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

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,218 3,762 4,933
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.17% 15.37% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.28% 41.33% 42.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,463 2,652 3,630
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £448
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 24 47
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -42.34%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -42.34%

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 14,368 9,103 11,691
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.06% 37.20% 32.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,846 6,306 8,436
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £743
UK median daily rate £505 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 470 201 327
10th Percentile £15.48 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.89 £18.13 £15.87
Median hourly rate £41.78 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +63.84% +19.33% -37.15%
75th Percentile £67.50 £37.50 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £72.50 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £37.12 £27.43 £21.37
% change year-on-year +35.35% +28.33% -38.94%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 3,318 £540 -1.82% 1,032
North of England +3 871 £500 +5.26% 559
South East +3 832 £500 -3.29% 650
Midlands -5 486 £491 -1.75% 277
North West +3 448 £500 - 311
South West +6 382 £525 - 277
Yorkshire +7 359 £500 +15.94% 154
West Midlands -1 351 £498 -5.24% 164
East of England +5 146 £550 -8.33% 174
East Midlands +3 125 £463 - 112
North East -1 73 £525 +7.69% 95
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
1 296 (4.76%) SharePoint
2 175 (2.81%) Confluence
3 173 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 168 (2.70%) Microsoft Exchange
5 91 (1.46%) Apache
6 84 (1.35%) Apache Airflow
7 22 (0.35%) IIS
8 16 (0.26%) SAS
9 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 13 (0.21%) CMS
9 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 12 (0.19%) Appian
10 12 (0.19%) Camunda
10 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.16%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.080%) Umbraco
13 5 (0.080%) WebLogic
Applications
1 86 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 36 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 31 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.080%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.064%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.064%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
10 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.016%) InDesign
11 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 88 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
6 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.096%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.080%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.080%) Shopify
8 5 (0.080%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
10 3 (0.048%) Magento
10 3 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.048%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,145 (34.50%) AWS
2 1,251 (20.12%) Azure DevOps
3 1,123 (18.06%) GCP
4 793 (12.75%) Power Platform
5 768 (12.35%) Entra ID
6 642 (10.32%) Microsoft 365
7 571 (9.18%) GitHub
8 455 (7.32%) Azure Data Factory
9 327 (5.26%) GitHub Actions
10 307 (4.94%) Serverless
11 299 (4.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 248 (3.99%) SaaS
13 232 (3.73%) Azure AKS
14 220 (3.54%) Dynamics 365
15 211 (3.39%) PaaS
15 211 (3.39%) Power Automate
16 202 (3.25%) Azure Monitor
17 172 (2.77%) IaaS
18 171 (2.75%) Azure Functions
18 171 (2.75%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 385 (6.19%) Firewall
2 274 (4.41%) DNS
3 232 (3.73%) VPN
4 206 (3.31%) Network Security
5 171 (2.75%) WAN
6 150 (2.41%) DHCP
7 117 (1.88%) LAN
8 90 (1.45%) TCP/IP
9 88 (1.42%) SD-WAN
10 74 (1.19%) Wi-Fi
11 70 (1.13%) VLAN
12 69 (1.11%) BGP
13 67 (1.08%) Kerberos
14 59 (0.95%) OSPF
15 44 (0.71%) SAN
16 40 (0.64%) Wireless
17 37 (0.60%) SSL
18 34 (0.55%) VXLAN
19 29 (0.47%) HTTP
20 28 (0.45%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 548 (8.81%) Power BI
2 372 (5.98%) SQL Server
