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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,940 4,077 5,229
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.48% 15.08% 14.11%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.21% 40.33% 42.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,889 2,835 3,826
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £425 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year +0.10% -0.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 35 49
10th Percentile £23.00 £25.40 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.00 £28.20 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +16.88% -36.21%
75th Percentile £80.31 £76.72 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.01 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £42.34
% change year-on-year -0.86% +36.99% -29.76%

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 15,698 10,109 12,184
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.03% 37.40% 32.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,559 6,818 8,683
10th Percentile £325 £313 £310
25th Percentile £416 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +2.49% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 558 269 330
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.75 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.05% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.39 £43.75
90th Percentile £84.13 £67.10 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £27.76 £22.08
% change year-on-year +35.09% +25.75% -36.93%

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 10 July 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 10 July 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 10 July 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 3,631 £550 - 1,152
North of England +7 1,017 £500 +4.17% 583
South East +2 866 £515 +2.90% 684
Midlands +2 613 £500 +1.01% 284
North West +7 534 £500 +1.63% 314
West Midlands +1 458 £500 -4.76% 173
South West +7 443 £540 +7.90% 321
Yorkshire +3 403 £500 +5.32% 183
East of England +3 186 £550 -2.22% 175
East Midlands +5 144 £494 +6.76% 111
North East +2 93 £525 +5.00% 95
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
1 345 (4.97%) SharePoint
2 223 (3.21%) Confluence
3 175 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 172 (2.48%) Apache Spark
5 118 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.61%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.36%) IIS
9 19 (0.27%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.14%) Camunda
12 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.10%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.086%) Appian
14 6 (0.086%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.086%) Documentum
14 6 (0.086%) Mendix
15 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 104 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (0.94%) Microsoft Project
3 64 (0.92%) Microsoft Office
4 36 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
5 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
8 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 5 (0.072%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.058%) Notion
11 4 (0.058%) Trello
12 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) Houdini
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
13 1 (0.014%) Sketch
13 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 97 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Magento
7 7 (0.10%) Maximo
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.086%) Endur
8 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.086%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.086%) Shopify
8 6 (0.086%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.058%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.058%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.058%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.058%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,463 (35.49%) AWS
2 1,409 (20.30%) Azure DevOps
3 1,163 (16.76%) GCP
4 901 (12.98%) Entra ID
5 879 (12.67%) Power Platform
6 701 (10.10%) Microsoft 365
7 625 (9.01%) GitHub
8 425 (6.12%) Azure Data Factory
9 376 (5.42%) GitHub Actions
10 314 (4.52%) Serverless
11 291 (4.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 288 (4.15%) SaaS
13 248 (3.57%) Azure AKS
14 235 (3.39%) Power Automate
15 230 (3.31%) Azure Monitor
16 224 (3.23%) PaaS
17 217 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
18 208 (3.00%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.94%) Snowflake
