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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,560 3,775 5,099
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.28% 15.26% 13.61%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.68% 40.40% 42.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,660 2,649 3,748
10th Percentile £363 £350 £363
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -3.57%
75th Percentile £630 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £744
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £535
% change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 27 47
10th Percentile £25.34 £25.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £40.39 £28.20 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -44.44%
75th Percentile £77.31 £77.35 £60.78
90th Percentile £101.01 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -42.34%

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 15,019 9,344 11,985
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.99% 37.77% 31.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,182 6,359 8,563
10th Percentile £325 £312 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £615 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £748
UK median daily rate £513 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.99% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 529 234 333
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.08 £21.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.72% +16.65% -38.21%
75th Percentile £69.44 £38.50 £43.75
90th Percentile £82.27 £70.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.31 £28.00 £21.64
% change year-on-year +33.25% +29.39% -38.17%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 3,487 £540 -1.82% 1,178
North of England +6 940 £500 +5.26% 1,002
South East +3 831 £505 +1.00% 1,129
Midlands +1 533 £500 - 596
North West +4 478 £500 +0.81% 501
South West +6 422 £528 +2.93% 543
West Midlands +1 397 £500 -4.76% 303
Yorkshire +5 380 £500 +5.26% 316
East of England +9 165 £550 -5.17% 546
East Midlands +5 126 £494 +6.76% 292
North East +5 94 £525 +5.00% 186
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
1 321 (4.89%) SharePoint
2 193 (2.94%) Confluence
3 169 (2.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 164 (2.50%) Apache Spark
5 107 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
6 98 (1.49%) Apache
7 35 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.38%) IIS
9 17 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Appian
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
12 10 (0.15%) Mendix
13 9 (0.14%) HCL Notes
14 8 (0.12%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.11%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.091%) Tomcat
Applications
1 92 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
4 33 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 26 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 25 (0.38%) Chatbot
7 12 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 9 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.076%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.076%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.061%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.061%) Notion
12 4 (0.061%) Trello
13 2 (0.030%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.015%) InDesign
14 1 (0.015%) PlantUML
14 1 (0.015%) Sketch
14 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 93 (1.42%) Dynamics CRM
2 67 (1.02%) SAP S/4HANA
3 23 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 12 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 11 (0.17%) Maximo
6 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
7 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 8 (0.12%) Payment Gateway
8 7 (0.11%) Shopify
9 6 (0.091%) SAP MDG
9 6 (0.091%) SimCorp Dimension
9 6 (0.091%) 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%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 4 (0.061%) Magento
11 4 (0.061%) Oracle FAH
11 4 (0.061%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,269 (34.59%) AWS
2 1,335 (20.35%) Azure DevOps
3 1,084 (16.52%) GCP
4 846 (12.90%) Power Platform
5 837 (12.76%) Entra ID
6 683 (10.41%) Microsoft 365
7 584 (8.90%) GitHub
8 433 (6.60%) Azure Data Factory
9 343 (5.23%) GitHub Actions
10 325 (4.95%) Serverless
11 279 (4.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 264 (4.02%) SaaS
13 242 (3.69%) Azure AKS
14 221 (3.37%) Power Automate
15 219 (3.34%) Dynamics 365
16 212 (3.23%) PaaS
17 207 (3.16%) Azure Monitor
18 189 (2.88%) Snowflake
19 182 (2.77%) PowerApps
