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

6 months to
23 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,911 3,948 5,071
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.81% 15.99% 13.44%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.89% 42.30% 41.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,230 2,797 3,722
10th Percentile £356 £353 £338
25th Percentile £425 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -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 113 27 62
10th Percentile £25.40 £22.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.55 £24.40 £22.35
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +16.01% -16.15%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £84.80 £79.22 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.12
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.53% -16.15%

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 13,781 9,334 12,176
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.86% 37.80% 32.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,496 6,518 8,753
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 £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 421 174 332
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.91 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.81 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.86% +27.68% -16.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £40.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.63 £62.45
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +39.62% +26.19% -18.48%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 3,212 £540 -1.74% 1,026
North of England +3 799 £486 +1.31% 584
South East 0 746 £500 -9.09% 707
Midlands -2 479 £500 -1.96% 375
North West +1 428 £473 -5.50% 290
West Midlands -3 361 £502 -4.48% 212
South West +6 345 £506 -3.67% 294
Yorkshire -1 324 £488 +8.33% 210
East of England +6 152 £550 -8.33% 213
East Midlands -2 110 £425 -10.53% 161
North East -5 49 £525 +10.53% 89
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
1 280 (4.74%) SharePoint
2 188 (3.18%) Microsoft Exchange
3 163 (2.76%) Apache Spark
4 158 (2.67%) Confluence
5 95 (1.61%) Apache
6 80 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.36%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.25%) Appian
9 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.25%) Camunda
10 14 (0.24%) CMS
10 14 (0.24%) SAS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 103 (1.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.12%) Trello
8 5 (0.085%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.085%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.085%) Weka
9 4 (0.068%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.051%) Spreadsheet
11 2 (0.034%) CPLEX
11 2 (0.034%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
12 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 98 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) 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 (0.085%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.085%) Endur
9 5 (0.085%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.085%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.068%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.068%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.068%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.068%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,072 (35.05%) AWS
2 1,225 (20.72%) Azure DevOps
3 1,174 (19.86%) GCP
4 797 (13.48%) Power Platform
5 762 (12.89%) Entra ID
6 682 (11.54%) Microsoft 365
7 605 (10.24%) GitHub
8 445 (7.53%) Azure Data Factory
9 342 (5.79%) GitHub Actions
10 338 (5.72%) Serverless
11 280 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (4.13%) Dynamics 365
13 241 (4.08%) SaaS
14 223 (3.77%) Power Automate
15 221 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
16 215 (3.64%) Azure AKS
17 208 (3.52%) Azure Functions
18 204 (3.45%) PaaS
19 195 (3.30%) Azure Logic Apps
20 179 (3.03%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 392 (6.63%) Firewall
2 262 (4.43%) DNS
3 222 (3.76%) VPN
4 197 (3.33%) Network Security
5 151 (2.55%) WAN
6 147 (2.49%) DHCP
7 115 (1.95%) LAN
8 90 (1.52%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
10 71 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 66 (1.12%) VLAN
12 62 (1.05%) Kerberos
