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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,490 3,738 5,003
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.39% 15.46% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.82% 40.97% 42.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,616 2,620 3,689
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -1.79%
75th Percentile £626 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £521 £538
% change year-on-year +0.77% -3.07% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 147 24 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £25.44 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £27.24 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £42.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.29% +21.43% -44.44%
75th Percentile £73.13 £76.49 £61.19
90th Percentile £98.84 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £40.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +43.75% +14.29% -44.44%

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 14,812 9,123 11,826
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.12% 37.73% 32.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,071 6,234 8,479
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £748
UK median daily rate £510 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 511 218 328
10th Percentile £15.93 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.88 £16.05
Median hourly rate £42.69 £25.50 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +67.39% +18.83% -38.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £37.75 £41.19
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £28.21 £21.50
% change year-on-year +31.18% +31.19% -42.67%

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 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 6 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 6 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 3,451 £540 -1.82% 1,294
North of England +5 939 £500 +5.26% 642
South East +3 827 £500 - 735
Midlands +1 528 £500 +2.56% 354
North West +4 471 £500 +5.26% 368
South West +5 399 £528 +2.93% 331
Yorkshire +7 391 £500 +8.11% 171
West Midlands +2 388 £500 -4.76% 230
East of England +4 154 £550 -5.17% 212
East Midlands +3 130 £465 +0.54% 124
North East +6 89 £525 +5.00% 103
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
1 316 (4.87%) SharePoint
2 174 (2.68%) Confluence
3 172 (2.65%) Microsoft Exchange
4 171 (2.63%) Apache Spark
5 104 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
6 97 (1.49%) Apache
7 32 (0.49%) SAS
8 23 (0.35%) IIS
9 18 (0.28%) CMS
10 15 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) Appian
12 11 (0.17%) Camunda
12 11 (0.17%) Mendix
12 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.15%) HCL Notes
14 9 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 6 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 87 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.03%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 19 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.12%) AutoCAD
7 8 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.077%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.077%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.077%) Revit
10 4 (0.062%) Acrobat
10 4 (0.062%) Notion
10 4 (0.062%) Trello
11 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.015%) InDesign
12 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.015%) Sketch
12 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 92 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 20 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.11%) Shopify
8 6 (0.092%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.092%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.077%) NEC Housing
9 5 (0.077%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.077%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.077%) SimCorp Dimension
10 4 (0.062%) Endur
10 4 (0.062%) Magento
10 4 (0.062%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.062%) R3 Corda
10 4 (0.062%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,249 (34.65%) AWS
2 1,309 (20.17%) Azure DevOps
3 1,117 (17.21%) GCP
4 828 (12.76%) Entra ID
5 817 (12.59%) Power Platform
6 690 (10.63%) Microsoft 365
7 586 (9.03%) GitHub
8 444 (6.84%) Azure Data Factory
9 344 (5.30%) GitHub Actions
10 313 (4.82%) Serverless
11 287 (4.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 265 (4.08%) SaaS
13 231 (3.56%) Azure AKS
14 219 (3.37%) PaaS
15 215 (3.31%) Dynamics 365
15 215 (3.31%) Power Automate
16 199 (3.07%) Azure Monitor
17 179 (2.76%) Snowflake
