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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,771 4,148 5,191
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.85% 16.14% 13.58%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.56% 42.66% 41.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,097 2,859 3,822
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £538 £543
Median % change year-on-year -2.33% -0.92% -3.98%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £747
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 109 26 72
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.78 £17.78
25th Percentile £52.00 £24.10 £22.58
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +64.29% -24.21% -21.26%
75th Percentile £64.50 £67.81 £60.40
90th Percentile £81.20 £78.75 £70.70
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +79.69% -30.71% -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 13,561 9,723 12,437
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 37.24% 37.83% 32.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,331 6,644 8,980
10th Percentile £310 £313 £275
25th Percentile £410 £419 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £708 £738 £731
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 384 154 333
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.23 £14.03
25th Percentile £20.46 £20.06 £16.06
Median hourly rate £38.54 £27.13 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +42.08% +26.93% -14.52%
75th Percentile £60.00 £43.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.25 £65.50
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +41.51% +24.01% -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 7 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 7 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 7 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 3,132 £540 -1.82% 1,015
North of England +2 756 £496 +0.51% 620
South East -1 731 £500 -9.09% 762
Midlands -2 474 £500 -3.85% 345
North West +2 386 £479 -4.28% 327
West Midlands -2 360 £523 -2.34% 197
South West +4 348 £504 -4.05% 277
Yorkshire -3 323 £500 +11.11% 199
East of England -3 156 £550 -4.35% 234
East Midlands 0 112 £437 -6.08% 143
North East -4 51 £525 +9.09% 106
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
1 286 (4.96%) SharePoint
2 195 (3.38%) Microsoft Exchange
3 156 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 148 (2.56%) Confluence
5 85 (1.47%) Apache
6 79 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
7 19 (0.33%) OpenStack
8 15 (0.26%) Appian
8 15 (0.26%) CMS
8 15 (0.26%) SAS
9 14 (0.24%) ArcGIS
10 13 (0.23%) Camunda
10 13 (0.23%) IIS
11 11 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.19%) Mendix
12 9 (0.16%) GeoServer
13 8 (0.14%) Smallworld
14 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.10%) Jupyter
14 6 (0.10%) WebLogic
Applications
1 105 (1.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 81 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (0.78%) MS Visio
4 40 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 40 (0.69%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.10%) Trello
7 5 (0.087%) Acrobat
7 5 (0.087%) PTC Creo
7 5 (0.087%) Weka
8 4 (0.069%) Adobe XD
9 2 (0.035%) SOLIDWORKS
10 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 1 (0.017%) AutoCAD
10 1 (0.017%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.017%) InDesign
10 1 (0.017%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.017%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 104 (1.80%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.21%) Maximo
4 10 (0.17%) Aladdin
4 10 (0.17%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 7 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 6 (0.10%) Remedy ITSM
7 6 (0.10%) SAP ERP
7 6 (0.10%) Workday HCM
8 5 (0.087%) Dynamics NAV
8 5 (0.087%) NetSuite
8 5 (0.087%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.087%) Salesforce CRM
8 5 (0.087%) SAP BPC
8 5 (0.087%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.069%) Endur
9 4 (0.069%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.069%) Oracle FAH
Cloud Services
1 2,039 (35.33%) AWS
2 1,192 (20.65%) GCP
3 1,146 (19.86%) Azure DevOps
4 791 (13.71%) Power Platform
5 747 (12.94%) Entra ID
6 691 (11.97%) Microsoft 365
7 572 (9.91%) GitHub
8 429 (7.43%) Azure Data Factory
9 325 (5.63%) Serverless
10 324 (5.61%) GitHub Actions
11 268 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 256 (4.44%) Dynamics 365
13 245 (4.25%) SaaS
14 225 (3.90%) Azure AKS
14 225 (3.90%) Power Automate
15 207 (3.59%) Azure Functions
16 204 (3.53%) PaaS
