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 14 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,040 3,849 4,920
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.46% 15.78% 13.28%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.92% 41.94% 41.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,348 2,742 3,627
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £648
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -0.95% -1.64% -2.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 29 50
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.87 £17.80
25th Percentile £54.78 £26.45 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £53.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +52.86% -35.39%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.25 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £84.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%

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 14,074 9,178 11,846
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 36.01% 37.64% 31.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,713 6,447 8,518
10th Percentile £313 £313 £281
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 434 187 318
10th Percentile £16.00 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.86
Median hourly rate £42.69 £26.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +61.08% +27.59% -24.47%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.49 £32.69
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.20 £59.97
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £27.50 £20.99
% change year-on-year +45.45% +31.05% -30.91%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 14 April 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 3,251 £538 -2.27% 979
North of England +2 823 £500 +5.26% 589
South East +1 766 £500 -4.76% 645
Midlands 0 503 £488 -6.47% 316
North West +1 444 £496 -0.80% 310
West Midlands 0 371 £500 -4.76% 186
South West +6 361 £500 -4.76% 259
Yorkshire +1 335 £500 +17.65% 206
East of England +8 152 £550 -8.33% 203
East Midlands +1 123 £447 -5.89% 130
North East -3 51 £525 +3.70% 78
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
1 281 (4.65%) SharePoint
2 176 (2.91%) Microsoft Exchange
3 169 (2.80%) Apache Spark
4 166 (2.75%) Confluence
5 94 (1.56%) Apache
6 89 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.35%) SAS
8 20 (0.33%) IIS
9 16 (0.26%) Appian
10 15 (0.25%) ArcGIS
10 15 (0.25%) Camunda
10 15 (0.25%) OpenStack
11 12 (0.20%) CMS
12 11 (0.18%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Mendix
13 9 (0.15%) Palantir Foundry
14 8 (0.13%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.12%) Anypoint
16 5 (0.083%) BizTalk Server
16 5 (0.083%) WebLogic
Applications
1 107 (1.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 78 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.91%) Microsoft Project
4 46 (0.76%) MS Visio
5 37 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.099%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.083%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.083%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
11 3 (0.050%) AutoCAD
11 3 (0.050%) CPLEX
11 3 (0.050%) Weka
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.017%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.017%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 101 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 61 (1.01%) SAP S/4HANA
3 12 (0.20%) Maximo
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.15%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
7 7 (0.12%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.083%) Oracle EBS
9 4 (0.066%) Dynamics AX
9 4 (0.066%) Endur
9 4 (0.066%) NetSuite
9 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.066%) SAP ERP
9 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
10 3 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
10 3 (0.050%) Oracle General Ledger
10 3 (0.050%) Oracle Payables
10 3 (0.050%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 2,100 (34.77%) AWS
2 1,258 (20.83%) Azure DevOps
3 1,157 (19.16%) GCP
4 801 (13.26%) Power Platform
5 767 (12.70%) Entra ID
6 666 (11.03%) Microsoft 365
7 583 (9.65%) GitHub
8 456 (7.55%) Azure Data Factory
9 331 (5.48%) GitHub Actions
10 327 (5.41%) Serverless
11 294 (4.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 252 (4.17%) SaaS
13 236 (3.91%) Dynamics 365
14 224 (3.71%) Azure AKS
15 218 (3.61%) Azure Monitor
16 212 (3.51%) Power Automate
17 211 (3.49%) PaaS
