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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,149 4,105 4,794
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.44% 14.77% 14.64%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.61% 39.35% 42.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,016 2,815 3,394
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £445
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 £731 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 155 40 24
10th Percentile £19.50 £16.27 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.99 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +45.87% -2.07% -20.42%
75th Percentile £81.81 £68.56 £53.50
90th Percentile £103.25 £89.38 £82.16
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £37.50 £36.75
% change year-on-year +5.33% +2.04% -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 16,025 10,431 11,247
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.61% 37.53% 34.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,701 7,044 7,727
10th Percentile £322 £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 £719 £729 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 556 259 186
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.45 £14.16
25th Percentile £17.92 £18.87 £19.96
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £30.73
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -14.42% -6.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £45.14 £60.95
90th Percentile £83.13 £71.56 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £29.63 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.70% -1.25% -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 10 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 10 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 10 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 3,739 £550 +0.92% 1,770
North of England +9 1,042 £500 +5.26% 652
South East +2 915 £525 +5.00% 706
Midlands +2 645 £493 -3.90% 383
North West +7 533 £500 +5.26% 343
West Midlands +3 473 £493 -8.29% 220
South West +4 434 £550 +10.00% 325
Yorkshire +6 428 £500 +5.26% 215
East of England +2 180 £525 +5.00% 206
East Midlands +6 161 £500 +8.11% 162
North East +7 94 £500 - 99
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
1 401 (5.61%) SharePoint
2 223 (3.12%) Confluence
3 180 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 171 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 155 (2.17%) Apache Airflow
6 110 (1.54%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 21 (0.29%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
13 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
14 12 (0.17%) nginx
15 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
16 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
17 7 (0.098%) Mendix
18 6 (0.084%) Documentum
18 6 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
19 5 (0.070%) Tomcat
Applications
1 110 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 69 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.48%) Chatbot
5 33 (0.46%) MS Visio
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
13 2 (0.028%) Mingle
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 110 (1.54%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.88%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) 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%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.084%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Maximo
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 2,554 (35.73%) AWS
2 1,506 (21.07%) Azure DevOps
3 1,216 (17.01%) GCP
4 969 (13.55%) Entra ID
5 920 (12.87%) Power Platform
6 758 (10.60%) Microsoft 365
7 719 (10.06%) GitHub
8 432 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 423 (5.92%) GitHub Actions
10 339 (4.74%) Serverless
11 320 (4.48%) SaaS
12 276 (3.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 272 (3.80%) Azure Monitor
14 260 (3.64%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.52%) Snowflake
16 248 (3.47%) Dynamics 365
17 235 (3.29%) Azure AKS
18 231 (3.23%) PowerApps
19 222 (3.11%) Microsoft Copilot
20 199 (2.78%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 484 (6.77%) Firewall
2 377 (5.27%) DNS
3 288 (4.03%) VPN
4 276 (3.86%) Network Security
5 213 (2.98%) DHCP
6 179 (2.50%) WAN
7 161 (2.25%) TCP/IP
8 105 (1.47%) BGP
9 102 (1.43%) LAN
10 91 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 87 (1.22%) VLAN
12 86 (1.20%) OSPF
13 73 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.85%) SAN
14 61 (0.85%) SSL
15 56 (0.78%) Wireless
16 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
17 39 (0.55%) IPsec
18 37 (0.52%) HTTP
19 36 (0.50%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 635 (8.88%) Power BI
2 425 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 362 (5.06%) Data Warehouse
4 313 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 246 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (3.02%) Metadata
7 191 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 165 (2.31%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.76%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.29%) Big Data
12 89 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 79 (1.11%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.06%) MySQL
15 62 (0.87%) Tableau
16 59 (0.83%) Amazon Redshift
17 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
17 55 (0.77%) Snowflake Schema
18 54 (0.76%) Amazon RDS
19 52 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 580 (8.11%) Git
2 497 (6.95%) JIRA
3 388 (5.43%) Jenkins
4 310 (4.34%) GitLab
5 112 (1.57%) Selenium
6 60 (0.84%) Postman
7 50 (0.70%) JUnit
7 50 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 49 (0.69%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.66%) JMeter
10 46 (0.64%) Cucumber
11 43 (0.60%) Maven
12 36 (0.50%) Gradle
13 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
13 35 (0.49%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.48%) WebDriver
15 31 (0.43%) Claude Code
16 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
17 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.39%) Gatling
General
1 1,959 (27.40%) Social Skills
2 1,401 (19.60%) Finance
3 759 (10.62%) Public Sector
4 731 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
5 419 (5.86%) Banking
6 203 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 198 (2.77%) Retail
8 187 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
9 150 (2.10%) Legal
10 96 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 81 (1.13%) Marketing
13 80 (1.12%) Aerospace
14 77 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 71 (0.99%) Military
16 70 (0.98%) Investment Banking
16 70 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
