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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 5
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,972 4,072 5,069
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.54% 14.89% 14.41%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.44% 39.87% 43.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,882 2,833 3,719
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £443
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £638 £640 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £525
% change year-on-year - - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 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 £80.00 £76.88 £59.95
90th Percentile £100.85 £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 15,689 10,212 11,719
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.96% 37.35% 33.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,471 6,902 8,342
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 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.70% -4.67% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 557 267 281
10th Percentile £16.70 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £39.00 £25.15 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +55.07% +14.32% -37.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £46.18
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 23 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 23 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 23 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 3,635 £550 - 1,353
North of England +7 1,016 £500 +1.83% 582
South East +2 898 £525 +5.00% 674
Midlands +3 622 £493 -0.51% 289
North West +7 536 £500 - 303
West Midlands +4 466 £493 -6.19% 177
South West +7 444 £530 +6.00% 234
Yorkshire +4 404 £500 +5.26% 189
East of England +5 181 £550 -2.22% 181
East Midlands +6 145 £481 +4.05% 111
North East +2 89 £525 +5.00% 100
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
1 364 (5.22%) SharePoint
2 237 (3.40%) Confluence
3 178 (2.55%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.31%) Apache Spark
5 115 (1.65%) Apache Airflow
6 105 (1.51%) Apache
7 37 (0.53%) SAS
8 25 (0.36%) IIS
9 16 (0.23%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 10 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.10%) Camunda
13 7 (0.10%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.086%) Documentum
15 5 (0.072%) Jupyter
15 5 (0.072%) Oracle Workflow
15 5 (0.072%) Tomcat
Applications
1 108 (1.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.00%) 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%) 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
9 4 (0.057%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,462 (35.31%) AWS
2 1,431 (20.52%) Azure DevOps
3 1,174 (16.84%) GCP
4 917 (13.15%) Entra ID
5 872 (12.51%) Power Platform
6 707 (10.14%) Microsoft 365
7 641 (9.19%) GitHub
8 424 (6.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 384 (5.51%) GitHub Actions
10 302 (4.33%) Serverless
11 297 (4.26%) SaaS
12 286 (4.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 254 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 247 (3.54%) Azure Monitor
15 232 (3.33%) Power Automate
16 225 (3.23%) PaaS
17 221 (3.17%) Dynamics 365
18 210 (3.01%) PowerApps
19 200 (2.87%) Snowflake
20 192 (2.75%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 466 (6.68%) Firewall
2 344 (4.93%) DNS
3 285 (4.09%) VPN
4 246 (3.53%) Network Security
5 184 (2.64%) WAN
6 182 (2.61%) DHCP
7 151 (2.17%) TCP/IP
8 119 (1.71%) LAN
9 112 (1.61%) BGP
10 92 (1.32%) OSPF
10 92 (1.32%) SD-WAN
11 86 (1.23%) VLAN
12 75 (1.08%) Wi-Fi
13 58 (0.83%) SSL
14 56 (0.80%) SAN
15 53 (0.76%) Wireless
16 48 (0.69%) IPsec
17 44 (0.63%) VXLAN
18 39 (0.56%) Kerberos
19 37 (0.53%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 618 (8.86%) Power BI
2 414 (5.94%) SQL Server
3 352 (5.05%) Data Warehouse
4 307 (4.40%) Data Lake
5 251 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
6 186 (2.67%) NoSQL
7 174 (2.50%) Azure SQL Database
8 170 (2.44%) Metadata
9 123 (1.76%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.66%) Relational Database
11 90 (1.29%) Big Data
12 83 (1.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 71 (1.02%) MongoDB
14 68 (0.98%) Tableau
15 59 (0.85%) MySQL
15 59 (0.85%) Snowflake Schema
16 54 (0.77%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.77%) Oracle Database
17 48 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
18 45 (0.65%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 524 (7.52%) JIRA
2 522 (7.49%) Git
3 331 (4.75%) Jenkins
4 247 (3.54%) GitLab
5 102 (1.46%) Selenium
6 60 (0.86%) JUnit
7 53 (0.76%) JMeter
8 51 (0.73%) 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%) Gatling
18 24 (0.34%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,746 (25.04%) Social Skills
2 1,377 (19.75%) Finance
3 759 (10.89%) Public Sector
4 690 (9.90%) Analytical Skills
5 391 (5.61%) Banking
6 205 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
7 168 (2.41%) Retail
8 166 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 154 (2.21%) Legal
10 91 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.18%) Telecoms
12 81 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
13 69 (0.99%) Law
14 64 (0.92%) Manufacturing
14 64 (0.92%) Marketing
15 63 (0.90%) Front Office
16 62 (0.89%) Financial Institution
16 62 (0.89%) Investment Banking
17 53 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