18 191 (3.16%) Azure Functions
19 186 (3.08%) Azure Logic Apps
20 173 (2.86%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 390 (6.46%) Firewall
2 272 (4.50%) DNS
3 235 (3.89%) VPN
4 201 (3.33%) Network Security
5 154 (2.55%) WAN
6 151 (2.50%) DHCP
7 120 (1.99%) LAN
8 90 (1.49%) TCP/IP
9 76 (1.26%) VLAN
10 74 (1.23%) Wi-Fi
11 72 (1.19%) SD-WAN
12 65 (1.08%) Kerberos
13 50 (0.83%) BGP
14 44 (0.73%) OSPF
15 39 (0.65%) Wireless
16 38 (0.63%) SAN
17 36 (0.60%) SSL
18 35 (0.58%) HTTP
19 31 (0.51%) Internet
20 29 (0.48%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 558 (9.24%) Power BI
2 354 (5.86%) SQL Server
3 337 (5.58%) Data Warehouse
4 290 (4.80%) Data Lake
5 210 (3.48%) Azure SQL Database
6 208 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
7 178 (2.95%) NoSQL
8 147 (2.43%) Metadata
9 133 (2.20%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.61%) Relational Database
11 89 (1.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 81 (1.34%) Big Data
13 77 (1.27%) MongoDB
13 77 (1.27%) Tableau
14 60 (0.99%) Oracle Database
15 56 (0.93%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.91%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.78%) MySQL
18 46 (0.76%) Spark SQL
18 46 (0.76%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 444 (7.35%) Git
2 416 (6.89%) JIRA
3 298 (4.93%) Jenkins
4 220 (3.64%) GitLab
5 105 (1.74%) Selenium
6 66 (1.09%) Postman
7 58 (0.96%) JUnit
8 56 (0.93%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.83%) JMeter
10 49 (0.81%) MLflow
11 42 (0.70%) REST Assured
12 35 (0.58%) SonarQube
13 34 (0.56%) Cypress.io
14 33 (0.55%) Oracle APEX
15 32 (0.53%) Artifactory
16 26 (0.43%) TestRail
17 25 (0.41%) Visual Studio
18 23 (0.38%) WebDriver
19 21 (0.35%) Mockito
19 21 (0.35%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,656 (27.42%) Social Skills
2 1,132 (18.74%) Finance
3 633 (10.48%) Public Sector
4 602 (9.97%) Analytical Skills
5 351 (5.81%) Banking
6 194 (3.21%) Documentation Skills
7 138 (2.28%) Legal
8 102 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 85 (1.41%) Retail
10 84 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
11 79 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
12 78 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
13 66 (1.09%) Financial Institution
14 65 (1.08%) Law
14 65 (1.08%) Marketing
15 62 (1.03%) Telecoms
16 58 (0.96%) Front Office
17 57 (0.94%) Investment Banking
18 44 (0.73%) Local Government
19 35 (0.58%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 994 (16.46%) Architect
2 781 (12.93%) Developer
3 731 (12.10%) Senior
4 559 (9.25%) Azure Engineer
5 523 (8.66%) Data Engineer
6 455 (7.53%) Lead
7 383 (6.34%) Analyst
8 298 (4.93%) DevOps Engineer
9 254 (4.21%) Solutions Architect
10 245 (4.06%) Consultant
11 178 (2.95%) Cloud Engineer
12 176 (2.91%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 158 (2.62%) Platform Engineer
14 153 (2.53%) Azure Architect
15 145 (2.40%) Security Engineer
16 136 (2.25%) Senior Developer
17 134 (2.22%) Data Architect
18 127 (2.10%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
19 126 (2.09%) Azure DevOps Engineer
20 123 (2.04%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 454 (7.52%) .NET
2 388 (6.42%) REST
3 259 (4.29%) React
4 249 (4.12%) Kafka
5 230 (3.81%) PySpark
6 210 (3.48%) Node.js
7 192 (3.18%) RESTful
8 183 (3.03%) Spring
9 173 (2.86%) OAuth
10 157 (2.60%) AngularJS
11 153 (2.53%) LDAP
12 146 (2.42%) Spring Boot
13 122 (2.02%) HTML
14 121 (2.00%) Middleware
15 120 (1.99%) JSON
16 115 (1.90%) SAML
17 113 (1.87%) SOAP
18 106 (1.75%) PyTorch
19 105 (1.74%) YAML
20 104 (1.72%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 559 (9.25%) Cloud Native
2 240 (3.97%) Onboarding
3 213 (3.53%) Product Ownership
4 172 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 155 (2.57%) Enterprise Software
6 149 (2.47%) Security Posture
7 143 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
8 141 (2.33%) Data Centre
9 133 (2.20%) Distributed Systems
9 133 (2.20%) Public Cloud
10 107 (1.77%) AI Agents
11 82 (1.36%) Data Structures
11 82 (1.36%) Replication
12 66 (1.09%) Management Information System
13 63 (1.04%) Data Protection Act
14 59 (0.98%) PKI
15 56 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
16 48 (0.79%) Low-Code
17 47 (0.78%) Algorithms
18 46 (0.76%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 673 (11.14%) Windows
2 309 (5.12%) Linux
3 204 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 118 (1.95%) Windows 10
5 62 (1.03%) VMS
6 55 (0.91%) Unix
