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

6 months to
19 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,855 3,922 5,092
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.82% 16.03% 13.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.76% 42.35% 41.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,192 2,772 3,750
10th Percentile £356 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £533 £543
Median % change year-on-year -1.55% -1.71% -4.07%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.94% -5.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 27 65
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.14 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £24.40 £22.30
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +15.85% -21.26%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £86.00 £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 13,692 9,262 12,173
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.00% 37.85% 32.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,437 6,456 8,774
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 £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 412 171 329
10th Percentile £15.51 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.51 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% +24.01% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £40.75
90th Percentile £79.95 £75.50 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £26.00 £21.37
% change year-on-year +42.31% +21.67% -16.88%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 3,186 £539 -2.00% 1,055
North of England +3 793 £488 +2.63% 595
South East 0 742 £500 -9.09% 684
Midlands -2 467 £500 - 355
North West +1 427 £476 -4.80% 308
West Midlands -2 358 £503 -4.19% 202
South West +5 338 £500 -4.76% 283
Yorkshire -2 317 £500 +11.11% 202
East of England +4 151 £550 -8.33% 190
East Midlands -4 102 £425 -10.53% 151
North East -2 51 £525 +10.53% 92
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
1 276 (4.71%) SharePoint
2 188 (3.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.82%) Apache Spark
4 151 (2.58%) Confluence
5 95 (1.62%) Apache
6 83 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.36%) IIS
8 18 (0.31%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.26%) Appian
9 15 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.26%) Camunda
9 15 (0.26%) SAS
10 14 (0.24%) CMS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.12%) Jupyter
Applications
1 101 (1.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.70%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.10%) Trello
8 5 (0.085%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.085%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.085%) Weka
9 4 (0.068%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.034%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.034%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.034%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 99 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (1.13%) 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%) Dynamics NAV
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%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle Payables
10 4 (0.068%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,060 (35.18%) AWS
2 1,200 (20.50%) Azure DevOps
3 1,172 (20.02%) GCP
4 795 (13.58%) Power Platform
5 750 (12.81%) Entra ID
6 666 (11.37%) Microsoft 365
7 597 (10.20%) GitHub
8 443 (7.57%) Azure Data Factory
9 336 (5.74%) GitHub Actions
9 336 (5.74%) Serverless
10 279 (4.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 245 (4.18%) Dynamics 365
12 241 (4.12%) SaaS
13 221 (3.77%) Power Automate
14 217 (3.71%) Azure Monitor
15 213 (3.64%) Azure AKS
16 208 (3.55%) Azure Functions
17 207 (3.54%) PaaS
18 188 (3.21%) Azure Logic Apps
19 177 (3.02%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 390 (6.66%) Firewall
2 258 (4.41%) DNS
3 217 (3.71%) VPN
4 194 (3.31%) Network Security
5 147 (2.51%) WAN
6 145 (2.48%) DHCP
7 111 (1.90%) LAN
8 89 (1.52%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
10 70 (1.20%) SD-WAN
11 63 (1.08%) Kerberos
11 63 (1.08%) VLAN
12 45 (0.77%) BGP
13 40 (0.68%) OSPF
13 40 (0.68%) Wireless
