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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,683 4,055 5,119
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.80% 16.11% 13.60%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.31% 42.64% 41.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,041 2,793 3,777
10th Percentile £350 £353 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -2.27% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK median daily rate £524 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -0.24% -0.94% -5.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 106 23 68
10th Percentile £25.47 £23.63 £17.78
25th Percentile £54.66 £24.40 £22.58
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -22.90%
75th Percentile £64.20 £66.88 £60.40
90th Percentile £83.00 £77.44 £72.38
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +76.92% -29.62% -21.26%

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 13,431 9,509 12,275
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.35% 37.78% 32.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,261 6,488 8,860
10th Percentile £310 £313 £274
25th Percentile £409 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £730
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 377 145 325
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.26 £14.18
25th Percentile £20.32 £21.05 £16.06
Median hourly rate £40.00 £27.25 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +46.79% +27.52% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £45.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £79.05 £71.75 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £39.47 £27.13 £21.37
% change year-on-year +45.49% +26.93% -14.52%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 3,082 £545 -0.91% 1,073
North of England 0 747 £496 +2.01% 715
South East -1 706 £500 -8.26% 1,008
Midlands -2 471 £500 -4.08% 416
North West 0 380 £479 -4.28% 351
West Midlands -2 355 £525 -1.87% 217
South West +4 347 £510 -2.95% 374
Yorkshire -3 318 £500 +11.11% 260
East of England -2 156 £558 -3.04% 359
East Midlands -2 114 £437 -7.07% 192
North East -4 53 £525 +9.09% 117
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 (4.94%) SharePoint
2 198 (3.48%) Microsoft Exchange
3 156 (2.75%) Apache Spark
4 146 (2.57%) Confluence
5 83 (1.46%) Apache
6 79 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.26%) Appian
8 15 (0.26%) SAS
9 14 (0.25%) CMS
10 13 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.23%) Camunda
11 10 (0.18%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.18%) IIS
11 10 (0.18%) Mendix
12 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Skype for Business
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 6 (0.11%) WebLogic
Applications
1 106 (1.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.46%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (0.83%) MS Visio
4 42 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 40 (0.70%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.12%) Trello
8 5 (0.088%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.088%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.088%) Weka
9 4 (0.070%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.018%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.018%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.018%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.018%) InDesign
11 1 (0.018%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.018%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 95 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.12%) Endur
7 6 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.088%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.088%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.088%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.088%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.088%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.088%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 4 (0.070%) Cloudability
Cloud Services
1 2,012 (35.40%) AWS
2 1,184 (20.83%) GCP
3 1,123 (19.76%) Azure DevOps
4 775 (13.64%) Power Platform
5 733 (12.90%) Entra ID
6 682 (12.00%) Microsoft 365
7 565 (9.94%) GitHub
8 425 (7.48%) Azure Data Factory
9 319 (5.61%) GitHub Actions
10 318 (5.60%) Serverless
11 267 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (4.29%) Dynamics 365
13 242 (4.26%) SaaS
14 223 (3.92%) Azure AKS
15 215 (3.78%) Power Automate
16 204 (3.59%) Azure Functions
17 201 (3.54%) PaaS
