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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 7,016 4,119 4,968
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.59% 14.92% 14.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.48% 39.90% 43.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,926 2,861 3,652
10th Percentile £375 £350 £350
25th Percentile £438 £425 £445
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 £745 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £520 £525
% change year-on-year +0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 33 33
10th Percentile £19.50 £20.30 £17.80
25th Percentile £31.25 £26.75 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £41.45 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.72% +18.43% -41.47%
75th Percentile £80.63 £76.25 £57.50
90th Percentile £101.18 £100.00 £73.94
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +27.78% +28.57% -40.32%

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 15,772 10,323 11,460
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.04% 37.40% 33.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,539 6,986 8,162
10th Percentile £325 £313 £313
25th Percentile £419 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.95% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £518 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 270 261
10th Percentile £16.68 £14.99 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.34 £18.13 £16.06
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.58 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.63% +16.25% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £43.75 £48.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £67.05 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £35.71 £27.50 £22.33
% change year-on-year +29.85% +23.18% -36.21%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 3,661 £550 - 1,301
North of England +7 1,019 £500 +3.09% 595
South East +2 901 £525 +5.00% 674
Midlands +4 635 £493 -0.51% 290
North West +7 535 £500 +1.63% 317
West Midlands +3 477 £493 -6.19% 190
South West +6 441 £534 +6.75% 244
Yorkshire +3 405 £500 +5.26% 188
East of England +5 182 £550 - 182
East Midlands +9 147 £481 +4.05% 99
North East +2 94 £520 +4.00% 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
1 367 (5.23%) SharePoint
2 241 (3.44%) Confluence
3 180 (2.57%) Microsoft Exchange
4 161 (2.29%) Apache Spark
5 119 (1.70%) Apache Airflow
6 106 (1.51%) Apache
7 38 (0.54%) SAS
8 26 (0.37%) IIS
9 15 (0.21%) CMS
10 14 (0.20%) OpenStack
11 13 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
12 12 (0.17%) ArcGIS
13 9 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
14 7 (0.100%) nginx
14 7 (0.100%) Umbraco
14 7 (0.100%) WebSphere
15 6 (0.086%) Camunda
15 6 (0.086%) Documentum
15 6 (0.086%) Jupyter
15 6 (0.086%) Mendix
Applications
1 105 (1.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (0.98%) Microsoft Project
3 66 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (0.43%) MS Visio
5 28 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 27 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
7 13 (0.19%) AutoCAD
8 10 (0.14%) CPLEX
8 10 (0.14%) Trello
9 9 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
10 8 (0.11%) Revit
11 4 (0.057%) Notion
12 3 (0.043%) Adobe XD
12 3 (0.043%) Houdini
12 3 (0.043%) NUKE
13 2 (0.029%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
14 1 (0.014%) InDesign
14 1 (0.014%) PTC Creo
14 1 (0.014%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 100 (1.43%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 26 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
4 15 (0.21%) Aladdin
5 8 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 8 (0.11%) Magento
5 8 (0.11%) Maximo
5 8 (0.11%) SAP MDG
5 8 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 7 (0.100%) Oracle EBS
6 7 (0.100%) Shopify
7 6 (0.086%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.071%) R3 Corda
8 5 (0.071%) SimCorp Dimension
8 5 (0.071%) Teamcenter
8 5 (0.071%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.057%) Endur
9 4 (0.057%) Quorum
9 4 (0.057%) Ripple
9 4 (0.057%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 2,486 (35.43%) AWS
2 1,454 (20.72%) Azure DevOps
3 1,182 (16.85%) GCP
4 906 (12.91%) Entra ID
5 886 (12.63%) Power Platform
6 705 (10.05%) Microsoft 365
7 646 (9.21%) GitHub
8 424 (6.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 387 (5.52%) GitHub Actions
10 307 (4.38%) Serverless
11 289 (4.12%) SaaS
12 284 (4.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 253 (3.61%) Azure AKS
