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

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,750 3,846 5,119
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.42% 15.08% 13.79%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.03% 40.06% 42.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,752 2,665 3,753
10th Percentile £368 £350 £355
25th Percentile £432 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.82%
75th Percentile £632 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £533
% change year-on-year - -1.41% -3.18%
Number of hourly rates quoted 156 32 49
10th Percentile £25.38 £25.15 £17.80
25th Percentile £44.66 £28.60 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £49.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.75% +27.92% -36.57%
75th Percentile £79.25 £77.27 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.67 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £38.50
% change year-on-year -0.86% +50.65% -36.49%

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 15,331 9,600 12,044
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.03% 37.64% 32.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,333 6,486 8,597
10th Percentile £325 £311 £306
25th Percentile £415 £413 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.68% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £715 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £514 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.78% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 549 247 331
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.21 £17.33 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.26% +14.32% -31.89%
75th Percentile £70.00 £40.73 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.35 £69.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £28.00 £22.00
% change year-on-year +33.93% +27.27% -37.14%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 3,547 £545 -1.00% 904
North of England +7 987 £510 +7.37% 464
South East +2 842 £514 +2.80% 570
Midlands +3 585 £500 +1.63% 259
North West +7 509 £500 +1.83% 264
West Midlands +1 431 £500 -4.76% 160
South West +6 428 £530 +6.00% 214
Yorkshire +4 396 £505 +6.37% 138
East of England +5 177 £550 - 149
East Midlands +6 144 £500 +9.59% 99
North East +6 95 £525 +5.00% 69
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
1 331 (4.90%) SharePoint
2 199 (2.95%) Confluence
3 171 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 168 (2.49%) Apache Spark
5 114 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (1.56%) Apache
7 36 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.37%) IIS
9 18 (0.27%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.19%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.15%) Camunda
13 8 (0.12%) Appian
13 8 (0.12%) Mendix
13 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) HCL Notes
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.089%) ArcGIS
16 5 (0.074%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 97 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
3 60 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 35 (0.52%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 26 (0.39%) Chatbot
7 14 (0.21%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
9 8 (0.12%) Revit
10 7 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.074%) Adobe XD
11 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
12 4 (0.059%) Notion
12 4 (0.059%) Trello
13 2 (0.030%) Acrobat
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 95 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.21%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Maximo
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
7 7 (0.10%) Shopify
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.089%) Endur
8 6 (0.089%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.089%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.089%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.074%) Magento
9 5 (0.074%) SAP MM
9 5 (0.074%) Unit4 Business World
10 4 (0.059%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.059%) Ripple
10 4 (0.059%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 2,378 (35.23%) AWS
2 1,363 (20.19%) Azure DevOps
3 1,132 (16.77%) GCP
4 866 (12.83%) Entra ID
5 859 (12.73%) Power Platform
6 680 (10.07%) Microsoft 365
7 591 (8.76%) GitHub
8 428 (6.34%) Azure Data Factory
9 354 (5.24%) GitHub Actions
10 322 (4.77%) Serverless
11 281 (4.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 280 (4.15%) SaaS
13 249 (3.69%) Azure AKS
14 223 (3.30%) Azure Monitor
14 223 (3.30%) Power Automate
15 216 (3.20%) Dynamics 365
16 212 (3.14%) PaaS
