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

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,395 3,672 4,944
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.35% 15.45% 13.52%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.73% 41.21% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,555 2,577 3,652
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 138 23 44
10th Percentile £24.67 £20.74 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £60.36
90th Percentile £92.25 £95.74 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -43.41%

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 14,623 8,910 11,713
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.10% 37.48% 32.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,970 6,152 8,466
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £746
UK median daily rate £508 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.98% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 498 196 321
10th Percentile £15.59 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.34 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +54.90% +19.33% -38.58%
75th Percentile £67.75 £37.56 £38.13
90th Percentile £81.08 £68.75 £67.00
UK median hourly rate £36.00 £28.00 £21.37
% change year-on-year +28.57% +31.02% -39.80%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 3,407 £540 -1.82% 1,112
North of England +4 913 £500 +5.26% 538
South East +3 835 £503 +0.50% 620
Midlands -2 505 £493 -0.20% 285
North West +3 461 £500 +5.26% 317
South West +5 401 £525 - 284
Yorkshire +8 381 £500 +11.11% 136
West Midlands 0 368 £500 -4.76% 181
East of England +6 151 £550 -5.17% 164
East Midlands +5 127 £463 - 104
North East +3 82 £525 +5.00% 86
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
1 314 (4.91%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.77%) Apache Spark
3 171 (2.67%) Confluence
3 171 (2.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 98 (1.53%) Apache
5 96 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
6 25 (0.39%) IIS
7 20 (0.31%) SAS
8 16 (0.25%) CMS
9 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
10 13 (0.20%) Mendix
11 12 (0.19%) Appian
11 12 (0.19%) Camunda
11 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) nginx
14 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 6 (0.094%) Tomcat
Applications
1 85 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
8 6 (0.094%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.078%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.078%) Trello
10 4 (0.063%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.063%) Revit
11 3 (0.047%) Notion
11 3 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.016%) Sketch
12 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 86 (1.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.13%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
7 7 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.094%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.094%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.063%) Endur
10 4 (0.063%) Magento
10 4 (0.063%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.063%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.063%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.063%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.063%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 2,189 (34.23%) AWS
2 1,291 (20.19%) Azure DevOps
3 1,114 (17.42%) GCP
4 811 (12.68%) Power Platform
5 806 (12.60%) Entra ID
6 678 (10.60%) Microsoft 365
7 576 (9.01%) GitHub
8 460 (7.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 329 (5.14%) GitHub Actions
10 309 (4.83%) Serverless
11 296 (4.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 258 (4.03%) SaaS
13 230 (3.60%) Azure AKS
14 213 (3.33%) Power Automate
15 209 (3.27%) Dynamics 365
16 208 (3.25%) PaaS
17 203 (3.17%) Azure Monitor
18 176 (2.75%) Snowflake
19 175 (2.74%) IaaS
20 174 (2.72%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 387 (6.05%) Firewall
2 284 (4.44%) DNS
3 233 (3.64%) VPN
4 211 (3.30%) Network Security
5 179 (2.80%) WAN
6 154 (2.41%) DHCP
7 120 (1.88%) LAN
8 92 (1.44%) TCP/IP
9 91 (1.42%) SD-WAN
10 76 (1.19%) BGP
11 71 (1.11%) VLAN
11 71 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (1.02%) OSPF
13 63 (0.99%) Kerberos
14 48 (0.75%) SAN
15 41 (0.64%) VXLAN
15 41 (0.64%) Wireless
16 40 (0.63%) SSL
17 30 (0.47%) IPsec
18 29 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (8.74%) Power BI
2 384 (6.00%) SQL Server
