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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,816 3,934 5,120
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.79% 16.01% 13.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.68% 42.34% 41.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,147 2,770 3,766
10th Percentile £356 £352 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -1.85% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 27 66
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.14 £17.79
25th Percentile £54.78 £24.40 £22.13
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +16.01% -22.88%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £86.00 £79.22 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -17.90%

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 13,627 9,291 12,227
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.99% 37.82% 32.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,382 6,465 8,817
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 £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £709 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 409 166 326
10th Percentile £15.60 £15.19 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.58 £26.00 £21.19
Median % change year-on-year +44.54% +22.73% -15.26%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.66 £42.06
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.88 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +47.06% +19.33% -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 17 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 17 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 17 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 3,160 £538 -2.23% 1,001
North of England +3 784 £491 +2.19% 596
South East -1 742 £500 -9.09% 678
Midlands -3 464 £500 - 325
North West +1 418 £486 -2.89% 295
West Midlands -1 360 £510 -2.86% 181
South West +5 334 £504 -4.05% 265
Yorkshire -2 317 £488 +8.33% 201
East of England +1 154 £550 -8.33% 196
East Midlands -4 99 £425 -10.53% 143
North East -4 51 £525 +10.53% 108
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
1 277 (4.76%) SharePoint
2 192 (3.30%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.84%) Apache Spark
4 150 (2.58%) Confluence
5 93 (1.60%) Apache
6 82 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
7 20 (0.34%) IIS
8 19 (0.33%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.26%) Appian
9 15 (0.26%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.26%) SAS
10 14 (0.24%) Camunda
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%) Smallworld
14 7 (0.12%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
15 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 105 (1.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.72%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.10%) Trello
8 5 (0.086%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.086%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.086%) Weka
9 4 (0.069%) 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
1 100 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 11 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.14%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
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 (0.086%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.086%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.086%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.086%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.086%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.069%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.069%) Endur
10 4 (0.069%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.069%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 2,036 (35.01%) AWS
2 1,191 (20.48%) Azure DevOps
3 1,167 (20.07%) GCP
4 797 (13.70%) Power Platform
5 756 (13.00%) Entra ID
6 667 (11.47%) Microsoft 365
7 595 (10.23%) GitHub
8 442 (7.60%) Azure Data Factory
9 342 (5.88%) Serverless
10 337 (5.79%) GitHub Actions
11 281 (4.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (4.25%) Dynamics 365
13 241 (4.14%) SaaS
14 223 (3.83%) Power Automate
15 219 (3.77%) Azure Monitor
16 216 (3.71%) Azure AKS
17 212 (3.65%) Azure Functions
18 207 (3.56%) PaaS
19 187 (3.22%) Azure Logic Apps
20 178 (3.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 391 (6.72%) Firewall
2 257 (4.42%) DNS
3 216 (3.71%) VPN
4 192 (3.30%) Network Security
5 148 (2.54%) DHCP
6 147 (2.53%) WAN
7 110 (1.89%) LAN
8 91 (1.56%) TCP/IP
9 77 (1.32%) Wi-Fi