18 200 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
19 183 (3.22%) Azure Logic Apps
20 182 (3.20%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 381 (6.70%) Firewall
2 254 (4.47%) DNS
3 203 (3.57%) VPN
4 174 (3.06%) Network Security
5 150 (2.64%) DHCP
6 132 (2.32%) WAN
7 96 (1.69%) LAN
8 92 (1.62%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
10 67 (1.18%) VLAN
11 65 (1.14%) Kerberos
12 63 (1.11%) SD-WAN
13 40 (0.70%) HTTP
14 37 (0.65%) BGP
15 35 (0.62%) Wireless
16 32 (0.56%) OSPF
16 32 (0.56%) SSL
17 29 (0.51%) Internet
17 29 (0.51%) MPLS
17 29 (0.51%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 539 (9.48%) Power BI
2 323 (5.68%) SQL Server
3 303 (5.33%) Data Warehouse
4 273 (4.80%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.70%) PostgreSQL
6 192 (3.38%) Azure SQL Database
7 166 (2.92%) NoSQL
8 134 (2.36%) Metadata
9 108 (1.90%) Delta Lake
10 103 (1.81%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.30%) MongoDB
13 70 (1.23%) Big Data
14 66 (1.16%) Tableau
15 59 (1.04%) BigQuery
16 58 (1.02%) Oracle Database
17 53 (0.93%) MySQL
18 49 (0.86%) Snowflake Schema
19 47 (0.83%) Redis
20 37 (0.65%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 435 (7.65%) Git
2 391 (6.88%) JIRA
3 274 (4.82%) Jenkins
4 212 (3.73%) GitLab
5 92 (1.62%) Selenium
6 68 (1.20%) Postman
7 58 (1.02%) JUnit
8 54 (0.95%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.88%) JMeter
10 49 (0.86%) MLflow
11 43 (0.76%) SonarQube
12 37 (0.65%) REST Assured
13 35 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
14 32 (0.56%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.51%) Visual Studio
16 28 (0.49%) Artifactory
17 27 (0.48%) TestRail
18 26 (0.46%) Bitbucket
19 24 (0.42%) Maven
20 23 (0.40%) ERwin
General
1 1,721 (30.28%) Social Skills
2 1,046 (18.41%) Finance
3 606 (10.66%) Public Sector
4 576 (10.14%) Analytical Skills
5 341 (6.00%) Banking
6 186 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 107 (1.88%) Legal
8 100 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 83 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
10 81 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
10 81 (1.43%) Retail
11 78 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
12 71 (1.25%) Marketing
13 58 (1.02%) Financial Institution
13 58 (1.02%) Telecoms
14 57 (1.00%) Investment Banking
15 55 (0.97%) Law
16 51 (0.90%) Front Office
17 38 (0.67%) Manufacturing
18 37 (0.65%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 943 (16.59%) Architect
2 799 (14.06%) Developer
3 644 (11.33%) Senior
4 472 (8.31%) Azure Engineer
5 467 (8.22%) Data Engineer
6 421 (7.41%) Lead
7 378 (6.65%) Analyst
8 273 (4.80%) Solutions Architect
9 265 (4.66%) DevOps Engineer
10 254 (4.47%) Consultant
11 159 (2.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 157 (2.76%) Security Engineer
13 155 (2.73%) Cloud Engineer
14 141 (2.48%) Azure Architect
15 138 (2.43%) Senior Developer
16 136 (2.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 128 (2.25%) Platform Engineer
18 115 (2.02%) Data Architect
19 112 (1.97%) Azure Data Engineer
20 108 (1.90%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 442 (7.78%) .NET
2 384 (6.76%) REST
3 270 (4.75%) React
4 215 (3.78%) Kafka
5 209 (3.68%) PySpark
6 206 (3.62%) Node.js
7 198 (3.48%) RESTful
8 174 (3.06%) OAuth
9 169 (2.97%) Spring
10 158 (2.78%) HTML
11 157 (2.76%) AngularJS
12 142 (2.50%) LDAP
13 141 (2.48%) Spring Boot
14 136 (2.39%) PyTorch
15 128 (2.25%) SOAP
16 127 (2.23%) CSS
17 122 (2.15%) Middleware
18 121 (2.13%) TensorFlow
19 118 (2.08%) SAML
20 113 (1.99%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 514 (9.04%) Cloud Native
2 233 (4.10%) Onboarding
3 196 (3.45%) Product Ownership
4 162 (2.85%) Security Posture
5 156 (2.75%) Hybrid Cloud
6 146 (2.57%) Enterprise Software
7 140 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
8 129 (2.27%) Data Centre
9 108 (1.90%) Public Cloud
10 91 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
11 84 (1.48%) AI Agents
12 80 (1.41%) Data Structures
13 76 (1.34%) Replication
14 66 (1.16%) Algorithms
15 65 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 62 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
17 56 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
18 54 (0.95%) Low-Code
19 46 (0.81%) PKI
20 45 (0.79%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 636 (11.19%) Windows
2 307 (5.40%) Linux
3 181 (3.18%) Windows Server
4 117 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 60 (1.06%) Unix
6 56 (0.99%) VMS
