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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,004 4,118 4,836
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.19% 14.93% 14.74%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.19% 39.44% 42.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,892 2,824 3,372
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £447 £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 £729 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £530
% change year-on-year +1.94% -2.83% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 158 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 £102.88 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £42.35 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +23.69% -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 15,850 10,440 11,349
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.38% 37.86% 34.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,568 7,059 7,708
10th Percentile £320 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £530
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -5.57% -3.64%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £643
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
Number of hourly rates quoted 551 245 173
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.09 £14.75
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £20.75
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.00 £33.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.73% -21.21% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £64.73
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.15 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £28.00 £31.75
% change year-on-year +16.07% -11.81% -9.29%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 0 3,672 £550 - 4,513
North of England +6 989 £500 +5.26% 1,416
South East 0 892 £525 +5.00% 1,227
Midlands +2 641 £493 -2.48% 772
North West +4 487 £500 +5.26% 775
West Midlands +1 481 £481 -10.93% 480
Yorkshire +6 421 £500 +5.26% 464
South West +2 417 £550 +10.00% 591
East of England +2 194 £510 +2.00% 407
East Midlands +5 154 £500 +8.11% 292
North East +2 94 £506 +1.25% 184
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
1 412 (5.88%) SharePoint
2 216 (3.08%) Confluence
3 177 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 166 (2.37%) Apache Spark
5 151 (2.16%) Apache Airflow
6 102 (1.46%) Apache
7 40 (0.57%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
9 21 (0.30%) IIS
10 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
14 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.100%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.100%) Mendix
16 6 (0.086%) Documentum
16 6 (0.086%) Oracle Workflow
17 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 105 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.53%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.13%) Trello
9 8 (0.11%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 7 (0.100%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.071%) Notion
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.029%) Mingle
14 1 (0.014%) 1Password
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 116 (1.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (0.84%) 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 (0.100%) Shopify
9 6 (0.086%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.086%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.071%) SAP Oil and Gas
11 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.057%) Maximo
11 4 (0.057%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.057%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,483 (35.45%) AWS
2 1,470 (20.99%) Azure DevOps
3 1,212 (17.30%) GCP
4 976 (13.93%) Entra ID
5 910 (12.99%) Power Platform
6 757 (10.81%) Microsoft 365
7 687 (9.81%) GitHub
8 409 (5.84%) Azure Data Factory
9 402 (5.74%) GitHub Actions
10 337 (4.81%) Serverless
11 317 (4.53%) SaaS
12 270 (3.85%) Power Automate
13 265 (3.78%) Azure Monitor
14 263 (3.75%) Dynamics 365
15 261 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 252 (3.60%) Snowflake
17 237 (3.38%) Azure AKS
17 237 (3.38%) Microsoft Copilot
18 232 (3.31%) PowerApps
19 208 (2.97%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 469 (6.70%) Firewall
2 376 (5.37%) DNS
3 285 (4.07%) VPN
4 260 (3.71%) Network Security
5 217 (3.10%) DHCP
6 173 (2.47%) WAN
7 165 (2.36%) TCP/IP
8 100 (1.43%) BGP
9 96 (1.37%) LAN
10 90 (1.28%) SD-WAN
11 86 (1.23%) VLAN
12 81 (1.16%) OSPF
