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

6 months to
11 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,541 3,770 5,075
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.36% 15.41% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.83% 40.82% 42.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,648 2,646 3,736
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £548
Median % change year-on-year - -4.11% -2.23%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £747
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £538
% change year-on-year +0.48% -2.79% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 25 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £25.58 £17.80
25th Percentile £41.35 £27.40 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -44.44%
75th Percentile £76.31 £77.19 £61.19
90th Percentile £101.01 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -43.41%

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 14,924 9,236 11,979
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.04% 37.75% 31.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,132 6,296 8,585
10th Percentile £325 £310 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £414
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 £744
UK median daily rate £510 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 520 225 331
10th Percentile £16.00 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.78 £25.00 £21.46
Median % change year-on-year +67.12% +16.50% -38.69%
75th Percentile £68.75 £37.75 £41.63
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.25 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.31 £28.00 £21.50
% change year-on-year +33.25% +30.23% -41.89%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 3,478 £540 -1.82% 880
North of England +5 943 £500 +5.26% 487
South East +3 841 £505 +1.00% 604
Midlands +1 533 £500 +1.01% 282
North West +4 475 £500 +5.26% 288
South West +5 409 £530 +3.41% 268
West Midlands +2 391 £500 -4.76% 185
Yorkshire +8 386 £500 +8.11% 122
East of England +7 157 £550 -5.17% 178
East Midlands +3 132 £470 +1.62% 97
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 77
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
1 322 (4.92%) SharePoint
2 182 (2.78%) Confluence
3 171 (2.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 170 (2.60%) Apache Spark
5 104 (1.59%) Apache Airflow
6 97 (1.48%) Apache
7 33 (0.50%) SAS
8 23 (0.35%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 11 (0.17%) Appian
11 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
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 89 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 58 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.49%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 23 (0.35%) Chatbot
7 11 (0.17%) AutoCAD
8 8 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 7 (0.11%) Revit
9 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.061%) Acrobat
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 93 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 21 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.17%) Maximo
5 10 (0.15%) Aladdin
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%) 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%) SimCorp Dimension
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 2,262 (34.58%) AWS
2 1,322 (20.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,107 (16.92%) GCP
4 834 (12.75%) Entra ID
5 826 (12.63%) Power Platform
6 686 (10.49%) Microsoft 365
7 584 (8.93%) GitHub
8 440 (6.73%) Azure Data Factory
9 345 (5.27%) GitHub Actions
10 318 (4.86%) Serverless
11 279 (4.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 269 (4.11%) SaaS
13 238 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 218 (3.33%) Dynamics 365
14 218 (3.33%) Power Automate
15 214 (3.27%) PaaS
16 201 (3.07%) Azure Monitor
17 182 (2.78%) Snowflake
18 176 (2.69%) PowerApps
19 175 (2.68%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 396 (6.05%) Firewall
2 298 (4.56%) DNS
3 231 (3.53%) VPN
4 219 (3.35%) Network Security
5 183 (2.80%) WAN
6 163 (2.49%) DHCP
7 114 (1.74%) LAN
8 97 (1.48%) SD-WAN
9 93 (1.42%) TCP/IP
10 79 (1.21%) BGP
11 73 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
12 67 (1.02%) VLAN
13 66 (1.01%) OSPF
14 61 (0.93%) Kerberos
15 49 (0.75%) SAN
16 45 (0.69%) SSL
17 44 (0.67%) VXLAN
