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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,119 4,141 4,807
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.34% 14.91% 14.70%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.35% 39.61% 42.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,985 2,843 3,373
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 £737 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £516 £525
% change year-on-year +1.74% -1.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 158 38 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.11 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.39 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -13.29% -16.63%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.12 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.88 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £42.35 £34.00 £36.75
% change year-on-year +24.56% -7.48% -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 16,052 10,455 11,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.58% 37.65% 34.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,713 7,071 7,707
10th Percentile £320 £306 £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 £638
90th Percentile £720 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 551 252 177
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.35
25th Percentile £17.99 £18.87 £20.50
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -20.30% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.37 £67.23 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £29.07 £31.00
% change year-on-year +11.80% -6.23% -11.43%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 3,729 £550 - 3,934
North of England +8 1,011 £500 +5.26% 1,304
South East +1 906 £525 +5.00% 1,149
Midlands +2 653 £488 -4.88% 712
North West +4 500 £500 +5.26% 715
West Midlands +1 483 £484 -10.32% 438
Yorkshire +4 430 £500 +5.26% 425
South West +2 430 £550 +10.00% 522
East of England +2 190 £510 +2.00% 378
East Midlands +5 161 £500 +8.11% 274
North East +4 94 £500 - 170
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
1 417 (5.86%) SharePoint
2 222 (3.12%) Confluence
3 180 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 163 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 151 (2.12%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (1.45%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
10 16 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 12 (0.17%) nginx
12 12 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.098%) Mendix
15 6 (0.084%) Documentum
15 6 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.070%) Tomcat
Applications
1 106 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 8 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
9 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.070%) Notion
11 3 (0.042%) Houdini
11 3 (0.042%) NUKE
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.028%) Mingle
13 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 116 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) SAP MDG
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.084%) SAP Oil and Gas
8 6 (0.084%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Maximo
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,528 (35.51%) AWS
2 1,491 (20.94%) Azure DevOps
3 1,215 (17.07%) GCP
4 981 (13.78%) Entra ID
5 918 (12.90%) Power Platform
6 770 (10.82%) Microsoft 365
7 701 (9.85%) GitHub
8 414 (5.82%) Azure Data Factory
9 412 (5.79%) GitHub Actions
10 336 (4.72%) Serverless
11 318 (4.47%) SaaS
12 271 (3.81%) Power Automate
13 270 (3.79%) Azure Monitor
14 263 (3.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 261 (3.67%) Dynamics 365
16 251 (3.53%) Snowflake
17 242 (3.40%) Azure AKS
18 235 (3.30%) PowerApps
19 234 (3.29%) Microsoft Copilot
20 205 (2.88%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 478 (6.71%) Firewall
2 382 (5.37%) DNS
3 293 (4.12%) VPN
4 266 (3.74%) Network Security
5 217 (3.05%) DHCP
6 177 (2.49%) WAN
7 167 (2.35%) TCP/IP
8 104 (1.46%) BGP
9 101 (1.42%) LAN
10 90 (1.26%) SD-WAN
10 90 (1.26%) VLAN
11 86 (1.21%) OSPF
12 77 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.88%) SSL
14 59 (0.83%) SAN
15 57 (0.80%) Wireless
16 41 (0.58%) VXLAN
17 37 (0.52%) Internet
17 37 (0.52%) IPsec
17 37 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 622 (8.74%) Power BI
2 420 (5.90%) SQL Server
3 344 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.24%) Data Lake
5 238 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (3.02%) Metadata
7 182 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 151 (2.12%) Azure SQL Database
9 122 (1.71%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.70%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (1.21%) Big Data
13 75 (1.05%) MongoDB
14 72 (1.01%) MySQL
15 58 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 56 (0.79%) Tableau
17 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
18 53 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
18 53 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
19 49 (0.69%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 602 (8.46%) Git
2 488 (6.85%) JIRA
3 391 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 308 (4.33%) GitLab
5 109 (1.53%) Selenium
6 59 (0.83%) Postman
7 50 (0.70%) SonarQube
8 49 (0.69%) Cypress.io
8 49 (0.69%) JUnit
9 46 (0.65%) Cucumber
10 44 (0.62%) Maven
11 42 (0.59%) JMeter
12 40 (0.56%) Visual Studio
13 37 (0.52%) Gradle
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.46%) Claude Code
15 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 30 (0.42%) Bitbucket
17 29 (0.41%) Gatling
18 28 (0.39%) MLflow
General
1 1,983 (27.86%) Social Skills
2 1,386 (19.47%) Finance
3 755 (10.61%) Public Sector
4 721 (10.13%) Analytical Skills
5 429 (6.03%) Banking
6 204 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 201 (2.82%) Retail
8 182 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.06%) Legal
10 95 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 85 (1.19%) Marketing
13 84 (1.18%) Aerospace
14 77 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 76 (1.07%) Investment Banking
16 72 (1.01%) Military
17 71 (1.00%) Organisational Skills
18 69 (0.97%) Law
19 53 (0.74%) Financial Institution
19 53 (0.74%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,329 (18.67%) Architect
2 913 (12.82%) Senior
3 790 (11.10%) Developer
4 605 (8.50%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (8.40%) Lead
6 514 (7.22%) Data Engineer
