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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 6 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 0
Contract jobs citing Azure 6,152 3,785 4,927
As % of all contract jobs in England 15.32% 15.48% 13.33%
As % of the Cloud Services category 43.06% 41.44% 41.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,440 2,697 3,618
10th Percentile £363 £351 £350
25th Percentile £425 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -3.67% -3.11%
75th Percentile £623 £640 £642
90th Percentile £725 £740 £750
UK median daily rate £520 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -0.95% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 112 26 48
10th Percentile £25.47 £21.78 £17.80
25th Percentile £51.25 £26.45 £22.45
Median hourly rate £57.50 £57.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.88% +62.86% -36.36%
75th Percentile £68.75 £76.06 £59.95
90th Percentile £80.00 £90.00 £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 14,286 9,134 11,776
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 35.57% 37.35% 31.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,836 6,406 8,479
10th Percentile £318 £313 £290
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £504 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.95% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £714 £741 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £521 £525
% change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 444 194 321
10th Percentile £15.95 £15.17 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.50 £18.13 £15.85
Median hourly rate £43.15 £26.45 £20.77
Median % change year-on-year +63.13% +27.35% -35.70%
75th Percentile £67.50 £42.74 £32.50
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £61.60
UK median hourly rate £40.00 £27.50 £20.99
% change year-on-year +45.45% +31.05% -40.04%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 3,305 £530 -3.64% 993
North of England +3 844 £500 +5.26% 609
South East +1 796 £500 -4.76% 661
Midlands -2 498 £489 -6.46% 319
North West +2 453 £500 - 341
South West +5 373 £500 -4.76% 285
West Midlands 0 360 £500 -4.76% 192
Yorkshire +3 343 £500 +17.65% 169
East of England +4 152 £545 -6.03% 217
East Midlands +2 128 £450 -5.26% 125
North East -1 57 £525 +3.70% 101
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
1 283 (4.60%) SharePoint
2 177 (2.88%) Microsoft Exchange
3 171 (2.78%) Apache Spark
4 164 (2.67%) Confluence
5 95 (1.54%) Apache
6 87 (1.41%) Apache Airflow
7 21 (0.34%) SAS
8 19 (0.31%) IIS
9 14 (0.23%) Appian
9 14 (0.23%) ArcGIS
9 14 (0.23%) CMS
10 13 (0.21%) Camunda
10 13 (0.21%) HCL Notes
10 13 (0.21%) Mendix
10 13 (0.21%) OpenStack
11 10 (0.16%) Palantir Foundry
12 7 (0.11%) Anypoint
13 6 (0.098%) WebLogic
14 5 (0.081%) BizTalk Server
14 5 (0.081%) nginx
Applications
1 99 (1.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 79 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 57 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
4 42 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 34 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 18 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.13%) Trello
8 7 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.081%) Acrobat
9 5 (0.081%) PTC Creo
10 4 (0.065%) Adobe XD
10 4 (0.065%) CPLEX
10 4 (0.065%) Weka
11 3 (0.049%) AutoCAD
12 2 (0.033%) Revit
12 2 (0.033%) SOLIDWORKS
13 1 (0.016%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 97 (1.58%) Dynamics CRM
2 60 (0.98%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (0.18%) Maximo
3 11 (0.18%) NEC Housing
3 11 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
4 8 (0.13%) Remedy ITSM
5 7 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 7 (0.11%) Dynamics AX
5 7 (0.11%) Teamcenter
6 5 (0.081%) Oracle EBS
7 4 (0.065%) Cloudability
7 4 (0.065%) Oracle FAH
7 4 (0.065%) SAP BPC
7 4 (0.065%) Unit4 Business World
8 3 (0.049%) Elite 3E
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle General Ledger
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Payables
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 3 (0.049%) Oracle Receivables
8 3 (0.049%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 2,116 (34.40%) AWS
2 1,279 (20.79%) Azure DevOps
3 1,162 (18.89%) GCP
4 795 (12.92%) Power Platform
5 772 (12.55%) Entra ID
6 646 (10.50%) Microsoft 365
7 587 (9.54%) GitHub
8 461 (7.49%) Azure Data Factory
9 333 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
10 332 (5.40%) Serverless
