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

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,131 4,048 4,814
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.64% 14.65% 14.45%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.77% 39.43% 42.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,983 2,794 3,509
10th Percentile £373 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £635 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 164 35 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £21.72 £17.84
25th Percentile £25.94 £27.08 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -24.21%
75th Percentile £79.25 £76.88 £54.13
90th Percentile £100.59 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £43.23 £35.00
% change year-on-year +21.46% +23.50% -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 15,927 10,265 11,213
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.93% 37.15% 33.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,624 6,963 7,943
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 563 268 232
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.08 £18.13 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £26.00 £24.59
Median % change year-on-year +36.54% +5.73% -23.92%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £83.72 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £27.76 £24.84
% change year-on-year +26.08% +11.76% -29.03%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 3,732 £550 - 2,008
North of England +8 1,027 £500 +5.26% 738
South East +2 916 £525 +5.00% 797
Midlands +4 654 £494 -1.25% 341
North West +8 534 £500 +2.56% 427
West Midlands +3 494 £493 -6.19% 216
South West +7 441 £540 +8.00% 327
Yorkshire +5 411 £500 +5.26% 219
East of England +3 178 £525 -4.55% 210
East Midlands +10 148 £488 +5.41% 125
North East +5 95 £513 +2.50% 103
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
1 382 (5.36%) SharePoint
2 239 (3.35%) Confluence
3 183 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 155 (2.17%) Apache Spark
5 135 (1.89%) Apache Airflow
6 109 (1.53%) Apache
7 37 (0.52%) SAS
8 27 (0.38%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
12 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
13 8 (0.11%) nginx
14 7 (0.098%) Camunda
14 7 (0.098%) Mendix
14 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.084%) Documentum
15 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 106 (1.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Project
3 64 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 30 (0.42%) MS Visio
6 26 (0.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
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%) CINEMA 4D
14 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 105 (1.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (0.95%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.17%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.098%) Maximo
7 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.098%) Shopify
8 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Endur
10 4 (0.056%) Quorum
10 4 (0.056%) Ripple
10 4 (0.056%) SAP ERP
10 4 (0.056%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,496 (35.00%) AWS
2 1,515 (21.25%) Azure DevOps
3 1,198 (16.80%) GCP
4 950 (13.32%) Entra ID
5 900 (12.62%) Power Platform
6 736 (10.32%) Microsoft 365
7 699 (9.80%) GitHub
8 433 (6.07%) Azure Data Factory
9 426 (5.97%) GitHub Actions
10 305 (4.28%) Serverless
11 300 (4.21%) SaaS
12 284 (3.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 258 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
14 254 (3.56%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.53%) Azure AKS
16 237 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
17 225 (3.16%) PaaS
17 225 (3.16%) PowerApps
18 222 (3.11%) Snowflake
19 202 (2.83%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 487 (6.83%) Firewall
2 371 (5.20%) DNS
3 301 (4.22%) VPN
4 269 (3.77%) Network Security
5 195 (2.73%) DHCP
6 183 (2.57%) WAN
7 167 (2.34%) TCP/IP
8 112 (1.57%) LAN
9 110 (1.54%) BGP
10 91 (1.28%) SD-WAN
10 91 (1.28%) VLAN
11 90 (1.26%) OSPF
12 70 (0.98%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.86%) SSL
14 59 (0.83%) SAN
15 53 (0.74%) Wireless
16 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
17 41 (0.57%) IPsec
18 40 (0.56%) HTTP
19 39 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 640 (8.97%) Power BI
2 418 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 365 (5.12%) Data Warehouse
