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

6 months to
4 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,056 3,879 5,025
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.69% 15.92% 13.38%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.92% 42.09% 41.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,350 2,774 3,703
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.00%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £645
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.94% -3.64%
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 14,109 9,216 12,053
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.54% 37.82% 32.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,721 6,497 8,664
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 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 426 181 317
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.46 £18.50 £15.89
Median hourly rate £42.59 £26.50 £20.97
Median % change year-on-year +60.73% +26.37% -20.08%
75th Percentile £67.50 £43.00 £35.00
90th Percentile £80.60 £75.50 £59.97
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £26.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +50.94% +26.19% -24.85%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +3 821 £488 +0.67% 604
South East +1 753 £500 -6.98% 685
Midlands -1 508 £488 -6.25% 369
North West +3 441 £476 -4.80% 303
West Midlands 0 377 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 355 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire 0 335 £500 +12.68% 208
East of England +7 151 £540 -6.90% 207
East Midlands 0 121 £436 -8.32% 163
North East -4 48 £525 +7.69% 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
1 295 (4.87%) SharePoint
2 183 (3.02%) Microsoft Exchange
3 170 (2.81%) Apache Spark
4 163 (2.69%) Confluence
5 100 (1.65%) Apache
6 92 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.36%) IIS
7 22 (0.36%) SAS
8 17 (0.28%) OpenStack
9 16 (0.26%) Appian
10 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.25%) Camunda
11 13 (0.21%) CMS
12 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Mendix
13 9 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 5 (0.083%) BizTalk Server
15 5 (0.083%) WebLogic
Applications
1 107 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 38 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.083%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) 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
1 102 (1.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 65 (1.07%) 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 (0.083%) 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 General Ledger
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle Payables
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle Receivables
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.066%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 2,107 (34.79%) AWS
2 1,254 (20.71%) Azure DevOps
3 1,163 (19.20%) GCP
4 813 (13.42%) Power Platform
5 783 (12.93%) Entra ID
6 680 (11.23%) Microsoft 365
7 589 (9.73%) GitHub
8 458 (7.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 340 (5.61%) GitHub Actions
10 336 (5.55%) Serverless
11 289 (4.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (4.08%) SaaS
13 243 (4.01%) Dynamics 365
14 222 (3.67%) Azure AKS
15 221 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
16 220 (3.63%) Power Automate
17 214 (3.53%) PaaS
18 198 (3.27%) Azure Functions
19 191 (3.15%) Azure Logic Apps
20 178 (2.94%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 397 (6.56%) Firewall
2 275 (4.54%) DNS
3 242 (4.00%) VPN
4 202 (3.34%) Network Security
5 155 (2.56%) WAN
6 152 (2.51%) DHCP
7 118 (1.95%) LAN
8 94 (1.55%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.24%) VLAN
10 74 (1.22%) SD-WAN
10 74 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.07%) Kerberos
12 51 (0.84%) BGP
13 45 (0.74%) OSPF
14 39 (0.64%) Wireless
15 36 (0.59%) SAN
16 35 (0.58%) HTTP
17 34 (0.56%) SSL
18 29 (0.48%) MPLS
19 27 (0.45%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 567 (9.36%) Power BI
2 350 (5.78%) SQL Server
3 336 (5.55%) Data Warehouse
4 289 (4.77%) Data Lake
5 209 (3.45%) Azure SQL Database