7 425 (5.97%) Solutions Architect
8 419 (5.89%) Analyst
9 366 (5.14%) DevOps Engineer
10 342 (4.80%) Cloud Engineer
11 284 (3.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 275 (3.86%) Consultant
13 223 (3.13%) Data Architect
14 200 (2.81%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.64%) Security Engineer
16 172 (2.42%) Azure Architect
17 168 (2.36%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 164 (2.30%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 160 (2.25%) Technical Architect
20 159 (2.23%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,226 (17.22%) Terraform
2 575 (8.08%) REST
3 528 (7.42%) .NET
4 327 (4.59%) Kafka
5 252 (3.54%) React
6 246 (3.46%) PySpark
7 243 (3.41%) OAuth
8 223 (3.13%) RESTful
9 193 (2.71%) JSON
10 150 (2.11%) OpenID
11 144 (2.02%) SAML
12 140 (1.97%) OAuth2
13 137 (1.92%) Spring
14 126 (1.77%) Spring Boot
15 125 (1.76%) AngularJS
16 121 (1.70%) HTML
17 119 (1.67%) Node.js
18 118 (1.66%) .NET Framework
19 116 (1.63%) Middleware
19 116 (1.63%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 794 (11.15%) Cloud Native
2 386 (5.42%) Onboarding
3 326 (4.58%) Product Ownership
4 262 (3.68%) Hybrid Cloud
5 255 (3.58%) Enterprise Software
6 253 (3.55%) AI Agents
7 238 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
8 220 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 193 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
10 159 (2.23%) Security Posture
11 151 (2.12%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.83%) Data Structures
13 119 (1.67%) Public Cloud
14 104 (1.46%) PKI
15 96 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
16 95 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
17 88 (1.24%) Replication
18 84 (1.18%) CMDB
19 72 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
20 64 (0.90%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 896 (12.59%) Windows
2 448 (6.29%) Linux
3 335 (4.71%) Windows Server
4 137 (1.92%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.12%) Unix
6 78 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 77 (1.08%) Android
8 72 (1.01%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 55 (0.77%) Ubuntu
11 43 (0.60%) VMS
12 22 (0.31%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.15%) 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 2,585 (36.31%) DevOps
2 2,247 (31.56%) CI/CD
3 1,763 (24.76%) Agile
4 1,277 (17.94%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,257 (17.66%) AI
6 1,216 (17.08%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,043 (14.65%) Migration
8 1,023 (14.37%) Analytics
9 1,002 (14.08%) Problem-Solving
10 830 (11.66%) Continuous Improvement
11 779 (10.94%) Data Modelling
12 762 (10.70%) Roadmaps
13 677 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
14 676 (9.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 672 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
16 643 (9.03%) Technical Leadership
17 640 (8.99%) Containerisation
18 597 (8.39%) Test Automation
19 588 (8.26%) Cybersecurity
20 585 (8.22%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,666 (23.40%) Python
2 1,366 (19.19%) SQL
3 810 (11.38%) PowerShell
4 590 (8.29%) Java
5 524 (7.36%) C#
6 422 (5.93%) JavaScript
7 353 (4.96%) Bash
8 311 (4.37%) Bicep
9 252 (3.54%) TypeScript
10 91 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.90%) Go
13 56 (0.79%) Scala
14 54 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 32 (0.45%) R
17 31 (0.44%) PL/SQL
18 30 (0.42%) Groovy
19 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
20 28 (0.39%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,865 (26.20%) Security Cleared
2 1,486 (20.87%) SC Cleared
3 526 (7.39%) Degree
4 427 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 277 (3.89%) DV Cleared
6 252 (3.54%) CISSP
7 236 (3.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 189 (2.65%) AWS Certification
9 185 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
10 165 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
11 161 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
12 121 (1.70%) CISM
13 84 (1.18%) CCNP
14 79 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 79 (1.11%) PMI Certification
15 75 (1.05%) PMP
16 54 (0.76%) Master's Degree
17 53 (0.74%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.72%) CCSP
19 49 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 518 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 394 (5.53%) QA
3 278 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 273 (3.83%) NIST
5 256 (3.60%) GDPR
6 177 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.39%) SLA
8 92 (1.29%) NCSC
9 79 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
10 78 (1.10%) WCAG
11 73 (1.03%) GRC
12 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
13 55 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 51 (0.72%) PMO
15 44 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 29 (0.41%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.37%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.28%) NIST 800
19 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 932 (13.09%) Active Directory
2 773 (10.86%) Docker
3 223 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.92%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
6 108 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.96%) vSphere
8 54 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) IAG
12 15 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.15%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,071 (15.04%) Kubernetes
2 415 (5.83%) Ansible
3 408 (5.73%) Microsoft Intune
4 225 (3.16%) Grafana
5 171 (2.40%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
7 126 (1.77%) SCCM
8 63 (0.88%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Argo
10 48 (0.67%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
12 35 (0.49%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.45%) SCOM
14 30 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) Istio
17 18 (0.25%) CASB
17 18 (0.25%) Packer
18 16 (0.22%) HAProxy
19 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,612 (36.69%) Microsoft
2 726 (10.20%) Databricks
3 379 (5.32%) ServiceNow
4 327 (4.59%) VMware
5 306 (4.30%) Google
6 287 (4.03%) Oracle
7 232 (3.26%) Cisco
8 198 (2.78%) Splunk
9 188 (2.64%) SAP
10 175 (2.46%) OpenAI
11 159 (2.23%) Salesforce
12 147 (2.06%) CyberArk
12 147 (2.06%) Palo Alto
13 117 (1.64%) Foundry
14 115 (1.62%) Dynatrace
15 84 (1.18%) Zscaler
16 78 (1.10%) IBM
17 77 (1.08%) Fortinet
18 74 (1.04%) Informatica
19 68 (0.96%) MuleSoft