3 322 (5.18%) Data Warehouse
4 304 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 206 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
6 193 (3.10%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.75%) NoSQL
8 141 (2.27%) Metadata
9 137 (2.20%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.56%) Relational Database
11 86 (1.38%) Big Data
11 86 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 75 (1.21%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.17%) Tableau
14 62 (1.00%) Oracle Database
15 59 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (0.93%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.74%) Star Schema
18 45 (0.72%) Spark SQL
19 40 (0.64%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 449 (7.22%) Git
2 432 (6.95%) JIRA
3 308 (4.95%) Jenkins
4 238 (3.83%) GitLab
5 92 (1.48%) Selenium
6 60 (0.96%) Postman
7 50 (0.80%) Cucumber
7 50 (0.80%) MLflow
8 47 (0.76%) JMeter
9 45 (0.72%) JUnit
10 40 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 36 (0.58%) SonarQube
12 31 (0.50%) Artifactory
13 28 (0.45%) Cypress.io
14 25 (0.40%) Maven
14 25 (0.40%) Visual Studio
15 24 (0.39%) Gatling
15 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
16 21 (0.34%) Bitbucket
16 21 (0.34%) TestRail
General
1 1,573 (25.30%) Social Skills
2 1,182 (19.01%) Finance
3 633 (10.18%) Public Sector
4 563 (9.05%) Analytical Skills
5 364 (5.85%) Banking
6 173 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
7 144 (2.32%) Legal
8 95 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 95 (1.53%) Retail
9 85 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
10 72 (1.16%) Financial Institution
11 63 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
11 63 (1.01%) Investment Banking
12 62 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
13 61 (0.98%) Marketing
14 60 (0.96%) Front Office
15 57 (0.92%) Law
16 50 (0.80%) Telecoms
17 41 (0.66%) Military
18 38 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,055 (16.97%) Architect
2 754 (12.13%) Senior
3 749 (12.05%) Developer
4 578 (9.30%) Azure Engineer
5 532 (8.56%) Data Engineer
6 447 (7.19%) Lead
7 385 (6.19%) Analyst
8 319 (5.13%) DevOps Engineer
9 284 (4.57%) Solutions Architect
10 258 (4.15%) Consultant
11 205 (3.30%) Cloud Engineer
11 205 (3.30%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 166 (2.67%) Azure Architect
13 161 (2.59%) Security Engineer
14 152 (2.44%) Data Architect
15 149 (2.40%) Platform Engineer
16 143 (2.30%) Technical Architect
17 135 (2.17%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 133 (2.14%) Business Analyst
18 133 (2.14%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (7.54%) .NET
2 398 (6.40%) REST
3 253 (4.07%) React
4 236 (3.80%) Kafka
5 229 (3.68%) PySpark
6 185 (2.98%) Node.js
7 181 (2.91%) RESTful
8 169 (2.72%) OAuth
9 164 (2.64%) LDAP
9 164 (2.64%) Spring
10 152 (2.44%) AngularJS
11 133 (2.14%) Spring Boot
12 122 (1.96%) Middleware
12 122 (1.96%) SOAP
13 121 (1.95%) JSON
14 113 (1.82%) SAML
15 109 (1.75%) OpenID
16 108 (1.74%) HTML
17 95 (1.53%) .NET Framework
17 95 (1.53%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 611 (9.83%) Cloud Native
2 252 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 212 (3.41%) Product Ownership
4 183 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 174 (2.80%) Data Centre
6 158 (2.54%) Legacy Systems
7 144 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
8 141 (2.27%) Security Posture
9 139 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
10 131 (2.11%) Public Cloud
11 121 (1.95%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.42%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.35%) Replication
14 69 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
15 65 (1.05%) Management Information System
16 59 (0.95%) PKI
17 57 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
18 55 (0.88%) Low-Code
19 51 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
19 51 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 707 (11.37%) Windows
2 318 (5.11%) Linux
3 207 (3.33%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.06%) Unix
6 61 (0.98%) Mac OS
7 60 (0.96%) Apple iOS
8 56 (0.90%) VMS
9 48 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 40 (0.64%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 9 (0.14%) Debian
