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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,335 3,672 4,947
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.26% 15.43% 13.54%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.61% 41.23% 42.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,519 2,576 3,653
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 £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 23 45
10th Percentile £25.38 £20.74 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £95.74 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -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 14,525 8,907 11,715
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.99% 37.42% 32.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,909 6,144 8,467
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £746
UK median daily rate £507 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.17% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 199 322
10th Percentile £15.61 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.08 £18.13 £15.86
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.50 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +54.90% +19.33% -38.76%
75th Percentile £67.50 £37.50 £38.13
90th Percentile £81.03 £68.75 £66.88
UK median hourly rate £35.96 £27.76 £21.37
% change year-on-year +29.52% +29.90% -40.64%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 3,374 £540 -1.82% 1,069
North of England +4 901 £500 +5.26% 527
South East +3 827 £503 +0.50% 614
Midlands -3 502 £493 -1.01% 267
North West +3 457 £500 +5.26% 308
South West +5 398 £528 +0.48% 277
Yorkshire +8 375 £500 +11.11% 132
West Midlands 0 365 £498 -5.24% 168
East of England +4 149 £550 -5.17% 165
East Midlands +4 127 £463 - 99
North East +3 80 £525 +5.00% 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
1 310 (4.89%) SharePoint
2 175 (2.76%) Apache Spark
3 172 (2.72%) Confluence
4 170 (2.68%) Microsoft Exchange
5 97 (1.53%) Apache
6 95 (1.50%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.39%) IIS
8 20 (0.32%) SAS
9 15 (0.24%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 13 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.19%) Appian
11 12 (0.19%) Camunda
11 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 6 (0.095%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.095%) Umbraco
Applications
1 83 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.079%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.079%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.079%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.079%) PTC Creo
8 5 (0.079%) Trello
9 4 (0.063%) Acrobat
10 3 (0.047%) Notion
10 3 (0.047%) Revit
10 3 (0.047%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.016%) InDesign
11 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.016%) Sketch
11 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 83 (1.31%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
4 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.14%) Maximo
4 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
5 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
6 7 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.095%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.079%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.079%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.079%) Shopify
8 5 (0.079%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.063%) Endur
9 4 (0.063%) Magento
9 4 (0.063%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.063%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.063%) SAP BPC
10 3 (0.047%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 2,164 (34.16%) AWS
2 1,281 (20.22%) Azure DevOps
3 1,108 (17.49%) GCP
4 803 (12.68%) Power Platform
5 801 (12.64%) Entra ID
6 672 (10.61%) Microsoft 365
7 574 (9.06%) GitHub
8 461 (7.28%) Azure Data Factory
9 329 (5.19%) GitHub Actions
10 312 (4.93%) Serverless
11 298 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 256 (4.04%) SaaS
13 232 (3.66%) Azure AKS
14 211 (3.33%) Power Automate
15 208 (3.28%) PaaS
16 206 (3.25%) Dynamics 365
17 202 (3.19%) Azure Monitor
18 175 (2.76%) IaaS
19 174 (2.75%) Azure Functions
20 172 (2.72%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 381 (6.01%) Firewall
2 279 (4.40%) DNS
3 230 (3.63%) VPN
4 211 (3.33%) Network Security
5 176 (2.78%) WAN
6 151 (2.38%) DHCP
7 118 (1.86%) LAN
8 90 (1.42%) SD-WAN
8 90 (1.42%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.20%) BGP
