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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,987 4,177 4,792
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.14% 15.06% 14.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.06% 39.50% 42.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,876 2,881 3,298
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £444 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year +0.24% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £517 £530
% change year-on-year +1.55% -2.45% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 38 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.24 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% -2.17% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.30 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.33 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £34.48 £35.00
% change year-on-year +31.09% -1.49% -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 15,857 10,575 11,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.37% 38.12% 34.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,574 7,170 7,575
10th Percentile £319 £303 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £532
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -5.92% -3.27%
75th Percentile £626 £625 £643
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 549 246 162
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.38 £15.98
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £31.50 £25.15 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +25.25% -27.03% +4.44%
75th Percentile £69.75 £43.75 £68.06
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £26.30 £33.54
% change year-on-year +14.07% -21.59% -3.61%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 3,659 £550 +0.92% 2,918
North of England +8 988 £500 +5.26% 1,053
South East +1 899 £525 +6.33% 777
Midlands +1 641 £493 -4.37% 582
West Midlands +2 490 £488 -11.36% 347
North West +7 485 £500 +5.26% 571
Yorkshire +4 421 £500 +2.56% 360
South West +2 408 £550 +10.00% 410
East of England +1 195 £508 +1.50% 282
East Midlands +2 146 £500 +8.11% 235
North East +4 97 £513 +2.50% 129
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
1 411 (5.88%) SharePoint
2 222 (3.18%) Confluence
3 175 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
4 168 (2.40%) Apache Spark
5 147 (2.10%) Apache Airflow
6 106 (1.52%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) CMS
10 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.19%) nginx
12 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.10%) Mendix
16 6 (0.086%) Documentum
17 5 (0.072%) HCL Notes
17 5 (0.072%) WebSphere
Applications
1 102 (1.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.53%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Revit
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.10%) CPLEX
10 5 (0.072%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) 1Password
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.029%) Mingle
13 2 (0.029%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 111 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.10%) Shopify
9 6 (0.086%) Cloudability
10 5 (0.072%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.057%) Maximo
11 4 (0.057%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.057%) Quorum
11 4 (0.057%) Ripple
11 4 (0.057%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,468 (35.32%) AWS
2 1,467 (21.00%) Azure DevOps
3 1,213 (17.36%) GCP
4 984 (14.08%) Entra ID
5 917 (13.12%) Power Platform
6 769 (11.01%) Microsoft 365
7 697 (9.98%) GitHub
8 403 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
9 398 (5.70%) Azure Data Factory
10 337 (4.82%) Serverless
11 311 (4.45%) SaaS
12 275 (3.94%) Power Automate
13 264 (3.78%) Dynamics 365
14 263 (3.76%) Azure Monitor
15 254 (3.64%) Snowflake
16 252 (3.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 237 (3.39%) Azure AKS
17 237 (3.39%) Microsoft Copilot
17 237 (3.39%) PowerApps
18 203 (2.91%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 461 (6.60%) Firewall
2 373 (5.34%) DNS
3 286 (4.09%) VPN
4 255 (3.65%) Network Security
5 218 (3.12%) DHCP
6 169 (2.42%) WAN
7 159 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.42%) BGP
9 97 (1.39%) LAN
10 86 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.16%) OSPF
12 77 (1.10%) VLAN
12 77 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
13 60 (0.86%) SSL
13 60 (0.86%) Wireless
14 58 (0.83%) SAN
15 39 (0.56%) VXLAN
16 37 (0.53%) Internet
16 37 (0.53%) IPsec
16 37 (0.53%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 609 (8.72%) Power BI
2 405 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 335 (4.79%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.37%) Data Lake
5 234 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 210 (3.01%) Metadata
7 181 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.08%) Azure SQL Database
9 118 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 115 (1.65%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 84 (1.20%) Big Data
13 82 (1.17%) MySQL
14 71 (1.02%) MongoDB
15 56 (0.80%) Amazon Redshift
16 54 (0.77%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.77%) Tableau
17 50 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
18 49 (0.70%) Oracle Database
19 48 (0.69%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 596 (8.53%) Git
2 476 (6.81%) JIRA
3 371 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 302 (4.32%) GitLab
5 117 (1.67%) Selenium
6 64 (0.92%) Postman
7 56 (0.80%) Cucumber
8 52 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.67%) JUnit
10 46 (0.66%) JMeter
11 45 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.63%) Visual Studio
13 41 (0.59%) Maven
14 37 (0.53%) Claude Code
14 37 (0.53%) Gradle
15 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
16 32 (0.46%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.44%) LoadRunner
18 30 (0.43%) Bitbucket
19 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,950 (27.91%) Social Skills
2 1,379 (19.74%) Finance
3 733 (10.49%) Public Sector
4 704 (10.08%) Analytical Skills
5 438 (6.27%) Banking
6 205 (2.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 204 (2.92%) Retail
8 172 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 132 (1.89%) Legal
10 96 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
11 94 (1.35%) Manufacturing
12 85 (1.22%) Aerospace
13 82 (1.17%) Marketing
14 81 (1.16%) Investment Banking
15 77 (1.10%) Telecoms
16 75 (1.07%) Military
17 67 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
18 64 (0.92%) Law
19 54 (0.77%) Billing
20 52 (0.74%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,320 (18.89%) Architect
2 900 (12.88%) Senior
3 790 (11.31%) Developer
4 601 (8.60%) Lead