13 48 (0.81%) BGP
14 43 (0.73%) OSPF
15 40 (0.68%) Wireless
16 36 (0.61%) HTTP
17 31 (0.52%) SAN
18 29 (0.49%) Internet
18 29 (0.49%) MPLS
18 29 (0.49%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 555 (9.39%) Power BI
2 336 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 320 (5.41%) Data Warehouse
4 279 (4.72%) Data Lake
5 212 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
6 206 (3.49%) Azure SQL Database
7 176 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 137 (2.32%) Metadata
9 124 (2.10%) Delta Lake
10 101 (1.71%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 79 (1.34%) Big Data
13 73 (1.23%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.23%) Tableau
14 58 (0.98%) Oracle Database
15 53 (0.90%) BigQuery
16 50 (0.85%) MySQL
17 49 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
18 45 (0.76%) Redis
19 43 (0.73%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 442 (7.48%) Git
2 408 (6.90%) JIRA
3 291 (4.92%) Jenkins
4 216 (3.65%) GitLab
5 97 (1.64%) Selenium
6 66 (1.12%) Postman
7 60 (1.02%) Cucumber
8 58 (0.98%) JUnit
9 53 (0.90%) JMeter
10 49 (0.83%) MLflow
11 39 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
13 34 (0.58%) SonarQube
14 32 (0.54%) Artifactory
15 31 (0.52%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.44%) TestRail
17 23 (0.39%) Gatling
17 23 (0.39%) SpecFlow
17 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,705 (28.84%) Social Skills
2 1,111 (18.80%) Finance
3 651 (11.01%) Public Sector
4 593 (10.03%) Analytical Skills
5 349 (5.90%) Banking
6 189 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
7 124 (2.10%) Legal
8 100 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
9 83 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
10 79 (1.34%) Retail
11 78 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
12 65 (1.10%) Marketing
12 65 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 64 (1.08%) Financial Institution
14 56 (0.95%) Investment Banking
14 56 (0.95%) Law
15 52 (0.88%) Front Office
16 46 (0.78%) Local Government
17 39 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 985 (16.66%) Architect
2 807 (13.65%) Developer
3 709 (11.99%) Senior
4 511 (8.64%) Azure Engineer
5 497 (8.41%) Data Engineer
6 445 (7.53%) Lead
7 387 (6.55%) Analyst
8 277 (4.69%) DevOps Engineer
9 265 (4.48%) Solutions Architect
10 256 (4.33%) Consultant
11 172 (2.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 162 (2.74%) Cloud Engineer
13 149 (2.52%) Azure Architect
14 145 (2.45%) Security Engineer
15 144 (2.44%) Platform Engineer
16 142 (2.40%) Senior Developer
17 131 (2.22%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 123 (2.08%) Data Architect
19 117 (1.98%) Business Analyst
20 115 (1.95%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 449 (7.60%) .NET
2 402 (6.80%) REST
3 274 (4.64%) React
4 235 (3.98%) Kafka
5 220 (3.72%) PySpark
6 210 (3.55%) Node.js
7 203 (3.43%) RESTful
8 186 (3.15%) Spring
9 172 (2.91%) OAuth
10 167 (2.83%) AngularJS
11 148 (2.50%) HTML
12 143 (2.42%) Spring Boot
13 141 (2.39%) LDAP
14 125 (2.11%) CSS
15 124 (2.10%) Middleware
16 123 (2.08%) PyTorch
17 121 (2.05%) JSON
18 120 (2.03%) SOAP
19 113 (1.91%) SAML
20 111 (1.88%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 534 (9.03%) Cloud Native
2 238 (4.03%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 172 (2.91%) Hybrid Cloud
5 158 (2.67%) Security Posture
6 151 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
7 150 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
8 138 (2.33%) Data Centre
9 123 (2.08%) Public Cloud
10 115 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
11 96 (1.62%) AI Agents
12 79 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 74 (1.25%) Replication
14 70 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
14 70 (1.18%) Management Information System
15 59 (1.00%) Algorithms
16 55 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
17 53 (0.90%) PKI
18 48 (0.81%) Low-Code
19 44 (0.74%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 655 (11.08%) Windows
2 309 (5.23%) Linux
3 201 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 59 (1.00%) VMS
6 55 (0.93%) Unix
7 39 (0.66%) Mac OS
8 36 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 32 (0.54%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.44%) Android
11 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.25%) Ubuntu
