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

6 months to
9 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,101 3,868 5,008
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.60% 15.88% 13.36%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.94% 42.14% 41.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,396 2,763 3,694
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £527
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.28% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 29 52
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.89 £26.45 £22.58
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +45.58% -27.59%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £84.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £36.75
% change year-on-year +64.29% -4.76% -31.94%

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 14,208 9,180 12,022
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.33% 37.69% 32.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,809 6,465 8,638
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £608 £638 £638
90th Percentile £714 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 437 185 322
10th Percentile £16.25 £15.23 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.50 £15.92
Median hourly rate £42.69 £26.50 £20.87
Median % change year-on-year +61.08% +26.98% -21.19%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.00 £33.75
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.30 £59.95
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £27.43 £21.00
% change year-on-year +45.85% +30.60% -26.32%

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 9 April 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 9 April 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 9 April 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 3,285 £538 -2.27% 1,004
North of England +3 837 £500 +5.26% 604
South East +1 769 £500 -4.76% 685
Midlands 0 509 £488 -4.41% 369
North West +2 449 £490 -2.00% 303
West Midlands 0 374 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 363 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire +1 342 £500 +17.65% 208
East of England +10 155 £550 -6.78% 207
East Midlands 0 126 £447 -5.89% 163
North East -3 54 £538 +6.17% 97
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
1 293 (4.80%) SharePoint
2 182 (2.98%) Microsoft Exchange
3 170 (2.79%) Apache Spark
4 168 (2.75%) Confluence
5 96 (1.57%) Apache
6 93 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) IIS
7 21 (0.34%) SAS
8 16 (0.26%) Appian
8 16 (0.26%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.25%) Camunda
10 12 (0.20%) CMS
11 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.082%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.082%) WebLogic
Applications
1 109 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.75%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.098%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.082%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.082%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) Weka
11 3 (0.049%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
13 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 105 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
8 6 (0.098%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
10 4 (0.066%) Dynamics AX
10 4 (0.066%) Endur
10 4 (0.066%) NetSuite
10 4 (0.066%) Oracle 11i
10 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
11 3 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
11 3 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
11 3 (0.049%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,131 (34.93%) AWS
2 1,268 (20.78%) Azure DevOps
3 1,169 (19.16%) GCP
4 812 (13.31%) Power Platform
5 783 (12.83%) Entra ID
6 680 (11.15%) Microsoft 365
7 592 (9.70%) GitHub
8 458 (7.51%) Azure Data Factory
9 336 (5.51%) GitHub Actions
10 334 (5.47%) Serverless
11 295 (4.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 255 (4.18%) SaaS
13 242 (3.97%) Dynamics 365
14 229 (3.75%) Azure AKS
15 223 (3.66%) Azure Monitor
16 218 (3.57%) Power Automate
17 216 (3.54%) PaaS
18 195 (3.20%) Azure Functions
19 190 (3.11%) Azure Logic Apps
20 178 (2.92%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 397 (6.51%) Firewall
2 276 (4.52%) DNS
3 240 (3.93%) VPN
4 204 (3.34%) Network Security
5 156 (2.56%) WAN
6 153 (2.51%) DHCP
7 119 (1.95%) LAN
8 94 (1.54%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.23%) VLAN
