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 22 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,105 3,828 4,908
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.40% 15.60% 13.26%
As % of the Cloud Services category 42.91% 41.60% 41.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,412 2,720 3,606
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £544
Median % change year-on-year - -3.45% -3.33%
75th Percentile £623 £640 £645
90th Percentile £720 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 111 28 49
10th Percentile £25.47 £22.50 £17.80
25th Percentile £53.28 £26.45 £22.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £57.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.88% +62.86% -35.39%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.49 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £86.00 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £57.50 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +64.29% - -36.36%

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 14,228 9,202 11,816
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.89% 37.51% 31.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,806 6,447 8,512
10th Percentile £313 £313 £285
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £502 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.48% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 441 193 319
10th Percentile £15.93 £15.22 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.87
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.50 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +69.81% +27.59% -30.77%
75th Percentile £67.84 £43.00 £33.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £74.75 £60.30
UK median hourly rate £42.59 £27.50 £21.00
% change year-on-year +54.88% +30.95% -38.24%

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 22 April 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 22 April 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 22 April 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 3,288 £535 -2.76% 1,059
North of England +3 835 £500 +5.26% 617
South East +2 783 £500 -4.76% 642
Midlands -2 499 £488 -6.25% 349
North West +2 447 £500 - 312
South West +6 373 £500 -4.76% 289
West Midlands 0 364 £500 -4.76% 198
Yorkshire +3 344 £500 +17.65% 197
East of England +7 148 £540 -8.47% 225
East Midlands +2 125 £450 -5.26% 149
North East -3 51 £525 +3.70% 110
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
1 286 (4.68%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.90%) Microsoft Exchange
3 175 (2.87%) Apache Spark
4 165 (2.70%) Confluence
5 97 (1.59%) Apache
6 87 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) SAS
8 19 (0.31%) IIS
9 15 (0.25%) Appian
10 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 14 (0.23%) Camunda
11 13 (0.21%) CMS
12 12 (0.20%) HCL Notes
12 12 (0.20%) Mendix
12 12 (0.20%) OpenStack
13 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.098%) WebLogic
16 5 (0.082%) BizTalk Server
16 5 (0.082%) nginx
Applications
1 99 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.92%) Microsoft Project
4 45 (0.74%) MS Visio
5 36 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 14 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 6 (0.098%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.082%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.082%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.066%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.066%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.066%) Weka
11 3 (0.049%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) Adobe Creative Suite
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 101 (1.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
4 10 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
5 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
6 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
6 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
7 5 (0.082%) Dynamics AX
7 5 (0.082%) Oracle EBS
8 4 (0.066%) Cloudability
8 4 (0.066%) Elite 3E
8 4 (0.066%) Oracle FAH
8 4 (0.066%) SAP BPC
8 4 (0.066%) SAP ERP
8 4 (0.066%) Unit4 Business World
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle Assets
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
9 3 (0.049%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 3 (0.049%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,120 (34.73%) AWS
2 1,272 (20.84%) Azure DevOps
3 1,170 (19.16%) GCP
4 797 (13.05%) Power Platform
5 770 (12.61%) Entra ID
6 659 (10.79%) Microsoft 365
7 579 (9.48%) GitHub
8 465 (7.62%) Azure Data Factory
9 334 (5.47%) Serverless
10 330 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