17 202 (2.99%) Snowflake
18 195 (2.89%) PowerApps
19 186 (2.76%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 419 (6.21%) Firewall
2 312 (4.62%) DNS
3 250 (3.70%) VPN
4 232 (3.44%) Network Security
5 194 (2.87%) WAN
6 165 (2.44%) DHCP
7 120 (1.78%) LAN
8 107 (1.59%) TCP/IP
9 101 (1.50%) SD-WAN
10 96 (1.42%) BGP
11 76 (1.13%) OSPF
12 71 (1.05%) VLAN
13 70 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
14 58 (0.86%) Kerberos
15 53 (0.79%) SSL
16 52 (0.77%) SAN
17 43 (0.64%) Wireless
18 42 (0.62%) VXLAN
19 39 (0.58%) IPsec
20 37 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 596 (8.83%) Power BI
2 409 (6.06%) SQL Server
3 340 (5.04%) Data Warehouse
4 309 (4.58%) Data Lake
5 238 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
6 181 (2.68%) Azure SQL Database
7 177 (2.62%) NoSQL
8 159 (2.36%) Metadata
9 132 (1.96%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.73%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.36%) Big Data
12 82 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.11%) MongoDB
14 74 (1.10%) Tableau
15 65 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.84%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.80%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.76%) MySQL
19 46 (0.68%) Amazon RDS
20 44 (0.65%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 482 (7.14%) Git
2 481 (7.13%) JIRA
3 311 (4.61%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.66%) GitLab
5 101 (1.50%) Selenium
6 58 (0.86%) Postman
7 57 (0.84%) JMeter
8 54 (0.80%) JUnit
9 51 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 43 (0.64%) REST Assured
11 41 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 39 (0.58%) MLflow
13 37 (0.55%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.52%) WebDriver
15 30 (0.44%) Cypress.io
16 29 (0.43%) Maven
17 26 (0.39%) Gatling
18 25 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
19 24 (0.36%) LoadRunner
20 23 (0.34%) Gradle
General
1 1,691 (25.05%) Social Skills
2 1,342 (19.88%) Finance
3 686 (10.16%) Public Sector
4 633 (9.38%) Analytical Skills
5 391 (5.79%) Banking
6 190 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 156 (2.31%) Legal
8 155 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 151 (2.24%) Retail
10 89 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 72 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
12 69 (1.02%) Investment Banking
13 67 (0.99%) Front Office
14 64 (0.95%) Financial Institution
14 64 (0.95%) Law
15 57 (0.84%) Telecoms
16 55 (0.81%) Marketing
17 54 (0.80%) Manufacturing
18 53 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
19 41 (0.61%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 1,199 (17.76%) Architect
2 840 (12.44%) Senior
3 811 (12.01%) Developer
4 593 (8.79%) Azure Engineer
5 531 (7.87%) Data Engineer
6 516 (7.64%) Lead
7 410 (6.07%) Analyst
8 349 (5.17%) Solutions Architect
9 322 (4.77%) DevOps Engineer
10 283 (4.19%) Consultant
11 269 (3.99%) Cloud Engineer
12 236 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 193 (2.86%) Data Architect
14 185 (2.74%) Azure Architect
15 176 (2.61%) Platform Engineer
16 172 (2.55%) Security Engineer
17 160 (2.37%) Technical Architect
18 155 (2.30%) Business Analyst
19 147 (2.18%) Project Manager
20 146 (2.16%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 522 (7.73%) .NET
2 445 (6.59%) REST
3 268 (3.97%) React
4 254 (3.76%) Kafka
5 225 (3.33%) PySpark
6 209 (3.10%) RESTful
7 203 (3.01%) OAuth
8 173 (2.56%) Spring
9 169 (2.50%) Node.js
10 160 (2.37%) AngularJS
11 143 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 140 (2.07%) JSON
13 139 (2.06%) LDAP
14 136 (2.01%) SAML
15 126 (1.87%) OpenID
16 115 (1.70%) HTML
17 113 (1.67%) Middleware
18 112 (1.66%) .NET Framework
19 109 (1.61%) SOAP
20 102 (1.51%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 727 (10.77%) Cloud Native
2 293 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 257 (3.81%) Product Ownership
4 215 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 208 (3.08%) Hybrid Cloud
6 207 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
7 186 (2.76%) Legacy Systems
8 151 (2.24%) AI Agents
9 150 (2.22%) Security Posture
10 142 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
11 133 (1.97%) Public Cloud
12 105 (1.56%) Data Structures
13 90 (1.33%) Management Information System
14 89 (1.32%) Replication
15 86 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
16 74 (1.10%) PKI
17 73 (1.08%) Enterprise Cloud
18 69 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
19 63 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 54 (0.80%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 794 (11.76%) Windows
