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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,421 3,687 5,016
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.40% 15.40% 13.58%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.88% 40.96% 42.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,574 2,587 3,704
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 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £538
% change year-on-year +0.38% -2.70% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 142 24 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.48 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.68 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -44.44%
75th Percentile £71.74 £76.49 £61.19
90th Percentile £100.51 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%

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 14,634 9,001 11,823
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.09% 37.60% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,956 6,168 8,515
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.39% -1.00% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £745
UK median daily rate £510 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 216 324
10th Percentile £15.56 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.34 £17.68 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.01 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +57.97% +17.01% -38.94%
75th Percentile £68.69 £37.50 £39.13
90th Percentile £81.75 £68.13 £69.85
UK median hourly rate £35.91 £27.88 £21.46
% change year-on-year +28.80% +29.92% -42.77%

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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3,421 £540 -1.82% 1,274
North of England +5 926 £500 +5.26% 654
South East +3 820 £502 +0.30% 697
Midlands 0 519 £499 +1.37% 367
North West +3 469 £500 +5.26% 364
South West +6 391 £525 +0.48% 337
Yorkshire +7 382 £500 +11.11% 177
West Midlands +1 380 £500 -4.76% 236
East of England +6 153 £550 -5.17% 207
East Midlands +4 129 £463 - 131
North East +2 87 £525 +2.44% 113
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
1 317 (4.94%) SharePoint
2 175 (2.73%) Confluence
3 174 (2.71%) Apache Spark
4 171 (2.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 100 (1.56%) Apache Airflow
6 97 (1.51%) Apache
7 28 (0.44%) SAS
8 25 (0.39%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.19%) Appian
12 11 (0.17%) Camunda
12 11 (0.17%) Mendix
12 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 9 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 6 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 87 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (1.06%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.12%) AutoCAD
8 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.078%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.078%) Revit
10 4 (0.062%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.062%) Notion
10 4 (0.062%) Trello
11 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.016%) Sketch
12 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 89 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 16 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.093%) NEC Housing
7 6 (0.093%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.093%) Shopify
7 6 (0.093%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.078%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.062%) Endur
9 4 (0.062%) Magento
9 4 (0.062%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.062%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.062%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,216 (34.51%) AWS
2 1,298 (20.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,112 (17.32%) GCP
4 814 (12.68%) Entra ID
5 812 (12.65%) Power Platform
6 679 (10.57%) Microsoft 365
7 582 (9.06%) GitHub
8 451 (7.02%) Azure Data Factory
9 340 (5.30%) GitHub Actions
10 313 (4.87%) Serverless
11 287 (4.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 263 (4.10%) SaaS
13 233 (3.63%) Azure AKS
14 217 (3.38%) PaaS
15 216 (3.36%) Dynamics 365
16 211 (3.29%) Power Automate
17 197 (3.07%) Azure Monitor
18 179 (2.79%) Snowflake
19 178 (2.77%) IaaS
20 169 (2.63%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 393 (6.12%) Firewall
2 291 (4.53%) DNS
3 235 (3.66%) VPN
4 216 (3.36%) Network Security
5 180 (2.80%) WAN
6 157 (2.45%) DHCP
7 116 (1.81%) LAN
8 93 (1.45%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.43%) SD-WAN
10 78 (1.21%) BGP
11 71 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
12 69 (1.07%) VLAN
13 67 (1.04%) OSPF
14 62 (0.97%) Kerberos
