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 6 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,034 4,243 4,728
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.18% 15.28% 14.71%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.10% 39.97% 42.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,899 2,921 3,229
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £444 £413 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £529 £518 £525
% change year-on-year +2.12% -1.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 167 40 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £24.22 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.39 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -4.61% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £64.77 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.34 £89.38 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £33.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +18.32% -4.61% -24.21%

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 15,949 10,616 11,189
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.43% 38.24% 34.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,607 7,183 7,470
10th Percentile £320 £304 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -3.67%
75th Percentile £632 £625 £640
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 574 254 165
10th Percentile £15.42 £15.50 £15.99
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £26.00 £34.47
% change year-on-year +15.38% -24.56% +4.44%

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 6 October 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 6 October 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 6 October 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 0 3,703 £550 - 3,727
North of England +3 1,006 £500 +5.26% 1,311
South East +1 893 £525 +5.00% 1,240
Midlands +1 631 £500 -3.24% 693
North West +5 491 £500 +5.26% 657
West Midlands +2 481 £488 -11.36% 419
Yorkshire +4 427 £500 +2.04% 454
South West +3 410 £550 +7.53% 544
East of England -1 194 £510 +1.49% 405
East Midlands +3 146 £500 +8.11% 274
North East +5 102 £513 +2.50% 212
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
1 408 (5.80%) SharePoint
2 232 (3.30%) Confluence
3 173 (2.46%) Microsoft Exchange
4 170 (2.42%) Apache Spark
5 143 (2.03%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.54%) Apache
7 32 (0.45%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) CMS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
10 14 (0.20%) nginx
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.100%) Mendix
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
16 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 107 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.53%) Chatbot
6 33 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 12 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.100%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.100%) Revit
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) Mingle
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) 1Password
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 112 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 9 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 8 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
8 7 (0.100%) Shopify
9 5 (0.071%) Maximo
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.057%) Ripple
10 4 (0.057%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.057%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,483 (35.30%) AWS
2 1,499 (21.31%) Azure DevOps
3 1,246 (17.71%) GCP
4 1,010 (14.36%) Entra ID
5 917 (13.04%) Power Platform
6 782 (11.12%) Microsoft 365
7 724 (10.29%) GitHub
8 414 (5.89%) GitHub Actions
9 403 (5.73%) Azure Data Factory
10 337 (4.79%) Serverless
11 321 (4.56%) SaaS
12 275 (3.91%) Azure Monitor
13 269 (3.82%) Power Automate
14 266 (3.78%) Dynamics 365
15 259 (3.68%) Snowflake
16 253 (3.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 241 (3.43%) Azure AKS
18 235 (3.34%) PowerApps
19 234 (3.33%) Microsoft Copilot
20 205 (2.91%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 465 (6.61%) Firewall
2 376 (5.35%) DNS
3 285 (4.05%) VPN
4 263 (3.74%) Network Security
5 218 (3.10%) DHCP
6 167 (2.37%) WAN
7 161 (2.29%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.41%) BGP
9 93 (1.32%) LAN
10 87 (1.24%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.15%) OSPF
12 75 (1.07%) VLAN
12 75 (1.07%) Wi-Fi
13 60 (0.85%) Wireless
14 59 (0.84%) SAN
15 58 (0.82%) SSL
16 39 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 38 (0.54%) MPLS
18 36 (0.51%) HTTP
18 36 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 607 (8.63%) Power BI
2 415 (5.90%) SQL Server
3 333 (4.73%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.31%) Data Lake
5 238 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 215 (3.06%) Metadata
7 180 (2.56%) NoSQL
8 157 (2.23%) Azure SQL Database
9 125 (1.78%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.71%) Delta Lake
11 92 (1.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 91 (1.29%) MySQL
13 83 (1.18%) Big Data
14 74 (1.05%) MongoDB
15 57 (0.81%) Amazon RDS
15 57 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 56 (0.80%) BigQuery
17 51 (0.73%) Tableau
18 50 (0.71%) Redis
19 49 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 614 (8.73%) Git
2 489 (6.95%) JIRA
3 390 (5.54%) Jenkins
4 308 (4.38%) GitLab
5 121 (1.72%) Selenium
6 65 (0.92%) Postman
7 64 (0.91%) Cucumber
8 50 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.68%) JUnit
10 47 (0.67%) JMeter
11 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
12 45 (0.64%) Visual Studio
13 41 (0.58%) Maven
14 40 (0.57%) Claude Code
15 38 (0.54%) Gradle
16 35 (0.50%) Bitbucket
16 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
17 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
18 30 (0.43%) LoadRunner
19 27 (0.38%) Gatling
General
1 1,976 (28.09%) Social Skills
2 1,407 (20.00%) Finance
3 740 (10.52%) Public Sector
4 716 (10.18%) Analytical Skills
5 452 (6.43%) Banking
6 206 (2.93%) Retail
7 202 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 167 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (1.95%) Legal
10 99 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
11 98 (1.39%) Manufacturing
12 89 (1.27%) Investment Banking
13 88 (1.25%) Marketing
14 86 (1.22%) Aerospace
15 79 (1.12%) Telecoms
16 74 (1.05%) Military
17 67 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
18 62 (0.88%) Law
19 58 (0.82%) Billing
20 54 (0.77%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,321 (18.78%) Architect
2 910 (12.94%) Senior
