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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 5
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,085 4,184 4,827
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.22% 15.02% 14.71%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.15% 39.58% 42.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,938 2,880 3,343
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £446 £413 £450
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 £516 £533
% change year-on-year +1.74% -3.19% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 40 25
10th Percentile £19.50 £15.50 -
25th Percentile £25.75 £26.00 £23.80
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.39 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.26% -13.29% -16.63%
75th Percentile £81.25 £64.77 £55.00
90th Percentile £102.17 £89.38 £80.38
UK median hourly rate £45.20 £34.24 £36.75
% change year-on-year +32.01% -6.83% -26.50%

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 16,046 10,572 11,340
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.48% 37.96% 34.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,693 7,158 7,642
10th Percentile £319 £306 £313
25th Percentile £425 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £501 £533
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -6.10% -3.09%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £645
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 555 254 166
10th Percentile £15.27 £15.50 £15.99
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 £70.00 £43.75 £65.68
90th Percentile £82.25 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £32.00 £26.50 £33.00
% change year-on-year +20.75% -19.70% -5.44%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 3,718 £550 - 3,812
North of England +6 1,001 £500 +5.26% 1,265
South East +1 905 £525 +5.00% 1,173
Midlands +2 644 £493 -3.90% 712
West Midlands +1 491 £488 -11.36% 426
North West +4 489 £500 +5.26% 670
Yorkshire +5 430 £500 +2.56% 444
South West +2 419 £550 +10.00% 522
East of England 0 202 £510 +2.00% 401
East Midlands +2 147 £500 +8.11% 286
North East +2 95 £513 +2.50% 159
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
1 414 (5.84%) SharePoint
2 225 (3.18%) Confluence
3 178 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 171 (2.41%) Apache Spark
5 152 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
6 108 (1.52%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 22 (0.31%) CMS
8 22 (0.31%) IIS
9 18 (0.25%) SharePoint Server
10 15 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.18%) nginx
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 9 (0.13%) Umbraco
13 8 (0.11%) Apache Superset
14 7 (0.099%) Mendix
15 6 (0.085%) Documentum
15 6 (0.085%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.071%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 102 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.51%) Chatbot
6 31 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.11%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.11%) Revit
8 8 (0.11%) Trello
9 5 (0.071%) Notion
9 5 (0.071%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.042%) Houdini
10 3 (0.042%) NUKE
11 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
11 2 (0.028%) Mingle
11 2 (0.028%) Windchill
12 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 115 (1.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (0.92%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 10 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
5 10 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
5 10 (0.14%) Workday HCM
6 8 (0.11%) Magento
6 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
6 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 7 (0.099%) Shopify
8 6 (0.085%) Cloudability
9 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
9 5 (0.071%) SAP Oil and Gas
10 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.056%) Dynamics NAV
10 4 (0.056%) Maximo
10 4 (0.056%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.056%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 2,511 (35.44%) AWS
2 1,483 (20.93%) Azure DevOps
3 1,232 (17.39%) GCP
4 997 (14.07%) Entra ID
5 926 (13.07%) Power Platform
6 774 (10.92%) Microsoft 365
7 703 (9.92%) GitHub
8 407 (5.74%) Azure Data Factory
8 407 (5.74%) GitHub Actions
9 341 (4.81%) Serverless
10 314 (4.43%) SaaS
11 274 (3.87%) Power Automate
12 268 (3.78%) Azure Monitor
13 264 (3.73%) Dynamics 365
14 258 (3.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 257 (3.63%) Snowflake
16 241 (3.40%) Azure AKS
17 239 (3.37%) Microsoft Copilot
17 239 (3.37%) PowerApps
18 210 (2.96%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 471 (6.65%) Firewall
