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

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,219 4,086 4,805
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.74% 14.70% 14.48%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.97% 39.53% 42.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,042 2,811 3,500
10th Percentile £369 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £420 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £728
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 38 30
10th Percentile £19.50 £18.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £55.00 £40.73 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.05% +16.36% -24.21%
75th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £51.30
90th Percentile £100.85 £96.50 £76.25
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £41.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +26.66% +18.43% -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 16,053 10,337 11,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.01% 37.19% 33.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,711 6,998 7,940
10th Percentile £325 £310 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.64% -2.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £644
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £523 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 553 274 230
10th Percentile £15.75 £15.02 £14.16
25th Percentile £19.50 £18.22 £16.30
Median hourly rate £35.50 £26.15 £23.98
Median % change year-on-year +35.76% +9.07% -25.80%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £52.73
90th Percentile £83.54 £67.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.00 £28.00 £24.18
% change year-on-year +25.00% +15.80% -30.51%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 3,756 £550 - 2,033
North of England +8 1,054 £500 +5.26% 741
South East +2 945 £525 +5.00% 797
Midlands +4 659 £495 -1.05% 342
North West +7 551 £500 +2.30% 428
West Midlands +3 494 £493 -6.19% 224
South West +6 437 £540 +8.00% 329
Yorkshire +6 421 £500 +5.26% 218
East of England +3 176 £525 +1.45% 197
East Midlands +8 152 £494 +6.76% 118
North East +6 95 £513 -0.87% 104
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
1 383 (5.31%) SharePoint
2 236 (3.27%) Confluence
3 184 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 160 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 141 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.51%) SAS
8 28 (0.39%) IIS
9 17 (0.24%) CMS
10 14 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.17%) SharePoint Server
12 9 (0.12%) nginx
13 8 (0.11%) Mendix
14 7 (0.097%) Camunda
14 7 (0.097%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.097%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.083%) Documentum
15 6 (0.083%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 107 (1.48%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 68 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
4 33 (0.46%) Chatbot
5 28 (0.39%) MS Visio
6 25 (0.35%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 9 (0.12%) CPLEX
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
10 8 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.069%) 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
1 104 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (0.96%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.097%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.097%) Shopify
8 6 (0.083%) Maximo
8 6 (0.083%) SAP MDG
9 5 (0.069%) Payment Gateway
9 5 (0.069%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.069%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.055%) Cloudability
10 4 (0.055%) Endur
10 4 (0.055%) Quorum
10 4 (0.055%) Ripple
10 4 (0.055%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.055%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,552 (35.35%) AWS
2 1,531 (21.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,218 (16.87%) GCP
4 964 (13.35%) Entra ID
5 907 (12.56%) Power Platform
6 739 (10.24%) Microsoft 365
7 710 (9.84%) GitHub
8 440 (6.10%) Azure Data Factory
9 433 (6.00%) GitHub Actions
10 314 (4.35%) SaaS
11 309 (4.28%) Serverless
12 286 (3.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 262 (3.63%) Azure Monitor
14 256 (3.55%) Power Automate
15 252 (3.49%) Azure AKS
16 237 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
17 226 (3.13%) Snowflake
18 224 (3.10%) PaaS
18 224 (3.10%) PowerApps
19 203 (2.81%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 489 (6.77%) Firewall
2 377 (5.22%) DNS
3 303 (4.20%) VPN
4 269 (3.73%) Network Security
5 200 (2.77%) DHCP
6 183 (2.53%) WAN
7 165 (2.29%) TCP/IP
