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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,080 3,842 5,001
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.54% 15.78% 13.37%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.98% 41.97% 41.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,380 2,741 3,693
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -4.00%
75th Percentile £625 £640 £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 111 29 50
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £26.45 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -28.57%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £84.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -35.19%

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 14,147 9,154 12,012
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.16% 37.61% 32.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,771 6,438 8,636
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 434 185 317
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.23 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.28 £18.50 £15.85
Median hourly rate £42.69 £26.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +61.08% +27.59% -23.78%
75th Percentile £67.50 £41.97 £32.75
90th Percentile £80.76 £75.30 £59.97
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £27.43 £20.97
% change year-on-year +45.85% +30.78% -27.69%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 3,272 £538 -2.27% 1,004
North of England +3 829 £500 +5.26% 604
South East +1 770 £500 -4.76% 685
Midlands -1 507 £488 -6.25% 369
North West +2 446 £491 -1.80% 303
West Midlands 0 372 £500 -4.76% 205
South West +6 361 £500 -4.76% 291
Yorkshire +2 339 £500 +17.65% 208
East of England +8 153 £545 -9.17% 207
East Midlands 0 126 £447 -4.89% 163
North East -3 52 £525 +3.70% 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 (4.72%) SharePoint
2 182 (2.99%) Microsoft Exchange
3 170 (2.80%) Apache Spark
4 167 (2.75%) Confluence
5 96 (1.58%) Apache
6 90 (1.48%) 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 12 (0.20%) CMS
11 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) Mendix
12 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
13 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
15 5 (0.082%) BizTalk Server
15 5 (0.082%) WebLogic
Applications
1 107 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) 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%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.049%) CPLEX
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 104 (1.71%) Dynamics CRM
2 62 (1.02%) 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 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
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 FAH
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 3 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
10 3 (0.049%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 2,122 (34.90%) AWS
2 1,264 (20.79%) Azure DevOps
3 1,166 (19.18%) GCP
4 808 (13.29%) Power Platform
5 777 (12.78%) Entra ID
6 673 (11.07%) Microsoft 365
7 588 (9.67%) GitHub
8 457 (7.52%) Azure Data Factory
9 332 (5.46%) GitHub Actions
10 331 (5.44%) Serverless
11 294 (4.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 254 (4.18%) SaaS
13 239 (3.93%) Dynamics 365
14 226 (3.72%) Azure AKS
15 220 (3.62%) Azure Monitor
16 215 (3.54%) Power Automate
17 213 (3.50%) PaaS
18 194 (3.19%) Azure Functions
19 188 (3.09%) Azure Logic Apps
20 177 (2.91%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 392 (6.45%) Firewall
2 275 (4.52%) DNS
3 236 (3.88%) VPN
4 203 (3.34%) Network Security
5 154 (2.53%) WAN
6 152 (2.50%) DHCP
7 119 (1.96%) LAN
8 92 (1.51%) TCP/IP
9 75 (1.23%) VLAN
10 74 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
11 71 (1.17%) SD-WAN
12 65 (1.07%) Kerberos
13 51 (0.84%) BGP
14 45 (0.74%) OSPF
15 39 (0.64%) Wireless
16 38 (0.63%) SAN
17 37 (0.61%) SSL
18 35 (0.58%) HTTP
19 32 (0.53%) Internet
20 29 (0.48%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 561 (9.23%) Power BI
2 354 (5.82%) SQL Server
3 338 (5.56%) Data Warehouse
4 291 (4.79%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