10 74 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 73 (1.20%) SD-WAN
12 65 (1.07%) Kerberos
13 51 (0.84%) BGP
14 45 (0.74%) OSPF
15 40 (0.66%) Wireless
16 38 (0.62%) SAN
17 37 (0.61%) SSL
18 35 (0.57%) HTTP
19 32 (0.52%) Internet
20 29 (0.48%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 565 (9.26%) Power BI
2 352 (5.77%) SQL Server
3 337 (5.52%) Data Warehouse
4 294 (4.82%) Data Lake
5 212 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 209 (3.43%) Azure SQL Database
7 182 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 148 (2.43%) Metadata
9 132 (2.16%) Delta Lake
10 99 (1.62%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 81 (1.33%) Big Data
13 78 (1.28%) Tableau
14 76 (1.25%) MongoDB
15 61 (1.00%) Oracle Database
16 57 (0.93%) BigQuery
16 57 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
17 47 (0.77%) MySQL
18 46 (0.75%) Spark SQL
18 46 (0.75%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 449 (7.36%) Git
2 419 (6.87%) JIRA
3 299 (4.90%) Jenkins
4 218 (3.57%) GitLab
5 105 (1.72%) Selenium
6 67 (1.10%) Postman
7 60 (0.98%) JUnit
8 57 (0.93%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.82%) JMeter
10 49 (0.80%) MLflow
11 42 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.59%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.57%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.54%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
15 26 (0.43%) TestRail
16 25 (0.41%) Visual Studio
17 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 22 (0.36%) Mockito
19 21 (0.34%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,680 (27.54%) Social Skills
2 1,136 (18.62%) Finance
3 642 (10.52%) Public Sector
4 607 (9.95%) Analytical Skills
5 354 (5.80%) Banking
6 194 (3.18%) Documentation Skills
7 141 (2.31%) Legal
8 106 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
10 84 (1.38%) Retail
11 82 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
12 81 (1.33%) Presentation Skills
13 67 (1.10%) Marketing
14 66 (1.08%) Financial Institution
14 66 (1.08%) Law
14 66 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 58 (0.95%) Front Office
16 56 (0.92%) Investment Banking
17 44 (0.72%) Local Government
18 35 (0.57%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,010 (16.55%) Architect
2 790 (12.95%) Developer
3 740 (12.13%) Senior
4 559 (9.16%) Azure Engineer
5 524 (8.59%) Data Engineer
6 461 (7.56%) Lead
7 386 (6.33%) Analyst
8 298 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 266 (4.36%) Solutions Architect
10 256 (4.20%) Consultant
11 179 (2.93%) Cloud Engineer
12 178 (2.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 157 (2.57%) Platform Engineer
14 155 (2.54%) Azure Architect
15 149 (2.44%) Security Engineer
16 141 (2.31%) Senior Developer
17 132 (2.16%) Data Architect
18 126 (2.07%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 124 (2.03%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 123 (2.02%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 453 (7.43%) .NET
2 392 (6.43%) REST
3 266 (4.36%) React
4 251 (4.11%) Kafka
5 229 (3.75%) PySpark
6 215 (3.52%) Node.js
7 196 (3.21%) RESTful
8 187 (3.07%) Spring
9 175 (2.87%) OAuth
10 155 (2.54%) AngularJS
11 152 (2.49%) LDAP
12 149 (2.44%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.15%) HTML
14 123 (2.02%) Middleware
15 121 (1.98%) JSON
16 118 (1.93%) SAML
17 116 (1.90%) SOAP
18 113 (1.85%) CSS
19 108 (1.77%) PyTorch
20 105 (1.72%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 561 (9.20%) Cloud Native
2 244 (4.00%) Onboarding
3 220 (3.61%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.88%) Hybrid Cloud
5 155 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
6 154 (2.52%) Security Posture
7 145 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
8 143 (2.34%) Data Centre
9 136 (2.23%) Public Cloud
10 130 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
11 106 (1.74%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.36%) Data Structures
12 83 (1.36%) Replication
13 68 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
14 66 (1.08%) Management Information System
15 61 (1.00%) PKI
16 56 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (0.79%) Algorithms
17 48 (0.79%) Low-Code
18 47 (0.77%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 682 (11.18%) Windows
2 315 (5.16%) Linux
3 205 (3.36%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.07%) VMS
6 56 (0.92%) Unix
7 53 (0.87%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.67%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.52%) Android
