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

6 months to
25 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,136 3,803 4,946
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.39% 15.47% 13.29%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.08% 41.40% 41.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,429 2,708 3,630
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -2.78% -4.00%
75th Percentile £623 £644 £643
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 26 51
10th Percentile £25.47 £21.78 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.55
Median hourly rate £57.50 £57.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.88% +62.86% -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.06 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £90.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%

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 14,243 9,187 11,848
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.72% 37.36% 31.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,819 6,438 8,539
10th Percentile £316 £313 £285
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.19% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 437 195 324
10th Percentile £16.15 £15.18 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £18.13 £15.97
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.45 £20.99
Median % change year-on-year +70.13% +26.04% -30.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.49 £32.88
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £61.05
UK median hourly rate £41.64 £27.43 £21.00
% change year-on-year +51.83% +30.60% -38.95%

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 25 April 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 25 April 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 25 April 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 3,295 £530 -3.64% 815
North of England +3 835 £500 +5.26% 502
South East +2 799 £500 -4.76% 598
Midlands 0 495 £488 -6.70% 279
North West +2 448 £500 - 267
South West +6 374 £500 -4.76% 224
West Midlands +1 358 £500 -4.76% 168
Yorkshire +3 342 £500 +17.65% 148
East of England +4 153 £540 -6.90% 190
East Midlands +1 127 £450 -5.26% 110
North East -2 52 £525 +3.70% 89
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
1 281 (4.58%) SharePoint
2 176 (2.87%) Microsoft Exchange
3 171 (2.79%) Apache Spark
4 163 (2.66%) Confluence
5 95 (1.55%) Apache
6 90 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) SAS
8 19 (0.31%) IIS
9 14 (0.23%) Appian
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.23%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
10 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 13 (0.21%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 6 (0.098%) WebLogic
14 5 (0.081%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.081%) nginx
Applications
1 99 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 41 (0.67%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 16 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.065%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.065%) Weka
11 3 (0.049%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 99 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
3 11 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
5 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
7 4 (0.065%) Cloudability
7 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
7 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
7 4 (0.065%) SAP ERP
7 4 (0.065%) Unit4 Business World
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.049%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 2,118 (34.52%) AWS
2 1,278 (20.83%) Azure DevOps
3 1,172 (19.10%) GCP
4 797 (12.99%) Power Platform
5 772 (12.58%) Entra ID
6 643 (10.48%) Microsoft 365
7 583 (9.50%) GitHub
8 462 (7.53%) Azure Data Factory
9 333 (5.43%) Serverless
10 332 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
11 304 (4.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 245 (3.99%) SaaS
13 240 (3.91%) Azure AKS
14 234 (3.81%) Dynamics 365
15 224 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
16 212 (3.46%) Power Automate
17 209 (3.41%) PaaS
18 189 (3.08%) Azure Functions
19 186 (3.03%) Azure Logic Apps
20 174 (2.84%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 383 (6.24%) Firewall
2 265 (4.32%) DNS
3 235 (3.83%) VPN
4 207 (3.37%) Network Security
5 152 (2.48%) WAN
6 144 (2.35%) DHCP
7 116 (1.89%) LAN
8 87 (1.42%) TCP/IP
9 70 (1.14%) VLAN
10 69 (1.12%) SD-WAN
10 69 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
11 67 (1.09%) Kerberos
