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

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 6 6
Rank change year-on-year +1 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,275 3,675 4,935
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.19% 15.33% 13.58%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.41% 41.05% 42.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,495 2,586 3,643
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £445
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year - -3.23% -3.34%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £535
% change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 126 24 46
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.53
Median hourly rate £57.50 £38.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +48.39% +10.71% -44.44%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.69 £59.95
90th Percentile £93.75 £93.61 £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 14,456 8,952 11,709
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.00% 37.33% 32.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,880 6,189 8,457
10th Percentile £325 £313 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £743
UK median daily rate £505 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 478 198 324
10th Percentile £15.59 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.35 £18.13 £15.88
Median hourly rate £41.78 £26.45 £21.37
Median % change year-on-year +57.96% +23.77% -34.04%
75th Percentile £67.50 £38.50 £35.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £71.63 £65.75
UK median hourly rate £37.00 £28.60 £21.37
% change year-on-year +29.37% +33.83% -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 22 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 22 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 22 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 3,354 £538 -2.27% 1,059
North of England +4 884 £500 +5.26% 589
South East +3 826 £500 -1.72% 610
Midlands -3 492 £491 -1.75% 267
North West +3 447 £500 +5.26% 338
South West +6 385 £525 - 262
Yorkshire +5 368 £500 +11.11% 158
West Midlands 0 355 £496 -5.48% 170
East of England +5 148 £550 -6.78% 162
East Midlands +4 127 £463 - 96
North East +1 78 £525 +5.00% 95
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
1 300 (4.78%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.82%) Confluence
3 174 (2.77%) Apache Spark
4 170 (2.71%) Microsoft Exchange
5 95 (1.51%) Apache
6 90 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
7 23 (0.37%) IIS
8 19 (0.30%) SAS
9 15 (0.24%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
11 12 (0.19%) Appian
11 12 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 12 (0.19%) Camunda
11 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
12 11 (0.18%) Palantir Foundry
13 10 (0.16%) OpenStack
14 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
15 6 (0.096%) Umbraco
15 6 (0.096%) WebSphere
16 5 (0.080%) Jupyter
Applications
1 85 (1.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 80 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 56 (0.89%) Microsoft Project
4 34 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.080%) AutoCAD
8 5 (0.080%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.080%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.064%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.064%) Adobe XD
10 3 (0.048%) Notion
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
10 3 (0.048%) SOLIDWORKS
11 1 (0.016%) InDesign
11 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
11 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 86 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
2 69 (1.10%) SAP S/4HANA
3 14 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
4 9 (0.14%) Aladdin
4 9 (0.14%) Maximo
4 9 (0.14%) Teamcenter
5 8 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
6 7 (0.11%) NEC Housing
6 7 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.096%) Unit4 Business World
8 5 (0.080%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.080%) SAP MDG
8 5 (0.080%) Shopify
8 5 (0.080%) SimCorp Dimension
9 4 (0.064%) Endur
9 4 (0.064%) Magento
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.064%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.064%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.064%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,146 (34.20%) AWS
2 1,268 (20.21%) Azure DevOps
3 1,106 (17.63%) GCP
4 794 (12.65%) Power Platform
5 782 (12.46%) Entra ID
6 659 (10.50%) Microsoft 365
7 571 (9.10%) GitHub
