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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,077 4,064 4,785
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.31% 14.85% 14.68%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.38% 39.50% 42.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,965 2,790 3,367
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £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 £732 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 152 37 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £16.01 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.41% -11.69% -16.63%
75th Percentile £81.53 £65.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £103.63 £91.25 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +11.71% -6.83% -31.94%

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 15,948 10,289 11,268
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.49% 37.60% 34.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,643 6,957 7,707
10th Percentile £320 £306 £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 £638
90th Percentile £720 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 545 249 180
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.45 £14.24
25th Percentile £17.97 £18.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £31.75
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -17.17% -3.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £62.81
90th Percentile £82.75 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £29.25 £30.88
% change year-on-year +11.11% -5.26% -11.79%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 3,704 £550 - 4,366
North of England +7 1,008 £500 +5.26% 1,426
South East +1 898 £525 +5.00% 1,182
Midlands +2 652 £488 -5.11% 767
North West +5 501 £500 +5.26% 793
West Midlands +2 482 £481 -10.93% 482
South West +2 428 £550 +10.00% 569
Yorkshire +6 426 £500 +5.26% 462
East of England +2 187 £518 +3.50% 403
East Midlands +5 160 £500 +8.11% 284
North East +6 94 £500 - 177
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
1 415 (5.86%) SharePoint
2 222 (3.14%) Confluence
3 180 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 151 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (1.48%) Apache
7 40 (0.57%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 12 (0.17%) nginx
12 12 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.099%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.099%) Mendix
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
15 6 (0.085%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 106 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 67 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.49%) Chatbot
6 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.16%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.071%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Mingle
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 115 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 58 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.14%) 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
8 6 (0.085%) SAP Oil and Gas
8 6 (0.085%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.057%) Endur
10 4 (0.057%) Maximo
10 4 (0.057%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,518 (35.58%) AWS
2 1,493 (21.10%) Azure DevOps
3 1,207 (17.06%) GCP
4 961 (13.58%) Entra ID
5 926 (13.08%) Power Platform
6 768 (10.85%) Microsoft 365
7 707 (9.99%) GitHub
8 416 (5.88%) Azure Data Factory
9 412 (5.82%) GitHub Actions
10 336 (4.75%) Serverless
11 318 (4.49%) SaaS
12 272 (3.84%) Power Automate
13 270 (3.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 263 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
15 259 (3.66%) Dynamics 365
16 250 (3.53%) Snowflake
17 241 (3.41%) Azure AKS
18 237 (3.35%) PowerApps
19 230 (3.25%) Microsoft Copilot
20 203 (2.87%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 473 (6.68%) Firewall
2 374 (5.28%) DNS
3 289 (4.08%) VPN
4 263 (3.72%) Network Security
5 214 (3.02%) DHCP
6 178 (2.52%) WAN
7 163 (2.30%) TCP/IP
8 103 (1.46%) BGP
9 100 (1.41%) LAN
10 91 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 90 (1.27%) VLAN
12 85 (1.20%) OSPF
13 77 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
14 63 (0.89%) SSL
15 59 (0.83%) SAN
16 57 (0.81%) Wireless
17 41 (0.58%) VXLAN
18 37 (0.52%) IPsec
19 36 (0.51%) HTTP
19 36 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 629 (8.89%) Power BI
2 423 (5.98%) SQL Server
3 351 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 307 (4.34%) Data Lake
5 239 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 211 (2.98%) Metadata
7 187 (2.64%) NoSQL
8 156 (2.20%) Azure SQL Database
9 122 (1.72%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.70%) Delta Lake
11 89 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (1.22%) Big Data
13 77 (1.09%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.03%) MySQL
15 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
15 58 (0.82%) Tableau
16 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
17 53 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
18 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
19 49 (0.69%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 594 (8.39%) Git
2 488 (6.90%) JIRA
3 389 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 305 (4.31%) GitLab
5 108 (1.53%) Selenium
6 58 (0.82%) Postman
7 50 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 49 (0.69%) JUnit
9 48 (0.68%) Cypress.io
10 46 (0.65%) Cucumber
11 44 (0.62%) Maven
12 42 (0.59%) JMeter
13 37 (0.52%) Gradle
13 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 32 (0.45%) Claude Code
17 29 (0.41%) Gatling
18 28 (0.40%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.40%) MLflow
General
1 1,961 (27.71%) Social Skills
2 1,387 (19.60%) Finance
3 756 (10.68%) Public Sector
4 718 (10.15%) Analytical Skills
5 420 (5.93%) Banking
6 205 (2.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 200 (2.83%) Retail
8 182 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
9 148 (2.09%) Legal
10 95 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 86 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 83 (1.17%) Marketing
13 80 (1.13%) Aerospace
14 76 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 73 (1.03%) Investment Banking
16 71 (1.00%) Military
17 70 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
