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

6 months to
18 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,841 3,913 5,122
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.81% 15.97% 13.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.77% 42.20% 41.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,169 2,761 3,766
10th Percentile £356 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £530 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.32% -1.85% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 27 66
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.14 £17.79
25th Percentile £54.78 £24.40 £22.13
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 13,657 9,273 12,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.98% 37.84% 32.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,396 6,461 8,819
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 £712 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 410 170 327
10th Percentile £15.61 £15.21 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.84 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.54 £26.81 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +40.01% +25.47% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £41.63
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.58 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £37.31 £26.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +40.79% +24.01% -16.88%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 3,181 £539 -2.00% 1,025
North of England +3 789 £489 +0.57% 601
South East 0 742 £500 -9.09% 688
Midlands -2 462 £500 - 328
North West +1 424 £481 -3.75% 302
West Midlands -2 358 £503 -4.19% 186
South West +6 336 £500 -4.76% 268
Yorkshire -2 316 £494 +9.72% 201
East of England +3 153 £550 -8.33% 192
East Midlands -7 98 £425 -10.53% 141
North East -3 51 £525 +10.53% 106
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
1 277 (4.74%) SharePoint
2 192 (3.29%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.82%) Apache Spark
4 151 (2.59%) Confluence
5 94 (1.61%) Apache
6 82 (1.40%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.38%) IIS
8 18 (0.31%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.26%) Appian
9 15 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.26%) SAS
10 14 (0.24%) Camunda
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%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.12%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 102 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (0.77%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.10%) Trello
8 5 (0.086%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.086%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.086%) 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
1 100 (1.71%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) 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 (0.086%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.086%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.086%) Endur
9 5 (0.086%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.086%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.086%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.068%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.068%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 2,050 (35.10%) AWS
2 1,190 (20.37%) Azure DevOps
3 1,168 (20.00%) GCP
4 795 (13.61%) Power Platform
5 758 (12.98%) Entra ID
6 668 (11.44%) Microsoft 365
7 596 (10.20%) GitHub
8 442 (7.57%) Azure Data Factory
9 339 (5.80%) Serverless
10 335 (5.74%) GitHub Actions
11 278 (4.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 245 (4.19%) Dynamics 365
13 243 (4.16%) SaaS
14 222 (3.80%) Power Automate
15 219 (3.75%) Azure Monitor
16 216 (3.70%) Azure AKS
17 211 (3.61%) Azure Functions
18 209 (3.58%) PaaS
19 186 (3.18%) Azure Logic Apps
20 177 (3.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 390 (6.68%) Firewall
2 255 (4.37%) DNS
3 217 (3.72%) VPN
4 192 (3.29%) Network Security
5 147 (2.52%) WAN
6 146 (2.50%) DHCP
7 110 (1.88%) LAN
8 89 (1.52%) TCP/IP
9 77 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 69 (1.18%) SD-WAN
11 63 (1.08%) Kerberos
12 61 (1.04%) VLAN
13 44 (0.75%) BGP
14 40 (0.68%) Wireless
15 39 (0.67%) OSPF
16 38 (0.65%) HTTP
17 32 (0.55%) SAN
18 30 (0.51%) Internet
19 29 (0.50%) MPLS