8 456 (7.27%) Azure Data Factory
9 324 (5.16%) GitHub Actions
10 312 (4.97%) Serverless
11 297 (4.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 249 (3.97%) SaaS
13 231 (3.68%) Azure AKS
14 212 (3.38%) Dynamics 365
14 212 (3.38%) Power Automate
15 207 (3.30%) PaaS
16 199 (3.17%) Azure Monitor
17 175 (2.79%) IaaS
18 174 (2.77%) Azure Functions
19 172 (2.74%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 383 (6.10%) Firewall
2 275 (4.38%) DNS
3 229 (3.65%) VPN
4 211 (3.36%) Network Security
5 174 (2.77%) WAN
6 150 (2.39%) DHCP
7 115 (1.83%) LAN
8 90 (1.43%) SD-WAN
9 89 (1.42%) TCP/IP
10 73 (1.16%) BGP
11 71 (1.13%) Wi-Fi
12 70 (1.12%) VLAN
13 66 (1.05%) Kerberos
14 63 (1.00%) OSPF
15 46 (0.73%) SAN
16 42 (0.67%) Wireless
17 38 (0.61%) SSL
18 37 (0.59%) VXLAN
19 30 (0.48%) HTTP
20 29 (0.46%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 544 (8.67%) Power BI
2 376 (5.99%) SQL Server
3 321 (5.12%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.86%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
6 192 (3.06%) Azure SQL Database
7 171 (2.73%) NoSQL
8 143 (2.28%) Metadata
9 138 (2.20%) Delta Lake
10 95 (1.51%) Relational Database
11 88 (1.40%) Big Data
11 88 (1.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (1.23%) MongoDB
13 72 (1.15%) Tableau
14 61 (0.97%) Snowflake Schema
15 59 (0.94%) Oracle Database
16 56 (0.89%) BigQuery
17 46 (0.73%) Spark SQL
17 46 (0.73%) Star Schema
18 43 (0.69%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 454 (7.24%) Git
2 433 (6.90%) JIRA
3 305 (4.86%) Jenkins
4 238 (3.79%) GitLab
5 95 (1.51%) Selenium
6 63 (1.00%) Postman
7 50 (0.80%) Cucumber
8 49 (0.78%) MLflow
9 48 (0.76%) JMeter
10 47 (0.75%) JUnit
11 43 (0.69%) REST Assured
12 39 (0.62%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.49%) Cypress.io
14 30 (0.48%) Artifactory
15 27 (0.43%) Maven
16 25 (0.40%) Visual Studio
17 24 (0.38%) Gatling
17 24 (0.38%) WebDriver
18 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.37%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,579 (25.16%) Social Skills
2 1,193 (19.01%) Finance
3 629 (10.02%) Public Sector
4 571 (9.10%) Analytical Skills
5 359 (5.72%) Banking
6 166 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
7 147 (2.34%) Legal
8 100 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 100 (1.59%) Retail
9 89 (1.42%) Organisational Skills
10 70 (1.12%) Financial Institution
11 67 (1.07%) Investment Banking
12 66 (1.05%) Influencing Skills
13 60 (0.96%) Front Office
13 60 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
14 58 (0.92%) Marketing
15 57 (0.91%) Law
16 48 (0.76%) Telecoms
17 42 (0.67%) Military
18 38 (0.61%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 1,069 (17.04%) Architect
2 756 (12.05%) Senior
3 753 (12.00%) Developer
4 580 (9.24%) Azure Engineer
5 531 (8.46%) Data Engineer
6 465 (7.41%) Lead
7 389 (6.20%) Analyst
8 324 (5.16%) DevOps Engineer
9 288 (4.59%) Solutions Architect
10 255 (4.06%) Consultant
11 213 (3.39%) Cloud Engineer
11 213 (3.39%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 171 (2.73%) Security Engineer
13 168 (2.68%) Azure Architect
14 159 (2.53%) Data Architect
15 148 (2.36%) Platform Engineer
16 141 (2.25%) Technical Architect
17 138 (2.20%) Project Manager
18 137 (2.18%) Azure DevOps Engineer
19 131 (2.09%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 478 (7.62%) .NET
2 403 (6.42%) REST
3 257 (4.10%) React
4 238 (3.79%) Kafka
5 231 (3.68%) PySpark
6 184 (2.93%) RESTful
7 183 (2.92%) Node.js
8 178 (2.84%) OAuth
9 164 (2.61%) LDAP
10 160 (2.55%) Spring
11 155 (2.47%) AngularJS
12 130 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 124 (1.98%) JSON
13 124 (1.98%) SOAP
14 123 (1.96%) Middleware
15 120 (1.91%) SAML
16 114 (1.82%) OpenID
17 109 (1.74%) HTML
18 98 (1.56%) YAML
19 95 (1.51%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 609 (9.71%) Cloud Native
2 256 (4.08%) Onboarding
3 216 (3.44%) Product Ownership
4 184 (2.93%) Hybrid Cloud
5 181 (2.88%) Data Centre
6 155 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
7 149 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
8 147 (2.34%) Security Posture
9 139 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
10 129 (2.06%) Public Cloud
11 123 (1.96%) AI Agents
12 88 (1.40%) Data Structures
13 83 (1.32%) Replication
14 70 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
15 64 (1.02%) Management Information System
16 57 (0.91%) Low-Code
17 56 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
17 56 (0.89%) PKI
18 53 (0.84%) Enterprise Cloud
