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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,419 3,687 4,979
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.35% 15.41% 13.56%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.68% 41.11% 42.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,574 2,584 3,675
10th Percentile £363 £350 £352
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £724 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 141 23 45
10th Percentile £25.38 £20.74 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.61
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 £61.60
90th Percentile £97.50 £95.74 £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 14,697 8,969 11,779
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.14% 37.48% 32.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,011 6,159 8,493
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £418
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 £747
UK median daily rate £508 £508 £525
% change year-on-year - -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 505 207 324
10th Percentile £15.67 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £17.96 £15.96
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +54.90% +19.33% -38.76%
75th Percentile £67.84 £37.63 £38.28
90th Percentile £81.15 £68.00 £68.23
UK median hourly rate £36.71 £28.00 £21.37
% change year-on-year +31.11% +31.02% -40.64%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 3,423 £538 -2.23% 1,014
North of England +5 926 £500 +5.26% 504
South East +3 821 £500 -0.10% 607
Midlands -3 508 £493 +0.10% 274
North West +3 465 £500 +5.26% 303
South West +6 399 £528 +0.48% 274
Yorkshire +8 386 £500 +11.11% 119
West Midlands +1 370 £500 -4.76% 180
East of England +6 154 £550 -5.17% 162
East Midlands +5 128 £463 - 94
North East +3 85 £525 +5.00% 83
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
1 316 (4.92%) SharePoint
2 176 (2.74%) Apache Spark
3 174 (2.71%) Confluence
4 171 (2.66%) Microsoft Exchange
5 99 (1.54%) Apache
6 97 (1.51%) Apache Airflow
7 24 (0.37%) IIS
8 19 (0.30%) SAS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.20%) Appian
11 13 (0.20%) Mendix
12 12 (0.19%) Camunda
12 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
13 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
14 10 (0.16%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 6 (0.093%) Tomcat
Applications
1 87 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.51%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
8 6 (0.093%) AutoCAD
9 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.078%) CPLEX
9 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.062%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.062%) Notion
10 4 (0.062%) Revit
10 4 (0.062%) Trello
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 72 (1.12%) 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 (0.093%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.093%) Shopify
8 6 (0.093%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.062%) Elite 3E
10 4 (0.062%) Endur
10 4 (0.062%) Magento
10 4 (0.062%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.062%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.062%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,206 (34.37%) AWS
2 1,303 (20.30%) Azure DevOps
3 1,117 (17.40%) GCP
4 817 (12.73%) Power Platform
5 809 (12.60%) Entra ID
6 682 (10.62%) Microsoft 365
7 581 (9.05%) GitHub
8 455 (7.09%) Azure Data Factory
9 336 (5.23%) GitHub Actions
10 312 (4.86%) Serverless
11 292 (4.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 254 (3.96%) SaaS
13 231 (3.60%) Azure AKS
14 217 (3.38%) Dynamics 365
15 214 (3.33%) Power Automate
16 208 (3.24%) PaaS
17 205 (3.19%) Azure Monitor
18 179 (2.79%) Snowflake
19 175 (2.73%) IaaS
20 174 (2.71%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 392 (6.11%) Firewall
2 289 (4.50%) DNS
3 234 (3.65%) VPN
4 215 (3.35%) Network Security
5 178 (2.77%) WAN
6 158 (2.46%) DHCP
7 119 (1.85%) LAN
8 92 (1.43%) TCP/IP
9 91 (1.42%) SD-WAN
10 76 (1.18%) BGP
11 70 (1.09%) VLAN
11 70 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
12 65 (1.01%) OSPF
13 62 (0.97%) Kerberos
14 50 (0.78%) SAN
15 41 (0.64%) SSL
15 41 (0.64%) VXLAN
15 41 (0.64%) Wireless
16 31 (0.48%) IPsec
