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

6 months to
11 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,216 3,773 4,949
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.28% 15.41% 13.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.42% 41.42% 42.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,461 2,667 3,641
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £720 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £536
% change year-on-year - -2.01% -2.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 24 47
10th Percentile £27.24 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £52.25 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -41.47%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.75 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £36.25 £35.00
% change year-on-year +58.62% +3.57% -41.67%

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 14,317 9,110 11,750
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.20% 37.21% 31.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,819 6,350 8,477
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £740 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £518 £525
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 463 198 323
10th Percentile £15.95 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.84 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £45.50 £25.98 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.17% +23.69% -35.19%
75th Percentile £68.63 £39.69 £34.38
90th Percentile £81.00 £72.88 £65.10
UK median hourly rate £40.25 £27.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +46.36% +28.69% -38.94%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 3,311 £538 -2.27% 981
North of England +4 861 £500 +5.26% 561
South East +3 824 £500 -4.76% 663
Midlands -3 503 £488 -2.50% 295
North West +3 451 £500 +0.81% 295
South West +6 384 £525 - 261
West Midlands 0 367 £498 -5.24% 158
Yorkshire +6 351 £500 +14.29% 170
East of England +4 147 £550 -5.17% 180
East Midlands +3 126 £450 -2.96% 136
North East 0 68 £525 +7.69% 96
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
1 288 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 175 (2.82%) Confluence
3 171 (2.75%) Apache Spark
3 171 (2.75%) Microsoft Exchange
4 91 (1.46%) Apache
5 85 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.34%) IIS
7 18 (0.29%) SAS
8 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
8 13 (0.21%) Mendix
9 12 (0.19%) Appian
9 12 (0.19%) Camunda
9 12 (0.19%) CMS
9 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.19%) OpenStack
10 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
11 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
12 5 (0.080%) BizTalk Server
12 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
12 5 (0.080%) WebLogic
Applications
1 90 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.34%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.080%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.064%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.064%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.032%) Weka
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 92 (1.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.080%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.064%) Cloudability
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.064%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.064%) Shopify
9 4 (0.064%) SimCorp Dimension
10 3 (0.048%) Elite 3E
10 3 (0.048%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,152 (34.62%) AWS
2 1,262 (20.30%) Azure DevOps
3 1,144 (18.40%) GCP
4 799 (12.85%) Power Platform
5 765 (12.31%) Entra ID
6 651 (10.47%) Microsoft 365
7 576 (9.27%) GitHub
8 459 (7.38%) Azure Data Factory
9 326 (5.24%) GitHub Actions
10 316 (5.08%) Serverless
11 302 (4.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 250 (4.02%) SaaS
13 233 (3.75%) Azure AKS
14 229 (3.68%) Dynamics 365
15 215 (3.46%) Power Automate
16 213 (3.43%) PaaS
17 204 (3.28%) Azure Monitor
18 174 (2.80%) Azure Functions
19 173 (2.78%) PowerApps
20 171 (2.75%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 390 (6.27%) Firewall
2 270 (4.34%) DNS
3 228 (3.67%) VPN
4 205 (3.30%) Network Security
5 166 (2.67%) WAN
6 149 (2.40%) DHCP
7 116 (1.87%) LAN
8 85 (1.37%) TCP/IP
9 84 (1.35%) SD-WAN
10 76 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
11 70 (1.13%) VLAN
12 66 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 65 (1.05%) BGP
14 56 (0.90%) OSPF
15 44 (0.71%) SAN
