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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 7 6
Rank change year-on-year +2 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,124 4,034 4,805
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.60% 14.63% 14.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.87% 39.16% 42.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,996 2,775 3,440
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year - -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 41 29
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £18.09
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 £53.00
90th Percentile £102.17 £95.00 £73.25
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 15,878 10,301 11,267
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.77% 37.35% 34.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,601 6,975 7,846
10th Percentile £325 £310 £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 £644
90th Percentile £716 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 549 268 196
10th Percentile £15.46 £15.20 £14.16
25th Percentile £18.50 £18.51 £18.42
Median hourly rate £34.13 £26.30 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.75% -12.33% -9.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £59.66
90th Percentile £82.49 £68.63 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £28.75 £30.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -4.17% -14.29%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 3,730 £550 +0.92% 2,983
North of England +11 1,040 £500 +5.26% 925
South East +2 923 £525 +5.00% 876
Midlands +4 647 £493 -3.90% 482
North West +7 530 £494 +3.89% 525
West Midlands +3 476 £490 -9.01% 296
Yorkshire +6 430 £500 +5.26% 287
South West +5 421 £540 +8.00% 458
East of England +3 175 £525 +5.00% 271
East Midlands +8 159 £500 +8.11% 185
North East +4 93 £500 - 119
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
1 396 (5.56%) SharePoint
2 229 (3.21%) Confluence
3 174 (2.44%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.26%) Apache Spark
5 143 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.53%) Apache
7 38 (0.53%) SAS
8 28 (0.39%) IIS
9 20 (0.28%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
14 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
15 8 (0.11%) Mendix
15 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
17 6 (0.084%) Camunda
17 6 (0.084%) Documentum
17 6 (0.084%) WebSphere
Applications
1 110 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 32 (0.45%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) 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%) Mingle
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 113 (1.59%) 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
5 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
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%) Cloudability
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
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%) Maximo
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,538 (35.63%) AWS
2 1,530 (21.48%) Azure DevOps
3 1,195 (16.77%) GCP
4 959 (13.46%) Entra ID
5 908 (12.75%) Power Platform
6 747 (10.49%) Microsoft 365
7 708 (9.94%) GitHub
8 423 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
9 421 (5.91%) Azure Data Factory
10 336 (4.72%) Serverless
11 317 (4.45%) SaaS
12 274 (3.85%) Azure Monitor
13 272 (3.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 262 (3.68%) Power Automate
15 253 (3.55%) Dynamics 365
16 241 (3.38%) Azure AKS
17 236 (3.31%) Snowflake
18 229 (3.21%) PowerApps
19 210 (2.95%) Microsoft Copilot
20 194 (2.72%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 487 (6.84%) Firewall
2 377 (5.29%) DNS
3 291 (4.08%) VPN
4 275 (3.86%) Network Security
5 212 (2.98%) DHCP
6 182 (2.55%) WAN
7 167 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 108 (1.52%) BGP
9 107 (1.50%) LAN
10 91 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) OSPF
12 88 (1.24%) VLAN
13 73 (1.02%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.86%) SAN
15 60 (0.84%) SSL
16 52 (0.73%) Wireless
17 42 (0.59%) VXLAN
18 39 (0.55%) HTTP
18 39 (0.55%) IPsec
19 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 634 (8.90%) Power BI
2 414 (5.81%) SQL Server
3 353 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.25%) Data Lake
5 238 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 210 (2.95%) Metadata
7 192 (2.70%) NoSQL
8 166 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.77%) Delta Lake
10 122 (1.71%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.24%) Big Data
11 88 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 73 (1.02%) MongoDB
13 70 (0.98%) MySQL
14 62 (0.87%) Tableau
15 57 (0.80%) Snowflake Schema
16 53 (0.74%) Amazon Redshift
16 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
17 52 (0.73%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 568 (7.97%) Git
2 504 (7.07%) JIRA
3 389 (5.46%) Jenkins
4 302 (4.24%) GitLab
5 116 (1.63%) Selenium
6 60 (0.84%) Postman
7 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
8 49 (0.69%) JUnit
9 47 (0.66%) SonarQube
10 46 (0.65%) JMeter
11 45 (0.63%) Cucumber
12 41 (0.58%) Maven
13 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
14 35 (0.49%) WebDriver
15 34 (0.48%) Gradle
16 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
17 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.39%) MLflow
18 27 (0.38%) Gatling
General
1 1,940 (27.23%) Social Skills
2 1,390 (19.51%) Finance
3 778 (10.92%) Public Sector
4 734 (10.30%) Analytical Skills
5 408 (5.73%) Banking
6 199 (2.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 191 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
8 189 (2.65%) Retail
9 147 (2.06%) Legal
10 93 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.22%) Manufacturing
12 82 (1.15%) Telecoms
13 76 (1.07%) Aerospace
14 73 (1.02%) Marketing
15 72 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 69 (0.97%) Law
16 69 (0.97%) Military
16 69 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
17 60 (0.84%) Financial Institution
18 54 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,304 (18.30%) Architect
2 909 (12.76%) Senior
3 796 (11.17%) Developer
4 611 (8.58%) Azure Engineer
5 596 (8.37%) Lead
6 523 (7.34%) Data Engineer
7 425 (5.97%) Analyst
8 399 (5.60%) Solutions Architect
9 356 (5.00%) DevOps Engineer
