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

6 months to
8 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,083 3,869 4,996
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.56% 15.89% 13.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.84% 42.05% 41.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,385 2,766 3,683
10th Percentile £358 £353 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £528
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.57% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 29 52
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.89 £26.45 £22.58
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £36.75
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +45.58% -30.56%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £85.40 £84.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £33.75 £36.75
% change year-on-year +70.37% -8.16% -31.94%

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 14,201 9,200 11,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.33% 37.78% 32.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,803 6,477 8,620
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
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 -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 436 185 321
10th Percentile £16.13 £15.23 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.46 £18.50 £15.89
Median hourly rate £42.59 £26.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +60.73% +27.59% -23.07%
75th Percentile £67.50 £41.97 £33.75
90th Percentile £80.60 £75.30 £59.95
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £27.35 £21.00
% change year-on-year +46.25% +30.24% -27.59%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 3,285 £538 -2.27% 1,004
North of England +3 823 £500 +5.26% 604
South East +1 766 £500 -7.02% 685
Midlands -1 503 £488 -4.41% 369
North West +2 443 £487 -2.70% 303
West Midlands -1 372 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 364 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire +2 336 £500 +17.65% 208
East of England +10 156 £540 -6.90% 207
East Midlands 0 122 £442 -6.89% 163
North East -6 48 £538 +6.17% 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
1 294 (4.83%) SharePoint
2 184 (3.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 171 (2.81%) Apache Spark
4 166 (2.73%) Confluence
5 98 (1.61%) Apache
6 93 (1.53%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) IIS
7 21 (0.35%) SAS
8 16 (0.26%) Appian
8 16 (0.26%) OpenStack
9 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
9 15 (0.25%) Camunda
10 13 (0.21%) CMS
11 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) Jupyter
12 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.082%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.082%) WebLogic
Applications
1 109 (1.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.082%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.082%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) Weka
11 3 (0.049%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.033%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
13 1 (0.016%) Revit
Business Applications
1 102 (1.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 64 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.12%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.099%) SAP ERP
8 5 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.066%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.066%) Endur
9 4 (0.066%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle 11i
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.066%) Workday HCM
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.049%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 2,113 (34.74%) AWS
2 1,264 (20.78%) Azure DevOps
3 1,162 (19.10%) GCP
4 817 (13.43%) Power Platform
5 785 (12.90%) Entra ID
6 684 (11.24%) Microsoft 365
7 589 (9.68%) GitHub
8 457 (7.51%) Azure Data Factory
9 339 (5.57%) Serverless
10 338 (5.56%) GitHub Actions
11 289 (4.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 253 (4.16%) SaaS
13 242 (3.98%) Dynamics 365
14 230 (3.78%) Azure AKS
15 223 (3.67%) Azure Monitor
16 221 (3.63%) Power Automate
17 218 (3.58%) PaaS
18 200 (3.29%) Azure Functions
19 191 (3.14%) Azure Logic Apps
20 179 (2.94%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 398 (6.54%) Firewall
2 278 (4.57%) DNS
3 242 (3.98%) VPN
4 203 (3.34%) Network Security
