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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 5,989 3,868 5,059
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.69% 15.96% 13.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.93% 42.17% 41.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,304 2,763 3,723
10th Percentile £358 £354 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £640
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -0.95% - -5.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 28 55
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £26.09 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £44.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +29.94% +14.94% -27.84%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £79.09 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £38.50
% change year-on-year +76.92% -15.58% -29.36%

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 13,949 9,173 12,135
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.54% 37.84% 32.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,617 6,471 8,724
10th Percentile £313 £313 £280
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.42% -0.36% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 424 180 328
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.43 £18.50 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.64 £26.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.13% +26.19% -18.69%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.23 £35.00
90th Percentile £80.14 £75.05 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -23.64%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 1 April 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 3,264 £538 -2.27% 1,004
North of England +2 811 £488 - 604
South East +1 739 £500 -6.98% 685
Midlands -1 493 £498 -0.50% 369
North West +1 435 £476 -4.80% 303
West Midlands -2 367 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +5 351 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire 0 331 £500 +11.11% 208
East of England +9 150 £550 -5.17% 207
East Midlands 0 116 £433 -8.84% 163
North East -4 48 £525 +9.09% 97
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
1 287 (4.79%) SharePoint
2 181 (3.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 168 (2.81%) Confluence
4 165 (2.76%) Apache Spark
5 98 (1.64%) Apache
6 90 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
7 21 (0.35%) SAS
8 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
9 16 (0.27%) Appian
9 16 (0.27%) Camunda
10 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 13 (0.22%) CMS
12 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Mendix
13 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 5 (0.083%) BizTalk Server
16 5 (0.083%) WebLogic
Applications
1 106 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 52 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.77%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.083%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.067%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.067%) Weka
11 3 (0.050%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
13 1 (0.017%) Revit
Business Applications
1 101 (1.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
7 7 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.083%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.067%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.067%) Endur
9 4 (0.067%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle General Ledger
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle Payables
9 4 (0.067%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.067%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,091 (34.91%) AWS
2 1,245 (20.79%) Azure DevOps
3 1,163 (19.42%) GCP
4 804 (13.42%) Power Platform
5 766 (12.79%) Entra ID
6 672 (11.22%) Microsoft 365
7 590 (9.85%) GitHub
8 451 (7.53%) Azure Data Factory
9 338 (5.64%) GitHub Actions
10 331 (5.53%) Serverless
11 284 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (4.07%) SaaS
13 240 (4.01%) Dynamics 365
14 217 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
15 215 (3.59%) Azure AKS
15 215 (3.59%) Power Automate
16 211 (3.52%) PaaS
17 202 (3.37%) Azure Functions
18 194 (3.24%) Azure Logic Apps
19 177 (2.96%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 397 (6.63%) Firewall
2 272 (4.54%) DNS
3 242 (4.04%) VPN
4 200 (3.34%) Network Security
5 157 (2.62%) WAN
