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 26 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,157 4,028 4,796
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.67% 14.62% 14.44%
As % of the Cloud Services category 45.09% 39.20% 42.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,006 2,763 3,454
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £415 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £515 £525
% change year-on-year +1.94% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 40 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.62 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.38 £26.68 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.99 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +45.87% +2.83% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £54.50
90th Percentile £102.17 £95.50 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +2.00% +7.14% -35.19%

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 15,871 10,275 11,229
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.74% 37.30% 33.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,602 6,957 7,878
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £718 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 274 196
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.25 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.25 £18.51 £17.69
Median hourly rate £35.00 £26.15 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +33.84% -4.91% -16.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.63
90th Percentile £83.40 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £33.99 £28.00 £27.72
% change year-on-year +21.39% +1.01% -20.80%

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 26 August 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 26 August 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 26 August 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 3,749 £550 +0.92% 828
North of England +8 1,051 £500 +5.26% 407
South East +3 926 £525 +5.00% 320
Midlands +4 644 £490 -4.85% 258
North West +6 538 £495 +3.13% 208
West Midlands +3 476 £488 -9.22% 150
Yorkshire +6 431 £500 +5.26% 145
South West +6 426 £540 +7.95% 274
East of England +3 175 £525 +3.96% 125
East Midlands +10 156 £488 +5.41% 107
North East +10 95 £506 +1.25% 60
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
1 393 (5.49%) SharePoint
2 230 (3.21%) Confluence
3 178 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 159 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 144 (2.01%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.51%) Apache
7 39 (0.54%) SAS
8 29 (0.41%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) CMS
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
13 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
14 11 (0.15%) nginx
15 7 (0.098%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.098%) Camunda
15 7 (0.098%) Mendix
15 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 110 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
3 71 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 31 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.070%) Notion
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
14 1 (0.014%) Mozilla Thunderbird
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 107 (1.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.15%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.070%) Maximo
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,540 (35.49%) AWS
2 1,533 (21.42%) Azure DevOps
3 1,211 (16.92%) GCP
4 952 (13.30%) Entra ID
5 907 (12.67%) Power Platform
6 742 (10.37%) Microsoft 365
7 704 (9.84%) GitHub
8 429 (5.99%) Azure Data Factory
9 425 (5.94%) GitHub Actions
10 322 (4.50%) Serverless
11 316 (4.42%) SaaS
12 277 (3.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 273 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
14 260 (3.63%) Power Automate
15 254 (3.55%) Azure AKS
16 251 (3.51%) Dynamics 365
17 230 (3.21%) Snowflake
18 227 (3.17%) PowerApps
19 208 (2.91%) PaaS
20 203 (2.84%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 481 (6.72%) Firewall
2 381 (5.32%) DNS
3 295 (4.12%) VPN
4 276 (3.86%) Network Security
5 206 (2.88%) DHCP
6 184 (2.57%) WAN
7 166 (2.32%) TCP/IP
8 109 (1.52%) BGP
9 108 (1.51%) LAN
10 90 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 89 (1.24%) OSPF
12 87 (1.22%) VLAN
13 72 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.85%) SAN