13 77 (1.10%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.89%) SAN
14 62 (0.89%) SSL
15 58 (0.83%) Wireless
16 40 (0.57%) VXLAN
17 38 (0.54%) IPsec
18 37 (0.53%) HTTP
18 37 (0.53%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (8.74%) Power BI
2 407 (5.81%) SQL Server
3 339 (4.84%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.33%) Data Lake
5 229 (3.27%) PostgreSQL
6 214 (3.06%) Metadata
7 181 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 148 (2.11%) Azure SQL Database
9 118 (1.68%) Delta Lake
10 115 (1.64%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.24%) Big Data
13 73 (1.04%) MongoDB
14 72 (1.03%) MySQL
15 55 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
15 55 (0.79%) BigQuery
16 53 (0.76%) Tableau
17 52 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
18 51 (0.73%) Snowflake Schema
19 50 (0.71%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 594 (8.48%) Git
2 471 (6.72%) JIRA
3 378 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 306 (4.37%) GitLab
5 117 (1.67%) Selenium
6 63 (0.90%) Postman
7 53 (0.76%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.73%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.69%) JUnit
9 48 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 43 (0.61%) JMeter
10 43 (0.61%) Visual Studio
11 41 (0.59%) Maven
12 36 (0.51%) Gradle
13 33 (0.47%) Claude Code
13 33 (0.47%) REST Assured
13 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
14 30 (0.43%) Bitbucket
15 29 (0.41%) LoadRunner
16 28 (0.40%) MLflow
General
1 1,952 (27.87%) Social Skills
2 1,360 (19.42%) Finance
3 741 (10.58%) Public Sector
4 714 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
5 419 (5.98%) Banking
6 206 (2.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 202 (2.88%) Retail
8 175 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (1.98%) Legal
10 95 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
11 87 (1.24%) Manufacturing
12 84 (1.20%) Aerospace
13 83 (1.19%) Marketing
14 79 (1.13%) Telecoms
15 75 (1.07%) Investment Banking
16 74 (1.06%) Military
17 69 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
18 68 (0.97%) Law
19 51 (0.73%) Local Government
20 50 (0.71%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,323 (18.89%) Architect
2 891 (12.72%) Senior
3 780 (11.14%) Developer
4 599 (8.55%) Azure Engineer
5 598 (8.54%) Lead
6 507 (7.24%) Data Engineer
7 422 (6.03%) Solutions Architect
8 401 (5.73%) Analyst
9 352 (5.03%) DevOps Engineer
10 344 (4.91%) Cloud Engineer
11 283 (4.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 266 (3.80%) Consultant
13 221 (3.16%) Data Architect
14 195 (2.78%) Platform Engineer
15 186 (2.66%) Security Engineer
16 172 (2.46%) Azure Architect
17 167 (2.38%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 163 (2.33%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 153 (2.18%) Technical Architect
20 152 (2.17%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,210 (17.28%) Terraform
2 571 (8.15%) REST
3 516 (7.37%) .NET
4 332 (4.74%) Kafka
5 245 (3.50%) OAuth
5 245 (3.50%) React
6 241 (3.44%) PySpark
7 219 (3.13%) RESTful
8 188 (2.68%) JSON
9 149 (2.13%) OpenID
10 143 (2.04%) SAML
11 142 (2.03%) OAuth2
12 130 (1.86%) Spring
13 124 (1.77%) HTML
14 122 (1.74%) Spring Boot
15 119 (1.70%) Middleware
16 118 (1.68%) AngularJS
17 116 (1.66%) Node.js
18 114 (1.63%) .NET Framework
18 114 (1.63%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 787 (11.24%) Cloud Native
2 376 (5.37%) Onboarding
3 323 (4.61%) Product Ownership
4 261 (3.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 258 (3.68%) AI Agents
6 248 (3.54%) Enterprise Software
7 231 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
8 222 (3.17%) Data Centre
9 193 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 160 (2.28%) Security Posture
11 151 (2.16%) Management Information System
12 127 (1.81%) Data Structures
13 116 (1.66%) Public Cloud
14 105 (1.50%) PKI
15 94 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
16 93 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
17 84 (1.20%) CMDB
17 84 (1.20%) Replication
18 76 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
19 67 (0.96%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 881 (12.58%) Windows
2 443 (6.32%) Linux
3 335 (4.78%) Windows Server
4 132 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 79 (1.13%) Unix
7 77 (1.10%) Android
8 72 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 66 (0.94%) Mac OS
10 56 (0.80%) 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 10 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 8 (0.11%) Debian