16 8 (0.13%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.096%) AIX
18 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,307 (37.10%) DevOps
2 1,910 (30.72%) CI/CD
3 1,431 (23.01%) Agile
4 924 (14.86%) Analytics
5 898 (14.44%) Problem-Solving
6 889 (14.30%) Infrastructure as Code
7 880 (14.15%) AI
8 864 (13.90%) Migration
9 722 (11.61%) Data Modelling
10 630 (10.13%) Stakeholder Management
11 617 (9.92%) Data Pipeline
12 607 (9.76%) Business Intelligence
13 598 (9.62%) ETL
14 584 (9.39%) Continuous Improvement
15 571 (9.18%) Containerisation
16 545 (8.76%) Roadmaps
17 532 (8.56%) Data Engineering
18 529 (8.51%) Microservices
19 499 (8.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 452 (7.27%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,505 (24.20%) Python
2 1,334 (21.45%) SQL
3 653 (10.50%) PowerShell
4 514 (8.27%) C#
5 507 (8.15%) Java
6 355 (5.71%) JavaScript
7 218 (3.51%) Bash
8 212 (3.41%) TypeScript
9 197 (3.17%) Bicep
10 90 (1.45%) Scala
11 84 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.25%) T-SQL
13 71 (1.14%) Go
14 46 (0.74%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.71%) PL/SQL
16 37 (0.60%) R
17 35 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 21 (0.34%) C++
18 21 (0.34%) Kotlin
19 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,574 (25.31%) Security Cleared
2 1,321 (21.24%) SC Cleared
3 443 (7.12%) Degree
4 346 (5.56%) Azure Certification
5 181 (2.91%) CISSP
6 170 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
7 147 (2.36%) Cisco Certification
8 142 (2.28%) DV Cleared
9 137 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 131 (2.11%) AWS Certification
11 105 (1.69%) CISM
12 101 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
13 70 (1.13%) CCNP
14 66 (1.06%) PMP
15 62 (1.00%) PMI Certification
16 56 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
17 54 (0.87%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 51 (0.82%) Master's Degree
19 47 (0.76%) ISTQB
20 38 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (7.22%) Data Quality
2 333 (5.36%) QA
3 314 (5.05%) GDPR
4 250 (4.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.76%) NIST
6 101 (1.62%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.30%) NCSC
8 78 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 65 (1.05%) SLA
10 61 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
10 61 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 49 (0.79%) PMO
12 47 (0.76%) GRC
13 37 (0.60%) WCAG
14 35 (0.56%) HIPAA
15 24 (0.39%) NIST 800
16 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 19 (0.31%) ISO 20022
18 17 (0.27%) PSD2
18 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 800 (12.87%) Active Directory
2 674 (10.84%) Docker
3 180 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
5 105 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
6 89 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 54 (0.87%) vSphere
8 35 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 21 (0.34%) VMware NSX
11 20 (0.32%) NFS
12 12 (0.19%) Postfix
13 11 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.096%) RACF
16 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.080%) HDFS
16 5 (0.080%) KVM
16 5 (0.080%) Snort
16 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 975 (15.68%) Terraform
2 890 (14.31%) Kubernetes
3 330 (5.31%) Microsoft Intune
4 280 (4.50%) Ansible
5 165 (2.65%) Grafana
6 141 (2.27%) Prometheus
7 131 (2.11%) Single Sign-On
8 98 (1.58%) SCCM
9 68 (1.09%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 34 (0.55%) Istio
10 34 (0.55%) Puppet
11 31 (0.50%) Argo
12 28 (0.45%) Jamf Pro
12 28 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
15 17 (0.27%) HP ALM
16 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
16 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
16 15 (0.24%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,017 (32.44%) Microsoft
2 636 (10.23%) Databricks
3 284 (4.57%) ServiceNow
4 260 (4.18%) Oracle
5 254 (4.08%) VMware
6 244 (3.92%) Google
7 187 (3.01%) SAP
8 167 (2.69%) Cisco
9 159 (2.56%) OpenAI
10 138 (2.22%) Splunk
11 134 (2.16%) CyberArk
12 112 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.59%) Foundry
14 93 (1.50%) Salesforce
15 78 (1.25%) Okta
16 70 (1.13%) Dynatrace
17 69 (1.11%) Citrix
18 68 (1.09%) BeyondTrust
19 63 (1.01%) Zscaler
20 58 (0.93%) Informatica