19 29 (0.50%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 555 (9.50%) Power BI
2 331 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 317 (5.43%) Data Warehouse
4 278 (4.76%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.60%) Azure SQL Database
6 208 (3.56%) PostgreSQL
7 176 (3.01%) NoSQL
8 135 (2.31%) Metadata
9 122 (2.09%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 80 (1.37%) Big Data
13 73 (1.25%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.25%) Tableau
14 60 (1.03%) Oracle Database
15 55 (0.94%) BigQuery
16 52 (0.89%) MySQL
17 48 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
18 46 (0.79%) Redis
19 42 (0.72%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 437 (7.48%) Git
2 395 (6.76%) JIRA
3 278 (4.76%) Jenkins
4 209 (3.58%) GitLab
5 98 (1.68%) Selenium
6 68 (1.16%) Postman
7 58 (0.99%) Cucumber
7 58 (0.99%) JUnit
8 54 (0.92%) JMeter
9 51 (0.87%) MLflow
10 38 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 36 (0.62%) SonarQube
12 35 (0.60%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
14 31 (0.53%) Visual Studio
15 27 (0.46%) Artifactory
16 26 (0.45%) TestRail
17 24 (0.41%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.39%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,694 (29.00%) Social Skills
2 1,095 (18.75%) Finance
3 643 (11.01%) Public Sector
4 595 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
5 340 (5.82%) Banking
6 193 (3.30%) Documentation Skills
7 120 (2.05%) Legal
8 101 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
9 84 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
10 81 (1.39%) Retail
11 76 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
12 64 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 63 (1.08%) Financial Institution
13 63 (1.08%) Marketing
14 55 (0.94%) Investment Banking
15 54 (0.92%) Law
16 53 (0.91%) Front Office
17 43 (0.74%) Local Government
18 39 (0.67%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 976 (16.71%) Architect
2 805 (13.78%) Developer
3 683 (11.69%) Senior
4 504 (8.63%) Azure Engineer
5 503 (8.61%) Data Engineer
6 447 (7.65%) Lead
7 373 (6.39%) Analyst
8 263 (4.50%) Solutions Architect
9 262 (4.49%) DevOps Engineer
10 255 (4.37%) Consultant
11 172 (2.94%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 163 (2.79%) Cloud Engineer
13 150 (2.57%) Azure Architect
14 147 (2.52%) Security Engineer
15 137 (2.35%) Senior Developer
16 136 (2.33%) Platform Engineer
17 132 (2.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 122 (2.09%) Data Architect
19 117 (2.00%) Azure Data Engineer
20 115 (1.97%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 446 (7.64%) .NET
2 398 (6.81%) REST
3 271 (4.64%) React
4 231 (3.95%) Kafka
5 222 (3.80%) PySpark
6 212 (3.63%) Node.js
7 201 (3.44%) RESTful
8 183 (3.13%) Spring
9 175 (3.00%) OAuth
10 165 (2.82%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.55%) HTML
12 141 (2.41%) LDAP
12 141 (2.41%) Spring Boot
13 130 (2.23%) PyTorch
14 126 (2.16%) CSS
15 124 (2.12%) Middleware
15 124 (2.12%) SOAP
16 118 (2.02%) JSON
16 118 (2.02%) SAML
17 116 (1.99%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 536 (9.18%) Cloud Native
2 234 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 210 (3.60%) Product Ownership
4 167 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
5 160 (2.74%) Security Posture
6 151 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
8 142 (2.43%) Data Centre
9 115 (1.97%) Public Cloud
10 106 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
11 96 (1.64%) AI Agents
12 77 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 73 (1.25%) Replication
14 69 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
15 67 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 64 (1.10%) Algorithms
17 57 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 51 (0.87%) PKI
19 48 (0.82%) Low-Code
20 47 (0.80%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 633 (10.84%) Windows
2 300 (5.14%) Linux
3 199 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.90%) Windows 10
5 58 (0.99%) VMS
6 53 (0.91%) Unix
7 36 (0.62%) Mac OS
7 36 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 32 (0.55%) Apple iOS
9 25 (0.43%) Android
10 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
11 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.26%) Ubuntu
13 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
15 5 (0.086%) AIX
15 5 (0.086%) CentOS
