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 16 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,545 3,771 5,098
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.28% 15.27% 13.61%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.66% 40.41% 42.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,644 2,645 3,747
10th Percentile £365 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -3.57%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £743
UK median daily rate £525 £524 £535
% change year-on-year +0.19% -2.06% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 149 26 47
10th Percentile £25.30 £25.73 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.25 £27.80 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -44.44%
75th Percentile £76.75 £77.42 £60.78
90th Percentile £101.18 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £35.00
% change year-on-year +16.75% +40.71% -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 14,992 9,332 11,983
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.99% 37.79% 32.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,162 6,351 8,561
10th Percentile £325 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £748
UK median daily rate £512 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.89% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 527 233 333
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.01 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.17% +16.33% -38.21%
75th Percentile £69.10 £37.75 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.31 £28.00 £21.64
% change year-on-year +33.25% +29.39% -38.17%

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 16 June 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 16 June 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 16 June 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 3,487 £540 -1.82% 1,283
North of England +5 937 £500 +5.26% 602
South East +3 831 £505 +1.00% 701
Midlands -1 529 £500 - 351
North West +5 476 £500 +3.09% 349
South West +5 418 £528 +4.46% 375
West Midlands +2 394 £500 -4.76% 219
Yorkshire +5 379 £500 +5.26% 154
East of England +5 161 £550 -5.17% 218
East Midlands +5 125 £488 +5.41% 132
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 100
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
1 321 (4.90%) SharePoint
2 190 (2.90%) Confluence
3 168 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 163 (2.49%) Apache Spark
5 106 (1.62%) Apache Airflow
6 97 (1.48%) Apache
7 34 (0.52%) SAS
8 25 (0.38%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Appian
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 9 (0.14%) Mendix
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.12%) HCL Notes
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 90 (1.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 26 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 24 (0.37%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.11%) Revit
9 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.061%) Acrobat
11 4 (0.061%) Adobe XD
11 4 (0.061%) Notion
11 4 (0.061%) Trello
12 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.015%) InDesign
13 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
13 1 (0.015%) Sketch
13 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 94 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.17%) Maximo
6 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.11%) Shopify
9 6 (0.092%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.092%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.092%) Unit4 Business World
10 5 (0.076%) Endur
10 5 (0.076%) NEC Housing
10 5 (0.076%) Oracle EBS
10 5 (0.076%) SAP MM
10 5 (0.076%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 4 (0.061%) Magento
11 4 (0.061%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,258 (34.50%) AWS
2 1,334 (20.38%) Azure DevOps
3 1,079 (16.49%) GCP
4 849 (12.97%) Power Platform
5 830 (12.68%) Entra ID
6 676 (10.33%) Microsoft 365
7 592 (9.05%) GitHub
8 436 (6.66%) Azure Data Factory
9 348 (5.32%) GitHub Actions
10 325 (4.97%) Serverless
11 280 (4.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 262 (4.00%) SaaS
13 240 (3.67%) Azure AKS
14 221 (3.38%) Power Automate
15 220 (3.36%) Dynamics 365
16 212 (3.24%) PaaS
17 205 (3.13%) Azure Monitor
18 191 (2.92%) Snowflake
19 182 (2.78%) PowerApps
20 176 (2.69%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 393 (6.00%) Firewall
2 298 (4.55%) DNS
3 228 (3.48%) VPN
4 221 (3.38%) Network Security
5 187 (2.86%) WAN
6 163 (2.49%) DHCP
7 112 (1.71%) LAN
8 97 (1.48%) SD-WAN
9 94 (1.44%) TCP/IP
