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

6 months to
10 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,688 3,993 5,162
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.72% 16.13% 13.55%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.41% 42.50% 41.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,046 2,802 3,792
10th Percentile £350 £352 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -0.46% -4.85%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.94% -5.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 107 25 71
10th Percentile £25.47 £21.42 £17.78
25th Percentile £54.78 £23.80 £22.19
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -21.26%
75th Percentile £66.63 £68.75 £59.98
90th Percentile £82.40 £79.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £31.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +82.54% -31.79% -16.04%

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 13,411 9,396 12,311
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.06% 37.95% 32.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,229 6,505 8,876
10th Percentile £310 £313 £275
25th Percentile £410 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £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 387 155 331
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £19.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.06% +26.19% -16.00%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.39 £43.75
90th Percentile £79.70 £71.75 £64.50
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 10 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 10 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 10 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 3,098 £540 -1.82% 851
North of England +1 741 £492 +0.46% 627
South East -1 728 £500 -9.09% 758
Midlands -3 468 £500 -3.85% 348
North West -1 376 £484 -3.13% 325
West Midlands -3 356 £511 -4.44% 207
South West +5 328 £512 -2.57% 280
Yorkshire -3 317 £488 +5.41% 214
East of England 0 152 £565 -2.59% 254
East Midlands -3 109 £447 -3.87% 138
North East -4 50 £525 +10.53% 97
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
1 279 (4.91%) SharePoint
2 191 (3.36%) Microsoft Exchange
3 156 (2.74%) Apache Spark
4 147 (2.58%) Confluence
5 84 (1.48%) Apache
6 77 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
7 18 (0.32%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.26%) Appian
8 15 (0.26%) CMS
8 15 (0.26%) SAS
9 14 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.25%) Camunda
10 13 (0.23%) IIS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.11%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.11%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 101 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.77%) MS Visio
4 41 (0.72%) Microsoft Project
5 39 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.11%) 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%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 101 (1.78%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 10 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
5 9 (0.16%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.11%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.11%) SAP ERP
8 6 (0.11%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.088%) Dynamics NAV
9 5 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.088%) Salesforce CRM
9 5 (0.088%) SAP BPC
9 5 (0.088%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.070%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.070%) Endur
10 4 (0.070%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.070%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 1,994 (35.06%) AWS
2 1,164 (20.46%) GCP
3 1,150 (20.22%) Azure DevOps
4 781 (13.73%) Power Platform
5 743 (13.06%) Entra ID
6 673 (11.83%) Microsoft 365
7 569 (10.00%) GitHub
8 422 (7.42%) Azure Data Factory
9 325 (5.71%) Serverless
10 323 (5.68%) GitHub Actions
11 264 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 249 (4.38%) Dynamics 365
13 240 (4.22%) SaaS
14 223 (3.92%) Power Automate
15 222 (3.90%) Azure AKS
16 206 (3.62%) Azure Functions
17 205 (3.60%) Azure Monitor
18 203 (3.57%) PaaS
19 185 (3.25%) Azure Logic Apps
20 177 (3.11%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 380 (6.68%) Firewall
2 249 (4.38%) DNS
3 211 (3.71%) VPN
4 174 (3.06%) Network Security
5 146 (2.57%) DHCP
6 138 (2.43%) WAN
