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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,968 4,088 5,222
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.47% 15.08% 14.14%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.17% 40.30% 42.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,907 2,841 3,821
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £525
% change year-on-year +0.48% -0.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 34 49
10th Percentile £23.00 £25.30 £17.80
25th Percentile £37.25 £28.05 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +27.92% -36.21%
75th Percentile £80.00 £76.96 £61.60
90th Percentile £100.85 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £62.50 £42.34
% change year-on-year -8.00% +47.61% -29.76%

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 15,776 10,143 12,150
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.03% 37.42% 32.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,603 6,846 8,652
10th Percentile £325 £311 £310
25th Percentile £416 £410 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.17% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +2.49% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 560 268 326
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +57.06% +14.32% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.39 £45.57
90th Percentile £83.88 £67.15 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.12 £27.63 £22.23
% change year-on-year +34.35% +24.32% -36.50%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 3,650 £550 - 1,030
North of England +7 1,017 £500 +4.17% 550
South East +2 872 £514 +2.80% 671
Midlands +3 615 £500 - 282
North West +8 534 £500 +1.63% 294
West Midlands +1 460 £500 -4.76% 168
South West +7 443 £538 +7.60% 217
Yorkshire +3 403 £500 +5.32% 173
East of England +4 186 £550 - 160
East Midlands +4 144 £494 +6.76% 114
North East +4 93 £525 +5.00% 92
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
1 347 (4.98%) SharePoint
2 224 (3.21%) Confluence
3 175 (2.51%) Microsoft Exchange
4 172 (2.47%) Apache Spark
5 118 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
6 112 (1.61%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 19 (0.27%) CMS
10 15 (0.22%) OpenStack
11 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) Camunda
13 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.086%) Appian
15 6 (0.086%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.086%) Documentum
15 6 (0.086%) Mendix
16 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 106 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
2 65 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
3 36 (0.52%) MS Visio
4 27 (0.39%) Chatbot
4 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
6 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
7 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.11%) Revit
9 5 (0.072%) Adobe XD
9 5 (0.072%) PTC Creo
9 5 (0.072%) Trello
10 4 (0.057%) Notion
11 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.014%) Adobe Creative Suite
12 1 (0.014%) Houdini
12 1 (0.014%) InDesign
12 1 (0.014%) Sketch
12 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 97 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 72 (1.03%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.11%) Maximo
6 8 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.10%) Magento
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.086%) Endur
8 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.086%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.086%) Shopify
8 6 (0.086%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
10 4 (0.057%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.057%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.057%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,476 (35.53%) AWS
2 1,416 (20.32%) Azure DevOps
3 1,174 (16.85%) GCP
4 907 (13.02%) Entra ID
5 882 (12.66%) Power Platform
6 703 (10.09%) Microsoft 365
7 630 (9.04%) GitHub
8 426 (6.11%) Azure Data Factory
9 377 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
10 314 (4.51%) Serverless
11 292 (4.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 291 (4.18%) SaaS
13 248 (3.56%) Azure AKS
14 235 (3.37%) Power Automate
15 232 (3.33%) Azure Monitor
16 226 (3.24%) PaaS
17 217 (3.11%) Dynamics 365
18 208 (2.99%) PowerApps
19 204 (2.93%) Snowflake
20 189 (2.71%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 437 (6.27%) Firewall
2 335 (4.81%) DNS
3 266 (3.82%) VPN
4 235 (3.37%) Network Security
5 189 (2.71%) WAN