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.098%) CentOS
17 5 (0.082%) AIX
17 5 (0.082%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.082%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,274 (37.27%) DevOps
2 1,859 (30.47%) CI/CD
3 1,423 (23.32%) Agile
4 991 (16.24%) Problem-Solving
5 942 (15.44%) Analytics
6 879 (14.41%) AI
7 836 (13.70%) Infrastructure as Code
8 809 (13.26%) Migration
9 695 (11.39%) Data Modelling
10 629 (10.31%) Business Intelligence
11 627 (10.28%) Stakeholder Management
12 599 (9.82%) Continuous Improvement
13 583 (9.56%) Data Pipeline
14 579 (9.49%) ETL
15 571 (9.36%) Containerisation
16 545 (8.93%) Data Engineering
16 545 (8.93%) Microservices
17 505 (8.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 499 (8.18%) Machine Learning
19 491 (8.05%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,556 (25.50%) Python
2 1,385 (22.70%) SQL
3 669 (10.97%) PowerShell
4 511 (8.38%) C#
5 510 (8.36%) Java
6 409 (6.70%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.82%) TypeScript
8 221 (3.62%) Bash
9 197 (3.23%) Bicep
10 94 (1.54%) Scala
11 78 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.25%) Go
13 72 (1.18%) PL/SQL
14 68 (1.11%) T-SQL
15 63 (1.03%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.67%) R
17 35 (0.57%) Shell Script
18 23 (0.38%) C++
19 22 (0.36%) PHP
20 18 (0.30%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,536 (25.18%) Security Cleared
2 1,272 (20.85%) SC Cleared
3 452 (7.41%) Degree
4 353 (5.79%) Azure Certification
5 189 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.80%) CISSP
7 149 (2.44%) Microsoft Certification
8 125 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
9 122 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 115 (1.88%) AWS Certification
11 101 (1.66%) CISM
12 98 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
13 68 (1.11%) CCNP
14 60 (0.98%) Master's Degree
15 58 (0.95%) PMP
16 56 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.85%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 41 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 442 (7.24%) Data Quality
2 356 (5.84%) GDPR
3 328 (5.38%) QA
4 261 (4.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.84%) NIST
6 97 (1.59%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.41%) NCSC
8 82 (1.34%) PCI DSS
9 57 (0.93%) Cyber Essentials
9 57 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 53 (0.87%) SLA
11 47 (0.77%) PMO
12 37 (0.61%) GRC
13 33 (0.54%) WCAG
14 32 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.39%) NIST 800
16 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
17 22 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 20 (0.33%) SOC 2
19 18 (0.30%) PSD2
System Software
1 822 (13.47%) Active Directory
2 701 (11.49%) Docker
3 189 (3.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
5 90 (1.48%) Hyper-V
6 86 (1.41%) Virtual Desktop
7 75 (1.23%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.54%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.39%) Firmware
11 17 (0.28%) NFS
12 10 (0.16%) Postfix
13 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.098%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.098%) RACF
14 6 (0.098%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.098%) Varnish
15 5 (0.082%) GPFS
15 5 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.082%) Snort
Systems Management
1 958 (15.70%) Terraform
2 900 (14.75%) Kubernetes
3 343 (5.62%) Microsoft Intune
4 264 (4.33%) Ansible
5 158 (2.59%) Grafana
6 140 (2.29%) Single Sign-On
7 131 (2.15%) Prometheus
8 108 (1.77%) SCCM
9 71 (1.16%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.66%) Argo
11 34 (0.56%) Istio
12 28 (0.46%) Puppet
12 28 (0.46%) vCenter Server
13 26 (0.43%) Progress Chef
14 24 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
15 21 (0.34%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
16 17 (0.28%) vRealize
17 16 (0.26%) Nmap
17 16 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,987 (32.57%) Microsoft
2 631 (10.34%) Databricks
3 290 (4.75%) Oracle
4 275 (4.51%) Google
5 266 (4.36%) ServiceNow
6 262 (4.29%) VMware
7 176 (2.88%) SAP
8 166 (2.72%) Cisco
9 160 (2.62%) OpenAI
10 143 (2.34%) Splunk
11 132 (2.16%) CyberArk
12 108 (1.77%) Foundry
13 92 (1.51%) Palo Alto
14 79 (1.29%) Okta
15 78 (1.28%) Salesforce
16 72 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
17 71 (1.16%) IBM
18 67 (1.10%) Citrix
19 64 (1.05%) Red Hat
20 62 (1.02%) Informatica