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 13 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,913 4,103 5,193
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.42% 15.03% 14.16%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.07% 40.19% 43.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,866 2,852 3,804
10th Percentile £365 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £631 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 34 49
10th Percentile £20.75 £25.30 £17.80
25th Percentile £37.25 £28.05 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +6.65% -23.03%
75th Percentile £79.75 £76.96 £61.60
90th Percentile £100.76 £100.00 £66.54
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £62.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year -8.00% +35.34% -23.03%

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 15,685 10,209 12,060
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.98% 37.41% 32.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,533 6,894 8,591
10th Percentile £325 £311 £311
25th Percentile £418 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.27% -2.19% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £717 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +2.99% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 562 269 324
10th Percentile £16.63 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.06% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.39 £46.18
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.06 £27.76 £22.30
% change year-on-year +33.50% +24.48% -36.29%

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 13 July 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 13 July 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 13 July 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 3,624 £550 - 1,276
North of England +6 1,012 £500 +3.09% 617
South East +2 862 £515 +3.00% 713
Midlands +3 609 £500 +0.50% 310
North West +7 531 £500 +0.81% 336
West Midlands +1 454 £500 -4.76% 192
South West +6 441 £539 +7.75% 346
Yorkshire +3 402 £500 +5.26% 195
East of England +2 186 £550 - 160
East Midlands +5 144 £494 +6.76% 117
North East +4 92 £525 +5.00% 96
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
1 347 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 224 (3.24%) Confluence
3 172 (2.49%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.44%) Apache Spark
5 116 (1.68%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.55%) Apache
7 37 (0.54%) SAS
8 26 (0.38%) IIS
9 19 (0.27%) CMS
10 15 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) Camunda
13 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.087%) Appian
15 6 (0.087%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.087%) Documentum
15 6 (0.087%) Mendix
16 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 105 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 66 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
3 64 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
4 36 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
5 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
8 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 5 (0.072%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
10 5 (0.072%) Trello
11 4 (0.058%) Notion
12 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.014%) Houdini
13 1 (0.014%) InDesign
13 1 (0.014%) NUKE
13 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 96 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Maximo
6 8 (0.12%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Magento
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.087%) Endur
8 6 (0.087%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.087%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.087%) Shopify
8 6 (0.087%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.058%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.058%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.058%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.058%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,457 (35.54%) AWS
2 1,407 (20.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,164 (16.84%) GCP
4 902 (13.05%) Entra ID
5 875 (12.66%) Power Platform
6 698 (10.10%) Microsoft 365
7 628 (9.08%) GitHub
8 421 (6.09%) Azure Data Factory
9 376 (5.44%) GitHub Actions
10 313 (4.53%) Serverless
11 289 (4.18%) SaaS
12 288 (4.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 246 (3.56%) Azure AKS
14 235 (3.40%) Power Automate
15 231 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
16 224 (3.24%) PaaS
17 215 (3.11%) Dynamics 365
