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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,050 4,141 4,807
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.29% 14.91% 14.70%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.30% 39.61% 42.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,935 2,843 3,373
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £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 £737 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £516 £525
% change year-on-year +1.74% -1.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 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 £103.13 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £34.00 £36.75
% change year-on-year +16.18% -7.48% -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 15,915 10,455 11,304
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.52% 37.65% 34.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,616 7,071 7,707
10th Percentile £320 £306 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £720 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 545 252 177
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.35
25th Percentile £17.97 £18.87 £20.50
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -20.30% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.32 £67.23 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £29.07 £31.00
% change year-on-year +11.80% -6.23% -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 16 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 16 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 16 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 3,688 £550 - 4,473
North of England +8 1,000 £500 +5.26% 1,470
South East +1 900 £525 +5.00% 1,260
Midlands +2 649 £488 -4.88% 781
North West +4 493 £500 +5.26% 821
West Midlands +1 481 £479 -11.30% 488
Yorkshire +4 426 £500 +5.26% 479
South West +2 426 £550 +10.00% 585
East of England +3 187 £510 +2.00% 419
East Midlands +5 159 £500 +8.11% 293
North East +4 94 £500 - 177
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
1 415 (5.89%) SharePoint
2 221 (3.13%) Confluence
3 179 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 162 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 151 (2.14%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (1.46%) Apache
7 40 (0.57%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.30%) IIS
10 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
13 12 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.099%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.099%) Mendix
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 6 (0.085%) Oracle Workflow
17 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 104 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.50%) Chatbot
6 30 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.16%) Trello
9 8 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
9 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 3 (0.043%) Houdini
11 3 (0.043%) NUKE
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 2 (0.028%) Mingle
13 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 115 (1.63%) Dynamics CRM
2 57 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.099%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.099%) Shopify
8 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.085%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.085%) SAP Oil and Gas
8 6 (0.085%) Workday HCM
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.057%) Endur
10 4 (0.057%) Maximo
10 4 (0.057%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,503 (35.50%) AWS
2 1,481 (21.01%) Azure DevOps
3 1,202 (17.05%) GCP
4 967 (13.72%) Entra ID
5 915 (12.98%) Power Platform
6 765 (10.85%) Microsoft 365
7 698 (9.90%) GitHub
8 410 (5.82%) Azure Data Factory
8 410 (5.82%) GitHub Actions
9 334 (4.74%) Serverless
10 318 (4.51%) SaaS
11 271 (3.84%) Power Automate
12 263 (3.73%) Azure Monitor
13 260 (3.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 260 (3.69%) Dynamics 365
14 249 (3.53%) Snowflake
15 242 (3.43%) Azure AKS
16 235 (3.33%) PowerApps
17 232 (3.29%) Microsoft Copilot
18 203 (2.88%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 475 (6.74%) Firewall
2 377 (5.35%) DNS
3 291 (4.13%) VPN
4 264 (3.74%) Network Security
5 214 (3.04%) DHCP
6 174 (2.47%) WAN
7 165 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 102 (1.45%) BGP
9 98 (1.39%) LAN
10 88 (1.25%) SD-WAN
10 88 (1.25%) VLAN
11 84 (1.19%) OSPF
12 77 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
13 63 (0.89%) SSL
14 58 (0.82%) SAN
15 56 (0.79%) Wireless
16 41 (0.58%) VXLAN
17 37 (0.52%) IPsec
18 36 (0.51%) HTTP
18 36 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 619 (8.78%) Power BI
2 418 (5.93%) SQL Server
3 344 (4.88%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.28%) Data Lake
5 236 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 212 (3.01%) Metadata
7 182 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 150 (2.13%) Azure SQL Database
9 119 (1.69%) Delta Lake
9 119 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 89 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 86 (1.22%) Big Data
12 75 (1.06%) MongoDB
13 72 (1.02%) MySQL
14 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
15 55 (0.78%) BigQuery
15 55 (0.78%) Tableau
16 52 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
17 51 (0.72%) Snowflake Schema
18 48 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 591 (8.38%) Git
2 484 (6.87%) JIRA
3 388 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 305 (4.33%) GitLab
5 108 (1.53%) Selenium
6 58 (0.82%) Postman
7 50 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 49 (0.70%) JUnit
9 48 (0.68%) Cypress.io
10 46 (0.65%) Cucumber
11 44 (0.62%) Maven
12 42 (0.60%) JMeter
13 39 (0.55%) Visual Studio
14 37 (0.52%) Gradle
15 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.47%) Claude Code
16 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
17 29 (0.41%) Gatling
18 28 (0.40%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.40%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,965 (27.87%) Social Skills
2 1,373 (19.48%) Finance
3 748 (10.61%) Public Sector
4 716 (10.16%) Analytical Skills
5 420 (5.96%) Banking
6 204 (2.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 200 (2.84%) Retail
8 182 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.09%) Legal
10 95 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 84 (1.19%) Marketing
13 83 (1.18%) Aerospace
14 77 (1.09%) Telecoms
15 73 (1.04%) Investment Banking
16 71 (1.01%) Military
