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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,075 4,254 4,791
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.20% 15.20% 14.74%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.04% 39.78% 42.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,937 2,922 3,291
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £518 £530
% change year-on-year +1.35% -2.26% -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 £102.33 £95.00 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +16.18% -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 16,065 10,693 11,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.51% 38.21% 34.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,696 7,236 7,555
10th Percentile £320 £304 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £505 £530
Median % change year-on-year +3.96% -4.72% -3.46%
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 565 253 164
10th Percentile £15.34 £15.30 £16.00
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.84
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £66.69
90th Percentile £81.85 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £26.30 £35.00
% change year-on-year +23.57% -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 2 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 2 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 2 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 3,720 £550 +0.92% 3,861
North of England +5 1,013 £500 +5.26% 1,262
South East 0 899 £525 +5.00% 1,222
Midlands +1 640 £493 -5.01% 713
North West +5 493 £500 +5.26% 662
West Midlands +2 488 £479 -12.91% 433
Yorkshire +5 434 £500 +5.26% 441
South West +2 413 £550 +7.53% 577
East of England 0 195 £505 - 407
East Midlands +3 148 £500 +8.11% 280
North East +4 100 £513 +2.50% 170
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
1 413 (5.84%) SharePoint
2 232 (3.28%) Confluence
3 175 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 171 (2.42%) Apache Spark
5 144 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
6 106 (1.50%) Apache
7 33 (0.47%) SAS
8 24 (0.34%) IIS
9 23 (0.33%) CMS
10 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.18%) nginx
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
1 105 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.83%) 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 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) Mingle
12 3 (0.042%) 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%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 112 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (0.92%) 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%) Magento
7 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
7 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 7 (0.099%) Cloudability
8 7 (0.099%) Shopify
9 5 (0.071%) Maximo
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.057%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.057%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.057%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.057%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,499 (35.32%) AWS
2 1,501 (21.22%) Azure DevOps
3 1,242 (17.55%) GCP
4 1,007 (14.23%) Entra ID
5 924 (13.06%) Power Platform
6 781 (11.04%) Microsoft 365
7 721 (10.19%) GitHub
8 416 (5.88%) GitHub Actions
9 405 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
10 340 (4.81%) Serverless
11 318 (4.49%) SaaS
12 276 (3.90%) Power Automate
13 271 (3.83%) Azure Monitor
14 269 (3.80%) Dynamics 365
15 259 (3.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 254 (3.59%) Snowflake
17 244 (3.45%) Azure AKS
18 239 (3.38%) Microsoft Copilot
19 238 (3.36%) PowerApps
20 207 (2.93%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 465 (6.57%) Firewall
2 376 (5.31%) DNS
3 283 (4.00%) VPN
4 262 (3.70%) Network Security
5 219 (3.10%) DHCP
6 168 (2.37%) WAN
7 161 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 98 (1.39%) BGP
9 95 (1.34%) LAN
10 86 (1.22%) SD-WAN
11 80 (1.13%) OSPF
12 77 (1.09%) VLAN
13 75 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
14 60 (0.85%) SSL
14 60 (0.85%) Wireless
15 58 (0.82%) SAN
16 39 (0.55%) VXLAN
17 37 (0.52%) MPLS
18 36 (0.51%) Internet
18 36 (0.51%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 615 (8.69%) Power BI
2 414 (5.85%) SQL Server
3 338 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.33%) Data Lake
5 237 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 217 (3.07%) Metadata
7 186 (2.63%) NoSQL
8 154 (2.18%) Azure SQL Database
9 123 (1.74%) Relational Database
10 119 (1.68%) 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 57 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 56 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
17 54 (0.76%) BigQuery
18 52 (0.73%) Tableau
19 48 (0.68%) Redis
19 48 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 610 (8.62%) Git
2 497 (7.02%) JIRA
3 385 (5.44%) Jenkins
4 313 (4.42%) GitLab
5 122 (1.72%) Selenium
6 67 (0.95%) Postman
7 64 (0.90%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.69%) JUnit
10 48 (0.68%) JMeter
11 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.62%) Visual Studio
13 43 (0.61%) Maven
14 40 (0.57%) Gradle
15 37 (0.52%) Claude Code
15 37 (0.52%) REST Assured
16 35 (0.49%) Bitbucket
17 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
18 30 (0.42%) LoadRunner
19 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,975 (27.92%) Social Skills
2 1,418 (20.04%) Finance
3 736 (10.40%) Public Sector
4 717 (10.13%) Analytical Skills
5 452 (6.39%) Banking
6 207 (2.93%) Retail
7 205 (2.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 170 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (1.95%) Legal
10 99 (1.40%) Influencing Skills
11 97 (1.37%) Manufacturing
12 88 (1.24%) Investment Banking
13 87 (1.23%) Aerospace
14 86 (1.22%) Marketing
15 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
16 76 (1.07%) Military
17 66 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
18 61 (0.86%) Law