15 49 (0.76%) SAN
16 43 (0.67%) VXLAN
17 40 (0.62%) SSL
17 40 (0.62%) Wireless
18 31 (0.48%) IPsec
19 30 (0.47%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 557 (8.67%) Power BI
2 386 (6.01%) SQL Server
3 328 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
4 317 (4.94%) Data Lake
5 216 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 190 (2.96%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 142 (2.21%) Metadata
9 138 (2.15%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.50%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.42%) Big Data
12 88 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.15%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.14%) Tableau
15 63 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (0.90%) Oracle Database
17 56 (0.87%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.72%) Spark SQL
19 44 (0.69%) MySQL
19 44 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 453 (7.05%) Git
2 438 (6.82%) JIRA
3 299 (4.66%) Jenkins
4 249 (3.88%) GitLab
5 101 (1.57%) Selenium
6 62 (0.97%) Postman
7 54 (0.84%) Cucumber
8 53 (0.83%) JMeter
9 50 (0.78%) JUnit
10 43 (0.67%) REST Assured
11 42 (0.65%) MLflow
12 40 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.47%) Artifactory
13 30 (0.47%) Cypress.io
13 30 (0.47%) WebDriver
14 27 (0.42%) Maven
14 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
15 25 (0.39%) Gatling
16 24 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,626 (25.32%) Social Skills
2 1,244 (19.37%) Finance
3 643 (10.01%) Public Sector
4 589 (9.17%) Analytical Skills
5 365 (5.68%) Banking
6 187 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.32%) Legal
8 115 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 113 (1.76%) Retail
10 88 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.07%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.03%) Financial Institution
13 65 (1.01%) Front Office
14 62 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
15 59 (0.92%) Law
16 58 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.86%) Marketing
18 44 (0.69%) Telecoms
19 38 (0.59%) Local Government
19 38 (0.59%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,112 (17.32%) Architect
2 783 (12.19%) Senior
3 749 (11.66%) Developer
4 575 (8.95%) Azure Engineer
5 527 (8.21%) Data Engineer
6 490 (7.63%) Lead
7 396 (6.17%) Analyst
8 322 (5.01%) DevOps Engineer
9 309 (4.81%) Solutions Architect
10 261 (4.06%) Consultant
11 231 (3.60%) Cloud Engineer
12 224 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 178 (2.77%) Security Engineer
14 173 (2.69%) Azure Architect
15 170 (2.65%) Data Architect
16 153 (2.38%) Platform Engineer
17 145 (2.26%) Technical Architect
18 143 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 139 (2.16%) Business Analyst
19 139 (2.16%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 493 (7.68%) .NET
2 422 (6.57%) REST
3 260 (4.05%) React
4 232 (3.61%) Kafka
5 225 (3.50%) PySpark
6 190 (2.96%) RESTful
7 183 (2.85%) OAuth
8 179 (2.79%) Node.js
9 167 (2.60%) LDAP
10 161 (2.51%) Spring
11 156 (2.43%) AngularJS
12 131 (2.04%) Spring Boot
13 130 (2.02%) JSON
14 122 (1.90%) SAML
15 121 (1.88%) SOAP
16 119 (1.85%) Middleware
17 118 (1.84%) OpenID
18 111 (1.73%) HTML
19 103 (1.60%) YAML
20 99 (1.54%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 650 (10.12%) Cloud Native
2 269 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 229 (3.57%) Product Ownership
4 197 (3.07%) Data Centre
4 197 (3.07%) Hybrid Cloud
5 169 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
6 159 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
7 157 (2.45%) Security Posture
8 149 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
9 136 (2.12%) Public Cloud
10 124 (1.93%) AI Agents
11 89 (1.39%) Data Structures
12 84 (1.31%) Replication
13 77 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
14 73 (1.14%) Management Information System
15 64 (1.00%) PKI
16 62 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
17 59 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
18 57 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
19 56 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 746 (11.62%) Windows
2 322 (5.01%) Linux
3 223 (3.47%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.78%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.03%) Mac OS
6 63 (0.98%) Apple iOS
6 63 (0.98%) Unix
7 58 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 54 (0.84%) VMS
9 49 (0.76%) Android
10 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
10 27 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