17 203 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
18 187 (3.24%) Azure Logic Apps
19 181 (3.14%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 393 (6.81%) Firewall
2 259 (4.49%) DNS
3 215 (3.73%) VPN
4 177 (3.07%) Network Security
5 149 (2.58%) DHCP
6 137 (2.37%) WAN
7 101 (1.75%) LAN
8 96 (1.66%) TCP/IP
9 80 (1.39%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.18%) VLAN
11 65 (1.13%) Kerberos
12 64 (1.11%) SD-WAN
13 43 (0.75%) HTTP
14 40 (0.69%) BGP
15 35 (0.61%) OSPF
15 35 (0.61%) Wireless
16 33 (0.57%) SSL
17 31 (0.54%) Internet
17 31 (0.54%) MPLS
18 30 (0.52%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (9.43%) Power BI
2 327 (5.67%) SQL Server
3 305 (5.29%) Data Warehouse
4 270 (4.68%) Data Lake
5 211 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
6 195 (3.38%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.95%) NoSQL
8 135 (2.34%) Metadata
9 109 (1.89%) Delta Lake
10 105 (1.82%) Relational Database
11 94 (1.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.28%) MongoDB
13 69 (1.20%) Big Data
14 67 (1.16%) Tableau
15 58 (1.01%) BigQuery
16 56 (0.97%) Oracle Database
17 52 (0.90%) MySQL
18 51 (0.88%) Snowflake Schema
19 49 (0.85%) Redis
20 37 (0.64%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 436 (7.56%) Git
2 386 (6.69%) JIRA
3 279 (4.83%) Jenkins
4 214 (3.71%) GitLab
5 93 (1.61%) Selenium
6 67 (1.16%) Postman
7 58 (1.01%) JUnit
8 54 (0.94%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.87%) MLflow
10 47 (0.81%) JMeter
11 39 (0.68%) SonarQube
12 37 (0.64%) REST Assured
13 35 (0.61%) Oracle APEX
14 34 (0.59%) Cypress.io
15 30 (0.52%) Visual Studio
16 28 (0.49%) Artifactory
17 26 (0.45%) Bitbucket
17 26 (0.45%) TestRail
18 23 (0.40%) Mockito
19 22 (0.38%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,732 (30.01%) Social Skills
2 1,066 (18.47%) Finance
3 625 (10.83%) Public Sector
4 578 (10.02%) Analytical Skills
5 344 (5.96%) Banking
6 189 (3.27%) Documentation Skills
7 111 (1.92%) Legal
8 99 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 84 (1.46%) Retail
10 83 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
11 82 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
12 77 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
13 71 (1.23%) Marketing
14 62 (1.07%) Financial Institution
15 61 (1.06%) Telecoms
16 58 (1.01%) Investment Banking
17 56 (0.97%) Law
18 51 (0.88%) Front Office
19 40 (0.69%) Manufacturing
20 38 (0.66%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 956 (16.57%) Architect
2 824 (14.28%) Developer
3 654 (11.33%) Senior
4 483 (8.37%) Azure Engineer
5 471 (8.16%) Data Engineer
6 426 (7.38%) Lead
7 376 (6.52%) Analyst
8 271 (4.70%) Solutions Architect
9 266 (4.61%) DevOps Engineer
10 255 (4.42%) Consultant
11 163 (2.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 159 (2.76%) Security Engineer
13 158 (2.74%) Cloud Engineer
14 146 (2.53%) Azure Architect
15 138 (2.39%) Senior Developer
16 137 (2.37%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 132 (2.29%) Platform Engineer
18 115 (1.99%) Data Architect
19 114 (1.98%) Azure Data Engineer
20 110 (1.91%) Azure Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 444 (7.69%) .NET
2 390 (6.76%) REST
3 272 (4.71%) React
4 215 (3.73%) Kafka
5 212 (3.67%) Node.js
6 211 (3.66%) PySpark
7 200 (3.47%) RESTful
8 178 (3.08%) OAuth
9 174 (3.02%) Spring
10 162 (2.81%) AngularJS
11 160 (2.77%) HTML
12 143 (2.48%) LDAP
13 142 (2.46%) Spring Boot
14 135 (2.34%) PyTorch
15 131 (2.27%) CSS
16 129 (2.24%) SOAP
17 124 (2.15%) Middleware
18 121 (2.10%) SAML
18 121 (2.10%) TensorFlow
19 114 (1.98%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 519 (8.99%) Cloud Native
2 239 (4.14%) Onboarding
3 197 (3.41%) Product Ownership
4 166 (2.88%) Security Posture
5 158 (2.74%) Hybrid Cloud
6 147 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
7 138 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
8 133 (2.30%) Data Centre
9 113 (1.96%) Public Cloud
10 95 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
11 93 (1.61%) AI Agents
12 78 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 73 (1.26%) Replication
14 66 (1.14%) Algorithms
15 64 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
15 64 (1.11%) Management Information System
16 57 (0.99%) Low-Code
17 56 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
18 47 (0.81%) PKI
19 46 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 646 (11.19%) Windows
2 309 (5.35%) Linux
3 187 (3.24%) Windows Server
4 119 (2.06%) Windows 10
5 59 (1.02%) Unix
6 58 (1.01%) VMS
7 45 (0.78%) Mac OS
8 37 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 36 (0.62%) Apple iOS