6 150 (2.50%) DHCP
7 115 (1.92%) LAN
8 94 (1.57%) TCP/IP
9 78 (1.30%) SD-WAN
10 75 (1.25%) VLAN
11 71 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (1.09%) Kerberos
13 52 (0.87%) BGP
14 46 (0.77%) OSPF
15 39 (0.65%) Wireless
16 36 (0.60%) HTTP
16 36 (0.60%) SAN
17 32 (0.53%) SSL
18 29 (0.48%) MPLS
19 27 (0.45%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (9.33%) Power BI
2 346 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 327 (5.46%) Data Warehouse
4 283 (4.73%) Data Lake
5 209 (3.49%) Azure SQL Database
6 202 (3.37%) PostgreSQL
7 179 (2.99%) NoSQL
8 140 (2.34%) Metadata
9 131 (2.19%) Delta Lake
10 93 (1.55%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 79 (1.32%) Big Data
12 79 (1.32%) Tableau
13 76 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 61 (1.02%) Oracle Database
15 57 (0.95%) BigQuery
16 51 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
17 49 (0.82%) MySQL
18 45 (0.75%) Star Schema
19 43 (0.72%) Redis
Development Applications
1 446 (7.45%) Git
2 416 (6.95%) JIRA
3 306 (5.11%) Jenkins
4 221 (3.69%) GitLab
5 104 (1.74%) Selenium
6 69 (1.15%) Postman
7 60 (1.00%) JUnit
8 58 (0.97%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.87%) JMeter
10 51 (0.85%) MLflow
11 40 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.55%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 28 (0.47%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.43%) TestRail
17 24 (0.40%) SpecFlow
18 23 (0.38%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
General
1 1,673 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 1,118 (18.67%) Finance
3 651 (10.87%) Public Sector
4 607 (10.14%) Analytical Skills
5 355 (5.93%) Banking
6 192 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 134 (2.24%) Legal
8 101 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.42%) Retail
10 82 (1.37%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
11 81 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 68 (1.14%) Marketing
13 67 (1.12%) Financial Institution
14 65 (1.09%) Telecoms
15 63 (1.05%) Law
16 55 (0.92%) Investment Banking
17 53 (0.88%) Front Office
18 44 (0.73%) Local Government
19 37 (0.62%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 996 (16.63%) Architect
2 793 (13.24%) Developer
3 716 (11.96%) Senior
4 531 (8.87%) Azure Engineer
5 506 (8.45%) Data Engineer
6 449 (7.50%) Lead
7 382 (6.38%) Analyst
8 287 (4.79%) DevOps Engineer
9 266 (4.44%) Solutions Architect
10 253 (4.22%) Consultant
11 168 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 166 (2.77%) Cloud Engineer
13 151 (2.52%) Azure Architect
14 150 (2.50%) Platform Engineer
15 142 (2.37%) Security Engineer
16 140 (2.34%) Senior Developer
17 127 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 126 (2.10%) Data Architect
19 118 (1.97%) Software Engineer
20 117 (1.95%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 453 (7.56%) .NET
2 397 (6.63%) REST
3 267 (4.46%) React
4 247 (4.12%) Kafka
5 221 (3.69%) PySpark
6 209 (3.49%) Node.js
7 199 (3.32%) RESTful
8 178 (2.97%) Spring
9 176 (2.94%) OAuth
10 164 (2.74%) AngularJS
11 148 (2.47%) LDAP
12 141 (2.35%) Spring Boot
13 135 (2.25%) HTML
14 128 (2.14%) Middleware
15 125 (2.09%) JSON
16 120 (2.00%) SOAP
17 118 (1.97%) PyTorch
18 117 (1.95%) CSS
19 116 (1.94%) SAML
20 107 (1.79%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 536 (8.95%) Cloud Native
2 243 (4.06%) Onboarding
3 221 (3.69%) Product Ownership
4 176 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 157 (2.62%) Security Posture
6 152 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
7 143 (2.39%) Legacy Systems
8 142 (2.37%) Data Centre
9 135 (2.25%) Public Cloud
10 123 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
11 102 (1.70%) AI Agents
12 82 (1.37%) Replication
13 81 (1.35%) Data Structures
14 66 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
14 66 (1.10%) Management Information System
15 56 (0.94%) PKI
16 55 (0.92%) Algorithms
16 55 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 47 (0.78%) Low-Code
18 45 (0.75%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 664 (11.09%) Windows
2 313 (5.23%) Linux
3 204 (3.41%) Windows Server
4 117 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.10%) VMS
6 58 (0.97%) Unix
7 43 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 41 (0.68%) Mac OS
9 32 (0.53%) Apple iOS
10 25 (0.42%) Android
11 21 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
