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 13 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,131 3,719 4,909
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.21% 15.42% 13.43%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.20% 41.48% 42.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,396 2,622 3,610
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £640
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £538
% change year-on-year - -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 24 47
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £52.00 £26.45 £22.40
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -40.32%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £90.00 £93.61 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £37.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year +53.33% +7.14% -41.57%

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 14,193 8,966 11,674
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.21% 37.17% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,725 6,222 8,419
10th Percentile £319 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £744
UK median daily rate £500 £515 £525
% change year-on-year -2.86% -1.90% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 463 194 323
10th Percentile £15.52 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.29 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £42.69 £25.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.39% +21.43% -34.98%
75th Percentile £67.84 £37.50 £34.38
90th Percentile £81.00 £72.13 £65.10
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £27.50 £21.37
% change year-on-year +43.64% +28.69% -38.94%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 May 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 3,263 £538 -2.27% 950
North of England +4 854 £500 +5.26% 557
South East +3 821 £500 -4.76% 645
Midlands -4 489 £490 -2.00% 290
North West +3 448 £500 +0.81% 298
South West +5 377 £525 - 262
West Midlands 0 357 £498 -5.24% 154
Yorkshire +5 346 £500 +14.29% 160
East of England +5 145 £550 -6.78% 190
East Midlands +3 122 £450 -2.70% 135
North East 0 69 £525 +9.09% 99
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
1 287 (4.68%) SharePoint
2 172 (2.81%) Confluence
3 171 (2.79%) Microsoft Exchange
4 169 (2.76%) Apache Spark
5 89 (1.45%) Apache
6 84 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) IIS
8 17 (0.28%) SAS
9 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
9 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 12 (0.20%) Appian
10 12 (0.20%) Camunda
10 12 (0.20%) CMS
10 12 (0.20%) HCL Notes
11 11 (0.18%) OpenStack
12 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
13 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 5 (0.082%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.082%) Jupyter
14 5 (0.082%) WebLogic
Applications
1 89 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 37 (0.60%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 17 (0.28%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.082%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.082%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.065%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.065%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.049%) Revit
10 3 (0.049%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.016%) InDesign
11 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 88 (1.44%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.11%) SAP S/4HANA
3 13 (0.21%) Remedy ITSM
4 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
5 9 (0.15%) Maximo
6 8 (0.13%) Aladdin
6 8 (0.13%) Payment Gateway
6 8 (0.13%) Teamcenter
7 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
8 6 (0.098%) Unit4 Business World
9 5 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
9 5 (0.082%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.065%) Oracle Assets
10 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
10 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
10 4 (0.065%) Shopify
10 4 (0.065%) SimCorp Dimension
11 3 (0.049%) Magento
11 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
11 3 (0.049%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 2,120 (34.58%) AWS
2 1,244 (20.29%) Azure DevOps
3 1,121 (18.28%) GCP
4 786 (12.82%) Power Platform
5 762 (12.43%) Entra ID
6 642 (10.47%) Microsoft 365
7 568 (9.26%) GitHub
8 451 (7.36%) Azure Data Factory
9 320 (5.22%) GitHub Actions
10 312 (5.09%) Serverless
11 300 (4.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 244 (3.98%) SaaS
13 225 (3.67%) Azure AKS