19 56 (0.79%) Billing
20 54 (0.76%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,327 (18.76%) Architect
2 911 (12.88%) Senior
3 808 (11.42%) Developer
4 605 (8.55%) Lead
5 592 (8.37%) Azure Engineer
6 507 (7.17%) Data Engineer
7 421 (5.95%) Solutions Architect
8 405 (5.72%) Analyst
9 360 (5.09%) DevOps Engineer
10 354 (5.00%) Cloud Engineer
11 291 (4.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 271 (3.83%) Consultant
13 221 (3.12%) Data Architect
14 193 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
15 190 (2.69%) Security Engineer
16 173 (2.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 173 (2.45%) Azure Architect
17 165 (2.33%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 157 (2.22%) Project Manager
19 154 (2.18%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,240 (17.53%) Terraform
2 619 (8.75%) REST
3 527 (7.45%) .NET
4 342 (4.83%) Kafka
5 265 (3.75%) React
6 247 (3.49%) OAuth
7 237 (3.35%) PySpark
8 233 (3.29%) RESTful
9 198 (2.80%) JSON
10 147 (2.08%) OpenID
11 142 (2.01%) OAuth2
12 138 (1.95%) SAML
13 137 (1.94%) HTML
14 131 (1.85%) Spring
15 130 (1.84%) SOAP
16 126 (1.78%) Middleware
17 124 (1.75%) Spring Boot
18 120 (1.70%) .NET Framework
19 118 (1.67%) AngularJS
20 114 (1.61%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 804 (11.36%) Cloud Native
2 386 (5.46%) Onboarding
3 330 (4.66%) Product Ownership
4 270 (3.82%) Enterprise Software
5 266 (3.76%) AI Agents
6 258 (3.65%) Hybrid Cloud
7 238 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
8 227 (3.21%) Data Centre
9 195 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
10 162 (2.29%) Security Posture
11 156 (2.20%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.84%) Data Structures
13 113 (1.60%) Public Cloud
14 111 (1.57%) PKI
15 95 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
16 92 (1.30%) Enterprise Cloud
17 86 (1.22%) CMDB
18 78 (1.10%) Replication
19 77 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
20 68 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 889 (12.57%) Windows
2 458 (6.47%) Linux
3 346 (4.89%) Windows Server
4 140 (1.98%) Windows 10
5 81 (1.14%) Android
5 81 (1.14%) Unix
6 78 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 76 (1.07%) Apple iOS
8 66 (0.93%) Mac OS
9 56 (0.79%) Ubuntu
10 41 (0.58%) 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 2,585 (36.54%) DevOps
2 2,271 (32.10%) CI/CD
3 1,765 (24.95%) Agile
4 1,317 (18.61%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,270 (17.95%) AI
6 1,235 (17.46%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,053 (14.88%) Migration
8 1,008 (14.25%) Problem-Solving
9 994 (14.05%) Analytics
10 839 (11.86%) Continuous Improvement
11 774 (10.94%) Roadmaps
12 759 (10.73%) Data Modelling
13 677 (9.57%) Business Intelligence
14 661 (9.34%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 659 (9.31%) Data Pipeline
16 646 (9.13%) Technical Leadership
17 634 (8.96%) Test Automation
18 631 (8.92%) Containerisation
19 592 (8.37%) Cybersecurity
20 591 (8.35%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,674 (23.66%) Python
2 1,382 (19.53%) SQL
3 822 (11.62%) PowerShell
4 584 (8.25%) Java
5 532 (7.52%) C#
6 443 (6.26%) JavaScript
7 366 (5.17%) Bash
8 317 (4.48%) Bicep
9 266 (3.76%) TypeScript
10 94 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 76 (1.07%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.02%) Go
13 54 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
13 54 (0.76%) Scala
14 50 (0.71%) Shell Script
15 31 (0.44%) C++
15 31 (0.44%) Groovy
15 31 (0.44%) R
16 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
17 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,840 (26.01%) Security Cleared
2 1,461 (20.65%) SC Cleared
3 528 (7.46%) Degree
4 419 (5.92%) Azure Certification
5 277 (3.92%) DV Cleared
6 241 (3.41%) CISSP
7 230 (3.25%) Microsoft Certification
8 196 (2.77%) AWS Certification
9 169 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
10 168 (2.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 167 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
12 120 (1.70%) CISM
13 84 (1.19%) PMI Certification
14 81 (1.14%) PMP
15 77 (1.09%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 74 (1.05%) CCNP
17 60 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.79%) ISTQB
19 52 (0.73%) CCSP
20 49 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 533 (7.53%) Data Quality
2 404 (5.71%) QA
3 268 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 254 (3.59%) NIST
5 247 (3.49%) GDPR
6 175 (2.47%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.40%) SLA
8 83 (1.17%) NCSC
9 75 (1.06%) WCAG
10 74 (1.05%) GRC
11 71 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
12 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
13 50 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 47 (0.66%) PMO
15 40 (0.57%) 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
1 924 (13.06%) Active Directory
2 768 (10.86%) Docker
3 225 (3.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 137 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 130 (1.84%) 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 1,075 (15.19%) Kubernetes
2 415 (5.87%) Ansible
3 408 (5.77%) Microsoft Intune
4 232 (3.28%) Grafana
5 178 (2.52%) Prometheus
6 130 (1.84%) SCCM
7 125 (1.77%) Single Sign-On
8 59 (0.83%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.72%) Argo
10 46 (0.65%) Puppet
11 34 (0.48%) 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 (0.25%) Packer
17 18 (0.25%) vCenter Server
18 14 (0.20%) QRadar
19 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,633 (37.22%) Microsoft
2 730 (10.32%) Databricks
3 362 (5.12%) ServiceNow
4 330 (4.66%) Google
5 324 (4.58%) VMware
6 283 (4.00%) Oracle
7 215 (3.04%) Cisco
8 207 (2.93%) Splunk
9 184 (2.60%) SAP
10 180 (2.54%) OpenAI
11 163 (2.30%) Salesforce
12 142 (2.01%) Palo Alto
13 140 (1.98%) CyberArk
14 117 (1.65%) Dynatrace
15 110 (1.55%) Foundry
16 85 (1.20%) IBM
17 83 (1.17%) Zscaler
18 72 (1.02%) Fortinet
19 67 (0.95%) Informatica
20 64 (0.90%) Okta