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

6 months to
14 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,031 4,095 4,820
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.29% 14.86% 14.69%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.37% 39.52% 42.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,931 2,808 3,398
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £413 £450
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 £736 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 151 37 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £16.01 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.45 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.41% -11.69% -16.63%
75th Percentile £81.81 £65.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £103.75 £91.25 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +11.71% -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 15,846 10,363 11,337
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.45% 37.60% 34.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,572 7,003 7,768
10th Percentile £320 £307 £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 £638
90th Percentile £719 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 542 252 180
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.50 £14.24
25th Percentile £17.81 £18.87 £20.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £26.30 £31.75
Median % change year-on-year +29.24% -17.17% -3.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £62.81
90th Percentile £82.94 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £29.16 £30.88
% change year-on-year +11.45% -5.55% -11.79%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 3,684 £550 +0.92% 3,701
North of England +8 1,002 £500 +5.26% 1,118
South East +2 896 £525 +5.00% 1,056
Midlands +2 644 £493 -3.90% 587
North West +4 500 £500 +5.26% 599
West Midlands +2 474 £488 -9.72% 364
South West +2 427 £550 +10.00% 488
Yorkshire +6 422 £500 +5.26% 376
East of England +2 182 £525 +5.00% 355
East Midlands +5 160 £500 +8.11% 222
North East +6 93 £500 - 149
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
1 411 (5.85%) SharePoint
2 219 (3.11%) Confluence
3 180 (2.56%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 150 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (1.49%) Apache
7 40 (0.57%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) CMS
10 17 (0.24%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.17%) nginx
13 12 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.100%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.100%) Mendix
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
16 6 (0.085%) Oracle Workflow
17 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 105 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 74 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 65 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (0.50%) Chatbot
4 35 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
7 11 (0.16%) Trello
8 9 (0.13%) 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
1 112 (1.59%) Dynamics CRM
2 59 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.100%) Shopify
9 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
9 6 (0.085%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.085%) SAP Oil and Gas
9 6 (0.085%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
11 4 (0.057%) Endur
11 4 (0.057%) Maximo
11 4 (0.057%) SAP ERP
11 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,498 (35.53%) AWS
2 1,485 (21.12%) Azure DevOps
3 1,196 (17.01%) GCP
4 951 (13.53%) Entra ID
5 919 (13.07%) Power Platform
6 759 (10.80%) Microsoft 365
7 703 (10.00%) GitHub
8 415 (5.90%) Azure Data Factory
9 411 (5.85%) GitHub Actions
10 333 (4.74%) Serverless
11 311 (4.42%) SaaS
12 270 (3.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 268 (3.81%) Power Automate
14 261 (3.71%) Azure Monitor
15 255 (3.63%) Dynamics 365
16 248 (3.53%) Snowflake
17 240 (3.41%) Azure AKS
18 236 (3.36%) PowerApps
19 226 (3.21%) Microsoft Copilot
20 203 (2.89%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 466 (6.63%) Firewall
2 369 (5.25%) DNS
3 285 (4.05%) VPN
4 259 (3.68%) Network Security
5 211 (3.00%) DHCP
6 176 (2.50%) WAN
7 159 (2.26%) TCP/IP
8 102 (1.45%) BGP
9 98 (1.39%) LAN
10 91 (1.29%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.27%) VLAN