14 219 (3.57%) Dynamics 365
15 210 (3.43%) PaaS
16 208 (3.39%) Power Automate
17 197 (3.21%) Azure Monitor
18 172 (2.81%) Azure Functions
19 170 (2.77%) PowerApps
20 169 (2.76%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 385 (6.28%) Firewall
2 268 (4.37%) DNS
3 228 (3.72%) VPN
4 204 (3.33%) Network Security
5 165 (2.69%) WAN
6 148 (2.41%) DHCP
7 114 (1.86%) LAN
8 85 (1.39%) SD-WAN
9 84 (1.37%) TCP/IP
10 74 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 68 (1.11%) VLAN
12 66 (1.08%) BGP
12 66 (1.08%) Kerberos
13 57 (0.93%) OSPF
14 45 (0.73%) SAN
15 40 (0.65%) Wireless
16 38 (0.62%) SSL
17 32 (0.52%) VXLAN
18 29 (0.47%) HTTP
18 29 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 546 (8.91%) Power BI
2 367 (5.99%) SQL Server
3 320 (5.22%) Data Warehouse
4 300 (4.89%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
6 195 (3.18%) Azure SQL Database
7 164 (2.67%) NoSQL
8 141 (2.30%) Metadata
9 136 (2.22%) Delta Lake
10 94 (1.53%) Relational Database
11 86 (1.40%) Big Data
12 83 (1.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 75 (1.22%) MongoDB
14 69 (1.13%) Tableau
15 61 (0.99%) Oracle Database
15 61 (0.99%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (0.90%) BigQuery
17 47 (0.77%) Star Schema
18 45 (0.73%) Spark SQL
19 42 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 445 (7.26%) Git
2 431 (7.03%) JIRA
3 300 (4.89%) Jenkins
4 234 (3.82%) GitLab
5 92 (1.50%) Selenium
6 59 (0.96%) Postman
7 50 (0.82%) MLflow
8 49 (0.80%) Cucumber
9 48 (0.78%) JUnit
10 45 (0.73%) JMeter
11 39 (0.64%) REST Assured
12 38 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.51%) Artifactory
14 28 (0.46%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.41%) Maven
16 24 (0.39%) Visual Studio
16 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
17 23 (0.38%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.38%) Gatling
18 21 (0.34%) TestRail
General
1 1,571 (25.62%) Social Skills
2 1,158 (18.89%) Finance
3 619 (10.10%) Public Sector
4 561 (9.15%) Analytical Skills
5 351 (5.73%) Banking
6 177 (2.89%) Documentation Skills
7 143 (2.33%) Legal
8 98 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 91 (1.48%) Retail
10 84 (1.37%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.11%) Financial Institution
12 65 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
13 62 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
14 60 (0.98%) Investment Banking
15 59 (0.96%) Front Office
16 58 (0.95%) Marketing
17 57 (0.93%) Law
18 51 (0.83%) Telecoms
19 38 (0.62%) Military
20 37 (0.60%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,025 (16.72%) Architect
2 746 (12.17%) Senior
3 740 (12.07%) Developer
4 562 (9.17%) Azure Engineer
5 529 (8.63%) Data Engineer
6 442 (7.21%) Lead
7 387 (6.31%) Analyst
8 317 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
9 275 (4.49%) Solutions Architect
10 252 (4.11%) Consultant
11 201 (3.28%) Cloud Engineer
12 199 (3.25%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 163 (2.66%) Azure Architect
14 161 (2.63%) Security Engineer
15 150 (2.45%) Platform Engineer
16 141 (2.30%) Technical Architect
17 139 (2.27%) Data Architect
18 134 (2.19%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 132 (2.15%) Business Analyst
20 129 (2.10%) Project Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 457 (7.45%) .NET
2 388 (6.33%) REST
3 247 (4.03%) React
4 239 (3.90%) Kafka
5 226 (3.69%) PySpark
6 185 (3.02%) Node.js
7 175 (2.85%) RESTful
8 166 (2.71%) OAuth
9 165 (2.69%) Spring
10 162 (2.64%) LDAP
11 150 (2.45%) AngularJS
12 133 (2.17%) Spring Boot
13 121 (1.97%) Middleware
14 119 (1.94%) JSON
15 117 (1.91%) SOAP
16 113 (1.84%) HTML
17 112 (1.83%) SAML
18 104 (1.70%) OpenID
19 97 (1.58%) YAML
20 91 (1.48%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 603 (9.84%) Cloud Native
2 247 (4.03%) Onboarding
3 207 (3.38%) Product Ownership
4 180 (2.94%) Hybrid Cloud
5 166 (2.71%) Data Centre
6 157 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
7 143 (2.33%) Distributed Systems
7 143 (2.33%) Security Posture
8 140 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
9 130 (2.12%) Public Cloud
10 115 (1.88%) AI Agents
11 86 (1.40%) Data Structures
12 84 (1.37%) Replication
13 69 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
14 64 (1.04%) Management Information System
15 57 (0.93%) PKI
16 55 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
17 52 (0.85%) Low-Code
18 49 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
18 49 (0.80%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 697 (11.37%) Windows
2 312 (5.09%) Linux
3 207 (3.38%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.83%) Windows 10