6 175 (2.51%) DHCP
7 126 (1.81%) TCP/IP
8 119 (1.71%) LAN
9 105 (1.51%) BGP
10 98 (1.41%) SD-WAN
11 83 (1.19%) OSPF
12 75 (1.08%) VLAN
13 69 (0.99%) Wi-Fi
14 57 (0.82%) SSL
15 55 (0.79%) Kerberos
16 54 (0.77%) SAN
17 45 (0.65%) Wireless
18 42 (0.60%) IPsec
19 41 (0.59%) VXLAN
20 39 (0.56%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 616 (8.84%) Power BI
2 423 (6.07%) SQL Server
3 349 (5.01%) Data Warehouse
4 304 (4.36%) Data Lake
5 255 (3.66%) PostgreSQL
6 179 (2.57%) Azure SQL Database
6 179 (2.57%) NoSQL
7 163 (2.34%) Metadata
8 128 (1.84%) Delta Lake
9 121 (1.74%) Relational Database
10 97 (1.39%) Big Data
11 79 (1.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 76 (1.09%) MongoDB
13 74 (1.06%) Tableau
14 64 (0.92%) Snowflake Schema
15 57 (0.82%) BigQuery
16 55 (0.79%) MySQL
17 53 (0.76%) Oracle Database
18 48 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
19 47 (0.67%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 517 (7.42%) JIRA
2 510 (7.32%) Git
3 333 (4.78%) Jenkins
4 253 (3.63%) GitLab
5 102 (1.46%) Selenium
6 60 (0.86%) Postman
7 57 (0.82%) JMeter
7 57 (0.82%) JUnit
8 50 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 42 (0.60%) REST Assured
9 42 (0.60%) SonarQube
10 38 (0.55%) MLflow
11 37 (0.53%) Visual Studio
11 37 (0.53%) WebDriver
12 36 (0.52%) Cypress.io
13 33 (0.47%) Maven
14 27 (0.39%) Team Foundation Server
15 26 (0.37%) Gatling
15 26 (0.37%) Gradle
16 25 (0.36%) LoadRunner
General
1 1,758 (25.23%) Social Skills
2 1,366 (19.60%) Finance
3 733 (10.52%) Public Sector
4 679 (9.74%) Analytical Skills
5 404 (5.80%) Banking
6 202 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 164 (2.35%) Legal
8 163 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 158 (2.27%) Retail
10 95 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 75 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
12 68 (0.98%) Investment Banking
12 68 (0.98%) Law
13 67 (0.96%) Front Office
14 65 (0.93%) Telecoms
15 64 (0.92%) Financial Institution
16 62 (0.89%) Marketing
17 61 (0.88%) Manufacturing
18 55 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
19 49 (0.70%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,239 (17.78%) Architect
2 871 (12.50%) Senior
3 845 (12.13%) Developer
4 602 (8.64%) Azure Engineer
5 551 (7.91%) Data Engineer
6 547 (7.85%) Lead
7 428 (6.14%) Analyst
8 368 (5.28%) Solutions Architect
9 328 (4.71%) DevOps Engineer
10 288 (4.13%) Consultant
11 283 (4.06%) Cloud Engineer
12 248 (3.56%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 197 (2.83%) Data Architect
14 187 (2.68%) Azure Architect
15 178 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 172 (2.47%) Security Engineer
17 164 (2.35%) Technical Architect
18 160 (2.30%) Business Analyst
19 149 (2.14%) Senior Developer
20 147 (2.11%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 526 (7.55%) .NET
2 467 (6.70%) REST
3 273 (3.92%) Kafka
4 272 (3.90%) React
5 226 (3.24%) PySpark
6 223 (3.20%) RESTful
7 214 (3.07%) OAuth
8 180 (2.58%) Spring
9 173 (2.48%) Node.js
10 160 (2.30%) AngularJS
11 151 (2.17%) JSON
12 149 (2.14%) Spring Boot
13 141 (2.02%) SAML
14 131 (1.88%) LDAP
15 129 (1.85%) OpenID
16 126 (1.81%) HTML
17 116 (1.66%) .NET Framework
18 111 (1.59%) Middleware
18 111 (1.59%) OAuth2
18 111 (1.59%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 754 (10.82%) Cloud Native
2 309 (4.43%) Onboarding
3 269 (3.86%) Product Ownership
4 222 (3.19%) Distributed Systems
5 219 (3.14%) Data Centre
6 211 (3.03%) Hybrid Cloud
7 204 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
8 164 (2.35%) AI Agents
9 147 (2.11%) Security Posture
10 143 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
11 128 (1.84%) Public Cloud
12 106 (1.52%) Data Structures
13 102 (1.46%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.35%) Replication
15 90 (1.29%) Data Protection Act
16 80 (1.15%) PKI
17 78 (1.12%) Enterprise Cloud
18 72 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
19 66 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
20 58 (0.83%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 832 (11.94%) Windows
2 363 (5.21%) Linux
3 262 (3.76%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.54%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.06%) Unix
6 67 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 65 (0.93%) Mac OS
8 59 (0.85%) Android
8 59 (0.85%) Apple iOS
9 44 (0.63%) VMS
10 38 (0.55%) Ubuntu
11 24 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
13 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
13 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