3 326 (5.10%) Data Warehouse
4 317 (4.96%) Data Lake
5 211 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
6 193 (3.02%) Azure SQL Database
7 172 (2.69%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.28%) Metadata
9 142 (2.22%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.49%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.42%) Big Data
12 86 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.17%) MongoDB
14 72 (1.13%) Tableau
15 66 (1.03%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (0.91%) BigQuery
16 58 (0.91%) Oracle Database
17 48 (0.75%) Spark SQL
18 46 (0.72%) MySQL
19 45 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 455 (7.11%) Git
2 436 (6.82%) JIRA
3 299 (4.68%) Jenkins
4 241 (3.77%) GitLab
5 94 (1.47%) Selenium
6 63 (0.99%) Postman
7 50 (0.78%) Cucumber
7 50 (0.78%) JMeter
8 46 (0.72%) JUnit
8 46 (0.72%) MLflow
9 43 (0.67%) REST Assured
10 39 (0.61%) SonarQube
11 30 (0.47%) Cypress.io
12 29 (0.45%) Artifactory
13 27 (0.42%) Maven
13 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
14 25 (0.39%) Gatling
15 24 (0.38%) WebDriver
16 23 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,616 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 1,227 (19.19%) Finance
3 637 (9.96%) Public Sector
4 587 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
5 365 (5.71%) Banking
6 176 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
7 150 (2.35%) Legal
8 109 (1.70%) Retail
9 107 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 90 (1.41%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.11%) Financial Institution
12 68 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (1.06%) Investment Banking
13 63 (0.99%) Front Office
14 58 (0.91%) Law
14 58 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
15 57 (0.89%) Marketing
16 45 (0.70%) Telecoms
17 42 (0.66%) Military
18 38 (0.59%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,098 (17.17%) Architect
2 773 (12.09%) Senior
3 752 (11.76%) Developer
4 580 (9.07%) Azure Engineer
5 535 (8.37%) Data Engineer
6 478 (7.47%) Lead
7 398 (6.22%) Analyst
8 324 (5.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 300 (4.69%) Solutions Architect
10 261 (4.08%) Consultant
11 223 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 221 (3.46%) Cloud Engineer
13 170 (2.66%) Azure Architect
14 169 (2.64%) Security Engineer
15 167 (2.61%) Data Architect
16 149 (2.33%) Platform Engineer
17 144 (2.25%) Technical Architect
18 143 (2.24%) Project Manager
19 141 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 135 (2.11%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 488 (7.63%) .NET
2 415 (6.49%) REST
3 263 (4.11%) React
4 235 (3.67%) Kafka
5 232 (3.63%) PySpark
6 189 (2.96%) RESTful
7 182 (2.85%) Node.js
8 181 (2.83%) OAuth
9 166 (2.60%) LDAP
10 158 (2.47%) AngularJS
11 155 (2.42%) Spring
12 129 (2.02%) JSON
12 129 (2.02%) Spring Boot
13 123 (1.92%) SOAP
14 122 (1.91%) SAML
15 120 (1.88%) Middleware
16 117 (1.83%) OpenID
17 110 (1.72%) HTML
18 105 (1.64%) YAML
19 98 (1.53%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 627 (9.80%) Cloud Native
2 267 (4.18%) Onboarding
3 224 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 194 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
5 187 (2.92%) Data Centre
6 164 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 156 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
8 148 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
9 146 (2.28%) Security Posture
10 135 (2.11%) Public Cloud
11 126 (1.97%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.28%) Replication
14 74 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
15 67 (1.05%) Management Information System
16 63 (0.99%) PKI
17 58 (0.91%) Low-Code
18 57 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
19 56 (0.88%) Enterprise Cloud
19 56 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 731 (11.43%) Windows
2 319 (4.99%) Linux
3 215 (3.36%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.85%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.02%) Mac OS
5 65 (1.02%) Unix
6 62 (0.97%) Apple iOS
7 55 (0.86%) VMS
8 47 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 46 (0.72%) Android
10 27 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
11 24 (0.38%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 14 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 11 (0.17%) CentOS
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 10 (0.16%) Debian
