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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,108 4,160 4,849
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.27% 14.96% 14.72%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.24% 39.65% 42.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,971 2,849 3,392
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £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 £733 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 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 £102.63 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £42.35 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +23.69% -6.83% -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 16,068 10,493 11,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.52% 37.73% 34.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,724 7,098 7,761
10th Percentile £320 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 557 247 174
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.40 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £20.56
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -20.30% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.92 £64.48
90th Percentile £82.30 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £28.50 £31.00
% change year-on-year +14.04% -8.06% -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 19 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 19 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 19 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 3,726 £550 - 3,736
North of England +6 1,006 £500 +5.26% 1,232
South East +1 904 £525 +5.00% 1,123
Midlands +2 651 £493 -3.19% 677
North West +5 494 £500 +5.26% 664
West Midlands +2 484 £488 -9.72% 421
Yorkshire +5 431 £500 +5.26% 403
South West +2 424 £550 +10.00% 501
East of England +3 197 £510 +2.00% 355
East Midlands +4 160 £500 +8.11% 256
North East +1 94 £506 +1.25% 171
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 (5.87%) SharePoint
2 223 (3.14%) Confluence
3 178 (2.50%) Microsoft Exchange
4 166 (2.34%) Apache Spark
5 152 (2.14%) Apache Airflow
6 102 (1.44%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.30%) IIS
10 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
14 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.098%) Mendix
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) Oracle Workflow
17 5 (0.070%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 107 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.83%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) 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%) 1Password
13 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 116 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.84%) 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 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.098%) Shopify
9 6 (0.084%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.084%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.070%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
11 4 (0.056%) Maximo
11 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,517 (35.41%) AWS
2 1,498 (21.07%) Azure DevOps
3 1,223 (17.21%) GCP
4 990 (13.93%) Entra ID
5 918 (12.92%) Power Platform
6 771 (10.85%) Microsoft 365
7 702 (9.88%) GitHub
8 415 (5.84%) Azure Data Factory
9 412 (5.80%) GitHub Actions
10 341 (4.80%) Serverless
11 322 (4.53%) SaaS
12 272 (3.83%) Power Automate
13 271 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
14 265 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 265 (3.73%) Dynamics 365
15 254 (3.57%) Snowflake
16 242 (3.40%) Azure AKS
17 238 (3.35%) Microsoft Copilot
18 234 (3.29%) PowerApps
19 209 (2.94%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 474 (6.67%) Firewall
2 381 (5.36%) DNS
3 291 (4.09%) VPN
4 263 (3.70%) Network Security
5 219 (3.08%) DHCP
6 177 (2.49%) WAN
7 167 (2.35%) TCP/IP
8 103 (1.45%) BGP
9 100 (1.41%) LAN
10 90 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) VLAN
12 84 (1.18%) OSPF
13 77 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.87%) SAN
14 62 (0.87%) SSL
15 57 (0.80%) Wireless
16 40 (0.56%) VXLAN
17 38 (0.53%) IPsec
18 37 (0.52%) Internet
18 37 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 617 (8.68%) Power BI
2 417 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 343 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
4 304 (4.28%) Data Lake
5 234 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
6 216 (3.04%) Metadata
7 183 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 151 (2.12%) Azure SQL Database
9 120 (1.69%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.63%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.22%) Big Data
13 74 (1.04%) MongoDB
14 72 (1.01%) MySQL
15 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
16 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.76%) Tableau
18 53 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
19 52 (0.73%) Amazon RDS
20 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 603 (8.48%) Git
2 486 (6.84%) JIRA
3 395 (5.56%) Jenkins
4 314 (4.42%) GitLab
5 117 (1.65%) Selenium
6 63 (0.89%) Postman
7 53 (0.75%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.70%) SonarQube
10 48 (0.68%) JUnit
11 45 (0.63%) Maven
12 43 (0.60%) JMeter
12 43 (0.60%) Visual Studio
13 38 (0.53%) Gradle
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.46%) Claude Code
15 33 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 32 (0.45%) Bitbucket
17 30 (0.42%) Gatling
18 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,982 (27.88%) Social Skills
2 1,386 (19.50%) Finance
3 751 (10.57%) Public Sector
4 723 (10.17%) Analytical Skills
5 428 (6.02%) Banking
6 208 (2.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 201 (2.83%) Retail
8 178 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
9 140 (1.97%) Legal
10 97 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 85 (1.20%) Marketing
13 84 (1.18%) Aerospace
14 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
15 77 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 74 (1.04%) Military
17 73 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
18 69 (0.97%) Law
19 54 (0.76%) Local Government
20 50 (0.70%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,334 (18.77%) Architect
2 908 (12.77%) Senior
3 786 (11.06%) Developer
4 606 (8.53%) Azure Engineer
5 603 (8.48%) Lead
