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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,411 3,690 4,956
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.35% 15.48% 13.53%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.70% 41.23% 42.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,568 2,586 3,665
10th Percentile £363 £351 £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 £741 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 140 23 44
10th Percentile £25.14 £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 £90.75 £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 14,671 8,950 11,740
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.13% 37.56% 32.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,994 6,159 8,486
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 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £748
UK median daily rate £508 £511 £525
% change year-on-year -0.72% -2.63% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 502 200 323
10th Percentile £15.64 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £18.13 £15.95
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +54.90% +19.33% -38.58%
75th Percentile £67.84 £37.75 £38.13
90th Percentile £81.00 £68.75 £66.75
UK median hourly rate £36.71 £28.00 £21.37
% change year-on-year +31.11% +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 28 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 28 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 28 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 3,419 £538 -2.27% 1,115
North of England +4 920 £500 +5.26% 532
South East +3 830 £500 -0.10% 622
Midlands -2 506 £493 -0.51% 288
North West +3 461 £500 +5.26% 318
South West +5 399 £530 +0.95% 281
Yorkshire +7 386 £500 +11.11% 131
West Midlands 0 368 £500 -4.76% 184
East of England +5 152 £550 -5.17% 166
East Midlands +5 128 £463 - 104
North East +3 84 £525 +5.00% 84
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
1 318 (4.96%) SharePoint
2 175 (2.73%) Apache Spark
3 172 (2.68%) Confluence
3 172 (2.68%) Microsoft Exchange
4 97 (1.51%) Apache
5 96 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
6 24 (0.37%) IIS
7 19 (0.30%) SAS
8 17 (0.27%) 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%) WebSphere
Applications
1 87 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 76 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (0.84%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.47%) 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 (0.062%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.062%) Notion
10 4 (0.062%) Revit
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 89 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.11%) 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 (0.12%) 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%) Shopify
9 5 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.062%) Elite 3E
10 4 (0.062%) Magento
10 4 (0.062%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.062%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.062%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.062%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,196 (34.25%) AWS
2 1,302 (20.31%) Azure DevOps
3 1,112 (17.35%) GCP
4 819 (12.77%) Power Platform
5 807 (12.59%) Entra ID
6 684 (10.67%) Microsoft 365
7 581 (9.06%) GitHub
8 461 (7.19%) Azure Data Factory
9 334 (5.21%) GitHub Actions
10 311 (4.85%) Serverless
11 296 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 257 (4.01%) SaaS
13 230 (3.59%) Azure AKS
14 214 (3.34%) Power Automate
15 212 (3.31%) Dynamics 365
16 208 (3.24%) PaaS
17 205 (3.20%) Azure Monitor
18 178 (2.78%) Snowflake
19 175 (2.73%) IaaS
20 173 (2.70%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 389 (6.07%) Firewall
2 285 (4.45%) DNS
3 235 (3.67%) VPN
4 213 (3.32%) Network Security
5 179 (2.79%) WAN
6 155 (2.42%) DHCP
7 120 (1.87%) LAN
8 92 (1.44%) TCP/IP
9 91 (1.42%) SD-WAN
10 76 (1.19%) BGP
11 71 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
12 70 (1.09%) VLAN
13 65 (1.01%) OSPF
14 62 (0.97%) Kerberos
15 50 (0.78%) SAN
16 41 (0.64%) SSL
16 41 (0.64%) VXLAN
16 41 (0.64%) Wireless
17 30 (0.47%) HTTP
17 30 (0.47%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 566 (8.83%) Power BI
2 387 (6.04%) SQL Server
3 329 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
