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 16 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,795 3,967 5,120
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.76% 16.03% 13.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.57% 42.41% 41.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,117 2,800 3,766
10th Percentile £356 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -1.85% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 27 66
10th Percentile £25.39 £22.14 £17.79
25th Percentile £53.91 £24.40 £22.13
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £46.12
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +16.01% -22.88%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £79.22 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +70.37% -26.92% -17.90%

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 13,613 9,355 12,228
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.02% 37.81% 32.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,360 6,522 8,818
10th Percentile £313 £313 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £607 £638 £638
90th Percentile £709 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 407 166 326
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.19 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.58 £26.00 £21.19
Median % change year-on-year +44.54% +22.73% -15.26%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.66 £42.06
90th Percentile £79.70 £75.88 £62.50
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £25.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +47.06% +19.33% -14.52%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 16 March 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 3,144 £538 -2.18% 939
North of England +2 777 £489 +2.95% 535
South East 0 746 £500 -9.09% 657
Midlands -3 465 £500 - 279
North West +1 409 £484 -3.15% 274
West Midlands -3 361 £510 -2.86% 163
South West +4 336 £510 -2.95% 233
Yorkshire -3 318 £488 +8.33% 175
East of England -1 152 £550 -5.17% 178
East Midlands -3 100 £428 -10.00% 114
North East -2 52 £525 +10.53% 94
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
1 276 (4.76%) SharePoint
2 190 (3.28%) Microsoft Exchange
3 165 (2.85%) Apache Spark
4 150 (2.59%) Confluence
5 90 (1.55%) Apache
6 82 (1.42%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.33%) IIS
7 19 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.26%) Appian
8 15 (0.26%) ArcGIS
8 15 (0.26%) SAS
9 14 (0.24%) Camunda
9 14 (0.24%) CMS
10 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.19%) Mendix
11 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
12 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
13 7 (0.12%) Jupyter
13 7 (0.12%) Palantir Foundry
14 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 103 (1.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (0.74%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.72%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.64%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.10%) Trello
8 5 (0.086%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.086%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.086%) Weka
9 4 (0.069%) Adobe XD
10 2 (0.035%) SOLIDWORKS
10 2 (0.035%) Spreadsheet
11 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
11 1 (0.017%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 100 (1.73%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.19%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 11 (0.19%) NEC Housing
5 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 9 (0.16%) Aladdin
7 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
8 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
9 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
9 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
9 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
10 5 (0.086%) Dynamics NAV
10 5 (0.086%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.086%) Salesforce CRM
10 5 (0.086%) SAP BPC
10 5 (0.086%) SAP MDG
11 4 (0.069%) Cloudability
11 4 (0.069%) Endur
11 4 (0.069%) NetSuite
11 4 (0.069%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 2,035 (35.12%) AWS
2 1,178 (20.33%) Azure DevOps
3 1,172 (20.22%) GCP
4 790 (13.63%) Power Platform
5 757 (13.06%) Entra ID
6 662 (11.42%) Microsoft 365
7 591 (10.20%) GitHub
8 437 (7.54%) Azure Data Factory
9 340 (5.87%) Serverless
10 338 (5.83%) GitHub Actions
11 270 (4.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (4.26%) Dynamics 365
13 243 (4.19%) SaaS
14 222 (3.83%) Power Automate
15 219 (3.78%) Azure AKS
16 218 (3.76%) Azure Monitor
17 212 (3.66%) Azure Functions
18 207 (3.57%) PaaS