18 207 (2.99%) PowerApps
19 198 (2.86%) Snowflake
20 189 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 435 (6.29%) Firewall
2 333 (4.82%) DNS
3 265 (3.83%) VPN
4 231 (3.34%) Network Security
5 186 (2.69%) WAN
6 174 (2.52%) DHCP
7 127 (1.84%) TCP/IP
8 120 (1.74%) LAN
9 106 (1.53%) BGP
10 95 (1.37%) SD-WAN
11 84 (1.22%) OSPF
12 75 (1.08%) VLAN
13 70 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.82%) SSL
15 55 (0.80%) Kerberos
16 54 (0.78%) SAN
17 46 (0.67%) Wireless
18 43 (0.62%) IPsec
19 41 (0.59%) VXLAN
20 38 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 611 (8.84%) Power BI
2 421 (6.09%) SQL Server
3 347 (5.02%) Data Warehouse
4 300 (4.34%) Data Lake
5 253 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
6 178 (2.57%) Azure SQL Database
7 176 (2.55%) NoSQL
8 162 (2.34%) Metadata
9 127 (1.84%) Delta Lake
10 119 (1.72%) Relational Database
11 96 (1.39%) Big Data
12 79 (1.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 73 (1.06%) MongoDB
13 73 (1.06%) Tableau
14 64 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
15 56 (0.81%) BigQuery
16 55 (0.80%) MySQL
17 53 (0.77%) Oracle Database
18 48 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
19 47 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 513 (7.42%) JIRA
2 506 (7.32%) Git
3 330 (4.77%) Jenkins
4 249 (3.60%) GitLab
5 99 (1.43%) Selenium
6 57 (0.82%) JMeter
6 57 (0.82%) JUnit
7 56 (0.81%) Postman
8 48 (0.69%) Cucumber
9 42 (0.61%) SonarQube
10 40 (0.58%) REST Assured
11 37 (0.54%) MLflow
11 37 (0.54%) Visual Studio
12 36 (0.52%) WebDriver
13 35 (0.51%) Cypress.io
14 34 (0.49%) Maven
15 27 (0.39%) Gradle
16 26 (0.38%) Gatling
16 26 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
17 25 (0.36%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,746 (25.26%) Social Skills
2 1,356 (19.62%) Finance
3 728 (10.53%) Public Sector
4 675 (9.76%) Analytical Skills
5 398 (5.76%) Banking
6 202 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
7 164 (2.37%) Legal
8 162 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 158 (2.29%) Retail
10 93 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (0.98%) Law
13 67 (0.97%) Front Office
13 67 (0.97%) Investment Banking
14 65 (0.94%) Telecoms
15 64 (0.93%) Financial Institution
16 61 (0.88%) Manufacturing
16 61 (0.88%) Marketing
17 55 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
18 49 (0.71%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,232 (17.82%) Architect
2 863 (12.48%) Senior
3 843 (12.19%) Developer
4 596 (8.62%) Azure Engineer
5 546 (7.90%) Lead
6 540 (7.81%) Data Engineer
7 425 (6.15%) Analyst
8 368 (5.32%) Solutions Architect
9 325 (4.70%) DevOps Engineer
10 285 (4.12%) Consultant
11 280 (4.05%) Cloud Engineer
12 248 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 197 (2.85%) Data Architect
14 185 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 174 (2.52%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.46%) Security Engineer
17 163 (2.36%) Technical Architect
18 159 (2.30%) Business Analyst
19 148 (2.14%) Senior Developer
20 146 (2.11%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 522 (7.55%) .NET
2 464 (6.71%) REST
3 271 (3.92%) React
4 270 (3.91%) Kafka
5 224 (3.24%) RESTful
6 221 (3.20%) PySpark
7 214 (3.10%) OAuth
8 180 (2.60%) Spring
9 171 (2.47%) Node.js
10 160 (2.31%) AngularJS
11 149 (2.16%) JSON
11 149 (2.16%) Spring Boot
12 141 (2.04%) SAML
13 131 (1.89%) LDAP
14 129 (1.87%) OpenID
15 125 (1.81%) HTML
16 116 (1.68%) .NET Framework
17 111 (1.61%) Middleware
17 111 (1.61%) OAuth2
18 110 (1.59%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 747 (10.81%) Cloud Native
2 305 (4.41%) Onboarding
3 267 (3.86%) Product Ownership
4 222 (3.21%) Distributed Systems
5 219 (3.17%) Data Centre
6 210 (3.04%) Hybrid Cloud
7 203 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
8 165 (2.39%) AI Agents
9 145 (2.10%) Security Posture
10 142 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
11 125 (1.81%) Public Cloud
12 105 (1.52%) Data Structures
13 102 (1.48%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.36%) Replication
15 89 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
16 79 (1.14%) PKI
17 78 (1.13%) Enterprise Cloud
18 72 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 65 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
20 57 (0.82%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 825 (11.93%) Windows
2 360 (5.21%) Linux
3 259 (3.75%) Windows Server
4 104 (1.50%) Windows 10
5 71 (1.03%) Unix
6 66 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.93%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.85%) Android
