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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,125 4,067 4,853
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.65% 14.72% 14.51%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.72% 39.55% 42.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,984 2,819 3,541
10th Percentile £371 £350 £350
25th Percentile £435 £420 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £519 £525
% change year-on-year +1.25% -1.24% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 163 34 32
10th Percentile £19.50 £21.01 £17.84
25th Percentile £28.50 £26.91 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £40.73 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.19% +16.36% -37.78%
75th Percentile £79.50 £75.31 £54.13
90th Percentile £100.68 £100.00 £74.47
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £41.45 £35.00
% change year-on-year +32.69% +18.43% -39.13%

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 15,933 10,283 11,289
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.00% 37.22% 33.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,621 6,982 8,009
10th Percentile £325 £308 £313
25th Percentile £421 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 567 265 240
10th Percentile £16.50 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.82 £18.13 £16.28
Median hourly rate £37.12 £25.15 £23.80
Median % change year-on-year +47.59% +5.67% -29.79%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £52.18
90th Percentile £83.75 £67.00 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.50 £27.45 £23.98
% change year-on-year +29.33% +14.49% -31.50%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 3,733 £550 - 2,019
North of England +8 1,024 £500 +5.26% 781
South East +1 911 £525 +5.00% 807
Midlands +4 656 £493 -1.50% 381
North West +6 541 £500 +5.26% 429
West Midlands +3 497 £493 -6.19% 235
South West +7 439 £540 +7.90% 321
Yorkshire +5 400 £500 +5.26% 255
East of England +4 177 £525 -4.55% 223
East Midlands +9 147 £488 +5.41% 146
North East +5 96 £513 -0.87% 107
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
1 386 (5.42%) SharePoint
2 245 (3.44%) Confluence
3 183 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 158 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 129 (1.81%) Apache Airflow
6 107 (1.50%) Apache
7 40 (0.56%) SAS
8 26 (0.36%) IIS
9 16 (0.22%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) Palantir Foundry
11 13 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 11 (0.15%) SharePoint Server
14 8 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.098%) Umbraco
15 7 (0.098%) WebSphere
16 6 (0.084%) Documentum
16 6 (0.084%) HCL Notes
16 6 (0.084%) Jupyter
16 6 (0.084%) Mendix
Applications
1 108 (1.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (1.01%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
4 32 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 31 (0.44%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.18%) AutoCAD
8 11 (0.15%) Trello
9 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
10 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
11 8 (0.11%) Revit
12 5 (0.070%) Notion
13 3 (0.042%) Houdini
13 3 (0.042%) NUKE
14 2 (0.028%) Adobe Creative Suite
14 2 (0.028%) Adobe XD
15 1 (0.014%) CINEMA 4D
15 1 (0.014%) PlantUML
15 1 (0.014%) Sketch
15 1 (0.014%) Weka
Business Applications
1 104 (1.46%) Dynamics CRM
2 66 (0.93%) SAP S/4HANA
3 25 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 13 (0.18%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.098%) Maximo
6 7 (0.098%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.098%) Shopify
7 6 (0.084%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.070%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.070%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.056%) Adobe Campaign
9 4 (0.056%) Endur
9 4 (0.056%) Payment Gateway
9 4 (0.056%) Quorum
9 4 (0.056%) Ripple
9 4 (0.056%) Salesforce CRM
9 4 (0.056%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 2,497 (35.05%) AWS
2 1,505 (21.12%) Azure DevOps
3 1,195 (16.77%) GCP
4 938 (13.16%) Entra ID
5 892 (12.52%) Power Platform
6 736 (10.33%) Microsoft 365
7 687 (9.64%) GitHub
8 430 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 412 (5.78%) GitHub Actions
10 303 (4.25%) Serverless
11 297 (4.17%) SaaS
12 284 (3.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 256 (3.59%) Power Automate
14 254 (3.56%) Azure Monitor
15 253 (3.55%) Azure AKS
16 234 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
17 226 (3.17%) PowerApps