20 189 (2.72%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 435 (6.27%) Firewall
2 333 (4.80%) DNS
3 263 (3.79%) VPN
4 235 (3.39%) Network Security
5 190 (2.74%) WAN
6 174 (2.51%) DHCP
7 124 (1.79%) TCP/IP
8 120 (1.73%) LAN
9 105 (1.51%) BGP
10 98 (1.41%) SD-WAN
11 83 (1.20%) OSPF
12 75 (1.08%) VLAN
13 69 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.82%) SSL
15 55 (0.79%) Kerberos
16 53 (0.76%) SAN
17 44 (0.63%) Wireless
18 42 (0.61%) IPsec
18 42 (0.61%) VXLAN
19 38 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 613 (8.83%) Power BI
2 419 (6.04%) SQL Server
3 349 (5.03%) Data Warehouse
4 302 (4.35%) Data Lake
5 250 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
6 178 (2.56%) NoSQL
7 177 (2.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 162 (2.33%) Metadata
9 127 (1.83%) Delta Lake
10 118 (1.70%) Relational Database
11 97 (1.40%) Big Data
12 78 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.08%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.07%) Tableau
15 64 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 53 (0.76%) MySQL
17 53 (0.76%) Oracle Database
18 48 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
19 47 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 511 (7.36%) JIRA
2 504 (7.26%) Git
3 332 (4.78%) Jenkins
4 252 (3.63%) GitLab
5 102 (1.47%) Selenium
6 60 (0.86%) Postman
7 57 (0.82%) JMeter
7 57 (0.82%) JUnit
8 50 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 42 (0.61%) REST Assured
9 42 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 37 (0.53%) MLflow
10 37 (0.53%) WebDriver
11 36 (0.52%) Cypress.io
12 35 (0.50%) Visual Studio
13 31 (0.45%) Maven
14 26 (0.37%) Gatling
14 26 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
15 25 (0.36%) LoadRunner
16 24 (0.35%) Gradle
General
1 1,747 (25.17%) Social Skills
2 1,357 (19.55%) Finance
3 729 (10.50%) Public Sector
4 671 (9.67%) Analytical Skills
5 401 (5.78%) Banking
6 200 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
7 163 (2.35%) Legal
8 160 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 158 (2.28%) Retail
10 95 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (0.98%) Investment Banking
12 68 (0.98%) Law
13 67 (0.97%) Front Office
14 64 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 63 (0.91%) Financial Institution
16 62 (0.89%) Marketing
17 61 (0.88%) Manufacturing
18 55 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
19 48 (0.69%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,235 (17.80%) Architect
2 869 (12.52%) Senior
3 840 (12.10%) Developer
4 601 (8.66%) Azure Engineer
5 549 (7.91%) Data Engineer
6 543 (7.82%) Lead
7 426 (6.14%) Analyst
8 367 (5.29%) Solutions Architect
9 327 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
10 288 (4.15%) Consultant
11 280 (4.03%) Cloud Engineer
12 246 (3.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 196 (2.82%) Data Architect
14 187 (2.69%) Azure Architect
15 177 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.45%) Security Engineer
17 164 (2.36%) Technical Architect
18 160 (2.31%) Business Analyst
19 149 (2.15%) Senior Developer
20 146 (2.10%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 524 (7.55%) .NET
2 463 (6.67%) REST
3 271 (3.90%) Kafka
3 271 (3.90%) React
4 223 (3.21%) PySpark
5 220 (3.17%) RESTful
6 212 (3.05%) OAuth
7 177 (2.55%) Spring
8 173 (2.49%) Node.js
9 160 (2.31%) AngularJS
10 149 (2.15%) JSON
11 147 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 139 (2.00%) SAML
13 131 (1.89%) LDAP
14 128 (1.84%) OpenID
15 123 (1.77%) HTML
16 114 (1.64%) .NET Framework
17 110 (1.59%) OAuth2
17 110 (1.59%) SOAP
18 109 (1.57%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 751 (10.82%) Cloud Native
2 305 (4.39%) Onboarding
3 269 (3.88%) Product Ownership
4 220 (3.17%) Data Centre
4 220 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
5 209 (3.01%) Hybrid Cloud
6 202 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
7 163 (2.35%) AI Agents
8 147 (2.12%) Security Posture
9 141 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
10 128 (1.84%) Public Cloud
11 104 (1.50%) Data Structures
12 98 (1.41%) Management Information System
13 93 (1.34%) Replication
14 89 (1.28%) Data Protection Act
15 79 (1.14%) PKI
16 77 (1.11%) Enterprise Cloud
17 72 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
18 64 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
19 58 (0.84%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 826 (11.90%) Windows
2 361 (5.20%) Linux
3 261 (3.76%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.54%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.07%) Unix
