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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,145 4,072 4,815
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.68% 14.73% 14.44%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.86% 39.62% 42.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,987 2,810 3,510
10th Percentile £372 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £420 £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 37 31
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.94 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £56.50 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.25% +14.29% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.25 £76.25 £55.25
90th Percentile £100.59 £100.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £40.73 £35.00
% change year-on-year +28.91% +16.36% -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 15,926 10,278 11,227
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.95% 37.18% 33.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,623 6,965 7,955
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £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 £643
90th Percentile £720 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.50% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 556 273 230
10th Percentile £15.97 £15.01 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £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 £83.43 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £27.88 £24.92
% change year-on-year +25.54% +11.88% -28.80%

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 3,735 £550 - 3,129
North of England +8 1,038 £500 +5.26% 961
South East +2 923 £525 +5.00% 944
Midlands +4 651 £498 -0.60% 447
North West +7 539 £500 +2.83% 561
West Midlands +3 486 £493 -6.19% 299
South West +6 436 £540 +8.00% 419
Yorkshire +6 417 £500 +5.26% 279
East of England +3 175 £525 -4.55% 257
East Midlands +10 152 £500 +8.11% 148
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 132
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
1 378 (5.29%) SharePoint
2 237 (3.32%) Confluence
3 181 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 157 (2.20%) Apache Spark
5 138 (1.93%) Apache Airflow
6 111 (1.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.52%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
13 9 (0.13%) nginx
14 8 (0.11%) Mendix
15 7 (0.098%) Camunda
15 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 107 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 64 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 28 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.35%) 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%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 103 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Maximo
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
10 4 (0.056%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,516 (35.21%) AWS
2 1,513 (21.18%) Azure DevOps
3 1,207 (16.89%) GCP
4 953 (13.34%) Entra ID
5 896 (12.54%) Power Platform
6 727 (10.17%) Microsoft 365
7 704 (9.85%) GitHub
8 433 (6.06%) Azure Data Factory
8 433 (6.06%) GitHub Actions
9 306 (4.28%) SaaS
10 303 (4.24%) Serverless
11 280 (3.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 259 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
13 251 (3.51%) Power Automate
14 248 (3.47%) Azure AKS
15 233 (3.26%) Dynamics 365
16 225 (3.15%) Snowflake
17 222 (3.11%) PowerApps
18 221 (3.09%) PaaS
19 201 (2.81%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 485 (6.79%) Firewall
2 372 (5.21%) DNS
3 302 (4.23%) VPN
4 269 (3.76%) Network Security
5 197 (2.76%) DHCP
6 182 (2.55%) WAN
7 164 (2.30%) TCP/IP
8 112 (1.57%) LAN
9 108 (1.51%) BGP
10 91 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) OSPF
11 89 (1.25%) VLAN
12 70 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 60 (0.84%) SSL
14 59 (0.83%) SAN
15 52 (0.73%) Wireless
16 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
17 41 (0.57%) HTTP
18 40 (0.56%) IPsec
19 39 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 634 (8.87%) Power BI
2 417 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 361 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.27%) Data Lake
5 243 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 186 (2.60%) Metadata
6 186 (2.60%) NoSQL
7 174 (2.44%) Azure SQL Database
8 125 (1.75%) Delta Lake
9 119 (1.67%) Relational Database
10 91 (1.27%) Big Data
11 86 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 66 (0.92%) MongoDB
13 61 (0.85%) Tableau
14 60 (0.84%) MySQL
15 59 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.80%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.73%) Star Schema
18 48 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
19 47 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 550 (7.70%) Git
2 524 (7.33%) JIRA
3 372 (5.21%) Jenkins
4 292 (4.09%) GitLab
5 113 (1.58%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) JUnit
7 56 (0.78%) Postman
8 54 (0.76%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.73%) JMeter
10 49 (0.69%) Cypress.io
11 48 (0.67%) SonarQube
12 42 (0.59%) WebDriver
13 39 (0.55%) Maven
14 38 (0.53%) Visual Studio
15 32 (0.45%) REST Assured
16 31 (0.43%) Gradle
17 27 (0.38%) Bitbucket
17 27 (0.38%) LoadRunner
17 27 (0.38%) MLflow
18 25 (0.35%) Gatling
General
1 1,880 (26.31%) Social Skills
2 1,398 (19.57%) Finance
3 770 (10.78%) Public Sector
4 722 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
5 407 (5.70%) Banking
6 192 (2.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 189 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
8 180 (2.52%) Retail
9 149 (2.09%) Legal
10 84 (1.18%) Influencing Skills
11 81 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
12 80 (1.12%) Manufacturing
12 80 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 71 (0.99%) Law
14 70 (0.98%) Aerospace
15 69 (0.97%) Marketing
16 68 (0.95%) Investment Banking
17 66 (0.92%) Financial Institution
18 58 (0.81%) Front Office
19 56 (0.78%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,268 (17.75%) Architect
2 919 (12.86%) Senior
3 830 (11.62%) Developer
4 613 (8.58%) Azure Engineer
5 605 (8.47%) Lead
6 537 (7.52%) Data Engineer