12 84 (1.19%) OSPF
13 76 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
14 62 (0.88%) SSL
15 59 (0.84%) SAN
16 56 (0.80%) Wireless
17 41 (0.58%) VXLAN
18 37 (0.53%) IPsec
19 36 (0.51%) HTTP
20 35 (0.50%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 627 (8.92%) Power BI
2 418 (5.95%) SQL Server
3 349 (4.96%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.35%) Data Lake
5 239 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
6 209 (2.97%) Metadata
7 187 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 156 (2.22%) Azure SQL Database
9 122 (1.74%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.71%) Delta Lake
11 89 (1.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 85 (1.21%) Big Data
13 77 (1.10%) MongoDB
14 72 (1.02%) MySQL
15 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
16 57 (0.81%) Tableau
17 56 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 52 (0.74%) Snowflake Schema
19 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
20 48 (0.68%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 583 (8.29%) Git
2 485 (6.90%) JIRA
3 385 (5.48%) Jenkins
4 305 (4.34%) GitLab
5 108 (1.54%) Selenium
6 58 (0.82%) Postman
7 50 (0.71%) SonarQube
8 49 (0.70%) JUnit
9 48 (0.68%) Cypress.io
10 46 (0.65%) Cucumber
11 44 (0.63%) Maven
12 41 (0.58%) JMeter
13 37 (0.53%) Gradle
13 37 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.44%) Claude Code
17 28 (0.40%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.40%) Gatling
17 28 (0.40%) MLflow
General
1 1,947 (27.69%) Social Skills
2 1,375 (19.56%) Finance
3 753 (10.71%) Public Sector
4 713 (10.14%) Analytical Skills
5 418 (5.95%) Banking
6 202 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 199 (2.83%) Retail
8 180 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
9 147 (2.09%) Legal
10 94 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 85 (1.21%) Manufacturing
12 82 (1.17%) Marketing
13 80 (1.14%) Aerospace
14 75 (1.07%) Telecoms
15 72 (1.02%) Investment Banking
16 71 (1.01%) Military
17 69 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
18 68 (0.97%) Law
19 53 (0.75%) Financial Institution
20 52 (0.74%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,312 (18.66%) Architect
2 905 (12.87%) Senior
3 787 (11.19%) Developer
4 598 (8.51%) Azure Engineer
5 589 (8.38%) Lead
6 509 (7.24%) Data Engineer
7 416 (5.92%) Solutions Architect
8 414 (5.89%) Analyst
9 359 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
10 340 (4.84%) Cloud Engineer
11 283 (4.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 273 (3.88%) Consultant
13 224 (3.19%) Data Architect
14 201 (2.86%) Platform Engineer
15 181 (2.57%) Security Engineer
16 170 (2.42%) Azure Architect
17 166 (2.36%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 161 (2.29%) Technical Architect
19 158 (2.25%) Project Manager
19 158 (2.25%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,210 (17.21%) Terraform
2 561 (7.98%) REST
3 526 (7.48%) .NET
4 324 (4.61%) Kafka
5 249 (3.54%) React
6 244 (3.47%) PySpark
7 232 (3.30%) OAuth
8 222 (3.16%) RESTful
9 192 (2.73%) JSON
10 143 (2.03%) OpenID
11 139 (1.98%) SAML
12 136 (1.93%) Spring
13 134 (1.91%) OAuth2
14 125 (1.78%) AngularJS
14 125 (1.78%) Spring Boot
15 123 (1.75%) HTML
16 117 (1.66%) .NET Framework
17 115 (1.64%) Node.js
18 114 (1.62%) SOAP
19 112 (1.59%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 776 (11.04%) Cloud Native
2 367 (5.22%) Onboarding
3 324 (4.61%) Product Ownership
4 258 (3.67%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.44%) Enterprise Software
6 241 (3.43%) AI Agents
7 235 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
8 217 (3.09%) Data Centre
9 188 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
10 156 (2.22%) Security Posture
11 143 (2.03%) Management Information System
12 128 (1.82%) Data Structures
13 120 (1.71%) Public Cloud
14 99 (1.41%) PKI
15 95 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
16 94 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
17 87 (1.24%) Replication
18 79 (1.12%) CMDB
19 71 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
20 62 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 874 (12.43%) Windows
2 442 (6.29%) Linux
3 329 (4.68%) Windows Server
4 129 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.14%) Unix