8 112 (1.55%) LAN
9 107 (1.48%) BGP
10 92 (1.27%) SD-WAN
11 90 (1.25%) VLAN
12 88 (1.22%) OSPF
13 74 (1.03%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.89%) SAN
15 61 (0.84%) SSL
16 52 (0.72%) Wireless
17 43 (0.60%) VXLAN
18 41 (0.57%) HTTP
19 40 (0.55%) IPsec
20 38 (0.53%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 638 (8.84%) Power BI
2 425 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 366 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.24%) Data Lake
5 246 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 191 (2.65%) NoSQL
7 189 (2.62%) Metadata
8 179 (2.48%) Azure SQL Database
9 125 (1.73%) Delta Lake
10 121 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.27%) Big Data
12 86 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 69 (0.96%) MongoDB
14 62 (0.86%) Tableau
15 60 (0.83%) BigQuery
15 60 (0.83%) MySQL
16 58 (0.80%) Snowflake Schema
17 53 (0.73%) Star Schema
18 50 (0.69%) Amazon Redshift
19 48 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 566 (7.84%) Git
2 522 (7.23%) JIRA
3 379 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 299 (4.14%) GitLab
5 116 (1.61%) Selenium
6 60 (0.83%) JUnit
7 56 (0.78%) Postman
8 54 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.72%) JMeter
10 48 (0.66%) Cypress.io
10 48 (0.66%) SonarQube
11 42 (0.58%) WebDriver
12 40 (0.55%) Maven
13 38 (0.53%) Visual Studio
14 32 (0.44%) Gradle
15 31 (0.43%) REST Assured
16 27 (0.37%) Bitbucket
16 27 (0.37%) LoadRunner
16 27 (0.37%) MLflow
17 26 (0.36%) Gatling
General
1 1,910 (26.46%) Social Skills
2 1,410 (19.53%) Finance
3 782 (10.83%) Public Sector
4 727 (10.07%) Analytical Skills
5 411 (5.69%) Banking
6 200 (2.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 192 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (2.51%) Retail
9 150 (2.08%) Legal
10 84 (1.16%) Manufacturing
11 83 (1.15%) Telecoms
12 82 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
13 81 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
14 72 (1.00%) Law
15 71 (0.98%) Aerospace
16 69 (0.96%) Marketing
17 68 (0.94%) Investment Banking
18 66 (0.91%) Financial Institution
19 57 (0.79%) Military
20 54 (0.75%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 1,287 (17.83%) Architect
2 926 (12.83%) Senior
3 834 (11.55%) Developer
4 619 (8.57%) Azure Engineer
5 611 (8.46%) Lead
6 539 (7.47%) Data Engineer
7 429 (5.94%) Analyst
8 395 (5.47%) Solutions Architect
9 339 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 325 (4.50%) Cloud Engineer
11 289 (4.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 265 (3.67%) Consultant
13 215 (2.98%) Data Architect
14 196 (2.72%) Platform Engineer
15 183 (2.53%) Security Engineer
16 182 (2.52%) Azure Architect
17 170 (2.35%) Project Manager
18 162 (2.24%) Senior Developer
19 158 (2.19%) Technical Architect
20 150 (2.08%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 542 (7.51%) .NET
2 529 (7.33%) REST
3 301 (4.17%) Kafka
4 257 (3.56%) React
5 240 (3.32%) PySpark
6 226 (3.13%) RESTful
7 219 (3.03%) OAuth
8 180 (2.49%) JSON
9 160 (2.22%) Spring
10 148 (2.05%) AngularJS
11 142 (1.97%) Node.js
11 142 (1.97%) SAML
12 134 (1.86%) OpenID
13 127 (1.76%) Spring Boot
14 125 (1.73%) .NET Framework
15 124 (1.72%) OAuth2
16 121 (1.68%) Middleware
17 119 (1.65%) HTML
18 111 (1.54%) SOAP
19 103 (1.43%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 794 (11.00%) Cloud Native
2 369 (5.11%) Onboarding
3 297 (4.11%) Product Ownership
4 253 (3.50%) Hybrid Cloud
5 243 (3.37%) Distributed Systems
6 222 (3.08%) Data Centre
7 215 (2.98%) AI Agents
8 205 (2.84%) Enterprise Software
9 203 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
10 170 (2.35%) Security Posture
11 129 (1.79%) Data Structures
12 125 (1.73%) Management Information System
13 123 (1.70%) Public Cloud
14 101 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
15 100 (1.39%) Enterprise Cloud
16 96 (1.33%) PKI
17 81 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
18 78 (1.08%) Replication
19 75 (1.04%) CMDB
20 68 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 885 (12.26%) Windows
2 440 (6.10%) Linux
3 312 (4.32%) Windows Server
4 121 (1.68%) Windows 10
5 80 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 80 (1.11%) Unix
6 69 (0.96%) Android
7 64 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 62 (0.86%) Apple iOS
9 50 (0.69%) Ubuntu
10 45 (0.62%) VMS
11 21 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.22%) CentOS
13 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
15 10 (0.14%) Debian
16 6 (0.083%) AIX
16 6 (0.083%) Amazon Linux
17 5 (0.069%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,641 (36.58%) DevOps
