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

6 months to
21 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,938 3,926 5,074
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.86% 16.03% 13.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.88% 42.41% 41.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,251 2,783 3,732
10th Percentile £356 £353 £341
25th Percentile £425 £425 £434
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -1.85% -4.72%
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 64
10th Percentile £25.40 £22.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.55 £24.40 £22.24
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 £46.18
% 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 13,849 9,257 12,170
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.99% 37.79% 32.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,550 6,463 8,760
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 £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £711 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 422 172 330
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.93 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.31 £27.13 £21.19
Median % change year-on-year +37.55% +28.04% -15.26%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.48 £40.75
90th Percentile £79.95 £74.88 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £26.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +39.62% +24.01% -16.13%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 3,229 £540 -1.82% 1,018
North of England +3 806 £488 +1.56% 581
South East 0 750 £500 -9.09% 702
Midlands -2 476 £500 -3.85% 369
North West +1 432 £475 -5.00% 287
West Midlands -3 361 £505 -3.90% 207
South West +6 345 £506 -3.67% 299
Yorkshire -1 327 £494 +9.72% 205
East of England +5 154 £550 -8.33% 204
East Midlands -3 107 £425 -10.53% 160
North East -4 49 £525 +10.53% 94
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
1 281 (4.73%) SharePoint
2 190 (3.20%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 158 (2.66%) Confluence
5 95 (1.60%) Apache
6 80 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
8 18 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.25%) Appian
9 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.25%) Camunda
9 15 (0.25%) SAS
10 14 (0.24%) CMS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
13 8 (0.13%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 103 (1.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 44 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.12%) Trello
8 5 (0.084%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.084%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.084%) Weka
9 4 (0.067%) 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 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) 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 (0.084%) Dynamics AX
9 5 (0.084%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.084%) Endur
9 5 (0.084%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.084%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.067%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.067%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.067%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.067%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,081 (35.05%) AWS
2 1,227 (20.66%) Azure DevOps
3 1,176 (19.80%) GCP
4 803 (13.52%) Power Platform
5 766 (12.90%) Entra ID
6 683 (11.50%) Microsoft 365
7 608 (10.24%) GitHub
8 447 (7.53%) Azure Data Factory
9 343 (5.78%) GitHub Actions
10 339 (5.71%) Serverless
11 281 (4.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 246 (4.14%) Dynamics 365
13 241 (4.06%) SaaS
14 223 (3.76%) Power Automate
15 222 (3.74%) Azure Monitor
16 216 (3.64%) Azure AKS
17 209 (3.52%) Azure Functions
18 206 (3.47%) PaaS
19 195 (3.28%) Azure Logic Apps
20 179 (3.01%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 394 (6.64%) Firewall
2 264 (4.45%) DNS
3 223 (3.76%) VPN
4 197 (3.32%) Network Security
5 151 (2.54%) WAN
6 148 (2.49%) DHCP
7 115 (1.94%) LAN
8 91 (1.53%) TCP/IP
9 77 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
10 70 (1.18%) SD-WAN
11 66 (1.11%) VLAN
12 63 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 48 (0.81%) BGP
14 43 (0.72%) OSPF
15 40 (0.67%) Wireless
16 37 (0.62%) HTTP
17 31 (0.52%) SAN
18 30 (0.51%) Internet
19 29 (0.49%) MPLS
19 29 (0.49%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (9.41%) Power BI
2 339 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 320 (5.39%) Data Warehouse
4 279 (4.70%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
6 207 (3.49%) Azure SQL Database
7 177 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 138 (2.32%) Metadata
9 124 (2.09%) Delta Lake
10 101 (1.70%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 81 (1.36%) Big Data
13 73 (1.23%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.23%) Tableau
14 59 (0.99%) Oracle Database
15 53 (0.89%) BigQuery
16 50 (0.84%) MySQL
16 50 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
17 46 (0.77%) Redis
18 44 (0.74%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 445 (7.49%) Git
2 413 (6.96%) JIRA
3 296 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 216 (3.64%) GitLab
5 97 (1.63%) Selenium
6 67 (1.13%) Postman
7 60 (1.01%) Cucumber
8 59 (0.99%) JUnit
9 53 (0.89%) JMeter
10 49 (0.83%) MLflow
11 40 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 38 (0.64%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.57%) Oracle APEX
15 32 (0.54%) Artifactory
16 31 (0.52%) Visual Studio
17 26 (0.44%) TestRail
18 25 (0.42%) Bitbucket
19 23 (0.39%) SpecFlow
19 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,715 (28.88%) Social Skills
2 1,114 (18.76%) Finance
3 653 (11.00%) Public Sector
4 598 (10.07%) Analytical Skills
5 350 (5.89%) Banking
6 191 (3.22%) Documentation Skills
7 125 (2.11%) Legal
8 100 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
10 83 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 79 (1.33%) Retail
12 78 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
13 65 (1.09%) Marketing
13 65 (1.09%) Telecoms
14 64 (1.08%) Financial Institution
15 56 (0.94%) Investment Banking
16 55 (0.93%) Law
17 53 (0.89%) Front Office