18 42 (0.64%) Wireless
19 32 (0.49%) Internet
19 32 (0.49%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 569 (8.70%) Power BI
2 394 (6.02%) SQL Server
3 325 (4.97%) Data Warehouse
4 316 (4.83%) Data Lake
5 219 (3.35%) PostgreSQL
6 189 (2.89%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.60%) NoSQL
8 145 (2.22%) Metadata
9 134 (2.05%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.47%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.36%) Big Data
12 87 (1.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.13%) MongoDB
13 74 (1.13%) Tableau
14 61 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
15 56 (0.86%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.83%) Oracle Database
17 46 (0.70%) Spark SQL
18 44 (0.67%) MySQL
18 44 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 456 (6.97%) Git
2 447 (6.83%) JIRA
3 293 (4.48%) Jenkins
4 243 (3.72%) GitLab
5 101 (1.54%) Selenium
6 60 (0.92%) Postman
7 54 (0.83%) JMeter
8 52 (0.79%) Cucumber
9 49 (0.75%) JUnit
10 45 (0.69%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.63%) MLflow
12 37 (0.57%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.46%) Visual Studio
13 30 (0.46%) WebDriver
14 28 (0.43%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.41%) Cypress.io
16 26 (0.40%) Maven
17 25 (0.38%) Gatling
18 23 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
19 21 (0.32%) TestRail
General
1 1,672 (25.56%) Social Skills
2 1,266 (19.35%) Finance
3 656 (10.03%) Public Sector
4 598 (9.14%) Analytical Skills
5 371 (5.67%) Banking
6 195 (2.98%) Documentation Skills
7 149 (2.28%) Legal
8 130 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 120 (1.83%) Retail
10 85 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
11 69 (1.05%) Investment Banking
12 64 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
12 64 (0.98%) Law
13 63 (0.96%) Financial Institution
13 63 (0.96%) Front Office
14 58 (0.89%) Marketing
15 55 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
16 49 (0.75%) Telecoms
17 41 (0.63%) Local Government
18 40 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,138 (17.40%) Architect
2 807 (12.34%) Senior
3 768 (11.74%) Developer
4 584 (8.93%) Azure Engineer
5 519 (7.93%) Data Engineer
6 502 (7.67%) Lead
7 404 (6.18%) Analyst
8 326 (4.98%) DevOps Engineer
8 326 (4.98%) Solutions Architect
9 264 (4.04%) Consultant
10 249 (3.81%) Cloud Engineer
11 238 (3.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 177 (2.71%) Security Engineer
13 173 (2.64%) Azure Architect
14 171 (2.61%) Data Architect
15 167 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 150 (2.29%) Business Analyst
17 149 (2.28%) Technical Architect
18 145 (2.22%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 144 (2.20%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 501 (7.66%) .NET
2 443 (6.77%) REST
3 264 (4.04%) React
4 243 (3.72%) Kafka
5 218 (3.33%) PySpark
6 198 (3.03%) RESTful
7 195 (2.98%) OAuth
8 174 (2.66%) Node.js
9 172 (2.63%) LDAP
10 164 (2.51%) Spring
11 158 (2.42%) AngularJS
12 136 (2.08%) SAML
13 134 (2.05%) Spring Boot
14 130 (1.99%) JSON
15 128 (1.96%) OpenID
16 126 (1.93%) SOAP
17 119 (1.82%) Middleware
18 117 (1.79%) HTML
19 102 (1.56%) .NET Framework
20 96 (1.47%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 668 (10.21%) Cloud Native
2 274 (4.19%) Onboarding
3 239 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 207 (3.16%) Data Centre
5 195 (2.98%) Hybrid Cloud
6 172 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
7 171 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
8 157 (2.40%) Security Posture
9 152 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
10 140 (2.14%) Public Cloud
11 136 (2.08%) AI Agents
12 90 (1.38%) Data Structures
13 83 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
14 80 (1.22%) Replication
15 75 (1.15%) Management Information System
16 65 (0.99%) Enterprise Cloud
16 65 (0.99%) PKI
17 62 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
18 60 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
19 57 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 768 (11.74%) Windows
2 317 (4.85%) Linux
3 237 (3.62%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.70%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.01%) Mac OS
6 65 (0.99%) Apple iOS
6 65 (0.99%) Unix
7 54 (0.83%) VMS
8 53 (0.81%) Android
9 52 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 27 (0.41%) Ubuntu
