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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,168 4,066 4,829
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.72% 14.71% 14.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.95% 39.58% 43.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,001 2,798 3,517
10th Percentile £367 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £419 £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 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 38 31
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.88 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.50 £40.73 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.28% +16.36% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.50 £72.50 £55.25
90th Percentile £100.68 £96.50 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £41.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +26.66% +18.43% -35.19%

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 15,945 10,274 11,229
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.97% 37.18% 33.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,633 6,952 7,950
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.84% -2.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 552 275 230
10th Percentile £15.94 £15.03 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.31 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £26.30 £24.59
Median % change year-on-year +34.98% +6.95% -23.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.58 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £28.00 £24.92
% change year-on-year +25.00% +12.36% -24.48%

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 14 August 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 14 August 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 14 August 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 3,735 £550 - 1,977
North of England +8 1,045 £500 +5.26% 728
South East +2 934 £525 +5.00% 777
Midlands +3 654 £494 -1.25% 338
North West +8 544 £500 +2.56% 424
West Midlands +3 491 £493 -6.19% 219
South West +5 435 £540 +8.00% 315
Yorkshire +6 419 £500 +5.26% 211
East of England +3 174 £525 -2.33% 191
East Midlands +8 150 £500 +8.11% 119
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 103
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
1 384 (5.36%) SharePoint
2 235 (3.28%) Confluence
3 183 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 159 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 140 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
6 111 (1.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.52%) SAS
8 28 (0.39%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
13 9 (0.13%) nginx
14 8 (0.11%) Mendix
15 7 (0.098%) Camunda
15 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 107 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 28 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.070%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 104 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Maximo
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) Payment Gateway
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Quorum
10 4 (0.056%) Ripple
10 4 (0.056%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,528 (35.27%) AWS
2 1,518 (21.18%) Azure DevOps
3 1,206 (16.82%) GCP
4 960 (13.39%) Entra ID
5 902 (12.58%) Power Platform
6 734 (10.24%) Microsoft 365
7 708 (9.88%) GitHub
8 436 (6.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 433 (6.04%) GitHub Actions
10 309 (4.31%) SaaS
10 309 (4.31%) Serverless
11 283 (3.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 259 (3.61%) Azure Monitor
13 256 (3.57%) Power Automate
14 249 (3.47%) Azure AKS
15 238 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
16 226 (3.15%) Snowflake
17 224 (3.13%) PowerApps
18 220 (3.07%) PaaS
19 202 (2.82%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 487 (6.79%) Firewall
2 374 (5.22%) DNS
3 304 (4.24%) VPN
4 268 (3.74%) Network Security
5 198 (2.76%) DHCP
6 183 (2.55%) WAN
7 165 (2.30%) TCP/IP
8 113 (1.58%) LAN
9 108 (1.51%) BGP
10 92 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 91 (1.27%) VLAN
12 89 (1.24%) OSPF
13 73 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.85%) SAN
14 61 (0.85%) SSL
15 52 (0.73%) Wireless
16 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
17 40 (0.56%) HTTP
17 40 (0.56%) IPsec
18 39 (0.54%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 637 (8.89%) Power BI
2 421 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 364 (5.08%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.23%) Data Lake
5 244 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 189 (2.64%) NoSQL
7 187 (2.61%) Metadata
8 177 (2.47%) Azure SQL Database
9 124 (1.73%) Delta Lake
10 120 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.27%) Big Data
12 86 (1.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 69 (0.96%) MongoDB
14 61 (0.85%) Tableau
15 60 (0.84%) BigQuery
15 60 (0.84%) MySQL
16 58 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
17 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 50 (0.70%) Amazon Redshift
19 48 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 559 (7.80%) Git
2 521 (7.27%) JIRA
3 376 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 296 (4.13%) GitLab
5 113 (1.58%) Selenium
6 59 (0.82%) JUnit
7 56 (0.78%) Postman
8 54 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.73%) JMeter
10 48 (0.67%) Cypress.io
10 48 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 42 (0.59%) WebDriver
12 40 (0.56%) Maven
13 38 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 32 (0.45%) Gradle
15 31 (0.43%) REST Assured
16 27 (0.38%) Bitbucket
16 27 (0.38%) LoadRunner
16 27 (0.38%) MLflow
17 25 (0.35%) MSI
General
1 1,897 (26.46%) Social Skills
2 1,402 (19.56%) Finance
3 773 (10.78%) Public Sector
4 726 (10.13%) Analytical Skills
5 409 (5.71%) Banking
6 199 (2.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 190 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (2.53%) Retail
9 149 (2.08%) Legal
10 82 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.14%) Manufacturing
11 81 (1.13%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.13%) Telecoms
12 72 (1.00%) Law
13 71 (0.99%) Aerospace
14 69 (0.96%) Marketing
15 68 (0.95%) Investment Banking
16 66 (0.92%) Financial Institution
17 57 (0.80%) Military
18 54 (0.75%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,270 (17.72%) Architect
2 921 (12.85%) Senior
3 832 (11.61%) Developer
4 615 (8.58%) Azure Engineer
5 607 (8.47%) Lead
6 540 (7.53%) Data Engineer
7 428 (5.97%) Analyst