4 319 (4.98%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
6 197 (3.07%) Azure SQL Database
7 174 (2.71%) NoSQL
8 144 (2.25%) Metadata
9 138 (2.15%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.51%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.42%) Big Data
12 88 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.17%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.15%) Tableau
15 66 (1.03%) Snowflake Schema
16 59 (0.92%) BigQuery
17 57 (0.89%) Oracle Database
18 47 (0.73%) Spark SQL
19 46 (0.72%) MySQL
19 46 (0.72%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 456 (7.11%) Git
2 438 (6.83%) JIRA
3 300 (4.68%) Jenkins
4 241 (3.76%) GitLab
5 96 (1.50%) Selenium
6 63 (0.98%) Postman
7 52 (0.81%) Cucumber
8 50 (0.78%) JMeter
9 46 (0.72%) JUnit
10 44 (0.69%) MLflow
11 42 (0.66%) REST Assured
12 39 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.47%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.45%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.42%) Maven
15 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.41%) WebDriver
17 25 (0.39%) Gatling
18 24 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
19 22 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,621 (25.28%) Social Skills
2 1,233 (19.23%) Finance
3 636 (9.92%) Public Sector
4 589 (9.19%) Analytical Skills
5 364 (5.68%) Banking
6 179 (2.79%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.32%) Legal
8 110 (1.72%) Retail
9 108 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 90 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.08%) Investment Banking
12 68 (1.06%) Financial Institution
13 66 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
14 64 (1.00%) Front Office
15 57 (0.89%) Law
15 57 (0.89%) Marketing
15 57 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
16 45 (0.70%) Telecoms
17 42 (0.66%) Military
18 39 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,105 (17.24%) Architect
2 779 (12.15%) Senior
3 759 (11.84%) Developer
4 575 (8.97%) Azure Engineer
5 535 (8.35%) Data Engineer
6 483 (7.53%) Lead
7 399 (6.22%) Analyst
8 324 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
9 304 (4.74%) Solutions Architect
10 257 (4.01%) Consultant
11 225 (3.51%) Cloud Engineer
12 224 (3.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 173 (2.70%) Security Engineer
14 172 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 168 (2.62%) Data Architect
16 148 (2.31%) Platform Engineer
17 142 (2.21%) Project Manager
17 142 (2.21%) Technical Architect
18 141 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 137 (2.14%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 491 (7.66%) .NET
2 418 (6.52%) REST
3 263 (4.10%) React
4 235 (3.67%) Kafka
5 226 (3.53%) PySpark
6 191 (2.98%) RESTful
7 183 (2.85%) Node.js
8 182 (2.84%) OAuth
9 165 (2.57%) LDAP
10 158 (2.46%) AngularJS
10 158 (2.46%) Spring
11 132 (2.06%) Spring Boot
12 129 (2.01%) JSON
13 122 (1.90%) SAML
14 121 (1.89%) SOAP
15 119 (1.86%) Middleware
16 117 (1.82%) OpenID
17 110 (1.72%) HTML
18 103 (1.61%) YAML
19 97 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 634 (9.89%) Cloud Native
2 266 (4.15%) Onboarding
3 228 (3.56%) Product Ownership
4 197 (3.07%) Hybrid Cloud
5 190 (2.96%) Data Centre
6 168 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
7 157 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
8 149 (2.32%) Security Posture
9 147 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
10 136 (2.12%) Public Cloud
11 124 (1.93%) AI Agents
12 89 (1.39%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.31%) Replication
14 73 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
15 71 (1.11%) Management Information System
16 63 (0.98%) PKI
17 59 (0.92%) Low-Code
18 58 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
18 58 (0.90%) Self-Motivation
19 57 (0.89%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 735 (11.46%) Windows
2 321 (5.01%) Linux
3 216 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.86%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.01%) Mac OS
5 65 (1.01%) Unix
6 62 (0.97%) Apple iOS
7 55 (0.86%) VMS
8 51 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 47 (0.73%) Android
10 27 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
11 26 (0.41%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