17 29 (0.45%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 560 (8.72%) Power BI
2 386 (6.01%) SQL Server
3 325 (5.06%) Data Warehouse
4 319 (4.97%) Data Lake
5 211 (3.29%) PostgreSQL
6 190 (2.96%) Azure SQL Database
7 172 (2.68%) NoSQL
8 142 (2.21%) Metadata
9 140 (2.18%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.51%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.43%) Big Data
12 86 (1.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.17%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.15%) Tableau
15 66 (1.03%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (0.90%) BigQuery
17 56 (0.87%) Oracle Database
18 47 (0.73%) Spark SQL
19 46 (0.72%) MySQL
20 45 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 451 (7.03%) Git
2 438 (6.82%) JIRA
3 301 (4.69%) Jenkins
4 244 (3.80%) GitLab
5 98 (1.53%) Selenium
6 63 (0.98%) Postman
7 53 (0.83%) Cucumber
8 50 (0.78%) JMeter
9 47 (0.73%) JUnit
10 44 (0.69%) MLflow
11 42 (0.65%) REST Assured
12 39 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.47%) Artifactory
13 30 (0.47%) Cypress.io
14 27 (0.42%) Maven
14 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
15 26 (0.41%) WebDriver
16 25 (0.39%) Gatling
17 24 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
18 23 (0.36%) TestRail
General
1 1,621 (25.25%) Social Skills
2 1,240 (19.32%) Finance
3 636 (9.91%) Public Sector
4 589 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
5 364 (5.67%) Banking
6 184 (2.87%) Documentation Skills
7 148 (2.31%) Legal
8 111 (1.73%) Retail
9 110 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 87 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 70 (1.09%) Investment Banking
12 68 (1.06%) Financial Institution
13 64 (1.00%) Front Office
14 62 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
15 57 (0.89%) Law
15 57 (0.89%) Presentation Skills
16 56 (0.87%) Marketing
17 45 (0.70%) Telecoms
18 40 (0.62%) Military
19 39 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,109 (17.28%) Architect
2 779 (12.14%) Senior
3 759 (11.82%) Developer
4 574 (8.94%) Azure Engineer
5 534 (8.32%) Data Engineer
6 481 (7.49%) Lead
7 399 (6.22%) Analyst
8 325 (5.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 308 (4.80%) Solutions Architect
10 257 (4.00%) Consultant
11 228 (3.55%) Cloud Engineer
12 227 (3.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 177 (2.76%) Security Engineer
14 171 (2.66%) Azure Architect
15 168 (2.62%) Data Architect
16 148 (2.31%) Platform Engineer
17 142 (2.21%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 139 (2.17%) Project Manager
19 138 (2.15%) Technical Architect
20 137 (2.13%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 489 (7.62%) .NET
2 419 (6.53%) REST
3 262 (4.08%) React
4 233 (3.63%) Kafka
5 225 (3.51%) PySpark
6 189 (2.94%) RESTful
7 182 (2.84%) OAuth
8 180 (2.80%) Node.js
9 166 (2.59%) LDAP
10 159 (2.48%) Spring
11 157 (2.45%) AngularJS
12 132 (2.06%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.04%) JSON
14 122 (1.90%) SAML
15 119 (1.85%) SOAP
16 118 (1.84%) OpenID
17 117 (1.82%) Middleware
18 109 (1.70%) HTML
19 103 (1.60%) YAML
20 98 (1.53%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 642 (10.00%) Cloud Native
2 265 (4.13%) Onboarding
3 233 (3.63%) Product Ownership
4 200 (3.12%) Hybrid Cloud
5 191 (2.98%) Data Centre
6 168 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
7 157 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
8 152 (2.37%) Security Posture
9 147 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
10 135 (2.10%) Public Cloud
11 124 (1.93%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.37%) Data Structures
13 86 (1.34%) Replication
14 73 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
15 72 (1.12%) Management Information System
16 66 (1.03%) PKI
17 60 (0.93%) Low-Code
18 58 (0.90%) Enterprise Cloud
19 57 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
20 56 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 740 (11.53%) Windows
2 326 (5.08%) Linux
3 221 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.84%) Windows 10
5 64 (1.00%) Mac OS
5 64 (1.00%) Unix
6 62 (0.97%) Apple iOS
7 55 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 55 (0.86%) VMS
8 47 (0.73%) Android
9 28 (0.44%) Ubuntu
10 27 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