10 69 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 64 (1.10%) Kerberos
12 62 (1.07%) VLAN
13 43 (0.74%) BGP
14 40 (0.69%) Wireless
15 38 (0.65%) HTTP
15 38 (0.65%) OSPF
16 32 (0.55%) SAN
17 30 (0.52%) Internet
18 29 (0.50%) MPLS
19 27 (0.46%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 556 (9.56%) Power BI
2 331 (5.69%) SQL Server
3 315 (5.42%) Data Warehouse
4 277 (4.76%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.61%) Azure SQL Database
6 208 (3.58%) PostgreSQL
7 177 (3.04%) NoSQL
8 134 (2.30%) Metadata
9 121 (2.08%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.69%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 79 (1.36%) Big Data
13 73 (1.26%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.26%) Tableau
14 60 (1.03%) Oracle Database
15 55 (0.95%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.93%) MySQL
17 48 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
18 46 (0.79%) Redis
19 41 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 441 (7.58%) Git
2 391 (6.72%) JIRA
3 278 (4.78%) Jenkins
4 209 (3.59%) GitLab
5 99 (1.70%) Selenium
6 70 (1.20%) Postman
7 58 (1.00%) Cucumber
7 58 (1.00%) JUnit
8 54 (0.93%) JMeter
9 51 (0.88%) MLflow
10 38 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 37 (0.64%) SonarQube
12 36 (0.62%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
14 31 (0.53%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.48%) Artifactory
16 26 (0.45%) TestRail
17 25 (0.43%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.40%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.40%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,688 (29.02%) Social Skills
2 1,085 (18.66%) Finance
3 640 (11.00%) Public Sector
4 594 (10.21%) Analytical Skills
5 338 (5.81%) Banking
6 191 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
7 118 (2.03%) Legal
8 102 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
10 83 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
11 81 (1.39%) Retail
12 76 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
13 64 (1.10%) Telecoms
14 63 (1.08%) Marketing
15 61 (1.05%) Financial Institution
16 55 (0.95%) Investment Banking
17 53 (0.91%) Law
18 52 (0.89%) Front Office
19 43 (0.74%) Local Government
20 38 (0.65%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 975 (16.76%) Architect
2 807 (13.88%) Developer
3 677 (11.64%) Senior
4 502 (8.63%) Azure Engineer
5 499 (8.58%) Data Engineer
6 443 (7.62%) Lead
7 370 (6.36%) Analyst
8 264 (4.54%) Solutions Architect
9 263 (4.52%) DevOps Engineer
10 255 (4.38%) Consultant
11 173 (2.97%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 163 (2.80%) Cloud Engineer
13 152 (2.61%) Azure Architect
14 148 (2.54%) Security Engineer
15 136 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
15 136 (2.34%) Senior Developer
16 131 (2.25%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 121 (2.08%) Data Architect
18 117 (2.01%) Azure Data Engineer
19 113 (1.94%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 446 (7.67%) .NET
2 399 (6.86%) REST
3 270 (4.64%) React
4 231 (3.97%) Kafka
5 221 (3.80%) PySpark
6 212 (3.65%) Node.js
7 200 (3.44%) RESTful
8 180 (3.09%) Spring
9 175 (3.01%) OAuth
10 163 (2.80%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.56%) HTML
12 141 (2.42%) LDAP
13 140 (2.41%) Spring Boot
14 128 (2.20%) PyTorch
15 126 (2.17%) CSS
16 124 (2.13%) Middleware
16 124 (2.13%) SOAP
17 118 (2.03%) SAML
18 117 (2.01%) JSON
19 114 (1.96%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 537 (9.23%) Cloud Native
2 233 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 207 (3.56%) Product Ownership
4 164 (2.82%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.73%) Security Posture
6 149 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 144 (2.48%) Enterprise Software
8 139 (2.39%) Data Centre
9 114 (1.96%) Public Cloud
10 104 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
11 95 (1.63%) AI Agents
12 77 (1.32%) Data Structures
13 74 (1.27%) Replication
14 68 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
15 67 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 64 (1.10%) Algorithms
17 55 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 51 (0.88%) PKI
19 48 (0.83%) Low-Code
20 46 (0.79%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 627 (10.78%) Windows
2 300 (5.16%) Linux
3 196 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 58 (1.00%) VMS
6 55 (0.95%) Unix
7 36 (0.62%) Mac OS
8 35 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 32 (0.55%) Apple iOS
10 25 (0.43%) Android