7 427 (5.98%) Analyst
8 392 (5.49%) Solutions Architect
9 335 (4.69%) DevOps Engineer
10 322 (4.51%) Cloud Engineer
11 284 (3.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 263 (3.68%) Consultant
13 212 (2.97%) Data Architect
14 198 (2.77%) Platform Engineer
15 183 (2.56%) Security Engineer
16 180 (2.52%) Azure Architect
17 170 (2.38%) Project Manager
18 160 (2.24%) Senior Developer
19 155 (2.17%) Technical Architect
20 150 (2.10%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 540 (7.56%) .NET
2 519 (7.26%) REST
3 295 (4.13%) Kafka
4 256 (3.58%) React
5 233 (3.26%) PySpark
6 223 (3.12%) RESTful
7 215 (3.01%) OAuth
8 174 (2.44%) JSON
9 157 (2.20%) Spring
10 147 (2.06%) AngularJS
11 144 (2.02%) Node.js
12 139 (1.95%) SAML
13 133 (1.86%) OpenID
14 125 (1.75%) .NET Framework
15 124 (1.74%) Spring Boot
16 122 (1.71%) Middleware
16 122 (1.71%) OAuth2
17 117 (1.64%) HTML
18 110 (1.54%) SOAP
19 103 (1.44%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 777 (10.87%) Cloud Native
2 359 (5.02%) Onboarding
3 298 (4.17%) Product Ownership
4 249 (3.48%) Hybrid Cloud
5 238 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
6 221 (3.09%) Data Centre
7 215 (3.01%) AI Agents
8 206 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
9 196 (2.74%) Enterprise Software
10 169 (2.37%) Security Posture
11 128 (1.79%) Data Structures
12 121 (1.69%) Management Information System
12 121 (1.69%) Public Cloud
13 100 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
14 96 (1.34%) PKI
15 94 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
16 80 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
17 77 (1.08%) Replication
18 73 (1.02%) CMDB
19 68 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 869 (12.16%) Windows
2 428 (5.99%) Linux
3 305 (4.27%) Windows Server
4 117 (1.64%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.11%) Unix
6 78 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 67 (0.94%) Android
8 62 (0.87%) Mac OS
9 60 (0.84%) Apple iOS
10 46 (0.64%) Ubuntu
11 45 (0.63%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.14%) Debian
17 6 (0.084%) AIX
17 6 (0.084%) Amazon Linux
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,615 (36.60%) DevOps
2 2,208 (30.90%) CI/CD
3 1,778 (24.88%) Agile
4 1,146 (16.04%) AI
5 1,129 (15.80%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,085 (15.19%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,056 (14.78%) Migration
8 1,024 (14.33%) Analytics
9 971 (13.59%) Problem-Solving
10 807 (11.29%) Continuous Improvement
11 796 (11.14%) Data Modelling
12 706 (9.88%) Data Pipeline
13 696 (9.74%) Roadmaps
14 695 (9.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 679 (9.50%) Business Intelligence
16 632 (8.85%) Containerisation
17 599 (8.38%) ETL
18 596 (8.34%) Microservices
19 588 (8.23%) Test Automation
20 580 (8.12%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,660 (23.23%) Python
2 1,409 (19.72%) SQL
3 780 (10.92%) PowerShell
4 584 (8.17%) Java
5 536 (7.50%) C#
6 416 (5.82%) JavaScript
7 336 (4.70%) Bash
8 286 (4.00%) Bicep
9 244 (3.41%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.90%) Go
13 52 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
13 52 (0.73%) Scala
14 45 (0.63%) Shell Script
15 33 (0.46%) Kotlin
15 33 (0.46%) R
16 30 (0.42%) Groovy
16 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
17 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,827 (25.57%) Security Cleared
2 1,472 (20.60%) SC Cleared
3 517 (7.24%) Degree
4 397 (5.56%) Azure Certification
5 245 (3.43%) DV Cleared
6 232 (3.25%) CISSP
7 207 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
8 186 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 174 (2.44%) AWS Certification
10 163 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
11 148 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
12 110 (1.54%) CISM
13 89 (1.25%) CCNP
14 75 (1.05%) PMP
15 73 (1.02%) PMI Certification
16 70 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 55 (0.77%) ISTQB
17 55 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 49 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 500 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 381 (5.33%) QA
3 284 (3.97%) GDPR
4 272 (3.81%) NIST
5 269 (3.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 164 (2.30%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.37%) NCSC
8 95 (1.33%) SLA
9 69 (0.97%) WCAG
10 68 (0.95%) GRC
10 68 (0.95%) PCI DSS
11 66 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
12 58 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.74%) PMO
14 31 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.41%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
19 16 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 898 (12.57%) Active Directory
2 766 (10.72%) Docker
3 213 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
6 102 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.88%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.41%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 15 (0.21%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.098%) Varnish
15 7 (0.098%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,188 (16.63%) Terraform
2 1,054 (14.75%) Kubernetes
3 389 (5.44%) Ansible
4 387 (5.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 225 (3.15%) Grafana
6 184 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 131 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
8 112 (1.57%) SCCM
9 59 (0.83%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.67%) Argo
11 47 (0.66%) Puppet
12 39 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
14 32 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 28 (0.39%) 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%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,438 (34.12%) Microsoft
2 676 (9.46%) Databricks
3 370 (5.18%) ServiceNow
4 302 (4.23%) VMware
5 284 (3.97%) Google
6 276 (3.86%) Oracle
7 216 (3.02%) Cisco
8 199 (2.79%) SAP
9 171 (2.39%) Splunk
10 160 (2.24%) OpenAI
11 144 (2.02%) CyberArk
12 140 (1.96%) Palo Alto
13 139 (1.95%) Salesforce
14 117 (1.64%) Foundry
15 108 (1.51%) Dynatrace
16 95 (1.33%) Zscaler
17 73 (1.02%) IBM
17 73 (1.02%) Okta
18 71 (0.99%) Informatica
19 68 (0.95%) Fortinet