20 177 (2.70%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 399 (6.08%) Firewall
2 297 (4.53%) DNS
3 230 (3.51%) VPN
4 218 (3.32%) Network Security
5 188 (2.87%) WAN
6 163 (2.48%) DHCP
7 113 (1.72%) LAN
8 95 (1.45%) SD-WAN
8 95 (1.45%) TCP/IP
9 86 (1.31%) BGP
10 73 (1.11%) Wi-Fi
11 68 (1.04%) OSPF
12 66 (1.01%) VLAN
13 58 (0.88%) Kerberos
14 50 (0.76%) SAN
15 46 (0.70%) SSL
16 43 (0.66%) VXLAN
16 43 (0.66%) Wireless
17 35 (0.53%) Internet
18 33 (0.50%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 583 (8.89%) Power BI
2 388 (5.91%) SQL Server
3 335 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
4 318 (4.85%) Data Lake
5 222 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 185 (2.82%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.59%) NoSQL
8 150 (2.29%) Metadata
9 132 (2.01%) Delta Lake
10 105 (1.60%) Relational Database
11 86 (1.31%) Big Data
12 84 (1.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.14%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.11%) Tableau
15 63 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (0.85%) Oracle Database
17 55 (0.84%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.72%) Spark SQL
19 46 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
20 45 (0.69%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 471 (7.18%) Git
2 458 (6.98%) JIRA
3 292 (4.45%) Jenkins
4 242 (3.69%) GitLab
5 97 (1.48%) Selenium
6 57 (0.87%) JMeter
7 56 (0.85%) Postman
8 51 (0.78%) JUnit
9 49 (0.75%) Cucumber
10 41 (0.63%) MLflow
10 41 (0.63%) REST Assured
11 40 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.50%) WebDriver
13 32 (0.49%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.44%) Cypress.io
15 28 (0.43%) Maven
16 27 (0.41%) Gatling
17 23 (0.35%) Artifactory
17 23 (0.35%) Gradle
17 23 (0.35%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,663 (25.35%) Social Skills
2 1,294 (19.73%) Finance
3 664 (10.12%) Public Sector
4 604 (9.21%) Analytical Skills
5 380 (5.79%) Banking
6 195 (2.97%) Documentation Skills
7 152 (2.32%) Legal
8 142 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 126 (1.92%) Retail
10 85 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.04%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.01%) Financial Institution
13 65 (0.99%) Law
14 64 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
15 63 (0.96%) Front Office
16 56 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.84%) Marketing
18 51 (0.78%) Telecoms
19 42 (0.64%) Local Government
19 42 (0.64%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 1,138 (17.35%) Architect
2 818 (12.47%) Senior
3 778 (11.86%) Developer
4 587 (8.95%) Azure Engineer
5 524 (7.99%) Data Engineer
6 500 (7.62%) Lead
7 407 (6.20%) Analyst
8 332 (5.06%) Solutions Architect
9 331 (5.05%) DevOps Engineer
10 273 (4.16%) Consultant
11 257 (3.92%) Cloud Engineer
12 234 (3.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 179 (2.73%) Azure Architect
13 179 (2.73%) Data Architect
14 177 (2.70%) Security Engineer
15 170 (2.59%) Platform Engineer
16 153 (2.33%) Business Analyst
17 147 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 146 (2.23%) Technical Architect
19 145 (2.21%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 490 (7.47%) .NET
2 442 (6.74%) REST
3 263 (4.01%) React
4 244 (3.72%) Kafka
5 223 (3.40%) PySpark
6 205 (3.13%) RESTful
7 194 (2.96%) OAuth
8 172 (2.62%) Node.js
9 168 (2.56%) Spring
10 154 (2.35%) AngularJS
11 151 (2.30%) LDAP
12 138 (2.10%) Spring Boot
13 134 (2.04%) JSON
14 133 (2.03%) SAML
15 121 (1.84%) SOAP
16 118 (1.80%) OpenID
17 117 (1.78%) Middleware
18 114 (1.74%) HTML
19 104 (1.59%) .NET Framework
20 98 (1.49%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 687 (10.47%) Cloud Native
2 282 (4.30%) Onboarding
3 246 (3.75%) Product Ownership
4 208 (3.17%) Data Centre
5 192 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
6 185 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
7 172 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
8 152 (2.32%) Security Posture
9 146 (2.23%) Enterprise Software
10 143 (2.18%) AI Agents
11 137 (2.09%) Public Cloud
12 99 (1.51%) Data Structures
13 85 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 83 (1.27%) Replication
15 80 (1.22%) Management Information System
16 67 (1.02%) Enterprise Cloud
16 67 (1.02%) PKI
17 66 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
18 58 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
18 58 (0.88%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 782 (11.92%) Windows
2 328 (5.00%) Linux
3 241 (3.67%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.63%) Windows 10
5 68 (1.04%) Unix
6 66 (1.01%) Apple iOS
7 62 (0.95%) Mac OS
8 56 (0.85%) Android