18 178 (2.74%) IaaS
19 173 (2.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 397 (6.12%) Firewall
2 295 (4.55%) DNS
3 235 (3.62%) VPN
4 219 (3.37%) Network Security
5 179 (2.76%) WAN
6 161 (2.48%) DHCP
7 115 (1.77%) LAN
8 93 (1.43%) TCP/IP
9 92 (1.42%) SD-WAN
10 79 (1.22%) BGP
11 71 (1.09%) VLAN
12 70 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
13 67 (1.03%) OSPF
14 62 (0.96%) Kerberos
15 48 (0.74%) SAN
16 43 (0.66%) VXLAN
17 40 (0.62%) SSL
18 39 (0.60%) Wireless
19 32 (0.49%) IPsec
20 31 (0.48%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 559 (8.61%) Power BI
2 392 (6.04%) SQL Server
3 325 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
4 315 (4.85%) Data Lake
5 221 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
6 189 (2.91%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 144 (2.22%) Metadata
9 137 (2.11%) Delta Lake
10 99 (1.53%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.40%) Big Data
12 86 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.16%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.14%) Tableau
15 61 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 60 (0.92%) Oracle Database
17 56 (0.86%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.72%) Spark SQL
19 46 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
20 45 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 453 (6.98%) Git
2 439 (6.76%) JIRA
3 300 (4.62%) Jenkins
4 249 (3.84%) GitLab
5 101 (1.56%) Selenium
6 61 (0.94%) Postman
7 54 (0.83%) JMeter
8 52 (0.80%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.76%) JUnit
10 43 (0.66%) REST Assured
11 42 (0.65%) MLflow
11 42 (0.65%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.46%) Artifactory
12 30 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 30 (0.46%) WebDriver
13 28 (0.43%) Visual Studio
14 27 (0.42%) Maven
15 25 (0.39%) Gatling
16 24 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,649 (25.41%) Social Skills
2 1,257 (19.37%) Finance
3 649 (10.00%) Public Sector
4 594 (9.15%) Analytical Skills
5 367 (5.65%) Banking
6 192 (2.96%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.30%) Legal
8 121 (1.86%) Retail
9 118 (1.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 87 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 70 (1.08%) Investment Banking
12 65 (1.00%) Financial Institution
13 64 (0.99%) Front Office
14 63 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
15 62 (0.96%) Law
16 56 (0.86%) Marketing
17 55 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
18 45 (0.69%) Telecoms
19 39 (0.60%) Military
20 38 (0.59%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,122 (17.29%) Architect
2 792 (12.20%) Senior
3 761 (11.73%) Developer
4 576 (8.88%) Azure Engineer
5 519 (8.00%) Data Engineer
6 497 (7.66%) Lead
7 397 (6.12%) Analyst
8 327 (5.04%) DevOps Engineer
9 316 (4.87%) Solutions Architect
10 263 (4.05%) Consultant
11 233 (3.59%) Cloud Engineer
12 230 (3.54%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 178 (2.74%) Security Engineer
14 174 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 171 (2.63%) Data Architect
16 159 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
17 146 (2.25%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 145 (2.23%) Business Analyst
18 145 (2.23%) Technical Architect
19 142 (2.19%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 498 (7.67%) .NET
2 433 (6.67%) REST
3 264 (4.07%) React
4 237 (3.65%) Kafka
5 223 (3.44%) PySpark
6 193 (2.97%) RESTful
7 189 (2.91%) OAuth
8 178 (2.74%) Node.js
9 168 (2.59%) LDAP
10 164 (2.53%) Spring
11 160 (2.47%) AngularJS
12 133 (2.05%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.02%) JSON
14 127 (1.96%) SAML
15 123 (1.90%) SOAP
16 122 (1.88%) OpenID
17 118 (1.82%) Middleware
18 113 (1.74%) HTML
19 101 (1.56%) YAML
20 98 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 660 (10.17%) Cloud Native
2 269 (4.14%) Onboarding
3 235 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 197 (3.04%) Data Centre
5 196 (3.02%) Hybrid Cloud
6 168 (2.59%) Legacy Systems
7 161 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
8 159 (2.45%) Security Posture
9 150 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
10 138 (2.13%) Public Cloud
11 127 (1.96%) AI Agents
12 87 (1.34%) Data Structures
13 84 (1.29%) Replication
14 80 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
15 74 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 65 (1.00%) PKI
17 63 (0.97%) Enterprise Cloud
18 59 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
19 57 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
20 56 (0.86%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 759 (11.69%) Windows
