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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 5 5
Rank change year-on-year -2 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,116 4,334 4,775
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.20% 15.41% 14.94%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.98% 39.87% 42.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,955 2,985 3,264
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £440 £415 £437
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year +0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £725
UK median daily rate £525 £518 £525
% change year-on-year +1.45% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 171 41 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £34.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +61.76% -2.86% -24.21%
75th Percentile £81.25 £65.57 £55.00
90th Percentile £100.00 £93.75 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £46.00 £33.39 £35.00
% change year-on-year +37.79% -4.61% -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 16,181 10,869 11,239
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.55% 38.64% 35.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,776 7,351 7,492
10th Percentile £323 £300 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -4.67% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 584 260 159
10th Percentile £15.50 £14.99 £16.24
25th Percentile £17.75 £18.51 £23.80
Median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +8.36%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £81.25 £67.03 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.50 £25.15 £35.00
% change year-on-year +29.22% -28.14% +7.99%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 3,764 £550 +0.92% 3,112
North of England +4 1,023 £500 +5.26% 1,029
South East +1 915 £537 +7.40% 832
Midlands +1 627 £490 -5.77% 507
North West +4 498 £500 +5.26% 517
West Midlands +1 487 £477 -13.27% 323
Yorkshire +4 436 £500 +0.70% 379
South West +2 401 £550 +7.42% 385
East of England -2 187 £505 +1.00% 299
East Midlands +1 136 £500 +8.11% 184
North East -1 98 £513 +2.50% 141
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
1 418 (5.87%) SharePoint
2 239 (3.36%) Confluence
3 176 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 174 (2.45%) Apache Spark
5 145 (2.04%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.57%) Apache
7 33 (0.46%) SAS
8 25 (0.35%) CMS
9 24 (0.34%) IIS
10 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
11 14 (0.20%) ArcGIS
11 14 (0.20%) nginx
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
13 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
14 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
15 7 (0.098%) Mendix
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
17 5 (0.070%) HCL Notes
17 5 (0.070%) Tomcat
Applications
1 112 (1.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.00%) Microsoft Office
3 62 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.63%) MS Visio
5 41 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 7 (0.098%) CPLEX
10 6 (0.084%) Revit
11 5 (0.070%) Notion
11 5 (0.070%) Spreadsheet
12 3 (0.042%) Houdini
12 3 (0.042%) Mingle
12 3 (0.042%) NUKE
12 3 (0.042%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.028%) 1Password
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.028%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 114 (1.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.15%) Workday HCM
6 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
7 9 (0.13%) Cloudability
7 9 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 9 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 8 (0.11%) Magento
8 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
9 7 (0.098%) Shopify
9 7 (0.098%) Teamcenter
10 5 (0.070%) Maximo
10 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.056%) Dynamics NAV
11 4 (0.056%) Quorum
11 4 (0.056%) Ripple
11 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,463 (34.61%) AWS
2 1,535 (21.57%) Azure DevOps
3 1,248 (17.54%) GCP
4 1,044 (14.67%) Entra ID
5 935 (13.14%) Power Platform
6 804 (11.30%) Microsoft 365
7 737 (10.36%) GitHub
8 426 (5.99%) GitHub Actions
9 410 (5.76%) Azure Data Factory
10 344 (4.83%) Serverless
11 318 (4.47%) SaaS
12 291 (4.09%) Azure Monitor
13 277 (3.89%) Dynamics 365
13 277 (3.89%) Power Automate
14 266 (3.74%) Snowflake
15 252 (3.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 245 (3.44%) PowerApps
17 243 (3.41%) Azure AKS
18 240 (3.37%) Microsoft Copilot