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.094%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.094%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,362 (36.94%) DevOps
2 1,953 (30.54%) CI/CD
3 1,454 (22.74%) Agile
4 944 (14.76%) Analytics
5 931 (14.56%) AI
6 918 (14.35%) Infrastructure as Code
7 914 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
8 888 (13.89%) Migration
9 734 (11.48%) Data Modelling
10 662 (10.35%) Stakeholder Management
11 634 (9.91%) Data Pipeline
12 617 (9.65%) Continuous Improvement
13 613 (9.59%) Business Intelligence
13 613 (9.59%) ETL
14 573 (8.96%) Roadmaps
15 558 (8.73%) Containerisation
16 546 (8.54%) Data Engineering
17 535 (8.37%) Microservices
18 523 (8.18%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 463 (7.24%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,525 (23.85%) Python
2 1,367 (21.38%) SQL
3 672 (10.51%) PowerShell
4 516 (8.07%) C#
4 516 (8.07%) Java
5 364 (5.69%) JavaScript
6 218 (3.41%) Bash
7 216 (3.38%) TypeScript
8 203 (3.17%) Bicep
9 90 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 86 (1.34%) Scala
11 77 (1.20%) T-SQL
12 71 (1.11%) Go
13 47 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
14 37 (0.58%) PL/SQL
14 37 (0.58%) R
15 35 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 22 (0.34%) C++
17 21 (0.33%) Kotlin
18 15 (0.23%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,588 (24.83%) Security Cleared
2 1,334 (20.86%) SC Cleared
3 458 (7.16%) Degree
4 348 (5.44%) Azure Certification
5 187 (2.92%) CISSP
6 172 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
7 156 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 151 (2.36%) DV Cleared
9 141 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 116 (1.81%) AWS Certification
11 109 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
12 105 (1.64%) CISM
13 74 (1.16%) CCNP
14 67 (1.05%) PMP
15 60 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 57 (0.89%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 50 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
19 46 (0.72%) ISTQB
20 39 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 458 (7.16%) Data Quality
2 334 (5.22%) QA
3 313 (4.89%) GDPR
4 250 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.66%) NIST
6 106 (1.66%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.31%) NCSC
8 80 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 79 (1.24%) SLA
10 66 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 46 (0.72%) GRC
13 45 (0.70%) PMO
14 43 (0.67%) WCAG
15 33 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 19 (0.30%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 830 (12.98%) Active Directory
2 655 (10.24%) Docker
3 185 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 115 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
5 102 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
6 92 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.92%) vSphere
8 42 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
10 25 (0.39%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.30%) NFS
12 17 (0.27%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.13%) Varnish
15 6 (0.094%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.094%) KVM
15 6 (0.094%) RACF
16 5 (0.078%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.063%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,001 (15.65%) Terraform
2 887 (13.87%) Kubernetes
3 344 (5.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 290 (4.53%) Ansible
5 174 (2.72%) Grafana
6 148 (2.31%) Prometheus
7 143 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
8 97 (1.52%) SCCM
9 72 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.55%) Puppet
11 32 (0.50%) Argo
11 32 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
12 31 (0.48%) Istio
13 28 (0.44%) Progress Chef
14 26 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.30%) HAProxy
16 18 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.23%) linkerd
18 15 (0.23%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,076 (32.46%) Microsoft
2 646 (10.10%) Databricks
3 291 (4.55%) ServiceNow
4 258 (4.03%) VMware
5 257 (4.02%) Oracle
6 235 (3.67%) Google
7 188 (2.94%) SAP
8 174 (2.72%) Cisco
9 163 (2.55%) OpenAI
10 141 (2.20%) Splunk
11 137 (2.14%) CyberArk
12 119 (1.86%) Palo Alto
13 100 (1.56%) Salesforce
14 99 (1.55%) Foundry
15 83 (1.30%) Okta
16 71 (1.11%) Dynatrace
17 66 (1.03%) Citrix
18 64 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
19 62 (0.97%) Zscaler
20 58 (0.91%) Informatica