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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,509 3,771 5,039
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.35% 15.47% 13.55%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.76% 40.96% 42.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,629 2,636 3,709
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £538
% change year-on-year +0.77% -3.07% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 148 25 46
10th Percentile £25.64 £25.58 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £27.40 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -44.44%
75th Percentile £75.00 £77.19 £61.19
90th Percentile £98.50 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £42.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +35.29% +21.43% -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 14,873 9,206 11,902
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.07% 37.77% 32.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,111 6,274 8,526
10th Percentile £325 £311 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £744
UK median daily rate £510 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 513 224 329
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.01 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +69.97% +16.52% -38.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £37.75 £42.50
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £28.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +32.14% +30.23% -44.55%

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 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 9 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 9 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 3,468 £540 -1.82% 896
North of England +4 945 £500 +5.26% 502
South East +3 832 £500 - 624
Midlands +1 529 £500 +2.56% 269
North West +4 475 £500 +5.26% 293
South West +5 397 £534 +4.15% 255
Yorkshire +8 391 £500 +8.11% 124
West Midlands +2 389 £500 -4.76% 173
East of England +3 153 £550 -5.17% 180
East Midlands +3 130 £465 +0.54% 96
North East +4 91 £525 +5.00% 85
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
1 320 (4.92%) SharePoint
2 176 (2.70%) Confluence
3 172 (2.64%) Apache Spark
3 172 (2.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 105 (1.61%) Apache Airflow
5 98 (1.51%) Apache
6 33 (0.51%) SAS
7 23 (0.35%) IIS
8 17 (0.26%) CMS
9 15 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
10 11 (0.17%) Appian
10 11 (0.17%) Mendix
10 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.15%) Camunda
11 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
12 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.11%) nginx
13 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 6 (0.092%) WebSphere
Applications
1 89 (1.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 19 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.15%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 6 (0.092%) Revit
11 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.061%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.061%) Notion
12 4 (0.061%) Trello
13 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.015%) InDesign
14 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.015%) Sketch
14 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 91 (1.40%) Dynamics CRM
2 73 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.17%) Maximo
5 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
6 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
8 7 (0.11%) Shopify
9 6 (0.092%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.092%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.077%) NEC Housing
10 5 (0.077%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
11 4 (0.061%) Elite 3E
11 4 (0.061%) Endur
11 4 (0.061%) Quorum
11 4 (0.061%) R3 Corda
11 4 (0.061%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,253 (34.61%) AWS
2 1,318 (20.25%) Azure DevOps
3 1,117 (17.16%) GCP
4 835 (12.83%) Entra ID
5 823 (12.64%) Power Platform
6 692 (10.63%) Microsoft 365
7 585 (8.99%) GitHub
8 443 (6.81%) Azure Data Factory
9 346 (5.32%) GitHub Actions
10 314 (4.82%) Serverless
11 285 (4.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 269 (4.13%) SaaS
13 231 (3.55%) Azure AKS
14 217 (3.33%) PaaS
15 216 (3.32%) Dynamics 365
15 216 (3.32%) Power Automate
16 200 (3.07%) Azure Monitor
17 181 (2.78%) Snowflake
18 178 (2.73%) IaaS
19 174 (2.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 397 (6.10%) Firewall
2 299 (4.59%) DNS
3 236 (3.63%) VPN
4 220 (3.38%) Network Security
5 181 (2.78%) WAN