14 37 (0.63%) HTTP
15 31 (0.53%) SAN
16 30 (0.51%) Internet
17 29 (0.50%) MPLS
17 29 (0.50%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 554 (9.46%) Power BI
2 330 (5.64%) SQL Server
3 316 (5.40%) Data Warehouse
4 279 (4.77%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.54%) Azure SQL Database
5 207 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
6 174 (2.97%) NoSQL
7 136 (2.32%) Metadata
8 123 (2.10%) Delta Lake
9 100 (1.71%) Relational Database
10 91 (1.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 81 (1.38%) Big Data
12 72 (1.23%) MongoDB
12 72 (1.23%) Tableau
13 58 (0.99%) Oracle Database
14 55 (0.94%) BigQuery
15 50 (0.85%) MySQL
16 48 (0.82%) Snowflake Schema
17 46 (0.79%) Redis
18 42 (0.72%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 436 (7.45%) Git
2 398 (6.80%) JIRA
3 279 (4.77%) Jenkins
4 209 (3.57%) GitLab
5 98 (1.67%) Selenium
6 68 (1.16%) Postman
7 60 (1.02%) Cucumber
8 59 (1.01%) JUnit
9 54 (0.92%) JMeter
10 51 (0.87%) MLflow
11 39 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
15 31 (0.53%) Visual Studio
16 27 (0.46%) Artifactory
17 26 (0.44%) TestRail
18 23 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.39%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,692 (28.90%) Social Skills
2 1,093 (18.67%) Finance
3 648 (11.07%) Public Sector
4 590 (10.08%) Analytical Skills
5 340 (5.81%) Banking
6 188 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 124 (2.12%) Legal
8 99 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
10 82 (1.40%) Retail
11 81 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
12 75 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
13 64 (1.09%) Telecoms
14 63 (1.08%) Financial Institution
14 63 (1.08%) Marketing
15 55 (0.94%) Law
16 54 (0.92%) Investment Banking
17 53 (0.91%) Front Office
18 43 (0.73%) Local Government
19 39 (0.67%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 979 (16.72%) Architect
2 809 (13.82%) Developer
3 691 (11.80%) Senior
4 506 (8.64%) Data Engineer
5 505 (8.63%) Azure Engineer
6 446 (7.62%) Lead
7 375 (6.40%) Analyst
8 265 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
9 264 (4.51%) Solutions Architect
10 254 (4.34%) Consultant
11 171 (2.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 163 (2.78%) Cloud Engineer
13 150 (2.56%) Azure Architect
14 148 (2.53%) Security Engineer
15 138 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
16 137 (2.34%) Senior Developer
17 133 (2.27%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 123 (2.10%) Data Architect
19 117 (2.00%) Azure Data Engineer
20 115 (1.96%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 446 (7.62%) .NET
2 400 (6.83%) REST
3 273 (4.66%) React
4 231 (3.95%) Kafka
5 222 (3.79%) PySpark
6 209 (3.57%) Node.js
7 200 (3.42%) RESTful
8 185 (3.16%) Spring
9 175 (2.99%) OAuth
10 165 (2.82%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.54%) HTML
12 142 (2.43%) Spring Boot
13 141 (2.41%) LDAP
14 127 (2.17%) PyTorch
15 126 (2.15%) CSS
16 122 (2.08%) SOAP
17 121 (2.07%) Middleware
18 119 (2.03%) JSON
19 117 (2.00%) SAML
20 113 (1.93%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 535 (9.14%) Cloud Native
2 234 (4.00%) Onboarding
3 212 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 169 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
5 160 (2.73%) Security Posture
6 152 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
7 148 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
8 140 (2.39%) Data Centre
9 118 (2.02%) Public Cloud
10 112 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
11 97 (1.66%) AI Agents
12 78 (1.33%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
13 71 (1.21%) Replication
14 68 (1.16%) Management Information System
15 62 (1.06%) Algorithms
16 58 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
17 52 (0.89%) PKI
18 48 (0.82%) Low-Code
19 47 (0.80%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 635 (10.85%) Windows
2 302 (5.16%) Linux
3 197 (3.36%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 59 (1.01%) VMS
6 52 (0.89%) Unix
7 38 (0.65%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 31 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 25 (0.43%) Android
