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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,190 3,751 4,948
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.25% 15.43% 13.46%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.34% 41.47% 42.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,440 2,651 3,641
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -2.68%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £536
% change year-on-year - -2.01% -2.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 119 24 47
10th Percentile £25.38 £21.12 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.63 £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 £90.75 £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 14,281 9,045 11,749
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.18% 37.21% 31.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,789 6,305 8,477
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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £713 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £517 £525
% change year-on-year -3.29% -1.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 462 197 323
10th Percentile £15.94 £15.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £21.36 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.50 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.47% +21.43% -36.84%
75th Percentile £68.33 £40.00 £34.38
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.00 £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 12 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 12 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 12 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 3,298 £538 -2.27% 972
North of England +3 860 £500 +5.26% 554
South East +3 826 £500 -4.76% 674
Midlands -3 496 £489 -2.25% 291
North West +3 450 £500 - 295
South West +6 381 £525 - 252
West Midlands 0 364 £498 -5.24% 160
Yorkshire +6 350 £500 +14.29% 161
East of England +4 146 £550 -5.17% 181
East Midlands +2 122 £450 -2.70% 129
North East 0 69 £525 +7.69% 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
1 290 (4.68%) SharePoint
2 174 (2.81%) Confluence
3 171 (2.76%) Apache Spark
3 171 (2.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 92 (1.49%) Apache
5 85 (1.37%) Apache Airflow
6 21 (0.34%) IIS
7 17 (0.27%) SAS
8 13 (0.21%) ArcGIS
8 13 (0.21%) Mendix
9 12 (0.19%) Appian
9 12 (0.19%) Camunda
9 12 (0.19%) CMS
9 12 (0.19%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.18%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 5 (0.081%) BizTalk Server
13 5 (0.081%) Jupyter
13 5 (0.081%) WebLogic
Applications
1 90 (1.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 83 (1.34%) Microsoft Office
3 59 (0.95%) Microsoft Project
4 40 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 33 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 21 (0.34%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Trello
8 5 (0.081%) CPLEX
8 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
9 4 (0.065%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
9 4 (0.065%) AutoCAD
10 3 (0.048%) Revit
11 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
12 1 (0.016%) InDesign
12 1 (0.016%) PlantUML
12 1 (0.016%) Weka
Business Applications
1 90 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 68 (1.10%) 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 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
8 5 (0.081%) Unit4 Business World
9 4 (0.065%) Oracle Assets
9 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
9 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
9 4 (0.065%) SAP MDG
9 4 (0.065%) Shopify
9 4 (0.065%) SimCorp Dimension
10 3 (0.048%) Cloudability
10 3 (0.048%) Elite 3E
10 3 (0.048%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,136 (34.51%) AWS
2 1,257 (20.31%) Azure DevOps
3 1,127 (18.21%) GCP
4 797 (12.88%) Power Platform
5 768 (12.41%) Entra ID
6 651 (10.52%) Microsoft 365
7 574 (9.27%) GitHub
8 457 (7.38%) Azure Data Factory
9 325 (5.25%) GitHub Actions
10 317 (5.12%) Serverless
11 302 (4.88%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 249 (4.02%) SaaS
13 231 (3.73%) Azure AKS
14 226 (3.65%) Dynamics 365
15 213 (3.44%) Power Automate
16 212 (3.42%) PaaS
17 202 (3.26%) Azure Monitor
18 173 (2.79%) Azure Functions
19 172 (2.78%) PowerApps