14 11 (0.16%) CentOS
15 10 (0.14%) Debian
16 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.086%) Rocky
16 6 (0.086%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,540 (36.45%) DevOps
2 2,157 (30.96%) CI/CD
3 1,692 (24.28%) Agile
4 1,099 (15.77%) AI
5 1,049 (15.05%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,022 (14.67%) Analytics
7 1,009 (14.48%) Migration
8 960 (13.78%) Problem-Solving
9 868 (12.46%) Stakeholder Management
10 786 (11.28%) Data Modelling
11 716 (10.28%) Continuous Improvement
12 699 (10.03%) Data Pipeline
13 681 (9.77%) Roadmaps
14 662 (9.50%) Business Intelligence
15 635 (9.11%) Containerisation
16 613 (8.80%) ETL
17 607 (8.71%) Microservices
18 603 (8.65%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 587 (8.42%) Data Engineering
20 542 (7.78%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,653 (23.72%) Python
2 1,429 (20.51%) SQL
3 705 (10.12%) PowerShell
4 584 (8.38%) Java
5 533 (7.65%) C#
6 382 (5.48%) JavaScript
7 263 (3.77%) Bash
8 255 (3.66%) TypeScript
9 237 (3.40%) Bicep
10 89 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 77 (1.11%) Go
13 70 (1.00%) Scala
14 48 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
15 38 (0.55%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.52%) R
17 31 (0.44%) Kotlin
18 29 (0.42%) PL/SQL
19 25 (0.36%) Groovy
20 22 (0.32%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,739 (24.96%) Security Cleared
2 1,423 (20.42%) SC Cleared
3 514 (7.38%) Degree
4 373 (5.35%) Azure Certification
5 221 (3.17%) CISSP
6 214 (3.07%) DV Cleared
7 186 (2.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 183 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
9 175 (2.51%) Cisco Certification
10 164 (2.35%) AWS Certification
11 147 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
12 106 (1.52%) CISM
13 82 (1.18%) CCNP
14 70 (1.00%) PMP
15 66 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
16 64 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 56 (0.80%) Master's Degree
18 50 (0.72%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 489 (7.02%) Data Quality
2 362 (5.20%) QA
3 304 (4.36%) GDPR
4 252 (3.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 246 (3.53%) NIST
6 153 (2.20%) Accessibility
7 100 (1.44%) NCSC
8 90 (1.29%) SLA
9 70 (1.00%) PCI DSS
10 68 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
11 64 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 60 (0.86%) WCAG
13 56 (0.80%) GRC
14 42 (0.60%) PMO
15 35 (0.50%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.34%) NIST 800
17 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
18 16 (0.23%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 879 (12.61%) Active Directory
2 732 (10.51%) Docker
3 197 (2.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 129 (1.85%) Virtual Desktop
5 128 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.31%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.88%) vSphere
8 52 (0.75%) VMware ESXi
9 33 (0.47%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.42%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 17 (0.24%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 10 (0.14%) IAG
15 8 (0.11%) Varnish
16 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
17 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
18 5 (0.072%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
18 5 (0.072%) RACF
18 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,122 (16.10%) Terraform
2 997 (14.31%) Kubernetes
3 383 (5.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 327 (4.69%) Ansible
5 202 (2.90%) Grafana
6 169 (2.43%) Prometheus
7 148 (2.12%) Single Sign-On
8 97 (1.39%) SCCM
9 66 (0.95%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
11 42 (0.60%) Progress Chef
12 41 (0.59%) Argo
13 39 (0.56%) Puppet
14 33 (0.47%) FortiGate
15 28 (0.40%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) HAProxy
18 17 (0.24%) Packer
19 16 (0.23%) HP ALM
20 14 (0.20%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,288 (32.84%) Microsoft
2 646 (9.27%) Databricks
3 349 (5.01%) ServiceNow
4 281 (4.03%) Oracle
5 275 (3.95%) VMware
6 260 (3.73%) Google
7 198 (2.84%) SAP
8 189 (2.71%) Cisco
9 170 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 148 (2.12%) Splunk
11 131 (1.88%) CyberArk
12 130 (1.87%) Palo Alto
12 130 (1.87%) Salesforce
13 121 (1.74%) Foundry
14 91 (1.31%) Dynatrace
15 88 (1.26%) Okta
16 78 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 70 (1.00%) Informatica
18 66 (0.95%) Citrix
19 62 (0.89%) Fortinet