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 2 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,400 3,721 5,014
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.36% 15.45% 13.59%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.76% 41.06% 42.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,563 2,609 3,702
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -1.79%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 139 24 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.48 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.68 £22.61
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -44.44%
75th Percentile £69.10 £76.49 £61.19
90th Percentile £98.17 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -44.44%

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 14,624 9,063 11,816
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.09% 37.64% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,948 6,208 8,509
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.44% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £745
UK median daily rate £510 £507 £525
% change year-on-year +0.69% -3.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 503 216 324
10th Percentile £15.52 £14.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.17 £17.68 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £25.01 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +57.97% +17.01% -38.94%
75th Percentile £68.17 £37.50 £39.13
90th Percentile £81.20 £68.13 £69.85
UK median hourly rate £35.91 £27.88 £21.46
% change year-on-year +28.80% +29.92% -43.53%

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 2 June 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 2 June 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 2 June 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 3,408 £540 -1.82% 1,264
North of England +5 934 £500 +5.26% 629
South East +3 813 £502 +0.30% 668
Midlands -1 509 £493 +0.10% 349
North West +3 471 £500 +5.26% 362
South West +6 393 £525 +0.48% 335
Yorkshire +7 387 £500 +11.11% 162
West Midlands +1 370 £500 -4.76% 225
East of England +4 153 £550 -5.17% 200
East Midlands +5 129 £463 - 124
North East 0 86 £525 +2.44% 105
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
1 312 (4.88%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.77%) Confluence
3 175 (2.73%) Apache Spark
4 169 (2.64%) Microsoft Exchange
5 98 (1.53%) Apache
6 97 (1.52%) Apache Airflow
7 25 (0.39%) IIS
8 21 (0.33%) SAS
9 17 (0.27%) CMS
10 14 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.19%) Appian
12 11 (0.17%) Camunda
12 11 (0.17%) Mendix
12 11 (0.17%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.16%) HCL Notes
14 9 (0.14%) ArcGIS
15 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.11%) nginx
15 7 (0.11%) Umbraco
16 6 (0.094%) Tomcat
Applications
1 87 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (0.86%) Microsoft Project
4 32 (0.50%) MS Visio
5 29 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) AutoCAD
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
8 5 (0.078%) Adobe XD
8 5 (0.078%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.078%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.063%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.063%) Notion
9 4 (0.063%) Revit
9 4 (0.063%) Trello
10 2 (0.031%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.016%) InDesign
11 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.016%) Sketch
11 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 90 (1.41%) Dynamics CRM
2 74 (1.16%) SAP S/4HANA
3 15 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
4 10 (0.16%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.14%) Maximo
5 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 8 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.094%) NEC Housing
7 6 (0.094%) SAP MDG
7 6 (0.094%) Shopify
7 6 (0.094%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.078%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.078%) SAP MM
8 5 (0.078%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.063%) Endur
9 4 (0.063%) Magento
9 4 (0.063%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.063%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.063%) Ripple
Cloud Services
1 2,210 (34.53%) AWS
2 1,297 (20.27%) Azure DevOps
3 1,122 (17.53%) GCP
4 809 (12.64%) Power Platform
5 808 (12.63%) Entra ID
6 677 (10.58%) Microsoft 365
7 583 (9.11%) GitHub
8 452 (7.06%) Azure Data Factory
9 340 (5.31%) GitHub Actions
10 311 (4.86%) Serverless
11 287 (4.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 258 (4.03%) SaaS
13 233 (3.64%) Azure AKS
14 215 (3.36%) Dynamics 365