2 2,235 (30.96%) CI/CD
3 1,788 (24.77%) Agile
4 1,164 (16.12%) AI
5 1,147 (15.89%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,109 (15.36%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,071 (14.84%) Migration
8 1,037 (14.36%) Analytics
9 982 (13.60%) Problem-Solving
10 813 (11.26%) Continuous Improvement
11 807 (11.18%) Data Modelling
12 713 (9.88%) Data Pipeline
13 706 (9.78%) Roadmaps
13 706 (9.78%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 687 (9.52%) Business Intelligence
15 646 (8.95%) Containerisation
16 604 (8.37%) ETL
17 601 (8.33%) Microservices
18 596 (8.26%) Test Automation
19 588 (8.15%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,676 (23.22%) Python
2 1,432 (19.84%) SQL
3 789 (10.93%) PowerShell
4 594 (8.23%) Java
5 539 (7.47%) C#
6 419 (5.80%) JavaScript
7 339 (4.70%) Bash
8 288 (3.99%) Bicep
9 242 (3.35%) TypeScript
10 95 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.09%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.89%) Go
13 53 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
14 52 (0.72%) Scala
15 47 (0.65%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.47%) R
17 33 (0.46%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.46%) PL/SQL
18 30 (0.42%) Groovy
19 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,851 (25.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,486 (20.58%) SC Cleared
3 527 (7.30%) Degree
4 404 (5.60%) Azure Certification
5 251 (3.48%) DV Cleared
6 243 (3.37%) CISSP
7 209 (2.90%) Microsoft Certification
8 188 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
9 175 (2.42%) AWS Certification
10 169 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
11 147 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
12 118 (1.63%) CISM
13 90 (1.25%) CCNP
14 77 (1.07%) PMP
15 75 (1.04%) PMI Certification
16 73 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 58 (0.80%) Master's Degree
18 56 (0.78%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.64%) TOGAF Certification
20 45 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 508 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 385 (5.33%) QA
3 287 (3.98%) GDPR
4 277 (3.84%) NIST
5 274 (3.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 168 (2.33%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.39%) NCSC
8 97 (1.34%) SLA
9 70 (0.97%) GRC
9 70 (0.97%) PCI DSS
10 69 (0.96%) WCAG
11 66 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
12 59 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 53 (0.73%) PMO
14 32 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.40%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.35%) SOC 2
17 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
18 18 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
19 16 (0.22%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 917 (12.70%) Active Directory
2 775 (10.74%) Docker
3 214 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 142 (1.97%) Virtual Desktop
5 134 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
6 104 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.87%) vSphere
8 54 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 36 (0.50%) VMware NSX
10 30 (0.42%) Firmware
11 21 (0.29%) NFS
12 15 (0.21%) IAG
13 13 (0.18%) Postfix
14 12 (0.17%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.097%) Varnish
15 7 (0.097%) Virtual Servers
16 6 (0.083%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.083%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.069%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 5 (0.069%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,201 (16.64%) Terraform
2 1,072 (14.85%) Kubernetes
3 399 (5.53%) Ansible
4 395 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
5 227 (3.14%) Grafana
6 186 (2.58%) Prometheus
7 130 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 115 (1.59%) SCCM
9 61 (0.84%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.68%) Argo
11 47 (0.65%) Puppet
12 39 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 28 (0.39%) Istio
16 22 (0.30%) SCOM
16 22 (0.30%) vCenter Server
17 20 (0.28%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
19 14 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,488 (34.46%) Microsoft
2 688 (9.53%) Databricks
3 373 (5.17%) ServiceNow
4 309 (4.28%) VMware
5 299 (4.14%) Google
6 283 (3.92%) Oracle
7 222 (3.08%) Cisco
8 202 (2.80%) SAP
9 176 (2.44%) Splunk
10 160 (2.22%) OpenAI
11 147 (2.04%) CyberArk
12 142 (1.97%) Palo Alto
13 140 (1.94%) Salesforce
14 116 (1.61%) Foundry
15 110 (1.52%) Dynatrace
16 94 (1.30%) Zscaler
17 77 (1.07%) IBM
18 74 (1.03%) Informatica
18 74 (1.03%) Okta
19 67 (0.93%) Red Hat