19 216 (3.04%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 474 (6.66%) Firewall
2 390 (5.48%) DNS
3 291 (4.09%) VPN
4 264 (3.71%) Network Security
5 223 (3.13%) DHCP
6 165 (2.32%) TCP/IP
7 164 (2.30%) WAN
8 103 (1.45%) BGP
9 92 (1.29%) LAN
10 86 (1.21%) SD-WAN
11 85 (1.19%) OSPF
12 76 (1.07%) VLAN
13 71 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.86%) Wireless
15 57 (0.80%) SAN
16 56 (0.79%) SSL
17 38 (0.53%) HTTP
17 38 (0.53%) Internet
17 38 (0.53%) IPsec
17 38 (0.53%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (8.60%) Power BI
2 417 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 337 (4.74%) Data Warehouse
4 307 (4.31%) Data Lake
5 241 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
6 224 (3.15%) Metadata
7 179 (2.52%) NoSQL
8 159 (2.23%) Azure SQL Database
9 126 (1.77%) Relational Database
10 120 (1.69%) Delta Lake
11 96 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 93 (1.31%) MySQL
13 85 (1.19%) Big Data
14 78 (1.10%) MongoDB
15 61 (0.86%) Amazon RDS
16 60 (0.84%) Amazon Redshift
17 57 (0.80%) BigQuery
18 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
19 50 (0.70%) Tableau
20 47 (0.66%) Redis
Development Applications
1 623 (8.75%) Git
2 497 (6.98%) JIRA
3 399 (5.61%) Jenkins
4 308 (4.33%) GitLab
5 127 (1.78%) Selenium
6 70 (0.98%) Postman
7 65 (0.91%) Cucumber
8 55 (0.77%) Cypress.io
9 50 (0.70%) JUnit
10 48 (0.67%) JMeter
11 47 (0.66%) Visual Studio
12 46 (0.65%) SonarQube
13 43 (0.60%) Maven
14 41 (0.58%) Claude Code
15 40 (0.56%) Gradle
16 36 (0.51%) REST Assured
17 34 (0.48%) Bitbucket
18 31 (0.44%) WebDriver
19 30 (0.42%) LoadRunner
20 28 (0.39%) MLflow
General
1 2,017 (28.34%) Social Skills
2 1,440 (20.24%) Finance
3 766 (10.76%) Public Sector
4 740 (10.40%) Analytical Skills
5 473 (6.65%) Banking
6 210 (2.95%) Retail
7 202 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 171 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 138 (1.94%) Legal
10 98 (1.38%) Manufacturing
11 97 (1.36%) Influencing Skills
12 93 (1.31%) Marketing
13 89 (1.25%) Investment Banking
14 88 (1.24%) Aerospace
15 79 (1.11%) Telecoms
16 73 (1.03%) Military
17 67 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
18 62 (0.87%) Law
19 58 (0.82%) Billing
19 58 (0.82%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,335 (18.76%) Architect
2 920 (12.93%) Senior
3 802 (11.27%) Developer
4 616 (8.66%) Lead
5 601 (8.45%) Azure Engineer
6 508 (7.14%) Data Engineer
7 428 (6.01%) Solutions Architect
8 403 (5.66%) Analyst
9 364 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
10 360 (5.06%) Cloud Engineer
11 293 (4.12%) Consultant
12 292 (4.10%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 218 (3.06%) Data Architect
14 198 (2.78%) Platform Engineer
15 189 (2.66%) Security Engineer
16 177 (2.49%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 168 (2.36%) Azure Architect
18 163 (2.29%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 159 (2.23%) Project Manager
20 150 (2.11%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,249 (17.55%) Terraform
2 645 (9.06%) REST
3 537 (7.55%) .NET
4 347 (4.88%) Kafka
5 272 (3.82%) React
6 259 (3.64%) OAuth
7 238 (3.34%) PySpark
8 232 (3.26%) RESTful
9 199 (2.80%) JSON
10 164 (2.30%) OpenID
11 151 (2.12%) OAuth2
12 150 (2.11%) SAML
13 140 (1.97%) HTML
14 138 (1.94%) SOAP
15 135 (1.90%) Middleware
16 125 (1.76%) Spring
17 122 (1.71%) ARM Templates
18 121 (1.70%) AngularJS
19 120 (1.69%) Spring Boot
20 115 (1.62%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 797 (11.20%) Cloud Native
2 398 (5.59%) Onboarding
3 357 (5.02%) Product Ownership
4 288 (4.05%) Enterprise Software
5 279 (3.92%) AI Agents
6 263 (3.70%) Hybrid Cloud
7 243 (3.41%) Distributed Systems
8 234 (3.29%) Data Centre
9 200 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
10 167 (2.35%) Management Information System
10 167 (2.35%) Security Posture
11 134 (1.88%) Data Structures
12 115 (1.62%) Public Cloud
13 113 (1.59%) PKI
14 100 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
15 95 (1.34%) Enterprise Cloud
16 90 (1.26%) CMDB
17 80 (1.12%) Replication
18 73 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 68 (0.96%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 891 (12.52%) Windows
2 477 (6.70%) Linux
3 351 (4.93%) Windows Server
4 147 (2.07%) Windows 10
5 83 (1.17%) Unix
6 79 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 75 (1.05%) Android
8 69 (0.97%) Apple iOS
9 58 (0.82%) macOS
9 58 (0.82%) Ubuntu
10 39 (0.55%) 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 6 (0.084%) AIX