11 301 (4.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 246 (4.03%) SaaS
13 237 (3.88%) Azure AKS
14 234 (3.83%) Dynamics 365
15 219 (3.59%) Azure Monitor
16 211 (3.46%) Power Automate
17 210 (3.44%) PaaS
18 191 (3.13%) Azure Functions
19 189 (3.10%) Azure Logic Apps
20 171 (2.80%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 386 (6.32%) Firewall
2 266 (4.36%) DNS
3 236 (3.87%) VPN
4 208 (3.41%) Network Security
5 157 (2.57%) WAN
6 149 (2.44%) DHCP
7 121 (1.98%) LAN
8 89 (1.46%) TCP/IP
9 74 (1.21%) SD-WAN
9 74 (1.21%) VLAN
10 70 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
11 65 (1.06%) Kerberos
12 50 (0.82%) BGP
13 44 (0.72%) OSPF
14 39 (0.64%) Wireless
15 38 (0.62%) SAN
16 37 (0.61%) SSL
17 32 (0.52%) Internet
18 31 (0.51%) HTTP
19 29 (0.48%) MPLS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 550 (9.01%) Power BI
2 368 (6.03%) SQL Server
3 335 (5.49%) Data Warehouse
4 296 (4.85%) Data Lake
5 214 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
6 206 (3.37%) Azure SQL Database
7 180 (2.95%) NoSQL
8 148 (2.42%) Metadata
9 138 (2.26%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.59%) Relational Database
11 94 (1.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (1.41%) Big Data
13 80 (1.31%) MongoDB
14 78 (1.28%) Tableau
15 63 (1.03%) Oracle Database
16 58 (0.95%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.90%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.79%) Star Schema
19 47 (0.77%) MySQL
20 44 (0.72%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 447 (7.32%) Git
2 424 (6.95%) JIRA
3 301 (4.93%) Jenkins
4 221 (3.62%) GitLab
5 101 (1.65%) Selenium
6 67 (1.10%) Postman
7 57 (0.93%) JUnit
8 55 (0.90%) Cucumber
9 50 (0.82%) MLflow
10 47 (0.77%) JMeter
11 42 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 34 (0.56%) Artifactory
12 34 (0.56%) Cypress.io
12 34 (0.56%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.52%) Oracle APEX
14 28 (0.46%) TestRail
15 26 (0.43%) Visual Studio
16 24 (0.39%) Gatling
17 22 (0.36%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.36%) WebDriver
General
1 1,654 (27.09%) Social Skills
2 1,142 (18.71%) Finance
3 632 (10.35%) Public Sector
4 611 (10.01%) Analytical Skills
5 358 (5.86%) Banking
6 192 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
7 141 (2.31%) Legal
8 96 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.44%) Retail
10 81 (1.33%) Organisational Skills
11 74 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
12 73 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
13 65 (1.06%) Financial Institution
14 63 (1.03%) Law
15 62 (1.02%) Marketing
16 61 (1.00%) Investment Banking
17 60 (0.98%) Front Office
18 54 (0.88%) Telecoms
19 44 (0.72%) Local Government
20 33 (0.54%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,004 (16.45%) Architect
2 778 (12.74%) Developer
3 736 (12.06%) Senior
4 574 (9.40%) Azure Engineer
5 530 (8.68%) Data Engineer
6 462 (7.57%) Lead
7 377 (6.18%) Analyst
8 316 (5.18%) DevOps Engineer
9 264 (4.32%) Solutions Architect
10 246 (4.03%) Consultant
11 191 (3.13%) Cloud Engineer
12 180 (2.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 154 (2.52%) Security Engineer
14 153 (2.51%) Platform Engineer
15 152 (2.49%) Azure Architect
16 137 (2.24%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 133 (2.18%) Data Architect
18 132 (2.16%) Senior Developer
18 132 (2.16%) Technical Architect
19 131 (2.15%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (7.68%) .NET
2 387 (6.34%) REST
3 261 (4.28%) React
4 247 (4.05%) Kafka
5 231 (3.78%) PySpark
6 208 (3.41%) Node.js
7 185 (3.03%) RESTful
8 178 (2.92%) Spring
9 177 (2.90%) OAuth
10 157 (2.57%) AngularJS
11 153 (2.51%) LDAP
12 143 (2.34%) Spring Boot
13 125 (2.05%) JSON
14 120 (1.97%) HTML
15 119 (1.95%) Middleware
16 118 (1.93%) SAML
17 116 (1.90%) SOAP
18 103 (1.69%) OpenID
19 102 (1.67%) YAML
20 101 (1.65%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 575 (9.42%) Cloud Native
2 243 (3.98%) Onboarding
3 211 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 174 (2.85%) Hybrid Cloud
5 161 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
6 151 (2.47%) Security Posture
7 150 (2.46%) Legacy Systems
8 146 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
9 139 (2.28%) Data Centre
10 137 (2.24%) Public Cloud
11 109 (1.79%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.36%) Replication
13 81 (1.33%) Data Structures
14 70 (1.15%) Management Information System
15 64 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
16 59 (0.97%) PKI
17 57 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
18 50 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
19 47 (0.77%) Low-Code
20 44 (0.72%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 677 (11.09%) Windows
