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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,148 4,036 4,799
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.65% 14.65% 14.44%
As % of the Cloud Services category 45.03% 39.27% 42.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,001 2,762 3,457
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £416 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
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 40 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.62 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.68 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.99 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.87% +2.83% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £54.50
90th Percentile £102.17 £95.50 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +2.00% +7.14% -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 15,873 10,277 11,237
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.74% 37.31% 33.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,602 6,951 7,884
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 546 274 198
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £35.00 £26.15 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.84% -3.15% -18.18%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.13 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.99 £28.00 £27.00
% change year-on-year +21.39% +3.70% -22.86%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 3,742 £550 - 919
North of England +7 1,040 £500 +5.26% 552
South East +2 923 £525 +5.00% 665
Midlands +4 649 £493 -4.37% 325
North West +6 535 £494 +2.81% 288
West Midlands +3 481 £493 -8.29% 195
South West +6 429 £540 +8.00% 343
Yorkshire +5 423 £500 +5.26% 181
East of England +3 174 £525 +2.94% 187
East Midlands +10 156 £488 +5.41% 129
North East +9 95 £506 +1.25% 91
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
1 393 (5.50%) SharePoint
2 229 (3.20%) Confluence
3 178 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 143 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.50%) Apache
7 39 (0.55%) SAS
8 29 (0.41%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) CMS
10 16 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.15%) nginx
15 8 (0.11%) Mendix
16 7 (0.098%) Camunda
16 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
16 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
17 6 (0.084%) Documentum
17 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 108 (1.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 70 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
4 32 (0.45%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.39%) 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
1 106 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.070%) Maximo
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,535 (35.46%) AWS
2 1,534 (21.46%) Azure DevOps
3 1,211 (16.94%) GCP
4 950 (13.29%) Entra ID
5 908 (12.70%) Power Platform
6 745 (10.42%) Microsoft 365
7 699 (9.78%) GitHub
8 429 (6.00%) Azure Data Factory
9 423 (5.92%) GitHub Actions
10 323 (4.52%) Serverless
11 317 (4.43%) SaaS
12 277 (3.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 272 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
14 260 (3.64%) Power Automate
15 259 (3.62%) Azure AKS
16 248 (3.47%) Dynamics 365
17 230 (3.22%) Snowflake
18 228 (3.19%) PowerApps
19 211 (2.95%) PaaS
20 206 (2.88%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 478 (6.69%) Firewall
2 378 (5.29%) DNS
3 296 (4.14%) VPN
4 274 (3.83%) Network Security
5 204 (2.85%) DHCP
6 183 (2.56%) WAN
7 166 (2.32%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.52%) BGP
9 108 (1.51%) LAN
10 90 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.25%) OSPF
12 87 (1.22%) VLAN
13 72 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.85%) SAN
15 59 (0.83%) SSL
16 51 (0.71%) Wireless
17 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
18 43 (0.60%) HTTP
19 38 (0.53%) IPsec
20 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 641 (8.97%) Power BI
2 414 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 361 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
4 299 (4.18%) Data Lake
5 240 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 197 (2.76%) Metadata
7 192 (2.69%) NoSQL
8 175 (2.45%) Azure SQL Database
9 121 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.68%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.27%) Big Data
12 85 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.04%) MongoDB
14 63 (0.88%) MySQL
14 63 (0.88%) Tableau
15 56 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.76%) Amazon Redshift
18 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
19 50 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 572 (8.00%) Git
2 514 (7.19%) JIRA
3 387 (5.41%) Jenkins
4 298 (4.17%) GitLab
5 116 (1.62%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) Postman
7 52 (0.73%) JUnit
8 51 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.67%) JMeter
10 46 (0.64%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.55%) Maven
13 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
13 37 (0.52%) WebDriver
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.46%) Gradle
16 29 (0.41%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
18 27 (0.38%) Gatling
19 26 (0.36%) MLflow
General
1 1,917 (26.82%) Social Skills
2 1,391 (19.46%) Finance
3 784 (10.97%) Public Sector
4 729 (10.20%) Analytical Skills
5 410 (5.74%) Banking
6 205 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 192 (2.69%) Documentation Skills
8 186 (2.60%) Retail
9 147 (2.06%) Legal
10 85 (1.19%) Manufacturing
11 83 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 80 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 73 (1.02%) Aerospace
14 72 (1.01%) Marketing
14 72 (1.01%) Organisational Skills
15 70 (0.98%) Investment Banking
15 70 (0.98%) Law
16 60 (0.84%) Financial Institution
17 59 (0.83%) Military
18 54 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,306 (18.27%) Architect
2 909 (12.72%) Senior
3 832 (11.64%) Developer
4 621 (8.69%) Azure Engineer
5 602 (8.42%) Lead
6 526 (7.36%) Data Engineer
7 421 (5.89%) Analyst
8 395 (5.53%) Solutions Architect
