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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,058 4,270 4,782
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.17% 15.24% 14.74%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.03% 39.86% 42.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,921 2,933 3,284
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £443 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £529 £517 £530
% change year-on-year +2.32% -2.45% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 41 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +54.41% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.76 £95.00 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £42.35 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +24.56% -2.86% -24.21%

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 16,031 10,713 11,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.46% 38.23% 34.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,669 7,252 7,558
10th Percentile £321 £305 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £505 £530
Median % change year-on-year +3.96% -4.72% -2.75%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £645
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 569 253 165
10th Percentile £15.30 £15.30 £15.99
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +6.06%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £66.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £31.50 £26.30 £35.00
% change year-on-year +19.77% -24.86% +6.06%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3,707 £550 +0.92% 3,962
North of England +4 1,008 £500 +5.26% 1,420
South East +1 899 £525 +5.00% 1,356
Midlands +1 638 £490 -5.63% 819
North West +5 489 £500 +5.26% 713
West Midlands +2 487 £477 -13.27% 490
Yorkshire +5 433 £500 +2.56% 496
South West +2 413 £550 +7.84% 652
East of England -1 196 £508 +1.00% 470
East Midlands +3 147 £500 +8.11% 329
North East +3 100 £513 +2.50% 226
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 (5.82%) SharePoint
2 232 (3.29%) Confluence
3 174 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 172 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 144 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.52%) Apache
7 33 (0.47%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 23 (0.33%) CMS
10 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) nginx
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.099%) Mendix
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
17 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
17 5 (0.071%) Tomcat
Applications
1 106 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.82%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.57%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.52%) Chatbot
6 33 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 12 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.099%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.099%) Revit
10 5 (0.071%) Notion
11 4 (0.057%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) Mingle
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.028%) 1Password
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 111 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.16%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
6 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 8 (0.11%) Cloudability
7 8 (0.11%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 5 (0.071%) Maximo
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.057%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.057%) Quorum
10 4 (0.057%) Ripple
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.057%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,493 (35.32%) AWS
2 1,494 (21.17%) Azure DevOps
3 1,245 (17.64%) GCP
4 1,004 (14.22%) Entra ID
5 920 (13.03%) Power Platform
6 781 (11.07%) Microsoft 365
7 716 (10.14%) GitHub
8 412 (5.84%) GitHub Actions
9 406 (5.75%) Azure Data Factory
10 340 (4.82%) Serverless
11 317 (4.49%) SaaS
12 272 (3.85%) Power Automate
13 269 (3.81%) Azure Monitor
14 268 (3.80%) Dynamics 365
15 260 (3.68%) Snowflake
16 257 (3.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 238 (3.37%) Azure AKS
18 237 (3.36%) Microsoft Copilot
18 237 (3.36%) PowerApps
19 206 (2.92%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 465 (6.59%) Firewall
2 378 (5.36%) DNS
3 284 (4.02%) VPN
4 263 (3.73%) Network Security
5 220 (3.12%) DHCP
6 169 (2.39%) WAN
7 161 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.40%) BGP
9 96 (1.36%) LAN