18 6 (0.086%) AIX
18 6 (0.086%) SUSE
19 4 (0.057%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,545 (36.34%) DevOps
2 2,220 (31.70%) CI/CD
3 1,737 (24.80%) Agile
4 1,276 (18.22%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,248 (17.82%) AI
6 1,204 (17.19%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,031 (14.72%) Migration
8 995 (14.21%) Analytics
9 990 (14.13%) Problem-Solving
10 816 (11.65%) Continuous Improvement
11 766 (10.94%) Data Modelling
12 754 (10.77%) Roadmaps
13 668 (9.54%) Business Intelligence
14 661 (9.44%) Data Pipeline
14 661 (9.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 639 (9.12%) Technical Leadership
16 628 (8.97%) Containerisation
17 598 (8.54%) Test Automation
18 583 (8.32%) Data Engineering
19 580 (8.28%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,639 (23.40%) Python
2 1,346 (19.22%) SQL
3 792 (11.31%) PowerShell
4 578 (8.25%) Java
5 522 (7.45%) C#
6 421 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 349 (4.98%) Bash
8 307 (4.38%) Bicep
9 252 (3.60%) TypeScript
10 89 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 72 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 67 (0.96%) Go
13 54 (0.77%) Scala
14 50 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
15 47 (0.67%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 28 (0.40%) Kotlin
19 26 (0.37%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,834 (26.19%) Security Cleared
2 1,455 (20.77%) SC Cleared
3 519 (7.41%) Degree
4 422 (6.03%) Azure Certification
5 277 (3.95%) DV Cleared
6 245 (3.50%) CISSP
7 233 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 192 (2.74%) AWS Certification
9 178 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 163 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
11 156 (2.23%) Computer Science Degree
12 119 (1.70%) CISM
13 80 (1.14%) CCNP
14 78 (1.11%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 78 (1.11%) PMI Certification
15 74 (1.06%) PMP
16 58 (0.83%) Master's Degree
17 56 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.73%) CCSP
19 50 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 517 (7.38%) Data Quality
2 393 (5.61%) QA
3 275 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 267 (3.81%) NIST
5 252 (3.60%) GDPR
6 174 (2.48%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.41%) SLA
8 91 (1.30%) NCSC
9 76 (1.09%) WCAG
10 75 (1.07%) Cyber Essentials
11 72 (1.03%) GRC
12 69 (0.99%) PCI DSS
13 51 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 49 (0.70%) PMO
15 42 (0.60%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 30 (0.43%) SOC 2
17 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
18 20 (0.29%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.29%) NIST 800
19 17 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 922 (13.16%) Active Directory
2 754 (10.77%) Docker
3 217 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 134 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 106 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 69 (0.99%) vSphere
8 53 (0.76%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.46%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.34%) Firmware
11 18 (0.26%) IAG
12 14 (0.20%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.086%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) BitLocker
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
18 4 (0.057%) KVM
Systems Management
1 1,053 (15.03%) Kubernetes
2 406 (5.80%) Ansible
3 397 (5.67%) Microsoft Intune
4 220 (3.14%) Grafana
5 168 (2.40%) Prometheus
6 131 (1.87%) Single Sign-On
7 123 (1.76%) SCCM
8 59 (0.84%) Progress Chef
9 47 (0.67%) Argo
10 43 (0.61%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 34 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.47%) SCOM
14 30 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 24 (0.34%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) CASB
17 18 (0.26%) Packer
18 17 (0.24%) Istio
19 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
20 12 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,571 (36.71%) Microsoft
2 718 (10.25%) Databricks
3 370 (5.28%) ServiceNow
4 321 (4.58%) VMware
5 312 (4.45%) Google
6 286 (4.08%) Oracle
7 223 (3.18%) Cisco
8 204 (2.91%) Splunk
9 181 (2.58%) SAP
10 177 (2.53%) OpenAI
11 159 (2.27%) Salesforce
12 148 (2.11%) CyberArk
13 139 (1.98%) Palo Alto
14 117 (1.67%) Foundry
15 115 (1.64%) Dynatrace
16 84 (1.20%) Zscaler
17 82 (1.17%) IBM
18 74 (1.06%) Fortinet
19 70 (1.00%) Informatica
20 66 (0.94%) MuleSoft