6 208 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
7 183 (3.02%) NoSQL
8 147 (2.43%) Metadata
9 131 (2.16%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.60%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 83 (1.37%) Big Data
13 81 (1.34%) Tableau
14 78 (1.29%) MongoDB
15 61 (1.01%) Oracle Database
16 57 (0.94%) BigQuery
17 56 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
18 49 (0.81%) MySQL
19 46 (0.76%) Star Schema
20 44 (0.73%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 450 (7.43%) Git
2 412 (6.80%) JIRA
3 301 (4.97%) Jenkins
4 220 (3.63%) GitLab
5 107 (1.77%) Selenium
6 69 (1.14%) Postman
7 62 (1.02%) JUnit
8 58 (0.96%) Cucumber
9 52 (0.86%) JMeter
10 49 (0.81%) MLflow
11 42 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 37 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 36 (0.59%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.54%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
15 27 (0.45%) Visual Studio
16 26 (0.43%) TestRail
17 23 (0.38%) Maven
17 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 22 (0.36%) Mockito
General
1 1,680 (27.74%) Social Skills
2 1,138 (18.79%) Finance
3 650 (10.73%) Public Sector
4 608 (10.04%) Analytical Skills
5 357 (5.89%) Banking
6 196 (3.24%) Documentation Skills
7 137 (2.26%) Legal
8 105 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.40%) Retail
10 83 (1.37%) Presentation Skills
11 82 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
11 82 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
12 67 (1.11%) Financial Institution
12 67 (1.11%) Marketing
13 66 (1.09%) Telecoms
14 65 (1.07%) Law
15 56 (0.92%) Investment Banking
16 55 (0.91%) Front Office
17 44 (0.73%) Local Government
18 36 (0.59%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,008 (16.64%) Architect
2 798 (13.18%) Developer
3 725 (11.97%) Senior
4 547 (9.03%) Azure Engineer
5 519 (8.57%) Data Engineer
6 459 (7.58%) Lead
7 388 (6.41%) Analyst
8 292 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
9 269 (4.44%) Solutions Architect
10 256 (4.23%) Consultant
11 173 (2.86%) Cloud Engineer
12 170 (2.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 156 (2.58%) Platform Engineer
14 154 (2.54%) Azure Architect
15 145 (2.39%) Security Engineer
16 143 (2.36%) Senior Developer
17 129 (2.13%) Data Architect
18 123 (2.03%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 121 (2.00%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 121 (2.00%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 451 (7.45%) .NET
2 394 (6.51%) REST
3 269 (4.44%) React
4 251 (4.14%) Kafka
5 225 (3.72%) PySpark
6 212 (3.50%) Node.js
7 200 (3.30%) RESTful
8 185 (3.05%) Spring
9 177 (2.92%) OAuth
10 159 (2.63%) AngularJS
11 150 (2.48%) LDAP
12 147 (2.43%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.16%) HTML
14 126 (2.08%) Middleware
15 122 (2.01%) JSON
16 118 (1.95%) SAML
17 116 (1.92%) SOAP
18 113 (1.87%) CSS
19 112 (1.85%) PyTorch
20 106 (1.75%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 548 (9.05%) Cloud Native
2 246 (4.06%) Onboarding
3 220 (3.63%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 154 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
6 153 (2.53%) Security Posture
7 147 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
8 142 (2.34%) Data Centre
9 133 (2.20%) Public Cloud
10 124 (2.05%) Distributed Systems
11 103 (1.70%) AI Agents
12 82 (1.35%) Data Structures
12 82 (1.35%) Replication
13 67 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
14 64 (1.06%) Management Information System
15 57 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
15 57 (0.94%) PKI
16 51 (0.84%) Algorithms
17 48 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
18 46 (0.76%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 669 (11.05%) Windows
2 313 (5.17%) Linux
3 205 (3.39%) Windows Server
4 121 (2.00%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.11%) VMS
6 57 (0.94%) Unix
7 45 (0.74%) Mac OS
8 43 (0.71%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 34 (0.56%) Apple iOS
10 26 (0.43%) Android
11 18 (0.30%) Ubuntu
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 9 (0.15%) Data ONTAP
15 6 (0.099%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.083%) AIX