14 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 5 (0.085%) AIX
16 5 (0.085%) CentOS
16 5 (0.085%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.085%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.068%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,208 (37.35%) DevOps
2 1,782 (30.15%) CI/CD
3 1,399 (23.67%) Agile
4 1,013 (17.14%) Problem-Solving
5 911 (15.41%) Analytics
6 841 (14.23%) AI
7 781 (13.21%) Infrastructure as Code
8 762 (12.89%) Migration
9 644 (10.89%) Data Modelling
10 624 (10.56%) Business Intelligence
11 610 (10.32%) Stakeholder Management
12 585 (9.90%) Continuous Improvement
13 562 (9.51%) Containerisation
14 548 (9.27%) Data Pipeline
14 548 (9.27%) ETL
15 539 (9.12%) Microservices
16 521 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 517 (8.75%) Data Engineering
18 513 (8.68%) Machine Learning
19 473 (8.00%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,541 (26.07%) Python
2 1,349 (22.82%) SQL
3 661 (11.18%) PowerShell
4 507 (8.58%) Java
5 496 (8.39%) C#
6 419 (7.09%) JavaScript
7 239 (4.04%) TypeScript
8 218 (3.69%) Bash
9 182 (3.08%) Bicep
10 96 (1.62%) Scala
11 77 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.29%) Go
13 73 (1.23%) PL/SQL
14 71 (1.20%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.10%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.69%) R
17 33 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 28 (0.47%) C++
19 23 (0.39%) Ruby
20 22 (0.37%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,469 (24.85%) Security Cleared
2 1,210 (20.47%) SC Cleared
3 472 (7.99%) Degree
4 345 (5.84%) Azure Certification
5 204 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 168 (2.84%) CISSP
7 149 (2.52%) Microsoft Certification
8 121 (2.05%) AWS Certification
9 118 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
10 116 (1.96%) DV Cleared
11 105 (1.78%) CISM
12 91 (1.54%) BPSS Clearance
13 71 (1.20%) Master's Degree
14 61 (1.03%) CCNP
15 52 (0.88%) PMP
15 52 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
16 51 (0.86%) PMI Certification
17 47 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 40 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 33 (0.56%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 420 (7.11%) Data Quality
2 362 (6.12%) GDPR
3 317 (5.36%) QA
4 265 (4.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 223 (3.77%) NIST
6 95 (1.61%) Accessibility
7 87 (1.47%) NCSC
8 84 (1.42%) PCI DSS
9 60 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.91%) SLA
12 46 (0.78%) PMO
13 35 (0.59%) GRC
13 35 (0.59%) HIPAA
14 32 (0.54%) WCAG
15 25 (0.42%) SOC 2
16 24 (0.41%) ISO 20022
17 23 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.39%) PSD2
18 19 (0.32%) NIST 800
System Software
1 797 (13.48%) Active Directory
2 700 (11.84%) Docker
3 181 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 90 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
5 83 (1.40%) Hyper-V
6 74 (1.25%) Virtual Desktop
7 68 (1.15%) vSphere
8 26 (0.44%) VMware NSX
9 23 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (0.27%) Firmware
11 14 (0.24%) 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 (0.085%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.085%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.085%) RACF
Systems Management
1 910 (15.40%) Terraform
2 881 (14.90%) Kubernetes
3 338 (5.72%) Microsoft Intune
4 262 (4.43%) Ansible
5 160 (2.71%) Grafana
6 144 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
7 136 (2.30%) Prometheus
8 113 (1.91%) SCCM
9 72 (1.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 45 (0.76%) Argo
11 33 (0.56%) Istio
12 29 (0.49%) Puppet
13 25 (0.42%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
14 21 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 18 (0.30%) FortiGate
16 16 (0.27%) Nmap
17 15 (0.25%) HP ALM
17 15 (0.25%) vRealize
18 14 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 1,924 (32.55%) Microsoft
2 595 (10.07%) Databricks
3 293 (4.96%) Oracle
4 292 (4.94%) Google
5 255 (4.31%) ServiceNow
6 242 (4.09%) VMware
7 171 (2.89%) SAP
8 155 (2.62%) Cisco
9 153 (2.59%) OpenAI
10 133 (2.25%) Splunk
11 119 (2.01%) CyberArk
12 101 (1.71%) Foundry
13 99 (1.67%) Palo Alto
14 80 (1.35%) Okta
15 79 (1.34%) Salesforce
16 70 (1.18%) Red Hat
17 66 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
18 65 (1.10%) IBM
19 63 (1.07%) Citrix
20 61 (1.03%) Informatica