5 157 (2.58%) WAN
6 154 (2.53%) DHCP
7 120 (1.97%) LAN
8 94 (1.55%) TCP/IP
9 77 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
10 75 (1.23%) VLAN
11 74 (1.22%) SD-WAN
12 65 (1.07%) Kerberos
13 51 (0.84%) BGP
14 45 (0.74%) OSPF
15 40 (0.66%) Wireless
16 38 (0.62%) SAN
17 37 (0.61%) SSL
18 35 (0.58%) HTTP
19 29 (0.48%) MPLS
20 28 (0.46%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 567 (9.32%) Power BI
2 353 (5.80%) SQL Server
3 335 (5.51%) Data Warehouse
4 292 (4.80%) Data Lake
5 211 (3.47%) PostgreSQL
6 209 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
7 183 (3.01%) NoSQL
8 148 (2.43%) Metadata
9 131 (2.15%) Delta Lake
10 99 (1.63%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 82 (1.35%) Big Data
13 81 (1.33%) Tableau
14 76 (1.25%) MongoDB
15 61 (1.00%) Oracle Database
16 57 (0.94%) BigQuery
17 55 (0.90%) Snowflake Schema
18 48 (0.79%) MySQL
19 46 (0.76%) Star Schema
20 45 (0.74%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 443 (7.28%) Git
2 414 (6.81%) JIRA
3 300 (4.93%) Jenkins
4 216 (3.55%) GitLab
5 106 (1.74%) Selenium
6 68 (1.12%) Postman
7 60 (0.99%) JUnit
8 58 (0.95%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.82%) JMeter
10 49 (0.81%) MLflow
11 42 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 35 (0.58%) SonarQube
14 33 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
15 32 (0.53%) Artifactory
16 26 (0.43%) TestRail
16 26 (0.43%) Visual Studio
17 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 22 (0.36%) Mockito
19 21 (0.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,676 (27.55%) Social Skills
2 1,132 (18.61%) Finance
3 643 (10.57%) Public Sector
4 607 (9.98%) Analytical Skills
5 353 (5.80%) Banking
6 195 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 139 (2.29%) Legal
8 103 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.40%) Organisational Skills
9 85 (1.40%) Retail
10 82 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
10 82 (1.35%) Presentation Skills
11 66 (1.08%) Marketing
11 66 (1.08%) Telecoms
12 65 (1.07%) Financial Institution
12 65 (1.07%) Law
13 58 (0.95%) Front Office
14 56 (0.92%) Investment Banking
15 44 (0.72%) Local Government
16 35 (0.58%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,006 (16.54%) Architect
2 802 (13.18%) Developer
3 729 (11.98%) Senior
4 554 (9.11%) Azure Engineer
5 517 (8.50%) Data Engineer
6 463 (7.61%) Lead
7 385 (6.33%) Analyst
8 297 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 266 (4.37%) Solutions Architect
10 257 (4.22%) Consultant
11 177 (2.91%) Cloud Engineer
12 176 (2.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 157 (2.58%) Platform Engineer
14 155 (2.55%) Azure Architect
15 148 (2.43%) Security Engineer
16 143 (2.35%) Senior Developer
17 129 (2.12%) Data Architect
18 125 (2.05%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 125 (2.05%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 122 (2.01%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 457 (7.51%) .NET
2 391 (6.43%) REST
3 266 (4.37%) React
4 250 (4.11%) Kafka
5 225 (3.70%) PySpark
6 213 (3.50%) Node.js
7 199 (3.27%) RESTful
8 186 (3.06%) Spring
9 175 (2.88%) OAuth
10 156 (2.56%) AngularJS
11 151 (2.48%) LDAP
12 149 (2.45%) Spring Boot
13 132 (2.17%) HTML
14 125 (2.05%) Middleware
15 121 (1.99%) JSON
16 117 (1.92%) SAML
17 116 (1.91%) SOAP
18 114 (1.87%) CSS
19 109 (1.79%) PyTorch
20 105 (1.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 556 (9.14%) Cloud Native
2 242 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 219 (3.60%) Product Ownership
4 179 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 153 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
5 153 (2.52%) Security Posture
6 144 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
7 142 (2.33%) Data Centre
8 136 (2.24%) Public Cloud
9 126 (2.07%) Distributed Systems
10 103 (1.69%) AI Agents
11 83 (1.36%) Data Structures
11 83 (1.36%) Replication
12 69 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
13 65 (1.07%) Management Information System
14 61 (1.00%) PKI
15 55 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
16 51 (0.84%) Algorithms
17 48 (0.79%) Low-Code
17 48 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 678 (11.15%) Windows
2 314 (5.16%) Linux
3 206 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 120 (1.97%) Windows 10
5 68 (1.12%) VMS
6 57 (0.94%) Unix
7 50 (0.82%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 38 (0.62%) Apple iOS