11 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.28%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.12%) CentOS
15 7 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
16 5 (0.086%) AIX
16 5 (0.086%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
17 4 (0.069%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,153 (37.02%) DevOps
2 1,748 (30.06%) CI/CD
3 1,385 (23.81%) Agile
4 1,015 (17.45%) Problem-Solving
5 900 (15.47%) Analytics
6 823 (14.15%) AI
7 756 (13.00%) Infrastructure as Code
8 752 (12.93%) Migration
9 634 (10.90%) Data Modelling
10 625 (10.75%) Business Intelligence
11 603 (10.37%) Stakeholder Management
12 571 (9.82%) Continuous Improvement
13 549 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
14 548 (9.42%) Containerisation
15 547 (9.41%) ETL
16 520 (8.94%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 519 (8.92%) Microservices
18 514 (8.84%) Machine Learning
19 506 (8.70%) Data Engineering
20 460 (7.91%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,523 (26.19%) Python
2 1,346 (23.14%) SQL
3 646 (11.11%) PowerShell
4 489 (8.41%) C#
5 481 (8.27%) Java
6 427 (7.34%) JavaScript
7 241 (4.14%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.73%) Bash
9 179 (3.08%) Bicep
10 94 (1.62%) Scala
11 75 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.27%) Go
13 72 (1.24%) PL/SQL
14 68 (1.17%) Kusto Query Language
14 68 (1.17%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.69%) R
16 32 (0.55%) Shell Script
17 25 (0.43%) C++
18 22 (0.38%) PHP
18 22 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,434 (24.66%) Security Cleared
2 1,179 (20.27%) SC Cleared
3 465 (8.00%) Degree
4 337 (5.79%) Azure Certification
5 199 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 170 (2.92%) CISSP
7 149 (2.56%) Microsoft Certification
8 121 (2.08%) AWS Certification
9 114 (1.96%) DV Cleared
10 111 (1.91%) Cisco Certification
11 107 (1.84%) CISM
12 86 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
13 73 (1.26%) Master's Degree
14 58 (1.00%) CCNP
15 52 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
16 51 (0.88%) PMI Certification
16 51 (0.88%) PMP
17 48 (0.83%) ISTQB
18 38 (0.65%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.58%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 414 (7.12%) Data Quality
2 364 (6.26%) GDPR
3 311 (5.35%) QA
4 266 (4.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 224 (3.85%) NIST
6 95 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.48%) NCSC
8 83 (1.43%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 53 (0.91%) SLA
12 44 (0.76%) PMO
13 33 (0.57%) GRC
14 32 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 29 (0.50%) WCAG
16 24 (0.41%) EU AI Act
16 24 (0.41%) ISO 20022
16 24 (0.41%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.40%) PSD2
18 21 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 787 (13.53%) Active Directory
2 682 (11.73%) Docker
3 176 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 87 (1.50%) Virtual Machines
5 79 (1.36%) Hyper-V
6 69 (1.19%) Virtual Desktop
7 68 (1.17%) vSphere
8 24 (0.41%) VMware NSX
9 22 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
10 16 (0.28%) Firmware
11 13 (0.22%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.12%) KVM
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
14 6 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.10%) Snort
15 5 (0.086%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.086%) RACF
Systems Management
1 888 (15.27%) Terraform
2 859 (14.77%) Kubernetes
3 325 (5.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 250 (4.30%) Ansible
5 154 (2.65%) Grafana
6 144 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
7 132 (2.27%) Prometheus
8 111 (1.91%) SCCM
9 75 (1.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.74%) Argo
11 31 (0.53%) Istio
12 26 (0.45%) Puppet
13 23 (0.40%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
16 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
17 16 (0.28%) Nmap
17 16 (0.28%) vRealize
18 15 (0.26%) HP ALM
19 14 (0.24%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 1,880 (32.32%) Microsoft
2 588 (10.11%) Databricks
3 294 (5.06%) Oracle
4 292 (5.02%) Google
5 251 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 235 (4.04%) VMware
7 166 (2.85%) SAP
8 153 (2.63%) OpenAI
9 144 (2.48%) Cisco
10 132 (2.27%) Splunk
11 118 (2.03%) CyberArk
12 103 (1.77%) Foundry
13 91 (1.56%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.41%) Okta
14 82 (1.41%) Salesforce
15 70 (1.20%) Red Hat
16 65 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
17 64 (1.10%) IBM
18 63 (1.08%) Citrix
19 57 (0.98%) Informatica