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 29 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,020 4,159 4,759
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.15% 15.09% 14.72%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.02% 39.58% 42.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,901 2,872 3,271
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £444 £413 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £526 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.19% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £518 £530
% change year-on-year +1.40% -2.31% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 38 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £34.24 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% -2.17% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.30 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.33 £90.63 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £34.48 £35.00
% change year-on-year +31.09% -1.49% -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 15,949 10,507 11,210
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.43% 38.13% 34.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,636 7,122 7,511
10th Percentile £319 £303 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £532
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -5.83% -3.36%
75th Percentile £627 £625 £644
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 550 245 162
10th Percentile £15.25 £15.09 £15.98
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.87 £21.37
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -27.03% +4.44%
75th Percentile £69.80 £43.75 £68.06
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £26.30 £33.54
% change year-on-year +14.07% -21.59% +1.64%

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 29 September 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 29 September 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 29 September 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 3,679 £550 +0.92% 2,982
North of England +8 992 £500 +5.26% 1,071
South East +1 900 £525 +5.53% 784
Midlands +1 644 £493 -4.37% 595
West Midlands +2 492 £488 -11.36% 357
North West +6 486 £500 +5.26% 579
Yorkshire +4 423 £500 +2.56% 367
South West +2 411 £550 +9.45% 426
East of England +2 196 £505 +1.00% 291
East Midlands +3 147 £500 +8.11% 238
North East +3 98 £516 +3.25% 132
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
1 416 (5.93%) SharePoint
2 225 (3.21%) Confluence
3 176 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 168 (2.39%) Apache Spark
5 148 (2.11%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.52%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 23 (0.33%) IIS
9 21 (0.30%) CMS
10 18 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
11 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.19%) ArcGIS
12 13 (0.19%) nginx
12 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.100%) Mendix
16 6 (0.085%) Documentum
17 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
17 5 (0.071%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 103 (1.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.75%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.53%) Chatbot
6 32 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Revit
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.100%) CPLEX
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
1 112 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 63 (0.90%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) 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 (0.100%) Cloudability
8 7 (0.100%) 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%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.057%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,481 (35.34%) AWS
2 1,476 (21.03%) Azure DevOps
3 1,225 (17.45%) GCP
4 992 (14.13%) Entra ID
5 923 (13.15%) Power Platform
6 774 (11.03%) Microsoft 365
7 700 (9.97%) GitHub
8 405 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
9 398 (5.67%) Azure Data Factory
10 337 (4.80%) Serverless
11 315 (4.49%) SaaS
12 275 (3.92%) Power Automate
13 265 (3.77%) Dynamics 365
14 264 (3.76%) Azure Monitor
15 256 (3.65%) Snowflake
16 252 (3.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
17 238 (3.39%) Microsoft Copilot
18 237 (3.38%) Azure AKS
18 237 (3.38%) PowerApps
19 203 (2.89%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 461 (6.57%) Firewall
2 376 (5.36%) DNS
3 288 (4.10%) VPN
4 256 (3.65%) Network Security