7 52 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 44 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 39 (0.65%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.53%) Android
11 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
12 17 (0.28%) Ubuntu
12 17 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.099%) CentOS
17 5 (0.083%) AIX
17 5 (0.083%) CoreOS
17 5 (0.083%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,259 (37.40%) DevOps
2 1,839 (30.45%) CI/CD
3 1,408 (23.31%) Agile
4 973 (16.11%) Problem-Solving
5 932 (15.43%) Analytics
6 865 (14.32%) AI
7 834 (13.81%) Infrastructure as Code
8 800 (13.25%) Migration
9 695 (11.51%) Data Modelling
10 622 (10.30%) Business Intelligence
11 616 (10.20%) Stakeholder Management
12 589 (9.75%) Continuous Improvement
13 580 (9.60%) Data Pipeline
14 575 (9.52%) ETL
15 570 (9.44%) Containerisation
16 543 (8.99%) Data Engineering
17 540 (8.94%) Microservices
18 506 (8.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 484 (8.01%) Machine Learning
20 480 (7.95%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 1,539 (25.48%) Python
2 1,369 (22.67%) SQL
3 656 (10.86%) PowerShell
4 513 (8.49%) C#
5 506 (8.38%) Java
6 402 (6.66%) JavaScript
7 229 (3.79%) TypeScript
8 220 (3.64%) Bash
9 195 (3.23%) Bicep
10 96 (1.59%) Scala
11 78 (1.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.26%) Go
13 71 (1.18%) PL/SQL
14 68 (1.13%) T-SQL
15 61 (1.01%) Kusto Query Language
16 41 (0.68%) R
17 34 (0.56%) Shell Script
18 23 (0.38%) C++
19 22 (0.36%) PHP
20 16 (0.26%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,516 (25.10%) Security Cleared
2 1,259 (20.84%) SC Cleared
3 449 (7.43%) Degree
4 349 (5.78%) Azure Certification
5 189 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
6 169 (2.80%) CISSP
7 143 (2.37%) Microsoft Certification
8 125 (2.07%) Cisco Certification
9 118 (1.95%) DV Cleared
10 114 (1.89%) AWS Certification
11 100 (1.66%) CISM
12 96 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
13 68 (1.13%) CCNP
14 60 (0.99%) Master's Degree
15 58 (0.96%) PMP
16 55 (0.91%) PMI Certification
17 52 (0.86%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.83%) ISTQB
19 41 (0.68%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.60%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (7.25%) Data Quality
2 346 (5.73%) GDPR
3 324 (5.36%) QA
4 255 (4.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 227 (3.76%) NIST
6 92 (1.52%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.37%) NCSC
8 81 (1.34%) PCI DSS
9 58 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 55 (0.91%) Cyber Essentials
11 53 (0.88%) SLA
12 47 (0.78%) PMO
13 38 (0.63%) GRC
14 30 (0.50%) WCAG
15 27 (0.45%) HIPAA
16 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
16 23 (0.38%) NIST 800
17 20 (0.33%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 18 (0.30%) PSD2
19 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 807 (13.36%) Active Directory
2 692 (11.46%) Docker
3 188 (3.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 99 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
5 89 (1.47%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.46%) Hyper-V
7 74 (1.23%) vSphere
8 35 (0.58%) VMware ESXi
9 32 (0.53%) VMware NSX
10 24 (0.40%) Firmware
11 17 (0.28%) NFS
12 10 (0.17%) Postfix
13 7 (0.12%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.099%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.099%) RACF
14 6 (0.099%) Varnish
15 5 (0.083%) KVM
15 5 (0.083%) Microsoft App-V
15 5 (0.083%) Slurm Workload Manager
15 5 (0.083%) Snort
Systems Management
1 957 (15.84%) Terraform
2 898 (14.87%) Kubernetes
3 333 (5.51%) Microsoft Intune
4 260 (4.30%) Ansible
5 158 (2.62%) Grafana
6 138 (2.28%) Single Sign-On
7 130 (2.15%) Prometheus
8 106 (1.75%) SCCM
9 71 (1.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 38 (0.63%) Argo
11 34 (0.56%) Istio
12 29 (0.48%) Puppet
12 29 (0.48%) vCenter Server
13 26 (0.43%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
15 21 (0.35%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.26%) Nmap
17 16 (0.26%) vRealize
17 16 (0.26%) VxRail
Vendors
1 1,962 (32.48%) Microsoft
2 629 (10.41%) Databricks
3 288 (4.77%) Oracle
4 277 (4.59%) Google
5 267 (4.42%) ServiceNow
6 259 (4.29%) VMware
7 174 (2.88%) SAP
8 163 (2.70%) Cisco
9 160 (2.65%) OpenAI
10 138 (2.28%) Splunk
11 134 (2.22%) CyberArk
12 107 (1.77%) Foundry
13 87 (1.44%) Palo Alto
14 79 (1.31%) Okta
14 79 (1.31%) Salesforce
15 72 (1.19%) BeyondTrust
16 70 (1.16%) IBM
17 67 (1.11%) Citrix
18 62 (1.03%) Red Hat
19 60 (0.99%) Informatica