10 87 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.15%) OSPF
12 76 (1.08%) VLAN
13 75 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.85%) SSL
14 60 (0.85%) Wireless
15 59 (0.84%) SAN
16 39 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 38 (0.54%) MPLS
18 36 (0.51%) HTTP
18 36 (0.51%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (8.67%) Power BI
2 415 (5.88%) SQL Server
3 337 (4.77%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.34%) Data Lake
5 236 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 214 (3.03%) Metadata
7 184 (2.61%) NoSQL
8 153 (2.17%) Azure SQL Database
9 122 (1.73%) Relational Database
10 119 (1.69%) Delta Lake
11 92 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.23%) MySQL
13 86 (1.22%) Big Data
14 74 (1.05%) MongoDB
15 58 (0.82%) Amazon Redshift
16 56 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
16 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
17 52 (0.74%) Tableau
18 48 (0.68%) Redis
19 46 (0.65%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 610 (8.64%) Git
2 493 (6.98%) JIRA
3 384 (5.44%) Jenkins
4 311 (4.41%) GitLab
5 121 (1.71%) Selenium
6 66 (0.94%) Postman
7 64 (0.91%) Cucumber
8 50 (0.71%) Cypress.io
9 48 (0.68%) JMeter
9 48 (0.68%) JUnit
10 45 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 44 (0.62%) Visual Studio
12 42 (0.60%) Maven
13 39 (0.55%) Gradle
14 38 (0.54%) Claude Code
15 37 (0.52%) REST Assured
16 35 (0.50%) Bitbucket
17 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
18 30 (0.43%) LoadRunner
19 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,969 (27.90%) Social Skills
2 1,419 (20.10%) Finance
3 734 (10.40%) Public Sector
4 719 (10.19%) Analytical Skills
5 453 (6.42%) Banking
6 207 (2.93%) Retail
7 202 (2.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 167 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
9 135 (1.91%) Legal
10 99 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 96 (1.36%) Manufacturing
12 89 (1.26%) Investment Banking
13 87 (1.23%) Marketing
14 86 (1.22%) Aerospace
15 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
16 77 (1.09%) Military
17 68 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
18 61 (0.86%) Law
19 58 (0.82%) Billing
20 55 (0.78%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,324 (18.76%) Architect
2 913 (12.94%) Senior
3 802 (11.36%) Developer
4 606 (8.59%) Lead
5 591 (8.37%) Azure Engineer
6 506 (7.17%) Data Engineer
7 420 (5.95%) Solutions Architect
8 400 (5.67%) Analyst
9 361 (5.11%) DevOps Engineer
10 354 (5.02%) Cloud Engineer
11 292 (4.14%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 271 (3.84%) Consultant
13 223 (3.16%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.68%) Platform Engineer
15 188 (2.66%) Security Engineer
16 176 (2.49%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 171 (2.42%) Azure Architect
18 165 (2.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 157 (2.22%) Project Manager
20 153 (2.17%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,231 (17.44%) Terraform
2 617 (8.74%) REST
3 526 (7.45%) .NET
4 343 (4.86%) Kafka
5 266 (3.77%) React
6 246 (3.49%) OAuth
7 235 (3.33%) PySpark
8 230 (3.26%) RESTful
9 198 (2.81%) JSON
10 148 (2.10%) OpenID
11 142 (2.01%) OAuth2
12 139 (1.97%) SAML
13 138 (1.96%) HTML
14 129 (1.83%) SOAP
15 127 (1.80%) Middleware
16 126 (1.79%) Spring
17 120 (1.70%) Spring Boot
18 119 (1.69%) .NET Framework
18 119 (1.69%) AngularJS
19 113 (1.60%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 799 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 384 (5.44%) Onboarding
3 331 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 271 (3.84%) AI Agents
5 270 (3.83%) Enterprise Software
6 258 (3.66%) Hybrid Cloud
7 240 (3.40%) Distributed Systems
8 228 (3.23%) Data Centre
9 196 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 163 (2.31%) Security Posture
11 156 (2.21%) Management Information System
12 132 (1.87%) Data Structures
13 117 (1.66%) Public Cloud
14 111 (1.57%) PKI
15 96 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
16 92 (1.30%) Enterprise Cloud
17 86 (1.22%) CMDB
18 79 (1.12%) Replication
19 77 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
20 67 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 889 (12.60%) Windows
2 461 (6.53%) Linux
3 346 (4.90%) Windows Server
4 139 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.15%) Android
5 81 (1.15%) Unix
6 78 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 76 (1.08%) Apple iOS
8 66 (0.94%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.79%) Ubuntu