18 52 (0.75%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,236 (17.73%) Architect
2 881 (12.64%) Senior
3 824 (11.82%) Developer
4 615 (8.82%) Azure Engineer
5 562 (8.06%) Lead
6 531 (7.62%) Data Engineer
7 434 (6.22%) Analyst
8 377 (5.41%) Solutions Architect
9 336 (4.82%) DevOps Engineer
10 296 (4.25%) Cloud Engineer
11 273 (3.92%) Consultant
12 264 (3.79%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 204 (2.93%) 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
19 159 (2.28%) Technical Architect
20 152 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 523 (7.50%) .NET
2 478 (6.86%) REST
3 274 (3.93%) Kafka
4 266 (3.82%) React
5 223 (3.20%) RESTful
6 219 (3.14%) PySpark
7 209 (3.00%) OAuth
8 167 (2.40%) Spring
9 160 (2.29%) JSON
9 160 (2.29%) Node.js
10 153 (2.19%) AngularJS
11 135 (1.94%) SAML
11 135 (1.94%) Spring Boot
12 129 (1.85%) OpenID
13 124 (1.78%) .NET Framework
14 123 (1.76%) HTML
15 117 (1.68%) OAuth2
16 116 (1.66%) LDAP
17 112 (1.61%) Middleware
17 112 (1.61%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 736 (10.56%) Cloud Native
2 327 (4.69%) Onboarding
3 286 (4.10%) Product Ownership
4 230 (3.30%) Distributed Systems
5 227 (3.26%) Data Centre
6 221 (3.17%) Hybrid Cloud
7 206 (2.95%) Legacy Systems
8 187 (2.68%) AI Agents
9 152 (2.18%) Enterprise Software
10 151 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 128 (1.84%) Public Cloud
12 125 (1.79%) Data Structures
13 108 (1.55%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
15 85 (1.22%) Enterprise Cloud
15 85 (1.22%) PKI
16 82 (1.18%) Replication
17 76 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
18 70 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
19 62 (0.89%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 834 (11.96%) Windows
2 390 (5.59%) Linux
3 265 (3.80%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.08%) Unix
6 73 (1.05%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 64 (0.92%) Android
8 63 (0.90%) Mac OS
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 2,531 (36.30%) DevOps
2 2,128 (30.52%) CI/CD
3 1,737 (24.91%) Agile
4 1,111 (15.94%) AI
5 1,058 (15.17%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,025 (14.70%) Migration
7 1,014 (14.54%) Analytics
8 942 (13.51%) Stakeholder Management
9 923 (13.24%) Problem-Solving
10 788 (11.30%) Data Modelling
11 747 (10.71%) Continuous Improvement
12 683 (9.80%) Data Pipeline
13 678 (9.72%) Roadmaps
14 666 (9.55%) Business Intelligence
15 637 (9.14%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 617 (8.85%) Containerisation
17 607 (8.71%) Microservices
18 589 (8.45%) ETL
19 578 (8.29%) Data Engineering
20 544 (7.80%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,623 (23.28%) Python
2 1,395 (20.01%) SQL
3 732 (10.50%) PowerShell
4 567 (8.13%) Java
5 522 (7.49%) C#
6 381 (5.46%) JavaScript
7 297 (4.26%) Bash
8 260 (3.73%) Bicep
9 245 (3.51%) TypeScript
10 88 (1.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 79 (1.13%) T-SQL
12 67 (0.96%) Go
13 50 (0.72%) Scala
14 47 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 40 (0.57%) 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 1,748 (25.07%) Security Cleared
2 1,415 (20.30%) SC Cleared
3 514 (7.37%) Degree
4 385 (5.52%) Azure Certification
5 232 (3.33%) DV Cleared
6 223 (3.20%) CISSP
7 192 (2.75%) Microsoft Certification
8 185 (2.65%) Cisco Certification
9 169 (2.42%) AWS Certification
10 166 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 143 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.53%) CISM
13 91 (1.31%) CCNP
14 72 (1.03%) PMP
15 69 (0.99%) PMI Certification
16 68 (0.98%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.75%) Master's Degree
18 48 (0.69%) ISTQB
19 47 (0.67%) TOGAF Certification
20 45 (0.65%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 488 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 362 (5.19%) QA
3 290 (4.16%) GDPR
4 249 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 248 (3.56%) NIST
6 161 (2.31%) Accessibility
7 95 (1.36%) NCSC
8 92 (1.32%) SLA
9 69 (0.99%) PCI DSS
10 67 (0.96%) Cyber Essentials
10 67 (0.96%) WCAG
11 65 (0.93%) GRC
12 51 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 50 (0.72%) 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
1 888 (12.74%) Active Directory
2 727 (10.43%) 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 62 (0.89%) 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 1,131 (16.22%) Terraform
2 992 (14.23%) Kubernetes
3 387 (5.55%) Microsoft Intune
4 348 (4.99%) Ansible
5 210 (3.01%) Grafana
6 175 (2.51%) Prometheus
7 138 (1.98%) Single Sign-On
8 101 (1.45%) SCCM
9 50 (0.72%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 50 (0.72%) Progress Chef
10 43 (0.62%) Argo
11 42 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
11 42 (0.60%) Puppet
12 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
13 26 (0.37%) Istio
14 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
15 19 (0.27%) Packer
16 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.23%) SCOM
18 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,313 (33.18%) Microsoft
2 630 (9.04%) Databricks
3 357 (5.12%) ServiceNow
4 278 (3.99%) VMware
5 274 (3.93%) Oracle
6 262 (3.76%) Google
7 207 (2.97%) Cisco
8 200 (2.87%) SAP
9 170 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 155 (2.22%) Splunk
11 134 (1.92%) Palo Alto
12 132 (1.89%) CyberArk
12 132 (1.89%) Salesforce
13 120 (1.72%) Foundry
14 94 (1.35%) Dynatrace
15 90 (1.29%) Zscaler
16 74 (1.06%) Okta
17 67 (0.96%) Fortinet
17 67 (0.96%) Informatica
18 64 (0.92%) Citrix