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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,043 4,293 4,765
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.23% 15.34% 14.76%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.19% 39.98% 42.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,906 2,945 3,256
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £441 £413 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £529 £519 £525
% change year-on-year +1.93% -1.24% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 40 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £24.22 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £64.77 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.34 £89.38 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £33.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +18.32% -4.61% -24.21%

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 15,939 10,738 11,261
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.46% 38.37% 34.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,607 7,248 7,525
10th Percentile £322 £303 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.48% -4.29% -3.67%
75th Percentile £631 £625 £640
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 570 253 161
10th Percentile £15.37 £15.04 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £22.50
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +8.29%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +19.28% -28.14% +6.06%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 0 3,721 £550 - 3,429
North of England +4 1,012 £500 +5.26% 1,076
South East +1 897 £525 +5.00% 822
Midlands +1 627 £500 -4.03% 542
North West +4 489 £500 +5.26% 552
West Midlands +2 482 £488 -11.36% 347
Yorkshire +5 433 £500 +1.73% 379
South West +2 401 £550 +7.42% 417
East of England -1 188 £505 +0.50% 300
East Midlands +2 141 £500 +8.11% 195
North East +2 103 £506 +1.25% 152
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
1 409 (5.81%) SharePoint
2 232 (3.29%) Confluence
3 173 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 170 (2.41%) Apache Spark
5 143 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.55%) Apache
7 32 (0.45%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) CMS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
10 14 (0.20%) nginx
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.099%) Mendix
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
16 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 108 (1.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 61 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.53%) Chatbot
6 36 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 12 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.099%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.099%) Revit
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) Mingle
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) 1Password
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 114 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 5 (0.071%) Maximo
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.057%) Quorum
10 4 (0.057%) Ripple
10 4 (0.057%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.057%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,473 (35.11%) AWS
2 1,502 (21.33%) Azure DevOps
3 1,244 (17.66%) GCP
4 1,022 (14.51%) Entra ID
5 922 (13.09%) Power Platform
6 781 (11.09%) Microsoft 365
7 727 (10.32%) GitHub
8 418 (5.93%) GitHub Actions
9 403 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
10 338 (4.80%) Serverless
11 315 (4.47%) SaaS
12 283 (4.02%) Azure Monitor
13 270 (3.83%) Power Automate
14 269 (3.82%) Dynamics 365
15 259 (3.68%) Snowflake
16 254 (3.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 239 (3.39%) PowerApps
18 238 (3.38%) Azure AKS
19 236 (3.35%) Microsoft Copilot
20 207 (2.94%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 472 (6.70%) Firewall
2 382 (5.42%) DNS
3 291 (4.13%) VPN
4 267 (3.79%) Network Security
5 221 (3.14%) DHCP
6 166 (2.36%) WAN
7 165 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.41%) BGP
9 91 (1.29%) LAN
10 87 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.15%) OSPF
12 76 (1.08%) VLAN
13 72 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 59 (0.84%) Wireless
15 57 (0.81%) SAN
16 56 (0.80%) SSL
17 39 (0.55%) VXLAN
18 38 (0.54%) MPLS
19 37 (0.53%) HTTP
19 37 (0.53%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 611 (8.68%) Power BI
2 411 (5.84%) SQL Server
3 335 (4.76%) Data Warehouse
4 301 (4.27%) Data Lake
5 233 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
6 217 (3.08%) Metadata
7 180 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 159 (2.26%) Azure SQL Database
9 122 (1.73%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.70%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 90 (1.28%) MySQL
13 83 (1.18%) Big Data
14 74 (1.05%) MongoDB
15 60 (0.85%) Amazon RDS
16 57 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
17 56 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.72%) Redis
18 51 (0.72%) Tableau
19 49 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 621 (8.82%) Git
2 491 (6.97%) JIRA
3 397 (5.64%) Jenkins
4 312 (4.43%) GitLab
5 123 (1.75%) Selenium
6 67 (0.95%) Postman
7 64 (0.91%) Cucumber
8 52 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.70%) JUnit
10 48 (0.68%) JMeter
11 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
12 45 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 42 (0.60%) Maven
14 40 (0.57%) Claude Code
15 39 (0.55%) Gradle
16 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.48%) Bitbucket
18 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
19 30 (0.43%) LoadRunner
20 27 (0.38%) Gatling
General
1 1,988 (28.23%) Social Skills
2 1,419 (20.15%) Finance
3 748 (10.62%) Public Sector
4 721 (10.24%) Analytical Skills
5 457 (6.49%) Banking
6 206 (2.92%) Retail
7 202 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 166 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (1.95%) Legal
10 99 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 98 (1.39%) Manufacturing
12 89 (1.26%) Investment Banking
12 89 (1.26%) Marketing
13 88 (1.25%) Aerospace
14 78 (1.11%) Telecoms
15 76 (1.08%) Military
16 66 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
17 61 (0.87%) Law
18 57 (0.81%) Billing
19 54 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,326 (18.83%) Architect
2 919 (13.05%) Senior
3 797 (11.32%) Developer
4 603 (8.56%) Lead
5 586 (8.32%) Azure Engineer
6 504 (7.16%) Data Engineer
