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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,970 4,068 5,097
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.54% 14.90% 14.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.45% 39.89% 43.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,887 2,826 3,745
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £635 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 31 40
10th Percentile £19.50 £26.00 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £28.70 £23.43
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -41.57%
75th Percentile £80.31 £76.88 £60.36
90th Percentile £101.01 £100.00 £70.22
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -41.47%

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 15,680 10,198 11,771
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.95% 37.36% 33.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,494 6,890 8,381
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £419 £409 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £519 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 266 286
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £17.88 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.27 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +56.14% +14.32% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.66 £48.11
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £36.31 £27.50 £22.00
% change year-on-year +32.04% +25.00% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 3,629 £550 - 1,347
North of England +7 1,011 £500 +1.63% 578
South East +2 895 £525 +5.00% 667
Midlands +3 629 £495 - 295
North West +8 532 £500 - 301
West Midlands +4 474 £495 -5.71% 185
South West +6 446 £534 +6.75% 245
Yorkshire +4 403 £500 +5.26% 194
East of England +7 184 £550 -4.35% 176
East Midlands +7 144 £481 +4.05% 109
North East +3 89 £525 +5.00% 94
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
1 361 (5.18%) SharePoint
2 235 (3.37%) Confluence
3 179 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 160 (2.30%) Apache Spark
5 114 (1.64%) Apache Airflow
6 103 (1.48%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.36%) IIS
9 18 (0.26%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.11%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.10%) Camunda
14 7 (0.10%) nginx
14 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.086%) Documentum
16 5 (0.072%) Jupyter
16 5 (0.072%) Oracle Workflow
16 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 107 (1.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (0.99%) Microsoft Project
3 67 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
4 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 27 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
9 9 (0.13%) Trello
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 4 (0.057%) Notion
12 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) Houdini
13 2 (0.029%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) PTC Creo
13 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) InDesign
14 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 97 (1.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (0.99%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.20%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.10%) SAP MDG
6 7 (0.10%) Shopify
7 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.072%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.072%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.072%) SimCorp Dimension
8 5 (0.072%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.072%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Adobe Campaign
9 4 (0.057%) Endur
9 4 (0.057%) Remedy AR System
Cloud Services
1 2,464 (35.35%) AWS
2 1,432 (20.55%) Azure DevOps
3 1,172 (16.81%) GCP
4 917 (13.16%) Entra ID
5 866 (12.42%) Power Platform
6 705 (10.11%) Microsoft 365
7 644 (9.24%) GitHub
8 424 (6.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 386 (5.54%) GitHub Actions
10 303 (4.35%) Serverless
11 296 (4.25%) SaaS
12 285 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 251 (3.60%) Azure AKS
14 247 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
15 231 (3.31%) Power Automate
16 226 (3.24%) PaaS
17 219 (3.14%) Dynamics 365
18 207 (2.97%) PowerApps
19 202 (2.90%) Snowflake
20 190 (2.73%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 467 (6.70%) Firewall
2 346 (4.96%) DNS
3 285 (4.09%) VPN
4 247 (3.54%) Network Security
5 184 (2.64%) DHCP
5 184 (2.64%) WAN
6 151 (2.17%) TCP/IP
7 119 (1.71%) LAN
