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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 7 6
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,098 4,002 4,805
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.56% 14.61% 14.53%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.80% 39.11% 42.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,985 2,752 3,440
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year - -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £638 £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 152 41 29
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £18.09
25th Percentile £25.66 £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 £53.00
90th Percentile £102.33 £95.00 £73.25
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 15,844 10,233 11,266
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.74% 37.37% 34.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,600 6,926 7,845
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £718 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 265 196
10th Percentile £15.42 £15.15 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £18.42
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 £59.66
90th Percentile £82.62 £69.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £28.75 £30.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +1 3,713 £550 +0.92% 3,150
North of England +11 1,035 £500 +5.26% 908
South East +2 920 £525 +5.00% 890
Midlands +4 648 £493 -3.90% 482
North West +7 528 £498 +4.74% 516
West Midlands +3 477 £488 -9.22% 288
Yorkshire +7 427 £500 +5.26% 276
South West +5 420 £540 +8.00% 465
East of England +5 178 £525 +5.00% 288
East Midlands +9 159 £500 +8.11% 193
North East +6 93 £500 - 121
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
1 392 (5.52%) SharePoint
2 229 (3.23%) Confluence
3 173 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 165 (2.32%) Apache Spark
5 145 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
6 111 (1.56%) Apache
7 38 (0.54%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 19 (0.27%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
14 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
15 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
15 8 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 6 (0.085%) Camunda
16 6 (0.085%) HCL Notes
16 6 (0.085%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.46%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
6 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) 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%) Mingle
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 109 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) 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 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.099%) Shopify
8 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.085%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.070%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Maximo
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,540 (35.78%) AWS
2 1,521 (21.43%) Azure DevOps
3 1,202 (16.93%) GCP
4 954 (13.44%) Entra ID
5 905 (12.75%) Power Platform
6 744 (10.48%) Microsoft 365
7 704 (9.92%) GitHub
8 421 (5.93%) Azure Data Factory
9 419 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
10 335 (4.72%) Serverless
11 316 (4.45%) SaaS
12 271 (3.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 270 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
14 258 (3.63%) Power Automate
15 247 (3.48%) Dynamics 365
16 239 (3.37%) Snowflake
17 238 (3.35%) Azure AKS
18 226 (3.18%) PowerApps
19 210 (2.96%) Microsoft Copilot
20 190 (2.68%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 483 (6.80%) Firewall
2 373 (5.26%) DNS
3 287 (4.04%) VPN
4 275 (3.87%) Network Security
5 212 (2.99%) DHCP
6 182 (2.56%) WAN
7 164 (2.31%) TCP/IP
8 107 (1.51%) BGP
8 107 (1.51%) LAN
9 91 (1.28%) SD-WAN
10 88 (1.24%) OSPF
10 88 (1.24%) VLAN
11 73 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
12 61 (0.86%) SAN
12 61 (0.86%) SSL
13 53 (0.75%) Wireless
14 42 (0.59%) VXLAN
15 39 (0.55%) IPsec
16 37 (0.52%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
17 36 (0.51%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 634 (8.93%) Power BI
2 417 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 355 (5.00%) Data Warehouse
4 304 (4.28%) Data Lake
5 242 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 211 (2.97%) Metadata
7 191 (2.69%) NoSQL
8 164 (2.31%) Azure SQL Database
9 127 (1.79%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.72%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.28%) Big Data
12 88 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 77 (1.08%) MongoDB
14 71 (1.00%) MySQL
15 62 (0.87%) Tableau
16 56 (0.79%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.77%) Amazon Redshift
17 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 50 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 568 (8.00%) Git
2 504 (7.10%) JIRA
3 389 (5.48%) Jenkins
4 303 (4.27%) GitLab
5 115 (1.62%) Selenium
6 60 (0.85%) Postman
7 50 (0.70%) Cypress.io
7 50 (0.70%) JUnit
8 47 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 46 (0.65%) Cucumber
9 46 (0.65%) JMeter
10 42 (0.59%) Maven
11 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
12 35 (0.49%) Gradle
12 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.49%) WebDriver
13 30 (0.42%) MLflow
14 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
15 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
16 27 (0.38%) Gatling
General
1 1,933 (27.23%) Social Skills
2 1,385 (19.51%) Finance
3 768 (10.82%) Public Sector
4 734 (10.34%) Analytical Skills
5 409 (5.76%) Banking
6 199 (2.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 191 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
8 185 (2.61%) Retail
9 144 (2.03%) Legal
10 95 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 86 (1.21%) Manufacturing
12 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
13 76 (1.07%) Aerospace
14 74 (1.04%) Marketing
15 73 (1.03%) Investment Banking
16 69 (0.97%) Military
16 69 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
17 68 (0.96%) Law
18 60 (0.85%) Financial Institution
19 55 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,305 (18.39%) Architect
2 907 (12.78%) Senior
3 789 (11.12%) Developer
4 606 (8.54%) Azure Engineer
