%) Continuous Improvement
13 553 (9.39%) Containerisation
14 550 (9.34%) ETL
15 549 (9.32%) Data Pipeline
16 536 (9.10%) Microservices
17 519 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 517 (8.78%) Data Engineering
19 512 (8.69%) Machine Learning
20 472 (8.01%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,536 (26.08%) Python
2 1,349 (22.90%) SQL
3 653 (11.09%) PowerShell
4 502 (8.52%) Java
5 495 (8.40%) C#
6 425 (7.22%) JavaScript
7 240 (4.07%) TypeScript
8 214 (3.63%) Bash
9 179 (3.04%) Bicep
10 98 (1.66%) Scala
11 77 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.29%) Go
13 73 (1.24%) PL/SQL
14 71 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.10%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.70%) R
17 33 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 28 (0.48%) C++
19 22 (0.37%) PHP
19 22 (0.37%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,467 (24.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,208 (20.51%) SC Cleared
3 470 (7.98%) Degree
4 339 (5.76%) Azure Certification
5 202 (3.43%) Computer Science Degree
6 166 (2.82%) CISSP
7 150 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 118 (2.00%) AWS Certification
9 117 (1.99%) Cisco Certification
10 115 (1.95%) DV Cleared
11 103 (1.75%) CISM
12 90 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
13 71 (1.21%) Master's Degree
14 61 (1.04%) CCNP
15 52 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
16 51 (0.87%) PMP
17 50 (0.85%) PMI Certification
18 46 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 39 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 33 (0.56%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 420 (7.13%) Data Quality
2 357 (6.06%) GDPR
3 314 (5.33%) QA
4 261 (4.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 218 (3.70%) NIST
6 97 (1.65%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.46%) NCSC
8 83 (1.41%) PCI DSS
9 58 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 54 (0.92%) SLA
11 46 (0.78%) PMO
12 34 (0.58%) GRC
13 32 (0.54%) HIPAA
13 32 (0.54%) WCAG
14 25 (0.42%) SOC 2
15 24 (0.41%) ISO 20022
16 23 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 23 (0.39%) PSD2
17 19 (0.32%) NIST 800
System Software
1 791 (13.43%) Active Directory
2 695 (11.80%) Docker
3 179 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (1.54%) Virtual Machines
5 79 (1.34%) Hyper-V
6 74 (1.26%) Virtual Desktop
7 68 (1.15%) vSphere
8 25 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 23 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (0.27%) Firmware
11 14 (0.24%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
14 6 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.10%) Snort
15 5 (0.085%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.085%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.085%) RACF
Systems Management
1 906 (15.38%) Terraform
2 877 (14.89%) Kubernetes
3 337 (5.72%) Microsoft Intune
4 253 (4.30%) Ansible
5 157 (2.67%) Grafana
6 143 (2.43%) Single Sign-On
7 135 (2.29%) Prometheus
8 114 (1.94%) SCCM
9 73 (1.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.76%) Argo
11 31 (0.53%) Istio
12 23 (0.39%) Puppet
13 21 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
13 21 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 21 (0.36%) vCenter Server
14 18 (0.31%) FortiGate
15 16 (0.27%) Nmap
16 15 (0.25%) HP ALM
16 15 (0.25%) vRealize
17 14 (0.24%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 1,918 (32.56%) Microsoft
2 590 (10.02%) Databricks
3 293 (4.97%) Oracle
4 290 (4.92%) Google
5 253 (4.30%) ServiceNow
6 238 (4.04%) VMware
7 168 (2.85%) SAP
8 154 (2.61%) OpenAI
9 151 (2.56%) Cisco
10 133 (2.26%) Splunk
11 119 (2.02%) CyberArk
12 101 (1.71%) Foundry
13 96 (1.63%) Palo Alto
14 81 (1.38%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.34%) Okta
16 70 (1.19%) Red Hat
17 66 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
18 65 (1.10%) IBM
19 63 (1.07%) Citrix
20 59 (1.00%) Informatica