8 112 (1.61%) BGP
9 92 (1.32%) OSPF
9 92 (1.32%) SD-WAN
10 86 (1.23%) VLAN
11 75 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
12 58 (0.83%) SSL
13 56 (0.80%) SAN
14 53 (0.76%) Wireless
15 48 (0.69%) IPsec
16 44 (0.63%) VXLAN
17 41 (0.59%) Kerberos
18 37 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (8.78%) Power BI
2 417 (5.98%) SQL Server
3 353 (5.06%) Data Warehouse
4 303 (4.35%) Data Lake
5 253 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
6 182 (2.61%) NoSQL
7 175 (2.51%) Azure SQL Database
8 168 (2.41%) Metadata
9 122 (1.75%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.29%) Big Data
12 84 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 72 (1.03%) MongoDB
14 68 (0.98%) Tableau
15 59 (0.85%) MySQL
15 59 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.82%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.77%) Oracle Database
18 47 (0.67%) Amazon RDS
19 43 (0.62%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 522 (7.49%) JIRA
2 518 (7.43%) Git
3 331 (4.75%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.54%) GitLab
5 102 (1.46%) Selenium
6 59 (0.85%) JUnit
7 52 (0.75%) JMeter
8 50 (0.72%) Postman
9 48 (0.69%) Cucumber
10 43 (0.62%) SonarQube
11 41 (0.59%) Cypress.io
12 37 (0.53%) WebDriver
13 36 (0.52%) Maven
13 36 (0.52%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.50%) MLflow
15 33 (0.47%) REST Assured
16 29 (0.42%) Gradle
17 25 (0.36%) Bitbucket
17 25 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
18 24 (0.34%) Gatling
General
1 1,749 (25.09%) Social Skills
2 1,375 (19.73%) Finance
3 755 (10.83%) Public Sector
4 689 (9.89%) Analytical Skills
5 393 (5.64%) Banking
6 205 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
7 168 (2.41%) Retail
8 167 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 156 (2.24%) Legal
10 92 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
11 81 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
12 80 (1.15%) Telecoms
13 69 (0.99%) Law
14 64 (0.92%) Marketing
15 63 (0.90%) Front Office
16 62 (0.89%) Financial Institution
16 62 (0.89%) Investment Banking
16 62 (0.89%) Manufacturing
17 54 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.75%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,243 (17.83%) Architect
2 881 (12.64%) Senior
3 824 (11.82%) Developer
4 612 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
5 561 (8.05%) Lead
6 527 (7.56%) Data Engineer
7 434 (6.23%) Analyst
8 378 (5.42%) Solutions Architect
9 336 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
10 294 (4.22%) Cloud Engineer
11 276 (3.96%) Consultant
12 265 (3.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 206 (2.96%) Data Architect
14 181 (2.60%) Platform Engineer
15 173 (2.48%) Azure Architect
16 172 (2.47%) Security Engineer
17 164 (2.35%) Business Analyst
18 162 (2.32%) Project Manager
19 160 (2.30%) Technical Architect
20 152 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 523 (7.50%) .NET
2 472 (6.77%) REST
3 273 (3.92%) Kafka
4 264 (3.79%) React
5 222 (3.19%) RESTful
6 217 (3.11%) PySpark
7 209 (3.00%) OAuth
8 168 (2.41%) Spring
9 161 (2.31%) Node.js
10 159 (2.28%) JSON
11 152 (2.18%) AngularJS
12 136 (1.95%) SAML
12 136 (1.95%) Spring Boot
13 130 (1.87%) OpenID
14 122 (1.75%) .NET Framework
14 122 (1.75%) HTML
15 117 (1.68%) LDAP
15 117 (1.68%) OAuth2
16 112 (1.61%) Middleware
16 112 (1.61%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 735 (10.55%) Cloud Native
2 324 (4.65%) Onboarding
3 287 (4.12%) Product Ownership
4 228 (3.27%) Data Centre
4 228 (3.27%) Distributed Systems
5 223 (3.20%) Hybrid Cloud
6 205 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
7 186 (2.67%) AI Agents
8 153 (2.20%) Security Posture
9 150 (2.15%) Enterprise Software
10 129 (1.85%) Public Cloud
11 119 (1.71%) Data Structures
12 109 (1.56%) Management Information System
13 94 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
14 85 (1.22%) PKI
14 85 (1.22%) Replication
15 84 (1.21%) Enterprise Cloud
16 76 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
17 69 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
18 61 (0.88%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 834 (11.97%) Windows
2 388 (5.57%) Linux
3 265 (3.80%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.55%) Windows 10
5 74 (1.06%) Unix
6 73 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.92%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.90%) Android
9 59 (0.85%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.65%) VMS
11 43 (0.62%) Ubuntu