8 392 (5.47%) Solutions Architect
9 334 (4.66%) DevOps Engineer
10 322 (4.49%) Cloud Engineer
11 286 (3.99%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 263 (3.67%) Consultant
13 212 (2.96%) Data Architect
14 197 (2.75%) Platform Engineer
15 182 (2.54%) Security Engineer
16 179 (2.50%) Azure Architect
17 170 (2.37%) Project Manager
18 162 (2.26%) Senior Developer
19 155 (2.16%) Technical Architect
20 150 (2.09%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 540 (7.53%) .NET
2 524 (7.31%) REST
3 299 (4.17%) Kafka
4 256 (3.57%) React
5 239 (3.33%) PySpark
6 224 (3.13%) RESTful
7 217 (3.03%) OAuth
8 178 (2.48%) JSON
9 159 (2.22%) Spring
10 147 (2.05%) AngularJS
11 142 (1.98%) Node.js
12 140 (1.95%) SAML
13 133 (1.86%) OpenID
14 126 (1.76%) Spring Boot
15 125 (1.74%) .NET Framework
16 123 (1.72%) OAuth2
17 120 (1.67%) Middleware
18 117 (1.63%) HTML
19 110 (1.53%) SOAP
20 103 (1.44%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 783 (10.92%) Cloud Native
2 364 (5.08%) Onboarding
3 297 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 249 (3.47%) Hybrid Cloud
5 241 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
6 221 (3.08%) Data Centre
7 213 (2.97%) AI Agents
8 203 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
9 200 (2.79%) Enterprise Software
10 170 (2.37%) Security Posture
11 128 (1.79%) Data Structures
12 124 (1.73%) Management Information System
13 123 (1.72%) Public Cloud
14 100 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
15 96 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
15 96 (1.34%) PKI
16 81 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 77 (1.07%) Replication
18 75 (1.05%) CMDB
19 68 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 878 (12.25%) Windows
2 435 (6.07%) Linux
3 308 (4.30%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.67%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.12%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (1.10%) Unix
7 68 (0.95%) Android
8 63 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 61 (0.85%) Apple iOS
10 49 (0.68%) Ubuntu
11 43 (0.60%) VMS
12 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) CentOS
14 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
16 10 (0.14%) Debian
17 6 (0.084%) AIX
17 6 (0.084%) Amazon Linux
18 5 (0.070%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,620 (36.55%) DevOps
2 2,219 (30.96%) CI/CD
3 1,778 (24.80%) Agile
4 1,151 (16.06%) AI
5 1,135 (15.83%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,095 (15.28%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,065 (14.86%) Migration
8 1,027 (14.33%) Analytics
9 978 (13.64%) Problem-Solving
10 808 (11.27%) Continuous Improvement
11 802 (11.19%) Data Modelling
12 708 (9.88%) Data Pipeline
13 700 (9.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 698 (9.74%) Roadmaps
15 685 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
16 638 (8.90%) Containerisation
17 603 (8.41%) ETL
18 598 (8.34%) Microservices
19 590 (8.23%) Test Automation
20 585 (8.16%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,668 (23.27%) Python
2 1,421 (19.82%) SQL
3 782 (10.91%) PowerShell
4 587 (8.19%) Java
5 537 (7.49%) C#
6 415 (5.79%) JavaScript
7 338 (4.72%) Bash
8 286 (3.99%) Bicep
9 241 (3.36%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.10%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.89%) Go
13 52 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
13 52 (0.73%) Scala
14 46 (0.64%) Shell Script
15 33 (0.46%) Kotlin
15 33 (0.46%) PL/SQL
15 33 (0.46%) R
16 30 (0.42%) Groovy
17 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,827 (25.49%) Security Cleared
2 1,467 (20.47%) SC Cleared
3 522 (7.28%) Degree
4 402 (5.61%) Azure Certification
5 246 (3.43%) DV Cleared
6 235 (3.28%) CISSP
7 207 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
9 172 (2.40%) AWS Certification
10 166 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
11 146 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
12 113 (1.58%) CISM
13 90 (1.26%) CCNP
14 77 (1.07%) PMP
15 75 (1.05%) PMI Certification
16 71 (0.99%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 56 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.77%) ISTQB
19 45 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 505 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 379 (5.29%) QA
3 284 (3.96%) GDPR
4 275 (3.84%) NIST
5 272 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 165 (2.30%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.40%) NCSC
8 96 (1.34%) SLA
9 69 (0.96%) GRC
9 69 (0.96%) PCI DSS
9 69 (0.96%) WCAG
10 65 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 58 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 53 (0.74%) PMO
13 31 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 29 (0.40%) HIPAA
15 25 (0.35%) SOC 2
16 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
17 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
18 16 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 909 (12.68%) Active Directory
2 769 (10.73%) Docker
3 215 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 140 (1.95%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
6 102 (1.42%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.89%) vSphere
8 54 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.42%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 15 (0.21%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.098%) Varnish
15 7 (0.098%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,191 (16.62%) Terraform
2 1,060 (14.79%) Kubernetes
3 396 (5.52%) Ansible
4 393 (5.48%) Microsoft Intune
5 225 (3.14%) Grafana
6 184 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 130 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
8 114 (1.59%) SCCM
9 60 (0.84%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.67%) Argo
11 47 (0.66%) Puppet
12 39 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.47%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 28 (0.39%) Istio
16 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
17 21 (0.29%) SCOM
18 20 (0.28%) Packer
19 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
20 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,463 (34.36%) Microsoft
2 682 (9.51%) Databricks
3 372 (5.19%) ServiceNow
4 308 (4.30%) VMware
5 292 (4.07%) Google
6 281 (3.92%) Oracle
7 221 (3.08%) Cisco
8 202 (2.82%) SAP
9 172 (2.40%) Splunk
10 158 (2.20%) OpenAI
11 145 (2.02%) CyberArk
12 142 (1.98%) Palo Alto
13 140 (1.95%) Salesforce
14 114 (1.59%) Foundry
15 110 (1.53%) Dynatrace
16 95 (1.33%) Zscaler
17 75 (1.05%) IBM
18 73 (1.02%) Informatica
18 73 (1.02%) Okta
19 69 (0.96%) Fortinet