14 247 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
15 239 (3.41%) Power Automate
16 226 (3.22%) Dynamics 365
17 221 (3.15%) PaaS
18 217 (3.09%) PowerApps
19 205 (2.92%) Snowflake
20 197 (2.81%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 467 (6.66%) Firewall
2 339 (4.83%) DNS
3 283 (4.03%) VPN
4 251 (3.58%) Network Security
5 185 (2.64%) WAN
6 174 (2.48%) DHCP
7 150 (2.14%) TCP/IP
8 118 (1.68%) LAN
9 111 (1.58%) BGP
10 91 (1.30%) OSPF
11 90 (1.28%) SD-WAN
12 86 (1.23%) VLAN
13 73 (1.04%) Wi-Fi
14 61 (0.87%) SSL
15 56 (0.80%) SAN
16 53 (0.76%) Wireless
17 45 (0.64%) IPsec
18 44 (0.63%) VXLAN
19 38 (0.54%) HTTP
19 38 (0.54%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 625 (8.91%) Power BI
2 419 (5.97%) SQL Server
3 361 (5.15%) Data Warehouse
4 308 (4.39%) Data Lake
5 251 (3.58%) PostgreSQL
6 187 (2.67%) NoSQL
7 176 (2.51%) Metadata
8 172 (2.45%) Azure SQL Database
9 125 (1.78%) Delta Lake
10 116 (1.65%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.25%) Big Data
12 85 (1.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 71 (1.01%) MongoDB
14 69 (0.98%) Tableau
15 59 (0.84%) MySQL
15 59 (0.84%) Snowflake Schema
16 54 (0.77%) BigQuery
16 54 (0.77%) Oracle Database
17 50 (0.71%) Amazon RDS
18 48 (0.68%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 530 (7.55%) JIRA
2 528 (7.53%) Git
3 334 (4.76%) Jenkins
4 252 (3.59%) GitLab
5 102 (1.45%) Selenium
6 59 (0.84%) JUnit
7 51 (0.73%) JMeter
8 49 (0.70%) Cucumber
8 49 (0.70%) Postman
9 44 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 42 (0.60%) Cypress.io
11 38 (0.54%) Maven
11 38 (0.54%) WebDriver
12 36 (0.51%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.50%) MLflow
14 33 (0.47%) REST Assured
15 29 (0.41%) Gradle
16 26 (0.37%) Bitbucket
16 26 (0.37%) Gatling
17 25 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,773 (25.27%) Social Skills
2 1,388 (19.78%) Finance
3 768 (10.95%) Public Sector
4 693 (9.88%) Analytical Skills
5 401 (5.72%) Banking
6 199 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
7 173 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 172 (2.45%) Retail
9 151 (2.15%) Legal
10 89 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
11 82 (1.17%) Telecoms
12 80 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
13 70 (1.00%) Law
14 69 (0.98%) Manufacturing
15 66 (0.94%) Marketing
16 64 (0.91%) Financial Institution
16 64 (0.91%) Front Office
17 62 (0.88%) Investment Banking
18 52 (0.74%) Military
18 52 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,247 (17.77%) Architect
2 885 (12.61%) Senior
3 839 (11.96%) Developer
4 618 (8.81%) Azure Engineer
5 571 (8.14%) Lead
6 537 (7.65%) Data Engineer
7 433 (6.17%) Analyst
8 384 (5.47%) Solutions Architect
9 337 (4.80%) DevOps Engineer
10 304 (4.33%) Cloud Engineer
11 273 (3.89%) Consultant
12 268 (3.82%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 210 (2.99%) Data Architect
14 186 (2.65%) Platform Engineer
15 174 (2.48%) Security Engineer
16 173 (2.47%) Azure Architect
17 163 (2.32%) Business Analyst
18 161 (2.29%) Project Manager
18 161 (2.29%) Technical Architect
19 152 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 538 (7.67%) .NET
2 485 (6.91%) REST
3 277 (3.95%) Kafka
4 268 (3.82%) React
5 226 (3.22%) RESTful
6 221 (3.15%) PySpark
7 210 (2.99%) OAuth
8 168 (2.39%) Spring
9 165 (2.35%) JSON
10 162 (2.31%) Node.js
11 153 (2.18%) AngularJS
12 135 (1.92%) Spring Boot
13 134 (1.91%) SAML
14 131 (1.87%) OpenID
15 126 (1.80%) .NET Framework
16 125 (1.78%) HTML
17 118 (1.68%) OAuth2
18 115 (1.64%) Middleware
19 113 (1.61%) SOAP
20 107 (1.53%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 746 (10.63%) Cloud Native
2 334 (4.76%) Onboarding
3 292 (4.16%) Product Ownership
4 236 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
5 225 (3.21%) Data Centre
6 222 (3.16%) Hybrid Cloud
7 201 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
8 193 (2.75%) AI Agents
9 161 (2.29%) Enterprise Software
10 152 (2.17%) Security Posture
11 128 (1.82%) Data Structures
12 125 (1.78%) Public Cloud
13 110 (1.57%) Management Information System
14 94 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 88 (1.25%) Enterprise Cloud
16 87 (1.24%) PKI
17 78 (1.11%) Replication
18 76 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
19 71 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
20 62 (0.88%) IoT
Operating Systems
1 833 (11.87%) Windows
2 393 (5.60%) Linux
3 267 (3.81%) Windows Server
4 107 (1.53%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.07%) Unix
6 73 (1.04%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 65 (0.93%) Mac OS
8 63 (0.90%) Android