11 305 (4.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 245 (3.98%) SaaS
13 239 (3.88%) Azure AKS
14 232 (3.77%) Dynamics 365
15 221 (3.59%) Azure Monitor
16 215 (3.49%) Power Automate
17 209 (3.40%) PaaS
18 188 (3.06%) Azure Functions
19 183 (2.97%) Azure Logic Apps
20 176 (2.86%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 397 (6.45%) Firewall
2 268 (4.36%) DNS
3 240 (3.90%) VPN
4 209 (3.40%) Network Security
5 155 (2.52%) WAN
6 143 (2.32%) DHCP
7 116 (1.89%) LAN
8 86 (1.40%) TCP/IP
9 74 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
10 73 (1.19%) SD-WAN
11 70 (1.14%) VLAN
12 65 (1.06%) Kerberos
13 56 (0.91%) BGP
14 49 (0.80%) OSPF
15 42 (0.68%) SAN
16 38 (0.62%) Wireless
17 37 (0.60%) SSL
18 35 (0.57%) HTTP
19 31 (0.50%) Internet
20 27 (0.44%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 553 (8.99%) Power BI
2 371 (6.03%) SQL Server
3 334 (5.43%) Data Warehouse
4 300 (4.88%) Data Lake
5 213 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
6 203 (3.30%) Azure SQL Database
7 178 (2.89%) NoSQL
8 146 (2.37%) Metadata
9 137 (2.23%) Delta Lake
10 97 (1.58%) Relational Database
11 92 (1.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 88 (1.43%) Big Data
13 78 (1.27%) MongoDB
14 76 (1.24%) Tableau
15 65 (1.06%) Oracle Database
16 59 (0.96%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (0.89%) BigQuery
18 48 (0.78%) Star Schema
19 46 (0.75%) MySQL
20 44 (0.72%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 450 (7.31%) Git
2 428 (6.96%) JIRA
3 301 (4.89%) Jenkins
4 227 (3.69%) GitLab
5 103 (1.67%) Selenium
6 66 (1.07%) Postman
7 56 (0.91%) Cucumber
7 56 (0.91%) JUnit
8 51 (0.83%) MLflow
9 46 (0.75%) JMeter
10 42 (0.68%) REST Assured
11 35 (0.57%) SonarQube
12 34 (0.55%) Artifactory
13 33 (0.54%) Cypress.io
14 28 (0.46%) TestRail
15 26 (0.42%) Visual Studio
16 25 (0.41%) Bitbucket
17 24 (0.39%) Gatling
17 24 (0.39%) Oracle APEX
17 24 (0.39%) WebDriver
General
1 1,647 (26.77%) Social Skills
2 1,145 (18.61%) Finance
3 644 (10.47%) Public Sector
4 601 (9.77%) Analytical Skills
5 357 (5.80%) Banking
6 196 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 141 (2.29%) Legal
8 92 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 88 (1.43%) Retail
10 83 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 71 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
12 68 (1.11%) Influencing Skills
13 65 (1.06%) Financial Institution
14 64 (1.04%) Marketing
15 62 (1.01%) Investment Banking
16 60 (0.98%) Front Office
17 58 (0.94%) Law
18 53 (0.86%) Telecoms
19 44 (0.72%) Local Government
20 35 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 1,018 (16.55%) Architect
2 788 (12.81%) Developer
3 740 (12.03%) Senior
4 575 (9.35%) Azure Engineer
5 526 (8.55%) Data Engineer
6 460 (7.48%) Lead
7 379 (6.16%) Analyst
8 321 (5.22%) DevOps Engineer
9 264 (4.29%) Solutions Architect
10 247 (4.01%) Consultant
11 196 (3.19%) Cloud Engineer
12 188 (3.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 163 (2.65%) Azure Architect
14 155 (2.52%) Security Engineer
15 152 (2.47%) Platform Engineer
16 139 (2.26%) Azure DevOps Engineer
17 135 (2.19%) Data Architect
18 134 (2.18%) Technical Architect
19 128 (2.08%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
20 127 (2.06%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 468 (7.61%) .NET
2 398 (6.47%) REST
3 259 (4.21%) React
4 248 (4.03%) Kafka
5 225 (3.66%) PySpark
6 207 (3.36%) Node.js
7 181 (2.94%) Spring
8 180 (2.93%) RESTful
9 179 (2.91%) OAuth
10 157 (2.55%) AngularJS
10 157 (2.55%) LDAP
11 144 (2.34%) Spring Boot
12 124 (2.02%) JSON
13 123 (2.00%) SAML
14 121 (1.97%) HTML
14 121 (1.97%) SOAP
15 117 (1.90%) Middleware
16 111 (1.80%) OpenID
17 99 (1.61%) YAML
18 98 (1.59%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 591 (9.61%) Cloud Native
2 244 (3.97%) Onboarding
3 214 (3.48%) Product Ownership
4 178 (2.89%) Hybrid Cloud
5 155 (2.52%) Enterprise Software
6 153 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
7 150 (2.44%) Security Posture
8 149 (2.42%) Distributed Systems
9 142 (2.31%) Data Centre
10 137 (2.23%) Public Cloud
11 111 (1.80%) AI Agents
12 83 (1.35%) Data Structures
12 83 (1.35%) Replication
13 69 (1.12%) Management Information System
14 68 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
15 57 (0.93%) PKI
16 56 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
17 53 (0.86%) Low-Code
18 49 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
19 45 (0.73%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 681 (11.07%) Windows
2 309 (5.02%) Linux
3 215 (3.49%) Windows Server
4 111 (1.80%) Windows 10
5 62 (1.01%) VMS