16 71 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
17 68 (0.96%) Law
18 53 (0.75%) Financial Institution
18 53 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,316 (18.67%) Architect
2 901 (12.78%) Senior
3 785 (11.13%) Developer
4 597 (8.47%) Azure Engineer
5 594 (8.43%) Lead
6 506 (7.18%) Data Engineer
7 418 (5.93%) Solutions Architect
8 414 (5.87%) Analyst
9 361 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
10 341 (4.84%) Cloud Engineer
11 283 (4.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 275 (3.90%) Consultant
13 223 (3.16%) Data Architect
14 199 (2.82%) Platform Engineer
15 185 (2.62%) Security Engineer
16 172 (2.44%) Azure Architect
17 166 (2.35%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 160 (2.27%) Technical Architect
19 159 (2.26%) Project Manager
20 158 (2.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,213 (17.21%) Terraform
2 568 (8.06%) REST
3 523 (7.42%) .NET
4 325 (4.61%) Kafka
5 250 (3.55%) React
6 243 (3.45%) PySpark
7 239 (3.39%) OAuth
8 220 (3.12%) RESTful
9 190 (2.70%) JSON
10 149 (2.11%) OpenID
11 142 (2.01%) SAML
12 137 (1.94%) OAuth2
12 137 (1.94%) Spring
13 126 (1.79%) Spring Boot
14 123 (1.74%) AngularJS
15 121 (1.72%) HTML
16 116 (1.65%) Node.js
17 115 (1.63%) .NET Framework
17 115 (1.63%) SOAP
18 113 (1.60%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 781 (11.08%) Cloud Native
2 378 (5.36%) Onboarding
3 324 (4.60%) Product Ownership
4 261 (3.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 252 (3.57%) Enterprise Software
6 246 (3.49%) AI Agents
7 234 (3.32%) Distributed Systems
8 219 (3.11%) Data Centre
9 191 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
10 158 (2.24%) Security Posture
11 150 (2.13%) Management Information System
12 128 (1.82%) Data Structures
13 119 (1.69%) Public Cloud
14 102 (1.45%) PKI
15 96 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
16 95 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
17 87 (1.23%) Replication
18 82 (1.16%) CMDB
19 71 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
20 63 (0.89%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 884 (12.54%) Windows
2 446 (6.33%) Linux
3 331 (4.70%) Windows Server
4 133 (1.89%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.13%) Unix
6 77 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 75 (1.06%) Android
8 70 (0.99%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 55 (0.78%) Ubuntu
11 42 (0.60%) VMS
12 22 (0.31%) CentOS
13 18 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
14 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,563 (36.35%) DevOps
2 2,219 (31.48%) CI/CD
3 1,751 (24.84%) Agile
4 1,261 (17.89%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,242 (17.62%) AI
6 1,201 (17.04%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,032 (14.64%) Migration
8 1,018 (14.44%) Analytics
9 996 (14.13%) Problem-Solving
10 819 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
11 770 (10.92%) Data Modelling
12 756 (10.72%) Roadmaps
13 675 (9.57%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 674 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
15 667 (9.46%) Data Pipeline
16 637 (9.04%) Technical Leadership
17 635 (9.01%) Containerisation
18 590 (8.37%) Test Automation
19 583 (8.27%) Cybersecurity
20 581 (8.24%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,640 (23.26%) Python
2 1,350 (19.15%) SQL
3 799 (11.33%) PowerShell
4 585 (8.30%) Java
5 518 (7.35%) C#
6 419 (5.94%) JavaScript
7 351 (4.98%) Bash
8 308 (4.37%) Bicep
9 250 (3.55%) TypeScript
10 91 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 70 (0.99%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.85%) Go
13 55 (0.78%) Scala
14 54 (0.77%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 32 (0.45%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Groovy
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,844 (26.16%) Security Cleared
2 1,469 (20.84%) SC Cleared
3 524 (7.43%) Degree
4 421 (5.97%) Azure Certification
5 273 (3.87%) DV Cleared
6 249 (3.53%) CISSP
7 235 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.65%) AWS Certification
9 184 (2.61%) Cisco Certification
10 160 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
10 160 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
11 118 (1.67%) CISM
12 83 (1.18%) CCNP
13 79 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 79 (1.12%) PMI Certification
14 75 (1.06%) PMP
15 53 (0.75%) ISTQB
15 53 (0.75%) Master's Degree
16 51 (0.72%) CCSP
17 49 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 512 (7.26%) Data Quality
2 388 (5.50%) QA
3 273 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 269 (3.82%) NIST
5 255 (3.62%) GDPR
6 174 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.39%) SLA
8 91 (1.29%) NCSC
9 78 (1.11%) Cyber Essentials
9 78 (1.11%) WCAG
10 73 (1.04%) GRC
11 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
12 55 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 51 (0.72%) PMO
14 44 (0.62%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 28 (0.40%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
17 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
17 20 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 18 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 923 (13.09%) Active Directory
2 766 (10.87%) Docker
3 221 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
6 107 (1.52%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.95%) vSphere
8 53 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 18 (0.26%) IAG
12 15 (0.21%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.057%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,062 (15.06%) Kubernetes
2 410 (5.82%) Ansible
3 404 (5.73%) Microsoft Intune
4 221 (3.13%) Grafana
5 170 (2.41%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.86%) Single Sign-On
7 124 (1.76%) SCCM
8 63 (0.89%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.70%) Argo
10 48 (0.68%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 31 (0.44%) SCOM
14 30 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) Istio
17 18 (0.26%) CASB
17 18 (0.26%) Packer
18 16 (0.23%) HAProxy
19 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,592 (36.77%) Microsoft
2 718 (10.18%) Databricks
3 375 (5.32%) ServiceNow
4 325 (4.61%) VMware
5 300 (4.26%) Google
6 284 (4.03%) Oracle
7 229 (3.25%) Cisco
8 193 (2.74%) Splunk
9 184 (2.61%) SAP
10 172 (2.44%) OpenAI
11 155 (2.20%) Salesforce
12 146 (2.07%) CyberArk
12 146 (2.07%) Palo Alto
13 113 (1.60%) Foundry
14 112 (1.59%) Dynatrace
15 84 (1.19%) Zscaler
16 77 (1.09%) IBM
17 76 (1.08%) Fortinet
18 72 (1.02%) Informatica
19 65 (0.92%) MuleSoft