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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,054 4,160 4,849
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.28% 14.96% 14.72%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.28% 39.65% 42.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,932 2,849 3,392
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £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 £733 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 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 £102.75 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +15.36% -6.83% -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 15,929 10,493 11,409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.50% 37.73% 34.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,624 7,098 7,761
10th Percentile £320 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -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 553 247 174
10th Percentile £15.26 £15.40 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.97 £18.87 £20.56
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -20.30% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.92 £64.48
90th Percentile £82.34 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £28.50 £31.00
% change year-on-year +14.04% -8.06% -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 18 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 18 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 18 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 3,696 £550 - 3,568
North of England +6 1,001 £500 +5.26% 1,206
South East +1 899 £525 +5.00% 1,090
Midlands +2 646 £493 -3.19% 664
North West +5 493 £500 +5.26% 650
West Midlands +2 480 £488 -9.72% 405
Yorkshire +5 428 £500 +5.26% 394
South West +2 423 £550 +10.00% 479
East of England +1 190 £510 +2.00% 344
East Midlands +4 159 £500 +8.11% 259
North East 0 93 £500 - 168
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 (5.88%) SharePoint
2 221 (3.13%) Confluence
3 178 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 166 (2.35%) Apache Spark
5 152 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
6 102 (1.45%) Apache
7 40 (0.57%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
9 20 (0.28%) IIS
10 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) 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%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 106 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) 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 60 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.085%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.071%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.057%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.057%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,494 (35.36%) AWS
2 1,480 (20.98%) Azure DevOps
3 1,206 (17.10%) GCP
4 985 (13.96%) Entra ID
5 913 (12.94%) Power Platform
6 764 (10.83%) Microsoft 365
7 694 (9.84%) GitHub
8 412 (5.84%) Azure Data Factory
9 409 (5.80%) GitHub Actions
10 334 (4.73%) Serverless
11 319 (4.52%) SaaS
12 270 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
12 270 (3.83%) Power Automate
13 264 (3.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 263 (3.73%) Dynamics 365
15 253 (3.59%) Snowflake
16 242 (3.43%) Azure AKS
17 236 (3.35%) Microsoft Copilot
18 234 (3.32%) PowerApps
19 206 (2.92%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 471 (6.68%) Firewall
2 380 (5.39%) DNS
3 290 (4.11%) VPN
4 262 (3.71%) Network Security
5 218 (3.09%) DHCP
6 176 (2.50%) WAN
7 165 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 102 (1.45%) BGP
9 100 (1.42%) LAN
10 89 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.25%) VLAN
12 84 (1.19%) OSPF
13 77 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.88%) SAN
15 61 (0.86%) SSL
16 57 (0.81%) Wireless
17 40 (0.57%) VXLAN
18 37 (0.52%) HTTP
18 37 (0.52%) IPsec
18 37 (0.52%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 616 (8.73%) Power BI
2 414 (5.87%) SQL Server
3 341 (4.83%) Data Warehouse
4 301 (4.27%) Data Lake
5 232 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (3.05%) Metadata
7 182 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 150 (2.13%) Azure SQL Database
9 120 (1.70%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.63%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.23%) Big Data
13 72 (1.02%) MongoDB
14 71 (1.01%) MySQL
15 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
16 55 (0.78%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.77%) Tableau
18 53 (0.75%) Snowflake Schema
19 51 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
20 50 (0.71%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 597 (8.46%) Git
2 481 (6.82%) JIRA
3 392 (5.56%) Jenkins
4 312 (4.42%) GitLab
5 113 (1.60%) Selenium
6 61 (0.86%) Postman
7 50 (0.71%) Cypress.io
7 50 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 48 (0.68%) Cucumber
9 47 (0.67%) JUnit
10 44 (0.62%) Maven
11 43 (0.61%) JMeter
12 40 (0.57%) Visual Studio
13 37 (0.52%) Gradle
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.47%) Claude Code
16 32 (0.45%) WebDriver
17 31 (0.44%) Bitbucket
18 30 (0.43%) Gatling
19 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,971 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 1,370 (19.42%) Finance
3 747 (10.59%) Public Sector
4 718 (10.18%) Analytical Skills
5 423 (6.00%) Banking
6 205 (2.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 200 (2.84%) Retail
8 178 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 140 (1.98%) Legal
10 95 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 85 (1.20%) Marketing
13 84 (1.19%) Aerospace
14 77 (1.09%) Telecoms
15 76 (1.08%) Investment Banking
16 73 (1.03%) Military
17 72 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
18 68 (0.96%) Law
19 54 (0.77%) Local Government
20 50 (0.71%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,326 (18.80%) Architect
2 900 (12.76%) Senior
3 779 (11.04%) Developer
4 603 (8.55%) Azure Engineer
5 596 (8.45%) Lead
6 506 (7.17%) Data Engineer
7 421 (5.97%) Solutions Architect
8 410 (5.81%) Analyst
9 362 (5.13%) DevOps Engineer
10 345 (4.89%) Cloud Engineer