4 308 (4.32%) Data Lake
5 243 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 183 (2.57%) Metadata
7 180 (2.52%) NoSQL
8 173 (2.43%) Azure SQL Database
9 128 (1.79%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.67%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.26%) Big Data
12 87 (1.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 65 (0.91%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.84%) MySQL
15 59 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
15 59 (0.83%) Tableau
16 57 (0.80%) BigQuery
17 53 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 50 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
19 48 (0.67%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 555 (7.78%) Git
2 523 (7.33%) JIRA
3 364 (5.10%) Jenkins
4 291 (4.08%) GitLab
5 111 (1.56%) Selenium
6 57 (0.80%) JUnit
7 54 (0.76%) Postman
8 52 (0.73%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.70%) JMeter
10 49 (0.69%) Cypress.io
10 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
11 41 (0.57%) WebDriver
12 40 (0.56%) Maven
13 37 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 32 (0.45%) REST Assured
15 31 (0.43%) Gradle
16 27 (0.38%) Bitbucket
16 27 (0.38%) MLflow
17 26 (0.36%) Gatling
18 25 (0.35%) MSI
General
1 1,849 (25.93%) Social Skills
2 1,395 (19.56%) Finance
3 780 (10.94%) Public Sector
4 714 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 399 (5.60%) Banking
6 190 (2.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 188 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
8 178 (2.50%) Retail
9 150 (2.10%) Legal
10 83 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 81 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 79 (1.11%) Manufacturing
13 70 (0.98%) Law
14 69 (0.97%) Aerospace
15 67 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 66 (0.93%) Investment Banking
16 66 (0.93%) Marketing
17 59 (0.83%) Front Office
18 55 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,266 (17.75%) Architect
2 924 (12.96%) Senior
3 829 (11.63%) Developer
4 623 (8.74%) Azure Engineer
5 593 (8.32%) Lead
6 544 (7.63%) Data Engineer
7 427 (5.99%) Analyst
8 395 (5.54%) Solutions Architect
9 337 (4.73%) DevOps Engineer
10 326 (4.57%) Cloud Engineer
11 286 (4.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 262 (3.67%) Consultant
13 212 (2.97%) Data Architect
14 195 (2.73%) Platform Engineer
15 182 (2.55%) Security Engineer
16 178 (2.50%) Azure Architect
17 170 (2.38%) Project Manager
18 159 (2.23%) Technical Architect
19 157 (2.20%) Senior Developer
20 153 (2.15%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 548 (7.68%) .NET
2 506 (7.10%) REST
3 288 (4.04%) Kafka
4 259 (3.63%) React
5 231 (3.24%) PySpark
6 224 (3.14%) RESTful
7 215 (3.02%) OAuth
8 174 (2.44%) JSON
9 154 (2.16%) Spring
10 150 (2.10%) Node.js
11 149 (2.09%) AngularJS
12 137 (1.92%) SAML
13 133 (1.87%) OpenID
14 128 (1.79%) .NET Framework
15 123 (1.72%) OAuth2
16 122 (1.71%) HTML
17 120 (1.68%) Spring Boot
18 119 (1.67%) Middleware
19 110 (1.54%) SOAP
20 103 (1.44%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 770 (10.80%) Cloud Native
2 352 (4.94%) Onboarding
3 300 (4.21%) Product Ownership
4 244 (3.42%) Hybrid Cloud
5 234 (3.28%) Distributed Systems
6 219 (3.07%) Data Centre
7 214 (3.00%) AI Agents
8 205 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
9 188 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
10 169 (2.37%) Security Posture
11 125 (1.75%) Data Structures
12 121 (1.70%) Management Information System
12 121 (1.70%) Public Cloud
13 95 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
14 94 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
15 92 (1.29%) PKI
16 78 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
17 77 (1.08%) Replication
18 71 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
19 68 (0.95%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 868 (12.17%) Windows
2 426 (5.97%) Linux
3 301 (4.22%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.68%) Windows 10
5 78 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 78 (1.09%) Unix
6 66 (0.93%) Android
7 62 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.83%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.66%) Ubuntu
10 45 (0.63%) VMS
11 20 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
12 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
12 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.17%) CentOS