2 379 (5.35%) DNS
3 291 (4.11%) VPN
4 261 (3.68%) Network Security
5 219 (3.09%) DHCP
6 172 (2.43%) WAN
7 164 (2.31%) TCP/IP
8 100 (1.41%) BGP
9 98 (1.38%) LAN
10 89 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 83 (1.17%) VLAN
12 82 (1.16%) OSPF
13 77 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
14 64 (0.90%) SSL
15 61 (0.86%) Wireless
16 59 (0.83%) SAN
17 39 (0.55%) VXLAN
18 38 (0.54%) IPsec
18 38 (0.54%) MPLS
19 37 (0.52%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 615 (8.68%) Power BI
2 410 (5.79%) SQL Server
3 339 (4.78%) Data Warehouse
4 304 (4.29%) Data Lake
5 233 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
6 217 (3.06%) Metadata
7 184 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.06%) Azure SQL Database
9 117 (1.65%) Relational Database
10 115 (1.62%) Delta Lake
11 88 (1.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.23%) Big Data
13 81 (1.14%) MySQL
14 75 (1.06%) MongoDB
15 56 (0.79%) Amazon Redshift
15 56 (0.79%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.76%) Tableau
17 51 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
17 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
18 49 (0.69%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 600 (8.47%) Git
2 476 (6.72%) JIRA
3 376 (5.31%) Jenkins
4 309 (4.36%) GitLab
5 118 (1.67%) Selenium
6 63 (0.89%) Postman
7 55 (0.78%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) Cypress.io
9 49 (0.69%) JUnit
9 49 (0.69%) SonarQube
10 45 (0.64%) JMeter
10 45 (0.64%) Visual Studio
11 42 (0.59%) Maven
12 38 (0.54%) Gradle
13 37 (0.52%) Claude Code
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 33 (0.47%) WebDriver
16 31 (0.44%) LoadRunner
17 30 (0.42%) Bitbucket
18 28 (0.40%) Gatling
General
1 1,974 (27.86%) Social Skills
2 1,391 (19.63%) Finance
3 738 (10.42%) Public Sector
4 714 (10.08%) Analytical Skills
5 440 (6.21%) Banking
6 209 (2.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 206 (2.91%) Retail
8 174 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
9 137 (1.93%) Legal
10 95 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
11 93 (1.31%) Manufacturing
12 86 (1.21%) Aerospace
13 82 (1.16%) Marketing
14 80 (1.13%) Investment Banking
14 80 (1.13%) Telecoms
15 74 (1.04%) Military
16 68 (0.96%) Law
17 66 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
18 54 (0.76%) Billing
19 52 (0.73%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,339 (18.90%) Architect
2 908 (12.82%) Senior
3 798 (11.26%) Developer
4 614 (8.67%) Lead
5 603 (8.51%) Azure Engineer
6 510 (7.20%) Data Engineer
7 429 (6.06%) Solutions Architect
8 408 (5.76%) Analyst
9 359 (5.07%) DevOps Engineer
10 351 (4.95%) Cloud Engineer
11 286 (4.04%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 268 (3.78%) Consultant
13 224 (3.16%) Data Architect
14 200 (2.82%) Platform Engineer
15 189 (2.67%) Security Engineer
16 178 (2.51%) Azure Architect
17 169 (2.39%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 167 (2.36%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 158 (2.23%) Senior Developer
19 158 (2.23%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,228 (17.33%) Terraform
2 596 (8.41%) REST
3 519 (7.33%) .NET
4 342 (4.83%) Kafka
5 257 (3.63%) React
6 254 (3.59%) OAuth
7 240 (3.39%) PySpark
8 225 (3.18%) RESTful
9 193 (2.72%) JSON
10 151 (2.13%) OpenID
11 147 (2.07%) OAuth2
12 145 (2.05%) SAML
13 135 (1.91%) Spring
14 127 (1.79%) Spring Boot
15 126 (1.78%) HTML
15 126 (1.78%) Middleware
15 126 (1.78%) SOAP
16 117 (1.65%) .NET Framework
17 116 (1.64%) Node.js
18 115 (1.62%) AngularJS
Miscellaneous
1 804 (11.35%) Cloud Native
2 378 (5.34%) Onboarding
3 329 (4.64%) Product Ownership
4 264 (3.73%) Hybrid Cloud
5 263 (3.71%) AI Agents
6 260 (3.67%) Enterprise Software
7 240 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
8 225 (3.18%) Data Centre
9 197 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
10 164 (2.31%) Security Posture
11 154 (2.17%) Management Information System
12 130 (1.83%) Data Structures
13 119 (1.68%) Public Cloud
14 109 (1.54%) PKI
15 94 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
16 93 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
17 88 (1.24%) CMDB
18 82 (1.16%) Replication
19 78 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
20 68 (0.96%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 888 (12.53%) Windows
2 446 (6.29%) Linux
3 338 (4.77%) Windows Server
4 138 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 82 (1.16%) Unix
6 79 (1.12%) Android
7 76 (1.07%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 73 (1.03%) Apple iOS
9 69 (0.97%) Mac OS
10 53 (0.75%) Ubuntu
11 40 (0.56%) VMS
12 26 (0.37%) CentOS