11 286 (4.05%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 272 (3.86%) Consultant
13 222 (3.15%) Data Architect
14 199 (2.82%) Platform Engineer
15 186 (2.64%) Security Engineer
16 172 (2.44%) Azure Architect
17 168 (2.38%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 162 (2.30%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 156 (2.21%) Technical Architect
20 154 (2.18%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,222 (17.32%) Terraform
2 572 (8.11%) REST
3 517 (7.33%) .NET
4 331 (4.69%) Kafka
5 246 (3.49%) React
6 244 (3.46%) OAuth
7 241 (3.42%) PySpark
8 221 (3.13%) RESTful
9 191 (2.71%) JSON
10 151 (2.14%) OpenID
11 144 (2.04%) SAML
12 140 (1.98%) OAuth2
13 130 (1.84%) Spring
14 122 (1.73%) HTML
14 122 (1.73%) Spring Boot
15 121 (1.72%) AngularJS
16 118 (1.67%) Middleware
17 117 (1.66%) Node.js
18 116 (1.64%) SOAP
19 115 (1.63%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 787 (11.16%) Cloud Native
2 381 (5.40%) Onboarding
3 321 (4.55%) Product Ownership
4 261 (3.70%) Hybrid Cloud
5 252 (3.57%) AI Agents
6 251 (3.56%) Enterprise Software
7 233 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
8 220 (3.12%) Data Centre
9 194 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
10 162 (2.30%) Security Posture
11 152 (2.15%) Management Information System
12 129 (1.83%) Data Structures
13 117 (1.66%) Public Cloud
14 106 (1.50%) PKI
15 96 (1.36%) Enterprise Cloud
16 94 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
17 87 (1.23%) Replication
18 82 (1.16%) CMDB
19 74 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
20 64 (0.91%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 891 (12.63%) Windows
2 444 (6.29%) Linux
3 334 (4.73%) Windows Server
4 136 (1.93%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.13%) Unix
6 78 (1.11%) Android
7 77 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 67 (0.95%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.79%) Ubuntu
11 43 (0.61%) VMS
12 24 (0.34%) 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
17 8 (0.11%) Debian
18 6 (0.085%) AIX
19 5 (0.071%) SUSE
20 4 (0.057%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,561 (36.31%) DevOps
2 2,230 (31.61%) CI/CD
3 1,740 (24.67%) Agile
4 1,272 (18.03%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,252 (17.75%) AI
6 1,212 (17.18%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,037 (14.70%) Migration
8 1,013 (14.36%) Analytics
9 997 (14.13%) Problem-Solving
10 817 (11.58%) Continuous Improvement
11 770 (10.92%) Data Modelling
12 759 (10.76%) Roadmaps
13 673 (9.54%) Business Intelligence
14 664 (9.41%) Data Pipeline
14 664 (9.41%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 639 (9.06%) Technical Leadership
16 635 (9.00%) Containerisation
17 596 (8.45%) Test Automation
18 582 (8.25%) Data Engineering
19 581 (8.24%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,649 (23.38%) Python
2 1,350 (19.14%) SQL
3 804 (11.40%) PowerShell
4 579 (8.21%) Java
5 516 (7.31%) C#
6 418 (5.93%) JavaScript
7 353 (5.00%) Bash
8 312 (4.42%) Bicep
9 251 (3.56%) TypeScript
10 89 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (1.02%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.91%) Go
13 57 (0.81%) Scala
14 54 (0.77%) Kusto Query Language
15 48 (0.68%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 30 (0.43%) Groovy
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 25 (0.35%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,846 (26.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,465 (20.77%) SC Cleared
3 519 (7.36%) Degree
4 427 (6.05%) Azure Certification
5 278 (3.94%) DV Cleared
6 251 (3.56%) CISSP
7 233 (3.30%) Microsoft Certification
8 193 (2.74%) AWS Certification
9 178 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
10 164 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
11 159 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
12 122 (1.73%) CISM
13 80 (1.13%) CCNP
14 78 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 78 (1.11%) PMI Certification
15 74 (1.05%) PMP
16 56 (0.79%) ISTQB
17 55 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 51 (0.72%) CCSP
19 50 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (7.36%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.57%) QA
3 277 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 269 (3.81%) NIST
5 256 (3.63%) GDPR
6 176 (2.50%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.40%) SLA
8 91 (1.29%) NCSC
9 77 (1.09%) Cyber Essentials
9 77 (1.09%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) GRC
11 68 (0.96%) PCI DSS
12 55 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.71%) PMO
14 42 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 30 (0.43%) SOC 2
16 27 (0.38%) HIPAA
17 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
17 20 (0.28%) NIST 800
18 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 930 (13.18%) Active Directory
2 764 (10.83%) Docker
3 219 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
6 109 (1.55%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.98%) vSphere
8 53 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.47%) 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 1,065 (15.10%) Kubernetes
2 416 (5.90%) Ansible
3 407 (5.77%) Microsoft Intune
4 226 (3.20%) Grafana
5 173 (2.45%) Prometheus
6 134 (1.90%) Single Sign-On
7 124 (1.76%) SCCM
8 63 (0.89%) Progress Chef
9 48 (0.68%) Argo
9 48 (0.68%) Puppet
10 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
10 35 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
11 33 (0.47%) SCOM
12 30 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 24 (0.34%) vCenter Server
14 19 (0.27%) Istio
15 18 (0.26%) CASB
15 18 (0.26%) Packer
16 16 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,593 (36.76%) Microsoft
2 723 (10.25%) Databricks
3 378 (5.36%) ServiceNow
4 324 (4.59%) VMware
5 310 (4.39%) Google
6 286 (4.05%) Oracle
7 228 (3.23%) Cisco
8 201 (2.85%) Splunk
9 186 (2.64%) SAP
10 173 (2.45%) OpenAI
11 158 (2.24%) Salesforce
12 147 (2.08%) CyberArk
13 142 (2.01%) Palo Alto
14 115 (1.63%) Dynatrace
15 114 (1.62%) Foundry
16 84 (1.19%) Zscaler
17 77 (1.09%) IBM
18 74 (1.05%) Informatica
19 73 (1.03%) Fortinet
20 68 (0.96%) MuleSoft