5 594 (8.37%) Lead
6 524 (7.38%) Data Engineer
7 426 (6.00%) Analyst
8 401 (5.65%) Solutions Architect
9 351 (4.95%) DevOps Engineer
10 332 (4.68%) Cloud Engineer
11 283 (3.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 267 (3.76%) Consultant
13 228 (3.21%) Data Architect
14 206 (2.90%) Platform Engineer
15 180 (2.54%) Azure Architect
16 169 (2.38%) Security Engineer
17 162 (2.28%) Project Manager
17 162 (2.28%) Technical Architect
18 158 (2.23%) Senior Developer
19 157 (2.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,206 (16.99%) Terraform
2 549 (7.73%) REST
3 535 (7.54%) .NET
4 321 (4.52%) Kafka
5 253 (3.56%) PySpark
6 252 (3.55%) React
7 228 (3.21%) OAuth
7 228 (3.21%) RESTful
8 187 (2.63%) JSON
9 147 (2.07%) Spring
10 140 (1.97%) SAML
11 139 (1.96%) OpenID
12 130 (1.83%) AngularJS
13 128 (1.80%) OAuth2
14 125 (1.76%) .NET Framework
14 125 (1.76%) Spring Boot
15 124 (1.75%) Node.js
16 121 (1.70%) HTML
17 118 (1.66%) Middleware
18 109 (1.54%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 797 (11.23%) Cloud Native
2 366 (5.16%) Onboarding
3 311 (4.38%) Product Ownership
4 253 (3.56%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.41%) Distributed Systems
6 238 (3.35%) Enterprise Software
7 235 (3.31%) AI Agents
8 216 (3.04%) Data Centre
9 201 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
10 161 (2.27%) Security Posture
11 138 (1.94%) Management Information System
12 126 (1.78%) Data Structures
13 121 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 101 (1.42%) PKI
15 98 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
16 96 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
17 86 (1.21%) Replication
18 78 (1.10%) CMDB
19 74 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
20 62 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 883 (12.44%) Windows
2 444 (6.26%) Linux
3 326 (4.59%) Windows Server
4 127 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.14%) Unix
6 78 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 72 (1.01%) Android
8 68 (0.96%) Apple iOS
9 66 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 48 (0.68%) VMS
12 19 (0.27%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,616 (36.86%) DevOps
2 2,222 (31.30%) CI/CD
3 1,782 (25.11%) Agile
4 1,216 (17.13%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,204 (16.96%) AI
6 1,185 (16.69%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,053 (14.84%) Migration
8 1,025 (14.44%) Analytics
9 987 (13.91%) Problem-Solving
10 820 (11.55%) Continuous Improvement
11 782 (11.02%) Data Modelling
12 731 (10.30%) Roadmaps
13 693 (9.76%) Business Intelligence
14 684 (9.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 683 (9.62%) Data Pipeline
16 638 (8.99%) Containerisation
17 611 (8.61%) Technical Leadership
18 590 (8.31%) Data Engineering
19 589 (8.30%) Microservices
19 589 (8.30%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,665 (23.46%) Python
2 1,408 (19.84%) SQL
3 789 (11.12%) PowerShell
4 591 (8.33%) Java
5 519 (7.31%) C#
6 407 (5.73%) JavaScript
7 350 (4.93%) Bash
8 304 (4.28%) Bicep
9 240 (3.38%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 75 (1.06%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.85%) Go
13 55 (0.77%) Scala
14 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 48 (0.68%) Kusto Query Language
16 36 (0.51%) R
17 31 (0.44%) Groovy
18 30 (0.42%) Kotlin
18 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,856 (26.15%) Security Cleared
2 1,486 (20.94%) SC Cleared
3 521 (7.34%) Degree
4 405 (5.71%) Azure Certification
5 262 (3.69%) DV Cleared
6 245 (3.45%) CISSP
7 221 (3.11%) Microsoft Certification
8 189 (2.66%) AWS Certification
9 181 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
10 167 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 160 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
12 120 (1.69%) CISM
13 83 (1.17%) CCNP
14 76 (1.07%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 74 (1.04%) PMI Certification
16 73 (1.03%) PMP
17 59 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 54 (0.76%) ISTQB
19 48 (0.68%) CCSP
20 44 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 524 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.54%) QA
3 282 (3.97%) NIST
4 280 (3.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 269 (3.79%) GDPR
6 168 (2.37%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.39%) SLA
8 94 (1.32%) NCSC
9 71 (1.00%) PCI DSS
9 71 (1.00%) WCAG
10 70 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.96%) GRC
12 56 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.70%) PMO
14 39 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 25 (0.35%) SOC 2
16 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
17 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 17 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 910 (12.82%) Active Directory
2 776 (10.93%) Docker
3 220 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.99%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
6 108 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.87%) vSphere
8 53 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.38%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 16 (0.23%) NFS
13 13 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.17%) Postfix
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.085%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.085%) Varnish
17 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,064 (14.99%) Kubernetes
2 402 (5.66%) Ansible
3 387 (5.45%) Microsoft Intune
4 225 (3.17%) Grafana
5 176 (2.48%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
7 121 (1.70%) SCCM
8 63 (0.89%) Progress Chef
9 50 (0.70%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 30 (0.42%) SCOM
14 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 19 (0.27%) Packer
17 17 (0.24%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.23%) CASB
19 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,520 (35.50%) Microsoft
2 709 (9.99%) Databricks
3 370 (5.21%) ServiceNow
4 321 (4.52%) VMware
5 300 (4.23%) Google
6 285 (4.02%) Oracle
7 222 (3.13%) Cisco
8 193 (2.72%) SAP
9 187 (2.63%) Splunk
10 168 (2.37%) OpenAI
11 148 (2.09%) CyberArk
12 146 (2.06%) Salesforce
13 142 (2.00%) Palo Alto
14 112 (1.58%) Foundry
15 106 (1.49%) Dynatrace
16 83 (1.17%) Zscaler
17 80 (1.13%) Informatica
18 74 (1.04%) Fortinet
19 73 (1.03%) IBM
20 67 (0.94%) Okta