18 225 (3.16%) PaaS
19 216 (3.03%) Snowflake
20 199 (2.79%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 477 (6.69%) Firewall
2 358 (5.02%) DNS
3 296 (4.15%) VPN
4 262 (3.68%) Network Security
5 185 (2.60%) DHCP
6 182 (2.55%) WAN
7 160 (2.25%) TCP/IP
8 111 (1.56%) LAN
9 110 (1.54%) BGP
10 90 (1.26%) OSPF
10 90 (1.26%) SD-WAN
11 88 (1.24%) VLAN
12 72 (1.01%) Wi-Fi
13 61 (0.86%) SSL
14 57 (0.80%) SAN
15 53 (0.74%) Wireless
16 44 (0.62%) VXLAN
17 42 (0.59%) IPsec
18 40 (0.56%) HTTP
19 39 (0.55%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 638 (8.95%) Power BI
2 420 (5.89%) SQL Server
3 364 (5.11%) Data Warehouse
4 306 (4.29%) Data Lake
5 245 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
6 188 (2.64%) NoSQL
7 180 (2.53%) Metadata
8 175 (2.46%) Azure SQL Database
9 127 (1.78%) Delta Lake
10 117 (1.64%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.25%) Big Data
12 86 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 70 (0.98%) MongoDB
14 60 (0.84%) MySQL
15 59 (0.83%) Snowflake Schema
15 59 (0.83%) Tableau
16 58 (0.81%) BigQuery
17 51 (0.72%) Oracle Database
17 51 (0.72%) Star Schema
18 50 (0.70%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 551 (7.73%) Git
2 533 (7.48%) JIRA
3 352 (4.94%) Jenkins
4 282 (3.96%) GitLab
5 106 (1.49%) Selenium
6 60 (0.84%) JUnit
7 53 (0.74%) Postman
8 51 (0.72%) Cucumber
8 51 (0.72%) JMeter
9 50 (0.70%) SonarQube
10 48 (0.67%) Cypress.io
11 41 (0.58%) Maven
12 40 (0.56%) WebDriver
13 35 (0.49%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.48%) REST Assured
15 32 (0.45%) MLflow
16 31 (0.44%) Gradle
17 28 (0.39%) Bitbucket
18 26 (0.36%) Gatling
19 25 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 1,835 (25.75%) Social Skills
2 1,401 (19.66%) Finance
3 778 (10.92%) Public Sector
4 708 (9.94%) Analytical Skills
5 397 (5.57%) Banking
6 193 (2.71%) Documentation Skills
7 185 (2.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 179 (2.51%) Retail
9 151 (2.12%) Legal
10 86 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
11 83 (1.16%) Telecoms
12 80 (1.12%) Influencing Skills
13 76 (1.07%) Manufacturing
14 70 (0.98%) Law
15 67 (0.94%) Financial Institution
16 66 (0.93%) Aerospace
16 66 (0.93%) Investment Banking
16 66 (0.93%) Marketing
17 62 (0.87%) Front Office
18 55 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,276 (17.91%) Architect
2 915 (12.84%) Senior
3 842 (11.82%) Developer
4 622 (8.73%) Azure Engineer
5 589 (8.27%) Lead
6 544 (7.64%) Data Engineer
7 431 (6.05%) Analyst
8 402 (5.64%) Solutions Architect
9 336 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
10 314 (4.41%) Cloud Engineer
11 278 (3.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 266 (3.73%) Consultant
13 214 (3.00%) Data Architect
14 189 (2.65%) Platform Engineer
15 179 (2.51%) Azure Architect
16 176 (2.47%) Security Engineer
17 170 (2.39%) Project Manager
18 159 (2.23%) Senior Developer
19 157 (2.20%) Business Analyst
19 157 (2.20%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 547 (7.68%) .NET
2 499 (7.00%) REST
3 276 (3.87%) Kafka
4 262 (3.68%) React
5 228 (3.20%) PySpark
5 228 (3.20%) RESTful
6 213 (2.99%) OAuth
7 169 (2.37%) JSON
8 153 (2.15%) AngularJS
8 153 (2.15%) Node.js
9 151 (2.12%) Spring
10 138 (1.94%) SAML
11 132 (1.85%) OpenID
12 127 (1.78%) .NET Framework
13 121 (1.70%) HTML
14 118 (1.66%) Middleware
14 118 (1.66%) OAuth2
15 117 (1.64%) Spring Boot
16 111 (1.56%) SOAP
17 102 (1.43%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 758 (10.64%) Cloud Native
2 352 (4.94%) Onboarding
3 298 (4.18%) Product Ownership
4 237 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
4 237 (3.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 220 (3.09%) Data Centre
6 206 (2.89%) AI Agents
7 205 (2.88%) Legacy Systems
8 174 (2.44%) Enterprise Software
9 163 (2.29%) Security Posture
10 130 (1.82%) Data Structures
11 121 (1.70%) Public Cloud
12 120 (1.68%) Management Information System
13 95 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
14 91 (1.28%) PKI
15 90 (1.26%) Enterprise Cloud
16 76 (1.07%) Replication
16 76 (1.07%) Self-Motivation
17 70 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
18 62 (0.87%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 861 (12.08%) Windows
2 415 (5.82%) Linux
3 288 (4.04%) Windows Server
4 119 (1.67%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 75 (1.05%) Unix
6 69 (0.97%) Android
7 65 (0.91%) Mac OS
8 62 (0.87%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.67%) Ubuntu
10 42 (0.59%) VMS
11 19 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