17 69 (0.97%) Law
18 55 (0.77%) Financial Institution
18 55 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,334 (18.66%) Architect
2 913 (12.77%) Senior
3 787 (11.01%) Developer
4 611 (8.55%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (8.36%) Lead
6 536 (7.50%) Data Engineer
7 420 (5.87%) Analyst
8 417 (5.83%) Solutions Architect
9 357 (4.99%) DevOps Engineer
10 338 (4.73%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 276 (3.86%) Consultant
13 229 (3.20%) Data Architect
14 203 (2.84%) Platform Engineer
15 178 (2.49%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.46%) Azure Architect
17 163 (2.28%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 163 (2.28%) Project Manager
18 162 (2.27%) Technical Architect
19 156 (2.18%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,221 (17.08%) Terraform
2 563 (7.88%) REST
3 535 (7.48%) .NET
4 331 (4.63%) Kafka
5 255 (3.57%) PySpark
5 255 (3.57%) React
6 235 (3.29%) OAuth
7 226 (3.16%) RESTful
8 191 (2.67%) JSON
9 143 (2.00%) OpenID
10 142 (1.99%) Spring
11 141 (1.97%) SAML
12 132 (1.85%) OAuth2
13 127 (1.78%) AngularJS
14 126 (1.76%) Spring Boot
15 124 (1.73%) .NET Framework
16 123 (1.72%) HTML
17 120 (1.68%) Node.js
18 114 (1.59%) Middleware
19 112 (1.57%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 805 (11.26%) Cloud Native
2 368 (5.15%) Onboarding
3 319 (4.46%) Product Ownership
4 262 (3.66%) Hybrid Cloud
5 241 (3.37%) Enterprise Software
6 238 (3.33%) AI Agents
7 237 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
8 220 (3.08%) Data Centre
9 199 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 160 (2.24%) Security Posture
11 141 (1.97%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.82%) Data Structures
13 115 (1.61%) Public Cloud
14 100 (1.40%) PKI
15 97 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
16 94 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
17 88 (1.23%) Replication
18 79 (1.11%) CMDB
19 76 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
20 64 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 884 (12.37%) Windows
2 448 (6.27%) Linux
3 334 (4.67%) Windows Server
4 128 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.16%) Unix
6 77 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 74 (1.04%) Android
8 69 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 66 (0.92%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.74%) Ubuntu
11 46 (0.64%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) 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 (0.084%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,618 (36.62%) DevOps
2 2,234 (31.25%) CI/CD
3 1,777 (24.86%) Agile
4 1,247 (17.44%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,231 (17.22%) AI
6 1,207 (16.88%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,062 (14.86%) Migration
8 1,042 (14.58%) Analytics
9 998 (13.96%) Problem-Solving
10 828 (11.58%) Continuous Improvement
11 791 (11.06%) Data Modelling
12 748 (10.46%) Roadmaps
13 696 (9.74%) Data Pipeline
14 695 (9.72%) Business Intelligence
15 682 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 643 (8.99%) Containerisation
17 628 (8.78%) Technical Leadership
18 602 (8.42%) Data Engineering
19 595 (8.32%) Test Automation
20 586 (8.20%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 1,671 (23.37%) Python
2 1,406 (19.67%) SQL
3 795 (11.12%) PowerShell
4 584 (8.17%) Java
5 521 (7.29%) C#
6 416 (5.82%) JavaScript
7 348 (4.87%) Bash
8 308 (4.31%) Bicep
9 248 (3.47%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 59 (0.83%) Go
13 57 (0.80%) Scala
14 50 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
14 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 36 (0.50%) R
16 30 (0.42%) Groovy
16 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
17 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,859 (26.00%) Security Cleared
2 1,484 (20.76%) SC Cleared
3 526 (7.36%) Degree
4 411 (5.75%) Azure Certification
5 268 (3.75%) DV Cleared
6 250 (3.50%) CISSP
7 225 (3.15%) Microsoft Certification
8 188 (2.63%) AWS Certification
9 187 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
10 163 (2.28%) Computer Science Degree
11 162 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
12 122 (1.71%) CISM
13 87 (1.22%) CCNP
14 78 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 78 (1.09%) PMI Certification
15 76 (1.06%) PMP
16 57 (0.80%) Master's Degree
17 54 (0.76%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.71%) CCSP
19 49 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 532 (7.44%) Data Quality
2 402 (5.62%) QA
3 280 (3.92%) NIST
4 278 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 268 (3.75%) GDPR
6 169 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.40%) SLA
8 95 (1.33%) NCSC
9 74 (1.04%) WCAG
10 72 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (0.98%) GRC
11 70 (0.98%) PCI DSS
12 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.74%) PMO
14 41 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.41%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 19 (0.27%) ISO 20022
17 19 (0.27%) NIST 800
18 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 919 (12.85%) Active Directory
2 781 (10.92%) Docker
3 223 (3.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 109 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.88%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 25 (0.35%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) IAG
12 15 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
13 11 (0.15%) Postfix
14 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 6 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
17 4 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,070 (14.97%) Kubernetes
2 407 (5.69%) Ansible
3 393 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 222 (3.11%) Grafana
5 173 (2.42%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
7 122 (1.71%) SCCM
8 62 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.71%) Argo
10 46 (0.64%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 33 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 31 (0.43%) SCOM
15 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
16 18 (0.25%) Istio
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 17 (0.24%) CASB
18 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
19 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,568 (35.92%) Microsoft
2 729 (10.20%) Databricks
3 373 (5.22%) ServiceNow
4 326 (4.56%) VMware
5 303 (4.24%) Google
6 288 (4.03%) Oracle
7 228 (3.19%) Cisco
8 192 (2.69%) SAP
9 190 (2.66%) Splunk
10 166 (2.32%) OpenAI
11 154 (2.15%) Salesforce
12 148 (2.07%) CyberArk
13 147 (2.06%) Palo Alto
14 112 (1.57%) Foundry
15 105 (1.47%) Dynatrace
16 81 (1.13%) Informatica
17 80 (1.12%) Zscaler
18 77 (1.08%) Fortinet
19 74 (1.04%) IBM
20 67 (0.94%) Okta