10 28 (0.49%) Android
11 22 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 18 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
13 12 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.19%) CentOS
15 7 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
15 7 (0.12%) Solaris
16 6 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.087%) AIX
17 5 (0.087%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,094 (36.28%) DevOps
2 1,726 (29.91%) CI/CD
3 1,371 (23.76%) Agile
4 1,030 (17.85%) Problem-Solving
5 884 (15.32%) Analytics
6 822 (14.24%) AI
7 741 (12.84%) Infrastructure as Code
8 715 (12.39%) Migration
9 615 (10.66%) Business Intelligence
10 613 (10.62%) Data Modelling
11 596 (10.33%) Stakeholder Management
12 555 (9.62%) Containerisation
13 549 (9.51%) Continuous Improvement
14 526 (9.11%) ETL
15 525 (9.10%) Data Pipeline
16 523 (9.06%) Machine Learning
17 513 (8.89%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 508 (8.80%) Microservices
19 488 (8.46%) Data Engineering
20 458 (7.94%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,501 (26.01%) Python
2 1,310 (22.70%) SQL
3 648 (11.23%) PowerShell
4 493 (8.54%) C#
5 481 (8.33%) Java
6 440 (7.62%) JavaScript
7 251 (4.35%) TypeScript
8 228 (3.95%) Bash
9 167 (2.89%) Bicep
10 90 (1.56%) Scala
11 77 (1.33%) Go
12 74 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.28%) PL/SQL
13 71 (1.23%) Kusto Query Language
14 67 (1.16%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.69%) R
16 29 (0.50%) C++
17 28 (0.49%) PHP
17 28 (0.49%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.38%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,417 (24.55%) Security Cleared
2 1,162 (20.14%) SC Cleared
3 462 (8.01%) Degree
4 343 (5.94%) Azure Certification
5 195 (3.38%) Computer Science Degree
6 166 (2.88%) CISSP
7 156 (2.70%) Microsoft Certification
8 125 (2.17%) AWS Certification
9 118 (2.04%) DV Cleared
10 105 (1.82%) Cisco Certification
11 103 (1.78%) CISM
12 85 (1.47%) BPSS Clearance
13 70 (1.21%) Master's Degree
14 54 (0.94%) TOGAF Certification
15 53 (0.92%) CCNP
16 48 (0.83%) PMI Certification
17 46 (0.80%) PMP
18 43 (0.75%) ISTQB
19 36 (0.62%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 32 (0.55%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 387 (6.71%) Data Quality
2 355 (6.15%) GDPR
3 301 (5.22%) QA
4 265 (4.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 211 (3.66%) NIST
6 98 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.49%) NCSC
8 80 (1.39%) PCI DSS
9 55 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
10 54 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 52 (0.90%) SLA
12 41 (0.71%) PMO
13 34 (0.59%) GRC
13 34 (0.59%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.50%) WCAG
15 28 (0.49%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.43%) EU AI Act
17 24 (0.42%) ISO 20022
18 23 (0.40%) PSD2
19 20 (0.35%) NIST 800
System Software
1 799 (13.85%) Active Directory
2 682 (11.82%) Docker
3 175 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 86 (1.49%) Virtual Machines
5 78 (1.35%) Hyper-V
6 68 (1.18%) vSphere
7 65 (1.13%) Virtual Desktop
8 24 (0.42%) VMware NSX
9 18 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
10 14 (0.24%) NFS
11 12 (0.21%) Firmware
12 9 (0.16%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 7 (0.12%) KVM
13 7 (0.12%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 7 (0.12%) Snort
14 6 (0.10%) GPFS
14 6 (0.10%) Lustre
15 5 (0.087%) RACF
16 4 (0.069%) Squid
Systems Management
1 858 (14.87%) Terraform
2 850 (14.73%) Kubernetes
3 339 (5.87%) Microsoft Intune
4 252 (4.37%) Ansible
5 144 (2.50%) Single Sign-On
6 142 (2.46%) Grafana
7 128 (2.22%) SCCM
8 123 (2.13%) Prometheus
9 72 (1.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.73%) Argo
11 30 (0.52%) Istio
12 26 (0.45%) Puppet
13 22 (0.38%) Progress Chef
14 20 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 19 (0.33%) Nmap
15 19 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 18 (0.31%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.29%) Nessus
18 16 (0.28%) vRealize
19 15 (0.26%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 1,893 (32.80%) Microsoft
2 579 (10.03%) Databricks
3 298 (5.16%) Oracle
4 288 (4.99%) Google
5 268 (4.64%) ServiceNow
6 233 (4.04%) VMware
7 165 (2.86%) SAP
8 153 (2.65%) OpenAI
9 144 (2.50%) Cisco
10 137 (2.37%) Splunk
11 114 (1.98%) CyberArk
12 98 (1.70%) Foundry
13 90 (1.56%) Salesforce
14 87 (1.51%) Palo Alto
15 78 (1.35%) Okta
16 69 (1.20%) Citrix
17 68 (1.18%) Red Hat
18 64 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
19 63 (1.09%) IBM
20 56 (0.97%) Zscaler