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

6 months to
5 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 -1
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,797 4,012 5,194
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.42% 15.14% 13.94%
As % of the Cloud Services category 44.14% 40.15% 42.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,776 2,778 3,809
10th Percentile £367 £350 £350
25th Percentile £434 £423 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
75th Percentile £633 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK median daily rate £525 £523 £527
% change year-on-year +0.43% -0.71% -4.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 159 35 48
10th Percentile £24.60 £25.40 £17.80
25th Percentile £38.25 £28.20 £23.80
Median hourly rate £57.50 £45.00 £42.34
Median % change year-on-year +27.78% +6.28% -29.84%
75th Percentile £78.88 £76.72 £61.60
90th Percentile £101.18 £100.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £58.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -0.86% +25.60% -23.83%

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 15,399 9,993 12,160
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 34.92% 37.70% 32.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,353 6,737 8,675
10th Percentile £325 £313 £308
25th Percentile £415 £410 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £638
90th Percentile £716 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £515 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.98% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 553 256 332
10th Percentile £16.62 £15.05 £14.16
25th Percentile £23.21 £18.04 £16.06
Median hourly rate £41.06 £25.33 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +62.13% +15.11% -33.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £40.36 £43.75
90th Percentile £83.20 £67.50 £70.00
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £27.88 £22.08
% change year-on-year +34.51% +26.30% -36.93%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 3,562 £545 -0.91% 1,329
North of England +6 1,001 £500 +5.32% 633
South East +2 841 £520 +4.00% 706
Midlands +3 599 £500 +1.63% 344
North West +8 525 £500 - 349
West Midlands +1 447 £500 -4.76% 193
South West +7 434 £540 +7.90% 281
Yorkshire +3 396 £510 +7.37% 194
East of England +4 181 £550 - 199
East Midlands +4 141 £500 +8.11% 151
North East +1 93 £525 +5.00% 98
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
1 339 (4.99%) SharePoint
2 211 (3.10%) Confluence
3 171 (2.52%) Microsoft Exchange
4 164 (2.41%) Apache Spark
5 115 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
6 106 (1.56%) Apache
7 37 (0.54%) SAS
8 25 (0.37%) IIS
9 19 (0.28%) CMS
10 14 (0.21%) OpenStack
10 14 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.15%) Camunda
12 8 (0.12%) Umbraco
13 7 (0.10%) Appian
13 7 (0.10%) Mendix
13 7 (0.10%) nginx
13 7 (0.10%) WebSphere
14 6 (0.088%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.088%) Documentum
14 6 (0.088%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 98 (1.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (0.93%) Microsoft Office
2 63 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
3 35 (0.51%) MS Visio
4 27 (0.40%) Chatbot
5 26 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.21%) AutoCAD
7 10 (0.15%) CPLEX
8 8 (0.12%) Revit
9 7 (0.10%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.074%) Adobe XD
10 5 (0.074%) PTC Creo
11 4 (0.059%) Notion
11 4 (0.059%) Trello
12 2 (0.029%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.015%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.015%) Houdini
13 1 (0.015%) InDesign
13 1 (0.015%) Sketch
13 1 (0.015%) Weka
Business Applications
1 93 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 71 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
3 24 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
4 14 (0.21%) Aladdin
5 9 (0.13%) Teamcenter
6 8 (0.12%) Dynamics AX
7 7 (0.10%) Maximo
7 7 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.088%) Endur
8 6 (0.088%) Magento
8 6 (0.088%) Oracle EBS
8 6 (0.088%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.088%) SAP MDG
8 6 (0.088%) Shopify
8 6 (0.088%) SimCorp Dimension
9 5 (0.074%) SAP MM
10 4 (0.059%) Remedy AR System
10 4 (0.059%) Ripple
10 4 (0.059%) Salesforce CRM
10 4 (0.059%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 2,407 (35.41%) AWS
2 1,375 (20.23%) Azure DevOps
3 1,129 (16.61%) GCP
4 881 (12.96%) Entra ID
5 854 (12.56%) Power Platform
6 691 (10.17%) Microsoft 365
7 606 (8.92%) GitHub
8 415 (6.11%) Azure Data Factory