18 68 (0.96%) Law
19 53 (0.75%) Financial Institution
20 52 (0.73%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,317 (18.61%) Architect
2 909 (12.84%) Senior
3 791 (11.18%) Developer
4 597 (8.44%) Lead
5 596 (8.42%) Azure Engineer
6 511 (7.22%) Data Engineer
7 418 (5.91%) Solutions Architect
8 416 (5.88%) Analyst
9 362 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
10 341 (4.82%) Cloud Engineer
11 285 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 275 (3.89%) Consultant
13 226 (3.19%) Data Architect
14 203 (2.87%) Platform Engineer
15 184 (2.60%) Security Engineer
16 173 (2.44%) Azure Architect
17 166 (2.35%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 161 (2.27%) Project Manager
19 160 (2.26%) Senior Developer
19 160 (2.26%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,221 (17.25%) Terraform
2 568 (8.03%) REST
3 529 (7.47%) .NET
4 331 (4.68%) Kafka
5 253 (3.57%) React
6 243 (3.43%) PySpark
7 236 (3.33%) OAuth
8 222 (3.14%) RESTful
9 196 (2.77%) JSON
10 146 (2.06%) OpenID
11 141 (1.99%) SAML
12 137 (1.94%) Spring
13 135 (1.91%) OAuth2
14 126 (1.78%) Spring Boot
15 125 (1.77%) AngularJS
16 123 (1.74%) HTML
17 118 (1.67%) .NET Framework
18 117 (1.65%) Node.js
19 115 (1.62%) SOAP
20 114 (1.61%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 786 (11.11%) Cloud Native
2 374 (5.28%) Onboarding
3 330 (4.66%) Product Ownership
4 262 (3.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 248 (3.50%) Enterprise Software
6 244 (3.45%) AI Agents
7 236 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
8 218 (3.08%) Data Centre
9 190 (2.68%) Legacy Systems
10 158 (2.23%) Security Posture
11 147 (2.08%) Management Information System
12 128 (1.81%) Data Structures
13 120 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 100 (1.41%) PKI
15 96 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
16 95 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
17 87 (1.23%) Replication
18 81 (1.14%) CMDB
19 71 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
20 63 (0.89%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 879 (12.42%) Windows
2 445 (6.29%) Linux
3 331 (4.68%) Windows Server
4 130 (1.84%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.13%) Unix
6 76 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 74 (1.05%) Android
8 69 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 68 (0.96%) Mac OS
10 54 (0.76%) Ubuntu
11 42 (0.59%) VMS
12 21 (0.30%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,585 (36.53%) DevOps
2 2,223 (31.41%) CI/CD
3 1,769 (25.00%) Agile
4 1,264 (17.86%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,244 (17.58%) AI
6 1,207 (17.06%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,039 (14.68%) Migration
8 1,024 (14.47%) Analytics
9 1,002 (14.16%) Problem-Solving
10 822 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
11 777 (10.98%) Data Modelling
12 752 (10.63%) Roadmaps
13 685 (9.68%) Business Intelligence
14 677 (9.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 674 (9.52%) Data Pipeline
16 640 (9.04%) Containerisation
17 632 (8.93%) Technical Leadership
18 593 (8.38%) Test Automation
19 588 (8.31%) Data Engineering
20 575 (8.12%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,647 (23.27%) Python
2 1,370 (19.36%) SQL
3 798 (11.28%) PowerShell
4 585 (8.27%) Java
5 525 (7.42%) C#
6 420 (5.93%) JavaScript
7 352 (4.97%) Bash
8 307 (4.34%) Bicep
9 252 (3.56%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.85%) Go
13 54 (0.76%) Scala
14 51 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 33 (0.47%) R
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Groovy
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,853 (26.18%) Security Cleared
2 1,477 (20.87%) SC Cleared
3 525 (7.42%) Degree
4 417 (5.89%) Azure Certification
5 269 (3.80%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.45%) CISSP
7 236 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 186 (2.63%) AWS Certification
9 182 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
10 162 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
10 162 (2.29%) Computer Science Degree
11 116 (1.64%) CISM
12 83 (1.17%) CCNP
13 79 (1.12%) PMI Certification
14 77 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 77 (1.09%) PMP
15 54 (0.76%) Master's Degree
16 53 (0.75%) ISTQB
17 50 (0.71%) CCSP
18 49 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 517 (7.31%) Data Quality
2 401 (5.67%) QA
3 271 (3.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 270 (3.82%) NIST
5 258 (3.65%) GDPR
6 174 (2.46%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.38%) SLA
8 90 (1.27%) NCSC
9 78 (1.10%) WCAG
10 75 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
11 71 (1.00%) GRC
12 68 (0.96%) PCI DSS
13 56 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 51 (0.72%) PMO
15 41 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 28 (0.40%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
19 19 (0.27%) NIST 800
20 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 922 (13.03%) Active Directory
2 774 (10.94%) Docker
3 218 (3.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.95%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 66 (0.93%) vSphere
8 53 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) IAG
12 15 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.057%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,069 (15.11%) Kubernetes
2 411 (5.81%) Ansible
3 400 (5.65%) Microsoft Intune
4 223 (3.15%) Grafana
5 172 (2.43%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 123 (1.74%) SCCM
8 63 (0.89%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Argo
10 48 (0.68%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 31 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 31 (0.44%) SCOM
14 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.27%) Istio
16 18 (0.25%) CASB
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 16 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,590 (36.60%) Microsoft
2 723 (10.22%) Databricks
3 374 (5.28%) ServiceNow
4 322 (4.55%) VMware
5 303 (4.28%) Google
6 288 (4.07%) Oracle
7 229 (3.24%) Cisco
8 192 (2.71%) Splunk
9 187 (2.64%) SAP
10 169 (2.39%) OpenAI
11 154 (2.18%) Salesforce
12 146 (2.06%) CyberArk
13 144 (2.03%) Palo Alto
14 114 (1.61%) Foundry
15 111 (1.57%) Dynatrace
16 81 (1.14%) Zscaler
17 78 (1.10%) Informatica
18 76 (1.07%) Fortinet
18 76 (1.07%) IBM
19 65 (0.92%) Red Hat