15 58 (0.81%) SSL
16 50 (0.70%) Wireless
17 44 (0.61%) HTTP
17 44 (0.61%) VXLAN
18 38 (0.53%) IPsec
19 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 640 (8.94%) Power BI
2 416 (5.81%) SQL Server
3 361 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 298 (4.16%) Data Lake
5 240 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 198 (2.77%) Metadata
7 188 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 175 (2.45%) Azure SQL Database
9 121 (1.69%) Delta Lake
9 121 (1.69%) Relational Database
10 89 (1.24%) Big Data
11 85 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 74 (1.03%) MongoDB
13 63 (0.88%) MySQL
13 63 (0.88%) Tableau
14 56 (0.78%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.77%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.75%) Amazon Redshift
17 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 50 (0.70%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 570 (7.96%) Git
2 514 (7.18%) JIRA
3 387 (5.41%) Jenkins
4 300 (4.19%) GitLab
5 117 (1.63%) Selenium
6 58 (0.81%) Postman
7 53 (0.74%) JUnit
8 51 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.67%) JMeter
10 47 (0.66%) Cucumber
11 45 (0.63%) SonarQube
12 40 (0.56%) Maven
13 38 (0.53%) WebDriver
14 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
15 35 (0.49%) REST Assured
16 33 (0.46%) Gradle
17 29 (0.41%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.39%) LoadRunner
19 27 (0.38%) Gatling
19 27 (0.38%) MLflow
General
1 1,929 (26.95%) Social Skills
2 1,395 (19.49%) Finance
3 789 (11.02%) Public Sector
4 732 (10.23%) Analytical Skills
5 414 (5.78%) Banking
6 203 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 192 (2.68%) Documentation Skills
8 185 (2.58%) Retail
9 147 (2.05%) Legal
10 85 (1.19%) Manufacturing
11 83 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 80 (1.12%) Telecoms
13 74 (1.03%) Aerospace
14 73 (1.02%) Marketing
15 72 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 71 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
17 69 (0.96%) Law
18 61 (0.85%) Financial Institution
18 61 (0.85%) Military
19 54 (0.75%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,308 (18.28%) Architect
2 911 (12.73%) Senior
3 820 (11.46%) Developer
4 619 (8.65%) Azure Engineer
5 607 (8.48%) Lead
6 525 (7.34%) Data Engineer
7 425 (5.94%) Analyst
8 392 (5.48%) Solutions Architect
9 356 (4.97%) DevOps Engineer
10 326 (4.55%) Cloud Engineer
11 285 (3.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 268 (3.74%) Consultant
13 220 (3.07%) Data Architect
14 205 (2.86%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.63%) Azure Architect
16 171 (2.39%) Security Engineer
17 163 (2.28%) Technical Architect
18 162 (2.26%) Senior Developer
19 159 (2.22%) Project Manager
20 156 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,194 (16.68%) Terraform
2 550 (7.68%) REST
3 545 (7.61%) .NET
4 311 (4.35%) Kafka
5 254 (3.55%) React
6 248 (3.47%) PySpark
7 230 (3.21%) RESTful
8 228 (3.19%) OAuth
9 183 (2.56%) JSON
10 152 (2.12%) Spring
11 141 (1.97%) AngularJS
11 141 (1.97%) SAML
12 137 (1.91%) OpenID
13 130 (1.82%) Node.js
14 129 (1.80%) .NET Framework
15 128 (1.79%) OAuth2
16 126 (1.76%) Spring Boot
17 123 (1.72%) HTML
18 120 (1.68%) Middleware
19 113 (1.58%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 786 (10.98%) Cloud Native
2 373 (5.21%) Onboarding
3 310 (4.33%) Product Ownership
4 251 (3.51%) Hybrid Cloud
5 242 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
6 223 (3.12%) AI Agents
6 223 (3.12%) Data Centre
7 222 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
8 205 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
9 156 (2.18%) Security Posture
10 131 (1.83%) Management Information System
11 128 (1.79%) Data Structures
12 123 (1.72%) Public Cloud
13 100 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
14 98 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
14 98 (1.37%) PKI
15 80 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
16 78 (1.09%) CMDB
17 77 (1.08%) Replication
18 62 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 883 (12.34%) Windows
2 434 (6.06%) Linux
3 319 (4.46%) Windows Server
4 127 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.12%) Unix
6 76 (1.06%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 72 (1.01%) Android
8 68 (0.95%) Apple iOS
9 63 (0.88%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.74%) Ubuntu
11 47 (0.66%) VMS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 18 (0.25%) CentOS