10 332 (4.66%) Cloud Engineer
11 286 (4.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 268 (3.76%) Consultant
13 228 (3.20%) Data Architect
14 207 (2.91%) Platform Engineer
15 181 (2.54%) Azure Architect
16 169 (2.37%) Security Engineer
17 162 (2.27%) Technical Architect
18 159 (2.23%) Project Manager
19 158 (2.22%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 158 (2.22%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,212 (17.01%) Terraform
2 548 (7.69%) REST
3 538 (7.55%) .NET
4 319 (4.48%) Kafka
5 252 (3.54%) PySpark
6 251 (3.52%) React
7 231 (3.24%) RESTful
8 229 (3.21%) OAuth
9 188 (2.64%) JSON
10 149 (2.09%) Spring
11 141 (1.98%) SAML
12 136 (1.91%) OpenID
13 132 (1.85%) AngularJS
14 127 (1.78%) OAuth2
15 125 (1.75%) .NET Framework
15 125 (1.75%) Node.js
15 125 (1.75%) Spring Boot
16 122 (1.71%) HTML
17 118 (1.66%) Middleware
18 108 (1.52%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 793 (11.13%) Cloud Native
2 366 (5.14%) Onboarding
3 310 (4.35%) Product Ownership
4 254 (3.57%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.40%) Distributed Systems
6 237 (3.33%) AI Agents
7 236 (3.31%) Enterprise Software
8 219 (3.07%) Data Centre
9 200 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
10 160 (2.25%) Security Posture
11 135 (1.90%) Management Information System
12 124 (1.74%) Data Structures
13 120 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 100 (1.40%) PKI
15 98 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
16 96 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
17 84 (1.18%) Replication
18 78 (1.09%) CMDB
19 75 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
20 62 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 883 (12.39%) Windows
2 440 (6.18%) Linux
3 326 (4.58%) Windows Server
4 126 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.14%) Unix
6 76 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 72 (1.01%) Android
8 68 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 66 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 52 (0.73%) Ubuntu
11 48 (0.67%) VMS
12 18 (0.25%) CentOS
12 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.084%) AIX
17 5 (0.070%) Data ONTAP
17 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,628 (36.89%) DevOps
2 2,225 (31.23%) CI/CD
3 1,783 (25.03%) Agile
4 1,211 (17.00%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,196 (16.79%) AI
6 1,186 (16.65%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,056 (14.82%) Migration
8 1,029 (14.44%) Analytics
9 994 (13.95%) Problem-Solving
10 826 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
11 777 (10.91%) Data Modelling
12 729 (10.23%) Roadmaps
13 693 (9.73%) Business Intelligence
14 688 (9.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 682 (9.57%) Data Pipeline
16 645 (9.05%) Containerisation
17 610 (8.56%) Technical Leadership
18 593 (8.32%) Microservices
19 591 (8.30%) Data Engineering
19 591 (8.30%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,666 (23.39%) Python
2 1,413 (19.83%) SQL
3 788 (11.06%) PowerShell
4 587 (8.24%) Java
5 522 (7.33%) C#
6 406 (5.70%) JavaScript
7 353 (4.96%) Bash
8 305 (4.28%) Bicep
9 239 (3.35%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 75 (1.05%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.84%) Go
13 53 (0.74%) Scala
14 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 47 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
16 36 (0.51%) R
17 32 (0.45%) Groovy
18 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
20 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,859 (26.09%) Security Cleared
2 1,492 (20.94%) SC Cleared
3 517 (7.26%) Degree
4 404 (5.67%) Azure Certification
5 258 (3.62%) DV Cleared
6 242 (3.40%) CISSP
7 222 (3.12%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.62%) AWS Certification
9 181 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 165 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
11 159 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
12 119 (1.67%) CISM
13 84 (1.18%) CCNP
14 75 (1.05%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 74 (1.04%) PMI Certification
16 73 (1.02%) PMP
17 58 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.77%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.66%) CCSP
20 44 (0.62%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (7.29%) Data Quality
2 394 (5.53%) QA
3 282 (3.96%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 282 (3.96%) NIST
4 269 (3.78%) GDPR
5 170 (2.39%) Accessibility
6 98 (1.38%) SLA
7 94 (1.32%) NCSC
8 72 (1.01%) WCAG
9 70 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
9 70 (0.98%) PCI DSS
10 66 (0.93%) GRC
11 56 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.70%) PMO
13 39 (0.55%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 25 (0.35%) SOC 2
15 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
16 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
16 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 914 (12.83%) Active Directory
2 778 (10.92%) Docker
3 218 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.98%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 107 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.87%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 27 (0.38%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 16 (0.22%) NFS
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 (14.99%) Kubernetes
2 404 (5.67%) Ansible
3 390 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 224 (3.14%) Grafana
5 176 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 120 (1.68%) SCCM
8 62 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 50 (0.70%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 29 (0.41%) SCOM
14 23 (0.32%) vCenter Server
15 21 (0.29%) Istio
16 19 (0.27%) Packer
17 17 (0.24%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.21%) CASB
19 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,530 (35.51%) Microsoft
2 707 (9.92%) Databricks
3 371 (5.21%) ServiceNow
4 318 (4.46%) VMware
5 294 (4.13%) Google
6 283 (3.97%) Oracle
7 221 (3.10%) Cisco
8 193 (2.71%) SAP
9 186 (2.61%) Splunk
10 169 (2.37%) OpenAI
11 147 (2.06%) CyberArk
12 144 (2.02%) Salesforce
13 142 (1.99%) Palo Alto
14 114 (1.60%) Foundry
15 106 (1.49%) Dynatrace
16 86 (1.21%) Zscaler
17 80 (1.12%) Informatica
18 74 (1.04%) Fortinet
19 73 (1.02%) IBM
20 67 (0.94%) Okta