10 30 (0.49%) Android
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 7 (0.12%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.082%) AIX
16 5 (0.082%) CentOS
16 5 (0.082%) CoreOS
16 5 (0.082%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,263 (37.20%) DevOps
2 1,839 (30.23%) CI/CD
3 1,418 (23.31%) Agile
4 987 (16.23%) Problem-Solving
5 937 (15.40%) Analytics
6 879 (14.45%) AI
7 828 (13.61%) Infrastructure as Code
8 800 (13.15%) Migration
9 688 (11.31%) Data Modelling
10 630 (10.36%) Business Intelligence
11 629 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
12 594 (9.76%) Continuous Improvement
13 580 (9.53%) ETL
14 579 (9.52%) Data Pipeline
15 572 (9.40%) Containerisation
16 544 (8.94%) Data Engineering
17 542 (8.91%) Microservices
18 506 (8.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 505 (8.30%) Machine Learning
20 488 (8.02%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,550 (25.48%) Python
2 1,377 (22.64%) SQL
3 671 (11.03%) PowerShell
4 514 (8.45%) C#
5 506 (8.32%) Java
6 413 (6.79%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.83%) TypeScript
8 222 (3.65%) Bash
9 196 (3.22%) Bicep
10 94 (1.55%) Scala
11 78 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.22%) Go
13 71 (1.17%) PL/SQL
14 68 (1.12%) T-SQL
15 65 (1.07%) Kusto Query Language
16 40 (0.66%) R
17 36 (0.59%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.36%) PHP
19 21 (0.35%) C++
20 18 (0.30%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,529 (25.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,267 (20.83%) SC Cleared
3 455 (7.48%) Degree
4 350 (5.75%) Azure Certification
5 191 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
6 171 (2.81%) CISSP
7 150 (2.47%) Microsoft Certification
8 125 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
9 124 (2.04%) DV Cleared
10 113 (1.86%) AWS Certification
11 101 (1.66%) CISM
12 96 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
13 69 (1.13%) CCNP
14 63 (1.04%) Master's Degree
15 58 (0.95%) PMP
16 57 (0.94%) PMI Certification
17 53 (0.87%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 40 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (7.22%) Data Quality
2 357 (5.87%) GDPR
3 330 (5.42%) QA
4 266 (4.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.85%) NIST
6 97 (1.59%) Accessibility
7 88 (1.45%) NCSC
8 82 (1.35%) PCI DSS
9 59 (0.97%) Cyber Essentials
10 57 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 52 (0.85%) SLA
12 48 (0.79%) PMO
13 36 (0.59%) GRC
14 33 (0.54%) WCAG
15 32 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
18 20 (0.33%) SOC 2
19 18 (0.30%) PSD2
System Software
1 826 (13.58%) Active Directory
2 698 (11.47%) Docker
3 188 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
5 89 (1.46%) Hyper-V
6 86 (1.41%) Virtual Desktop
7 75 (1.23%) vSphere
8 35 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.54%) VMware NSX
10 22 (0.36%) Firmware
11 17 (0.28%) NFS
12 10 (0.16%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.099%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.099%) RACF
14 6 (0.099%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.099%) Varnish
15 5 (0.082%) KVM
15 5 (0.082%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.082%) Snort
Systems Management
1 950 (15.62%) Terraform
2 895 (14.71%) Kubernetes
3 343 (5.64%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (4.32%) Ansible
5 160 (2.63%) Grafana
6 141 (2.32%) Single Sign-On
7 132 (2.17%) Prometheus
8 109 (1.79%) SCCM
9 73 (1.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.66%) Argo
11 34 (0.56%) Istio
12 28 (0.46%) Puppet
12 28 (0.46%) vCenter Server
13 26 (0.43%) Progress Chef
14 24 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
15 21 (0.35%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
16 17 (0.28%) vRealize
17 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
17 16 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,991 (32.73%) Microsoft
2 628 (10.32%) Databricks
3 293 (4.82%) Oracle
4 276 (4.54%) Google
5 260 (4.27%) VMware
6 259 (4.26%) ServiceNow
7 174 (2.86%) SAP
8 165 (2.71%) Cisco
9 159 (2.61%) OpenAI
10 143 (2.35%) Splunk
11 130 (2.14%) CyberArk
12 108 (1.78%) Foundry
13 93 (1.53%) Palo Alto
14 80 (1.32%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.30%) Okta
16 71 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
16 71 (1.17%) IBM
17 67 (1.10%) Citrix
18 64 (1.05%) Red Hat
19 63 (1.04%) Informatica