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

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,125 4,072 4,803
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.64% 14.63% 14.47%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.75% 39.40% 42.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,980 2,815 3,510
10th Percentile £372 £350 £350
25th Percentile £437 £421 £450
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 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 35 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £21.72 £17.84
25th Percentile £25.75 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.25 £76.88 £54.13
90th Percentile £100.59 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £43.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +21.46% +23.50% -35.78%

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 15,922 10,336 11,178
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.95% 37.14% 33.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,615 7,014 7,944
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £423 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £720 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 565 269 232
10th Percentile £15.96 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £26.00 £24.59
Median % change year-on-year +36.54% +5.73% -23.92%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.70 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £27.63 £24.84
% change year-on-year +26.67% +11.23% -29.03%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 3,736 £550 - 2,022
North of England +8 1,017 £500 +5.26% 765
South East +2 914 £525 +5.00% 819
Midlands +4 653 £493 -1.50% 373
North West +8 532 £500 +3.09% 430
West Midlands +3 492 £493 -6.19% 226
South West +6 442 £540 +8.00% 344
Yorkshire +5 403 £500 +5.26% 245
East of England +4 179 £525 -4.55% 222
East Midlands +10 149 £488 +5.41% 147
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 100
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
1 383 (5.38%) SharePoint
2 241 (3.38%) Confluence
3 185 (2.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 157 (2.20%) Apache Spark
5 131 (1.84%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.53%) Apache
7 37 (0.52%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
13 8 (0.11%) nginx
14 7 (0.098%) Camunda
14 7 (0.098%) Mendix
14 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.084%) Documentum
15 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 107 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
3 65 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
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%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 105 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (0.94%) 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 (0.098%) Maximo
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
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%) Quorum
10 4 (0.056%) Ripple
10 4 (0.056%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,489 (34.93%) AWS
2 1,508 (21.16%) Azure DevOps
3 1,196 (16.79%) GCP
4 950 (13.33%) Entra ID
5 894 (12.55%) Power Platform
6 738 (10.36%) Microsoft 365
7 695 (9.75%) GitHub
8 428 (6.01%) Azure Data Factory
9 423 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
10 305 (4.28%) Serverless
11 302 (4.24%) SaaS
12 283 (3.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 259 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
14 255 (3.58%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.54%) Azure AKS
16 235 (3.30%) Dynamics 365
17 228 (3.20%) PowerApps
18 226 (3.17%) PaaS
19 219 (3.07%) Snowflake
20 200 (2.81%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 481 (6.75%) Firewall
2 367 (5.15%) DNS
3 299 (4.20%) VPN
4 263 (3.69%) Network Security
5 191 (2.68%) DHCP
6 181 (2.54%) WAN
7 164 (2.30%) TCP/IP
8 110 (1.54%) BGP
9 109 (1.53%) LAN
10 90 (1.26%) OSPF
10 90 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) VLAN
12 70 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.86%) SSL
14 58 (0.81%) SAN
15 53 (0.74%) Wireless
16 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
17 42 (0.59%) IPsec
18 40 (0.56%) HTTP
19 39 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 638 (8.95%) Power BI
2 420 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 364 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.29%) Data Lake
5 240 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
6 184 (2.58%) NoSQL
7 179 (2.51%) Metadata
8 176 (2.47%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.77%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.28%) Big Data
12 88 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 65 (0.91%) MongoDB
14 61 (0.86%) MySQL
15 60 (0.84%) Tableau
16 58 (0.81%) BigQuery
16 58 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
17 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 49 (0.69%) Oracle Database
19 48 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 553 (7.76%) Git
2 527 (7.40%) JIRA
3 357 (5.01%) Jenkins
4 289 (4.06%) GitLab
5 110 (1.54%) Selenium
6 57 (0.80%) JUnit
7 54 (0.76%) Postman
8 51 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.70%) JMeter
10 49 (0.69%) Cypress.io
11 48 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 41 (0.58%) WebDriver
13 39 (0.55%) Maven
14 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 32 (0.45%) REST Assured
16 31 (0.44%) Gradle
17 27 (0.38%) Bitbucket
18 26 (0.36%) Gatling
18 26 (0.36%) MLflow
18 26 (0.36%) MSI
General
1 1,846 (25.91%) Social Skills
2 1,400 (19.65%) Finance
3 777 (10.91%) Public Sector
4 711 (9.98%) Analytical Skills
5 401 (5.63%) Banking
6 190 (2.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 189 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
8 179 (2.51%) Retail
9 149 (2.09%) Legal
10 83 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 80 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
13 78 (1.09%) Manufacturing
14 70 (0.98%) Law
15 68 (0.95%) Aerospace
16 67 (0.94%) Investment Banking
17 66 (0.93%) Financial Institution
17 66 (0.93%) Marketing
18 61 (0.86%) Front Office
19 55 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,268 (17.80%) Architect
2 922 (12.94%) Senior
3 835 (11.72%) Developer
4 619 (8.69%) Azure Engineer
5 591 (8.29%) Lead
6 540 (7.58%) Data Engineer
7 431 (6.05%) Analyst
8 396 (5.56%) Solutions Architect
9 334 (4.69%) DevOps Engineer
10 320 (4.49%) Cloud Engineer
