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

6 months to
28 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,140 4,021 4,795
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.60% 14.60% 14.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.92% 39.14% 42.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,003 2,756 3,457
10th Percentile £368 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £418 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 41 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +40.00% +7.14% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £54.50
90th Percentile £102.17 £95.00 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £38.75 £35.00
% change year-on-year -1.29% +10.71% -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 15,895 10,274 11,265
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.73% 37.29% 33.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,618 6,952 7,901
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.96% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £643
90th Percentile £718 £734 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 269 198
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.07 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £17.80
Median hourly rate £34.38 £26.30 £28.25
Median % change year-on-year +30.70% -6.90% -14.39%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £56.88
90th Percentile £82.62 £67.30 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.99 £28.50 £28.00
% change year-on-year +19.26% +1.79% -20.28%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 3,739 £550 +1.29% 3,085
North of England +8 1,044 £500 +5.26% 992
South East +3 927 £525 +5.00% 984
Midlands +4 643 £490 -4.62% 512
North West +6 533 £491 +3.37% 545
West Midlands +3 472 £488 -9.47% 316
Yorkshire +6 429 £500 +5.26% 311
South West +6 427 £540 +8.00% 490
East of England +3 174 £525 +3.45% 295
East Midlands +9 159 £494 +6.76% 195
North East +8 95 £506 +1.25% 145
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
1 394 (5.52%) SharePoint
2 228 (3.19%) Confluence
3 179 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 160 (2.24%) Apache Spark
5 144 (2.02%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.53%) Apache
7 39 (0.55%) SAS
8 28 (0.39%) IIS
9 19 (0.27%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) nginx
13 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.098%) Mendix
16 6 (0.084%) Camunda
16 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
16 6 (0.084%) WebSphere
Applications
1 111 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
4 32 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.14%) Trello
8 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
9 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.070%) Notion
11 3 (0.042%) Houdini
11 3 (0.042%) NUKE
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
13 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
13 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 108 (1.51%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.88%) 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%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) Maximo
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.070%) Workday HCM
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,537 (35.53%) AWS
2 1,531 (21.44%) Azure DevOps
3 1,196 (16.75%) GCP
4 957 (13.40%) Entra ID
5 912 (12.77%) Power Platform
6 748 (10.48%) Microsoft 365
7 706 (9.89%) GitHub
8 431 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 425 (5.95%) GitHub Actions
10 327 (4.58%) Serverless
11 314 (4.40%) SaaS
12 276 (3.87%) Azure Monitor
13 275 (3.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 259 (3.63%) Power Automate
15 253 (3.54%) Azure AKS
16 250 (3.50%) Dynamics 365
17 232 (3.25%) Snowflake
18 226 (3.17%) PowerApps
19 207 (2.90%) Microsoft Copilot
20 204 (2.86%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 482 (6.75%) Firewall
2 376 (5.27%) DNS
3 296 (4.15%) VPN
4 278 (3.89%) Network Security
5 208 (2.91%) DHCP
6 185 (2.59%) WAN
7 166 (2.32%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.53%) BGP
9 108 (1.51%) LAN
10 92 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) OSPF
12 86 (1.20%) VLAN
13 72 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.84%) SAN
15 58 (0.81%) SSL
16 51 (0.71%) Wireless
17 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
18 39 (0.55%) IPsec
19 38 (0.53%) HTTP
20 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 641 (8.98%) Power BI
2 413 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 359 (5.03%) Data Warehouse
4 300 (4.20%) Data Lake
5 236 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
6 202 (2.83%) Metadata
7 190 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 174 (2.44%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.76%) Delta Lake
10 123 (1.72%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.25%) Big Data
12 85 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 73 (1.02%) MongoDB
14 63 (0.88%) Tableau
15 61 (0.85%) MySQL
16 58 (0.81%) Snowflake Schema
17 57 (0.80%) Star Schema
18 53 (0.74%) BigQuery
19 51 (0.71%) Amazon Redshift
20 50 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 571 (8.00%) Git
2 503 (7.04%) JIRA
3 385 (5.39%) Jenkins
4 301 (4.22%) GitLab
5 115 (1.61%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) Postman
7 51 (0.71%) Cypress.io
8 50 (0.70%) JUnit
9 46 (0.64%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.63%) JMeter
11 43 (0.60%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.57%) Maven
13 38 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.49%) WebDriver
15 34 (0.48%) Gradle
16 29 (0.41%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.38%) Gatling
18 27 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 1,933 (27.07%) Social Skills
2 1,394 (19.52%) Finance
3 787 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 731 (10.24%) Analytical Skills
5 409 (5.73%) Banking
6 202 (2.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 190 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
8 188 (2.63%) Retail
9 148 (2.07%) Legal
10 85 (1.19%) Influencing Skills
10 85 (1.19%) Manufacturing
11 82 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 76 (1.06%) Aerospace
13 73 (1.02%) Marketing
14 72 (1.01%) Investment Banking
15 69 (0.97%) Law
15 69 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
16 67 (0.94%) Military
17 59 (0.83%) Financial Institution
18 56 (0.78%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,306 (18.29%) Architect
