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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,239 3,746 4,940
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.35% 15.35% 13.40%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.45% 41.24% 42.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,488 2,655 3,637
10th Percentile £363 £350 £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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £741 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £535
% change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 25 47
10th Percentile £26.37 £21.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £53.28 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +43.75% +14.29% -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.48 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -39.13%

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 14,359 9,084 11,754
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.33% 37.23% 31.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,858 6,352 8,496
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £745 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 456 198 318
10th Percentile £15.97 £15.06 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £45.25 £26.45 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +71.08% +27.35% -31.90%
75th Percentile £68.07 £41.85 £32.31
90th Percentile £81.00 £72.88 £61.72
UK median hourly rate £40.64 £27.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +47.78% +30.95% -40.00%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 3,332 £535 -2.73% 1,097
North of England +4 849 £500 +5.26% 601
South East +2 818 £500 -5.93% 694
Midlands -2 514 £488 -2.50% 300
North West +3 448 £500 - 310
South West +6 385 £525 - 280
West Midlands 0 374 £500 -4.76% 169
Yorkshire +1 348 £500 +17.65% 181
East of England +3 149 £550 -5.17% 204
East Midlands +3 130 £450 -2.96% 130
North East 0 61 £525 +7.69% 111
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
1 289 (4.63%) SharePoint
2 175 (2.80%) Apache Spark
3 173 (2.77%) Microsoft Exchange
4 170 (2.72%) Confluence
5 93 (1.49%) Apache
6 83 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) IIS
8 18 (0.29%) SAS
9 13 (0.21%) Appian
9 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 13 (0.21%) Camunda
9 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
9 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 12 (0.19%) CMS
11 11 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.080%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.080%) Umbraco
Applications
1 99 (1.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.96%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.66%) MS Visio
5 35 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 20 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.080%) Acrobat
8 5 (0.080%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.064%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
11 2 (0.032%) Weka
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
Business Applications
1 93 (1.49%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.07%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 5 (0.080%) Cloudability
7 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
7 5 (0.080%) Unit4 Business World
8 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.064%) SAP MDG
8 4 (0.064%) Shopify
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Payables
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 3 (0.048%) Oracle Receivables
Cloud Services
1 2,149 (34.44%) AWS
2 1,274 (20.42%) Azure DevOps
3 1,157 (18.54%) GCP
4 806 (12.92%) Power Platform
5 771 (12.36%) Entra ID
6 660 (10.58%) Microsoft 365
7 576 (9.23%) GitHub
8 464 (7.44%) Azure Data Factory
9 327 (5.24%) GitHub Actions
10 324 (5.19%) Serverless
11 306 (4.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 255 (4.09%) SaaS
13 243 (3.89%) Azure AKS
14 228 (3.65%) Dynamics 365
15 215 (3.45%) PaaS
16 214 (3.43%) Power Automate
17 209 (3.35%) Azure Monitor
18 180 (2.89%) Azure Functions
19 175 (2.80%) Azure Logic Apps
20 174 (2.79%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 392 (6.28%) Firewall
2 269 (4.31%) DNS
3 234 (3.75%) VPN
4 210 (3.37%) Network Security
5 164 (2.63%) WAN
6 146 (2.34%) DHCP
7 116 (1.86%) LAN
8 84 (1.35%) TCP/IP
9 82 (1.31%) SD-WAN
10 78 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
11 70 (1.12%) VLAN