5 589 (8.43%) Azure Engineer
6 502 (7.18%) Data Engineer
7 422 (6.04%) Solutions Architect
8 404 (5.78%) Analyst
9 352 (5.04%) Cloud Engineer
10 350 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
11 287 (4.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 264 (3.78%) Consultant
13 220 (3.15%) Data Architect
14 194 (2.78%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.69%) Security Engineer
16 174 (2.49%) Azure Architect
17 169 (2.42%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 163 (2.33%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 156 (2.23%) Technical Architect
20 154 (2.20%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,215 (17.39%) Terraform
2 599 (8.57%) REST
3 513 (7.34%) .NET
4 330 (4.72%) Kafka
5 254 (3.64%) React
6 247 (3.54%) OAuth
7 235 (3.36%) PySpark
8 226 (3.23%) RESTful
9 194 (2.78%) JSON
10 147 (2.10%) OpenID
11 143 (2.05%) OAuth2
12 140 (2.00%) SAML
13 130 (1.86%) SOAP
14 128 (1.83%) HTML
15 127 (1.82%) Spring
16 125 (1.79%) Middleware
17 120 (1.72%) Spring Boot
18 115 (1.65%) .NET Framework
19 114 (1.63%) AngularJS
20 111 (1.59%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 791 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 381 (5.45%) Onboarding
3 328 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 264 (3.78%) Enterprise Software
5 261 (3.74%) Hybrid Cloud
6 260 (3.72%) AI Agents
7 236 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
8 225 (3.22%) Data Centre
9 196 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
10 163 (2.33%) Security Posture
11 152 (2.18%) Management Information System
12 127 (1.82%) Data Structures
13 116 (1.66%) Public Cloud
14 107 (1.53%) PKI
15 93 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
16 92 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
17 86 (1.23%) CMDB
18 79 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
19 77 (1.10%) Replication
20 66 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 877 (12.55%) Windows
2 446 (6.38%) Linux
3 335 (4.79%) Windows Server
4 140 (2.00%) Windows 10
5 82 (1.17%) Unix
6 79 (1.13%) Android
7 74 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (1.04%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.99%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.76%) Ubuntu
11 37 (0.53%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 18 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.10%) Debian
18 6 (0.086%) AIX
19 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
19 4 (0.057%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,540 (36.35%) DevOps
2 2,222 (31.80%) CI/CD
3 1,728 (24.73%) Agile
4 1,292 (18.49%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,252 (17.92%) AI
6 1,205 (17.25%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,036 (14.83%) Migration
8 986 (14.11%) Problem-Solving
9 980 (14.03%) Analytics
10 813 (11.64%) Continuous Improvement
11 761 (10.89%) Data Modelling
12 759 (10.86%) Roadmaps
13 668 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
14 659 (9.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 644 (9.22%) Data Pipeline
16 637 (9.12%) Technical Leadership
17 624 (8.93%) Containerisation
18 612 (8.76%) Test Automation
19 580 (8.30%) Cybersecurity
20 576 (8.24%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,634 (23.39%) Python
2 1,345 (19.25%) SQL
3 798 (11.42%) PowerShell
4 573 (8.20%) Java
5 519 (7.43%) C#
6 432 (6.18%) JavaScript
7 351 (5.02%) Bash
8 312 (4.47%) Bicep
9 259 (3.71%) TypeScript
10 89 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 70 (1.00%) Go
13 53 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
13 53 (0.76%) Scala
14 49 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
17 29 (0.42%) C++
17 29 (0.42%) R
18 28 (0.40%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,829 (26.18%) Security Cleared
2 1,453 (20.80%) SC Cleared
3 521 (7.46%) Degree
4 417 (5.97%) Azure Certification
5 277 (3.96%) DV Cleared
6 243 (3.48%) CISSP
7 230 (3.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 195 (2.79%) AWS Certification
9 172 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
10 167 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
11 161 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 120 (1.72%) CISM
13 79 (1.13%) PMI Certification
14 78 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 76 (1.09%) CCNP
16 75 (1.07%) PMP
17 58 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 51 (0.73%) CCSP
20 49 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 516 (7.39%) Data Quality
2 398 (5.70%) QA
3 273 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 257 (3.68%) NIST
5 247 (3.54%) GDPR
6 172 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.42%) SLA
8 88 (1.26%) NCSC
9 75 (1.07%) GRC
9 75 (1.07%) WCAG
10 72 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.97%) PCI DSS
12 50 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 47 (0.67%) PMO
14 40 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 32 (0.46%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.29%) COBIT
19 19 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 918 (13.14%) Active Directory
2 748 (10.71%) Docker
3 220 (3.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 131 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 129 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 105 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.96%) vSphere
8 47 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.30%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 12 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.086%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.072%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.057%) KVM
18 4 (0.057%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,051 (15.04%) Kubernetes
2 405 (5.80%) Ansible
3 404 (5.78%) Microsoft Intune
4 221 (3.16%) Grafana
5 170 (2.43%) Prometheus
6 126 (1.80%) SCCM
6 126 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
7 58 (0.83%) Progress Chef
8 46 (0.66%) Argo
9 43 (0.62%) Puppet
10 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
11 33 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
12 32 (0.46%) SCOM
13 25 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.30%) Istio
15 19 (0.27%) CASB
16 18 (0.26%) Packer
16 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,591 (37.08%) Microsoft
2 714 (10.22%) Databricks
3 367 (5.25%) ServiceNow
4 318 (4.55%) Google
4 318 (4.55%) VMware
5 283 (4.05%) Oracle
6 217 (3.11%) Cisco
7 204 (2.92%) Splunk
8 182 (2.60%) SAP
9 177 (2.53%) OpenAI
10 160 (2.29%) Salesforce
11 142 (2.03%) CyberArk
12 137 (1.96%) Palo Alto
13 117 (1.67%) Dynatrace
14 109 (1.56%) Foundry
15 84 (1.20%) IBM
15 84 (1.20%) Zscaler
16 73 (1.04%) Fortinet
17 65 (0.93%) Informatica
17 65 (0.93%) Okta