15 5 (0.086%) CoreOS
15 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.068%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,156 (36.91%) DevOps
2 1,749 (29.94%) CI/CD
3 1,389 (23.78%) Agile
4 1,018 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
5 900 (15.41%) Analytics
6 830 (14.21%) AI
7 760 (13.01%) Infrastructure as Code
8 751 (12.86%) Migration
9 638 (10.92%) Data Modelling
10 623 (10.67%) Business Intelligence
11 610 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
12 576 (9.86%) Continuous Improvement
13 552 (9.45%) Data Pipeline
14 548 (9.38%) Containerisation
14 548 (9.38%) ETL
15 521 (8.92%) Microservices
15 521 (8.92%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 516 (8.83%) Machine Learning
17 507 (8.68%) Data Engineering
18 464 (7.94%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,524 (26.09%) Python
2 1,350 (23.11%) SQL
3 650 (11.13%) PowerShell
4 489 (8.37%) C#
5 486 (8.32%) Java
6 425 (7.28%) JavaScript
7 239 (4.09%) TypeScript
8 212 (3.63%) Bash
9 178 (3.05%) Bicep
10 94 (1.61%) Scala
11 76 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 75 (1.28%) Go
13 74 (1.27%) PL/SQL
14 68 (1.16%) Kusto Query Language
15 66 (1.13%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.70%) R
17 32 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 25 (0.43%) C++
19 22 (0.38%) PHP
19 22 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,443 (24.70%) Security Cleared
2 1,188 (20.34%) SC Cleared
3 465 (7.96%) Degree
4 337 (5.77%) Azure Certification
5 201 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 170 (2.91%) CISSP
7 146 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
8 120 (2.05%) AWS Certification
9 114 (1.95%) Cisco Certification
10 112 (1.92%) DV Cleared
11 107 (1.83%) CISM
12 87 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
13 72 (1.23%) Master's Degree
14 60 (1.03%) CCNP
15 53 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
16 51 (0.87%) PMI Certification
16 51 (0.87%) PMP
17 48 (0.82%) ISTQB
18 39 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.58%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 416 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 363 (6.21%) GDPR
3 315 (5.39%) QA
4 266 (4.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 226 (3.87%) NIST
6 96 (1.64%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.47%) NCSC
8 84 (1.44%) PCI DSS
9 57 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 54 (0.92%) SLA
11 45 (0.77%) PMO
12 34 (0.58%) GRC
13 32 (0.55%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.50%) WCAG
15 24 (0.41%) EU AI Act
15 24 (0.41%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 23 (0.39%) ISO 20022
17 22 (0.38%) PSD2
System Software
1 788 (13.49%) Active Directory
2 687 (11.76%) Docker
3 177 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
5 78 (1.34%) Hyper-V
6 70 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
7 68 (1.16%) vSphere
8 24 (0.41%) VMware NSX
9 23 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (0.27%) Firmware
11 13 (0.22%) 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 (0.086%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.086%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.086%) RACF
Systems Management
1 890 (15.24%) Terraform
2 863 (14.77%) Kubernetes
3 327 (5.60%) Microsoft Intune
4 248 (4.25%) Ansible
5 153 (2.62%) Grafana
6 144 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
7 131 (2.24%) Prometheus
8 114 (1.95%) SCCM
9 74 (1.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.74%) Argo
11 31 (0.53%) Istio
12 23 (0.39%) Puppet
13 21 (0.36%) vCenter Server
14 20 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
14 20 (0.34%) Progress Chef
15 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.27%) Nmap
17 15 (0.26%) HP ALM
17 15 (0.26%) vRealize
18 14 (0.24%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 1,886 (32.29%) Microsoft
2 590 (10.10%) Databricks
3 295 (5.05%) Oracle
4 290 (4.96%) Google
5 254 (4.35%) ServiceNow
6 236 (4.04%) VMware
7 170 (2.91%) SAP
8 154 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 146 (2.50%) Cisco
10 131 (2.24%) Splunk
11 119 (2.04%) CyberArk
12 104 (1.78%) Foundry
13 92 (1.58%) Palo Alto
14 81 (1.39%) Salesforce
15 80 (1.37%) Okta
16 68 (1.16%) Red Hat
17 66 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
18 65 (1.11%) IBM
19 63 (1.08%) Citrix
20 57 (0.98%) Informatica