19 186 (3.21%) Azure Logic Apps
20 177 (3.05%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 392 (6.76%) Firewall
2 258 (4.45%) DNS
3 215 (3.71%) VPN
4 191 (3.30%) Network Security
5 149 (2.57%) DHCP
6 143 (2.47%) WAN
7 108 (1.86%) LAN
8 94 (1.62%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.35%) Wi-Fi
10 66 (1.14%) SD-WAN
11 64 (1.10%) Kerberos
12 61 (1.05%) VLAN
13 42 (0.72%) BGP
14 40 (0.69%) HTTP
15 39 (0.67%) Wireless
16 37 (0.64%) OSPF
17 31 (0.53%) Internet
17 31 (0.53%) SAN
18 29 (0.50%) MPLS
18 29 (0.50%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 550 (9.49%) Power BI
2 328 (5.66%) SQL Server
3 307 (5.30%) Data Warehouse
4 272 (4.69%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.59%) PostgreSQL
6 204 (3.52%) Azure SQL Database
7 174 (3.00%) NoSQL
8 133 (2.30%) Metadata
9 118 (2.04%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.64%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 79 (1.36%) Big Data
13 71 (1.23%) MongoDB
13 71 (1.23%) Tableau
14 59 (1.02%) Oracle Database
15 55 (0.95%) BigQuery
16 53 (0.91%) MySQL
17 48 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
18 47 (0.81%) Redis
19 38 (0.66%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 438 (7.56%) Git
2 389 (6.71%) JIRA
3 277 (4.78%) Jenkins
4 209 (3.61%) GitLab
5 99 (1.71%) Selenium
6 70 (1.21%) Postman
7 58 (1.00%) Cucumber
7 58 (1.00%) JUnit
8 54 (0.93%) JMeter
9 50 (0.86%) MLflow
10 39 (0.67%) SonarQube
11 38 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.62%) Cypress.io
13 34 (0.59%) Oracle APEX
14 31 (0.53%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.48%) Artifactory
16 26 (0.45%) TestRail
17 25 (0.43%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.40%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.40%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,691 (29.18%) Social Skills
2 1,077 (18.58%) Finance
3 631 (10.89%) Public Sector
4 590 (10.18%) Analytical Skills
5 341 (5.88%) Banking
6 189 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
7 116 (2.00%) Legal
8 101 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.45%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
11 81 (1.40%) Retail
12 76 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
13 65 (1.12%) Telecoms
14 63 (1.09%) Marketing
15 62 (1.07%) Financial Institution
16 57 (0.98%) Investment Banking
17 53 (0.91%) Law
18 52 (0.90%) Front Office
19 42 (0.72%) Local Government
20 39 (0.67%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 978 (16.88%) Architect
2 808 (13.94%) Developer
3 670 (11.56%) Senior
4 500 (8.63%) Azure Engineer
5 493 (8.51%) Data Engineer
6 437 (7.54%) Lead
7 368 (6.35%) Analyst
8 266 (4.59%) Solutions Architect
9 264 (4.56%) DevOps Engineer
10 256 (4.42%) Consultant
11 175 (3.02%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 159 (2.74%) Cloud Engineer
13 152 (2.62%) Azure Architect
14 148 (2.55%) Security Engineer
15 134 (2.31%) Platform Engineer
15 134 (2.31%) Senior Developer
16 131 (2.26%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 118 (2.04%) Data Architect
18 116 (2.00%) Azure Data Engineer
19 110 (1.90%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 447 (7.71%) .NET
2 403 (6.95%) REST
3 270 (4.66%) React
4 224 (3.87%) Kafka
5 221 (3.81%) PySpark
6 213 (3.68%) Node.js
7 200 (3.45%) RESTful
8 180 (3.11%) Spring
9 176 (3.04%) OAuth
10 165 (2.85%) AngularJS
11 150 (2.59%) HTML
12 143 (2.47%) LDAP
13 140 (2.42%) Spring Boot
14 132 (2.28%) PyTorch
15 126 (2.17%) CSS
16 125 (2.16%) SOAP
17 124 (2.14%) Middleware
18 118 (2.04%) SAML
18 118 (2.04%) TensorFlow
19 112 (1.93%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 536 (9.25%) Cloud Native
2 238 (4.11%) Onboarding
3 200 (3.45%) Product Ownership
4 162 (2.80%) Hybrid Cloud
5 159 (2.74%) Security Posture
6 149 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
8 137 (2.36%) Data Centre
9 113 (1.95%) Public Cloud
10 103 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
11 95 (1.64%) AI Agents
12 78 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 73 (1.26%) Replication
14 68 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
15 67 (1.16%) Management Information System
16 65 (1.12%) Algorithms
17 55 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
18 51 (0.88%) PKI
19 49 (0.85%) Low-Code
20 46 (0.79%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 634 (10.94%) Windows
2 304 (5.25%) Linux
3 196 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 110 (1.90%) Windows 10
5 58 (1.00%) VMS
6 56 (0.97%) Unix
7 37 (0.64%) Mac OS
8 35 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 33 (0.57%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.45%) Android