18 46 (0.77%) Local Government
19 39 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 987 (16.62%) Architect
2 817 (13.76%) Developer
3 710 (11.96%) Senior
4 509 (8.57%) Azure Engineer
5 501 (8.44%) Data Engineer
6 446 (7.51%) Lead
7 388 (6.53%) Analyst
8 276 (4.65%) DevOps Engineer
9 265 (4.46%) Solutions Architect
10 258 (4.34%) Consultant
11 173 (2.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 164 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
13 150 (2.53%) Azure Architect
13 150 (2.53%) Security Engineer
14 143 (2.41%) Platform Engineer
15 142 (2.39%) Senior Developer
16 131 (2.21%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 123 (2.07%) Data Architect
18 118 (1.99%) Business Analyst
19 115 (1.94%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 450 (7.58%) .NET
2 407 (6.85%) REST
3 276 (4.65%) React
4 236 (3.97%) Kafka
5 220 (3.70%) PySpark
6 210 (3.54%) Node.js
7 204 (3.44%) RESTful
8 187 (3.15%) Spring
9 175 (2.95%) OAuth
10 168 (2.83%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.51%) HTML
12 144 (2.43%) Spring Boot
13 143 (2.41%) LDAP
14 126 (2.12%) CSS
15 125 (2.11%) SOAP
16 124 (2.09%) Middleware
17 123 (2.07%) PyTorch
18 122 (2.05%) JSON
19 118 (1.99%) SAML
20 111 (1.87%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 536 (9.03%) Cloud Native
2 239 (4.02%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.60%) Product Ownership
4 171 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.68%) Security Posture
6 152 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
6 152 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 139 (2.34%) Data Centre
8 123 (2.07%) Public Cloud
9 116 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
10 97 (1.63%) AI Agents
11 80 (1.35%) Data Structures
12 74 (1.25%) Replication
13 71 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
13 71 (1.20%) Management Information System
14 60 (1.01%) Algorithms
15 56 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
16 54 (0.91%) PKI
17 48 (0.81%) Low-Code
18 47 (0.79%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 655 (11.03%) Windows
2 311 (5.24%) Linux
3 202 (3.40%) Windows Server
4 116 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 59 (0.99%) VMS
6 56 (0.94%) 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 (0.35%) 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 (0.084%) AIX
16 5 (0.084%) CentOS
16 5 (0.084%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.084%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.067%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,214 (37.29%) DevOps
2 1,790 (30.14%) CI/CD
3 1,409 (23.73%) Agile
4 1,019 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
5 916 (15.43%) Analytics
6 843 (14.20%) AI
7 782 (13.17%) Infrastructure as Code
8 764 (12.87%) Migration
9 647 (10.90%) Data Modelling
10 628 (10.58%) Business Intelligence
11 611 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
12 587 (9.89%) Continuous Improvement
13 562 (9.46%) Containerisation
14 552 (9.30%) Data Pipeline
15 551 (9.28%) ETL
16 541 (9.11%) Microservices
17 523 (8.81%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 519 (8.74%) Data Engineering
19 514 (8.66%) Machine Learning
20 474 (7.98%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,548 (26.07%) Python
2 1,354 (22.80%) SQL
3 663 (11.17%) PowerShell
4 508 (8.56%) Java
5 498 (8.39%) C#
6 425 (7.16%) JavaScript
7 241 (4.06%) TypeScript
8 219 (3.69%) Bash
9 183 (3.08%) Bicep
10 98 (1.65%) Scala
11 78 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.28%) Go
13 73 (1.23%) PL/SQL
14 72 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.09%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.69%) R
17 34 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 28 (0.47%) C++
19 23 (0.39%) Ruby
20 22 (0.37%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,476 (24.86%) Security Cleared
2 1,215 (20.46%) SC Cleared
3 473 (7.97%) Degree
4 346 (5.83%) Azure Certification
5 204 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 172 (2.90%) CISSP
7 150 (2.53%) Microsoft Certification
8 121 (2.04%) AWS Certification
9 118 (1.99%) Cisco Certification
10 116 (1.95%) DV Cleared
11 107 (1.80%) CISM
12 91 (1.53%) 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 (0.79%) ISTQB
18 40 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 33 (0.56%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 421 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 364 (6.13%) GDPR
3 317 (5.34%) QA
4 265 (4.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 223 (3.76%) NIST
6 98 (1.65%) Accessibility
7 87 (1.47%) NCSC
8 84 (1.41%) PCI DSS
9 60 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
10 58 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.91%) SLA
12 46 (0.77%) PMO
13 35 (0.59%) GRC
13 35 (0.59%) HIPAA
14 32 (0.54%) WCAG
15 25 (0.42%) SOC 2
16 24 (0.40%) ISO 20022
17 23 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.39%) PSD2
18 19 (0.32%) NIST 800
System Software
1 796 (13.41%) Active Directory
2 704 (11.86%) Docker
3 181 (3.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 91 (1.53%) Virtual Machines
5 82 (1.38%) 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 (0.13%) 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 (0.084%) BitLocker
15 5 (0.084%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.084%) RACF
Systems Management
1 912 (15.36%) Terraform
2 887 (14.94%) Kubernetes
3 339 (5.71%) Microsoft Intune
4 261 (4.40%) Ansible
5 161 (2.71%) Grafana
6 146 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
7 138 (2.32%) Prometheus
8 114 (1.92%) SCCM
9 73 (1.23%) 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 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
14 21 (0.35%) 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 1,932 (32.54%) Microsoft
2 597 (10.05%) Databricks
3 295 (4.97%) Oracle
4 292 (4.92%) Google
5 257 (4.33%) ServiceNow
6 242 (4.08%) VMware
7 172 (2.90%) SAP
8 155 (2.61%) Cisco
9 154 (2.59%) OpenAI
10 134 (2.26%) Splunk
11 120 (2.02%) CyberArk
12 101 (1.70%) Foundry
13 99 (1.67%) Palo Alto
14 80 (1.35%) Okta
14 80 (1.35%) Salesforce
15 70 (1.18%) Red Hat
16 66 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.09%) IBM
18 63 (1.06%) Citrix
19 61 (1.03%) Informatica