20 170 (2.75%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 391 (6.32%) Firewall
2 269 (4.35%) DNS
3 228 (3.68%) VPN
4 205 (3.31%) Network Security
5 166 (2.68%) WAN
6 149 (2.41%) DHCP
7 115 (1.86%) LAN
8 85 (1.37%) SD-WAN
9 84 (1.36%) TCP/IP
10 75 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 69 (1.11%) VLAN
12 66 (1.07%) BGP
12 66 (1.07%) Kerberos
13 57 (0.92%) OSPF
14 46 (0.74%) SAN
15 40 (0.65%) Wireless
16 38 (0.61%) SSL
17 33 (0.53%) HTTP
18 32 (0.52%) VXLAN
19 29 (0.47%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 558 (9.01%) Power BI
2 367 (5.93%) SQL Server
3 323 (5.22%) Data Warehouse
4 305 (4.93%) Data Lake
5 207 (3.34%) PostgreSQL
6 197 (3.18%) Azure SQL Database
7 167 (2.70%) NoSQL
8 144 (2.33%) Metadata
9 139 (2.25%) Delta Lake
10 96 (1.55%) Relational Database
11 87 (1.41%) Big Data
12 84 (1.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 76 (1.23%) MongoDB
14 73 (1.18%) Tableau
15 64 (1.03%) Oracle Database
16 61 (0.99%) Snowflake Schema
17 56 (0.90%) BigQuery
18 47 (0.76%) Star Schema
19 46 (0.74%) Spark SQL
20 42 (0.68%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 452 (7.30%) Git
2 429 (6.93%) JIRA
3 304 (4.91%) Jenkins
4 237 (3.83%) GitLab
5 93 (1.50%) Selenium
6 59 (0.95%) Postman
7 51 (0.82%) JUnit
8 50 (0.81%) MLflow
9 49 (0.79%) Cucumber
10 45 (0.73%) JMeter
11 39 (0.63%) REST Assured
12 38 (0.61%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.52%) Artifactory
14 28 (0.45%) Cypress.io
15 25 (0.40%) Maven
16 24 (0.39%) Gatling
16 24 (0.39%) Visual Studio
16 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
17 23 (0.37%) Bitbucket
18 21 (0.34%) TestRail
General
1 1,591 (25.70%) Social Skills
2 1,172 (18.93%) Finance
3 631 (10.19%) Public Sector
4 571 (9.22%) Analytical Skills
5 358 (5.78%) Banking
6 182 (2.94%) Documentation Skills
7 143 (2.31%) Legal
8 98 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 89 (1.44%) Retail
10 84 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
11 68 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
12 67 (1.08%) Financial Institution
13 62 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 62 (1.00%) Investment Banking
14 60 (0.97%) Front Office
14 60 (0.97%) Law
14 60 (0.97%) Marketing
15 52 (0.84%) Telecoms
16 38 (0.61%) Local Government
16 38 (0.61%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,028 (16.61%) Architect
2 754 (12.18%) Senior
3 749 (12.10%) Developer
4 569 (9.19%) Azure Engineer
5 532 (8.59%) Data Engineer
6 449 (7.25%) Lead
7 395 (6.38%) Analyst
8 317 (5.12%) DevOps Engineer
9 276 (4.46%) Solutions Architect
10 252 (4.07%) Consultant
11 204 (3.30%) Cloud Engineer
12 200 (3.23%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 166 (2.68%) Azure Architect
14 163 (2.63%) Security Engineer
15 151 (2.44%) Platform Engineer
16 140 (2.26%) Technical Architect
17 139 (2.25%) Data Architect
18 134 (2.16%) Azure DevOps Engineer
18 134 (2.16%) Business Analyst
19 131 (2.12%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 460 (7.43%) .NET
2 393 (6.35%) REST
3 249 (4.02%) React
4 245 (3.96%) Kafka
5 228 (3.68%) PySpark
6 189 (3.05%) Node.js
7 177 (2.86%) RESTful
8 171 (2.76%) Spring
9 169 (2.73%) OAuth
10 162 (2.62%) LDAP
11 153 (2.47%) AngularJS
12 139 (2.25%) Spring Boot
13 123 (1.99%) Middleware
14 121 (1.95%) JSON
15 120 (1.94%) SOAP
16 115 (1.86%) HTML
16 115 (1.86%) SAML
17 107 (1.73%) OpenID
18 100 (1.62%) YAML
19 92 (1.49%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 608 (9.82%) Cloud Native
2 248 (4.01%) Onboarding
3 210 (3.39%) Product Ownership
4 181 (2.92%) Hybrid Cloud
5 164 (2.65%) Data Centre
6 159 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
7 145 (2.34%) Distributed Systems
8 144 (2.33%) Enterprise Software
8 144 (2.33%) Security Posture
9 130 (2.10%) Public Cloud
10 115 (1.86%) AI Agents
11 88 (1.42%) Data Structures
12 85 (1.37%) Replication
13 69 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
14 66 (1.07%) Management Information System
15 58 (0.94%) PKI
16 55 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
17 52 (0.84%) Low-Code
18 49 (0.79%) Self-Motivation
18 49 (0.79%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 699 (11.29%) Windows
2 316 (5.11%) Linux
3 207 (3.34%) Windows Server
4 112 (1.81%) Windows 10
5 66 (1.07%) Unix
6 58 (0.94%) VMS
7 55 (0.89%) Mac OS
8 51 (0.82%) Apple iOS
9 48 (0.78%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 37 (0.60%) Android