3 801 (11.39%) Developer
4 603 (8.57%) Lead
5 591 (8.40%) Azure Engineer
6 498 (7.08%) Data Engineer
7 421 (5.99%) Solutions Architect
8 394 (5.60%) Analyst
9 364 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
10 352 (5.00%) Cloud Engineer
11 291 (4.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 271 (3.85%) Consultant
13 221 (3.14%) Data Architect
14 187 (2.66%) Platform Engineer
14 187 (2.66%) Security Engineer
15 180 (2.56%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 169 (2.40%) Azure Architect
17 164 (2.33%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 158 (2.25%) Project Manager
19 150 (2.13%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,231 (17.50%) Terraform
2 624 (8.87%) REST
3 528 (7.51%) .NET
4 342 (4.86%) Kafka
5 267 (3.80%) React
6 247 (3.51%) OAuth
7 237 (3.37%) PySpark
8 229 (3.26%) RESTful
9 200 (2.84%) JSON
10 149 (2.12%) OpenID
11 144 (2.05%) OAuth2
12 140 (1.99%) HTML
13 137 (1.95%) SAML
14 130 (1.85%) Middleware
14 130 (1.85%) SOAP
15 126 (1.79%) Spring
16 121 (1.72%) AngularJS
17 120 (1.71%) Spring Boot
18 118 (1.68%) .NET Framework
19 113 (1.61%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 801 (11.39%) Cloud Native
2 380 (5.40%) Onboarding
3 328 (4.66%) Product Ownership
4 277 (3.94%) Enterprise Software
5 274 (3.90%) AI Agents
6 256 (3.64%) Hybrid Cloud
7 244 (3.47%) Distributed Systems
8 229 (3.26%) Data Centre
9 195 (2.77%) Legacy Systems
10 162 (2.30%) Management Information System
10 162 (2.30%) Security Posture
11 131 (1.86%) Data Structures
12 115 (1.63%) PKI
12 115 (1.63%) Public Cloud
13 94 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
14 90 (1.28%) Enterprise Cloud
15 89 (1.27%) CMDB
16 80 (1.14%) Replication
17 74 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
18 66 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 889 (12.64%) Windows
2 464 (6.60%) Linux
3 347 (4.93%) Windows Server
4 145 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.14%) Android
5 80 (1.14%) Unix
6 78 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 75 (1.07%) Apple iOS
8 62 (0.88%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.80%) Ubuntu
10 40 (0.57%) VMS
11 26 (0.37%) CentOS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 7 (0.100%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
18 4 (0.057%) Mac OS X
18 4 (0.057%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,577 (36.64%) DevOps
2 2,262 (32.16%) CI/CD
3 1,755 (24.95%) Agile
4 1,329 (18.89%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,270 (18.06%) AI
6 1,229 (17.47%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,058 (15.04%) Migration
8 1,007 (14.32%) Problem-Solving
9 988 (14.05%) Analytics
10 838 (11.91%) Continuous Improvement
11 780 (11.09%) Roadmaps
12 759 (10.79%) Data Modelling
13 669 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
14 659 (9.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 651 (9.26%) Data Pipeline
16 641 (9.11%) Technical Leadership
17 633 (9.00%) Test Automation
18 627 (8.91%) Containerisation
19 599 (8.52%) Observability
20 597 (8.49%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,681 (23.90%) Python
2 1,365 (19.41%) SQL
3 825 (11.73%) PowerShell
4 576 (8.19%) Java
5 530 (7.53%) C#
6 444 (6.31%) JavaScript
7 373 (5.30%) Bash
8 319 (4.54%) Bicep
9 267 (3.80%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.05%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.02%) Go
13 56 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.74%) Scala
15 51 (0.73%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) C++
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) PL/SQL
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,840 (26.16%) Security Cleared
2 1,461 (20.77%) SC Cleared
3 524 (7.45%) Degree
4 417 (5.93%) Azure Certification
5 281 (3.99%) DV Cleared
6 242 (3.44%) CISSP
7 231 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 199 (2.83%) AWS Certification
9 171 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
10 170 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
11 169 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
12 122 (1.73%) CISM
13 84 (1.19%) PMI Certification
14 81 (1.15%) PMP
15 77 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 75 (1.07%) CCNP
17 60 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 55 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 52 (0.74%) CCSP
20 49 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 531 (7.55%) Data Quality
2 405 (5.76%) QA
3 269 (3.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 256 (3.64%) NIST
5 246 (3.50%) GDPR
6 179 (2.54%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.42%) SLA
8 85 (1.21%) NCSC
9 76 (1.08%) WCAG
10 72 (1.02%) GRC
11 71 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
12 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
13 49 (0.70%) PMO
14 48 (0.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 41 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 34 (0.48%) SOC 2
17 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.28%) COBIT
18 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 921 (13.09%) Active Directory
2 769 (10.93%) Docker
3 227 (3.23%) VMware Infrastructure
4 134 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
6 109 (1.55%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.97%) vSphere
8 49 (0.70%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.27%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (0.14%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.100%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,074 (15.27%) Kubernetes
2 418 (5.94%) Ansible
3 407 (5.79%) Microsoft Intune
4 237 (3.37%) Grafana
5 178 (2.53%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.86%) SCCM
7 123 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
8 60 (0.85%) Progress Chef
9 52 (0.74%) Argo
10 46 (0.65%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.45%) SCOM
13 30 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) CASB
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.24%) Packer
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
19 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,634 (37.45%) Microsoft
2 726 (10.32%) Databricks
3 358 (5.09%) ServiceNow
4 334 (4.75%) Google
5 325 (4.62%) VMware
6 283 (4.02%) Oracle
7 217 (3.09%) Cisco
8 204 (2.90%) Splunk
9 186 (2.64%) OpenAI
10 183 (2.60%) SAP
11 165 (2.35%) Salesforce
12 144 (2.05%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.96%) CyberArk
14 124 (1.76%) Dynatrace
15 110 (1.56%) Foundry
16 84 (1.19%) IBM
17 81 (1.15%) Zscaler
18 74 (1.05%) Fortinet
19 66 (0.94%) Informatica
20 64 (0.91%) MuleSoft