13 18 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
14 15 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
16 9 (0.13%) Amazon Linux
17 7 (0.099%) Debian
18 6 (0.085%) AIX
19 4 (0.056%) Alpine Linux
19 4 (0.056%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,573 (36.32%) DevOps
2 2,249 (31.74%) CI/CD
3 1,739 (24.54%) Agile
4 1,296 (18.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 1,269 (17.91%) AI
6 1,222 (17.25%) Infrastructure as Code
7 1,052 (14.85%) Migration
8 1,004 (14.17%) Analytics
9 994 (14.03%) Problem-Solving
10 819 (11.56%) Continuous Improvement
11 779 (11.00%) Data Modelling
12 769 (10.85%) Roadmaps
13 674 (9.51%) Business Intelligence
14 666 (9.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 661 (9.33%) Data Pipeline
16 646 (9.12%) Technical Leadership
17 635 (8.96%) Containerisation
18 619 (8.74%) Test Automation
19 587 (8.29%) Data Engineering
20 585 (8.26%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 1,649 (23.27%) Python
2 1,360 (19.20%) SQL
3 809 (11.42%) PowerShell
4 593 (8.37%) Java
5 524 (7.40%) C#
6 436 (6.15%) JavaScript
7 356 (5.02%) Bash
8 316 (4.46%) Bicep
9 260 (3.67%) TypeScript
10 90 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 74 (1.04%) T-SQL
12 70 (0.99%) Go
13 54 (0.76%) Scala
14 53 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
15 48 (0.68%) Shell Script
16 31 (0.44%) Groovy
16 31 (0.44%) PL/SQL
17 30 (0.42%) R
18 29 (0.41%) C++
18 29 (0.41%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,850 (26.11%) Security Cleared
2 1,469 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 527 (7.44%) Degree
4 425 (6.00%) Azure Certification
5 278 (3.92%) DV Cleared
6 246 (3.47%) CISSP
7 234 (3.30%) Microsoft Certification
8 194 (2.74%) AWS Certification
9 176 (2.48%) Cisco Certification
10 165 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
11 163 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
12 120 (1.69%) CISM
13 80 (1.13%) PMI Certification
14 79 (1.12%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 78 (1.10%) CCNP
16 76 (1.07%) PMP
17 59 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 58 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 52 (0.73%) CCSP
20 50 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 522 (7.37%) Data Quality
2 396 (5.59%) QA
3 277 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 261 (3.68%) NIST
5 255 (3.60%) GDPR
6 173 (2.44%) Accessibility
7 101 (1.43%) SLA
8 90 (1.27%) NCSC
9 76 (1.07%) WCAG
10 73 (1.03%) GRC
11 72 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
12 68 (0.96%) PCI DSS
13 51 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 48 (0.68%) PMO
15 40 (0.56%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 32 (0.45%) SOC 2
17 26 (0.37%) HIPAA
18 21 (0.30%) ISO 20022
19 19 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
20 18 (0.25%) NIST 800
System Software
1 931 (13.14%) Active Directory
2 764 (10.78%) Docker
3 222 (3.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 135 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 133 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
6 107 (1.51%) Hyper-V
7 70 (0.99%) vSphere
8 50 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.40%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.32%) Firmware
11 19 (0.27%) IAG
12 13 (0.18%) NFS
13 11 (0.16%) Postfix
14 10 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
15 8 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
16 7 (0.099%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
17 6 (0.085%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.071%) Dovecot
19 4 (0.056%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 1,071 (15.12%) Kubernetes
2 409 (5.77%) Ansible
3 408 (5.76%) Microsoft Intune
4 221 (3.12%) Grafana
5 169 (2.39%) Prometheus
6 133 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
7 128 (1.81%) SCCM
8 58 (0.82%) Progress Chef
9 49 (0.69%) Argo
10 43 (0.61%) Puppet
11 36 (0.51%) FortiGate
12 35 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.47%) SCOM
14 28 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.30%) Istio
16 20 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) CASB
18 18 (0.25%) Packer
19 15 (0.21%) HP ALM
20 13 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,618 (36.95%) Microsoft
2 724 (10.22%) Databricks
3 373 (5.26%) ServiceNow
4 322 (4.54%) VMware
5 321 (4.53%) Google
6 289 (4.08%) Oracle
7 225 (3.18%) Cisco
8 205 (2.89%) Splunk
9 183 (2.58%) SAP
10 179 (2.53%) OpenAI
11 158 (2.23%) Salesforce
12 140 (1.98%) CyberArk
13 138 (1.95%) Palo Alto
14 118 (1.67%) Dynatrace
15 115 (1.62%) Foundry
16 88 (1.24%) IBM
17 84 (1.19%) Zscaler
18 75 (1.06%) Fortinet
19 68 (0.96%) Informatica
20 66 (0.93%) Okta