9 58 (0.83%) Apple iOS
10 45 (0.64%) VMS
11 43 (0.61%) Ubuntu
12 21 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 14 (0.20%) Windows Server 2012
14 12 (0.17%) Data ONTAP
14 12 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 9 (0.13%) Debian
17 6 (0.086%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.071%) AIX
18 5 (0.071%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,557 (36.45%) DevOps
2 2,149 (30.63%) CI/CD
3 1,759 (25.07%) Agile
4 1,121 (15.98%) AI
5 1,072 (15.28%) Infrastructure as Code
6 1,025 (14.61%) Migration
7 1,020 (14.54%) Analytics
8 971 (13.84%) Stakeholder Management
9 936 (13.34%) Problem-Solving
10 795 (11.33%) Data Modelling
11 757 (10.79%) Continuous Improvement
12 687 (9.79%) Data Pipeline
13 685 (9.76%) Roadmaps
14 673 (9.59%) Business Intelligence
15 652 (9.29%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 630 (8.98%) Containerisation
17 615 (8.77%) Microservices
18 592 (8.44%) ETL
19 581 (8.28%) Data Engineering
20 547 (7.80%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,634 (23.29%) Python
2 1,405 (20.03%) SQL
3 726 (10.35%) PowerShell
4 574 (8.18%) Java
5 536 (7.64%) C#
6 392 (5.59%) JavaScript
7 304 (4.33%) Bash
8 269 (3.83%) Bicep
9 246 (3.51%) TypeScript
10 89 (1.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 80 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 64 (0.91%) Go
13 50 (0.71%) Scala
14 47 (0.67%) Kusto Query Language
15 40 (0.57%) Shell Script
16 36 (0.51%) Kotlin
17 34 (0.48%) R
18 29 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 26 (0.37%) Groovy
20 24 (0.34%) C++
Qualifications
1 1,766 (25.17%) Security Cleared
2 1,428 (20.35%) SC Cleared
3 517 (7.37%) Degree
4 384 (5.47%) Azure Certification
5 235 (3.35%) DV Cleared
6 221 (3.15%) CISSP
7 192 (2.74%) Microsoft Certification
8 182 (2.59%) Cisco Certification
9 172 (2.45%) AWS Certification
10 167 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 150 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.53%) CISM
13 91 (1.30%) CCNP
14 71 (1.01%) PMP
15 68 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 66 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 54 (0.77%) Master's Degree
18 49 (0.70%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
20 43 (0.61%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 491 (7.00%) Data Quality
2 360 (5.13%) QA
3 287 (4.09%) GDPR
4 247 (3.52%) NIST
5 246 (3.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 165 (2.35%) Accessibility
7 93 (1.33%) NCSC
8 90 (1.28%) SLA
9 68 (0.97%) PCI DSS
9 68 (0.97%) WCAG
10 66 (0.94%) Cyber Essentials
10 66 (0.94%) GRC
11 52 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 48 (0.68%) PMO
13 29 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
13 29 (0.41%) HIPAA
14 23 (0.33%) SOC 2
15 22 (0.31%) NIST 800
16 16 (0.23%) ISO 20022
17 15 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 868 (12.37%) Active Directory
2 740 (10.55%) Docker
3 190 (2.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 136 (1.94%) Virtual Desktop
5 129 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 90 (1.28%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.87%) vSphere
8 51 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 34 (0.48%) VMware NSX
10 29 (0.41%) 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 (0.100%) Varnish
16 6 (0.086%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.086%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.071%) VMware Workstation
18 4 (0.057%) RACF
18 4 (0.057%) Snort
Systems Management
1 1,145 (16.32%) Terraform
2 1,008 (14.37%) Kubernetes
3 384 (5.47%) Microsoft Intune
4 351 (5.00%) Ansible
5 212 (3.02%) Grafana
6 178 (2.54%) Prometheus
7 130 (1.85%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.43%) SCCM
9 51 (0.73%) Progress Chef
10 47 (0.67%) Argo
11 44 (0.63%) Puppet
12 42 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
13 39 (0.56%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 32 (0.46%) FortiGate
15 27 (0.38%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.27%) Packer
18 18 (0.26%) HAProxy
19 16 (0.23%) SCOM
20 13 (0.19%) QRadar
Vendors
1 2,306 (32.87%) Microsoft
2 641 (9.14%) Databricks
3 360 (5.13%) ServiceNow
4 279 (3.98%) VMware
5 272 (3.88%) Oracle
6 267 (3.81%) Google
7 208 (2.96%) Cisco
8 199 (2.84%) SAP
9 173 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 156 (2.22%) Splunk
11 135 (1.92%) CyberArk
11 135 (1.92%) Palo Alto
12 129 (1.84%) Salesforce
13 122 (1.74%) Foundry
14 95 (1.35%) Dynatrace
15 90 (1.28%) Zscaler
16 71 (1.01%) Okta
17 68 (0.97%) Informatica
18 67 (0.95%) Fortinet
19 64 (0.91%) Citrix