6 76 (1.08%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 74 (1.05%) Android
8 69 (0.98%) Apple iOS
9 67 (0.95%) Mac OS
10 54 (0.77%) Ubuntu
11 42 (0.60%) VMS
12 21 (0.30%) 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
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) Data ONTAP
18 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,569 (36.54%) DevOps
2 2,207 (31.39%) CI/CD
3 1,756 (24.98%) Agile
4 1,254 (17.84%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,233 (17.54%) AI
6 1,202 (17.10%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,031 (14.66%) Migration
8 1,018 (14.48%) Analytics
9 994 (14.14%) Problem-Solving
10 815 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
11 769 (10.94%) Data Modelling
12 744 (10.58%) Roadmaps
13 683 (9.71%) Business Intelligence
14 672 (9.56%) Data Pipeline
15 671 (9.54%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 637 (9.06%) Containerisation
17 629 (8.95%) Technical Leadership
18 589 (8.38%) Test Automation
19 582 (8.28%) Data Engineering
20 574 (8.16%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,634 (23.24%) Python
2 1,366 (19.43%) SQL
3 792 (11.26%) PowerShell
4 577 (8.21%) Java
5 519 (7.38%) C#
6 416 (5.92%) JavaScript
7 352 (5.01%) Bash
8 305 (4.34%) Bicep
9 248 (3.53%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.85%) Go
13 53 (0.75%) Scala
14 51 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 33 (0.47%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Groovy
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 25 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,844 (26.23%) Security Cleared
2 1,468 (20.88%) SC Cleared
3 522 (7.42%) Degree
4 413 (5.87%) Azure Certification
5 269 (3.83%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.47%) CISSP
7 234 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.63%) AWS Certification
9 181 (2.57%) Cisco Certification
10 163 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
11 162 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
12 117 (1.66%) CISM
13 82 (1.17%) CCNP
14 77 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 77 (1.10%) PMI Certification
15 75 (1.07%) PMP
16 55 (0.78%) Master's Degree
17 53 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 50 (0.71%) CCSP
19 49 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 514 (7.31%) Data Quality
2 398 (5.66%) QA
3 271 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 270 (3.84%) NIST
5 256 (3.64%) GDPR
6 172 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 98 (1.39%) SLA
8 92 (1.31%) NCSC
9 76 (1.08%) WCAG
10 73 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
11 68 (0.97%) GRC
11 68 (0.97%) PCI DSS
12 56 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 51 (0.73%) PMO
14 41 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 28 (0.40%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.27%) NIST 800
19 18 (0.26%) COBIT
System Software
1 913 (12.99%) Active Directory
2 769 (10.94%) Docker
3 215 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 138 (1.96%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
6 104 (1.48%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.91%) vSphere
8 52 (0.74%) 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 1,061 (15.09%) Kubernetes
2 408 (5.80%) Ansible
3 396 (5.63%) Microsoft Intune
4 219 (3.11%) Grafana
5 170 (2.42%) Prometheus
6 127 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 123 (1.75%) SCCM
8 63 (0.90%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.70%) Argo
10 48 (0.68%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
13 31 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 31 (0.44%) SCOM
14 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
15 18 (0.26%) CASB
15 18 (0.26%) Istio
15 18 (0.26%) Packer
16 16 (0.23%) HAProxy
17 15 (0.21%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,561 (36.42%) Microsoft
2 717 (10.20%) Databricks
3 369 (5.25%) ServiceNow
4 319 (4.54%) VMware
5 303 (4.31%) Google
6 285 (4.05%) Oracle
7 227 (3.23%) Cisco
8 188 (2.67%) SAP
8 188 (2.67%) Splunk
9 167 (2.38%) OpenAI
10 154 (2.19%) Salesforce
11 144 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 143 (2.03%) Palo Alto
13 113 (1.61%) Foundry
14 109 (1.55%) Dynatrace
15 80 (1.14%) Zscaler
16 78 (1.11%) Informatica
17 76 (1.08%) Fortinet
18 75 (1.07%) IBM
19 64 (0.91%) MuleSoft