2 310 (5.08%) Linux
3 210 (3.44%) Windows Server
4 114 (1.87%) Windows 10
5 61 (1.00%) VMS
6 58 (0.95%) Unix
7 52 (0.85%) Mac OS
8 47 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 40 (0.66%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.52%) Android
11 20 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
11 20 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 18 (0.29%) Ubuntu
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.11%) CentOS
17 6 (0.098%) CoreOS
18 5 (0.082%) AIX
18 5 (0.082%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,287 (37.46%) DevOps
2 1,871 (30.65%) CI/CD
3 1,425 (23.34%) Agile
4 959 (15.71%) Problem-Solving
5 932 (15.27%) Analytics
6 877 (14.37%) AI
7 847 (13.87%) Infrastructure as Code
8 821 (13.45%) Migration
9 706 (11.56%) Data Modelling
10 614 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
11 611 (10.01%) Business Intelligence
12 600 (9.83%) Data Pipeline
13 597 (9.78%) Continuous Improvement
14 578 (9.47%) ETL
15 572 (9.37%) Containerisation
16 548 (8.98%) Data Engineering
17 537 (8.80%) Microservices
18 508 (8.32%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 496 (8.12%) Roadmaps
20 476 (7.80%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,539 (25.21%) Python
2 1,372 (22.47%) SQL
3 663 (10.86%) PowerShell
4 528 (8.65%) C#
5 519 (8.50%) Java
6 396 (6.49%) JavaScript
7 228 (3.73%) TypeScript
8 219 (3.59%) Bash
9 197 (3.23%) Bicep
10 100 (1.64%) Scala
11 76 (1.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 76 (1.24%) Go
12 73 (1.20%) T-SQL
13 70 (1.15%) PL/SQL
14 62 (1.02%) Kusto Query Language
15 42 (0.69%) R
16 36 (0.59%) Shell Script
17 21 (0.34%) C++
18 20 (0.33%) PHP
19 16 (0.26%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,535 (25.14%) Security Cleared
2 1,283 (21.02%) SC Cleared
3 452 (7.40%) Degree
4 358 (5.86%) Azure Certification
5 190 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
6 172 (2.82%) CISSP
7 141 (2.31%) Microsoft Certification
8 135 (2.21%) Cisco Certification
9 124 (2.03%) AWS Certification
10 122 (2.00%) DV Cleared
11 98 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
12 97 (1.59%) CISM
13 72 (1.18%) CCNP
14 59 (0.97%) PMP
15 58 (0.95%) Master's Degree
16 56 (0.92%) PMI Certification
17 55 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
18 50 (0.82%) ISTQB
19 46 (0.75%) (ISC)2 CCSP
20 36 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (7.34%) Data Quality
2 353 (5.78%) GDPR
3 323 (5.29%) QA
4 252 (4.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 228 (3.73%) NIST
6 91 (1.49%) Accessibility
7 86 (1.41%) PCI DSS
8 80 (1.31%) NCSC
9 60 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 54 (0.88%) SLA
11 53 (0.87%) Cyber Essentials
12 47 (0.77%) PMO
13 38 (0.62%) GRC
14 33 (0.54%) HIPAA
15 30 (0.49%) WCAG
16 24 (0.39%) NIST 800
17 23 (0.38%) ISO 20022
18 19 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 19 (0.31%) SOC 2
19 18 (0.29%) PSD2
System Software
1 799 (13.09%) Active Directory
2 693 (11.35%) Docker
3 182 (2.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 103 (1.69%) Virtual Machines
5 95 (1.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.44%) Hyper-V
7 62 (1.02%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.43%) VMware NSX
10 23 (0.38%) Firmware
11 17 (0.28%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 7 (0.11%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
14 6 (0.098%) BitLocker
14 6 (0.098%) Microsoft App-V
14 6 (0.098%) RACF
14 6 (0.098%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 6 (0.098%) Varnish
15 5 (0.082%) KVM
15 5 (0.082%) Snort
Systems Management
1 972 (15.92%) Terraform
2 907 (14.86%) Kubernetes
3 332 (5.44%) Microsoft Intune
4 265 (4.34%) Ansible
5 163 (2.67%) Grafana
6 137 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
7 134 (2.19%) Prometheus
8 106 (1.74%) SCCM
9 68 (1.11%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.57%) Argo
10 35 (0.57%) Istio
11 32 (0.52%) Puppet
12 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
13 23 (0.38%) vCenter Server
14 22 (0.36%) Jamf Pro
15 21 (0.34%) FortiGate
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
17 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.25%) linkerd
18 15 (0.25%) Nmap
Vendors
1 2,000 (32.76%) Microsoft
2 630 (10.32%) Databricks
3 291 (4.77%) Oracle
4 280 (4.59%) Google
5 276 (4.52%) ServiceNow
6 253 (4.14%) VMware
7 175 (2.87%) SAP
8 166 (2.72%) Cisco
9 163 (2.67%) OpenAI
10 134 (2.19%) Splunk
11 131 (2.15%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.72%) Foundry
13 83 (1.36%) Palo Alto
13 83 (1.36%) Salesforce
14 81 (1.33%) Okta
15 67 (1.10%) BeyondTrust
15 67 (1.10%) IBM
16 65 (1.06%) Citrix
17 60 (0.98%) Informatica
18 58 (0.95%) Red Hat