2 326 (5.02%) Linux
3 232 (3.57%) Windows Server
4 115 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.00%) Mac OS
5 65 (1.00%) Unix
6 61 (0.94%) Apple iOS
7 59 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 55 (0.85%) VMS
9 49 (0.76%) Android
10 27 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
13 15 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.092%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,393 (36.87%) DevOps
2 1,993 (30.71%) CI/CD
3 1,476 (22.74%) Agile
4 950 (14.64%) Analytics
5 945 (14.56%) AI
6 944 (14.55%) Infrastructure as Code
7 916 (14.11%) Migration
7 916 (14.11%) Problem-Solving
8 727 (11.20%) Data Modelling
9 703 (10.83%) Stakeholder Management
10 639 (9.85%) Data Pipeline
11 630 (9.71%) Continuous Improvement
12 615 (9.48%) Business Intelligence
13 609 (9.38%) ETL
14 605 (9.32%) Roadmaps
15 565 (8.71%) Containerisation
16 553 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 547 (8.43%) Microservices
18 537 (8.27%) Data Engineering
19 481 (7.41%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,515 (23.34%) Python
2 1,375 (21.19%) SQL
3 684 (10.54%) PowerShell
4 541 (8.34%) Java
5 520 (8.01%) C#
6 359 (5.53%) JavaScript
7 227 (3.50%) TypeScript
8 221 (3.41%) Bash
9 205 (3.16%) Bicep
10 82 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.20%) Scala
11 78 (1.20%) T-SQL
12 69 (1.06%) Go
13 43 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
14 38 (0.59%) Shell Script
15 34 (0.52%) PL/SQL
16 31 (0.48%) R
17 24 (0.37%) Kotlin
18 22 (0.34%) C++
19 14 (0.22%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,619 (24.95%) Security Cleared
2 1,356 (20.89%) SC Cleared
3 466 (7.18%) Degree
4 362 (5.58%) Azure Certification
5 203 (3.13%) CISSP
6 178 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
7 157 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
7 157 (2.42%) DV Cleared
8 148 (2.28%) Microsoft Certification
9 134 (2.06%) AWS Certification
10 119 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
11 109 (1.68%) CISM
12 74 (1.14%) CCNP
13 69 (1.06%) PMP
14 62 (0.96%) PMI Certification
15 60 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 49 (0.76%) Master's Degree
17 48 (0.74%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
19 39 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 453 (6.98%) Data Quality
2 337 (5.19%) QA
3 306 (4.71%) GDPR
4 252 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 237 (3.65%) NIST
6 113 (1.74%) Accessibility
7 85 (1.31%) SLA
8 82 (1.26%) NCSC
9 73 (1.12%) PCI DSS
10 67 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
11 60 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 47 (0.72%) GRC
13 46 (0.71%) WCAG
14 43 (0.66%) PMO
15 34 (0.52%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 845 (13.02%) Active Directory
2 672 (10.35%) Docker
3 195 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 116 (1.79%) Virtual Desktop
5 105 (1.62%) Virtual Machines
6 94 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.96%) vSphere
8 50 (0.77%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
9 27 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 19 (0.29%) NFS
11 17 (0.26%) Postfix
12 10 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.12%) Varnish
14 7 (0.11%) BitLocker
15 6 (0.092%) KVM
15 6 (0.092%) RACF
16 5 (0.077%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.077%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 5 (0.077%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,014 (15.62%) Terraform
2 905 (13.94%) Kubernetes
3 355 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 295 (4.55%) Ansible
5 179 (2.76%) Grafana
6 155 (2.39%) Prometheus
7 148 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
8 93 (1.43%) SCCM
9 73 (1.12%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.54%) Jamf Pro
10 35 (0.54%) Progress Chef
11 33 (0.51%) Argo
11 33 (0.51%) Puppet
12 31 (0.48%) Istio
13 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
14 24 (0.37%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
16 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
17 15 (0.23%) Packer
18 14 (0.22%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,108 (32.48%) Microsoft
2 635 (9.78%) Databricks
3 295 (4.55%) ServiceNow
4 266 (4.10%) VMware
5 253 (3.90%) Oracle
6 240 (3.70%) Google
7 189 (2.91%) SAP
8 174 (2.68%) Cisco
9 156 (2.40%) OpenAI
10 137 (2.11%) Splunk
11 136 (2.10%) CyberArk
12 123 (1.90%) Palo Alto
13 104 (1.60%) Foundry
13 104 (1.60%) Salesforce
14 89 (1.37%) Okta
15 74 (1.14%) Dynatrace
16 68 (1.05%) Citrix
17 63 (0.97%) BeyondTrust
18 62 (0.96%) Zscaler
19 61 (0.94%) Red Hat