5 218 (3.11%) DHCP
6 168 (2.39%) WAN
7 160 (2.28%) TCP/IP
8 99 (1.41%) BGP
9 96 (1.37%) LAN
10 86 (1.23%) SD-WAN
11 81 (1.15%) OSPF
12 77 (1.10%) VLAN
13 76 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.87%) SSL
15 60 (0.85%) Wireless
16 58 (0.83%) SAN
17 39 (0.56%) VXLAN
18 37 (0.53%) Internet
18 37 (0.53%) IPsec
18 37 (0.53%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 614 (8.75%) Power BI
2 406 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 338 (4.81%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.34%) Data Lake
5 234 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
6 212 (3.02%) Metadata
7 182 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.07%) Azure SQL Database
9 118 (1.68%) Relational Database
10 115 (1.64%) Delta Lake
11 91 (1.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 85 (1.21%) Big Data
13 82 (1.17%) MySQL
14 71 (1.01%) MongoDB
15 57 (0.81%) Amazon Redshift
16 55 (0.78%) BigQuery
16 55 (0.78%) Tableau
17 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
18 49 (0.70%) Oracle Database
19 48 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 600 (8.55%) Git
2 481 (6.85%) JIRA
3 373 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 305 (4.34%) GitLab
5 118 (1.68%) Selenium
6 64 (0.91%) Postman
7 57 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 52 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 47 (0.67%) JMeter
9 47 (0.67%) JUnit
10 45 (0.64%) SonarQube
11 44 (0.63%) Visual Studio
12 41 (0.58%) Maven
13 37 (0.53%) Claude Code
13 37 (0.53%) Gradle
14 35 (0.50%) REST Assured
15 32 (0.46%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.44%) Bitbucket
16 31 (0.44%) LoadRunner
17 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,954 (27.83%) Social Skills
2 1,391 (19.81%) Finance
3 737 (10.50%) Public Sector
4 707 (10.07%) Analytical Skills
5 445 (6.34%) Banking
6 206 (2.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 204 (2.91%) Retail
8 173 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 133 (1.89%) Legal
10 97 (1.38%) Influencing Skills
11 94 (1.34%) Manufacturing
12 86 (1.23%) Aerospace
13 84 (1.20%) Investment Banking
14 82 (1.17%) Marketing
15 79 (1.13%) Telecoms
16 76 (1.08%) Military
17 67 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
18 64 (0.91%) Law
19 55 (0.78%) Billing
20 52 (0.74%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,322 (18.83%) Architect
2 904 (12.88%) Senior
3 794 (11.31%) Developer
4 604 (8.60%) Lead
5 592 (8.43%) Azure Engineer
6 506 (7.21%) Data Engineer
7 422 (6.01%) Solutions Architect
8 408 (5.81%) Analyst
9 355 (5.06%) Cloud Engineer
10 352 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
11 289 (4.12%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 265 (3.77%) Consultant
13 220 (3.13%) Data Architect
14 194 (2.76%) Platform Engineer
15 190 (2.71%) Security Engineer
16 174 (2.48%) Azure Architect
17 172 (2.45%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 164 (2.34%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 156 (2.22%) Technical Architect
20 154 (2.19%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,220 (17.38%) Terraform
2 601 (8.56%) REST
3 517 (7.36%) .NET
4 334 (4.76%) Kafka
5 256 (3.65%) React
6 249 (3.55%) OAuth
7 238 (3.39%) PySpark
8 227 (3.23%) RESTful
9 193 (2.75%) JSON
10 148 (2.11%) OpenID
11 143 (2.04%) OAuth2
12 140 (1.99%) SAML
13 130 (1.85%) SOAP
14 128 (1.82%) HTML
15 127 (1.81%) Spring
16 125 (1.78%) Middleware
17 120 (1.71%) Spring Boot
18 116 (1.65%) .NET Framework
18 116 (1.65%) AngularJS
19 111 (1.58%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 795 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 385 (5.48%) Onboarding
3 329 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 264 (3.76%) Enterprise Software
5 261 (3.72%) Hybrid Cloud
6 260 (3.70%) AI Agents
7 237 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
8 226 (3.22%) Data Centre
9 198 (2.82%) Legacy Systems
10 163 (2.32%) Security Posture
11 154 (2.19%) Management Information System
12 129 (1.84%) Data Structures
13 118 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 108 (1.54%) PKI
15 93 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
15 93 (1.32%) Enterprise Cloud
16 86 (1.23%) CMDB
17 79 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 77 (1.10%) Replication
19 67 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 881 (12.55%) Windows
2 451 (6.42%) Linux
3 337 (4.80%) Windows Server
4 140 (1.99%) Windows 10
5 82 (1.17%) Unix
6 79 (1.13%) Android