6 209 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
7 181 (2.98%) NoSQL
8 148 (2.43%) Metadata
9 133 (2.19%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.61%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 81 (1.33%) Big Data
13 77 (1.27%) Tableau
14 76 (1.25%) MongoDB
15 60 (0.99%) Oracle Database
16 56 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.90%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.77%) MySQL
19 46 (0.76%) Spark SQL
19 46 (0.76%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 450 (7.40%) Git
2 419 (6.89%) JIRA
3 299 (4.92%) Jenkins
4 220 (3.62%) GitLab
5 105 (1.73%) Selenium
6 66 (1.09%) Postman
7 58 (0.95%) JUnit
8 56 (0.92%) Cucumber
9 51 (0.84%) JMeter
10 49 (0.81%) MLflow
11 42 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 36 (0.59%) SonarQube
13 35 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.54%) Artifactory
14 33 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
15 26 (0.43%) TestRail
16 25 (0.41%) Visual Studio
17 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 21 (0.35%) Mockito
18 21 (0.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,669 (27.45%) Social Skills
2 1,137 (18.70%) Finance
3 638 (10.49%) Public Sector
4 606 (9.97%) Analytical Skills
5 355 (5.84%) Banking
6 194 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 140 (2.30%) Legal
8 104 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.40%) Retail
10 84 (1.38%) Organisational Skills
11 80 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
12 78 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
13 67 (1.10%) Marketing
14 66 (1.09%) Financial Institution
15 65 (1.07%) Law
16 63 (1.04%) Telecoms
17 58 (0.95%) Front Office
18 56 (0.92%) Investment Banking
19 44 (0.72%) Local Government
20 35 (0.58%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,005 (16.53%) Architect
2 789 (12.98%) Developer
3 736 (12.11%) Senior
4 561 (9.23%) Azure Engineer
5 526 (8.65%) Data Engineer
6 459 (7.55%) Lead
7 383 (6.30%) Analyst
8 297 (4.88%) DevOps Engineer
9 260 (4.28%) Solutions Architect
10 249 (4.10%) Consultant
11 179 (2.94%) Cloud Engineer
12 178 (2.93%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 159 (2.62%) Platform Engineer
14 153 (2.52%) Azure Architect
15 148 (2.43%) Security Engineer
16 139 (2.29%) Senior Developer
17 133 (2.19%) Data Architect
18 127 (2.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 126 (2.07%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 123 (2.02%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 458 (7.53%) .NET
2 393 (6.46%) REST
3 264 (4.34%) React
4 250 (4.11%) Kafka
5 231 (3.80%) PySpark
6 215 (3.54%) Node.js
7 194 (3.19%) RESTful
8 184 (3.03%) Spring
9 175 (2.88%) OAuth
10 158 (2.60%) AngularJS
11 153 (2.52%) LDAP
12 146 (2.40%) Spring Boot
13 127 (2.09%) HTML
14 122 (2.01%) Middleware
15 120 (1.97%) JSON
16 116 (1.91%) SAML
17 114 (1.88%) SOAP
18 109 (1.79%) CSS
19 107 (1.76%) PyTorch
20 105 (1.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 562 (9.24%) Cloud Native
2 242 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 216 (3.55%) Product Ownership
4 174 (2.86%) Hybrid Cloud
5 155 (2.55%) Enterprise Software
6 151 (2.48%) Security Posture
7 143 (2.35%) Data Centre
7 143 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
8 136 (2.24%) Public Cloud
9 133 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
10 106 (1.74%) AI Agents
11 82 (1.35%) Data Structures
11 82 (1.35%) Replication
12 66 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
12 66 (1.09%) Management Information System
13 61 (1.00%) PKI
14 56 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
15 48 (0.79%) Low-Code
15 48 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
16 47 (0.77%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 675 (11.10%) Windows
2 312 (5.13%) Linux
3 204 (3.36%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.94%) Windows 10
5 63 (1.04%) VMS
6 55 (0.90%) Unix
7 52 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.67%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.53%) 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 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.099%) CentOS