15 210 (3.28%) Power Automate
16 209 (3.27%) PaaS
17 198 (3.09%) Azure Monitor
18 180 (2.81%) Snowflake
19 176 (2.75%) IaaS
20 170 (2.66%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 390 (6.09%) Firewall
2 289 (4.52%) DNS
3 232 (3.63%) VPN
4 215 (3.36%) Network Security
5 177 (2.77%) WAN
6 157 (2.45%) DHCP
7 117 (1.83%) LAN
8 93 (1.45%) TCP/IP
9 91 (1.42%) SD-WAN
10 77 (1.20%) BGP
11 70 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
12 69 (1.08%) VLAN
13 66 (1.03%) OSPF
14 62 (0.97%) Kerberos
15 50 (0.78%) SAN
16 42 (0.66%) VXLAN
17 40 (0.63%) SSL
17 40 (0.63%) Wireless
18 31 (0.48%) IPsec
19 30 (0.47%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 554 (8.66%) Power BI
2 385 (6.02%) SQL Server
3 326 (5.09%) Data Warehouse
4 318 (4.97%) Data Lake
5 216 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 191 (2.98%) Azure SQL Database
7 170 (2.66%) NoSQL
8 141 (2.20%) Metadata
9 138 (2.16%) Delta Lake
10 98 (1.53%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.42%) Big Data
12 88 (1.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 74 (1.16%) Tableau
14 73 (1.14%) MongoDB
15 65 (1.02%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (0.91%) BigQuery
17 54 (0.84%) Oracle Database
18 47 (0.73%) Spark SQL
19 46 (0.72%) MySQL
20 45 (0.70%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 451 (7.05%) Git
2 439 (6.86%) JIRA
3 304 (4.75%) Jenkins
4 249 (3.89%) GitLab
5 100 (1.56%) Selenium
6 62 (0.97%) Postman
7 55 (0.86%) Cucumber
8 53 (0.83%) JMeter
9 50 (0.78%) JUnit
10 42 (0.66%) MLflow
10 42 (0.66%) REST Assured
11 39 (0.61%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.47%) Artifactory
12 30 (0.47%) Cypress.io
13 29 (0.45%) WebDriver
14 27 (0.42%) Maven
14 27 (0.42%) Visual Studio
15 25 (0.39%) Gatling
16 24 (0.38%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.34%) Bitbucket
General
1 1,616 (25.25%) Social Skills
2 1,237 (19.33%) Finance
3 642 (10.03%) Public Sector
4 586 (9.16%) Analytical Skills
5 363 (5.67%) Banking
6 186 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 146 (2.28%) Legal
8 115 (1.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 113 (1.77%) Retail
10 87 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.06%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.03%) Financial Institution
13 64 (1.00%) Front Office
14 62 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
15 60 (0.94%) Law
16 58 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
17 55 (0.86%) Marketing
18 45 (0.70%) Telecoms
19 38 (0.59%) Local Government
19 38 (0.59%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,108 (17.31%) Architect
2 779 (12.17%) Senior
3 752 (11.75%) Developer
4 573 (8.95%) Azure Engineer
5 526 (8.22%) Data Engineer
6 484 (7.56%) Lead
7 394 (6.16%) Analyst
8 324 (5.06%) DevOps Engineer
9 310 (4.84%) Solutions Architect
10 260 (4.06%) Consultant
11 229 (3.58%) Cloud Engineer
12 225 (3.52%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 180 (2.81%) Security Engineer
14 171 (2.67%) Azure Architect
15 168 (2.63%) Data Architect
16 150 (2.34%) Platform Engineer
17 141 (2.20%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 141 (2.20%) Technical Architect
18 139 (2.17%) Business Analyst
19 138 (2.16%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 489 (7.64%) .NET
2 422 (6.59%) REST
3 263 (4.11%) React
4 233 (3.64%) Kafka
5 225 (3.52%) PySpark
6 191 (2.98%) RESTful
7 183 (2.86%) OAuth
8 179 (2.80%) Node.js
9 167 (2.61%) LDAP
10 163 (2.55%) Spring
11 157 (2.45%) AngularJS
12 133 (2.08%) Spring Boot
13 131 (2.05%) JSON
14 122 (1.91%) SOAP
15 121 (1.89%) SAML
16 118 (1.84%) OpenID
17 117 (1.83%) Middleware
18 110 (1.72%) HTML
19 103 (1.61%) YAML
20 98 (1.53%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 645 (10.08%) Cloud Native
2 267 (4.17%) Onboarding
3 234 (3.66%) Product Ownership
4 200 (3.13%) Hybrid Cloud
5 194 (3.03%) Data Centre
6 168 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
7 159 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
8 156 (2.44%) Security Posture
9 148 (2.31%) Enterprise Software
10 134 (2.09%) Public Cloud
11 123 (1.92%) AI Agents
12 89 (1.39%) Data Structures
13 87 (1.36%) Replication
14 76 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
15 73 (1.14%) Management Information System
16 64 (1.00%) PKI
17 59 (0.92%) Enterprise Cloud
17 59 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
18 57 (0.89%) Low-Code
19 56 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 741 (11.58%) Windows
2 326 (5.09%) Linux
3 222 (3.47%) Windows Server
4 113 (1.77%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.02%) Mac OS
6 63 (0.98%) Unix
7 61 (0.95%) Apple iOS