10 71 (1.12%) VLAN
10 71 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.03%) OSPF
12 64 (1.01%) Kerberos
13 48 (0.76%) SAN
14 40 (0.63%) Wireless
15 39 (0.62%) SSL
15 39 (0.62%) VXLAN
16 30 (0.47%) HTTP
17 29 (0.46%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 553 (8.73%) Power BI
2 381 (6.01%) SQL Server
3 321 (5.07%) Data Warehouse
4 314 (4.96%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.31%) PostgreSQL
6 194 (3.06%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.70%) NoSQL
8 144 (2.27%) Metadata
9 142 (2.24%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.52%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.40%) Big Data
12 87 (1.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (1.20%) MongoDB
14 71 (1.12%) Tableau
15 65 (1.03%) Snowflake Schema
16 59 (0.93%) Oracle Database
17 58 (0.92%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.74%) Spark SQL
19 45 (0.71%) MySQL
19 45 (0.71%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 455 (7.18%) Git
2 434 (6.85%) JIRA
3 301 (4.75%) Jenkins
4 243 (3.84%) GitLab
5 94 (1.48%) Selenium
6 63 (0.99%) Postman
7 50 (0.79%) Cucumber
8 49 (0.77%) JMeter
9 48 (0.76%) MLflow
10 47 (0.74%) JUnit
11 43 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 38 (0.60%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.47%) Cypress.io
14 29 (0.46%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.43%) Maven
16 26 (0.41%) Visual Studio
17 25 (0.39%) Gatling
18 24 (0.38%) WebDriver
19 23 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
20 22 (0.35%) TestRail
General
1 1,596 (25.19%) Social Skills
2 1,213 (19.15%) Finance
3 634 (10.01%) Public Sector
4 578 (9.12%) Analytical Skills
5 364 (5.75%) Banking
6 172 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
7 148 (2.34%) Legal
8 104 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 104 (1.64%) Retail
9 90 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
10 70 (1.10%) Financial Institution
11 68 (1.07%) Investment Banking
12 67 (1.06%) Influencing Skills
13 62 (0.98%) Front Office
14 58 (0.92%) Law
14 58 (0.92%) Marketing
14 58 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
15 46 (0.73%) Telecoms
16 42 (0.66%) Military
17 38 (0.60%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,080 (17.05%) Architect
2 764 (12.06%) Senior
3 752 (11.87%) Developer
4 578 (9.12%) Azure Engineer
5 535 (8.45%) Data Engineer
6 468 (7.39%) Lead
7 394 (6.22%) Analyst
8 321 (5.07%) DevOps Engineer
9 293 (4.63%) Solutions Architect
10 259 (4.09%) Consultant
11 220 (3.47%) Cloud Engineer
12 218 (3.44%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 169 (2.67%) Azure Architect
13 169 (2.67%) Security Engineer
14 163 (2.57%) Data Architect
15 149 (2.35%) Platform Engineer
16 143 (2.26%) Technical Architect
17 141 (2.23%) Project Manager
18 138 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 135 (2.13%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 485 (7.66%) .NET
2 412 (6.50%) REST
3 261 (4.12%) React
4 241 (3.80%) Kafka
5 233 (3.68%) PySpark
6 188 (2.97%) RESTful
7 181 (2.86%) Node.js
8 180 (2.84%) OAuth
9 166 (2.62%) LDAP
10 157 (2.48%) AngularJS
10 157 (2.48%) Spring
11 130 (2.05%) Spring Boot
12 129 (2.04%) JSON
13 122 (1.93%) SOAP
14 121 (1.91%) Middleware
15 120 (1.89%) SAML
16 114 (1.80%) OpenID
17 109 (1.72%) HTML
18 104 (1.64%) YAML
19 97 (1.53%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 623 (9.83%) Cloud Native
2 265 (4.18%) Onboarding
3 219 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 191 (3.01%) Hybrid Cloud
5 182 (2.87%) Data Centre
6 158 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 155 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
8 146 (2.30%) Security Posture
9 142 (2.24%) Enterprise Software
10 132 (2.08%) Public Cloud
11 127 (2.00%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.39%) Data Structures
13 82 (1.29%) Replication
14 71 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
15 66 (1.04%) Management Information System
16 60 (0.95%) PKI
17 57 (0.90%) Low-Code
18 56 (0.88%) Enterprise Cloud
18 56 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
19 55 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 721 (11.38%) Windows
2 317 (5.00%) Linux
3 212 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.88%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.04%) Unix
6 63 (0.99%) Mac OS
7 61 (0.96%) Apple iOS
8 55 (0.87%) VMS
9 47 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 44 (0.69%) Android