7 425 (6.03%) Solutions Architect
8 392 (5.57%) Analyst
9 362 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 353 (5.01%) Cloud Engineer
11 291 (4.13%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 277 (3.93%) Consultant
13 221 (3.14%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
15 185 (2.63%) Security Engineer
16 177 (2.51%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 170 (2.41%) Azure Architect
18 161 (2.29%) Project Manager
19 160 (2.27%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 150 (2.13%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,237 (17.56%) Terraform
2 628 (8.92%) REST
3 528 (7.50%) .NET
4 343 (4.87%) Kafka
5 272 (3.86%) React
6 254 (3.61%) OAuth
7 237 (3.37%) PySpark
8 228 (3.24%) RESTful
9 198 (2.81%) JSON
10 156 (2.21%) OpenID
11 149 (2.12%) OAuth2
12 144 (2.04%) SAML
13 140 (1.99%) HTML
14 130 (1.85%) Middleware
15 129 (1.83%) SOAP
16 125 (1.77%) Spring
17 124 (1.76%) AngularJS
18 120 (1.70%) ARM Templates
19 119 (1.69%) Spring Boot
20 115 (1.63%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 794 (11.27%) Cloud Native
2 386 (5.48%) Onboarding
3 341 (4.84%) Product Ownership
4 282 (4.00%) Enterprise Software
5 274 (3.89%) AI Agents
6 262 (3.72%) Hybrid Cloud
7 243 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
8 231 (3.28%) Data Centre
9 193 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
10 164 (2.33%) Management Information System
11 163 (2.31%) Security Posture
12 130 (1.85%) Data Structures
13 114 (1.62%) Public Cloud
14 113 (1.60%) PKI
15 96 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
16 90 (1.28%) CMDB
16 90 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
17 79 (1.12%) Replication
18 74 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
19 67 (0.95%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 888 (12.61%) Windows
2 474 (6.73%) Linux
3 350 (4.97%) Windows Server
4 145 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.15%) Unix
6 78 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 75 (1.06%) Android
8 70 (0.99%) Apple iOS
9 56 (0.80%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.80%) Ubuntu
10 39 (0.55%) VMS
11 26 (0.37%) CentOS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 6 (0.085%) AIX
16 6 (0.085%) Debian
17 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
17 4 (0.057%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,595 (36.85%) DevOps
2 2,269 (32.22%) CI/CD
3 1,754 (24.90%) Agile
4 1,346 (19.11%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,266 (17.98%) AI
6 1,236 (17.55%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,058 (15.02%) Migration
8 1,016 (14.43%) Problem-Solving
9 995 (14.13%) Analytics
10 853 (12.11%) Continuous Improvement
11 787 (11.17%) Roadmaps
12 753 (10.69%) Data Modelling
13 672 (9.54%) Business Intelligence
14 660 (9.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 653 (9.27%) Data Pipeline
16 645 (9.16%) Technical Leadership
16 645 (9.16%) Test Automation
17 622 (8.83%) Containerisation
18 610 (8.66%) Cybersecurity
19 603 (8.56%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,687 (23.95%) Python
2 1,364 (19.37%) SQL
3 839 (11.91%) PowerShell
4 575 (8.16%) Java
5 535 (7.60%) C#
6 448 (6.36%) JavaScript
7 377 (5.35%) Bash
8 325 (4.61%) Bicep
9 273 (3.88%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.99%) Go
13 57 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
14 53 (0.75%) Scala
15 51 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) C++
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,840 (26.13%) Security Cleared
2 1,459 (20.72%) SC Cleared
3 531 (7.54%) Degree
4 416 (5.91%) Azure Certification
5 287 (4.07%) DV Cleared
6 246 (3.49%) CISSP
7 229 (3.25%) Microsoft Certification
8 204 (2.90%) AWS Certification
9 172 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
9 172 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
10 169 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
11 124 (1.76%) CISM
12 85 (1.21%) PMI Certification
13 82 (1.16%) PMP
14 78 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 73 (1.04%) CCNP
16 60 (0.85%) Master's Degree
17 56 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 53 (0.75%) CCSP
19 52 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 532 (7.55%) Data Quality
2 410 (5.82%) QA
3 273 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 255 (3.62%) NIST
5 248 (3.52%) GDPR
6 178 (2.53%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.42%) SLA
8 88 (1.25%) NCSC
9 76 (1.08%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
10 72 (1.02%) GRC
11 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
12 49 (0.70%) PMO
13 47 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 42 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 34 (0.48%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.33%) HIPAA
17 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
17 20 (0.28%) COBIT
17 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 930 (13.20%) Active Directory
2 769 (10.92%) Docker
3 226 (3.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 133 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.99%) vSphere
8 47 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.37%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.28%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.13%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.099%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,074 (15.25%) Kubernetes
2 423 (6.01%) Ansible
3 412 (5.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (3.37%) Grafana
5 176 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 138 (1.96%) SCCM
7 127 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 61 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 52 (0.74%) Argo
10 47 (0.67%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.45%) SCOM
13 30 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) CASB
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.24%) Packer
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
19 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,657 (37.73%) Microsoft
2 730 (10.36%) Databricks
3 365 (5.18%) ServiceNow
4 337 (4.78%) Google
5 322 (4.57%) VMware
6 287 (4.07%) Oracle
7 216 (3.07%) Cisco
8 204 (2.90%) Splunk
9 186 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 186 (2.64%) SAP
10 168 (2.39%) Salesforce
11 145 (2.06%) Palo Alto
12 141 (2.00%) CyberArk
13 127 (1.80%) Dynatrace
14 112 (1.59%) Foundry
15 84 (1.19%) IBM
16 82 (1.16%) Zscaler
17 75 (1.06%) Fortinet
18 65 (0.92%) Informatica
18 65 (0.92%) Okta