19 52 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 709 (11.30%) Windows
2 314 (5.00%) Linux
3 208 (3.31%) Windows Server
4 116 (1.85%) Windows 10
5 67 (1.07%) Unix
6 60 (0.96%) Mac OS
7 59 (0.94%) Apple iOS
8 55 (0.88%) VMS
9 46 (0.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 42 (0.67%) Android
11 24 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 22 (0.35%) Ubuntu
13 20 (0.32%) Windows Server 2016
14 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.14%) CentOS
16 9 (0.14%) Debian
17 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
18 6 (0.096%) CoreOS
18 6 (0.096%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,328 (37.10%) DevOps
2 1,927 (30.71%) CI/CD
3 1,431 (22.80%) Agile
4 923 (14.71%) Analytics
5 897 (14.29%) AI
6 894 (14.25%) Infrastructure as Code
7 887 (14.14%) Problem-Solving
8 881 (14.04%) Migration
9 725 (11.55%) Data Modelling
10 647 (10.31%) Stakeholder Management
11 621 (9.90%) Data Pipeline
12 603 (9.61%) Business Intelligence
13 601 (9.58%) ETL
14 593 (9.45%) Continuous Improvement
15 567 (9.04%) Containerisation
16 548 (8.73%) Roadmaps
17 537 (8.56%) Microservices
18 531 (8.46%) Data Engineering
19 504 (8.03%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 450 (7.17%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,495 (23.82%) Python
2 1,337 (21.31%) SQL
3 650 (10.36%) PowerShell
4 514 (8.19%) C#
5 509 (8.11%) Java
6 359 (5.72%) JavaScript
7 213 (3.39%) Bash
8 211 (3.36%) TypeScript
9 197 (3.14%) Bicep
10 89 (1.42%) Scala
11 85 (1.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 78 (1.24%) T-SQL
13 69 (1.10%) Go
14 46 (0.73%) Kusto Query Language
15 39 (0.62%) PL/SQL
16 36 (0.57%) R
17 34 (0.54%) Shell Script
18 22 (0.35%) C++
19 21 (0.33%) Kotlin
20 14 (0.22%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,566 (24.96%) Security Cleared
2 1,314 (20.94%) SC Cleared
3 449 (7.16%) Degree
4 341 (5.43%) Azure Certification
5 182 (2.90%) CISSP
6 170 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
7 149 (2.37%) Cisco Certification
8 145 (2.31%) DV Cleared
9 136 (2.17%) Microsoft Certification
10 116 (1.85%) AWS Certification
11 104 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
12 102 (1.63%) CISM
13 71 (1.13%) CCNP
14 66 (1.05%) PMP
15 60 (0.96%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.88%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 52 (0.83%) Master's Degree
18 47 (0.75%) TOGAF Certification
19 46 (0.73%) ISTQB
20 39 (0.62%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (7.09%) Data Quality
2 332 (5.29%) QA
3 311 (4.96%) GDPR
4 247 (3.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 231 (3.68%) NIST
6 102 (1.63%) Accessibility
7 83 (1.32%) NCSC
8 80 (1.27%) PCI DSS
9 69 (1.10%) SLA
10 63 (1.00%) Cyber Essentials
11 61 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 47 (0.75%) GRC
12 47 (0.75%) PMO
13 37 (0.59%) WCAG
14 35 (0.56%) HIPAA
15 25 (0.40%) NIST 800
16 23 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
17 18 (0.29%) SOC 2
18 17 (0.27%) ISO 20022
19 16 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 809 (12.89%) Active Directory
2 661 (10.53%) Docker
3 181 (2.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 111 (1.77%) Virtual Desktop
5 104 (1.66%) Virtual Machines
6 89 (1.42%) Hyper-V
7 59 (0.94%) vSphere
8 40 (0.64%) VMware ESXi
9 27 (0.43%) Firmware
10 23 (0.37%) VMware NSX
11 19 (0.30%) NFS
12 15 (0.24%) Postfix
13 10 (0.16%) Microsoft App-V
14 8 (0.13%) Varnish
15 6 (0.096%) KVM
15 6 (0.096%) RACF
16 5 (0.080%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.080%) Snort
16 5 (0.080%) VMware Workstation
17 4 (0.064%) Sendmail
Systems Management
1 983 (15.67%) Terraform
2 889 (14.17%) Kubernetes
3 336 (5.35%) Microsoft Intune
4 282 (4.49%) Ansible
5 169 (2.69%) Grafana
6 143 (2.28%) Prometheus
7 137 (2.18%) Single Sign-On
8 99 (1.58%) SCCM
9 71 (1.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 36 (0.57%) Puppet
11 33 (0.53%) Istio
12 32 (0.51%) Argo
13 30 (0.48%) Jamf Pro
14 28 (0.45%) Progress Chef
15 26 (0.41%) FortiGate
16 18 (0.29%) vCenter Server
17 17 (0.27%) HAProxy
17 17 (0.27%) HP ALM
18 15 (0.24%) linkerd
19 14 (0.22%) Packer
Vendors
1 2,035 (32.43%) Microsoft
2 639 (10.18%) Databricks
3 288 (4.59%) ServiceNow
4 254 (4.05%) Oracle
5 251 (4.00%) VMware
6 232 (3.70%) Google
7 185 (2.95%) SAP
8 168 (2.68%) Cisco
9 162 (2.58%) OpenAI
10 142 (2.26%) Splunk
11 134 (2.14%) CyberArk
12 114 (1.82%) Palo Alto
13 98 (1.56%) Foundry
14 92 (1.47%) Salesforce
15 84 (1.34%) Okta
16 70 (1.12%) Dynatrace
17 65 (1.04%) Citrix
18 64 (1.02%) BeyondTrust
19 62 (0.99%) Zscaler
20 58 (0.92%) Informatica