6 165 (2.53%) DHCP
7 115 (1.77%) LAN
8 94 (1.44%) SD-WAN
8 94 (1.44%) TCP/IP
9 81 (1.24%) BGP
10 72 (1.11%) VLAN
11 71 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
12 69 (1.06%) OSPF
13 64 (0.98%) Kerberos
14 49 (0.75%) SAN
15 45 (0.69%) VXLAN
16 42 (0.65%) SSL
17 39 (0.60%) Wireless
18 32 (0.49%) Internet
18 32 (0.49%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 566 (8.70%) Power BI
2 394 (6.05%) SQL Server
3 326 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
4 314 (4.82%) Data Lake
5 219 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
6 189 (2.90%) Azure SQL Database
7 168 (2.58%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.23%) Metadata
9 135 (2.07%) Delta Lake
10 100 (1.54%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.38%) Big Data
12 88 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.15%) Tableau
14 74 (1.14%) MongoDB
15 61 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 59 (0.91%) Oracle Database
17 56 (0.86%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.72%) Spark SQL
19 45 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
19 45 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 455 (6.99%) Git
2 441 (6.78%) JIRA
3 297 (4.56%) Jenkins
4 248 (3.81%) GitLab
5 102 (1.57%) Selenium
6 62 (0.95%) Postman
7 54 (0.83%) JMeter
8 52 (0.80%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.75%) JUnit
10 44 (0.68%) REST Assured
11 42 (0.65%) MLflow
12 40 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.46%) Artifactory
13 30 (0.46%) Cypress.io
13 30 (0.46%) Visual Studio
13 30 (0.46%) WebDriver
14 27 (0.41%) Maven
15 25 (0.38%) Gatling
16 24 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,655 (25.43%) Social Skills
2 1,257 (19.31%) Finance
3 653 (10.03%) Public Sector
4 593 (9.11%) Analytical Skills
5 370 (5.68%) Banking
6 196 (3.01%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.29%) Legal
8 119 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 119 (1.83%) Retail
9 86 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
10 70 (1.08%) Investment Banking
11 65 (1.00%) Financial Institution
12 64 (0.98%) Front Office
12 64 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
13 62 (0.95%) Law
14 56 (0.86%) Marketing
15 55 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 46 (0.71%) Telecoms
17 40 (0.61%) Military
18 39 (0.60%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,126 (17.30%) Architect
2 795 (12.21%) Senior
3 761 (11.69%) Developer
4 580 (8.91%) Azure Engineer
5 523 (8.04%) Data Engineer
6 498 (7.65%) Lead
7 399 (6.13%) Analyst
8 327 (5.02%) DevOps Engineer
9 322 (4.95%) Solutions Architect
10 264 (4.06%) Consultant
11 236 (3.63%) Cloud Engineer
11 236 (3.63%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 177 (2.72%) Security Engineer
13 175 (2.69%) Azure Architect
14 171 (2.63%) Data Architect
15 162 (2.49%) Platform Engineer
16 146 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
16 146 (2.24%) Technical Architect
17 145 (2.23%) Business Analyst
17 145 (2.23%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 497 (7.64%) .NET
2 434 (6.67%) REST
3 263 (4.04%) React
4 237 (3.64%) Kafka
5 224 (3.44%) PySpark
6 195 (3.00%) OAuth
7 192 (2.95%) RESTful
8 177 (2.72%) Node.js
9 173 (2.66%) LDAP
10 163 (2.50%) Spring
11 159 (2.44%) AngularJS
12 133 (2.04%) SAML
12 133 (2.04%) Spring Boot
13 132 (2.03%) JSON
14 127 (1.95%) OpenID
15 125 (1.92%) SOAP
16 118 (1.81%) Middleware
17 113 (1.74%) HTML
18 101 (1.55%) YAML
19 98 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 659 (10.12%) Cloud Native
2 272 (4.18%) Onboarding
3 234 (3.60%) Product Ownership
4 200 (3.07%) Data Centre
5 195 (3.00%) Hybrid Cloud
6 171 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
7 163 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
8 159 (2.44%) Security Posture
9 150 (2.30%) Enterprise Software
10 138 (2.12%) Public Cloud
11 127 (1.95%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.35%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.29%) Replication
14 81 (1.24%) Data Protection Act
15 75 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 66 (1.01%) PKI
17 63 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
18 60 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
19 59 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
20 56 (0.86%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 761 (11.69%) Windows
2 319 (4.90%) Linux
3 238 (3.66%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.71%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.01%) Unix
6 64 (0.98%) Mac OS
7 62 (0.95%) Apple iOS