12 47 (0.77%) BGP
13 41 (0.67%) SAN
14 40 (0.65%) OSPF
15 37 (0.60%) SSL
16 35 (0.57%) HTTP
16 35 (0.57%) Wireless
17 31 (0.51%) Internet
18 27 (0.44%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 553 (9.01%) Power BI
2 371 (6.05%) SQL Server
3 336 (5.48%) Data Warehouse
4 300 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 212 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
6 204 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
7 177 (2.88%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.38%) Metadata
9 137 (2.23%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.55%) Relational Database
11 93 (1.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 88 (1.43%) Big Data
13 78 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 77 (1.25%) Tableau
15 65 (1.06%) Oracle Database
16 60 (0.98%) Snowflake Schema
17 56 (0.91%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.78%) Star Schema
19 47 (0.77%) MySQL
20 44 (0.72%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 449 (7.32%) Git
2 424 (6.91%) JIRA
3 301 (4.91%) Jenkins
4 221 (3.60%) GitLab
5 102 (1.66%) Selenium
6 66 (1.08%) Postman
7 57 (0.93%) JUnit
8 55 (0.90%) Cucumber
9 51 (0.83%) MLflow
10 46 (0.75%) JMeter
11 41 (0.67%) REST Assured
12 34 (0.55%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.54%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.54%) Cypress.io
14 28 (0.46%) Oracle APEX
14 28 (0.46%) TestRail
15 26 (0.42%) Bitbucket
15 26 (0.42%) Visual Studio
16 24 (0.39%) Gatling
16 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
General
1 1,655 (26.97%) Social Skills
2 1,142 (18.61%) Finance
3 638 (10.40%) Public Sector
4 604 (9.84%) Analytical Skills
5 356 (5.80%) Banking
6 196 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 140 (2.28%) Legal
8 97 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 89 (1.45%) Retail
10 82 (1.34%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
12 68 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 65 (1.06%) Financial Institution
14 63 (1.03%) Marketing
15 62 (1.01%) Law
16 61 (0.99%) Investment Banking
17 60 (0.98%) Front Office
18 54 (0.88%) Telecoms
19 44 (0.72%) Local Government
20 33 (0.54%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,011 (16.48%) Architect
2 788 (12.84%) Developer
3 736 (11.99%) Senior
4 572 (9.32%) Azure Engineer
5 530 (8.64%) Data Engineer
6 462 (7.53%) Lead
7 374 (6.10%) Analyst
8 320 (5.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 262 (4.27%) Solutions Architect
10 250 (4.07%) Consultant
11 196 (3.19%) Cloud Engineer
12 184 (3.00%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 159 (2.59%) Azure Architect
14 153 (2.49%) Security Engineer
15 152 (2.48%) Platform Engineer
16 137 (2.23%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 134 (2.18%) Data Architect
18 133 (2.17%) Technical Architect
19 130 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 129 (2.10%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 467 (7.61%) .NET
2 396 (6.45%) REST
3 260 (4.24%) React
4 246 (4.01%) Kafka
5 224 (3.65%) PySpark
6 208 (3.39%) Node.js
7 181 (2.95%) Spring
8 180 (2.93%) OAuth
9 179 (2.92%) RESTful
10 160 (2.61%) LDAP
11 158 (2.57%) AngularJS
12 145 (2.36%) Spring Boot
13 124 (2.02%) JSON
13 124 (2.02%) SAML
14 122 (1.99%) HTML
15 121 (1.97%) SOAP
16 117 (1.91%) Middleware
17 112 (1.83%) OpenID
18 100 (1.63%) PyTorch
19 99 (1.61%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 589 (9.60%) Cloud Native
2 242 (3.94%) Onboarding
3 210 (3.42%) Product Ownership
4 175 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 157 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
6 154 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
7 150 (2.44%) Security Posture
8 148 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
9 137 (2.23%) Public Cloud
10 135 (2.20%) Data Centre
11 111 (1.81%) AI Agents
12 84 (1.37%) Replication
13 83 (1.35%) Data Structures
14 68 (1.11%) Management Information System
15 66 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
16 59 (0.96%) PKI
17 55 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
18 53 (0.86%) Low-Code
19 49 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
20 45 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 681 (11.10%) Windows
2 308 (5.02%) Linux
3 215 (3.50%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 62 (1.01%) VMS
6 58 (0.95%) Unix
7 53 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 48 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 40 (0.65%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.52%) Android