9 368 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
10 312 (4.59%) Serverless
11 283 (4.16%) SaaS
12 277 (4.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 247 (3.63%) Azure AKS
14 227 (3.34%) Power Automate
15 225 (3.31%) Azure Monitor
16 217 (3.19%) PaaS
17 209 (3.07%) Dynamics 365
18 202 (2.97%) Snowflake
19 199 (2.93%) PowerApps
20 186 (2.74%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 421 (6.19%) Firewall
2 321 (4.72%) DNS
3 255 (3.75%) VPN
4 229 (3.37%) Network Security
5 192 (2.82%) WAN
6 170 (2.50%) DHCP
7 120 (1.77%) LAN
8 112 (1.65%) TCP/IP
9 101 (1.49%) SD-WAN
10 99 (1.46%) BGP
11 79 (1.16%) OSPF
12 71 (1.04%) VLAN
13 68 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
14 58 (0.85%) Kerberos
15 56 (0.82%) SSL
16 52 (0.77%) SAN
17 43 (0.63%) Wireless
18 42 (0.62%) VXLAN
19 41 (0.60%) IPsec
20 38 (0.56%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 590 (8.68%) Power BI
2 410 (6.03%) SQL Server
3 336 (4.94%) Data Warehouse
4 298 (4.38%) Data Lake
5 241 (3.55%) PostgreSQL
6 175 (2.57%) NoSQL
7 173 (2.55%) Azure SQL Database
8 159 (2.34%) Metadata
9 132 (1.94%) Delta Lake
10 114 (1.68%) Relational Database
11 91 (1.34%) Big Data
12 76 (1.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.10%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.07%) Tableau
15 64 (0.94%) Snowflake Schema
16 57 (0.84%) BigQuery
17 55 (0.81%) Oracle Database
18 51 (0.75%) MySQL
19 47 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
20 44 (0.65%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 488 (7.18%) Git
1 488 (7.18%) JIRA
2 320 (4.71%) Jenkins
3 249 (3.66%) GitLab
4 101 (1.49%) Selenium
5 58 (0.85%) Postman
6 57 (0.84%) JMeter
7 55 (0.81%) JUnit
8 51 (0.75%) Cucumber
9 43 (0.63%) REST Assured
10 41 (0.60%) SonarQube
11 39 (0.57%) MLflow
12 36 (0.53%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.51%) WebDriver
14 31 (0.46%) Cypress.io
15 29 (0.43%) Maven
16 26 (0.38%) Gatling
17 25 (0.37%) LoadRunner
17 25 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
18 22 (0.32%) Gradle
General
1 1,698 (24.98%) Social Skills
2 1,342 (19.74%) Finance
3 703 (10.34%) Public Sector
4 648 (9.53%) Analytical Skills
5 391 (5.75%) Banking
6 191 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
7 162 (2.38%) Legal
8 157 (2.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 157 (2.31%) Retail
9 90 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
10 74 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
11 68 (1.00%) Investment Banking
12 67 (0.99%) Front Office
13 63 (0.93%) Financial Institution
13 63 (0.93%) Law
14 61 (0.90%) Telecoms
15 57 (0.84%) Manufacturing
15 57 (0.84%) Marketing
16 52 (0.77%) Presentation Skills
17 45 (0.66%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,218 (17.92%) Architect
2 844 (12.42%) Senior
3 812 (11.95%) Developer
4 587 (8.64%) Azure Engineer
5 531 (7.81%) Lead
6 530 (7.80%) Data Engineer
7 415 (6.11%) Analyst
8 361 (5.31%) Solutions Architect
9 321 (4.72%) DevOps Engineer
10 284 (4.18%) Consultant
11 272 (4.00%) Cloud Engineer
12 238 (3.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 195 (2.87%) Data Architect
14 184 (2.71%) Azure Architect
15 173 (2.55%) Platform Engineer
16 170 (2.50%) Security Engineer
17 164 (2.41%) Technical Architect
18 157 (2.31%) Business Analyst
19 145 (2.13%) Project Manager
19 145 (2.13%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 517 (7.61%) .NET
2 449 (6.61%) REST
3 264 (3.88%) React
4 256 (3.77%) Kafka
5 221 (3.25%) PySpark
6 211 (3.10%) RESTful
7 207 (3.05%) OAuth
8 174 (2.56%) Spring
9 170 (2.50%) Node.js
10 158 (2.32%) AngularJS
11 144 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 141 (2.07%) JSON
12 141 (2.07%) SAML
13 133 (1.96%) LDAP
14 126 (1.85%) OpenID
15 115 (1.69%) HTML
16 114 (1.68%) .NET Framework
17 111 (1.63%) Middleware
18 108 (1.59%) SOAP
19 105 (1.54%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 727 (10.70%) Cloud Native
2 295 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 261 (3.84%) Product Ownership
4 215 (3.16%) Data Centre
5 212 (3.12%) Distributed Systems
6 207 (3.05%) Hybrid Cloud
7 189 (2.78%) Legacy Systems
8 153 (2.25%) AI Agents
9 145 (2.13%) Security Posture
10 137 (2.02%) Enterprise Software
11 129 (1.90%) Public Cloud
12 102 (1.50%) Data Structures
13 93 (1.37%) Replication
14 92 (1.35%) Management Information System
15 86 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
16 76 (1.12%) PKI
17 75 (1.10%) Enterprise Cloud
18 71 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 63 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
20 55 (0.81%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 810 (11.92%) Windows