10 40 (0.57%) VMS
11 26 (0.37%) CentOS
12 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
16 7 (0.099%) Debian
17 6 (0.085%) AIX
18 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
18 4 (0.057%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,571 (36.43%) DevOps
2 2,259 (32.01%) CI/CD
3 1,763 (24.98%) Agile
4 1,320 (18.70%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,273 (18.04%) AI
6 1,225 (17.36%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,052 (14.91%) Migration
8 1,005 (14.24%) Problem-Solving
9 990 (14.03%) Analytics
10 838 (11.87%) Continuous Improvement
11 778 (11.02%) Roadmaps
12 759 (10.75%) Data Modelling
13 675 (9.56%) Business Intelligence
14 662 (9.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 657 (9.31%) Data Pipeline
16 642 (9.10%) Technical Leadership
17 632 (8.95%) Test Automation
18 626 (8.87%) Containerisation
19 593 (8.40%) Observability
20 592 (8.39%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,676 (23.75%) Python
2 1,374 (19.47%) SQL
3 822 (11.65%) PowerShell
4 579 (8.20%) Java
5 532 (7.54%) C#
6 444 (6.29%) JavaScript
7 365 (5.17%) Bash
8 312 (4.42%) Bicep
9 265 (3.75%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.05%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.02%) Go
13 56 (0.79%) Kusto Query Language
14 54 (0.77%) Scala
15 50 (0.71%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) C++
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) R
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,832 (25.96%) Security Cleared
2 1,451 (20.56%) SC Cleared
3 525 (7.44%) Degree
4 417 (5.91%) Azure Certification
5 279 (3.95%) DV Cleared
6 241 (3.41%) CISSP
7 229 (3.24%) Microsoft Certification
8 197 (2.79%) AWS Certification
9 170 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
10 167 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
11 166 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
12 120 (1.70%) CISM
13 85 (1.20%) PMI Certification
14 82 (1.16%) PMP
15 77 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 75 (1.06%) CCNP
17 60 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 52 (0.74%) CCSP
20 48 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 534 (7.57%) Data Quality
2 404 (5.72%) QA
3 269 (3.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 256 (3.63%) NIST
5 248 (3.51%) GDPR
6 176 (2.49%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.42%) SLA
8 83 (1.18%) NCSC
9 76 (1.08%) WCAG
10 74 (1.05%) GRC
11 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
12 70 (0.99%) PCI DSS
13 50 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 48 (0.68%) PMO
15 41 (0.58%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 33 (0.47%) SOC 2
17 25 (0.35%) HIPAA
18 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 922 (13.06%) Active Directory
2 765 (10.84%) Docker
3 226 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.93%) Virtual Desktop
5 131 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
6 109 (1.54%) Hyper-V
7 68 (0.96%) vSphere
8 49 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.38%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.27%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 11 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
13 10 (0.14%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 8 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.071%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,068 (15.13%) Kubernetes
2 417 (5.91%) Ansible
3 407 (5.77%) Microsoft Intune
4 231 (3.27%) Grafana
5 178 (2.52%) Prometheus
6 129 (1.83%) SCCM
7 125 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
8 60 (0.85%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.72%) Argo
10 46 (0.65%) Puppet
11 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 33 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
13 32 (0.45%) SCOM
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 20 (0.28%) CASB
17 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
18 17 (0.24%) Packer
19 14 (0.20%) QRadar
20 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,632 (37.29%) Microsoft
2 727 (10.30%) Databricks
3 361 (5.11%) ServiceNow
4 332 (4.70%) Google
5 325 (4.60%) VMware
6 282 (4.00%) Oracle
7 217 (3.07%) Cisco
8 207 (2.93%) Splunk
9 184 (2.61%) SAP
10 183 (2.59%) OpenAI
11 164 (2.32%) Salesforce
12 144 (2.04%) Palo Alto
13 140 (1.98%) CyberArk
14 117 (1.66%) Dynatrace
15 110 (1.56%) Foundry
16 85 (1.20%) IBM
17 83 (1.18%) Zscaler
18 74 (1.05%) Fortinet
19 67 (0.95%) Informatica
20 64 (0.91%) Red Hat