11 20 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 19 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) AIX
15 8 (0.13%) CentOS
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.098%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.081%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,311 (37.66%) DevOps
2 1,884 (30.70%) CI/CD
3 1,424 (23.21%) Agile
4 947 (15.43%) Analytics
5 945 (15.40%) Problem-Solving
6 876 (14.28%) AI
7 860 (14.02%) Infrastructure as Code
8 830 (13.53%) Migration
9 706 (11.51%) Data Modelling
10 616 (10.04%) Business Intelligence
11 609 (9.93%) Data Pipeline
12 607 (9.89%) Stakeholder Management
13 593 (9.66%) Continuous Improvement
14 577 (9.40%) Containerisation
15 574 (9.35%) ETL
16 545 (8.88%) Microservices
17 539 (8.78%) Data Engineering
18 504 (8.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 498 (8.12%) Roadmaps
20 474 (7.72%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,535 (25.02%) Python
2 1,377 (22.44%) SQL
3 671 (10.94%) PowerShell
4 530 (8.64%) Java
5 526 (8.57%) C#
6 394 (6.42%) JavaScript
7 226 (3.68%) TypeScript
8 222 (3.62%) Bash
9 200 (3.26%) Bicep
10 95 (1.55%) Scala
11 77 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.24%) Go
13 73 (1.19%) T-SQL
14 66 (1.08%) PL/SQL
15 61 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
16 42 (0.68%) R
17 36 (0.59%) Shell Script
18 21 (0.34%) C++
19 20 (0.33%) Kotlin
20 19 (0.31%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,549 (25.24%) Security Cleared
2 1,296 (21.12%) SC Cleared
3 446 (7.27%) Degree
4 352 (5.74%) Azure Certification
5 186 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.66%) CISSP
7 144 (2.35%) Microsoft Certification
8 129 (2.10%) Cisco Certification
9 123 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 119 (1.94%) AWS Certification
11 101 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
12 94 (1.53%) CISM
13 68 (1.11%) CCNP
14 59 (0.96%) PMP
15 57 (0.93%) Master's Degree
16 55 (0.90%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
17 49 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 39 (0.64%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 447 (7.28%) Data Quality
2 349 (5.69%) GDPR
3 331 (5.39%) QA
4 248 (4.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 223 (3.63%) NIST
6 87 (1.42%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.29%) NCSC
7 79 (1.29%) PCI DSS
8 59 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 55 (0.90%) SLA
10 51 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
11 48 (0.78%) PMO
12 38 (0.62%) GRC
13 32 (0.52%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.47%) WCAG
15 23 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 19 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 18 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 804 (13.10%) Active Directory
2 697 (11.36%) Docker
3 175 (2.85%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 96 (1.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 58 (0.95%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 23 (0.37%) Firmware
10 22 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.29%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.098%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.098%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.098%) RACF
14 6 (0.098%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.098%) Varnish
15 5 (0.081%) HDFS
15 5 (0.081%) Snort
Systems Management
1 976 (15.91%) Terraform
2 916 (14.93%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 268 (4.37%) Ansible
5 168 (2.74%) Grafana
6 140 (2.28%) Prometheus
7 138 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
8 104 (1.69%) SCCM
9 68 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.57%) Istio
11 34 (0.55%) Argo
12 32 (0.52%) Puppet
13 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.37%) vCenter Server
15 22 (0.36%) FortiGate
16 21 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
17 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
18 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
19 15 (0.24%) linkerd
20 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,019 (32.90%) Microsoft
2 623 (10.15%) Databricks
3 291 (4.74%) Oracle
4 278 (4.53%) Google
5 267 (4.35%) ServiceNow
6 249 (4.06%) VMware
7 177 (2.88%) SAP
8 161 (2.62%) OpenAI
9 156 (2.54%) Cisco
10 136 (2.22%) Splunk
11 130 (2.12%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.71%) Foundry
13 87 (1.42%) Salesforce
14 79 (1.29%) Okta
14 79 (1.29%) Palo Alto
15 66 (1.08%) BeyondTrust
15 66 (1.08%) Citrix
16 60 (0.98%) Dynatrace
17 59 (0.96%) IBM
17 59 (0.96%) Informatica