2 349 (5.13%) Linux
3 258 (3.80%) Windows Server
4 101 (1.49%) Windows 10
5 75 (1.10%) Unix
6 63 (0.93%) Mac OS
6 63 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 59 (0.87%) Apple iOS
8 57 (0.84%) Android
9 44 (0.65%) VMS
10 36 (0.53%) Ubuntu
11 25 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 16 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
13 13 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.18%) Data ONTAP
15 11 (0.16%) CentOS
16 10 (0.15%) Debian
17 6 (0.088%) CoreOS
17 6 (0.088%) Rocky
17 6 (0.088%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,470 (36.34%) DevOps
2 2,090 (30.75%) CI/CD
3 1,636 (24.07%) Agile
4 1,073 (15.79%) AI
5 1,020 (15.01%) Infrastructure as Code
6 990 (14.57%) Analytics
7 978 (14.39%) Migration
8 931 (13.70%) Problem-Solving
9 831 (12.23%) Stakeholder Management
10 759 (11.17%) Data Modelling
11 683 (10.05%) Continuous Improvement
12 670 (9.86%) Data Pipeline
12 670 (9.86%) Roadmaps
13 633 (9.31%) Business Intelligence
14 615 (9.05%) Containerisation
15 598 (8.80%) ETL
16 583 (8.58%) Microservices
16 583 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 570 (8.39%) Data Engineering
18 520 (7.65%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,611 (23.70%) Python
2 1,396 (20.54%) SQL
3 687 (10.11%) PowerShell
4 566 (8.33%) Java
5 530 (7.80%) C#
6 368 (5.41%) JavaScript
7 252 (3.71%) Bash
8 247 (3.63%) TypeScript
9 234 (3.44%) Bicep
10 85 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 78 (1.15%) T-SQL
12 75 (1.10%) Go
13 68 (1.00%) Scala
14 44 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
15 36 (0.53%) R
16 34 (0.50%) Shell Script
17 30 (0.44%) Kotlin
18 28 (0.41%) PL/SQL
19 21 (0.31%) C++
19 21 (0.31%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,675 (24.64%) Security Cleared
2 1,375 (20.23%) SC Cleared
3 502 (7.39%) Degree
4 362 (5.33%) Azure Certification
5 219 (3.22%) CISSP
6 192 (2.82%) DV Cleared
7 177 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
8 173 (2.55%) Cisco Certification
8 173 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 158 (2.32%) AWS Certification
10 138 (2.03%) BPSS Clearance
11 105 (1.54%) CISM
12 83 (1.22%) CCNP
13 68 (1.00%) PMP
14 64 (0.94%) (ISC)2 CCSP
15 62 (0.91%) PMI Certification
16 52 (0.77%) Master's Degree
17 48 (0.71%) ISTQB
18 46 (0.68%) TOGAF Certification
19 43 (0.63%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 347 (5.11%) QA
3 302 (4.44%) GDPR
4 250 (3.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 241 (3.55%) NIST
6 141 (2.07%) Accessibility
7 94 (1.38%) NCSC
8 86 (1.27%) SLA
9 71 (1.04%) PCI DSS
10 69 (1.02%) Cyber Essentials
11 62 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 57 (0.84%) WCAG
13 55 (0.81%) GRC
14 37 (0.54%) PMO
15 35 (0.51%) HIPAA
16 30 (0.44%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 24 (0.35%) SOC 2
18 23 (0.34%) NIST 800
19 17 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
20 16 (0.24%) COBIT
System Software
1 856 (12.59%) Active Directory
2 706 (10.39%) Docker
3 190 (2.80%) VMware Infrastructure
4 126 (1.85%) Virtual Desktop
5 125 (1.84%) Virtual Machines
6 88 (1.29%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.87%) vSphere
8 49 (0.72%) VMware ESXi
9 30 (0.44%) VMware NSX
10 28 (0.41%) Firmware
11 23 (0.34%) NFS
12 17 (0.25%) Postfix
13 11 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.12%) IAG
14 8 (0.12%) Varnish
15 7 (0.10%) BitLocker
16 6 (0.088%) EMC RecoverPoint
17 5 (0.074%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
17 5 (0.074%) RACF
17 5 (0.074%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 1,101 (16.20%) Terraform
2 956 (14.07%) Kubernetes
3 377 (5.55%) Microsoft Intune
4 315 (4.63%) Ansible
5 191 (2.81%) Grafana
6 157 (2.31%) Prometheus
7 148 (2.18%) Single Sign-On
8 95 (1.40%) SCCM
9 68 (1.00%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 42 (0.62%) Progress Chef
11 41 (0.60%) Jamf Pro
12 40 (0.59%) Argo
13 39 (0.57%) Puppet
14 35 (0.51%) FortiGate
15 28 (0.41%) Istio
16 20 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 19 (0.28%) HAProxy
18 16 (0.24%) HP ALM
18 16 (0.24%) Packer
19 13 (0.19%) SCOM
Vendors
1 2,213 (32.56%) Microsoft
2 635 (9.34%) Databricks
3 338 (4.97%) ServiceNow
4 267 (3.93%) Oracle
5 261 (3.84%) VMware
6 245 (3.60%) Google
7 195 (2.87%) SAP
8 189 (2.78%) Cisco
9 166 (2.44%) OpenAI
10 138 (2.03%) Splunk
11 128 (1.88%) Palo Alto
11 128 (1.88%) Salesforce
12 122 (1.79%) CyberArk
13 117 (1.72%) Foundry
14 91 (1.34%) Okta
15 88 (1.29%) Dynatrace
16 76 (1.12%) Zscaler
17 69 (1.02%) Informatica
18 64 (0.94%) Citrix
19 62 (0.91%) Fortinet