8 58 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 56 (0.88%) VMS
10 49 (0.77%) Android
11 28 (0.44%) Ubuntu
12 27 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
13 20 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
14 14 (0.22%) Windows Server 2012
15 12 (0.19%) Data ONTAP
16 11 (0.17%) CentOS
17 10 (0.16%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 6 (0.094%) CoreOS
19 6 (0.094%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,370 (37.03%) DevOps
2 1,970 (30.78%) CI/CD
3 1,470 (22.97%) Agile
4 938 (14.66%) Analytics
5 928 (14.50%) Infrastructure as Code
6 926 (14.47%) AI
7 912 (14.25%) Problem-Solving
8 903 (14.11%) Migration
9 723 (11.30%) Data Modelling
10 680 (10.63%) Stakeholder Management
11 635 (9.92%) Data Pipeline
12 623 (9.73%) Continuous Improvement
13 609 (9.52%) ETL
14 607 (9.48%) Business Intelligence
15 594 (9.28%) Roadmaps
16 560 (8.75%) Containerisation
17 540 (8.44%) Data Engineering
18 539 (8.42%) Microservices
19 536 (8.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 475 (7.42%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,512 (23.63%) Python
2 1,366 (21.34%) SQL
3 681 (10.64%) PowerShell
4 533 (8.33%) Java
5 517 (8.08%) C#
6 360 (5.63%) JavaScript
7 224 (3.50%) Bash
8 223 (3.48%) TypeScript
9 207 (3.23%) Bicep
10 84 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 81 (1.27%) Scala
12 79 (1.23%) T-SQL
13 70 (1.09%) Go
14 46 (0.72%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.56%) Shell Script
16 34 (0.53%) PL/SQL
17 32 (0.50%) R
18 24 (0.38%) Kotlin
19 23 (0.36%) C++
20 15 (0.23%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,580 (24.69%) Security Cleared
2 1,328 (20.75%) SC Cleared
3 464 (7.25%) Degree
4 354 (5.53%) Azure Certification
5 200 (3.13%) CISSP
6 176 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
7 156 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 149 (2.33%) DV Cleared
9 140 (2.19%) Microsoft Certification
10 129 (2.02%) AWS Certification
11 117 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
12 107 (1.67%) CISM
13 74 (1.16%) CCNP
14 69 (1.08%) PMP
15 62 (0.97%) PMI Certification
16 60 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 50 (0.78%) Master's Degree
18 46 (0.72%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
19 40 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (7.11%) Data Quality
2 335 (5.23%) QA
3 309 (4.83%) GDPR
4 248 (3.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.63%) NIST
6 112 (1.75%) Accessibility
7 84 (1.31%) NCSC
8 82 (1.28%) SLA
9 74 (1.16%) PCI DSS
10 67 (1.05%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 46 (0.72%) GRC
13 45 (0.70%) WCAG
14 44 (0.69%) PMO
15 34 (0.53%) HIPAA
16 26 (0.41%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 26 (0.41%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.33%) SOC 2
18 16 (0.25%) ISO 20022
19 15 (0.23%) PSD2
System Software
1 826 (12.91%) Active Directory
2 669 (10.45%) Docker
3 189 (2.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 110 (1.72%) Virtual Desktop
5 103 (1.61%) Virtual Machines
6 94 (1.47%) Hyper-V
7 61 (0.95%) vSphere
8 47 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.42%) Firmware
9 27 (0.42%) VMware NSX
10 20 (0.31%) NFS
11 17 (0.27%) Postfix
12 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
13 8 (0.13%) Varnish
14 6 (0.094%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.094%) KVM
14 6 (0.094%) RACF
15 5 (0.078%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
15 5 (0.078%) EMC RecoverPoint
15 5 (0.078%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,005 (15.70%) Terraform
2 904 (14.13%) Kubernetes
3 348 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 294 (4.59%) Ansible
5 178 (2.78%) Grafana
6 153 (2.39%) Prometheus
7 145 (2.27%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.48%) SCCM
9 72 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 37 (0.58%) Progress Chef
11 34 (0.53%) Puppet
12 33 (0.52%) Argo
12 33 (0.52%) Jamf Pro
13 31 (0.48%) Istio
14 26 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 21 (0.33%) vCenter Server
16 19 (0.30%) HAProxy
17 16 (0.25%) HP ALM
18 14 (0.22%) linkerd
18 14 (0.22%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,080 (32.50%) Microsoft
2 638 (9.97%) Databricks
3 285 (4.45%) ServiceNow
4 261 (4.08%) VMware
5 248 (3.88%) Oracle
6 240 (3.75%) Google
7 187 (2.92%) SAP
8 174 (2.72%) Cisco
9 158 (2.47%) OpenAI
10 138 (2.16%) Splunk
11 135 (2.11%) CyberArk
12 120 (1.88%) Palo Alto
13 97 (1.52%) Foundry
13 97 (1.52%) Salesforce
14 87 (1.36%) Okta
15 69 (1.08%) Dynatrace
16 65 (1.02%) Citrix
17 63 (0.98%) BeyondTrust
18 62 (0.97%) Red Hat
19 60 (0.94%) Informatica