6 508 (7.15%) Data Engineer
7 424 (5.97%) Solutions Architect
8 414 (5.82%) Analyst
9 364 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
10 346 (4.87%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 273 (3.84%) Consultant
13 222 (3.12%) Data Architect
14 201 (2.83%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.64%) Security Engineer
16 172 (2.42%) Azure Architect
17 169 (2.38%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 163 (2.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 156 (2.19%) Technical Architect
20 155 (2.18%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,229 (17.29%) Terraform
2 579 (8.15%) REST
3 523 (7.36%) .NET
4 336 (4.73%) Kafka
5 248 (3.49%) React
6 247 (3.47%) OAuth
7 242 (3.40%) PySpark
8 225 (3.17%) RESTful
9 191 (2.69%) JSON
10 151 (2.12%) OpenID
11 145 (2.04%) SAML
12 142 (2.00%) OAuth2
13 131 (1.84%) Spring
14 124 (1.74%) HTML
15 123 (1.73%) Spring Boot
16 122 (1.72%) Middleware
17 121 (1.70%) AngularJS
18 117 (1.65%) Node.js
18 117 (1.65%) SOAP
19 116 (1.63%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 793 (11.16%) Cloud Native
2 385 (5.42%) Onboarding
3 325 (4.57%) Product Ownership
4 263 (3.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 258 (3.63%) AI Agents
6 253 (3.56%) Enterprise Software
7 234 (3.29%) Distributed Systems
8 223 (3.14%) Data Centre
9 194 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
10 162 (2.28%) Security Posture
11 154 (2.17%) Management Information System
12 129 (1.81%) Data Structures
13 121 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 107 (1.51%) PKI
15 96 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
16 94 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
17 87 (1.22%) Replication
18 84 (1.18%) CMDB
19 77 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
20 67 (0.94%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 900 (12.66%) Windows
2 453 (6.37%) Linux
3 339 (4.77%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.91%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.17%) Unix
6 80 (1.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 78 (1.10%) Android
8 73 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 67 (0.94%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.79%) Ubuntu
11 43 (0.60%) VMS
12 24 (0.34%) 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
17 8 (0.11%) Debian
18 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 6 (0.084%) SUSE
19 4 (0.056%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,592 (36.47%) DevOps
2 2,251 (31.67%) CI/CD
3 1,755 (24.69%) Agile
4 1,285 (18.08%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,264 (17.78%) AI
6 1,220 (17.16%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,044 (14.69%) Migration
8 1,013 (14.25%) Analytics
9 1,008 (14.18%) Problem-Solving
10 826 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
11 773 (10.88%) Data Modelling
12 762 (10.72%) Roadmaps
13 674 (9.48%) Business Intelligence
14 666 (9.37%) Data Pipeline
14 666 (9.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 643 (9.05%) Containerisation
16 642 (9.03%) Technical Leadership
17 608 (8.55%) Test Automation
18 588 (8.27%) Cybersecurity
18 588 (8.27%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,664 (23.41%) Python
2 1,359 (19.12%) SQL
3 809 (11.38%) PowerShell
4 590 (8.30%) Java
5 527 (7.41%) C#
6 422 (5.94%) JavaScript
7 356 (5.01%) Bash
8 312 (4.39%) Bicep
9 254 (3.57%) TypeScript
10 89 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (1.01%) T-SQL
12 68 (0.96%) Go
13 58 (0.82%) Scala
14 54 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.69%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 30 (0.42%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 26 (0.37%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,855 (26.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,473 (20.72%) SC Cleared
3 526 (7.40%) Degree
4 430 (6.05%) Azure Certification
5 278 (3.91%) DV Cleared
6 252 (3.55%) CISSP
7 234 (3.29%) Microsoft Certification
8 195 (2.74%) AWS Certification
9 179 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
10 165 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
11 160 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
12 123 (1.73%) CISM
13 80 (1.13%) CCNP
14 79 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 79 (1.11%) PMI Certification
15 75 (1.06%) PMP
16 58 (0.82%) ISTQB
16 58 (0.82%) Master's Degree
17 52 (0.73%) CCSP
18 50 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (7.30%) Data Quality
2 399 (5.61%) QA
3 279 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 272 (3.83%) NIST
5 258 (3.63%) GDPR
6 177 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.39%) SLA
8 92 (1.29%) NCSC
9 78 (1.10%) WCAG
10 77 (1.08%) Cyber Essentials
11 73 (1.03%) GRC
12 70 (0.98%) PCI DSS
13 55 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 50 (0.70%) PMO
15 42 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 30 (0.42%) SOC 2
17 27 (0.38%) HIPAA
18 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.28%) NIST 800
20 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 934 (13.14%) Active Directory
2 772 (10.86%) Docker
3 220 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.90%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 109 (1.53%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.97%) vSphere
8 53 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) 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 1,075 (15.12%) Kubernetes
2 418 (5.88%) Ansible
3 408 (5.74%) Microsoft Intune
4 228 (3.21%) Grafana
5 175 (2.46%) Prometheus
6 134 (1.89%) Single Sign-On
7 124 (1.74%) SCCM
8 63 (0.89%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Puppet
10 48 (0.68%) Argo
11 35 (0.49%) FortiGate
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) SCOM
13 30 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.27%) CASB
15 19 (0.27%) Istio
16 18 (0.25%) Packer
17 16 (0.23%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,614 (36.78%) Microsoft
2 728 (10.24%) Databricks
3 381 (5.36%) ServiceNow
4 326 (4.59%) VMware
5 317 (4.46%) Google
6 291 (4.09%) Oracle
7 230 (3.24%) Cisco
8 206 (2.90%) Splunk
9 186 (2.62%) SAP
10 177 (2.49%) OpenAI
11 161 (2.27%) Salesforce
12 149 (2.10%) CyberArk
13 143 (2.01%) Palo Alto
14 117 (1.65%) Dynatrace
14 117 (1.65%) Foundry
15 84 (1.18%) Zscaler
16 81 (1.14%) IBM
17 74 (1.04%) Fortinet
17 74 (1.04%) Informatica
18 68 (0.96%) MuleSoft