11 27 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 24 (0.38%) Ubuntu
13 21 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
17 9 (0.14%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 6 (0.095%) AIX
19 6 (0.095%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,341 (36.95%) DevOps
2 1,941 (30.64%) CI/CD
3 1,439 (22.72%) Agile
4 934 (14.74%) Analytics
5 924 (14.59%) AI
6 908 (14.33%) Infrastructure as Code
7 905 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
8 878 (13.86%) Migration
9 730 (11.52%) Data Modelling
10 652 (10.29%) Stakeholder Management
11 631 (9.96%) Data Pipeline
12 609 (9.61%) ETL
13 608 (9.60%) Business Intelligence
14 606 (9.57%) Continuous Improvement
15 561 (8.86%) Containerisation
16 556 (8.78%) Roadmaps
17 541 (8.54%) Data Engineering
18 536 (8.46%) Microservices
19 511 (8.07%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 457 (7.21%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,510 (23.84%) Python
2 1,362 (21.50%) SQL
3 662 (10.45%) PowerShell
4 516 (8.15%) C#
5 512 (8.08%) Java
6 359 (5.67%) JavaScript
7 215 (3.39%) Bash
7 215 (3.39%) TypeScript
8 202 (3.19%) Bicep
9 88 (1.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 87 (1.37%) Scala
11 77 (1.22%) T-SQL
12 70 (1.10%) Go
13 46 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
14 38 (0.60%) PL/SQL
15 37 (0.58%) R
16 35 (0.55%) Shell Script
17 22 (0.35%) C++
18 21 (0.33%) Kotlin
19 14 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,573 (24.83%) Security Cleared
2 1,320 (20.84%) SC Cleared
3 455 (7.18%) Degree
4 346 (5.46%) Azure Certification
5 185 (2.92%) CISSP
6 170 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 152 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
8 149 (2.35%) DV Cleared
9 140 (2.21%) Microsoft Certification
10 116 (1.83%) AWS Certification
11 105 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
12 103 (1.63%) CISM
13 71 (1.12%) CCNP
14 66 (1.04%) PMP
15 59 (0.93%) PMI Certification
16 57 (0.90%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 50 (0.79%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
19 46 (0.73%) ISTQB
20 39 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 454 (7.17%) Data Quality
2 333 (5.26%) QA
3 310 (4.89%) GDPR
4 245 (3.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 230 (3.63%) NIST
6 103 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.33%) NCSC
8 79 (1.25%) PCI DSS
9 77 (1.22%) SLA
10 64 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 46 (0.73%) GRC
13 45 (0.71%) PMO
14 39 (0.62%) WCAG
15 34 (0.54%) HIPAA
16 25 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 18 (0.28%) SOC 2
19 17 (0.27%) ISO 20022
20 16 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 827 (13.05%) Active Directory
2 656 (10.36%) Docker
3 182 (2.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 114 (1.80%) Virtual Desktop
5 102 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
6 92 (1.45%) Hyper-V
7 60 (0.95%) vSphere
8 41 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.43%) Firmware
10 23 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.30%) NFS
12 17 (0.27%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.13%) Varnish
15 6 (0.095%) KVM
15 6 (0.095%) RACF
16 5 (0.079%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.079%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.079%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.063%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 996 (15.72%) Terraform
2 888 (14.02%) Kubernetes
3 342 (5.40%) Microsoft Intune
4 287 (4.53%) Ansible
5 171 (2.70%) Grafana
6 145 (2.29%) Prometheus
7 138 (2.18%) Single Sign-On
8 97 (1.53%) SCCM
9 72 (1.14%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.55%) Puppet
11 32 (0.51%) Argo
12 31 (0.49%) Istio
12 31 (0.49%) Jamf Pro
13 27 (0.43%) Progress Chef
14 26 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 19 (0.30%) HAProxy
16 18 (0.28%) vCenter Server
17 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.24%) linkerd
19 14 (0.22%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,060 (32.52%) Microsoft
2 643 (10.15%) Databricks
3 287 (4.53%) ServiceNow
4 257 (4.06%) Oracle
5 252 (3.98%) VMware
6 231 (3.65%) Google
7 187 (2.95%) SAP
8 169 (2.67%) Cisco
9 163 (2.57%) OpenAI
10 141 (2.23%) Splunk
11 136 (2.15%) CyberArk
12 114 (1.80%) Palo Alto
13 99 (1.56%) Foundry
14 94 (1.48%) Salesforce
15 83 (1.31%) Okta
16 70 (1.10%) Dynatrace
17 64 (1.01%) BeyondTrust
18 63 (0.99%) Citrix
19 61 (0.96%) Zscaler
20 58 (0.92%) Red Hat