7 45 (0.79%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.63%) Apple iOS
10 28 (0.49%) Android
11 22 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.19%) CentOS
15 7 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
15 7 (0.12%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.088%) AIX
17 5 (0.088%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,057 (36.20%) DevOps
2 1,707 (30.04%) CI/CD
3 1,360 (23.93%) Agile
4 1,029 (18.11%) Problem-Solving
5 873 (15.36%) Analytics
6 802 (14.11%) AI
7 736 (12.95%) Infrastructure as Code
8 708 (12.46%) Migration
9 609 (10.72%) Business Intelligence
10 607 (10.68%) Data Modelling
11 592 (10.42%) Stakeholder Management
12 550 (9.68%) Containerisation
13 538 (9.47%) Continuous Improvement
14 520 (9.15%) Data Pipeline
15 519 (9.13%) ETL
16 511 (8.99%) Machine Learning
17 505 (8.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 495 (8.71%) Microservices
19 480 (8.45%) Data Engineering
20 448 (7.88%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,478 (26.01%) Python
2 1,287 (22.65%) SQL
3 640 (11.26%) PowerShell
4 487 (8.57%) C#
5 474 (8.34%) Java
6 441 (7.76%) JavaScript
7 247 (4.35%) TypeScript
8 226 (3.98%) Bash
9 164 (2.89%) Bicep
10 90 (1.58%) Scala
11 77 (1.35%) Go
12 76 (1.34%) PL/SQL
13 70 (1.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 69 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
15 63 (1.11%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.70%) R
17 29 (0.51%) C++
18 28 (0.49%) PHP
18 28 (0.49%) Shell Script
19 20 (0.35%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,394 (24.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,143 (20.11%) SC Cleared
3 459 (8.08%) Degree
4 337 (5.93%) Azure Certification
5 194 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.89%) CISSP
7 154 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
8 123 (2.16%) AWS Certification
9 115 (2.02%) DV Cleared
10 103 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
11 102 (1.79%) CISM
12 83 (1.46%) BPSS Clearance
13 71 (1.25%) Master's Degree
14 54 (0.95%) TOGAF Certification
15 52 (0.92%) CCNP
16 49 (0.86%) PMI Certification
17 46 (0.81%) PMP
18 44 (0.77%) ISTQB
19 35 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 31 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (6.83%) Data Quality
2 353 (6.21%) GDPR
3 296 (5.21%) QA
4 260 (4.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 207 (3.64%) NIST
6 96 (1.69%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.51%) NCSC
8 79 (1.39%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 51 (0.90%) SLA
12 41 (0.72%) PMO
13 36 (0.63%) HIPAA
14 33 (0.58%) GRC
15 28 (0.49%) SOC 2
15 28 (0.49%) WCAG
16 25 (0.44%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.42%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.40%) PSD2
19 20 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 784 (13.80%) Active Directory
2 673 (11.84%) Docker
3 176 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 83 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
5 78 (1.37%) Hyper-V
6 69 (1.21%) vSphere
7 68 (1.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 13 (0.23%) NFS
11 12 (0.21%) Firmware
12 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.12%) KVM
13 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 7 (0.12%) Snort
14 6 (0.11%) GPFS
14 6 (0.11%) Lustre
15 5 (0.088%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.088%) RACF
Systems Management
1 845 (14.87%) Terraform
2 834 (14.68%) Kubernetes
3 336 (5.91%) Microsoft Intune
4 246 (4.33%) Ansible
5 143 (2.52%) Grafana
6 140 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
7 126 (2.22%) SCCM
8 124 (2.18%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.76%) Argo
11 28 (0.49%) Istio
12 25 (0.44%) Puppet
13 21 (0.37%) Progress Chef
14 20 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 19 (0.33%) Nmap
15 19 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 18 (0.32%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.30%) Nessus
18 16 (0.28%) vRealize
19 15 (0.26%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,853 (32.61%) Microsoft
2 577 (10.15%) Databricks
3 302 (5.31%) Oracle
4 288 (5.07%) Google
5 266 (4.68%) ServiceNow
6 234 (4.12%) VMware
7 165 (2.90%) SAP
8 142 (2.50%) Cisco
8 142 (2.50%) OpenAI
9 137 (2.41%) Splunk
10 112 (1.97%) CyberArk
11 93 (1.64%) Salesforce
12 92 (1.62%) Foundry
13 88 (1.55%) Palo Alto
14 78 (1.37%) Okta
15 70 (1.23%) Citrix
16 68 (1.20%) Red Hat
17 63 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
18 62 (1.09%) IBM
19 52 (0.92%) Siemens