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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,190 3,723 4,918
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.20% 15.39% 13.49%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.19% 41.40% 42.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,440 2,625 3,613
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £537
% change year-on-year - -2.17% -2.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 24 47
10th Percentile £25.61 £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% -41.67%
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% -41.93%

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 14,332 8,992 11,664
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.19% 37.16% 31.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,816 6,239 8,405
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £633 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £744
UK median daily rate £505 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -1.97% -1.97% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 471 195 324
10th Percentile £15.62 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.40 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £42.69 £25.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.39% +21.43% -35.19%
75th Percentile £67.67 £38.13 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £72.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £37.54 £27.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +36.51% +28.69% -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 15 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 15 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 15 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 3,303 £540 -1.82% 1,005
North of England +3 862 £500 +5.26% 586
South East +3 830 £500 -3.66% 658
Midlands -4 486 £488 -2.50% 299
North West +3 448 £500 - 313
South West +6 379 £525 - 279
Yorkshire +8 354 £500 +14.29% 167
West Midlands -1 353 £495 -5.71% 170
East of England +2 146 £550 -6.78% 191
East Midlands 0 123 £463 - 128
North East -2 69 £525 +10.53% 107
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
1 293 (4.73%) SharePoint
2 176 (2.84%) Confluence
3 172 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 171 (2.76%) Microsoft Exchange
5 90 (1.45%) Apache
6 84 (1.36%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) 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 11 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.081%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.081%) Umbraco
14 5 (0.081%) WebLogic
Applications
1 89 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.081%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.065%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.065%) 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 89 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 6 (0.097%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.081%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.065%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.065%) Shopify
9 4 (0.065%) SimCorp Dimension
10 3 (0.048%) Magento
10 3 (0.048%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.048%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,135 (34.49%) AWS
2 1,251 (20.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,121 (18.11%) GCP
4 792 (12.79%) Power Platform
5 765 (12.36%) Entra ID
6 644 (10.40%) Microsoft 365
7 570 (9.21%) GitHub
8 453 (7.32%) Azure Data Factory
9 323 (5.22%) GitHub Actions
10 307 (4.96%) Serverless
11 297 (4.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 247 (3.99%) SaaS
13 231 (3.73%) Azure AKS
14 221 (3.57%) Dynamics 365
15 212 (3.42%) PaaS
15 212 (3.42%) Power Automate
16 196 (3.17%) Azure Monitor
17 171 (2.76%) IaaS
17 171 (2.76%) PowerApps
18 169 (2.73%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 383 (6.19%) Firewall
2 277 (4.47%) DNS
3 232 (3.75%) VPN
4 205 (3.31%) Network Security
5 169 (2.73%) WAN
6 151 (2.44%) DHCP
7 116 (1.87%) LAN
8 89 (1.44%) TCP/IP
9 86 (1.39%) SD-WAN
10 73 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 68 (1.10%) BGP
11 68 (1.10%) VLAN