10 84 (1.28%) BGP
11 74 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
12 67 (1.02%) OSPF
13 66 (1.01%) VLAN
14 58 (0.89%) Kerberos
15 49 (0.75%) SAN
16 45 (0.69%) SSL
17 43 (0.66%) VXLAN
18 42 (0.64%) Wireless
19 36 (0.55%) Internet
20 33 (0.50%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 584 (8.92%) Power BI
2 389 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 335 (5.12%) Data Warehouse
4 323 (4.94%) Data Lake
5 225 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 183 (2.80%) Azure SQL Database
7 168 (2.57%) NoSQL
8 150 (2.29%) Metadata
9 134 (2.05%) Delta Lake
10 104 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 86 (1.31%) Big Data
12 84 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.13%) MongoDB
13 74 (1.13%) Tableau
14 64 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (0.84%) Oracle Database
16 54 (0.83%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.72%) Spark SQL
18 46 (0.70%) Star Schema
19 45 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 468 (7.15%) Git
2 452 (6.91%) JIRA
3 289 (4.42%) Jenkins
4 243 (3.71%) GitLab
5 96 (1.47%) Selenium
6 55 (0.84%) JMeter
7 54 (0.83%) Postman
8 50 (0.76%) JUnit
9 48 (0.73%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.64%) MLflow
11 40 (0.61%) REST Assured
11 40 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.50%) WebDriver
13 32 (0.49%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.44%) Cypress.io
15 28 (0.43%) Maven
16 27 (0.41%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.41%) Gatling
17 23 (0.35%) Gradle
17 23 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,660 (25.36%) Social Skills
2 1,297 (19.82%) Finance
3 653 (9.98%) Public Sector
4 601 (9.18%) Analytical Skills
5 376 (5.74%) Banking
6 195 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
7 151 (2.31%) Legal
8 138 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 127 (1.94%) Retail
10 84 (1.28%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.04%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.01%) Financial Institution
13 65 (0.99%) Law
14 63 (0.96%) Front Office
14 63 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
15 56 (0.86%) Marketing
16 55 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
17 50 (0.76%) Telecoms
18 42 (0.64%) Manufacturing
19 41 (0.63%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,137 (17.37%) Architect
2 814 (12.44%) Senior
3 777 (11.87%) Developer
4 586 (8.95%) Azure Engineer
5 522 (7.98%) Data Engineer
6 496 (7.58%) Lead
7 408 (6.23%) Analyst
8 330 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
9 327 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
10 273 (4.17%) Consultant
11 255 (3.90%) Cloud Engineer
12 235 (3.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 182 (2.78%) Data Architect
14 179 (2.73%) Azure Architect
15 178 (2.72%) Security Engineer
16 171 (2.61%) Platform Engineer
17 153 (2.34%) Business Analyst
18 146 (2.23%) Technical Architect
19 145 (2.22%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 145 (2.22%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 491 (7.50%) .NET
2 438 (6.69%) REST
3 263 (4.02%) React
4 245 (3.74%) Kafka
5 222 (3.39%) PySpark
6 201 (3.07%) RESTful
7 192 (2.93%) OAuth
8 173 (2.64%) Node.js
9 166 (2.54%) Spring
10 155 (2.37%) AngularJS
11 151 (2.31%) LDAP
12 136 (2.08%) Spring Boot
13 133 (2.03%) JSON
14 131 (2.00%) SAML
15 122 (1.86%) SOAP
16 117 (1.79%) Middleware
17 116 (1.77%) OpenID
18 113 (1.73%) HTML
19 102 (1.56%) .NET Framework
20 98 (1.50%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 679 (10.37%) Cloud Native
2 280 (4.28%) Onboarding
3 244 (3.73%) Product Ownership
4 205 (3.13%) Data Centre
5 192 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
6 180 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
7 169 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
8 155 (2.37%) Security Posture
9 145 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
10 140 (2.14%) AI Agents
11 139 (2.12%) Public Cloud
12 97 (1.48%) Data Structures
13 85 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 83 (1.27%) Replication
15 78 (1.19%) Management Information System
16 66 (1.01%) Enterprise Cloud
16 66 (1.01%) PKI
16 66 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
17 59 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
18 58 (0.89%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 771 (11.78%) Windows
2 328 (5.01%) Linux
3 237 (3.62%) Windows Server
4 106 (1.62%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.02%) Unix
6 66 (1.01%) Apple iOS
7 62 (0.95%) Mac OS