9 355 (4.97%) DevOps Engineer
10 327 (4.57%) Cloud Engineer
11 287 (4.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 264 (3.69%) Consultant
13 222 (3.11%) Data Architect
14 203 (2.84%) Platform Engineer
15 189 (2.64%) Azure Architect
16 171 (2.39%) Security Engineer
17 161 (2.25%) Senior Developer
17 161 (2.25%) Technical Architect
18 157 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 157 (2.20%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,191 (16.66%) Terraform
2 548 (7.67%) .NET
2 548 (7.67%) REST
3 311 (4.35%) Kafka
4 254 (3.55%) React
5 249 (3.48%) PySpark
6 229 (3.20%) RESTful
7 227 (3.18%) OAuth
8 184 (2.57%) JSON
9 152 (2.13%) Spring
10 144 (2.01%) AngularJS
11 140 (1.96%) SAML
12 137 (1.92%) OpenID
13 130 (1.82%) Node.js
14 128 (1.79%) .NET Framework
14 128 (1.79%) OAuth2
15 126 (1.76%) Spring Boot
16 125 (1.75%) HTML
17 119 (1.66%) Middleware
18 112 (1.57%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 788 (11.02%) Cloud Native
2 368 (5.15%) Onboarding
3 307 (4.29%) Product Ownership
4 248 (3.47%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
6 224 (3.13%) Data Centre
7 222 (3.11%) Enterprise Software
8 219 (3.06%) AI Agents
9 203 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
10 156 (2.18%) Security Posture
11 129 (1.80%) Management Information System
12 127 (1.78%) Data Structures
13 120 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 98 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 98 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
15 97 (1.36%) PKI
16 80 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
17 77 (1.08%) CMDB
17 77 (1.08%) Replication
18 65 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 878 (12.28%) Windows
2 432 (6.04%) Linux
3 317 (4.43%) Windows Server
4 128 (1.79%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.12%) Unix
6 76 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 71 (0.99%) Android
8 67 (0.94%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.74%) Ubuntu
11 47 (0.66%) VMS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.25%) CentOS
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 7 (0.098%) Data ONTAP
18 6 (0.084%) AIX
19 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,639 (36.92%) DevOps
2 2,227 (31.16%) CI/CD
3 1,787 (25.00%) Agile
4 1,163 (16.27%) Infrastructure as Code
5 1,161 (16.24%) AI
6 1,159 (16.21%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,057 (14.79%) Migration
8 1,034 (14.47%) Analytics
9 999 (13.98%) Problem-Solving
10 816 (11.42%) Continuous Improvement
11 783 (10.95%) Data Modelling
12 700 (9.79%) Roadmaps
13 695 (9.72%) Business Intelligence
14 693 (9.70%) Data Pipeline
15 691 (9.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 648 (9.07%) Containerisation
17 601 (8.41%) Microservices
18 598 (8.37%) ETL
19 596 (8.34%) Technical Leadership
20 594 (8.31%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,649 (23.07%) Python
2 1,419 (19.85%) SQL
3 788 (11.02%) PowerShell
4 595 (8.32%) Java
5 536 (7.50%) C#
6 412 (5.76%) JavaScript
7 343 (4.80%) Bash
8 302 (4.22%) Bicep
9 241 (3.37%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.84%) Go
13 50 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
13 50 (0.70%) Scala
13 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
14 36 (0.50%) R
15 32 (0.45%) Groovy
15 32 (0.45%) Kotlin
15 32 (0.45%) PL/SQL
16 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,874 (26.22%) Security Cleared
2 1,508 (21.10%) SC Cleared
3 513 (7.18%) Degree
4 407 (5.69%) Azure Certification
5 254 (3.55%) DV Cleared
6 234 (3.27%) CISSP
7 210 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
9 182 (2.55%) AWS Certification
10 165 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 146 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
12 111 (1.55%) CISM
13 89 (1.25%) CCNP
14 72 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 71 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 70 (0.98%) PMP
17 59 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 43 (0.60%) CCSP
20 42 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 512 (7.16%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.50%) QA
3 277 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 275 (3.85%) NIST
5 268 (3.75%) GDPR
6 168 (2.35%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.37%) NCSC
7 98 (1.37%) SLA
8 68 (0.95%) GRC
8 68 (0.95%) WCAG
9 66 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
9 66 (0.92%) PCI DSS
10 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 47 (0.66%) PMO
12 37 (0.52%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
14 23 (0.32%) SOC 2
15 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
15 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
16 17 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 907 (12.69%) Active Directory
2 777 (10.87%) Docker
3 215 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 103 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.87%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.41%) Firmware
11 19 (0.27%) NFS
12 16 (0.22%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.098%) Varnish
17 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
18 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,059 (14.82%) Kubernetes
2 401 (5.61%) Ansible
3 390 (5.46%) Microsoft Intune
4 224 (3.13%) Grafana
5 179 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.83%) Single Sign-On
7 118 (1.65%) SCCM
8 61 (0.85%) Progress Chef
9 50 (0.70%) Argo
10 48 (0.67%) Puppet
11 36 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 26 (0.36%) Istio
15 22 (0.31%) SCOM
15 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) Packer
17 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 14 (0.20%) CASB
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,502 (35.00%) Microsoft
2 695 (9.72%) Databricks
3 368 (5.15%) ServiceNow
4 311 (4.35%) VMware
5 292 (4.09%) Google
6 281 (3.93%) Oracle
7 219 (3.06%) Cisco
8 195 (2.73%) SAP
9 177 (2.48%) Splunk
10 164 (2.29%) OpenAI
11 145 (2.03%) CyberArk
12 141 (1.97%) Palo Alto
13 139 (1.94%) Salesforce
14 112 (1.57%) Foundry
15 106 (1.48%) Dynatrace
16 92 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 78 (1.09%) Informatica
18 76 (1.06%) IBM
19 72 (1.01%) Fortinet
20 71 (0.99%) Okta