13 14 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.16%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.094%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.094%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,373 (37.01%) DevOps
2 1,959 (30.56%) CI/CD
3 1,459 (22.76%) Agile
4 940 (14.66%) Analytics
5 920 (14.35%) AI
6 919 (14.33%) Infrastructure as Code
7 917 (14.30%) Problem-Solving
8 892 (13.91%) Migration
9 739 (11.53%) Data Modelling
10 667 (10.40%) Stakeholder Management
11 636 (9.92%) Data Pipeline
12 619 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
13 618 (9.64%) Business Intelligence
14 617 (9.62%) ETL
15 577 (9.00%) Roadmaps
16 557 (8.69%) Containerisation
17 544 (8.49%) Data Engineering
18 537 (8.38%) Microservices
19 528 (8.24%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 467 (7.28%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,524 (23.77%) Python
2 1,376 (21.46%) SQL
3 677 (10.56%) PowerShell
4 526 (8.20%) Java
5 520 (8.11%) C#
6 361 (5.63%) JavaScript
7 222 (3.46%) Bash
8 221 (3.45%) TypeScript
9 204 (3.18%) Bicep
10 90 (1.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 84 (1.31%) Scala
12 78 (1.22%) T-SQL
13 72 (1.12%) Go
14 46 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 37 (0.58%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.56%) PL/SQL
17 35 (0.55%) R
18 23 (0.36%) C++
19 21 (0.33%) Kotlin
20 15 (0.23%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,583 (24.69%) Security Cleared
2 1,329 (20.73%) SC Cleared
3 461 (7.19%) Degree
4 353 (5.51%) Azure Certification
5 193 (3.01%) CISSP
6 172 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 156 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
8 152 (2.37%) DV Cleared
9 144 (2.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 120 (1.87%) AWS Certification
11 113 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.67%) CISM
13 75 (1.17%) CCNP
14 67 (1.05%) PMP
15 60 (0.94%) PMI Certification
16 57 (0.89%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
19 46 (0.72%) ISTQB
20 39 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 459 (7.16%) Data Quality
2 333 (5.19%) QA
3 312 (4.87%) GDPR
4 252 (3.93%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 235 (3.67%) NIST
6 106 (1.65%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.31%) NCSC
8 81 (1.26%) SLA
9 79 (1.23%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
11 60 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 45 (0.70%) PMO
13 44 (0.69%) GRC
14 43 (0.67%) WCAG
15 35 (0.55%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 25 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 832 (12.98%) Active Directory
2 658 (10.26%) Docker
3 188 (2.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.78%) Virtual Desktop
5 102 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
6 94 (1.47%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.95%) vSphere
8 44 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
10 25 (0.39%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.31%) NFS
12 17 (0.27%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) 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%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,000 (15.60%) Terraform
2 890 (13.88%) Kubernetes
3 347 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 289 (4.51%) Ansible
5 177 (2.76%) Grafana
6 151 (2.36%) Prometheus
7 145 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
8 97 (1.51%) SCCM
9 72 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 33 (0.51%) Argo
10 33 (0.51%) Puppet
11 32 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
11 32 (0.50%) Progress Chef
12 31 (0.48%) Istio
13 26 (0.41%) FortiGate
14 19 (0.30%) HAProxy
14 19 (0.30%) vCenter Server
15 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
16 15 (0.23%) linkerd
16 15 (0.23%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,083 (32.49%) Microsoft
2 641 (10.00%) Databricks
3 287 (4.48%) ServiceNow
4 260 (4.06%) VMware
5 257 (4.01%) Oracle
6 239 (3.73%) Google
7 186 (2.90%) SAP
8 175 (2.73%) Cisco
9 159 (2.48%) OpenAI
10 137 (2.14%) Splunk
11 135 (2.11%) CyberArk
12 120 (1.87%) Palo Alto
13 100 (1.56%) Salesforce
14 98 (1.53%) Foundry
15 84 (1.31%) Okta
16 69 (1.08%) Dynatrace
17 65 (1.01%) Citrix
18 64 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
19 60 (0.94%) Zscaler
20 59 (0.92%) Informatica