11 281 (3.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 264 (3.71%) Consultant
13 213 (2.99%) Data Architect
14 193 (2.71%) Platform Engineer
15 179 (2.51%) Security Engineer
16 178 (2.50%) Azure Architect
17 171 (2.40%) Project Manager
18 157 (2.20%) Business Analyst
18 157 (2.20%) Senior Developer
19 156 (2.19%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 550 (7.72%) .NET
2 506 (7.10%) REST
3 283 (3.97%) Kafka
4 260 (3.65%) React
5 228 (3.20%) PySpark
6 225 (3.16%) RESTful
7 217 (3.05%) OAuth
8 173 (2.43%) JSON
9 152 (2.13%) Spring
10 151 (2.12%) Node.js
11 149 (2.09%) AngularJS
12 139 (1.95%) SAML
13 134 (1.88%) OpenID
14 129 (1.81%) .NET Framework
15 123 (1.73%) HTML
15 123 (1.73%) OAuth2
16 120 (1.68%) Middleware
17 118 (1.66%) Spring Boot
18 109 (1.53%) SOAP
19 102 (1.43%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 761 (10.68%) Cloud Native
2 350 (4.91%) Onboarding
3 300 (4.21%) Product Ownership
4 241 (3.38%) Hybrid Cloud
5 235 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
6 219 (3.07%) Data Centre
7 212 (2.98%) AI Agents
8 204 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
9 182 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
10 167 (2.34%) Security Posture
11 127 (1.78%) Data Structures
12 122 (1.71%) Public Cloud
13 121 (1.70%) Management Information System
14 96 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
15 93 (1.31%) PKI
16 91 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
17 79 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
18 75 (1.05%) Replication
19 70 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
20 67 (0.94%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 871 (12.22%) Windows
2 422 (5.92%) Linux
3 299 (4.20%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.70%) Windows 10
5 77 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 77 (1.08%) Unix
6 66 (0.93%) Android
7 64 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.83%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 45 (0.63%) VMS
11 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) CentOS
15 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
15 10 (0.14%) Debian
16 6 (0.084%) AIX
17 5 (0.070%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,608 (36.60%) DevOps
2 2,191 (30.75%) CI/CD
3 1,773 (24.88%) Agile
4 1,146 (16.08%) AI
5 1,118 (15.69%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,049 (14.72%) Migration
6 1,049 (14.72%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,033 (14.50%) Analytics
8 957 (13.43%) Problem-Solving
9 799 (11.21%) Data Modelling
10 791 (11.10%) Continuous Improvement
11 708 (9.94%) Data Pipeline
12 691 (9.70%) Roadmaps
12 691 (9.70%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 686 (9.63%) Business Intelligence
14 638 (8.95%) Containerisation
15 605 (8.49%) ETL
16 594 (8.34%) Microservices
17 591 (8.29%) Data Engineering
18 584 (8.20%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,660 (23.30%) Python
2 1,415 (19.86%) SQL
3 770 (10.81%) PowerShell
4 572 (8.03%) Java
5 548 (7.69%) C#
6 421 (5.91%) JavaScript
7 334 (4.69%) Bash
8 282 (3.96%) Bicep
9 251 (3.52%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 81 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 61 (0.86%) Go
13 52 (0.73%) Scala
14 51 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 33 (0.46%) Kotlin
16 33 (0.46%) R
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.39%) Groovy
19 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,824 (25.60%) Security Cleared
2 1,469 (20.62%) SC Cleared
3 516 (7.24%) Degree
4 394 (5.53%) Azure Certification
5 244 (3.42%) DV Cleared
6 230 (3.23%) CISSP
7 205 (2.88%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 173 (2.43%) AWS Certification
10 165 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
11 147 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
12 109 (1.53%) CISM
13 88 (1.24%) CCNP
14 73 (1.02%) PMP
15 71 (1.00%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 71 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 54 (0.76%) ISTQB
17 52 (0.73%) Master's Degree
18 49 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
19 45 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 496 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 378 (5.31%) QA
3 286 (4.01%) GDPR
4 266 (3.73%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 263 (3.69%) NIST
6 168 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.38%) NCSC
8 94 (1.32%) SLA
9 70 (0.98%) WCAG
10 69 (0.97%) GRC
10 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
11 67 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
12 56 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.70%) PMO
14 31 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 28 (0.39%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 16 (0.22%) COBIT
19 15 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 903 (12.67%) Active Directory
2 768 (10.78%) Docker
3 208 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.92%) Virtual Machines
6 103 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.86%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.51%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.42%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 14 (0.20%) IAG
12 14 (0.20%) Postfix
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.098%) Varnish
15 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.056%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 1,178 (16.53%) Terraform
2 1,046 (14.68%) Kubernetes
3 393 (5.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 384 (5.39%) Ansible
5 218 (3.06%) Grafana
6 181 (2.54%) Prometheus
7 128 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.54%) SCCM
9 58 (0.81%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.69%) Argo
11 46 (0.65%) Puppet
12 39 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 27 (0.38%) Istio
16 21 (0.29%) SCOM
16 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.28%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 13 (0.18%) CASB
Vendors
1 2,431 (34.12%) Microsoft
2 662 (9.29%) Databricks
3 364 (5.11%) ServiceNow
4 298 (4.18%) VMware
5 280 (3.93%) Google
6 272 (3.82%) Oracle
7 213 (2.99%) Cisco
8 195 (2.74%) SAP
9 165 (2.32%) Splunk
10 162 (2.27%) OpenAI
11 142 (1.99%) Palo Alto
12 139 (1.95%) CyberArk
13 131 (1.84%) Salesforce
14 119 (1.67%) Foundry
15 103 (1.45%) Dynatrace
16 93 (1.31%) Zscaler
17 70 (0.98%) Okta
18 69 (0.97%) Informatica
19 67 (0.94%) Citrix
19 67 (0.94%) Fortinet