16 40 (0.64%) Wireless
17 38 (0.61%) SSL
18 33 (0.53%) HTTP
19 31 (0.50%) VXLAN
20 28 (0.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (8.99%) Power BI
2 370 (5.95%) SQL Server
3 327 (5.26%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.91%) Data Lake
5 208 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 199 (3.20%) Azure SQL Database
7 168 (2.70%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.35%) Metadata
9 139 (2.24%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (1.40%) Big Data
13 77 (1.24%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.17%) Tableau
15 64 (1.03%) Oracle Database
16 61 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.76%) Star Schema
19 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
20 42 (0.68%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 455 (7.32%) Git
2 430 (6.92%) JIRA
3 304 (4.89%) Jenkins
4 236 (3.80%) GitLab
5 94 (1.51%) Selenium
6 59 (0.95%) Postman
7 51 (0.82%) JUnit
8 50 (0.80%) MLflow
9 49 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 45 (0.72%) JMeter
11 39 (0.63%) REST Assured
12 38 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.53%) Artifactory
14 29 (0.47%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.40%) Maven
16 24 (0.39%) Gatling
16 24 (0.39%) Visual Studio
16 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
17 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
18 21 (0.34%) TestRail
General
1 1,610 (25.90%) Social Skills
2 1,181 (19.00%) Finance
3 637 (10.25%) Public Sector
4 578 (9.30%) Analytical Skills
5 358 (5.76%) Banking
6 185 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.35%) Legal
8 98 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 89 (1.43%) Retail
10 84 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.09%) Financial Institution
11 68 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
12 63 (1.01%) Investment Banking
13 62 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
14 61 (0.98%) Front Office
14 61 (0.98%) Law
14 61 (0.98%) Marketing
15 52 (0.84%) Telecoms
16 38 (0.61%) Local Government
16 38 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,033 (16.62%) Architect
2 757 (12.18%) Senior
3 756 (12.16%) Developer
4 569 (9.15%) Azure Engineer
5 533 (8.57%) Data Engineer
6 454 (7.30%) Lead
7 399 (6.42%) Analyst
8 318 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 275 (4.42%) Solutions Architect
10 250 (4.02%) Consultant
11 204 (3.28%) Cloud Engineer
12 197 (3.17%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 166 (2.67%) Azure Architect
14 163 (2.62%) Security Engineer
15 151 (2.43%) Platform Engineer
16 141 (2.27%) Technical Architect
17 140 (2.25%) Data Architect
18 137 (2.20%) Business Analyst
19 134 (2.16%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 131 (2.11%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 464 (7.46%) .NET
2 396 (6.37%) REST
3 250 (4.02%) Kafka
4 249 (4.01%) React
5 227 (3.65%) PySpark
6 190 (3.06%) Node.js
7 180 (2.90%) RESTful
8 174 (2.80%) Spring
9 170 (2.73%) OAuth
10 164 (2.64%) LDAP
11 155 (2.49%) AngularJS
12 142 (2.28%) Spring Boot
13 124 (1.99%) Middleware
14 120 (1.93%) JSON
14 120 (1.93%) SOAP
15 117 (1.88%) SAML
16 116 (1.87%) HTML
17 108 (1.74%) OpenID
18 100 (1.61%) YAML
19 92 (1.48%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 611 (9.83%) Cloud Native
2 249 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 212 (3.41%) Product Ownership
4 180 (2.90%) Hybrid Cloud
5 162 (2.61%) Data Centre
6 160 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
8 144 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
8 144 (2.32%) Security Posture
9 130 (2.09%) Public Cloud
10 114 (1.83%) AI Agents
11 88 (1.42%) Data Structures
12 85 (1.37%) Replication
13 69 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
13 69 (1.11%) Management Information System
14 58 (0.93%) PKI
15 55 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
16 53 (0.85%) Low-Code
17 49 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
17 49 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 703 (11.31%) Windows
2 317 (5.10%) Linux
3 207 (3.33%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.06%) Unix
6 58 (0.93%) VMS
7 56 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 51 (0.82%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 37 (0.60%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.14%) AIX
17 8 (0.13%) CentOS
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 6 (0.097%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,319 (37.31%) DevOps