5 65 (1.06%) Unix
6 56 (0.91%) VMS
7 55 (0.90%) Mac OS
8 52 (0.85%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 37 (0.60%) Android
11 23 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.33%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 8 (0.13%) CentOS
17 7 (0.11%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.098%) AIX
18 6 (0.098%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,287 (37.30%) DevOps
2 1,882 (30.70%) CI/CD
3 1,414 (23.06%) Agile
4 921 (15.02%) Analytics
5 893 (14.57%) Problem-Solving
6 872 (14.22%) Infrastructure as Code
7 863 (14.08%) AI
8 835 (13.62%) Migration
9 703 (11.47%) Data Modelling
10 618 (10.08%) Stakeholder Management
11 607 (9.90%) Data Pipeline
12 606 (9.88%) Business Intelligence
13 589 (9.61%) ETL
14 580 (9.46%) Continuous Improvement
15 572 (9.33%) Containerisation
16 530 (8.64%) Data Engineering
16 530 (8.64%) Microservices
17 524 (8.55%) Roadmaps
18 497 (8.11%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 452 (7.37%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,496 (24.40%) Python
2 1,325 (21.61%) SQL
3 654 (10.67%) PowerShell
4 505 (8.24%) C#
5 503 (8.20%) Java
6 353 (5.76%) JavaScript
7 219 (3.57%) Bash
8 208 (3.39%) TypeScript
9 189 (3.08%) Bicep
10 88 (1.44%) Scala
11 83 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 76 (1.24%) T-SQL
13 73 (1.19%) Go
14 50 (0.82%) Kusto Query Language
15 43 (0.70%) PL/SQL
16 38 (0.62%) R
17 34 (0.55%) Shell Script
18 23 (0.38%) C++
19 20 (0.33%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,548 (25.25%) Security Cleared
2 1,292 (21.07%) SC Cleared
3 434 (7.08%) Degree
4 345 (5.63%) Azure Certification
5 177 (2.89%) CISSP
6 170 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
7 144 (2.35%) Cisco Certification
8 135 (2.20%) DV Cleared
8 135 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
9 128 (2.09%) AWS Certification
10 102 (1.66%) CISM
11 101 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
12 68 (1.11%) CCNP
13 63 (1.03%) PMP
14 59 (0.96%) PMI Certification
15 56 (0.91%) TOGAF Certification
16 53 (0.86%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 51 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.77%) ISTQB
19 37 (0.60%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 442 (7.21%) Data Quality
2 327 (5.33%) QA
3 317 (5.17%) GDPR
4 250 (4.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.78%) NIST
6 97 (1.58%) Accessibility
7 81 (1.32%) NCSC
8 78 (1.27%) PCI DSS
9 63 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 62 (1.01%) SLA
11 58 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.82%) PMO
13 45 (0.73%) GRC
14 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 33 (0.54%) WCAG
16 23 (0.38%) NIST 800
17 21 (0.34%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 19 (0.31%) ISO 20022
19 17 (0.28%) PSD2
19 17 (0.28%) SOC 2
System Software
1 799 (13.03%) Active Directory
2 669 (10.91%) Docker
3 178 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 107 (1.75%) Virtual Desktop
5 106 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
6 87 (1.42%) Hyper-V
7 52 (0.85%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 20 (0.33%) NFS
11 18 (0.29%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.20%) Postfix
13 11 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.098%) RACF
16 5 (0.082%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.082%) HDFS
16 5 (0.082%) KVM
16 5 (0.082%) Snort
17 4 (0.065%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 963 (15.71%) Terraform
2 888 (14.48%) Kubernetes
3 328 (5.35%) Microsoft Intune
4 279 (4.55%) Ansible
5 165 (2.69%) Grafana
6 141 (2.30%) Prometheus
7 131 (2.14%) Single Sign-On
8 100 (1.63%) SCCM
9 66 (1.08%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 34 (0.55%) Puppet
11 33 (0.54%) Istio
12 31 (0.51%) Argo
13 28 (0.46%) Progress Chef
14 25 (0.41%) FortiGate
15 23 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
16 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.28%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
18 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
19 14 (0.23%) Nmap
Vendors
1 1,991 (32.47%) Microsoft
2 620 (10.11%) Databricks
3 274 (4.47%) ServiceNow
4 257 (4.19%) Oracle
5 249 (4.06%) VMware
6 248 (4.05%) Google
7 184 (3.00%) SAP
8 161 (2.63%) Cisco
9 156 (2.54%) OpenAI
10 133 (2.17%) Splunk
11 132 (2.15%) CyberArk
12 108 (1.76%) Palo Alto
13 97 (1.58%) Foundry
14 89 (1.45%) Salesforce
15 78 (1.27%) Okta
16 67 (1.09%) BeyondTrust
17 66 (1.08%) Citrix
18 64 (1.04%) Dynatrace
19 61 (0.99%) Zscaler
20 58 (0.95%) Informatica