17 5 (0.082%) AIX
17 5 (0.082%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.082%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,272 (37.37%) DevOps
2 1,855 (30.51%) CI/CD
3 1,418 (23.32%) Agile
4 977 (16.07%) Problem-Solving
5 941 (15.48%) Analytics
6 874 (14.38%) AI
7 832 (13.68%) Infrastructure as Code
8 809 (13.31%) Migration
9 696 (11.45%) Data Modelling
10 626 (10.30%) Business Intelligence
11 620 (10.20%) Stakeholder Management
12 591 (9.72%) Continuous Improvement
13 584 (9.61%) Data Pipeline
14 577 (9.49%) ETL
15 571 (9.39%) Containerisation
16 544 (8.95%) Data Engineering
17 542 (8.91%) Microservices
18 511 (8.40%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 490 (8.06%) Machine Learning
20 485 (7.98%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,552 (25.53%) Python
2 1,378 (22.66%) SQL
3 665 (10.94%) PowerShell
4 516 (8.49%) C#
5 508 (8.36%) Java
6 409 (6.73%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.83%) TypeScript
8 220 (3.62%) Bash
9 195 (3.21%) Bicep
10 96 (1.58%) Scala
11 78 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.25%) Go
13 71 (1.17%) PL/SQL
14 68 (1.12%) T-SQL
15 62 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.67%) R
17 34 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 23 (0.38%) C++
19 22 (0.36%) PHP
20 17 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,526 (25.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,265 (20.81%) SC Cleared
3 450 (7.40%) Degree
4 350 (5.76%) Azure Certification
5 189 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
6 170 (2.80%) CISSP
7 145 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
8 125 (2.06%) Cisco Certification
9 122 (2.01%) DV Cleared
10 114 (1.88%) AWS Certification
11 100 (1.64%) CISM
12 96 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
13 68 (1.12%) CCNP
14 60 (0.99%) Master's Degree
15 59 (0.97%) PMP
16 56 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 41 (0.67%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (7.24%) Data Quality
2 349 (5.74%) GDPR
3 325 (5.35%) QA
4 261 (4.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 230 (3.78%) NIST
6 95 (1.56%) Accessibility
7 85 (1.40%) NCSC
8 82 (1.35%) PCI DSS
9 58 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 56 (0.92%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.87%) SLA
12 47 (0.77%) PMO
13 38 (0.63%) GRC
14 33 (0.54%) WCAG
15 29 (0.48%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
18 21 (0.35%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
19 18 (0.30%) PSD2
19 18 (0.30%) SOC 2
System Software
1 816 (13.42%) Active Directory
2 698 (11.48%) Docker
3 188 (3.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 100 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
5 88 (1.45%) Hyper-V
6 85 (1.40%) Virtual Desktop
7 74 (1.22%) vSphere
8 35 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.53%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.39%) 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
1 954 (15.69%) Terraform
2 902 (14.84%) Kubernetes
3 336 (5.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 261 (4.29%) Ansible
5 158 (2.60%) Grafana
6 140 (2.30%) Single Sign-On
7 130 (2.14%) Prometheus
8 108 (1.78%) SCCM
9 71 (1.17%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.63%) Argo
11 34 (0.56%) Istio
12 29 (0.48%) vCenter Server
13 28 (0.46%) Puppet
14 26 (0.43%) Progress Chef
15 23 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
16 21 (0.35%) FortiGate
17 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
18 16 (0.26%) Nmap
18 16 (0.26%) vRealize
18 16 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,980 (32.57%) Microsoft
2 631 (10.38%) Databricks
3 288 (4.74%) Oracle
4 278 (4.57%) Google
5 269 (4.42%) ServiceNow
6 259 (4.26%) VMware
7 175 (2.88%) SAP
8 163 (2.68%) Cisco
9 159 (2.62%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.29%) Splunk
11 134 (2.20%) CyberArk
12 107 (1.76%) Foundry
13 88 (1.45%) Palo Alto
14 79 (1.30%) Okta
14 79 (1.30%) Salesforce
15 72 (1.18%) BeyondTrust
16 70 (1.15%) IBM
17 67 (1.10%) Citrix
18 63 (1.04%) Red Hat
19 60 (0.99%) Informatica