11 21 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
13 16 (0.28%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.14%) CentOS
16 7 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
17 5 (0.086%) AIX
17 5 (0.086%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
18 4 (0.069%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,139 (36.91%) DevOps
2 1,753 (30.25%) CI/CD
3 1,377 (23.76%) Agile
4 1,013 (17.48%) Problem-Solving
5 901 (15.55%) Analytics
6 822 (14.18%) AI
7 751 (12.96%) Infrastructure as Code
8 742 (12.80%) Migration
9 626 (10.80%) Data Modelling
10 618 (10.66%) Business Intelligence
11 598 (10.32%) Stakeholder Management
12 568 (9.80%) Continuous Improvement
13 551 (9.51%) Containerisation
14 545 (9.40%) Data Pipeline
15 533 (9.20%) ETL
16 518 (8.94%) Machine Learning
17 517 (8.92%) Microservices
18 516 (8.90%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 501 (8.65%) Data Engineering
20 459 (7.92%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,524 (26.30%) Python
2 1,342 (23.16%) SQL
3 645 (11.13%) PowerShell
4 488 (8.42%) C#
5 487 (8.40%) Java
6 431 (7.44%) JavaScript
7 243 (4.19%) TypeScript
8 216 (3.73%) Bash
9 179 (3.09%) Bicep
10 94 (1.62%) Scala
11 76 (1.31%) Go
12 73 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 72 (1.24%) PL/SQL
14 70 (1.21%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.12%) T-SQL
16 40 (0.69%) R
17 32 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 29 (0.50%) C++
19 22 (0.38%) PHP
19 22 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,428 (24.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,175 (20.28%) SC Cleared
3 464 (8.01%) Degree
4 339 (5.85%) Azure Certification
5 198 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
6 170 (2.93%) CISSP
7 148 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
8 122 (2.11%) AWS Certification
9 116 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 110 (1.90%) Cisco Certification
11 107 (1.85%) CISM
12 86 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
13 74 (1.28%) Master's Degree
14 57 (0.98%) CCNP
15 53 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
16 50 (0.86%) PMI Certification
17 48 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 48 (0.83%) PMP
18 38 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 34 (0.59%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 408 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 360 (6.21%) GDPR
3 304 (5.25%) QA
4 264 (4.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 221 (3.81%) NIST
6 97 (1.67%) Accessibility
7 87 (1.50%) NCSC
8 83 (1.43%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 53 (0.91%) SLA
12 44 (0.76%) PMO
13 33 (0.57%) GRC
13 33 (0.57%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.50%) WCAG
15 24 (0.41%) EU AI Act
15 24 (0.41%) ISO 20022
15 24 (0.41%) SOC 2
16 23 (0.40%) PSD2
17 21 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 787 (13.58%) Active Directory
2 685 (11.82%) Docker
3 176 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 88 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
5 82 (1.42%) Hyper-V
6 67 (1.16%) vSphere
7 65 (1.12%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.41%) VMware NSX
9 21 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
10 15 (0.26%) Firmware
11 13 (0.22%) NFS
12 8 (0.14%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.12%) KVM
13 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
14 6 (0.10%) Snort
15 5 (0.086%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.086%) RACF
Systems Management
1 883 (15.24%) Terraform
2 860 (14.84%) Kubernetes
3 326 (5.63%) Microsoft Intune
4 249 (4.30%) Ansible
5 152 (2.62%) Grafana
6 143 (2.47%) Single Sign-On
7 130 (2.24%) Prometheus
8 112 (1.93%) SCCM
9 74 (1.28%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 44 (0.76%) Argo
11 31 (0.53%) Istio
12 26 (0.45%) Puppet
13 23 (0.40%) Progress Chef
14 21 (0.36%) vCenter Server
15 20 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
16 19 (0.33%) FortiGate
17 16 (0.28%) Nmap
17 16 (0.28%) vRealize
18 15 (0.26%) HP ALM
19 14 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 1,875 (32.36%) Microsoft
2 586 (10.11%) Databricks
3 293 (5.06%) Oracle
4 291 (5.02%) Google
5 256 (4.42%) ServiceNow
6 235 (4.06%) VMware
7 172 (2.97%) SAP
8 153 (2.64%) OpenAI
9 144 (2.48%) Cisco
10 132 (2.28%) Splunk
11 117 (2.02%) CyberArk
12 104 (1.79%) Foundry
13 91 (1.57%) Palo Alto
14 82 (1.42%) Okta
15 81 (1.40%) Salesforce
16 69 (1.19%) Red Hat
17 65 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.10%) IBM
19 62 (1.07%) Citrix
20 54 (0.93%) Zscaler