2 909 (12.73%) Senior
3 809 (11.33%) Developer
4 618 (8.66%) Azure Engineer
5 600 (8.40%) Lead
6 530 (7.42%) Data Engineer
7 430 (6.02%) Analyst
8 394 (5.52%) Solutions Architect
9 357 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
10 328 (4.59%) Cloud Engineer
11 288 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 265 (3.71%) Consultant
13 221 (3.10%) Data Architect
14 205 (2.87%) Platform Engineer
15 185 (2.59%) Azure Architect
16 170 (2.38%) Security Engineer
17 164 (2.30%) Senior Developer
17 164 (2.30%) Technical Architect
18 160 (2.24%) Project Manager
19 158 (2.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,207 (16.90%) Terraform
2 544 (7.62%) REST
3 539 (7.55%) .NET
4 315 (4.41%) Kafka
5 254 (3.56%) React
6 252 (3.53%) PySpark
7 230 (3.22%) RESTful
8 225 (3.15%) OAuth
9 185 (2.59%) JSON
10 149 (2.09%) Spring
11 140 (1.96%) SAML
12 136 (1.90%) OpenID
13 132 (1.85%) AngularJS
14 129 (1.81%) .NET Framework
14 129 (1.81%) Node.js
15 126 (1.76%) Spring Boot
16 124 (1.74%) OAuth2
17 118 (1.65%) HTML
18 116 (1.62%) Middleware
19 110 (1.54%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 791 (11.08%) Cloud Native
2 365 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 308 (4.31%) Product Ownership
4 256 (3.59%) Hybrid Cloud
5 241 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
6 228 (3.19%) AI Agents
7 223 (3.12%) Enterprise Software
8 221 (3.10%) Data Centre
9 205 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
10 158 (2.21%) Security Posture
11 134 (1.88%) Management Information System
12 128 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 121 (1.69%) Public Cloud
14 100 (1.40%) Enterprise Cloud
15 99 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
16 98 (1.37%) PKI
17 80 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
18 78 (1.09%) Replication
19 77 (1.08%) CMDB
20 62 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 880 (12.32%) Windows
2 437 (6.12%) Linux
3 321 (4.50%) Windows Server
4 127 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 79 (1.11%) Unix
6 77 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 71 (0.99%) Android
8 67 (0.94%) Apple iOS
9 66 (0.92%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.74%) Ubuntu
11 48 (0.67%) VMS
12 18 (0.25%) CentOS
12 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 7 (0.098%) Data ONTAP
17 6 (0.084%) AIX
18 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,630 (36.83%) DevOps
2 2,218 (31.06%) CI/CD
3 1,784 (24.99%) Agile
4 1,195 (16.74%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,177 (16.48%) AI
6 1,176 (16.47%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,059 (14.83%) Migration
8 1,039 (14.55%) Analytics
9 994 (13.92%) Problem-Solving
10 818 (11.46%) Continuous Improvement
11 779 (10.91%) Data Modelling
12 719 (10.07%) Roadmaps
13 697 (9.76%) Business Intelligence
14 693 (9.71%) Data Pipeline
15 692 (9.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 648 (9.08%) Containerisation
17 599 (8.39%) Technical Leadership
18 597 (8.36%) Microservices
19 594 (8.32%) ETL
20 593 (8.31%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,657 (23.21%) Python
2 1,415 (19.82%) SQL
3 796 (11.15%) PowerShell
4 588 (8.24%) Java
5 530 (7.42%) C#
6 404 (5.66%) JavaScript
7 351 (4.92%) Bash
8 303 (4.24%) Bicep
9 238 (3.33%) TypeScript
10 97 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 61 (0.85%) Go
13 51 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
13 51 (0.71%) Scala
14 49 (0.69%) Shell Script
15 36 (0.50%) R
16 32 (0.45%) Groovy
16 32 (0.45%) Kotlin
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,872 (26.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,505 (21.08%) SC Cleared
3 520 (7.28%) Degree
4 407 (5.70%) Azure Certification
5 257 (3.60%) DV Cleared
6 240 (3.36%) CISSP
7 219 (3.07%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.59%) AWS Certification
9 183 (2.56%) Cisco Certification
10 168 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
11 152 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
12 117 (1.64%) CISM
13 84 (1.18%) CCNP
14 75 (1.05%) PMI Certification
15 74 (1.04%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 73 (1.02%) PMP
17 59 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 57 (0.80%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.64%) CCSP
20 43 (0.60%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 518 (7.25%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.50%) QA
3 278 (3.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 278 (3.89%) NIST
4 271 (3.80%) GDPR
5 170 (2.38%) Accessibility
6 98 (1.37%) NCSC
7 96 (1.34%) SLA
8 72 (1.01%) WCAG
9 70 (0.98%) PCI DSS
10 69 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
11 67 (0.94%) GRC
12 55 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 51 (0.71%) PMO
14 39 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.32%) SOC 2
17 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
17 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
18 17 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 913 (12.79%) Active Directory
2 777 (10.88%) Docker
3 219 (3.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 107 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.85%) vSphere
8 51 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.38%) Firmware
11 18 (0.25%) NFS
12 17 (0.24%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 12 (0.17%) Postfix
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 6 (0.084%) Varnish
17 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,068 (14.96%) Kubernetes
2 406 (5.69%) Ansible
3 390 (5.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 226 (3.17%) Grafana
5 180 (2.52%) Prometheus
6 128 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
7 119 (1.67%) SCCM
8 62 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.71%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 36 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 25 (0.35%) SCOM
14 24 (0.34%) Istio
15 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.28%) Packer
17 17 (0.24%) HAProxy
18 14 (0.20%) HP ALM
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,529 (35.42%) Microsoft
2 704 (9.86%) Databricks
3 367 (5.14%) ServiceNow
4 316 (4.43%) VMware
5 294 (4.12%) Google
6 278 (3.89%) Oracle
7 221 (3.10%) Cisco
8 192 (2.69%) SAP
9 184 (2.58%) Splunk
10 166 (2.32%) OpenAI
11 145 (2.03%) CyberArk
12 142 (1.99%) Palo Alto
12 142 (1.99%) Salesforce
13 110 (1.54%) Foundry
14 106 (1.48%) Dynatrace
15 89 (1.25%) Zscaler
16 78 (1.09%) Informatica
17 74 (1.04%) Fortinet
17 74 (1.04%) IBM
18 66 (0.92%) Okta