8 55 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 54 (0.83%) VMS
10 50 (0.77%) Android
11 27 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 27 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
12 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
14 11 (0.17%) CentOS
15 10 (0.15%) Debian
16 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 6 (0.092%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,396 (36.81%) DevOps
2 1,995 (30.65%) CI/CD
3 1,479 (22.72%) Agile
4 955 (14.67%) Analytics
5 952 (14.63%) AI
6 944 (14.50%) Infrastructure as Code
7 918 (14.10%) Migration
7 918 (14.10%) Problem-Solving
8 725 (11.14%) Data Modelling
9 705 (10.83%) Stakeholder Management
10 641 (9.85%) Data Pipeline
11 630 (9.68%) Continuous Improvement
12 621 (9.54%) Business Intelligence
13 615 (9.45%) ETL
14 605 (9.29%) Roadmaps
15 562 (8.63%) Containerisation
16 557 (8.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 549 (8.43%) Microservices
18 540 (8.30%) Data Engineering
19 483 (7.42%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,518 (23.32%) Python
2 1,377 (21.16%) SQL
3 686 (10.54%) PowerShell
4 543 (8.34%) Java
5 522 (8.02%) C#
6 357 (5.48%) JavaScript
7 226 (3.47%) TypeScript
8 220 (3.38%) Bash
9 206 (3.16%) Bicep
10 85 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.23%) T-SQL
12 78 (1.20%) Scala
13 69 (1.06%) Go
14 43 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 32 (0.49%) PL/SQL
17 31 (0.48%) R
18 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
19 22 (0.34%) C++
20 14 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,628 (25.01%) Security Cleared
2 1,369 (21.03%) SC Cleared
3 468 (7.19%) Degree
4 361 (5.55%) Azure Certification
5 204 (3.13%) CISSP
6 176 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
7 157 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
7 157 (2.41%) DV Cleared
8 152 (2.34%) Microsoft Certification
9 135 (2.07%) AWS Certification
10 121 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
11 109 (1.67%) CISM
12 74 (1.14%) CCNP
13 69 (1.06%) PMP
14 62 (0.95%) PMI Certification
15 60 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 49 (0.75%) ISTQB
17 48 (0.74%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 39 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 452 (6.94%) Data Quality
2 340 (5.22%) QA
3 305 (4.69%) GDPR
4 255 (3.92%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 239 (3.67%) NIST
6 111 (1.71%) Accessibility
7 87 (1.34%) SLA
8 85 (1.31%) NCSC
9 73 (1.12%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.04%) Cyber Essentials
11 60 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 48 (0.74%) GRC
13 46 (0.71%) WCAG
14 43 (0.66%) PMO
15 34 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
18 21 (0.32%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
20 15 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 849 (13.04%) Active Directory
2 668 (10.26%) Docker
3 197 (3.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 106 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
6 95 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 65 (1.00%) vSphere
8 52 (0.80%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.41%) Firmware
9 27 (0.41%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.29%) NFS
11 17 (0.26%) Postfix
12 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.092%) KVM
15 6 (0.092%) RACF
16 5 (0.077%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.077%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,016 (15.61%) Terraform
2 899 (13.81%) Kubernetes
3 357 (5.48%) Microsoft Intune
4 295 (4.53%) Ansible
5 178 (2.73%) Grafana
6 153 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 149 (2.29%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.46%) SCCM
9 75 (1.15%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
11 35 (0.54%) Progress Chef
12 34 (0.52%) Argo
13 33 (0.51%) Puppet
14 31 (0.48%) Istio
15 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
16 24 (0.37%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
19 15 (0.23%) Packer
20 14 (0.22%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,114 (32.48%) Microsoft
2 636 (9.77%) Databricks
3 293 (4.50%) ServiceNow
4 271 (4.16%) VMware
5 255 (3.92%) Oracle
6 240 (3.69%) Google
7 191 (2.93%) SAP
8 177 (2.72%) Cisco
9 156 (2.40%) OpenAI
10 137 (2.10%) Splunk
11 136 (2.09%) CyberArk
12 124 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 106 (1.63%) Salesforce
14 105 (1.61%) Foundry
15 90 (1.38%) Okta
16 74 (1.14%) Dynatrace
17 67 (1.03%) Citrix
18 63 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
19 62 (0.95%) Zscaler
20 60 (0.92%) Informatica