12 22 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
13 15 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.17%) CentOS
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 9 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.072%) AIX
17 5 (0.072%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,536 (36.38%) DevOps
2 2,131 (30.57%) CI/CD
3 1,740 (24.96%) Agile
4 1,107 (15.88%) AI
5 1,058 (15.18%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,024 (14.69%) Migration
7 1,013 (14.53%) Analytics
8 940 (13.49%) Stakeholder Management
9 925 (13.27%) Problem-Solving
10 786 (11.28%) Data Modelling
11 750 (10.76%) Continuous Improvement
12 680 (9.76%) Data Pipeline
13 678 (9.73%) Roadmaps
14 662 (9.50%) Business Intelligence
15 636 (9.12%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 619 (8.88%) Containerisation
17 608 (8.72%) Microservices
18 591 (8.48%) ETL
19 578 (8.29%) Data Engineering
20 541 (7.76%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,621 (23.26%) Python
2 1,392 (19.97%) SQL
3 732 (10.50%) PowerShell
4 567 (8.13%) Java
5 520 (7.46%) C#
6 378 (5.42%) JavaScript
7 298 (4.28%) Bash
8 257 (3.69%) Bicep
9 243 (3.49%) TypeScript
10 88 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 70 (1.00%) Go
13 50 (0.72%) Scala
14 47 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 39 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.49%) Kotlin
16 34 (0.49%) R
17 29 (0.42%) PL/SQL
18 26 (0.37%) Groovy
19 21 (0.30%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,742 (24.99%) Security Cleared
2 1,411 (20.24%) SC Cleared
3 516 (7.40%) Degree
4 384 (5.51%) Azure Certification
5 231 (3.31%) DV Cleared
6 222 (3.19%) CISSP
7 191 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
8 184 (2.64%) Cisco Certification
9 170 (2.44%) AWS Certification
10 168 (2.41%) Computer Science Degree
11 144 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
12 106 (1.52%) CISM
13 90 (1.29%) CCNP
14 72 (1.03%) PMP
15 69 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 53 (0.76%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.69%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 45 (0.65%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 486 (6.97%) Data Quality
2 360 (5.16%) QA
3 288 (4.13%) GDPR
4 248 (3.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 247 (3.54%) NIST
6 161 (2.31%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.33%) NCSC
8 91 (1.31%) SLA
9 69 (0.99%) PCI DSS
10 66 (0.95%) Cyber Essentials
10 66 (0.95%) WCAG
11 64 (0.92%) GRC
12 51 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 48 (0.69%) PMO
14 30 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
15 29 (0.42%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.33%) NIST 800
16 23 (0.33%) SOC 2
17 16 (0.23%) COBIT
18 15 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 890 (12.77%) Active Directory
2 729 (10.46%) Docker
3 194 (2.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.95%) Virtual Desktop
5 128 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 91 (1.31%) Hyper-V
7 63 (0.90%) vSphere
8 51 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.49%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.40%) Firmware
11 23 (0.33%) NFS
12 16 (0.23%) Postfix
13 13 (0.19%) IAG
14 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
15 7 (0.10%) Varnish
16 6 (0.086%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.072%) RACF
17 5 (0.072%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,133 (16.26%) Terraform
2 992 (14.23%) Kubernetes
3 388 (5.57%) Microsoft Intune
4 348 (4.99%) Ansible
5 209 (3.00%) Grafana
6 176 (2.53%) Prometheus
7 137 (1.97%) Single Sign-On
8 101 (1.45%) SCCM
9 52 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 50 (0.72%) Progress Chef
11 43 (0.62%) Argo
11 43 (0.62%) Jamf Pro
12 42 (0.60%) Puppet
13 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
14 26 (0.37%) Istio
15 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.27%) Packer
17 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.23%) SCOM
19 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,311 (33.16%) Microsoft
2 624 (8.95%) Databricks
3 356 (5.11%) ServiceNow
4 279 (4.00%) VMware
5 278 (3.99%) Oracle
6 262 (3.76%) Google
7 207 (2.97%) Cisco
8 200 (2.87%) SAP
9 168 (2.41%) OpenAI
10 155 (2.22%) Splunk
11 135 (1.94%) Salesforce
12 134 (1.92%) Palo Alto
13 130 (1.87%) CyberArk
14 119 (1.71%) Foundry
15 93 (1.33%) Dynatrace
16 90 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 73 (1.05%) Okta
18 67 (0.96%) Fortinet
19 66 (0.95%) Informatica
20 64 (0.92%) Citrix