12 65 (1.04%) Kerberos
13 63 (1.01%) BGP
14 55 (0.88%) OSPF
15 42 (0.67%) SAN
16 41 (0.66%) Wireless
17 38 (0.61%) SSL
18 34 (0.54%) HTTP
19 29 (0.46%) Internet
19 29 (0.46%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 560 (8.98%) Power BI
2 371 (5.95%) SQL Server
3 328 (5.26%) Data Warehouse
4 311 (4.98%) Data Lake
5 209 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 202 (3.24%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.72%) NoSQL
8 148 (2.37%) Metadata
9 139 (2.23%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.55%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.44%) Big Data
12 89 (1.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 79 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 72 (1.15%) Tableau
15 67 (1.07%) Oracle Database
16 58 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.88%) BigQuery
18 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
18 46 (0.74%) Star Schema
19 43 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 462 (7.41%) Git
2 432 (6.92%) JIRA
3 302 (4.84%) Jenkins
4 232 (3.72%) GitLab
5 98 (1.57%) Selenium
6 63 (1.01%) Postman
7 53 (0.85%) Cucumber
8 52 (0.83%) JUnit
9 51 (0.82%) MLflow
10 47 (0.75%) JMeter
11 40 (0.64%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.56%) SonarQube
13 34 (0.54%) Artifactory
14 31 (0.50%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.40%) TestRail
16 24 (0.38%) Gatling
16 24 (0.38%) WebDriver
17 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.37%) Visual Studio
18 22 (0.35%) Maven
General
1 1,632 (26.16%) Social Skills
2 1,168 (18.72%) Finance
3 639 (10.24%) Public Sector
4 594 (9.52%) Analytical Skills
5 356 (5.71%) Banking
6 190 (3.05%) Documentation Skills
7 145 (2.32%) Legal
8 95 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.41%) Retail
10 87 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
12 68 (1.09%) Financial Institution
13 65 (1.04%) Marketing
14 63 (1.01%) Law
15 62 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
15 62 (0.99%) Investment Banking
16 60 (0.96%) Front Office
17 53 (0.85%) Telecoms
18 40 (0.64%) Local Government
19 38 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,035 (16.59%) Architect
2 769 (12.33%) Developer
3 754 (12.09%) Senior
4 576 (9.23%) Azure Engineer
5 530 (8.49%) Data Engineer
6 463 (7.42%) Lead
7 396 (6.35%) Analyst
8 324 (5.19%) DevOps Engineer
9 271 (4.34%) Solutions Architect
10 246 (3.94%) Consultant
11 210 (3.37%) Cloud Engineer
12 194 (3.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 162 (2.60%) Azure Architect
14 161 (2.58%) Security Engineer
15 153 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
16 139 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 138 (2.21%) Data Architect
18 137 (2.20%) Technical Architect
19 130 (2.08%) Business Analyst
20 127 (2.04%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 461 (7.39%) .NET
2 394 (6.32%) REST
3 250 (4.01%) React
4 249 (3.99%) Kafka
5 224 (3.59%) PySpark
6 197 (3.16%) Node.js
7 179 (2.87%) RESTful
8 175 (2.80%) Spring
9 170 (2.72%) OAuth
10 161 (2.58%) LDAP
11 157 (2.52%) AngularJS
12 138 (2.21%) Spring Boot
13 122 (1.96%) Middleware
14 121 (1.94%) JSON
15 118 (1.89%) SAML
16 117 (1.88%) HTML
17 115 (1.84%) SOAP
18 109 (1.75%) OpenID
19 99 (1.59%) YAML
20 95 (1.52%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 613 (9.83%) Cloud Native
2 249 (3.99%) Onboarding
3 217 (3.48%) Product Ownership
4 181 (2.90%) Hybrid Cloud
5 161 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
6 155 (2.48%) Data Centre
7 148 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
8 145 (2.32%) Security Posture
9 144 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
10 132 (2.12%) Public Cloud
11 115 (1.84%) AI Agents
12 85 (1.36%) Data Structures
12 85 (1.36%) Replication
13 71 (1.14%) Management Information System
14 67 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
15 57 (0.91%) PKI
16 56 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
17 55 (0.88%) Low-Code
18 49 (0.79%) Virtual Team
19 48 (0.77%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 697 (11.17%) Windows
2 315 (5.05%) Linux
3 206 (3.30%) Windows Server
4 109 (1.75%) Windows 10
5 64 (1.03%) Unix
6 60 (0.96%) VMS
7 56 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.75%) Apple iOS
9 46 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 33 (0.53%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 18 (0.29%) Ubuntu