6 66 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.85%) Android
8 59 (0.85%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.63%) VMS
10 37 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 24 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.16%) CentOS
15 10 (0.14%) Debian
16 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.086%) Rocky
16 6 (0.086%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,529 (36.44%) DevOps
2 2,148 (30.95%) CI/CD
3 1,682 (24.24%) Agile
4 1,095 (15.78%) AI
5 1,045 (15.06%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,018 (14.67%) Analytics
7 1,004 (14.47%) Migration
8 952 (13.72%) Problem-Solving
9 867 (12.49%) Stakeholder Management
10 782 (11.27%) Data Modelling
11 713 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
12 698 (10.06%) Data Pipeline
13 680 (9.80%) Roadmaps
14 659 (9.50%) Business Intelligence
15 632 (9.11%) Containerisation
16 614 (8.85%) ETL
17 603 (8.69%) Microservices
18 600 (8.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 585 (8.43%) Data Engineering
20 540 (7.78%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,648 (23.75%) Python
2 1,420 (20.46%) SQL
3 702 (10.12%) PowerShell
4 581 (8.37%) Java
5 531 (7.65%) C#
6 381 (5.49%) JavaScript
7 262 (3.78%) Bash
8 253 (3.65%) TypeScript
9 235 (3.39%) Bicep
10 89 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.11%) Go
13 70 (1.01%) Scala
14 48 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 38 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.52%) R
17 30 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 28 (0.40%) PL/SQL
19 25 (0.36%) Groovy
20 22 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,729 (24.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,418 (20.43%) SC Cleared
3 511 (7.36%) Degree
4 369 (5.32%) Azure Certification
5 220 (3.17%) CISSP
6 212 (3.05%) DV Cleared
7 184 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 180 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 176 (2.54%) Cisco Certification
10 162 (2.33%) AWS Certification
11 144 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
12 105 (1.51%) CISM
13 83 (1.20%) CCNP
14 69 (0.99%) PMP
15 66 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.79%) Master's Degree
18 50 (0.72%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 488 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 360 (5.19%) QA
3 302 (4.35%) GDPR
4 250 (3.60%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 243 (3.50%) NIST
6 152 (2.19%) Accessibility
7 99 (1.43%) NCSC
8 90 (1.30%) SLA
9 70 (1.01%) PCI DSS
10 68 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 59 (0.85%) WCAG
13 56 (0.81%) GRC
14 42 (0.61%) PMO
15 35 (0.50%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 16 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 874 (12.59%) Active Directory
2 726 (10.46%) Docker
3 196 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 129 (1.86%) Virtual Desktop
5 127 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.31%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.88%) vSphere
8 51 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.42%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 17 (0.24%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.14%) IAG
15 8 (0.12%) Varnish
16 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.072%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
18 5 (0.072%) RACF
18 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,118 (16.11%) Terraform
2 989 (14.25%) Kubernetes
3 382 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 327 (4.71%) Ansible
5 202 (2.91%) Grafana
6 168 (2.42%) Prometheus
7 147 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 97 (1.40%) SCCM
9 66 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
11 42 (0.61%) Progress Chef
12 41 (0.59%) Argo
13 39 (0.56%) Puppet
14 33 (0.48%) FortiGate
15 28 (0.40%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) HAProxy
18 17 (0.24%) Packer
19 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
20 14 (0.20%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,276 (32.80%) Microsoft
2 644 (9.28%) Databricks
3 347 (5.00%) ServiceNow
4 275 (3.96%) Oracle
5 273 (3.93%) VMware
6 256 (3.69%) Google
7 197 (2.84%) SAP
8 189 (2.72%) Cisco
9 170 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 148 (2.13%) Splunk
11 131 (1.89%) Palo Alto
12 130 (1.87%) Salesforce
13 128 (1.84%) CyberArk
14 121 (1.74%) Foundry
15 91 (1.31%) Dynatrace
16 88 (1.27%) Okta
17 78 (1.12%) Zscaler
18 69 (0.99%) Informatica
19 66 (0.95%) Citrix
20 63 (0.91%) Fortinet