8 59 (0.85%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.64%) VMS
10 37 (0.54%) Ubuntu
11 24 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.16%) CentOS
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.087%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.087%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.072%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,527 (36.55%) DevOps
2 2,139 (30.94%) CI/CD
3 1,682 (24.33%) Agile
4 1,087 (15.72%) AI
5 1,041 (15.06%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,011 (14.62%) Analytics
7 1,000 (14.47%) Migration
8 951 (13.76%) Problem-Solving
9 866 (12.53%) Stakeholder Management
10 782 (11.31%) Data Modelling
11 708 (10.24%) Continuous Improvement
12 692 (10.01%) Data Pipeline
13 677 (9.79%) Roadmaps
14 658 (9.52%) Business Intelligence
15 629 (9.10%) Containerisation
16 607 (8.78%) ETL
17 606 (8.77%) Microservices
18 601 (8.69%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 578 (8.36%) Data Engineering
20 532 (7.70%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,637 (23.68%) Python
2 1,416 (20.48%) SQL
3 700 (10.13%) PowerShell
4 584 (8.45%) Java
5 528 (7.64%) C#
6 378 (5.47%) JavaScript
7 263 (3.80%) Bash
8 254 (3.67%) TypeScript
9 235 (3.40%) Bicep
10 88 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.10%) Go
13 68 (0.98%) Scala
14 48 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 37 (0.54%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.52%) R
17 31 (0.45%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 24 (0.35%) Groovy
20 22 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,723 (24.92%) Security Cleared
2 1,411 (20.41%) SC Cleared
3 512 (7.41%) Degree
4 372 (5.38%) Azure Certification
5 218 (3.15%) CISSP
6 212 (3.07%) DV Cleared
7 185 (2.68%) Microsoft Certification
8 180 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
9 175 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
10 164 (2.37%) AWS Certification
11 148 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
12 104 (1.50%) CISM
13 83 (1.20%) CCNP
14 69 (1.00%) PMP
15 66 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 63 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 56 (0.81%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.68%) ISTQB
19 45 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 481 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 355 (5.14%) QA
3 298 (4.31%) GDPR
4 247 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 245 (3.54%) NIST
6 153 (2.21%) Accessibility
7 97 (1.40%) NCSC
8 89 (1.29%) SLA
9 69 (1.00%) PCI DSS
10 66 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 60 (0.87%) WCAG
13 56 (0.81%) GRC
14 43 (0.62%) PMO
15 35 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 16 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 873 (12.63%) Active Directory
2 726 (10.50%) Docker
3 195 (2.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 129 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 127 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.30%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.88%) vSphere
8 52 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.42%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.14%) IAG
15 8 (0.12%) Varnish
16 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.087%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.072%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
18 5 (0.072%) RACF
18 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,110 (16.06%) Terraform
2 987 (14.28%) Kubernetes
3 378 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 326 (4.72%) Ansible
5 201 (2.91%) Grafana
6 168 (2.43%) Prometheus
7 148 (2.14%) Single Sign-On
8 96 (1.39%) SCCM
9 66 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.61%) Jamf Pro
10 42 (0.61%) Progress Chef
11 41 (0.59%) Argo
12 38 (0.55%) Puppet
13 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 28 (0.41%) Istio
15 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) HAProxy
17 17 (0.25%) Packer
18 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
19 14 (0.20%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,274 (32.89%) Microsoft
2 632 (9.14%) Databricks
3 348 (5.03%) ServiceNow
4 280 (4.05%) Oracle
5 273 (3.95%) VMware
6 259 (3.75%) Google
7 196 (2.84%) SAP
8 189 (2.73%) Cisco
9 169 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 148 (2.14%) Splunk
11 130 (1.88%) CyberArk
11 130 (1.88%) Palo Alto
12 129 (1.87%) Salesforce
13 121 (1.75%) Foundry
14 89 (1.29%) Dynatrace
15 88 (1.27%) Okta
16 77 (1.11%) Zscaler
17 69 (1.00%) Informatica
18 65 (0.94%) Citrix
19 62 (0.90%) Fortinet