16 6 (0.084%) Debian
17 5 (0.070%) Alpine Linux
18 3 (0.042%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,637 (37.06%) DevOps
2 2,296 (32.27%) CI/CD
3 1,772 (24.90%) Agile
4 1,374 (19.31%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,284 (18.04%) AI
6 1,253 (17.61%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,072 (15.06%) Migration
8 1,024 (14.39%) Problem-Solving
9 1,004 (14.11%) Analytics
10 873 (12.27%) Continuous Improvement
11 799 (11.23%) Roadmaps
12 764 (10.74%) Data Modelling
13 672 (9.44%) Business Intelligence
14 665 (9.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 661 (9.29%) Data Pipeline
16 653 (9.18%) Test Automation
17 651 (9.15%) Technical Leadership
18 622 (8.74%) Containerisation
19 618 (8.68%) Cybersecurity
20 609 (8.56%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 1,706 (23.97%) Python
2 1,373 (19.29%) SQL
3 860 (12.09%) PowerShell
4 569 (8.00%) Java
5 543 (7.63%) C#
6 454 (6.38%) JavaScript
7 381 (5.35%) Bash
8 340 (4.78%) Bicep
9 277 (3.89%) TypeScript
10 96 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 71 (1.00%) T-SQL
12 67 (0.94%) Go
13 61 (0.86%) Kusto Query Language
14 54 (0.76%) Scala
15 51 (0.72%) Shell Script
16 32 (0.45%) Groovy
17 30 (0.42%) C++
17 30 (0.42%) PL/SQL
17 30 (0.42%) R
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,860 (26.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,473 (20.70%) SC Cleared
3 539 (7.57%) Degree
4 421 (5.92%) Azure Certification
5 296 (4.16%) DV Cleared
6 246 (3.46%) CISSP
7 233 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 207 (2.91%) AWS Certification
9 174 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
10 173 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
11 169 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
12 125 (1.76%) CISM
13 90 (1.26%) PMI Certification
14 86 (1.21%) PMP
15 78 (1.10%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 73 (1.03%) CCNP
17 61 (0.86%) ISTQB
17 61 (0.86%) Master's Degree
18 54 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
19 52 (0.73%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 545 (7.66%) Data Quality
2 420 (5.90%) QA
3 274 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 258 (3.63%) NIST
5 247 (3.47%) GDPR
6 174 (2.45%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.41%) SLA
8 87 (1.22%) NCSC
9 73 (1.03%) WCAG
10 72 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
11 70 (0.98%) GRC
12 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
13 49 (0.69%) PMO
14 46 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
15 42 (0.59%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 37 (0.52%) SOC 2
17 23 (0.32%) HIPAA
18 21 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
19 20 (0.28%) COBIT
19 20 (0.28%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 938 (13.18%) Active Directory
2 774 (10.88%) Docker
3 227 (3.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.90%) Virtual Machines
5 130 (1.83%) Virtual Desktop
6 106 (1.49%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.98%) vSphere
8 46 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.37%) VMware NSX
10 18 (0.25%) Firmware
11 16 (0.22%) IAG
12 11 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
14 9 (0.13%) NFS
14 9 (0.13%) Postfix
15 7 (0.098%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.070%) Dovecot
17 5 (0.070%) ISA Server
17 5 (0.070%) Microsoft Virtual Server
Systems Management
1 1,082 (15.21%) Kubernetes
2 429 (6.03%) Ansible
3 416 (5.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 242 (3.40%) Grafana
5 178 (2.50%) Prometheus
6 140 (1.97%) SCCM
7 127 (1.78%) Single Sign-On
8 62 (0.87%) Progress Chef
9 51 (0.72%) Argo
10 47 (0.66%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.45%) SCOM
13 30 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
14 24 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) CASB
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 17 (0.24%) Packer
16 17 (0.24%) vCenter Server
17 14 (0.20%) QRadar
18 13 (0.18%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,718 (38.20%) Microsoft
2 746 (10.48%) Databricks
3 359 (5.04%) ServiceNow
4 342 (4.81%) Google
5 322 (4.53%) VMware
6 299 (4.20%) Oracle
7 214 (3.01%) Cisco
8 205 (2.88%) Splunk
9 193 (2.71%) OpenAI
10 189 (2.66%) SAP
11 175 (2.46%) Salesforce
12 145 (2.04%) Palo Alto
13 138 (1.94%) CyberArk
14 131 (1.84%) Dynatrace
15 120 (1.69%) Foundry
16 83 (1.17%) IBM
17 81 (1.14%) Zscaler
18 76 (1.07%) Fortinet
19 68 (0.96%) Informatica
20 66 (0.93%) Red Hat