7 75 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (1.04%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.98%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 38 (0.54%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 18 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.100%) Debian
18 6 (0.085%) AIX
19 4 (0.057%) Alpine Linux
19 4 (0.057%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,556 (36.41%) DevOps
2 2,237 (31.87%) CI/CD
3 1,739 (24.77%) Agile
4 1,301 (18.53%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,258 (17.92%) AI
6 1,215 (17.31%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,048 (14.93%) Migration
8 989 (14.09%) Analytics
9 988 (14.07%) Problem-Solving
10 816 (11.62%) Continuous Improvement
11 764 (10.88%) Data Modelling
12 761 (10.84%) Roadmaps
13 674 (9.60%) Business Intelligence
14 661 (9.42%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 650 (9.26%) Data Pipeline
16 639 (9.10%) Technical Leadership
17 628 (8.95%) Containerisation
18 616 (8.77%) Test Automation
19 582 (8.29%) Cybersecurity
20 581 (8.28%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,647 (23.46%) Python
2 1,354 (19.29%) SQL
3 803 (11.44%) PowerShell
4 576 (8.21%) Java
5 525 (7.48%) C#
6 433 (6.17%) JavaScript
7 355 (5.06%) Bash
8 315 (4.49%) Bicep
9 262 (3.73%) TypeScript
10 93 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 70 (1.00%) Go
13 54 (0.77%) Scala
14 53 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
15 49 (0.70%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
17 30 (0.43%) C++
17 30 (0.43%) PL/SQL
17 30 (0.43%) R
18 28 (0.40%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,836 (26.15%) Security Cleared
2 1,459 (20.78%) SC Cleared
3 524 (7.46%) Degree
4 418 (5.95%) Azure Certification
5 278 (3.96%) DV Cleared
6 244 (3.48%) CISSP
7 230 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 197 (2.81%) AWS Certification
9 173 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
10 169 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
11 163 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
12 121 (1.72%) CISM
13 79 (1.13%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 79 (1.13%) PMI Certification
14 76 (1.08%) CCNP
15 75 (1.07%) PMP
16 59 (0.84%) Master's Degree
17 57 (0.81%) ISTQB
18 52 (0.74%) CCSP
19 49 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 523 (7.45%) Data Quality
2 402 (5.73%) QA
3 274 (3.90%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 260 (3.70%) NIST
5 248 (3.53%) GDPR
6 174 (2.48%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.41%) SLA
8 89 (1.27%) NCSC
9 76 (1.08%) GRC
9 76 (1.08%) WCAG
10 72 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.98%) PCI DSS
12 50 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 47 (0.67%) PMO
14 40 (0.57%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 32 (0.46%) SOC 2
16 25 (0.36%) HIPAA
17 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
18 20 (0.28%) COBIT
System Software
1 922 (13.13%) Active Directory
2 754 (10.74%) Docker
3 220 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 131 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 130 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
6 105 (1.50%) Hyper-V
7 67 (0.95%) vSphere
8 47 (0.67%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 21 (0.30%) Firmware
11 17 (0.24%) IAG
12 12 (0.17%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
15 8 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.071%) ISA Server
18 4 (0.057%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,057 (15.06%) Kubernetes
2 408 (5.81%) Ansible
3 406 (5.78%) Microsoft Intune
4 223 (3.18%) Grafana
5 172 (2.45%) Prometheus
6 126 (1.79%) SCCM
6 126 (1.79%) Single Sign-On
7 59 (0.84%) Progress Chef
8 48 (0.68%) Argo
9 44 (0.63%) Puppet
10 35 (0.50%) FortiGate
11 33 (0.47%) Jamf Pro
12 32 (0.46%) SCOM
13 25 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.30%) Istio
15 20 (0.28%) CASB
16 18 (0.26%) Packer
16 18 (0.26%) vCenter Server
17 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
18 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,602 (37.07%) Microsoft
2 715 (10.19%) Databricks
3 367 (5.23%) ServiceNow
4 323 (4.60%) Google
5 318 (4.53%) VMware
6 283 (4.03%) Oracle
7 218 (3.11%) Cisco
8 205 (2.92%) Splunk
9 182 (2.59%) SAP
10 178 (2.54%) OpenAI
11 163 (2.32%) Salesforce
12 143 (2.04%) CyberArk
13 137 (1.95%) Palo Alto
14 117 (1.67%) Dynatrace
15 109 (1.55%) Foundry
16 85 (1.21%) IBM
17 84 (1.20%) Zscaler
18 73 (1.04%) Fortinet
19 65 (0.93%) Informatica
19 65 (0.93%) Okta