7 102 (1.79%) LAN
8 94 (1.65%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.16%) SD-WAN
11 63 (1.11%) Kerberos
11 63 (1.11%) VLAN
12 40 (0.70%) HTTP
13 38 (0.67%) BGP
14 35 (0.62%) Wireless
15 34 (0.60%) OSPF
16 30 (0.53%) Internet
16 30 (0.53%) MPLS
16 30 (0.53%) SAN
17 29 (0.51%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 539 (9.48%) Power BI
2 325 (5.71%) SQL Server
3 297 (5.22%) Data Warehouse
4 266 (4.68%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
6 194 (3.41%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 128 (2.25%) Metadata
9 111 (1.95%) Delta Lake
10 99 (1.74%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 71 (1.25%) Big Data
12 71 (1.25%) MongoDB
13 67 (1.18%) Tableau
14 58 (1.02%) BigQuery
15 56 (0.98%) Oracle Database
16 48 (0.84%) MySQL
17 47 (0.83%) Redis
18 46 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
19 35 (0.62%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 435 (7.65%) Git
2 380 (6.68%) JIRA
3 273 (4.80%) Jenkins
4 207 (3.64%) GitLab
5 92 (1.62%) Selenium
6 67 (1.18%) Postman
7 56 (0.98%) Cucumber
7 56 (0.98%) JUnit
8 50 (0.88%) MLflow
9 48 (0.84%) JMeter
10 38 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 37 (0.65%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.62%) Oracle APEX
13 33 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 31 (0.55%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.49%) Artifactory
16 26 (0.46%) Bitbucket
16 26 (0.46%) TestRail
17 23 (0.40%) SpecFlow
18 22 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,687 (29.66%) Social Skills
2 1,056 (18.57%) Finance
3 623 (10.95%) Public Sector
4 572 (10.06%) Analytical Skills
5 340 (5.98%) Banking
6 182 (3.20%) Documentation Skills
7 113 (1.99%) Legal
8 98 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
10 81 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
11 80 (1.41%) Retail
12 76 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
13 63 (1.11%) Marketing
13 63 (1.11%) Telecoms
14 61 (1.07%) Financial Institution
15 58 (1.02%) Investment Banking
16 56 (0.98%) Law
17 52 (0.91%) Front Office
18 39 (0.69%) Manufacturing
19 38 (0.67%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 947 (16.65%) Architect
2 812 (14.28%) Developer
3 655 (11.52%) Senior
4 482 (8.47%) Azure Engineer
5 462 (8.12%) Data Engineer
6 424 (7.45%) Lead
7 369 (6.49%) Analyst
8 268 (4.71%) Solutions Architect
9 262 (4.61%) DevOps Engineer
10 252 (4.43%) Consultant
11 163 (2.87%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 157 (2.76%) Cloud Engineer
13 153 (2.69%) Security Engineer
14 146 (2.57%) Azure Architect
15 136 (2.39%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
15 136 (2.39%) Senior Developer
16 131 (2.30%) Platform Engineer
17 113 (1.99%) Azure Data Engineer
17 113 (1.99%) Data Architect
18 112 (1.97%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 444 (7.81%) .NET
2 391 (6.87%) REST
3 268 (4.71%) React
4 214 (3.76%) Kafka
5 208 (3.66%) Node.js
6 207 (3.64%) PySpark
7 197 (3.46%) RESTful
8 173 (3.04%) Spring
9 172 (3.02%) OAuth
10 162 (2.85%) AngularJS
11 154 (2.71%) HTML
12 140 (2.46%) LDAP
13 137 (2.41%) Spring Boot
14 133 (2.34%) PyTorch
15 127 (2.23%) CSS
16 125 (2.20%) SOAP
17 123 (2.16%) Middleware
18 119 (2.09%) TensorFlow
19 116 (2.04%) SAML
20 114 (2.00%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 514 (9.04%) Cloud Native
2 238 (4.18%) Onboarding
3 197 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 156 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
5 155 (2.73%) Security Posture
6 145 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
7 139 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
8 132 (2.32%) Data Centre
9 112 (1.97%) Public Cloud
10 100 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
11 92 (1.62%) AI Agents
12 74 (1.30%) Data Structures
13 71 (1.25%) Replication
14 67 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
15 64 (1.13%) Algorithms
16 62 (1.09%) Management Information System
17 55 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 53 (0.93%) Low-Code
19 48 (0.84%) PKI
20 45 (0.79%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 628 (11.04%) Windows
2 297 (5.22%) Linux
3 184 (3.23%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.99%) Windows 10
5 56 (0.98%) VMS
6 54 (0.95%) Unix
7 43 (0.76%) Mac OS
8 35 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 33 (0.58%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.46%) Android