6 59 (0.96%) Unix
7 53 (0.86%) Mac OS
8 49 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 41 (0.67%) Apple iOS
10 32 (0.52%) Android
11 20 (0.33%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
12 19 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
13 13 (0.21%) Windows Server 2012
14 10 (0.16%) Data ONTAP
15 8 (0.13%) AIX
15 8 (0.13%) CentOS
15 8 (0.13%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.098%) CoreOS
16 6 (0.098%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 2,317 (37.66%) DevOps
2 1,890 (30.72%) CI/CD
3 1,433 (23.29%) Agile
4 945 (15.36%) Analytics
5 943 (15.33%) Problem-Solving
6 870 (14.14%) AI
7 868 (14.11%) Infrastructure as Code
8 835 (13.57%) Migration
9 705 (11.46%) Data Modelling
10 615 (10.00%) Business Intelligence
11 608 (9.88%) Stakeholder Management
12 607 (9.87%) Data Pipeline
13 592 (9.62%) Continuous Improvement
14 584 (9.49%) Containerisation
15 572 (9.30%) ETL
16 544 (8.84%) Microservices
17 536 (8.71%) Data Engineering
18 504 (8.19%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 500 (8.13%) Roadmaps
20 470 (7.64%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,542 (25.07%) Python
2 1,369 (22.25%) SQL
3 666 (10.83%) PowerShell
4 534 (8.68%) Java
5 526 (8.55%) C#
6 390 (6.34%) JavaScript
7 226 (3.67%) TypeScript
8 219 (3.56%) Bash
9 197 (3.20%) Bicep
10 95 (1.54%) Scala
11 77 (1.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 77 (1.25%) Go
12 73 (1.19%) T-SQL
13 62 (1.01%) PL/SQL
14 61 (0.99%) Kusto Query Language
15 42 (0.68%) R
16 36 (0.59%) Shell Script
17 21 (0.34%) C++
18 20 (0.33%) Kotlin
19 19 (0.31%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,556 (25.29%) Security Cleared
2 1,301 (21.15%) SC Cleared
3 441 (7.17%) Degree
4 351 (5.71%) Azure Certification
5 183 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.65%) CISSP
7 143 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
8 131 (2.13%) Cisco Certification
9 123 (2.00%) DV Cleared
10 119 (1.93%) AWS Certification
11 102 (1.66%) BPSS Clearance
12 94 (1.53%) CISM
13 70 (1.14%) CCNP
14 59 (0.96%) PMP
15 56 (0.91%) Master's Degree
15 56 (0.91%) PMI Certification
16 55 (0.89%) TOGAF Certification
17 49 (0.80%) ISTQB
18 39 (0.63%) (ISC)2 CCSP
19 36 (0.59%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 446 (7.25%) Data Quality
2 346 (5.62%) GDPR
3 336 (5.46%) QA
4 249 (4.05%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 223 (3.62%) NIST
6 88 (1.43%) Accessibility
7 79 (1.28%) NCSC
7 79 (1.28%) PCI DSS
8 59 (0.96%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 55 (0.89%) SLA
10 51 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
11 48 (0.78%) PMO
12 39 (0.63%) GRC
13 32 (0.52%) HIPAA
14 29 (0.47%) WCAG
15 23 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 22 (0.36%) NIST 800
17 19 (0.31%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
18 18 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
19 16 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 802 (13.04%) Active Directory
2 700 (11.38%) Docker
3 175 (2.84%) VMware Infrastructure
4 108 (1.76%) Virtual Machines
5 96 (1.56%) Virtual Desktop
6 88 (1.43%) Hyper-V
7 58 (0.94%) vSphere
8 35 (0.57%) VMware ESXi
9 23 (0.37%) Firmware
10 22 (0.36%) VMware NSX
11 18 (0.29%) NFS
12 11 (0.18%) Postfix
13 6 (0.098%) BitLocker
13 6 (0.098%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.098%) RACF
13 6 (0.098%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 6 (0.098%) Varnish
14 5 (0.081%) GPFS
14 5 (0.081%) KVM
14 5 (0.081%) Snort
Systems Management
1 978 (15.90%) Terraform
2 923 (15.00%) Kubernetes
3 333 (5.41%) Microsoft Intune
4 275 (4.47%) Ansible
5 172 (2.80%) Grafana
6 144 (2.34%) Prometheus
7 138 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
8 104 (1.69%) SCCM
9 66 (1.07%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 35 (0.57%) Istio
11 34 (0.55%) Argo
12 32 (0.52%) Puppet
13 27 (0.44%) Progress Chef
14 23 (0.37%) FortiGate
14 23 (0.37%) vCenter Server
15 21 (0.34%) Jamf Pro
16 17 (0.28%) HP ALM
16 17 (0.28%) Kubeflow
17 15 (0.24%) linkerd
18 14 (0.23%) HAProxy
Vendors
1 2,027 (32.95%) Microsoft
2 621 (10.09%) Databricks
3 285 (4.63%) Oracle
4 276 (4.49%) Google
5 266 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 250 (4.06%) VMware
7 176 (2.86%) SAP
8 160 (2.60%) OpenAI
9 158 (2.57%) Cisco
10 140 (2.28%) Splunk
11 128 (2.08%) CyberArk
12 105 (1.71%) Foundry
13 88 (1.43%) Palo Alto
14 87 (1.41%) Salesforce
15 81 (1.32%) Okta
16 67 (1.09%) Citrix
17 66 (1.07%) BeyondTrust
18 64 (1.04%) Dynatrace
19 60 (0.98%) IBM
19 60 (0.98%) Informatica