2 1,910 (30.73%) CI/CD
3 1,440 (23.17%) Agile
4 944 (15.19%) Analytics
5 914 (14.70%) Problem-Solving
6 878 (14.12%) Infrastructure as Code
7 877 (14.11%) AI
8 839 (13.50%) Migration
9 716 (11.52%) Data Modelling
10 633 (10.18%) Stakeholder Management
11 621 (9.99%) Business Intelligence
12 620 (9.97%) Data Pipeline
13 596 (9.59%) ETL
14 591 (9.51%) Continuous Improvement
15 585 (9.41%) Containerisation
16 541 (8.70%) Microservices
17 536 (8.62%) Data Engineering
18 534 (8.59%) Roadmaps
19 500 (8.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 464 (7.46%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,525 (24.53%) Python
2 1,352 (21.75%) SQL
3 664 (10.68%) PowerShell
4 523 (8.41%) Java
5 513 (8.25%) C#
6 363 (5.84%) JavaScript
7 222 (3.57%) Bash
8 219 (3.52%) TypeScript
9 193 (3.10%) Bicep
10 90 (1.45%) Scala
11 85 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.24%) Go
13 75 (1.21%) T-SQL
14 51 (0.82%) Kusto Query Language
15 47 (0.76%) PL/SQL
16 42 (0.68%) R
17 36 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 23 (0.37%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,577 (25.37%) Security Cleared
2 1,313 (21.12%) SC Cleared
3 439 (7.06%) Degree
4 349 (5.61%) Azure Certification
5 178 (2.86%) CISSP
6 173 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
7 142 (2.28%) Cisco Certification
8 139 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
9 138 (2.22%) DV Cleared
10 127 (2.04%) AWS Certification
11 103 (1.66%) CISM
12 102 (1.64%) BPSS Clearance
13 67 (1.08%) CCNP
14 62 (1.00%) PMP
15 59 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 56 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
17 54 (0.87%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.84%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 48 (0.77%) ISTQB
20 36 (0.58%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (7.19%) Data Quality
2 333 (5.36%) QA
3 327 (5.26%) GDPR
4 255 (4.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 233 (3.75%) NIST
6 93 (1.50%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.32%) NCSC
8 80 (1.29%) PCI DSS
9 63 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
10 60 (0.97%) SLA
11 59 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.80%) PMO
13 46 (0.74%) GRC
14 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 31 (0.50%) WCAG
16 22 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 22 (0.35%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.32%) ISO 20022
18 17 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 17 (0.27%) PSD2
System Software
1 805 (12.95%) Active Directory
2 685 (11.02%) Docker
3 178 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.77%) Virtual Machines
5 107 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
6 87 (1.40%) Hyper-V
7 54 (0.87%) vSphere
8 35 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 20 (0.32%) NFS
11 19 (0.31%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.19%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.097%) KVM
15 6 (0.097%) RACF
16 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.080%) HDFS
16 5 (0.080%) Snort
17 4 (0.064%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 978 (15.73%) Terraform
2 902 (14.51%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.34%) Microsoft Intune
4 280 (4.50%) Ansible
5 171 (2.75%) Grafana
6 146 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 132 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 102 (1.64%) SCCM
9 66 (1.06%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 33 (0.53%) Argo
10 33 (0.53%) Istio
10 33 (0.53%) Puppet
11 29 (0.47%) Progress Chef
12 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
13 23 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
14 19 (0.31%) vCenter Server
15 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
16 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
16 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
17 14 (0.23%) Nmap
Vendors
1 2,029 (32.64%) Microsoft
2 623 (10.02%) Databricks
3 276 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 259 (4.17%) Oracle
5 257 (4.13%) Google
6 248 (3.99%) VMware
7 184 (2.96%) SAP
8 161 (2.59%) Cisco
9 156 (2.51%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.24%) Splunk
11 134 (2.16%) CyberArk
12 107 (1.72%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.59%) Foundry
14 92 (1.48%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.27%) Okta
16 69 (1.11%) BeyondTrust
17 68 (1.09%) Citrix
18 66 (1.06%) Dynatrace
19 63 (1.01%) Informatica
20 61 (0.98%) Zscaler