8 56 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 52 (0.79%) VMS
10 29 (0.44%) Ubuntu
11 26 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
12 17 (0.26%) Windows Server 2012
13 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.17%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.091%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.091%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,410 (36.74%) DevOps
2 2,010 (30.64%) CI/CD
3 1,534 (23.38%) Agile
4 1,006 (15.34%) AI
5 969 (14.77%) Infrastructure as Code
6 963 (14.68%) Analytics
7 930 (14.18%) Migration
8 920 (14.02%) Problem-Solving
9 748 (11.40%) Stakeholder Management
10 740 (11.28%) Data Modelling
11 644 (9.82%) Data Pipeline
12 639 (9.74%) Continuous Improvement
13 633 (9.65%) Business Intelligence
14 626 (9.54%) Roadmaps
15 613 (9.34%) ETL
16 583 (8.89%) Containerisation
17 560 (8.54%) Microservices
18 558 (8.51%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 546 (8.32%) Data Engineering
20 493 (7.52%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,551 (23.64%) Python
2 1,370 (20.88%) SQL
3 678 (10.34%) PowerShell
4 542 (8.26%) Java
5 524 (7.99%) C#
6 359 (5.47%) JavaScript
7 236 (3.60%) TypeScript
8 220 (3.35%) Bash
9 215 (3.28%) Bicep
10 87 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 77 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 72 (1.10%) Scala
13 70 (1.07%) Go
14 41 (0.63%) Kusto Query Language
15 34 (0.52%) R
16 33 (0.50%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.44%) PL/SQL
18 27 (0.41%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.32%) C++
20 15 (0.23%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,634 (24.91%) Security Cleared
2 1,366 (20.82%) SC Cleared
3 470 (7.16%) Degree
4 362 (5.52%) Azure Certification
5 209 (3.19%) CISSP
6 171 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
7 165 (2.52%) DV Cleared
8 164 (2.50%) Microsoft Certification
9 158 (2.41%) Cisco Certification
10 151 (2.30%) AWS Certification
11 119 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
12 110 (1.68%) CISM
13 73 (1.11%) CCNP
14 72 (1.10%) PMP
15 66 (1.01%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.91%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 49 (0.75%) ISTQB
18 45 (0.69%) Master's Degree
19 44 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 40 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (7.10%) Data Quality
2 327 (4.98%) QA
3 306 (4.66%) GDPR
4 251 (3.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 238 (3.63%) NIST
6 125 (1.91%) Accessibility
7 90 (1.37%) NCSC
8 85 (1.30%) SLA
9 74 (1.13%) PCI DSS
10 67 (1.02%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 66 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
12 53 (0.81%) WCAG
13 51 (0.78%) GRC
14 39 (0.59%) PMO
15 35 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 27 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 26 (0.40%) NIST 800
18 22 (0.34%) SOC 2
19 16 (0.24%) COBIT
19 16 (0.24%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 843 (12.85%) Active Directory
2 680 (10.37%) Docker
3 190 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 125 (1.91%) Virtual Desktop
5 111 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
6 94 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 62 (0.95%) vSphere
8 53 (0.81%) VMware ESXi
9 28 (0.43%) 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 (0.091%) KVM
16 6 (0.091%) RACF
17 5 (0.076%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.076%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.061%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 1,039 (15.84%) Terraform
2 905 (13.80%) Kubernetes
3 367 (5.59%) Microsoft Intune
4 296 (4.51%) Ansible
5 172 (2.62%) Grafana
6 148 (2.26%) Prometheus
7 142 (2.16%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.45%) SCCM
9 72 (1.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
10 38 (0.58%) Progress Chef
11 35 (0.53%) Puppet
12 34 (0.52%) FortiGate
13 32 (0.49%) Argo
14 30 (0.46%) Istio
15 23 (0.35%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.29%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.24%) Packer
18 14 (0.21%) HP ALM
19 12 (0.18%) linkerd
Vendors
1 2,134 (32.53%) Microsoft
2 633 (9.65%) Databricks
3 300 (4.57%) ServiceNow
4 260 (3.96%) VMware
5 249 (3.80%) Oracle
6 231 (3.52%) Google
7 189 (2.88%) SAP
8 177 (2.70%) Cisco
9 167 (2.55%) OpenAI
10 130 (1.98%) Splunk
11 128 (1.95%) CyberArk
12 125 (1.91%) Palo Alto
13 112 (1.71%) Salesforce
14 111 (1.69%) Foundry
15 85 (1.30%) Okta
16 79 (1.20%) Dynatrace
17 67 (1.02%) Zscaler
18 65 (0.99%) Informatica
19 59 (0.90%) Citrix
20 57 (0.87%) Red Hat