11 23 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
12 21 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
13 20 (0.32%) Ubuntu
14 11 (0.18%) Windows Server 2012
15 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
16 9 (0.15%) AIX
17 8 (0.13%) CentOS
18 7 (0.11%) Debian
18 7 (0.11%) Windows 7
19 6 (0.097%) CoreOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,305 (37.24%) DevOps
2 1,900 (30.69%) CI/CD
3 1,435 (23.18%) Agile
4 937 (15.14%) Analytics
5 903 (14.59%) Problem-Solving
6 881 (14.23%) Infrastructure as Code
7 875 (14.14%) AI
8 838 (13.54%) Migration
9 714 (11.53%) Data Modelling
10 625 (10.10%) Stakeholder Management
11 619 (10.00%) Business Intelligence
12 616 (9.95%) Data Pipeline
13 594 (9.60%) ETL
14 588 (9.50%) Continuous Improvement
15 581 (9.39%) Containerisation
16 537 (8.68%) Microservices
17 534 (8.63%) Data Engineering
18 529 (8.55%) Roadmaps
19 498 (8.05%) Stakeholder Engagement
20 461 (7.45%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,513 (24.44%) Python
2 1,345 (21.73%) SQL
3 663 (10.71%) PowerShell
4 518 (8.37%) Java
5 509 (8.22%) C#
6 359 (5.80%) JavaScript
7 221 (3.57%) Bash
8 215 (3.47%) TypeScript
9 192 (3.10%) Bicep
10 89 (1.44%) Scala
11 85 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 77 (1.24%) Go
13 76 (1.23%) T-SQL
14 51 (0.82%) Kusto Query Language
15 46 (0.74%) PL/SQL
16 40 (0.65%) R
17 36 (0.58%) Shell Script
18 23 (0.37%) C++
19 20 (0.32%) Kotlin
20 16 (0.26%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,568 (25.33%) Security Cleared
2 1,305 (21.08%) SC Cleared
3 440 (7.11%) Degree
4 350 (5.65%) Azure Certification
5 176 (2.84%) CISSP
6 172 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
7 143 (2.31%) Cisco Certification
8 139 (2.25%) Microsoft Certification
9 138 (2.23%) DV Cleared
10 128 (2.07%) AWS Certification
11 102 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
12 101 (1.63%) CISM
13 68 (1.10%) CCNP
14 62 (1.00%) PMP
15 59 (0.95%) PMI Certification
16 56 (0.90%) TOGAF Certification
17 53 (0.86%) Master's Degree
18 52 (0.84%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 48 (0.78%) ISTQB
20 36 (0.58%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (7.16%) Data Quality
2 330 (5.33%) QA
3 322 (5.20%) GDPR
4 252 (4.07%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 232 (3.75%) NIST
6 96 (1.55%) Accessibility
7 82 (1.32%) NCSC
8 80 (1.29%) PCI DSS
9 64 (1.03%) Cyber Essentials
10 60 (0.97%) SLA
11 59 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 50 (0.81%) PMO
13 46 (0.74%) GRC
14 34 (0.55%) HIPAA
15 31 (0.50%) WCAG
16 22 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 19 (0.31%) ISO 20022
18 17 (0.27%) PSD2
19 16 (0.26%) SOC 2
System Software
1 803 (12.97%) Active Directory
2 679 (10.97%) Docker
3 179 (2.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 109 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 107 (1.73%) Virtual Desktop
6 87 (1.41%) Hyper-V
7 55 (0.89%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 26 (0.42%) Firmware
10 20 (0.32%) NFS
11 19 (0.31%) VMware NSX
12 12 (0.19%) Postfix
13 11 (0.18%) Microsoft App-V
14 7 (0.11%) Varnish
15 6 (0.097%) RACF
16 5 (0.081%) Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services
16 5 (0.081%) HDFS
16 5 (0.081%) KVM
16 5 (0.081%) Snort
17 4 (0.065%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 977 (15.78%) Terraform
2 899 (14.52%) Kubernetes
3 331 (5.35%) Microsoft Intune
4 282 (4.56%) Ansible
5 170 (2.75%) Grafana
6 146 (2.36%) Prometheus
7 132 (2.13%) Single Sign-On
8 101 (1.63%) SCCM
9 66 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 33 (0.53%) Argo
10 33 (0.53%) Istio
10 33 (0.53%) Puppet
11 29 (0.47%) Progress Chef
12 25 (0.40%) FortiGate
13 23 (0.37%) Jamf Pro
14 19 (0.31%) vCenter Server
15 16 (0.26%) HP ALM
16 15 (0.24%) HAProxy
16 15 (0.24%) Kubeflow
17 14 (0.23%) Nmap
Vendors
1 2,017 (32.58%) Microsoft
2 622 (10.05%) Databricks
3 275 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 258 (4.17%) Oracle
5 254 (4.10%) Google
6 249 (4.02%) VMware
7 181 (2.92%) SAP
8 161 (2.60%) Cisco
9 157 (2.54%) OpenAI
10 139 (2.25%) Splunk
11 132 (2.13%) CyberArk
12 107 (1.73%) Palo Alto
13 98 (1.58%) Foundry
14 90 (1.45%) Salesforce
15 78 (1.26%) Okta
16 68 (1.10%) Citrix
17 67 (1.08%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.03%) Dynatrace
19 61 (0.99%) Zscaler
20 59 (0.95%) Informatica