12 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
13 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
14 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
16 6 (0.10%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.083%) AIX
17 5 (0.083%) CentOS
17 5 (0.083%) CoreOS
18 4 (0.067%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,239 (37.39%) DevOps
2 1,814 (30.29%) CI/CD
3 1,402 (23.41%) Agile
4 990 (16.53%) Problem-Solving
5 923 (15.41%) Analytics
6 861 (14.38%) AI
7 813 (13.57%) Infrastructure as Code
8 783 (13.07%) Migration
9 671 (11.20%) Data Modelling
10 626 (10.45%) Stakeholder Management
11 621 (10.37%) Business Intelligence
12 589 (9.83%) Continuous Improvement
13 565 (9.43%) Data Pipeline
14 564 (9.42%) Containerisation
14 564 (9.42%) ETL
15 540 (9.02%) Microservices
16 537 (8.97%) Data Engineering
17 514 (8.58%) Machine Learning
18 510 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 484 (8.08%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,548 (25.85%) Python
2 1,360 (22.71%) SQL
3 662 (11.05%) PowerShell
4 505 (8.43%) C#
5 500 (8.35%) Java
6 415 (6.93%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.89%) TypeScript
8 217 (3.62%) Bash
9 187 (3.12%) Bicep
10 92 (1.54%) Scala
11 78 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.24%) Go
13 71 (1.19%) PL/SQL
14 69 (1.15%) Kusto Query Language
15 65 (1.09%) T-SQL
16 41 (0.68%) R
17 36 (0.60%) Shell Script
18 24 (0.40%) C++
19 22 (0.37%) PHP
20 17 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,498 (25.01%) Security Cleared
2 1,240 (20.70%) SC Cleared
3 450 (7.51%) Degree
4 340 (5.68%) Azure Certification
5 190 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 172 (2.87%) CISSP
7 149 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
8 125 (2.09%) Cisco Certification
9 123 (2.05%) DV Cleared
10 113 (1.89%) AWS Certification
11 103 (1.72%) CISM
12 94 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
13 67 (1.12%) CCNP
14 64 (1.07%) Master's Degree
15 55 (0.92%) PMP
16 54 (0.90%) PMI Certification
17 50 (0.83%) ISTQB
17 50 (0.83%) TOGAF Certification
18 41 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 427 (7.13%) Data Quality
2 356 (5.94%) GDPR
3 329 (5.49%) QA
4 268 (4.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 233 (3.89%) NIST
6 93 (1.55%) Accessibility
7 91 (1.52%) NCSC
8 83 (1.39%) PCI DSS
9 60 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
10 55 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.90%) SLA
12 50 (0.83%) PMO
13 38 (0.63%) GRC
14 33 (0.55%) HIPAA
14 33 (0.55%) WCAG
15 24 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 24 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
17 22 (0.37%) SOC 2
18 18 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 808 (13.49%) Active Directory
2 704 (11.75%) Docker
3 185 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 101 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
5 85 (1.42%) Hyper-V
6 80 (1.34%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.24%) vSphere
8 32 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (0.53%) VMware NSX
9 22 (0.37%) Firmware
10 16 (0.27%) NFS
11 10 (0.17%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 6 (0.10%) RACF
13 6 (0.10%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.10%) Snort
13 6 (0.10%) Varnish
14 5 (0.083%) BitLocker
14 5 (0.083%) GPFS
14 5 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 933 (15.58%) Terraform
2 890 (14.86%) Kubernetes
3 338 (5.64%) Microsoft Intune
4 266 (4.44%) Ansible
5 159 (2.65%) Grafana
6 146 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
7 130 (2.17%) Prometheus
8 107 (1.79%) SCCM
9 73 (1.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.67%) Argo
11 33 (0.55%) Istio
12 29 (0.48%) Puppet
13 27 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 21 (0.35%) FortiGate
14 21 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
15 17 (0.28%) vRealize
16 16 (0.27%) HP ALM
16 16 (0.27%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,952 (32.59%) Microsoft
2 615 (10.27%) Databricks
3 297 (4.96%) Oracle
4 277 (4.63%) Google
5 267 (4.46%) ServiceNow
6 252 (4.21%) VMware
7 174 (2.91%) SAP
8 165 (2.76%) Cisco
9 158 (2.64%) OpenAI
10 141 (2.35%) Splunk
11 127 (2.12%) CyberArk
12 108 (1.80%) Foundry
13 93 (1.55%) Palo Alto
14 83 (1.39%) Salesforce
15 80 (1.34%) Okta
16 71 (1.19%) BeyondTrust
17 70 (1.17%) IBM
18 65 (1.09%) Citrix
19 63 (1.05%) Informatica
20 62 (1.04%) Red Hat