8 56 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 55 (0.84%) Android
10 49 (0.75%) VMS
11 29 (0.44%) Ubuntu
12 26 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
13 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
14 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
15 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.17%) CentOS
17 10 (0.15%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 6 (0.092%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,407 (36.78%) DevOps
2 2,007 (30.66%) CI/CD
3 1,517 (23.18%) Agile
4 1,004 (15.34%) AI
5 965 (14.74%) Infrastructure as Code
6 964 (14.73%) Analytics
7 929 (14.19%) Migration
8 918 (14.03%) Problem-Solving
9 743 (11.35%) Stakeholder Management
10 738 (11.28%) Data Modelling
11 645 (9.85%) Data Pipeline
12 636 (9.72%) Business Intelligence
12 636 (9.72%) Continuous Improvement
13 620 (9.47%) Roadmaps
14 615 (9.40%) ETL
15 579 (8.85%) Containerisation
16 555 (8.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 554 (8.46%) Microservices
18 541 (8.27%) Data Engineering
19 489 (7.47%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,549 (23.67%) Python
2 1,369 (20.92%) SQL
3 678 (10.36%) PowerShell
4 537 (8.20%) Java
5 524 (8.01%) C#
6 356 (5.44%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 218 (3.33%) Bash
9 211 (3.22%) Bicep
10 89 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.21%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.10%) Scala
13 68 (1.04%) Go
14 41 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 34 (0.52%) R
16 32 (0.49%) PL/SQL
16 32 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 27 (0.41%) Kotlin
18 21 (0.32%) C++
19 15 (0.23%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,633 (24.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,370 (20.93%) SC Cleared
3 466 (7.12%) Degree
4 362 (5.53%) Azure Certification
5 207 (3.16%) CISSP
6 170 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
7 166 (2.54%) DV Cleared
8 162 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 158 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
10 151 (2.31%) AWS Certification
11 122 (1.86%) BPSS Clearance
12 109 (1.67%) CISM
13 73 (1.12%) CCNP
14 71 (1.08%) PMP
15 65 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 43 (0.66%) Master's Degree
18 43 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
19 40 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 461 (7.04%) Data Quality
2 326 (4.98%) QA
3 302 (4.61%) GDPR
4 252 (3.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 240 (3.67%) NIST
6 120 (1.83%) Accessibility
7 88 (1.34%) NCSC
8 84 (1.28%) SLA
9 74 (1.13%) PCI DSS
10 66 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
11 65 (0.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 51 (0.78%) GRC
12 51 (0.78%) WCAG
13 40 (0.61%) PMO
14 35 (0.53%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.24%) COBIT
18 16 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 836 (12.77%) Active Directory
2 675 (10.31%) Docker
3 189 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 124 (1.89%) Virtual Desktop
5 109 (1.67%) Virtual Machines
6 93 (1.42%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.95%) vSphere
8 53 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.41%) Firmware
10 26 (0.40%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.29%) NFS
12 17 (0.26%) Postfix
13 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.092%) KVM
16 6 (0.092%) RACF
17 5 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.061%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 1,037 (15.84%) Terraform
2 904 (13.81%) Kubernetes
3 364 (5.56%) Microsoft Intune
4 298 (4.55%) Ansible
5 174 (2.66%) Grafana
6 151 (2.31%) Prometheus
7 142 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
8 94 (1.44%) SCCM
9 71 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
10 38 (0.58%) Progress Chef
11 35 (0.53%) Argo
11 35 (0.53%) Puppet
12 33 (0.50%) FortiGate
12 33 (0.50%) Istio
13 23 (0.35%) vCenter Server
14 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
15 16 (0.24%) Packer
16 15 (0.23%) linkerd
17 14 (0.21%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 2,127 (32.50%) Microsoft
2 633 (9.67%) Databricks
3 300 (4.58%) ServiceNow
4 262 (4.00%) VMware
5 247 (3.77%) Oracle
6 232 (3.54%) Google
7 188 (2.87%) SAP
8 176 (2.69%) Cisco
9 167 (2.55%) OpenAI
10 133 (2.03%) Splunk
11 130 (1.99%) CyberArk
12 125 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 111 (1.70%) Foundry
13 111 (1.70%) Salesforce
14 84 (1.28%) Okta
15 78 (1.19%) Dynatrace
16 67 (1.02%) Zscaler
17 65 (0.99%) Informatica
18 60 (0.92%) Citrix
18 60 (0.92%) Red Hat