11 22 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.28%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.14%) CentOS
16 7 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
17 5 (0.088%) AIX
17 5 (0.088%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.088%) Solaris
17 5 (0.088%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,082 (36.60%) DevOps
2 1,710 (30.06%) CI/CD
3 1,356 (23.84%) Agile
4 1,008 (17.72%) Problem-Solving
5 878 (15.44%) Analytics
6 816 (14.35%) AI
7 725 (12.75%) Infrastructure as Code
8 710 (12.48%) Migration
9 605 (10.64%) Data Modelling
10 603 (10.60%) Business Intelligence
11 594 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
12 549 (9.65%) Continuous Improvement
13 546 (9.60%) Containerisation
14 522 (9.18%) ETL
15 518 (9.11%) Data Pipeline
16 517 (9.09%) Machine Learning
17 507 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 505 (8.88%) Microservices
19 482 (8.47%) Data Engineering
20 454 (7.98%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,480 (26.02%) Python
2 1,305 (22.94%) SQL
3 639 (11.23%) PowerShell
4 488 (8.58%) C#
5 477 (8.39%) Java
6 429 (7.54%) JavaScript
7 247 (4.34%) TypeScript
8 220 (3.87%) Bash
9 167 (2.94%) Bicep
10 90 (1.58%) Scala
11 76 (1.34%) Go
12 73 (1.28%) PL/SQL
13 72 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 69 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.14%) T-SQL
16 37 (0.65%) R
17 29 (0.51%) C++
18 28 (0.49%) Shell Script
19 23 (0.40%) PHP
20 22 (0.39%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,406 (24.72%) Security Cleared
2 1,155 (20.31%) SC Cleared
3 457 (8.03%) Degree
4 337 (5.92%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.88%) CISSP
7 151 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.14%) AWS Certification
9 117 (2.06%) DV Cleared
10 103 (1.81%) Cisco Certification
11 101 (1.78%) CISM
12 85 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
13 70 (1.23%) Master's Degree
14 53 (0.93%) TOGAF Certification
15 52 (0.91%) CCNP
16 48 (0.84%) PMI Certification
17 46 (0.81%) PMP
18 45 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 36 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 32 (0.56%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 388 (6.82%) Data Quality
2 352 (6.19%) GDPR
3 299 (5.26%) QA
4 262 (4.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 210 (3.69%) NIST
6 99 (1.74%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.42%) NCSC
8 80 (1.41%) PCI DSS
9 54 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
9 54 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 51 (0.90%) SLA
11 41 (0.72%) PMO
12 34 (0.60%) HIPAA
13 30 (0.53%) GRC
14 29 (0.51%) WCAG
15 26 (0.46%) SOC 2
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
1 788 (13.85%) Active Directory
2 673 (11.83%) Docker
3 173 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (1.51%) Virtual Machines
5 76 (1.34%) Hyper-V
6 66 (1.16%) vSphere
7 64 (1.13%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (0.25%) Firmware
11 13 (0.23%) NFS
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
14 6 (0.11%) GPFS
14 6 (0.11%) Lustre
14 6 (0.11%) Snort
15 5 (0.088%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.088%) RACF
Systems Management
1 851 (14.96%) Terraform
2 846 (14.87%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.84%) Microsoft Intune
4 244 (4.29%) Ansible
5 146 (2.57%) Grafana
6 140 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
7 125 (2.20%) Prometheus
8 120 (2.11%) SCCM
9 72 (1.27%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.74%) Argo
11 31 (0.55%) Istio
12 26 (0.46%) Puppet
13 22 (0.39%) Progress Chef
14 20 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 19 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 18 (0.32%) FortiGate
17 16 (0.28%) vRealize
18 15 (0.26%) Kubeflow
18 15 (0.26%) Nmap
19 14 (0.25%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,864 (32.77%) Microsoft
2 572 (10.06%) Databricks
3 293 (5.15%) Oracle
4 289 (5.08%) Google
5 254 (4.47%) ServiceNow
6 231 (4.06%) VMware
7 165 (2.90%) SAP
8 152 (2.67%) OpenAI
9 142 (2.50%) Cisco
10 131 (2.30%) Splunk
11 116 (2.04%) CyberArk
12 97 (1.71%) Foundry
13 87 (1.53%) Salesforce
14 86 (1.51%) Palo Alto
15 79 (1.39%) Okta
16 68 (1.20%) Citrix
17 66 (1.16%) Red Hat
18 64 (1.13%) BeyondTrust
19 63 (1.11%) IBM
20 54 (0.95%) Zscaler