12 13 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
13 12 (0.17%) CentOS
14 10 (0.14%) Data ONTAP
14 10 (0.14%) Debian
15 6 (0.084%) AIX
16 5 (0.070%) Amazon Linux
16 5 (0.070%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,599 (36.48%) DevOps
2 2,183 (30.64%) CI/CD
3 1,775 (24.91%) Agile
4 1,147 (16.10%) AI
5 1,109 (15.56%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,040 (14.60%) Migration
6 1,040 (14.60%) Stakeholder Management
7 1,036 (14.54%) Analytics
8 959 (13.46%) Problem-Solving
9 810 (11.37%) Data Modelling
10 781 (10.96%) Continuous Improvement
11 703 (9.87%) Data Pipeline
12 690 (9.68%) Roadmaps
13 688 (9.66%) Business Intelligence
14 687 (9.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 641 (9.00%) Containerisation
16 607 (8.52%) ETL
17 591 (8.29%) Microservices
18 588 (8.25%) Data Engineering
19 576 (8.08%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,658 (23.27%) Python
2 1,415 (19.86%) SQL
3 757 (10.62%) PowerShell
4 568 (7.97%) Java
5 541 (7.59%) C#
6 413 (5.80%) JavaScript
7 331 (4.65%) Bash
8 286 (4.01%) Bicep
9 249 (3.49%) TypeScript
10 91 (1.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 81 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 61 (0.86%) Go
13 51 (0.72%) Scala
14 47 (0.66%) Kusto Query Language
15 43 (0.60%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.48%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.46%) R
18 27 (0.38%) Groovy
18 27 (0.38%) PL/SQL
19 26 (0.36%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,820 (25.54%) Security Cleared
2 1,466 (20.58%) SC Cleared
3 521 (7.31%) Degree
4 395 (5.54%) Azure Certification
5 240 (3.37%) DV Cleared
6 231 (3.24%) CISSP
7 203 (2.85%) Microsoft Certification
8 187 (2.62%) Cisco Certification
9 179 (2.51%) AWS Certification
10 166 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
11 154 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
12 110 (1.54%) CISM
13 89 (1.25%) CCNP
14 72 (1.01%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 71 (1.00%) PMP
16 69 (0.97%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.73%) ISTQB
18 51 (0.72%) Master's Degree
19 50 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
20 46 (0.65%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 501 (7.03%) Data Quality
2 375 (5.26%) QA
3 288 (4.04%) GDPR
4 262 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 259 (3.64%) NIST
6 168 (2.36%) Accessibility
7 97 (1.36%) NCSC
8 95 (1.33%) SLA
9 71 (1.00%) WCAG
10 70 (0.98%) Cyber Essentials
11 69 (0.97%) PCI DSS
12 67 (0.94%) GRC
13 55 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 51 (0.72%) PMO
15 33 (0.46%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 28 (0.39%) HIPAA
17 24 (0.34%) SOC 2
18 21 (0.29%) NIST 800
19 16 (0.22%) COBIT
20 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 896 (12.58%) Active Directory
2 765 (10.74%) Docker
3 194 (2.72%) VMware Infrastructure
4 134 (1.88%) Virtual Desktop
4 134 (1.88%) Virtual Machines
5 99 (1.39%) Hyper-V
6 60 (0.84%) vSphere
7 52 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
8 36 (0.51%) VMware NSX
9 30 (0.42%) Firmware
10 21 (0.29%) NFS
11 16 (0.22%) Postfix
12 14 (0.20%) IAG
13 11 (0.15%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.098%) Varnish
15 6 (0.084%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 6 (0.084%) Virtual Servers
16 5 (0.070%) BitLocker
16 5 (0.070%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.056%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 1,174 (16.48%) Terraform
2 1,037 (14.55%) Kubernetes
3 391 (5.49%) Microsoft Intune
4 380 (5.33%) Ansible
5 216 (3.03%) Grafana
6 178 (2.50%) Prometheus
7 128 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 105 (1.47%) SCCM
9 57 (0.80%) Progress Chef
10 49 (0.69%) Argo
11 45 (0.63%) Puppet
12 39 (0.55%) Jamf Pro
13 35 (0.49%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 33 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 26 (0.36%) Istio
16 21 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.25%) HAProxy
18 18 (0.25%) SCOM
19 12 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,412 (33.85%) Microsoft
2 668 (9.38%) Databricks
3 364 (5.11%) ServiceNow
4 285 (4.00%) VMware
5 282 (3.96%) Google
6 276 (3.87%) Oracle
7 215 (3.02%) Cisco
8 193 (2.71%) SAP
9 163 (2.29%) OpenAI
10 160 (2.25%) Splunk
11 143 (2.01%) Palo Alto
12 140 (1.96%) CyberArk
13 131 (1.84%) Salesforce
14 119 (1.67%) Foundry
15 102 (1.43%) Dynatrace
16 92 (1.29%) Zscaler
17 69 (0.97%) Fortinet
17 69 (0.97%) Okta
18 67 (0.94%) Informatica
19 65 (0.91%) Citrix