11 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.26%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.14%) 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 2,173 (37.11%) DevOps
2 1,766 (30.16%) CI/CD
3 1,394 (23.81%) Agile
4 1,005 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
5 898 (15.34%) Analytics
6 834 (14.24%) AI
7 769 (13.13%) Infrastructure as Code
8 756 (12.91%) Migration
9 640 (10.93%) Data Modelling
10 621 (10.61%) Business Intelligence
11 605 (10.33%) Stakeholder Management
12 578 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
13 552 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
14 550 (9.39%) Containerisation
15 547 (9.34%) ETL
16 532 (9.09%) Microservices
17 518 (8.85%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 516 (8.81%) Machine Learning
19 513 (8.76%) Data Engineering
20 466 (7.96%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,530 (26.13%) Python
2 1,348 (23.02%) SQL
3 645 (11.02%) PowerShell
4 495 (8.45%) Java
5 493 (8.42%) C#
6 425 (7.26%) JavaScript
7 239 (4.08%) TypeScript
8 213 (3.64%) Bash
9 178 (3.04%) Bicep
10 94 (1.61%) Scala
11 77 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 75 (1.28%) Go
13 73 (1.25%) PL/SQL
14 68 (1.16%) Kusto Query Language
15 66 (1.13%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.70%) R
17 32 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 28 (0.48%) C++
19 22 (0.38%) PHP
19 22 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,458 (24.90%) Security Cleared
2 1,200 (20.50%) SC Cleared
3 468 (7.99%) Degree
4 338 (5.77%) Azure Certification
5 200 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 168 (2.87%) CISSP
7 149 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
8 118 (2.02%) AWS Certification
9 117 (2.00%) Cisco Certification
10 115 (1.96%) DV Cleared
11 106 (1.81%) CISM
12 89 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
13 71 (1.21%) Master's Degree
14 61 (1.04%) CCNP
15 52 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
16 51 (0.87%) PMP
17 50 (0.85%) PMI Certification
18 45 (0.77%) ISTQB
19 39 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 33 (0.56%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 418 (7.14%) Data Quality
2 359 (6.13%) GDPR
3 313 (5.35%) QA
4 264 (4.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 224 (3.83%) NIST
6 97 (1.66%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.47%) NCSC
8 83 (1.42%) PCI DSS
9 58 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 54 (0.92%) SLA
11 45 (0.77%) PMO
12 34 (0.58%) GRC
13 32 (0.55%) HIPAA
14 30 (0.51%) WCAG
15 25 (0.43%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 23 (0.39%) ISO 20022
17 22 (0.38%) PSD2
18 21 (0.36%) EU AI Act
System Software
1 783 (13.37%) Active Directory
2 689 (11.77%) Docker
3 178 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 89 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
5 79 (1.35%) Hyper-V
6 73 (1.25%) Virtual Desktop
7 68 (1.16%) vSphere
8 25 (0.43%) VMware NSX
9 23 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (0.27%) Firmware
11 13 (0.22%) 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
1 896 (15.30%) Terraform
2 867 (14.81%) Kubernetes
3 329 (5.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 250 (4.27%) Ansible
5 154 (2.63%) Grafana
6 143 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
7 132 (2.25%) Prometheus
8 113 (1.93%) SCCM
9 73 (1.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.75%) Argo
11 31 (0.53%) Istio
12 23 (0.39%) Puppet
13 21 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
13 21 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 21 (0.36%) vCenter Server
14 18 (0.31%) FortiGate
15 16 (0.27%) Nmap
16 15 (0.26%) HP ALM
16 15 (0.26%) vRealize
17 14 (0.24%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 1,893 (32.33%) Microsoft
2 591 (10.09%) Databricks
3 292 (4.99%) Oracle
4 287 (4.90%) Google
5 246 (4.20%) ServiceNow
6 237 (4.05%) VMware
7 169 (2.89%) SAP
8 156 (2.66%) OpenAI
9 148 (2.53%) Cisco
10 131 (2.24%) Splunk
11 119 (2.03%) CyberArk
12 103 (1.76%) Foundry
13 95 (1.62%) Palo Alto
14 79 (1.35%) Okta
14 79 (1.35%) Salesforce
15 69 (1.18%) Red Hat
16 66 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
17 65 (1.11%) IBM
18 63 (1.08%) Citrix
19 57 (0.97%) Informatica