16 5 (0.083%) CentOS
16 5 (0.083%) CoreOS
17 4 (0.066%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,257 (37.27%) DevOps
2 1,831 (30.23%) CI/CD
3 1,402 (23.15%) Agile
4 989 (16.33%) Problem-Solving
5 938 (15.49%) Analytics
6 871 (14.38%) AI
7 820 (13.54%) Infrastructure as Code
8 797 (13.16%) Migration
9 683 (11.28%) Data Modelling
10 630 (10.40%) Business Intelligence
10 630 (10.40%) Stakeholder Management
11 593 (9.79%) Continuous Improvement
12 580 (9.58%) ETL
13 578 (9.54%) Data Pipeline
14 572 (9.45%) Containerisation
15 545 (9.00%) Data Engineering
16 544 (8.98%) Microservices
17 513 (8.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 509 (8.40%) Machine Learning
19 489 (8.07%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,543 (25.48%) Python
2 1,375 (22.70%) SQL
3 665 (10.98%) PowerShell
4 507 (8.37%) C#
5 506 (8.36%) Java
6 411 (6.79%) JavaScript
7 234 (3.86%) TypeScript
8 218 (3.60%) Bash
9 193 (3.19%) Bicep
10 94 (1.55%) Scala
11 77 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 74 (1.22%) Go
13 71 (1.17%) PL/SQL
14 67 (1.11%) Kusto Query Language
14 67 (1.11%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.66%) R
16 36 (0.59%) Shell Script
17 22 (0.36%) PHP
18 21 (0.35%) C++
19 17 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,511 (24.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,254 (20.71%) SC Cleared
3 452 (7.46%) Degree
4 347 (5.73%) Azure Certification
5 191 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
6 173 (2.86%) CISSP
7 149 (2.46%) Microsoft Certification
8 124 (2.05%) Cisco Certification
8 124 (2.05%) DV Cleared
9 115 (1.90%) AWS Certification
10 102 (1.68%) CISM
11 95 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
12 67 (1.11%) CCNP
13 63 (1.04%) Master's Degree
14 57 (0.94%) PMP
15 56 (0.92%) PMI Certification
16 53 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
17 51 (0.84%) ISTQB
18 40 (0.66%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 35 (0.58%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (7.27%) Data Quality
2 359 (5.93%) GDPR
3 329 (5.43%) QA
4 268 (4.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.81%) NIST
6 94 (1.55%) Accessibility
7 90 (1.49%) NCSC
8 83 (1.37%) PCI DSS
9 61 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
10 57 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 54 (0.89%) SLA
12 50 (0.83%) PMO
13 38 (0.63%) GRC
14 34 (0.56%) HIPAA
15 33 (0.54%) WCAG
16 24 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 24 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.35%) SOC 2
19 18 (0.30%) PSD2
System Software
1 821 (13.56%) Active Directory
2 705 (11.64%) Docker
3 184 (3.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (1.63%) Virtual Machines
5 85 (1.40%) Hyper-V
6 83 (1.37%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.22%) vSphere
8 32 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
8 32 (0.53%) VMware NSX
9 22 (0.36%) Firmware
10 16 (0.26%) NFS
11 10 (0.17%) Postfix
12 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
13 6 (0.099%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.099%) RACF
13 6 (0.099%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.099%) Snort
13 6 (0.099%) Varnish
14 5 (0.083%) KVM
14 5 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 940 (15.52%) Terraform
2 898 (14.83%) Kubernetes
3 344 (5.68%) Microsoft Intune
4 263 (4.34%) Ansible
5 159 (2.63%) Grafana
6 148 (2.44%) Single Sign-On
7 131 (2.16%) Prometheus
8 109 (1.80%) SCCM
9 73 (1.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.66%) Argo
11 33 (0.54%) Istio
12 29 (0.48%) Puppet
13 27 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 27 (0.45%) vCenter Server
14 24 (0.40%) 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 1,976 (32.63%) Microsoft
2 629 (10.39%) Databricks
3 300 (4.95%) Oracle
4 277 (4.57%) Google
5 264 (4.36%) ServiceNow
6 253 (4.18%) VMware
7 176 (2.91%) SAP
8 163 (2.69%) Cisco
9 158 (2.61%) OpenAI
10 143 (2.36%) Splunk
11 130 (2.15%) CyberArk
12 106 (1.75%) Foundry
13 94 (1.55%) Palo Alto
14 83 (1.37%) Salesforce
15 82 (1.35%) Okta
16 71 (1.17%) BeyondTrust
16 71 (1.17%) IBM
17 66 (1.09%) Citrix
18 64 (1.06%) Informatica
19 63 (1.04%) Red Hat