14 16 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
15 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 7 (0.098%) Data ONTAP
18 6 (0.084%) AIX
19 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,640 (36.89%) DevOps
2 2,224 (31.07%) CI/CD
3 1,793 (25.05%) Agile
4 1,184 (16.54%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,167 (16.31%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,161 (16.22%) AI
7 1,058 (14.78%) Migration
8 1,039 (14.52%) Analytics
9 999 (13.96%) Problem-Solving
10 819 (11.44%) Continuous Improvement
11 780 (10.90%) Data Modelling
12 711 (9.93%) Roadmaps
13 694 (9.70%) Business Intelligence
14 693 (9.68%) Data Pipeline
15 692 (9.67%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 650 (9.08%) Containerisation
17 605 (8.45%) Microservices
18 598 (8.36%) ETL
19 597 (8.34%) Technical Leadership
20 595 (8.31%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,649 (23.04%) Python
2 1,415 (19.77%) SQL
3 792 (11.07%) PowerShell
4 590 (8.24%) Java
5 531 (7.42%) C#
6 408 (5.70%) JavaScript
7 345 (4.82%) Bash
8 303 (4.23%) Bicep
9 242 (3.38%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.03%) T-SQL
12 60 (0.84%) Go
13 51 (0.71%) Kusto Query Language
13 51 (0.71%) Scala
14 50 (0.70%) Shell Script
15 36 (0.50%) R
16 32 (0.45%) Groovy
16 32 (0.45%) Kotlin
16 32 (0.45%) PL/SQL
17 27 (0.38%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,875 (26.20%) Security Cleared
2 1,507 (21.06%) SC Cleared
3 513 (7.17%) Degree
4 407 (5.69%) Azure Certification
5 254 (3.55%) DV Cleared
6 238 (3.33%) CISSP
7 212 (2.96%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.58%) Cisco Certification
9 183 (2.56%) AWS Certification
10 165 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 150 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
12 114 (1.59%) CISM
13 88 (1.23%) CCNP
14 74 (1.03%) PMI Certification
15 73 (1.02%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 72 (1.01%) PMP
17 59 (0.82%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 44 (0.61%) CCSP
20 42 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 513 (7.17%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.53%) QA
3 280 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 278 (3.88%) NIST
5 269 (3.76%) GDPR
6 170 (2.38%) Accessibility
7 97 (1.36%) NCSC
7 97 (1.36%) SLA
8 70 (0.98%) WCAG
9 68 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
9 68 (0.95%) GRC
10 67 (0.94%) PCI DSS
11 56 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.70%) PMO
13 39 (0.54%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 24 (0.34%) HIPAA
15 23 (0.32%) SOC 2
16 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
16 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
17 17 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 912 (12.74%) Active Directory
2 775 (10.83%) Docker
3 215 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.98%) Virtual Desktop
5 132 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 103 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.87%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.41%) Firmware
11 19 (0.27%) NFS
12 17 (0.24%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
13 13 (0.18%) Postfix
14 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
15 7 (0.098%) Varnish
16 6 (0.084%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
Systems Management
1 1,061 (14.82%) Kubernetes
2 400 (5.59%) Ansible
3 394 (5.51%) Microsoft Intune
4 226 (3.16%) Grafana
5 180 (2.52%) Prometheus
6 132 (1.84%) Single Sign-On
7 119 (1.66%) SCCM
8 61 (0.85%) Progress Chef
9 50 (0.70%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 36 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 26 (0.36%) Istio
15 22 (0.31%) SCOM
15 22 (0.31%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.28%) Packer
17 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 14 (0.20%) CASB
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,511 (35.08%) Microsoft
2 700 (9.78%) Databricks
3 371 (5.18%) ServiceNow
4 312 (4.36%) VMware
5 292 (4.08%) Google
6 282 (3.94%) Oracle
7 218 (3.05%) Cisco
8 196 (2.74%) SAP
9 180 (2.52%) Splunk
10 164 (2.29%) OpenAI
11 147 (2.05%) CyberArk
12 140 (1.96%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.96%) Salesforce
13 108 (1.51%) Foundry
14 107 (1.50%) Dynatrace
15 92 (1.29%) Zscaler
16 78 (1.09%) Informatica
17 76 (1.06%) IBM
18 74 (1.03%) Fortinet
19 67 (0.94%) Okta