2 343 (5.08%) Linux
3 251 (3.72%) Windows Server
4 99 (1.47%) Windows 10
5 73 (1.08%) Unix
6 61 (0.90%) Apple iOS
6 61 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 60 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 55 (0.81%) Android
9 48 (0.71%) VMS
10 35 (0.52%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 14 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 7 (0.10%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.089%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.089%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,461 (36.46%) DevOps
2 2,077 (30.77%) CI/CD
3 1,617 (23.96%) Agile
4 1,066 (15.79%) AI
5 1,003 (14.86%) Infrastructure as Code
6 989 (14.65%) Analytics
7 972 (14.40%) Migration
8 932 (13.81%) Problem-Solving
9 795 (11.78%) Stakeholder Management
10 758 (11.23%) Data Modelling
11 672 (9.96%) Continuous Improvement
12 668 (9.90%) Data Pipeline
13 659 (9.76%) Roadmaps
14 639 (9.47%) Business Intelligence
15 613 (9.08%) Containerisation
16 610 (9.04%) ETL
17 576 (8.53%) Microservices
18 575 (8.52%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 574 (8.50%) Data Engineering
20 511 (7.57%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,604 (23.76%) Python
2 1,393 (20.64%) SQL
3 685 (10.15%) PowerShell
4 559 (8.28%) Java
5 535 (7.93%) C#
6 368 (5.45%) JavaScript
7 249 (3.69%) TypeScript
8 239 (3.54%) Bash
9 225 (3.33%) Bicep
10 86 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 81 (1.20%) T-SQL
12 73 (1.08%) Go
13 71 (1.05%) Scala
14 41 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 38 (0.56%) R
16 33 (0.49%) Shell Script
17 29 (0.43%) Kotlin
18 28 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 21 (0.31%) C++
20 20 (0.30%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,656 (24.53%) Security Cleared
2 1,372 (20.33%) SC Cleared
3 500 (7.41%) Degree
4 362 (5.36%) Azure Certification
5 218 (3.23%) CISSP
6 182 (2.70%) DV Cleared
7 180 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
8 171 (2.53%) Cisco Certification
8 171 (2.53%) Microsoft Certification
9 158 (2.34%) AWS Certification
10 128 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
11 107 (1.59%) CISM
12 81 (1.20%) CCNP
13 68 (1.01%) PMP
14 64 (0.95%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 63 (0.93%) PMI Certification
16 50 (0.74%) Master's Degree
17 48 (0.71%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.64%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 477 (7.07%) Data Quality
2 347 (5.14%) QA
3 305 (4.52%) GDPR
4 249 (3.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 238 (3.53%) NIST
6 133 (1.97%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.39%) NCSC
8 83 (1.23%) SLA
9 72 (1.07%) PCI DSS
10 68 (1.01%) Cyber Essentials
11 63 (0.93%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 55 (0.81%) GRC
13 54 (0.80%) WCAG
14 35 (0.52%) HIPAA
14 35 (0.52%) PMO
15 29 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 24 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 845 (12.52%) Active Directory
2 696 (10.31%) Docker
3 190 (2.81%) VMware Infrastructure
4 127 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
5 126 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.33%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.87%) vSphere
8 50 (0.74%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.41%) Firmware
11 22 (0.33%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
15 7 (0.10%) IAG
16 6 (0.089%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.074%) KVM
17 5 (0.074%) RACF
17 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,085 (16.07%) Terraform
2 955 (14.15%) Kubernetes
3 373 (5.53%) Microsoft Intune
4 312 (4.62%) Ansible
5 174 (2.58%) Grafana
6 151 (2.24%) Prometheus
7 147 (2.18%) Single Sign-On
8 92 (1.36%) SCCM
9 69 (1.02%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 40 (0.59%) Progress Chef
11 39 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
12 37 (0.55%) Puppet
13 35 (0.52%) FortiGate
14 31 (0.46%) Argo
15 28 (0.41%) Istio
16 21 (0.31%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.24%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.24%) Packer
19 13 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,191 (32.46%) Microsoft
2 641 (9.50%) Databricks
3 321 (4.76%) ServiceNow
4 262 (3.88%) VMware
5 256 (3.79%) Oracle
6 248 (3.67%) Google
7 191 (2.83%) SAP
8 187 (2.77%) Cisco
9 171 (2.53%) OpenAI
10 133 (1.97%) Splunk
11 129 (1.91%) Palo Alto
12 125 (1.85%) Salesforce
13 124 (1.84%) CyberArk
14 115 (1.70%) Foundry
15 90 (1.33%) Okta
16 87 (1.29%) Dynatrace
17 74 (1.10%) Zscaler
18 68 (1.01%) Informatica
19 61 (0.90%) Citrix
20 59 (0.87%) Fortinet