12 67 (1.08%) Kerberos
13 58 (0.94%) OSPF
14 45 (0.73%) SAN
15 40 (0.65%) Wireless
16 38 (0.61%) SSL
17 33 (0.53%) VXLAN
18 29 (0.47%) HTTP
19 28 (0.45%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 550 (8.89%) Power BI
2 371 (5.99%) SQL Server
3 322 (5.20%) Data Warehouse
4 304 (4.91%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 192 (3.10%) Azure SQL Database
7 167 (2.70%) NoSQL
8 141 (2.28%) Metadata
9 137 (2.21%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.55%) Relational Database
11 86 (1.39%) Big Data
12 85 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.20%) MongoDB
14 72 (1.16%) Tableau
15 61 (0.99%) Oracle Database
16 60 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
17 58 (0.94%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.76%) Star Schema
19 45 (0.73%) Spark SQL
20 40 (0.65%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 448 (7.24%) Git
2 435 (7.03%) JIRA
3 304 (4.91%) Jenkins
4 235 (3.80%) GitLab
5 92 (1.49%) Selenium
6 59 (0.95%) Postman
7 50 (0.81%) Cucumber
7 50 (0.81%) MLflow
8 46 (0.74%) JMeter
9 45 (0.73%) JUnit
10 40 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 37 (0.60%) 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 22 (0.36%) Bitbucket
17 21 (0.34%) ERwin
General
1 1,580 (25.53%) Social Skills
2 1,173 (18.95%) Finance
3 626 (10.11%) Public Sector
4 564 (9.11%) Analytical Skills
5 361 (5.83%) Banking
6 177 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 143 (2.31%) Legal
8 96 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 94 (1.52%) Retail
10 85 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.15%) Financial Institution
12 65 (1.05%) Investment Banking
13 63 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
13 63 (1.02%) Presentation Skills
14 61 (0.99%) Marketing
15 60 (0.97%) Front Office
16 57 (0.92%) Law
17 51 (0.82%) Telecoms
18 41 (0.66%) Military
19 37 (0.60%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,048 (16.93%) Architect
2 747 (12.07%) Senior
3 741 (11.97%) Developer
4 572 (9.24%) Azure Engineer
5 534 (8.63%) Data Engineer
6 443 (7.16%) Lead
7 389 (6.28%) Analyst
8 319 (5.15%) DevOps Engineer
9 279 (4.51%) Solutions Architect
10 255 (4.12%) Consultant
11 203 (3.28%) Cloud Engineer
12 200 (3.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 167 (2.70%) Azure Architect
14 161 (2.60%) Security Engineer
15 152 (2.46%) Data Architect
16 150 (2.42%) Platform Engineer
17 142 (2.29%) Technical Architect
18 134 (2.16%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 133 (2.15%) Business Analyst
20 131 (2.12%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 463 (7.48%) .NET
2 395 (6.38%) REST
3 248 (4.01%) React
4 238 (3.84%) Kafka
5 229 (3.70%) PySpark
6 187 (3.02%) Node.js
7 178 (2.88%) RESTful
8 169 (2.73%) OAuth
9 164 (2.65%) LDAP
9 164 (2.65%) Spring
10 150 (2.42%) AngularJS
11 132 (2.13%) Spring Boot
12 124 (2.00%) Middleware
13 121 (1.95%) JSON
13 121 (1.95%) SOAP
14 113 (1.83%) SAML
15 108 (1.74%) HTML
15 108 (1.74%) OpenID
16 96 (1.55%) YAML
17 93 (1.50%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 605 (9.77%) Cloud Native
2 251 (4.05%) Onboarding
3 207 (3.34%) Product Ownership
4 179 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
5 171 (2.76%) Data Centre
6 159 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
7 144 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
8 142 (2.29%) Security Posture
9 140 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
10 128 (2.07%) Public Cloud
11 120 (1.94%) AI Agents
12 86 (1.39%) Data Structures
12 86 (1.39%) Replication
13 69 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
14 65 (1.05%) Management Information System
15 58 (0.94%) PKI
16 57 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 55 (0.89%) Low-Code
18 51 (0.82%) Virtual Team
19 50 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 702 (11.34%) Windows
2 313 (5.06%) Linux
3 207 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.05%) Unix
6 61 (0.99%) Mac OS
7 58 (0.94%) Apple iOS
8 56 (0.90%) VMS
9 48 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 38 (0.61%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.32%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.13%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.097%) AIX