11 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
12 14 (0.22%) 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 (37.00%) DevOps
2 1,964 (30.60%) CI/CD
3 1,468 (22.87%) Agile
4 939 (14.63%) Analytics
5 925 (14.41%) Infrastructure as Code
6 922 (14.36%) AI
7 914 (14.24%) Problem-Solving
8 898 (13.99%) Migration
9 730 (11.37%) Data Modelling
10 672 (10.47%) Stakeholder Management
11 635 (9.89%) Data Pipeline
12 616 (9.60%) Continuous Improvement
13 615 (9.58%) ETL
14 612 (9.53%) Business Intelligence
15 584 (9.10%) Roadmaps
16 556 (8.66%) Containerisation
17 544 (8.47%) Data Engineering
18 535 (8.33%) Microservices
19 530 (8.26%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 471 (7.34%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,526 (23.77%) Python
2 1,368 (21.31%) SQL
3 679 (10.58%) PowerShell
4 527 (8.21%) Java
5 522 (8.13%) C#
6 363 (5.66%) JavaScript
7 224 (3.49%) Bash
8 221 (3.44%) TypeScript
9 206 (3.21%) Bicep
10 87 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 82 (1.28%) Scala
12 77 (1.20%) T-SQL
13 71 (1.11%) Go
14 46 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 35 (0.55%) PL/SQL
17 34 (0.53%) R
18 23 (0.36%) C++
19 21 (0.33%) Kotlin
20 15 (0.23%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,584 (24.68%) Security Cleared
2 1,329 (20.70%) SC Cleared
3 460 (7.17%) Degree
4 353 (5.50%) Azure Certification
5 196 (3.05%) CISSP
6 170 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 156 (2.43%) Cisco Certification
8 152 (2.37%) DV Cleared
9 144 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
10 124 (1.93%) AWS Certification
11 115 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
12 106 (1.65%) CISM
13 75 (1.17%) CCNP
14 68 (1.06%) PMP
15 61 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 58 (0.90%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.72%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
19 40 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 454 (7.07%) Data Quality
2 334 (5.20%) QA
3 310 (4.83%) GDPR
4 251 (3.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 236 (3.68%) NIST
6 109 (1.70%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.29%) NCSC
8 81 (1.26%) SLA
9 75 (1.17%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.06%) Cyber Essentials
11 60 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 45 (0.70%) PMO
13 44 (0.69%) GRC
14 43 (0.67%) WCAG
15 34 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.41%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 830 (12.93%) Active Directory
2 664 (10.34%) Docker
3 192 (2.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
5 102 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
6 95 (1.48%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.98%) vSphere
8 47 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
9 27 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.31%) NFS
11 17 (0.26%) Postfix
12 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 6 (0.093%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.093%) KVM
14 6 (0.093%) RACF
15 5 (0.078%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 5 (0.078%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,005 (15.66%) Terraform
2 895 (13.94%) Kubernetes
3 347 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 293 (4.56%) Ansible
5 177 (2.76%) Grafana
6 151 (2.35%) Prometheus
7 145 (2.26%) Single Sign-On
8 96 (1.50%) SCCM
9 72 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.55%) Progress Chef
11 34 (0.53%) Puppet
12 33 (0.51%) Argo
13 32 (0.50%) Jamf Pro
14 31 (0.48%) Istio
15 26 (0.41%) FortiGate
16 21 (0.33%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.30%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
19 14 (0.22%) linkerd
19 14 (0.22%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,089 (32.54%) Microsoft
2 642 (10.00%) Databricks
3 287 (4.47%) ServiceNow
4 262 (4.08%) VMware
5 255 (3.97%) Oracle
6 240 (3.74%) Google
7 184 (2.87%) SAP
8 176 (2.74%) Cisco
9 158 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.17%) Splunk
11 136 (2.12%) CyberArk
12 121 (1.89%) Palo Alto
13 98 (1.53%) Foundry
14 97 (1.51%) Salesforce
15 87 (1.36%) Okta
16 69 (1.07%) Dynatrace
17 65 (1.01%) Citrix
18 64 (1.00%) BeyondTrust
19 60 (0.93%) Red Hat
19 60 (0.93%) Zscaler