14 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
14 10 (0.14%) Debian
15 6 (0.084%) AIX
15 6 (0.084%) Amazon Linux
16 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,618 (36.71%) DevOps
2 2,199 (30.84%) CI/CD
3 1,777 (24.92%) Agile
4 1,145 (16.06%) AI
5 1,135 (15.92%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,058 (14.84%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,048 (14.70%) Migration
8 1,033 (14.49%) Analytics
9 959 (13.45%) Problem-Solving
10 799 (11.20%) Data Modelling
11 796 (11.16%) Continuous Improvement
12 712 (9.98%) Data Pipeline
13 690 (9.68%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 689 (9.66%) Roadmaps
15 686 (9.62%) Business Intelligence
16 640 (8.97%) Containerisation
17 606 (8.50%) ETL
18 590 (8.27%) Data Engineering
18 590 (8.27%) Microservices
18 590 (8.27%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,669 (23.40%) Python
2 1,416 (19.86%) SQL
3 778 (10.91%) PowerShell
4 578 (8.11%) Java
5 544 (7.63%) C#
6 420 (5.89%) JavaScript
7 337 (4.73%) Bash
8 287 (4.02%) Bicep
9 247 (3.46%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.12%) T-SQL
12 62 (0.87%) Go
13 52 (0.73%) Scala
14 51 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.62%) Shell Script
16 33 (0.46%) Kotlin
16 33 (0.46%) R
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 29 (0.41%) Groovy
19 28 (0.39%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,830 (25.66%) Security Cleared
2 1,474 (20.67%) SC Cleared
3 513 (7.19%) Degree
4 399 (5.60%) Azure Certification
5 244 (3.42%) DV Cleared
6 232 (3.25%) CISSP
7 205 (2.87%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
9 176 (2.47%) AWS Certification
10 165 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 148 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
12 110 (1.54%) CISM
13 89 (1.25%) CCNP
14 73 (1.02%) PMP
15 72 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 71 (1.00%) PMI Certification
17 53 (0.74%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.72%) Master's Degree
19 50 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
20 45 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 501 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 379 (5.31%) QA
3 287 (4.02%) GDPR
4 270 (3.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 268 (3.76%) NIST
6 168 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.39%) NCSC
8 95 (1.33%) SLA
9 70 (0.98%) WCAG
10 69 (0.97%) GRC
10 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
11 66 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
12 57 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.70%) PMO
14 31 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.41%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 16 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
18 16 (0.22%) COBIT
System Software
1 900 (12.62%) Active Directory
2 772 (10.83%) Docker
3 210 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 141 (1.98%) Virtual Desktop
5 137 (1.92%) Virtual Machines
6 102 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.87%) vSphere
8 53 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.42%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 14 (0.20%) IAG
12 14 (0.20%) Postfix
13 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.098%) Varnish
15 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.070%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,193 (16.73%) Terraform
2 1,057 (14.82%) Kubernetes
3 391 (5.48%) Microsoft Intune
4 388 (5.44%) Ansible
5 221 (3.10%) Grafana
6 183 (2.57%) Prometheus
7 129 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
8 110 (1.54%) SCCM
9 59 (0.83%) Progress Chef
10 48 (0.67%) Argo
11 46 (0.65%) Puppet
12 39 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
13 34 (0.48%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 34 (0.48%) FortiGate
14 27 (0.38%) Istio
15 21 (0.29%) SCOM
15 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 20 (0.28%) Packer
17 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,432 (34.10%) Microsoft
2 668 (9.37%) Databricks
3 366 (5.13%) ServiceNow
4 300 (4.21%) VMware
5 281 (3.94%) Google
6 272 (3.81%) Oracle
7 213 (2.99%) Cisco
8 197 (2.76%) SAP
9 166 (2.33%) Splunk
10 160 (2.24%) OpenAI
11 142 (1.99%) Palo Alto
12 139 (1.95%) CyberArk
13 133 (1.87%) Salesforce
14 118 (1.65%) Foundry
15 104 (1.46%) Dynatrace
16 95 (1.33%) Zscaler
17 72 (1.01%) Okta
18 71 (1.00%) Informatica
19 68 (0.95%) Fortinet
19 68 (0.95%) IBM