18 6 (0.097%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,302 (37.19%) DevOps
2 1,899 (30.68%) CI/CD
3 1,425 (23.02%) Agile
4 926 (14.96%) Analytics
5 897 (14.49%) Problem-Solving
6 883 (14.26%) Infrastructure as Code
7 878 (14.18%) AI
8 850 (13.73%) Migration
9 717 (11.58%) Data Modelling
10 630 (10.18%) Stakeholder Management
11 613 (9.90%) Data Pipeline
12 610 (9.85%) Business Intelligence
13 594 (9.60%) ETL
14 582 (9.40%) Continuous Improvement
15 572 (9.24%) Containerisation
16 535 (8.64%) Roadmaps
17 533 (8.61%) Data Engineering
18 529 (8.55%) Microservices
19 500 (8.08%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 456 (7.37%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,502 (24.26%) Python
2 1,335 (21.57%) SQL
3 655 (10.58%) PowerShell
4 509 (8.22%) C#
5 505 (8.16%) Java
6 353 (5.70%) JavaScript
7 220 (3.55%) Bash
8 211 (3.41%) TypeScript
9 193 (3.12%) Bicep
10 90 (1.45%) Scala
11 83 (1.34%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.24%) T-SQL
13 73 (1.18%) Go
14 47 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
15 44 (0.71%) PL/SQL
16 37 (0.60%) R
17 34 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.36%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,569 (25.35%) Security Cleared
2 1,315 (21.24%) SC Cleared
3 442 (7.14%) Degree
4 343 (5.54%) Azure Certification
5 180 (2.91%) CISSP
6 171 (2.76%) Computer Science Degree
7 145 (2.34%) Cisco Certification
8 140 (2.26%) DV Cleared
9 136 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
10 130 (2.10%) AWS Certification
11 105 (1.70%) CISM
12 100 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
13 69 (1.11%) CCNP
14 65 (1.05%) PMP
15 61 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 56 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
17 53 (0.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
18 52 (0.84%) Master's Degree
19 47 (0.76%) ISTQB
20 37 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (7.21%) Data Quality
2 328 (5.30%) QA
3 318 (5.14%) GDPR
4 252 (4.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 234 (3.78%) NIST
6 98 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.34%) NCSC
8 78 (1.26%) PCI DSS
9 64 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 63 (1.02%) SLA
11 59 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.81%) PMO
13 47 (0.76%) GRC
14 35 (0.57%) WCAG
15 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
16 24 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 22 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 19 (0.31%) ISO 20022
19 17 (0.27%) PSD2
19 17 (0.27%) SOC 2
System Software
1 803 (12.97%) Active Directory
2 674 (10.89%) Docker
3 178 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
4 107 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
5 87 (1.41%) Hyper-V
6 52 (0.84%) vSphere
7 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (0.42%) Firmware
9 20 (0.32%) NFS
10 19 (0.31%) VMware NSX
11 12 (0.19%) Postfix
12 11 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
13 7 (0.11%) Varnish
14 6 (0.097%) RACF
15 5 (0.081%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 5 (0.081%) HDFS
15 5 (0.081%) KVM
15 5 (0.081%) Snort
16 4 (0.065%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 972 (15.70%) Terraform
2 888 (14.35%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.36%) Microsoft Intune
4 280 (4.52%) Ansible
5 165 (2.67%) Grafana
6 140 (2.26%) Prometheus
7 130 (2.10%) Single Sign-On
8 98 (1.58%) SCCM
9 68 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 34 (0.55%) Istio
10 34 (0.55%) Puppet
11 32 (0.52%) 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 2,009 (32.46%) Microsoft
2 636 (10.27%) Databricks
3 283 (4.57%) ServiceNow
4 258 (4.17%) Oracle
5 250 (4.04%) VMware
6 246 (3.97%) Google
7 186 (3.00%) SAP
8 165 (2.67%) Cisco
9 158 (2.55%) OpenAI
10 136 (2.20%) Splunk
11 133 (2.15%) CyberArk
12 109 (1.76%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.60%) Foundry
14 91 (1.47%) Salesforce
15 78 (1.26%) Okta
16 69 (1.11%) Dynatrace
17 68 (1.10%) BeyondTrust
18 66 (1.07%) Citrix
19 63 (1.02%) Zscaler
20 58 (0.94%) Informatica