10 27 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
11 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
11 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
12 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
13 11 (0.17%) CentOS
14 10 (0.15%) Debian
15 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.092%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.092%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,401 (36.71%) DevOps
2 1,993 (30.47%) CI/CD
3 1,498 (22.90%) Agile
4 976 (14.92%) AI
5 959 (14.66%) Infrastructure as Code
6 953 (14.57%) Analytics
7 927 (14.17%) Migration
7 927 (14.17%) Problem-Solving
8 728 (11.13%) Data Modelling
9 724 (11.07%) Stakeholder Management
10 642 (9.82%) Data Pipeline
11 631 (9.65%) Continuous Improvement
12 620 (9.48%) Business Intelligence
13 616 (9.42%) ETL
14 608 (9.30%) Roadmaps
15 570 (8.71%) Containerisation
16 561 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 553 (8.45%) Microservices
18 534 (8.16%) Data Engineering
19 487 (7.45%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,534 (23.45%) Python
2 1,376 (21.04%) SQL
3 691 (10.56%) PowerShell
4 540 (8.26%) Java
5 529 (8.09%) C#
6 361 (5.52%) JavaScript
7 233 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 222 (3.39%) Bash
9 209 (3.20%) Bicep
10 87 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.19%) T-SQL
12 76 (1.16%) Scala
13 68 (1.04%) Go
14 42 (0.64%) Kusto Query Language
15 33 (0.50%) R
15 33 (0.50%) Shell Script
16 32 (0.49%) PL/SQL
17 25 (0.38%) Kotlin
18 22 (0.34%) C++
19 14 (0.21%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,639 (25.06%) Security Cleared
2 1,376 (21.04%) SC Cleared
3 473 (7.23%) Degree
4 358 (5.47%) Azure Certification
5 204 (3.12%) CISSP
6 175 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 160 (2.45%) DV Cleared
8 157 (2.40%) Microsoft Certification
9 156 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
10 144 (2.20%) AWS Certification
11 124 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
12 109 (1.67%) CISM
13 71 (1.09%) CCNP
14 70 (1.07%) PMP
15 63 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.92%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.70%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
19 40 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 453 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 334 (5.11%) QA
3 301 (4.60%) GDPR
4 254 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 240 (3.67%) NIST
6 116 (1.77%) Accessibility
7 90 (1.38%) NCSC
8 86 (1.31%) SLA
9 74 (1.13%) PCI DSS
10 65 (0.99%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 48 (0.73%) GRC
12 48 (0.73%) WCAG
13 43 (0.66%) PMO
14 34 (0.52%) HIPAA
15 27 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.32%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.24%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.23%) COBIT
System Software
1 849 (12.98%) Active Directory
2 666 (10.18%) Docker
3 197 (3.01%) VMware Infrastructure
4 122 (1.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 110 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
6 97 (1.48%) Hyper-V
7 64 (0.98%) 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%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
17 5 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,030 (15.75%) Terraform
2 899 (13.74%) Kubernetes
3 363 (5.55%) Microsoft Intune
4 298 (4.56%) Ansible
5 176 (2.69%) Grafana
6 152 (2.32%) Prometheus
7 144 (2.20%) Single Sign-On
8 98 (1.50%) SCCM
9 74 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
11 37 (0.57%) Progress Chef
12 34 (0.52%) Argo
12 34 (0.52%) Puppet
13 31 (0.47%) Istio
14 26 (0.40%) FortiGate
15 24 (0.37%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.24%) Packer
18 14 (0.21%) HP ALM
18 14 (0.21%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,130 (32.56%) Microsoft
2 636 (9.72%) Databricks
3 302 (4.62%) ServiceNow
4 272 (4.16%) VMware
5 250 (3.82%) Oracle
6 239 (3.65%) Google
7 187 (2.86%) SAP
8 177 (2.71%) Cisco
9 161 (2.46%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.13%) CyberArk
11 133 (2.03%) Splunk
12 125 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 110 (1.68%) Salesforce
14 109 (1.67%) Foundry
15 84 (1.28%) Okta
16 76 (1.16%) Dynatrace
17 64 (0.98%) Citrix
18 62 (0.95%) BeyondTrust
19 61 (0.93%) Zscaler
20 60 (0.92%) Red Hat