14 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.13%) AIX
17 7 (0.11%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.096%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,331 (37.36%) DevOps
2 1,919 (30.76%) CI/CD
3 1,441 (23.10%) Agile
4 945 (15.15%) Analytics
5 936 (15.00%) Problem-Solving
6 885 (14.18%) AI
7 884 (14.17%) Infrastructure as Code
8 838 (13.43%) Migration
9 710 (11.38%) Data Modelling
10 622 (9.97%) Business Intelligence
11 620 (9.94%) Stakeholder Management
12 618 (9.91%) Data Pipeline
13 600 (9.62%) Continuous Improvement
14 589 (9.44%) ETL
15 584 (9.36%) Containerisation
16 543 (8.70%) Microservices
17 537 (8.61%) Data Engineering
18 527 (8.45%) Roadmaps
19 512 (8.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 471 (7.55%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,542 (24.72%) Python
2 1,363 (21.85%) SQL
3 673 (10.79%) PowerShell
4 526 (8.43%) Java
5 516 (8.27%) C#
6 368 (5.90%) JavaScript
7 224 (3.59%) Bash
8 221 (3.54%) TypeScript
9 198 (3.17%) Bicep
10 91 (1.46%) Scala
11 83 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.25%) Go
13 74 (1.19%) T-SQL
14 54 (0.87%) Kusto Query Language
14 54 (0.87%) PL/SQL
15 43 (0.69%) R
16 35 (0.56%) Shell Script
17 22 (0.35%) C++
18 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
19 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,583 (25.37%) Security Cleared
2 1,320 (21.16%) SC Cleared
3 449 (7.20%) Degree
4 353 (5.66%) Azure Certification
5 178 (2.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 174 (2.79%) CISSP
7 143 (2.29%) Cisco Certification
8 142 (2.28%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (2.15%) DV Cleared
10 124 (1.99%) AWS Certification
11 99 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
12 98 (1.57%) CISM
13 70 (1.12%) CCNP
14 62 (0.99%) PMP
15 59 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
17 53 (0.85%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.83%) ISTQB
19 50 (0.80%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 35 (0.56%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (7.13%) Data Quality
2 334 (5.35%) GDPR
2 334 (5.35%) QA
3 256 (4.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 233 (3.73%) NIST
5 93 (1.49%) Accessibility
6 81 (1.30%) PCI DSS
7 80 (1.28%) NCSC
8 63 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
9 59 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 59 (0.95%) SLA
10 51 (0.82%) PMO
11 43 (0.69%) GRC
12 34 (0.54%) HIPAA
13 29 (0.46%) WCAG
14 22 (0.35%) NIST 800
15 20 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 20 (0.32%) ISO 20022
16 17 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 16 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 809 (12.97%) Active Directory
2 691 (11.08%) Docker
3 177 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
5 103 (1.65%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 54 (0.87%) vSphere
8 34 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 19 (0.30%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.29%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.096%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.096%) RACF
14 6 (0.096%) Varnish
15 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 5 (0.080%) HDFS
15 5 (0.080%) KVM
15 5 (0.080%) Snort
Systems Management
1 994 (15.93%) Terraform
2 913 (14.63%) Kubernetes
3 339 (5.43%) Microsoft Intune
4 278 (4.46%) Ansible
5 170 (2.72%) Grafana
6 145 (2.32%) Prometheus
7 134 (2.15%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.68%) SCCM
9 65 (1.04%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.56%) Argo
11 34 (0.54%) Istio
11 34 (0.54%) Puppet
12 28 (0.45%) Progress Chef
13 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 22 (0.35%) Jamf Pro
15 20 (0.32%) vCenter Server
16 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
17 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
17 15 (0.24%) linkerd
18 14 (0.22%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,047 (32.81%) Microsoft
2 625 (10.02%) Databricks
3 276 (4.42%) ServiceNow
4 274 (4.39%) Oracle
5 264 (4.23%) Google
6 250 (4.01%) VMware
7 183 (2.93%) SAP
8 164 (2.63%) Cisco
9 160 (2.56%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.23%) Splunk
11 134 (2.15%) CyberArk
12 102 (1.63%) Foundry
13 100 (1.60%) Palo Alto
14 96 (1.54%) Salesforce
15 79 (1.27%) Okta
16 70 (1.12%) BeyondTrust
17 68 (1.09%) Citrix
18 64 (1.03%) Dynatrace
18 64 (1.03%) Informatica
19 59 (0.95%) Zscaler