11 19 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 15 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.17%) CentOS
15 10 (0.16%) Debian
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.093%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.093%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,375 (36.99%) DevOps
2 1,977 (30.79%) CI/CD
3 1,470 (22.89%) Agile
4 940 (14.64%) Analytics
5 935 (14.56%) AI
5 935 (14.56%) Infrastructure as Code
6 913 (14.22%) Problem-Solving
7 911 (14.19%) Migration
8 726 (11.31%) Data Modelling
9 686 (10.68%) Stakeholder Management
10 641 (9.98%) Data Pipeline
11 624 (9.72%) Continuous Improvement
12 610 (9.50%) ETL
13 609 (9.48%) Business Intelligence
14 596 (9.28%) Roadmaps
15 553 (8.61%) Containerisation
16 543 (8.46%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 541 (8.43%) Data Engineering
18 535 (8.33%) Microservices
19 477 (7.43%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,513 (23.56%) Python
2 1,367 (21.29%) SQL
3 681 (10.61%) PowerShell
4 532 (8.29%) Java
5 518 (8.07%) C#
6 356 (5.54%) JavaScript
7 223 (3.47%) TypeScript
8 221 (3.44%) Bash
9 205 (3.19%) Bicep
10 83 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.25%) Scala
12 79 (1.23%) T-SQL
13 70 (1.09%) Go
14 45 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
15 37 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.55%) PL/SQL
17 32 (0.50%) R
18 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 23 (0.36%) C++
20 14 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,598 (24.89%) Security Cleared
2 1,343 (20.92%) SC Cleared
3 467 (7.27%) Degree
4 355 (5.53%) Azure Certification
5 200 (3.11%) CISSP
6 176 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
7 157 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
8 151 (2.35%) DV Cleared
9 141 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 130 (2.02%) AWS Certification
11 118 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.67%) CISM
13 74 (1.15%) CCNP
14 69 (1.07%) PMP
15 62 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.93%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 50 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.73%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
20 39 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 338 (5.26%) QA
3 308 (4.80%) GDPR
4 248 (3.86%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.61%) NIST
6 111 (1.73%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.31%) NCSC
8 82 (1.28%) SLA
9 74 (1.15%) PCI DSS
10 67 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
11 60 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 45 (0.70%) WCAG
13 44 (0.69%) GRC
13 44 (0.69%) PMO
14 34 (0.53%) HIPAA
15 26 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 20 (0.31%) SOC 2
17 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
18 15 (0.23%) PSD2
System Software
1 827 (12.88%) Active Directory
2 665 (10.36%) Docker
3 190 (2.96%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.71%) Virtual Desktop
5 103 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
6 93 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.95%) vSphere
8 47 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
9 27 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.30%) NFS
11 17 (0.26%) Postfix
12 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.093%) KVM
15 6 (0.093%) RACF
16 5 (0.078%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.078%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,006 (15.67%) Terraform
2 893 (13.91%) Kubernetes
3 351 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 294 (4.58%) Ansible
5 177 (2.76%) Grafana
6 152 (2.37%) Prometheus
7 146 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
8 93 (1.45%) SCCM
9 72 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.58%) Progress Chef
11 35 (0.55%) Puppet
12 34 (0.53%) Jamf Pro
13 33 (0.51%) Argo
14 31 (0.48%) Istio
15 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
16 21 (0.33%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.30%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
19 15 (0.23%) Packer
20 14 (0.22%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,083 (32.44%) Microsoft
2 638 (9.94%) Databricks
3 287 (4.47%) ServiceNow
4 262 (4.08%) VMware
5 250 (3.89%) Oracle
6 238 (3.71%) Google
7 189 (2.94%) SAP
8 175 (2.73%) Cisco
9 157 (2.45%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.16%) Splunk
11 135 (2.10%) CyberArk
12 122 (1.90%) Palo Alto
13 100 (1.56%) Salesforce
14 99 (1.54%) Foundry
15 87 (1.35%) Okta
16 69 (1.07%) Dynatrace
17 66 (1.03%) Citrix
18 63 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
19 61 (0.95%) Red Hat
20 60 (0.93%) Informatica